An orange-white umbrella of fire bent from the
pod's surface. Brown smoke curled in its wake. The craft was designed to withstand
Alpha Eradini's 10-million-degree corona, though, and it survived to glide
through the dense clouds of sulfuric acid and corrosive oxides in the upper
atmosphere of a planet those from Earth called Eden. If it were a manned craft,
the pilot would have been surprised to find the lowest layer of the planet’s
atmosphere rich with oxygen. But it was only a programmed machine from a
spacecraft that had recently visited this particular star system. Pressures as
strong as Deep Ocean scrubbed speed. The pod nosed downward as it drew close to
the surface. Its velocity was thirty kilometers per hour at impact. The ground
shook. Rocks and dust flew. The pod crumpled and rolled, flipping end over end
like an errant rock tossed down a hill, eventually coming to rest between a
pair of basaltic boulders. The door opened and the chime rang. A delivery
runner’s engine sputtered as it laboured past. The man who entered Kondati’s
shop wore the orange robe and obsidian jewelry of the Quartani Council. His
skin was leathery brown and smelled of banafi
oil. His primaries were yellow orbs of iridescence that blinked in the shop’s
dimness, and his central was a crystal blue orb high on his forehead that
marked him as from the southern regions. He said the world was about to end.
