Free Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

father’s constant
     pessimism.
    “I presume you’ve brought gossip?” Ross paused and added ironically, “And of course, a sincere apology from Dad begging me
     to come home?”
    Jess laughed. “If I’d brought that, I’d be here with a full Roamer celebration fleet such as the Spiral Arm has never seen.”
    Ross gave him a bittersweet laugh. “One of us is still off course from the Guiding Star. Let’s go up on deck. I want to be
     out in the fresh air.”
    They climbed through hatches, took a lift, and finally passed through a set of wind doors to a broad observation deck. The
     deck could be surrounded by an atmosphere field, but for now it was open to the sky itself. Ross frequently took the Blue
     Sky Mine down to an equilibrium level where the clouds were thick enough to be breathable and Golgen’s atmosphere was warmed
     by internal thermal sources.
    Jess drew a deep breath of the alien air. “This isn’t something I get to do every day.”
    “I do,” Ross said.
    The Blue Sky Mine, like all Roamer-designed factories, was composed of three main segments: the intake/feed tanks, the processing
     reactors and exhaust funnels, and the ekti storage spheres. As the skymine plowed through the atmosphere, open nozzles sucked
     in raw gases and delivered them through processing machinery. After passing through the catalytic reactors, the rare hydrogen
     allotrope was siphoned off, while the waste gases spilled back out from the hot stacks.
    Ekti was the only known allotrope of hydrogen, though other elements had varying molecular forms. Carbon manifested itself
     as powdery graphite, crystalline diamond, or exotic polymer spheres of buckminsterfullerene. Long ago, the Ildirans had discovered
     how to reconfigure hydrogen into a fuel that allowed their stardrives to function.
    Before ambitious Roamers took over the ekti-harvesting industry, old Ildiran-model cloud trawlers had been much larger, hosting
     a minimal splinter community of sixty to ninety family units and requiring a gigantic infrastructure. Therefore, harvesting
     ekti had cost the gregarious Ildirans a great deal.
    Independent Roamers, on the other hand, could operate skymines with a small support staff, which also allowed them to sell
     stardrive fuel at lower cost. The Ildirans had gladly surrendered their monopoly on ekti production, glad to leave the “desert
     islands in space” and let humans have the misery to themselves.
    The rest of the Hansa considered the Roamers to be little more than gypsy space trash, disorganized and disreputable. No one
     had an inkling of how much the clans actually had and how many taxes they avoided, since they kept such information hidden
     from outsiders.
    A flutter of white wings went past Jess’s face, startling him. He looked up to see a dozen doves flapping around the deck,
     swirling out into the sky and circling back to their perches and feed bins. “I’d forgotten about the birds.”
    “This is a perfect place for them. Look how far they can fly.”
    “Yes, but where do they land?”
    Ross rapped his knuckles on one of the railings. “Back here.” Clouds extended for a thousand miles below them, but neither
     Ross nor Jess felt dizzy. “They have nowhere else to go, so they always return. The best sort of cage.”
    Fastening his insulated jacket against the chill, Ross gazed across the infinite distance like a feudal lord surveying his
     domain. Jess pulled up his hood against the breeze. Behind them, exhaust plumes boiled upward like thunderheads that rapidly
     dispersed into the cloud decks of Golgen. The two brothers stood side by side in comfortable silence.
    During the lull in conversation, Jess sensed it was time for his gifts. He opened one of the pocket pouches on his right thigh
     and withdrew a thick golden disk engraved with symbols that matched the Tamblyn clan markings embroidered on Jess’s and Ross’s
     clothing. “Tasia made this for you.”
    Ross took it, looking with wonder