Horizon Storms (48 page)

Avi’h looked to the engineer, who answered, “We must make a journey 298

across the dark side to reach the sunlight again. There are three fast surface vehicles in the hangars outside.”

The Ildirans were not pleased with the idea, but Anton had once made the cross-continent trek on a lark during the recent day season; this would not be impossible.

As the skeleton crew muttered and complained, Vao’sh reached the limits of his patience. The rememberer’s trained voice made them all stop instantly. “Enough! Did you not hear Engineer Nur’of? All of our power will fail soon. Maratha Prime will be plunged back into irrevocable darkness. Unless we set out together before it is too late, we will all die here in the darkness.”

That was enough to quell further complaints.

815DAVLIN LOTZE

Crenna’s sky grew dark and cold as its sun continued to burn out.

Immediately upon returning from his brief inspection in space, Davlin gathered the colonists together—one hundred thirty of them—and explained the emergency. He wasn’t overstating the matter when he called it the direst threat they would ever face. “There is no time for town meetings and arguments. We have a week at best to remake our whole colony—to dig in and hole up, and give ourselves at least a chance to survive.” His voice was hard and firm.

Thanks to the exaggerated stories Rlinda Kett had told about him, the colonists already treated Davlin with awe and amazement—much to his embarrassment, since he disliked drawing attention to himself. They saw him as a heroic figure who could lead them through impossible circumstances. They believed him now.

“This world is going to die,” Davlin said. Though he felt a connection

with these people, he would not sugar-coat their situation. “The faeros are losing their battle in the sun. This entire system will be cold and lifeless within a matter of days, and I can’t think of a way to get anybody off Crenna to safety.”

Mayor Ruis clasped his hands in front of his stomach. “We’re just colonists here, Davlin. No one claims to understand these things. Tell us what to do!”

Davlin looked at their faces, wishing he had some ready answer for them. To his surprise, he realized that it actually mattered to him what they thought and how they viewed him. In this case, the worst thing he could say was that he didn’t know. Everyone could see the sun darkening in the sky and could feel the drop in temperature as the planet struggled to continue functioning under a vastly diminished solar flux. They had work to do, and so he rallied them.

Davlin asked that every piece of heavy machinery be brought to the center of town. “Forget about your crops and your livestock. They can’t possibly survive. Within a week, your homes will be covered by glaciers.

Stored food will have to last us. I assure you, at least seven other things will prove fatal long before the rations run out.” He didn’t list them, but the colonists didn’t question his statement. “Our only chance is to keep ourselves alive by whatever means, until rescue comes—and we don’t have much time.”

Mayor Ruis nodded solemnly. “And who’s going to rescue us, Davlin?”

“I’m still working on that.”

Through the amateur astronomer’s telescope, they observed the continuing battle in the plasma layers of Crenna’s star. The faeros were being beaten back as more and more diamond warglobes swooped in from outside the system, converging on the stellar battlefield. Sunspots grew like mortal wounds. Flares spouted and stuttered like dying gasps from the sun’s core.

The damage could never be undone. The star itself was doomed.

The colonists were astonished at how quickly the climate changed before their eyes. Storm systems churned like locomotives across the southern continent, where parts of the atmosphere had frozen out, leaving a void that caused giant, sucking Coriolis storms. Before long, the huge systems began to sweep north, giving the colonists even graver problems.

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The first night had seen a hard freeze that killed most of the crops and plants; each night afterward, the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees colder than the previous low. On the fourth night, trees had shattered. The wind speed picked up, and icy blizzards scoured colony buildings that had not been designed for arctic temperatures.

The townspeople worked around the clock, fully aware of their danger.

Their expressions were weary and frightened, but though they were under tremendous strain, the people followed Davlin’s instructions. He just prayed his idea would work.

It hurt to see all of the massive equipment once used for reclaiming agricultural land, plowing fields, and mining minerals now turned to the express purpose of digging deep tunnels and hollowing out shielded warrens beneath the crust, where the settlers might just be able to survive the incredible deep freeze that was setting in.

But they couldn’t survive for long.

After studying all available construction materials, Davlin had instantly dismissed the possibility of building insulated shelters on the surface.

Once the sun itself went dark, the deep cold of space would set in. Given time and extensive resources, a few ingenious Roamers might have been able to construct structures hardy enough to survive indefinitely, but Crenna was a peaceful, tame world. Mayor Ruis and his settlers had never prepared for this.

Even people without any construction experience put in their best efforts, shoring up tunnel shafts as the excavators burrowed deeper. Davlin could not make accurate calculations as to how far underground they would need to hide. He simply had them dig as deep as time permitted and then provision the chambers where they could huddle together against the oncoming instant ice age. Food supplies were taken from every outlying home and brought to communal underground warehouses. Mayor Ruis busied himself directing the aboveground activities and inventorying the rations.

Most important, generators were installed and fuel stockpiled, everything from small batteries to large thermal furnaces. Air recirculation tubing was laid down in the tunnels, and CO scrubbers were installed. Some 2

of the frightened colonists didn’t quite understand the need, assuming that if they had ventilation shafts they could always draw in air from the out-

side. They didn’t even think about what would happen once Crenna’s atmosphere itself froze solid.

Davlin wasn’t sure he could maintain morale, but he did have to keep them working.

On the surface, inside a cold and sheltered hangar, Davlin worked alone on the small ship. As part of his silver-beret background, he had taken emergency training in mechanics and starship operation. This task seemed even more hopeless than the rest of their activities, but survival hinged on his ability to get away from Crenna and summon help. He couldn’t allow himself to consider failure.

Outside, in the past three days, the temperature had dropped a full hundred degrees. The sky was always dark now, murky with twilight and faint flickers of sunshine that spat out from the injured sun.

The sudden and drastic climate shifts precipitated roaring storms and convulsions in the atmosphere. Most of the colonists were underground at the work site now. Few tried to stay up on the surface. Davlin himself was bundled in his warmest undergarments, a thick parka, and insulated gloves. Though they cost him dexterity, they kept his fingers from freezing and falling off.

Distressingly little ekti remained in the engines of this sightseeing craft, and he spent all day stripping away unnecessary mass, improving the efficiency of the conversion reactors, and increasing the throughput of the Ildiran stardrive, hoping to squeeze out just a few hundred thousand kilometers more on his journey.

The planet shivered in its death throes, cooling rapidly, already on its way to the edge of absolute zero. He was confident the colonists would be warm enough underground for a short while. But if he himself couldn’t make it to Relleker, then no one would ever save them. . . .

When he was as ready as he could be, knowing that any further improvements would cost too much time, Davlin decided to leave. The colonists had already installed the heavy hatch atop their tunnels: a vault door constructed of scrap metal, thick enough to insulate against the murderous cold. As Davlin operated the controls to get inside for one last time, he struggled against the biting frigidity. Within a day or so, simply surviv-

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ing aboveground would require a full-fledged environment suit. Already he wished he had supplemental oxygen.

The tunnels were refreshingly warm. At the moment the colonists were profligate with their energy expenditure, but eventually heat wouldn’t be a problem for them. The thermal output from their machinery and one hundred and thirty warm bodies might itself become a problem, unless it could be exhausted somewhere or converted into usable energy.

When the colonists gathered to bid him farewell, Davlin was stunned by the confidence, optimism, and hope on their faces. He had done his best to inform them of their slim chances, of how incredibly serious their situation was. But he was the man who had traveled to any number of uninhabited Klikiss worlds. He had discovered how to work the transportals.

They foolishly thought Davlin Lotze could do anything—and why shouldn’t he let them? If he failed, no one else would know it, and all the people here would be entombed in ice. They needed to believe.

The mayor seemed to expect him to make an inspirational speech, but Davlin said only, “I will do my best. As long as there’s one breath left in my body, I’ll spend it bringing help back here.”

Then, wasting no more time, he let himself out of the hatch and sealed the cap leading to the hibernation tunnels. Outside, he staggered through the winds and blowing ice to the hangar. Once inside the small ship with its partially empty stardrive fuel tank, he fired the engines and fought to guide the craft out through the uncertain gale. He wrestled with the controls as he flew off, heading into the deepening twilight of a dying sun. He did not perform calculations or estimate whether or not he would make it to the closest system. He would simply fly until he could go no farther. He had to hope that would be far enough.

825CESCA PERONI

When the Roamer engineers completed repairs to the fungus-reef city, Cesca invited Mother Alexa and Father Idriss to return to their rebuilt home.

Roamer crews labored with heavy machinery throughout the forest. Already they had reclaimed parts of the blasted landscape and built many temporary homes for the refugees. “I don’t know that we could have done it without Roamer assistance,” Alexa said.

Cesca nodded solemnly. “Hydrogues destroyed our skymines and our traditional way of life, too. But we persevere, and fight, and hold on to the things we value most. Our peoples have much in common.”

Father Idriss looked up at the organic mass propped up on the worldtree with jury-rigged struts and grafted-on crossbeams. “It looks . . .

different.”

“It looks fine,” Alexa answered. “Let’s go up.”

Cesca accompanied an excited Kotto Okiah as the Theron leaders re-entered the place where they had ruled in happier times. “You did an excellent job working with the materials at hand and finding innovative solutions, Kotto.”

The eccentric engineer was bursting with pride. “That’s what Roamers are good at, Speaker.” In only a month, he and his Roamer team had completed a job that would have taken the Therons years to do.

Inside the restored meeting chamber, Alexa and Idriss waited for their eyes to adjust to the soft artificial light. They gazed, smiling and uncertain, at the changed space. “I was afraid we’d have to abandon the whole fungus reef,” Alexa said.

Like a puppy turned loose, Kotto moved excitedly around the room.

“You saw the plans already, but here’s what we did. We reinforced the load-bearing walls with solid beams of worldtree wood. Could have used metal or polymer composites, but I thought you’d prefer a more natural look.”

He rapped his knuckles on sturdy ripple-grained beams that supported parts of the large room. “Underneath the city, we had to install a network 304

of braces and struts. Right now it looks a little raw, but you could plant vines or other foliage to cover the framework.”

Idriss said, “Our people will be glad enough just to come home.”

“Home.” Alexa’s voice caught in her throat. “This meeting chamber was where we crowned Reynald. It seems like only yesterday. And now both Reynald and Beneto are dead.” She turned to Idriss, her eyes glimmering with tears. “Why is Sarein taking so long to come home? I was sure she’d be here by now.”

Idriss said, “Nahton assured us she’s arriving soon.”

Kotto led them into corridors that burrowed through the reef. “Look, we’ve installed new plumbing and power conduits throughout. Many of the old ventilation systems were inefficient and tangled. Some of them went to dead ends. Whoever maintained the circulation systems seemed to be making it up as they went along.”

Idriss looked at his wife. “Yes, that’s how it was installed in the first place.”

“Well, it’s much more efficient now. You’ll notice a clear difference when you use it.” Kotto strutted beside the two leaders, who looked shell-shocked and uncertain about all the changes and improvements, although Alexa and Idriss would probably never figure out how to use most of them.

As if sensing his thoughts, Alexa touched her husband’s muscular arm.

“These are changes we can live with, Idriss. Our world will never be the same.”

Kotto wandered ahead, still chatting. “Enough of this city is restored for a third of the original population to move back in . . . maybe half, if they’re willing to crowd together in close quarters.”

Alexa showed little cheer despite the good news. “We won’t need to crowd—we lost too many people during the attack.”