Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [8]
Despite all the technology and manpower the Hansa had poured into the Klikiss Torch test, none of it could begin without a single mystic priest and his tree...
Now, aboard the technical observation platform, Chairman Wenceslas clasped his well-manicured hands in front of him. "Very well, Beneto, contact your counterpart at the neutron star. Tell them to open the wormhole."
Beneto touched the tree again.
6 ARCAS
Halfway across the Spiral Arm, another green priest waited with six Hansa technicians in a small scout ship in a stable spot beyond the gravitational pull of the neutron star.
The superdense stellar remnant was all that remained of a collapsed red giant that had run out of momentum and mass before it could become a black hole. Curling space with its powerful gravity, the neutron star rotated like a searchlight, jets of high-energy particles spraying from its poles like water from a fire hose. Such a tiny ball, less than ten kilometers across, yet with a celestial powerhouse of energy.
Crowded in the ship, the six techs were nervous and sweating. The tethered torpedo device had been deployed outside the ship, just waiting to drop into the crushed star's gravitational mouth. The techs stared at Arcas, as if the green priest could ease their fears or offer them some sort of shortcut.
"Time?" one asked, as if pleading.
The treeling beside him had not yet spoken. Arcas sighed. "I will tell you as soon as I hear."
Before long, he would return to Theroc, where the priests would give him some other duty to serve the worldforest. It was all the same to Arcas, though he had chosen this assignment—far away, and involving relatively few people. As a green priest, he could do nothing else. He was a loner, but he was also a green priest, linked with the forest. If only he could trade with someone who felt more devotion for the task.
He clenched the treeling's rough bark, but felt no incoming telink message. Nothing. More waiting. "Not yet."
Aboard the cold scout ship, the spaces were too confined, the walls too bare. The stored air tasted of processing filters, with none of the moist richness he was accustomed to breathing in the dense forests. Yet, even on Theroc Arcas felt none of the passion that most green priests did. He might have chosen another life entirely, but now his skin bore the green tinge of symbiosis, a subcutaneous algae that allowed him to photosynthesize bright light. The process was irreversible, and he would always remain linked to the worldforest, even if being a green priest was not what he truly wanted.
Arcas had become an acolyte to honor a deathbed promise to his father, rather than out of his own interests. Green priests were in such demand that even a mediocre one such as Arcas could choose from innumerable offers of employment. On Theroc, the elder green priests helped to make such decisions, and Father Idriss and Mother Alexa interacted with the Hansa. But each green priest—even Arcas—could tap into the overall forest mind and make his or her own choices. Among the numerous offers, opulent positions, important diplomatic and liaison posts, Arcas most wanted to be away from all the bustle. He had chosen to be here in this isolated station.
"Time?" another tech said, sounding even more anxious. "Why are they waiting so long?"
After communing through telink, Arcas refocused on the eager technicians. "They say they are ready at Oncier. You may launch the probe now."
Working with machinery incomprehensible to the green priest, the Hansa techs scrambled to release the tether and activate the Klikiss wormhole-generating device. The probe separated from the scout ship and accelerated toward the neutron star, picking up speed as it coasted down the steep space-time slope.
The technicians