Final Assault Read Online Free Page B

eliminated the need for traditional healers, and so they had no one besides the female caregivers to help the nestlings.
    Some of the female caregivers had grown ill as well, and several of the older ones had died. Some of the brood females had laid deformed eggs into the pods. There was debate now as to whether or not those eggs should be recycled.
    The strange clouds had dissipated into the atmosphere, and the radiation levels on Malmur had risen. No one had known how to fix that. And some of the farseeing males, the ones who specialized in preparing for the future, worried that the Malmuria hadn’t seen the results of all of the destruction yet.
    All of this because Cicoi and his fleet had allowed fifteen weapons through. He shuddered to think what would have happened had he not stopped any of them. He believed, although he said nothing to anyone, that Malmur itself would have been destroyed.
    As his fleet had returned to Malmur, he had planned to offer himself and his crew to the recycler. All failures went to the recycler where they were converted to energy and made into something more useful to their people. But the Elders had stopped him.
    The great Commanders of the past had put themselves into the recyclers when they had failed to complete the First Harvest of this Pass. They had lost ships, something that had never happened before, and so they had destroyed themselves, without really training their replacements.
    The Elders had argued that if Cicoi and his fellow Commanders did the same, the Malmuria would have no experienced leaders left. Cicoi privately thought that his experience was not the kind that the Malmuria wanted, but he had not argued with the Elders.
    When the Elders had been living, breathing creatures, instead of the black spirits they were now, they had saved Malmur from certain destruction. Once, Cicoi knew, the Malmuria had fought among themselves. The Elders had been the ones who had united the planet.
    They had found a way to release Malmur from its sun to save the entire race. They had sent Malmur into the depths of interstellar space until it found itself in a new orbit, around this new sun. They had devised the system of harvesting and darkness that had become the new order.
    The Elders had roused themselves from the spirit rest to guide Malmur through this new crisis. An Elder flew on this warship. He was not visible at the moment. As Malmur got closer to the third planet and the plans were finalized, he was present less and less. Cicoi worried that the Elder was vanishing not because he had come to trust Cicoi—Cicoi believed the Elder would never completely trust him—but because the Elder’s own personal energy, whatever it was, was fading.
    Cicoi hoped the Elders could hang on through this battle.
    Even though Cicoi had been chosen to be Commander of this entire mission, he answered to the Elders. The Elders were the ones who had come up with the new plan. They were the ones who had insisted that the fleet consist of eighteen warships and ninety harvesters. Cicoi had argued that more harvesters were needed—no harvest had ever been done with as few as ninety ships—but the Elders had been adamant.
    They had also insisted that the harvesters return one final time. The Malmuria would do a third harvesting pass, where in the past they had only done two.
    All of this change made Cicoi’s tentacles flake. Never before, not in all of the Passes he’d lived through, had tradition been so thoroughly violated.
    His Elder dismissed tradition, saying it had stifled growth on Malmur. Cicoi knew that sometimes the Elder did not understand how life worked now on Malmur. Gone were the days of continual sunshine and warmth and abundant energy. Gone was the luxury of time. From the moment the Malmuria woke from their long sleep, they were struggling to raise nestlings, fill pods, and provide enough food and energy to make it through the long darkness.
    Never before had Cicoi seen his people suffer