Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"You brought it, I see," Skutch noted.

"Yes," said Karr, holding up his Gattler. "This won't affect the plan, will it?"

Skutch walked over to Karr and took the Gattler. "Not a chance. There's enough juice in this reactor to snuff out your fire, and then some." Skutch attached the Gattler to one of the many cables connecting to the reactor. The multitool began to bleep happily, its powerpaks recharging. "Where you're going, I figure you might need to use a cutting beam."

Skutch returned to work. Karr stepped over to Bigelow, who was taking readings with a hand-held scan-tap and holding another complicated instrument in his teeth. Bigelow noticed Karr's presence, but kept on at his task and, for a while, Karr waited patiently.

"Will it work?" Karr asked when he finally could restrain himself no longer.

Bigelow shot Karr a sweaty look and removed the tool from his mouth. "The difficulties," he pronounced, his fingers moving with artful precision and speed, testing, tuning, and realigning the reactor's innards, "are a matter of scale rather than probability. The reactor is more than capable of producing the desired pyrotechnics. Not, however, before the null-core is operating at full capacity, a process which alone will take eight more hours. Furthermore, while it is commonly assumed that null-fusion processes are held in check by a single null-field, that is not strictly true. In fact, there are some one thousand two hundred and ninety-six separate nodes, which are divided into twenty-four separate sectors. Each and every one of those nodes generates a portion of the field and each and every one of them must be examined and brought up to specifications. I estimate sixteen hours to completion."

Karr tapped his subdermal chronometer. "Ten hours and counting down."

"Ten hours?" Bigelow repeated. His pudgy hands faltered on a recalcitrant regulator of some kind.

Sparks popped. He yanked back and sucked his fingers. "Ten hours...?"

Karr's comset activated.

"It's time," Jenette's voice buzzed.

"On my way."

Karr turned away and started back up the passage.

"Wait!" called Bigelow.

Karr looked back. Bigelow and Skutch had expressions best described as those of condemned men who had just received the sentence of a brainwiping.

"Don't you want to know if we can be done in that amount time?" the scientist asked.

"No," Karr said, grimly rubbing one of the many torture marks visible on his neck. He strode away.

"I've got to love what I don't want to love and trust what I don't want to trust."

A setting sun impaled itself upon the pillars of the Burning Heart of Night. The orb deflated as it sank, surrendering its essence to those radiant skewers, rimming the waves around Gnosis blood red. Kthulah had a clear view of the ill omen from the uppermost slopes of the floating mountain city: the number of Radiances was not four. Four was the number of the Prophecy. The Prophecy said a Pact would come.

The Prophecy said that that Pact would make the number of the Radiances four and save a piece of the light. Pact had gathered. Pact had awaited. But the Pact had not come. What was Kthulah to do? What would come of the fourth Gift, the Gift of Gamut? Kthulah feared for the Balance. He feared for all that was precious to Pact. A decision was imminent. Kthulah did not know what that decision was yet, but he felt it in his bones, a momentous decision, requiring the wielding of much power and a reciprocal punishment such as ... such as Kthulah shuddered to think upon.

The

Intruder

Comes

Soon, the Judges warned, from their customary positions at the corner of Kthulah's square platform, which had been moved out from its normal position within the tree-sheltered bowl.

Kthulah turned from looking inward at the Burning Heart to looking outward from the pillars of fire,

his gaze following the lengthening shadows of sunset. Just beyond Gnosis, which was at a distance of one exact horizon span from the center of the Burning Heart of Night, the rest of the Pact fleet formed a vast double-tiered ring, sealing off the pillars of Radiance from outside forces. Sailtrees on the many blockading islands jutted up into the Burning Heart's flaring red light like so many blood-soaked teeth.

Further out beyond the blockade, sparkling, radiant words were being relayed from where the black line of the ocean met a quickly darkening sky.

Kthulah of Gnosis! Kthulah of Gnosis! the flashing words said. This is Jenette of the blank-ones.

Jenette of the blank-ones craves audience with Kthulah of Gnosis. Jenette of the blank-ones begs audience with Kthulah of Gnosis.

Kthulah could feel the decision creeping closer to him, but he was not yet ready to face it.

Battle approaches, blank-one Jenette, he replied neutrally. Kthulah has no time for enemies.

Kthulah's words were relayed out. More words were relayed back.

Blank-ones and Pact are not enemies, Jenette's signals protested. Pact seek to do good. Blank-ones seek to do good. Please, let us not fight.

Blank-ones seek to harm the Burning Heart of Night. That makes blank-ones Kthulah's enemies.

Jenette argued, Blank-ones seek to heal the Burning Heart of Night. Blank-ones seek to make the number of Radiances the sacred number of four. Pact want this too, the blank-one Jenette knows this, so say the Roots of Wisdom, so says the Prophecy.

Kthulah objected, The Roots of Wisdom say a Pact must heal the Burning Heart, not blank-ones.

Perhaps ... Jenette's light words faltered, so that Kthulah could not properly read the inflection of the colors. Perhaps a Pact does come to heal the Burning Heart. Perhaps the blank-one Jenette brings that Pact.

Kthulah responded with challenging hues. Perhaps? A Pact comes, yes or no. Not perhaps.

Yes, then.

Name the Pact.

Jenette's words flashed meekly. The blank-one Jenette cannot ... Kthulah would not believe it.

Kthulah must trust. Please. Let us not fight. Khafra and blank-ones must cooperate. There can be only one outcome from fighting: the Burning Heart will perish.

Kthulah was angry with himself. He had felt a surge of hope at the possible coming of the prophesied Pact, even though the promise came from a blank-one, whom no sane Pact would trust even if they did speak the radiant language of truth. He abruptly ended the communication. Wrong, blank-one. Kthulah sees two outcomes. The Pack of Gnosis fights and defends the Burning Heart of Night, or the Pack of Gnosis fights and perishes trying.

The renegade ring-island bludgeoned through ocean waves like an ancient Terran dreadnaught. Ferals manned the island's sail-trees, spreading maximum surface of leaf-sail to the wind. Human soldiers and pulse cannons bristled along its broad flanks. It was an unlikely sight, the product of an even more unlikely alliance: Tlalok's fierce Ferals, colony humans loyal to Jenette (those of the non-loyal,

Pilot-consuming variety had stayed behind on the decimated Enclave island), and a few precious scores of domestics were all united to save the fugueship, Long Reach, the Burning Heart of Night.

Karr stood at the center of that maelstrom upon a dome of fire-insulating ghutzu. Ferals swarmed over the mound, like a nest of disturbed insects, stabbing their long teeth into the roots and injecting growth-stimulating immune venom. Tendrils sprouted and entwined before Karr's very eyes. Karr had to keep shifting his boots to keep from being rooted to the spot. Shy of being up in a sailtree, however, it was the best vantage point on the island. Karr had a clear view downwind, where the Feral battle lines were coming into view, their islands stretched across the western horizon from one end to the other, steadfastly maintaining their position by tacking against the wind, first one way and then the other, as Tlalok's island charged directly downwind at them.