The Dark Between The Stars

THIRTY-SEVEN
ELISA REEVES

Elisa spent four days stranded alone in space at the site of the exploded bloaters. She worked on her ship, rerouting power around the damaged systems to bypass any that were not absolutely vital. And she did it herself.

Garrison had always been arrogantly proud of Roamer ingenuity; he bragged about how his people could take the most unlikely hodge-podge of components and make them work like magic—the proverbial spit, chewing gum, and bandages. Elisa found it ridiculous.

Lee Iswander was also a Roamer, but instead of relying on his pilots being able to make duct-tape-and-twine repairs, Iswander Industries simply provided each ship with adequate spare parts in case anything should fail. It seemed a much more rational way to prepare for emergencies. Elisa had worked for days swapping out life-support modules, navigation circuits, and damaged engine controls.

Eventually, her ship was ready to fly again.

During the flight away from the site, where most of the bloaters had been destroyed, she pondered and rehearsed exactly how she was going to tell Iswander what had happened. Her mission had not turned out the way she’d expected, but at least she wasn’t returning empty-handed—thanks to her intrepid investigations. She had studied two of the surviving bloaters and couldn’t wait to tell Lee Iswander what she had found.

She didn’t want Iswander’s pity for the tragic death of her son as well as, she supposed, her husband. But once the industrialist learned what she had discovered, he would surely promote her (after acknowledging the painful loss of her family). This find was worth an incalculable fortune.

When she reached the Sheol system, the binary planet looked like a glowing ember in space, cracked and bleeding with lava. Just like always. The lack of space traffic surprised her, though. She heard none of the constant comm chatter of cargo ships hauling exotic metal-polymer materials or shipments of ingots. She surfed the channels, expecting to hear the usual drone of conversation from smelter barge crews and the control towers, even Alec Pannebaker showing off some stupid stunt. Their perimeter systems must have detected her, but she received no ID request. Odd.

She transmitted her queries, trying to find someone who would answer, and finally received a reply—but the transmission did not come from the admin tower down on the fiery surface; rather, the response was from a small satellite station in orbit that received bulk shipments and transferred supplies down to the main facility.

It was Lee Iswander’s voice. She couldn’t believe he would be manning the comm himself. By now, she had expected he would be the new Speaker for the Roamer clans.

“Elisa, you came back!” He sounded strange, shaken… relieved? “Did you retrieve your son?”

“No, he… he’s dead. Garrison put him in a hazardous situation. He was reckless. He… they were both lost in a massive explosion.”

Iswander groaned and said in a much quieter voice, “Haven’t we had enough deaths already?”

Elisa felt a sudden chill, now even more alarmed that the lava-processing facilities were so silent and empty. “What happened? Where is everyone on Sheol?”

“Everything happened. The facilities are gone. Hundreds dead—fifteen hundred and forty-three. The survivors are at Newstation, but I had to come back here, see if I could salvage anything. It seemed the best place.” He didn’t sound like himself at all. He seemed broken.

Though Elisa was ready to explode with questions, she quelled them, forced a businesslike calm. “I’m docking soon. You can tell me about it face-to-face.”

She guided her ship into the orbiting transfer station, and hers was one of only four ships in the bay; half of the lights had been dimmed.

She carried images of the bloater cluster, the record of the explosions, and her quick analysis. Rushing back to Sheol, she had been bursting with excitement over her news—enough to temporarily overshadow the loss of her son. But when she presented herself in the control chamber, she was astonished to see Lee Iswander’s face. He looked exhausted, aged. His skin tone was grayish, and he had shadows around his eyes.

“I’m glad to have one supporter back,” he said. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”

Alec Pannebaker swept into the control center, and his usual smile looked more relieved than excited. “Elisa! Well, that’s one step closer to digging our way out of this hole.”

“We’re in space,” grumbled Iswander’s son. “Everything’s a hole.”

Arden’s mother wrapped her arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulled him close, though he resisted. “I told you it’ll be all right. Your father’s had ups and downs before. We’ll get through this—we just have to be strong.”

Elisa looked Iswander straight in the eye. “No matter what happened, sir, I’m here to provide anything you might need for Iswander Industries. You have my full commitment… now that my son is gone.” Her voice cracked at the end.

Now that I have no distractions. No family obligations. Nothing else to divert me.

“We’ll need it,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’ve lost everything.”

Iswander explained the disaster in the lava-processing facilities, how he was being accused of using “irresponsible safety margins.” Elisa had also dismissed Garrison’s Chicken Little fears. Well, he hadn’t lived to see his fears proved right.

Iswander continued. “Only two dozen workers followed me back here, in hopes of salvaging something from the wreckage. Not necessarily because they have faith in me—they may not have anyplace else to go.”

When Iswander looked at her, his reddened eyes and his intense but distant stare made her stomach knot. He said, “When we came back here, I didn’t expect anyone to be alive, but the station had recorded transmissions from the smelter barges below, and some survivors in one shielded chamber in Tower Two that remained intact after the collapse. Those people knew they were going to die as the temperature rose and the insulation failed.”

His voice sounded hollow and distant, as if he had scrubbed and scrubbed to remove all emotion from it, but the stains remained. “They recorded farewell messages, said goodbye to their wives or husbands, families, friends. Some of them cursed me, some of them seemed resigned. Sooner or later they all died, and most of them not quickly. In the last seconds, they—” His voice hitched, and he glanced at his son. “Arden heard some of the messages. I should have sent him away sooner.”

Elisa stood straight, determined. “Do I need to listen to them? Anything valuable in the last words?”

“I deleted the messages. All of them. Couldn’t risk anyone else hearing that.”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Good decision, sir.”

He hung his head. “I’m ruined. I have assets from my other industries, and I’ve buried funds in banks on scattered planets, but it won’t do me much good. After this debacle, no one would partner with me again.”

Elisa had never heard him like this. “So… you came back to lie low?”

“We’re not hiding—we’re reassessing.” Iswander gave Elisa a self-deprecating smile. “Oh, and I lost the election to become Speaker, in case you were wondering. I got one vote.”

“I wouldn’t vote against you,” she said, and decided it was time. “In fact, I’ve found a new venture for you, something no other Roamer knows about. Are you willing to start from scratch?”

“Don’t have much choice,” Iswander said. “And I’ve done it before.”

Now she saw a faint light in the back of his eyes again. Good.

She displayed the file she had brought. After the explosions and the loss of her son, she had felt defeated as well, but there was too much at stake. Even if she was wounded from her own loss, she had to be strong in order to help Lee Iswander.

She showed images of the swollen nodules drifting about in the empty dark between the stars, thousands of them. “This is where I tracked Garrison in his stolen ship, a large cluster of strange nodules. Maybe organic, maybe not. They aren’t in any database. He tried to hide among them, but look how dangerous they are.”

She displayed the furious inferno as the bloaters detonated, one after another, a chain reaction that swelled outward like multiple supernovas. The blast flung her ship on the crest of the shock wave. She didn’t tell him that the initial energy discharge had come from her own ship.

Iswander blinked, as if reminded of the erupting fires on Sheol. He reached out to clutch her hand, a surprisingly warm and compassionate grip. “I’m sorry about your son, Elisa.”

She pulled her hand away and called up another file. She had to make him see. “That isn’t all, sir. Those bloaters…” She felt a pang as she used the word Seth had made up. “I analyzed a few outliers that survived the explosion. They were scattered across great distances, like bread crumbs in a line, and once I knew what to look for, I scanned far and wide—and discovered a second cluster of bloaters near the fringe of an uninhabited star system. I suspect there are other conglomerations as well. I left a marker at the new site—we can go back whenever we like.”

Iswander looked at the images of the exotic bloaters, dull brownish green nodules barely lit by the distant spray of starlight. “But what are they? Why should I care?”

“Because, sir, they will save you, make you fabulously rich.” Elisa’s eyes shone, and now she clasped his hand, trying to push her intensity upon him so that she reignited his own drive. “The bloaters are filled with ekti!”