Eternity's Mind (35 page)

Now she tossed her coppery hair under the bright sunshine. “We must learn to fight new foes of all sorts, Rememberer Anton. I trust in my own skills to fight the monster before me.”

She had asked him to watch her battle the powerful ugru, though at the moment Anton was far more interested in delving into how the Shana Rei were previously defeated, as the Mage-Imperator had requested. The rememberers had studied the relevant tales many times, but Anton kept hoping he would uncover new revelations, especially in the less-familiar and long-buried apocryphal documents.

Without doubt, he was more likely to find answers in the documents than by watching Yazra'h fight this lumpy, ugly combat beast. But she had insisted, and Yazra'h was very good at insisting.

Sitting in the arena stands, Anton put out the documents he had brought along, still hoping to get some reading done. Five of Ildira's seven suns shone down, and Anton wore filmgoggles for protection. After so many years on Ildira, he was accustomed to the intense daylight, but the sun flare from the printed crystal sheets made the records difficult to read.

Yazra'h danced around on the soft turf of the fighting area. She held a small crystal dagger in each hand, each blade no longer than his index finger. The little prickers couldn't possibly do any damage to the behemoth in front of her and would only annoy the monster … but annoying an ugru—and surviving—was Yazra'h's intent.

“Watch me, Rememberer Anton!”

He dutifully looked up as she explained, skipping around the plodding hulk. The ugru had brown leathery skin studded with gravelly warts. Its body was stocky, its four legs thick, its head a blunt dome that rested flat on broad shoulders with no discernible neck. “Ugrus are bottom feeders in the jungle, eating fungus in the underbrush. They lumber along, impervious to predators, oblivious to even the largest biting insects.”

Yazra'h danced up and slapped the ugru's shoulder as hard as she could, and the loud crack sounded like a gunshot. The ugru flinched and plodded away.

“These creatures are normally docile, but they can be provoked.” She smacked the ugru again and pranced around it, coming up on the opposite side for another loud slap. With a grunt, the creature shuffled in the other direction. Yazra'h dove onto its back and jabbed repeatedly with her stubby crystal daggers, although the points barely pricked the thick hide. The ugru groaned and turned in one direction, then the other.

“When it is finally enraged, the ugru becomes a powerful and worthy opponent.” She pricked six more times and sprang off the creature's back, crouching and ready to fight. The ugru, though, just lumbered away.

Hiding a smile, Anton went back to his studies, rearranging his notes, pulling out cross-referenced sections of the standard Saga along with the apocrypha. The Ildiran historical epic contained seminal tales about the Shana Rei, many of which were just descriptions of disasters—colonies smothered by darkness, worlds entirely englobed—much like what he had recently seen at Kuivahr. The stories were chilling, but he tried to find hints and insights that could lead to solutions.

He found a mention of another strange myth from before the time of the war with the shadows, about a presence called Eternity's Mind, a powerful force that could stand against the chaos the Shana Rei wished to impose, but since the Ildirans could neither contact nor influence Eternity's Mind, Anton assumed it was too esoteric a legend to be of any practical use.

Of more interest, he studied the tale of the Ahlar Designate, whose world had been saved from a shadow cloud, but the creatures of darkness had worked their way into his
thism,
into his blood—driving him mad. Unable to control his actions, the Ahlar Designate had attempted to murder his nine children. Somehow forcing control back on himself, he had slashed open the main arteries in his arm and let the blood spill out: black blood, tainted blood. When his blood finally ran red again, he was free of the Shana Rei, but it was too late, and he died. If nothing else, it was a small victory.

Yazra'h spun about, slapped the ugru again, and bounded onto its back. She did a cartwheel, then sprang back off, but not before jabbing the poor creature again. Sufficiently provoked at last, the ugru lifted a massive front leg and swung at her as if to brush away a distraction. She flitted in and poked the soft part of its foot, which made the ugru snort.

“It will heal quickly, and its pain receptors shut down in seconds,” she explained, then pricked again, planting herself defiantly in front of the big creature, making sure she was at the center of its gaze. “Fight me, monster!”

“That's quite remarkable,” Anton said, and turned back to his documents. He would look up and watch when the beast finally, if ever, responded.

The previous war against the Shana Rei had ended when Mage-Imperator Xiba'h coerced an alliance with the faeros. The flaming elementals had been the only force strong enough to drive back the shadows, yet the faeros were smothered in great numbers each time they fought the creatures of darkness.

The Saga of Seven Suns devoted many stanzas to how Mage-Imperator Xiba'h had burned himself alive in order to summon the faeros. After that, his successor and the fiery elementals had defeated the Shana Rei. Somehow.

Anton studied the unhelpful stanzas again, shaking his head. “I wish the writers hadn't skipped so many details.”

If the faeros had been so effective, what about the wentals? Or the hydrogues? In a dramatic attack on the Golgen skymine, the hydrogues had been consumed by darkness inside their gas giants, but they—like the wentals—were much diminished since the Elemental War. According to Nira, the verdani were now suffering great damage in their worldforest, with trees dying from a spreading blight. A shadow blight.

“Yah!” Yazra'h yelled and struck the ugru again, and this time it reacted as if she had stepped on a landmine. This was the response she had been trying to provoke for the past ten minutes. With a snuffling roar, the ugru lifted up on its tree-like back legs, raising meaty front arms, each as large as a cannon barrel, and used them as battering rams. The monster swung so swiftly that Yazra'h barely had time to yell before it sent her flying.

Anton expected to hear the crack of bone and see blood spray out of her mouth, but Yazra'h spun in the air and fell on her hands and knees. Somehow, she still managed to look graceful.

The ugru rounded on her, and she sprang back up, holding the two crystal prickers as if they might scare the beast. It thundered toward her. Yazra'h bounced out of the way, laughing in a manner that Anton found completely inappropriate.

“Come fight me!”

The ugru charged toward her. Yazra'h darted sideways. The beast responded with surprising swiftness and agility, and she startled it by running straight at it. At the last minute, she jumped into the air, pressed her palms on its shoulders as she flipped herself, and landed behind the creature. She slapped its thick hide and poked again with her tiny stingers.

The ugru managed to anticipate some of her tricks. With another tremendous swat, it sent Yazra'h flying again. Although she landed on her feet, Anton could tell she was hurt, but he knew she would be insulted if he rushed to offer aid. In fact, any such attempt would likely get
him
trampled. Unable to concentrate on his reading anymore, he watched the fight continue.

“Don't you think you should leave the poor thing alone now?” he called.

“I must practice and become proficient. There is a war coming.”

“Yes, and your skills will be of great use if we are threatened by a herd of ugrus, but I doubt this will help against the Shana Rei.”

Yazra'h backed away. “I see your point, Rememberer Anton.” She winced as she moved, and he hoped she wasn't severely injured.

Once she stopped provoking it, the ugru quickly became docile and began to snuffle at the food offerings on the practice field. In less than a minute, the beast had forgotten entirely about her.

Yazra'h came back to Anton, panting and sweaty. “Were you impressed?”

“I am always impressed—your fighting skill is unequaled. I just hope I can impress you with some discovery I make in the old records.”

Her brows knitted together. “I am already impressed with that, Rememberer Anton. You can do a difficult thing that is beyond me. Together we are certain to find a way to defeat any enemy.”

Anton wasn't so sure, but he appreciated her confidence.

 

CHAPTER

59

GENERAL NALANI KEAH

From the bridge of the
Kutuzov,
Keah commanded the surviving CDF ships as they fell back and tried to defend Earth. They kept fighting as they retreated from the ruins of the Lunar Orbital Complex, and she lost three more Mantas on the way.

Waves of bugbot battleships were dumping doomsday blasts on entire continents below. Dozens of major cities had already been obliterated. Millions must be dead. She swallowed hard. It couldn't be billions yet—could it?

This was already far worse than Relleker.

Anyone with common sense and a functional ship had already tried to escape, but most of those were wiped out by pursuing bugbots. The angular black ships were chasing down terrified human pilots for sport, while others continued the wholesale extermination on the surface.

“I needed more time to build up our forces, damn it,” she muttered to herself.
More time!
She hadn't even been able to load up her Juggernaut with sun bombs from Dr. Krieger's facility.

The
Kutuzov
plowed through the flurry of robot ships, and Keah watched the slaughter ahead. She stood up from her command chair because she was so furious. Her Juggernaut fired every remaining weapon in its arsenal, but even that could not protect the last streams of evacuees that tried to escape from orbit. Any fleeing vessel looked to have about a ten percent chance of getting away—terrible odds, but the chances of survival for anyone left on the planet would be far less. Thanks to her insistence, Earth's population had seen images of the massacre of Relleker, so they knew exactly what was coming. But they couldn't do anything about it.

Maybe she should have kept the threat confidential, let all those doomed people sleep cozily in their beds for a few more days. “What purpose did it serve for us to tell them all to prepare? Prepare how? Are they hiding in their basements? For all the good that'll do!”

“Most people would rather know their fates, General,” said First Officer Wingo. “You made the right decision.”

“And some of those people are indeed getting away,” Lieutenant Tait pointed out.

She felt sick to see that her entire CDF force amounted to no more than a hundred heavy ships.

Beyond the rubble of the LOC, a sudden blossoming of brilliant explosions looked like suns bursting inside the heart of the shadow cloud. Keah gawked in surprise. “What the hell? Enhanced magnification!” Her rear screen showed a grainy image, still distorted by chaotic entropy waves. The dark nebula and the hexagonal cylinders sparkled and collapsed, bombarded by an unexpected booby trap of sun bombs. Dozens of them, right inside the shadow cloud. “Good Lord—I guess Dr. Krieger decided to make use of his inventory.”

Patton said, “Wish we had more sun bombs.”

“I'll take my victories wherever they come.” Keah allowed herself a warm grin. “I bet the Shana Rei just felt a kick in the nuts.”

Though diminished and wounded, the roiling cloud swirled forward to engulf the remaining fragments of the LOC, and she knew that Krieger and his fabrication facilities were gone. Unlike Admiral Handies, who tried to run away in his Juggernaut, Krieger had actually made a difference … at least a small one.

“I'm continuing my attack, General,” announced Admiral Haroun, darting in and out with his battered
Okrun.
“Jazers and railguns are mostly depleted. I don't have any sun bombs left, but laser cannons are recharging. That's another hundred robot ships destroyed, but I'm not really keeping count.”

Haroun yelped as a weapons blast struck his battleship, and he had to reel away.

“Destroying a hundred enemy ships is a good start, Admiral,” Keah answered. “Now do that ten thousand more times, and we'll win.”

The numbers were completely hopeless. That was a fact, not despair. She didn't want to run from a fight, but she had a hundred ships against hundreds of thousands. The people on Earth were wailing for help—just like at Relleker.

She watched another Manta explode as a swarm of bugbot ships cut it off, engulfed it, and fired relentlessly until the ship broke into flaming fragments. She could order her CDF ships to stay here and keep shooting at enemy targets until they themselves were destroyed. And then what? They could never save the population of Earth and it wouldn't help the Confederation.

“Somebody give me a new alternative, damn it!”

She heard only the overlapping pleas on the open comm channels mixed with a litany of damage reports. She saw the flashes of weapons fire in space, and watched dark scars being sketched over the surface of the Earth. The robot extermination bombs were now sweeping across Europe.

“General, look at the screen!” Sensor Chief Saliba pointed as a swollen projectile of pure fire rolled past them. Several bridge crewmembers leaped to their feet.

Crackling, flaming ellipsoids hurtled in from interplanetary space, streaking toward Earth like tracer bullets.

“Faeros? What the hell! Full sensors,” Keah said. “Where are they coming from? How many?”

“Approximately fifty, General.”

Keah stared in awe as the fiery elementals joined the fray. “Haven't they already caused enough damage?” In the past, thousands of enraged faeros had pummeled Earth's Moon until it shattered into fragments. Now the fireballs were back, and Keah hated them.