Oblivion by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online Page A

looked at him. Jamison was probably right.
    This was a meeting of the Tenth Planet Project, and even though Cross had been to a dozen meetings since the aliens left, none of them had been of the original Tenth Planet group. The meetings had been for other things, crisis things, with some or none of the members of the Tenth Planet Project.
    That alone made this coming meeting different.
    He knew it. He was just avoiding it. And he couldn’t any longer. That was what he had been telling his colleagues: no one had time to shut their eyes anymore. And yet he was trying to do it, too.
    It was hard to look clearly at something that could destroy life as he knew it.
    “All right,” he said to Jamison. “But you call me the instant you find something.”
    Jamison mock saluted, a goofy grin on his face. “I’ll call you in a nanosecond, sir.”
    “You know,” Cross said, smiling for the first time in a while, “I believe you will ”
    April 27, 2018
18:05 Universal Time
    170 Days Until Second Harvest
    Commander Cicoi had only been in Elders Circle once before, several Passes ago, as he got a tour of Command Central. He had just been made general, and it was customary to let all generals know what they were defending.
    He had thought it odd that the Commanders believed the generals were defending buildings. Cicoi had always thought he was defending Malmuria.
    Elders Circle was deep within the bowels of Command Central, ten layers below the tenth public layer. The Waiting Chamber was icy cold, even for Malmur, and the lighting was thin, activated when the first tentacle crossed the threshold. The Waiting Chamber was done in black; the Waiting Circles, dark spots on an already dark floor.
    The Commander of the North was already in the room, on the Waiting Circle that designated his position. The Commander of the North was the oldest of the Commanders, the only one of the main Commanders who did not lose his life after the disaster. He was large, as most elder Malmuria were, but his tentacles were graying at the tips. Someday, his upper tentacles would be gray and useless, his lower nearly solid stumps, and he would lose his position through sheer immobility.
    It was a fate that awaited them all, a fate that Cicoi was not looking forward to.
    The Commander of the North raised a single eyestalk, turned it, and peered at Cicoi. “We await only the Commander of the Center, then.”
    Cicoi nodded. The Commander of the Center was in a tenuous position. He had risen through the ranks, as the rest of them had, but had done so over the objections of the Brood Nest females. The females, though a younger group, had made it known that they did not accept the results of the last harvest. They were clamoring for one of theirs to become a Commander, even though they had no military experience.
    The clamor was coming from the Center, from a group of females who believed that all decisions should consider the impact on the nestlings and the families, and the future of the race. Some of the youngest females, barely out of the nest, their tentacles newly sprouted, believed they should get military training just like the males.
    Fortunately this rebelliousness had not spread to the other segments. In fact, the Commanders had tried to keep news of this uprising quiet, so that the other females would not learn of it. The females would be busy enough tending the broods and making the food harvested by the Sulas last long enough to compensate for the shortages.
    The final set of chimes were ringing as the Commander of the Center entered the Waiting Chamber. He seemed diminished somehow, as if command had shortened him and damaged his tentacles.
    He slid onto his circle, his head bowed, all but two of his eyestalks pocketed. More problems in the Center then. Cicoi did not want to know about them.
    Cicoi stood on his own circle, head bowed. His tentacles were at his side in proper respectful position. He stood on the tips of his lower tentacles. He had