The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances by Kevin J. Anderson Read Free Book Online

Hanseatic League back on Earth, the demand for fuel would increase exponentially. He preferred to make long-range plans, and he wanted his people to be on the forefront of the new industry.
    Several days later, after the last Ildiran crewmembers filed onto the final shuttle and departed, Oliver joined Corey on the deck. Both men waved at the enormous ornate warliner drifting among the clouds. The big ship cut through the cloud decks like a prowling leviathan.
    Corey let out a long sigh of relief, finally believing that the aliens had turned over the huge facility to them. He and Oliver exchanged a high-five, then Corey hurried to the station-wide intercom. “All right, everybody—the Ildirans didn’t want it, so we’ve got this facility all to ourselves. Let’s get to work.”

7
    THARA WEN
    The forest was different, and she was different when she came out of the wilderness and made her way back to the colony village. What had once been a blur of green and a tangle of branches and leaves, Thara Wen now saw as a mosaic of individual items—insects, twigs, specks of pollen, fallen leaves. Everything in perfect clarity and detail, everything connected. And the trees—the worldtrees —were a giant sentient mind, half slumbering, a network of roots and trees covering Theroc, interlinked with more connections than all the neurons in a human brain.
    The forest had always been like that, but the human settlers here had never noticed. It was Thara who had changed, and she had matured far beyond her years. She could see it all now.
    As she walked through the dense thickets, the underbrush seemed to move out of her way. Needing no trail, Thara glided along with the sunlight dappling her beautiful green skin. The color seemed natural to her now, a symbol of her connection to the forest.
    She stepped out of the thick forest and into the main clearing where the settlement buildings had been erected. Some of the homes were prefab colony buildings dropped down from the Caillié supplies, while other buildings were constructed from local materials. One entire complex consisted of hollowed out chambers in the gigantic fungus conglomerations that grew like coral reefs from the worldtree trunks.
    At the edge of the thick foliage, Thara paused in silence to watch the people in the village, some of them working, others looking concerned. They were familiar faces to her. She remembered them; she had known them all her life, both aboard the Caillié and here on Theroc.
    But now she saw more .
    She spotted Sam Roper. Two strong young men were holding him by the arms while he struggled. Roper was indignant, lashing out, cursing.
    The elected village leader, Norris Brovnik, stood with his arms crossed over his shirt, skeptical. As he argued with Sam Roper, Brovnik looked up and was the first to notice her standing there.
    Then others cried out. “It’s Thara Wen! She’s alive after all.”
    Roper struggled against the two young men holding him. “Let me go! See, she’s alive—I didn’t do anything to her.”
    Norris Brovnik shook his head. “Hold him. I still want some answers.”
    The dense trees masked her with greenish shadows, but when Thara stepped into the clearing, they could see that she was completely hairless, that her skin was green . . . that her entire demeanor had changed. She walked forward, amid many gasps of astonishment.
    “What happened to her?”
    Thara stretched out her hands to greet them all, but they seemed afraid to touch her.
    The village leader ran his eyes up and down her body, amazed at the green skin. “You just vanished, Thara. We are relieved to see you safe—we’ve been searching for days.”
    This surprised her. “Days?” Was that how long she had been immersed in the tree mind?
    “We thought Roper had done something to you. Can you tell us what happened?”
    She looked down, opened and closed her fingers, then traced a fingertip along her forearm. “Something marvelous. I don’t understand it