Read Of Fire and Night for Free Online

“But the damage does not appear significant enough to have disintegrated all facilities and personnel.”
    GU added, “This appears to be an intentional departure. Perhaps an evacuation.”
    Kotto stared at the readings as he circled the rings twice more. “The shipyards are all gone. Not wiped out—just . . .
gone,
as if Del and his crew pulled up stakes and vanished.”
    What could have driven off a man like Del Kellum? Could the EDF have done this—just like they destroyed Rendezvous? He cringed to think of it. And they’d taken the derelict! How was Kotto supposed to find anybody now—Del Kellum, Speaker Peroni, his mother, anybody?
    “Just when I thought we were fresh out of conundrums.”

7
    DENN PERONI
    A fter centuries of skin-of-the-teeth survival, Roamers never expected things to go exactly as planned. The unforeseen happened with alarming regularity.
    Denn Peroni had left the water mines of Plumas, still nursing a hangover and wondering how he had gotten drunk enough to join the Tamblyn brothers in the crackpot piracy scheme that had ended in the capture of a Hansa merchant vessel with its pilot and copilot. Cringing at the magnitude of their collective stupidity, he had flown away, leaving the captives behind. Sooner or later, Caleb and his brothers would realize they didn’t know what to do with Rlinda Kett and Branson Roberts. Meanwhile, he was glad to be alone aboard his ship—without the constant chatter, complaints, and sloppiness of Caleb Tamblyn.
    Denn flew the
Dogged Persistence
from one known clan settlement to another, adjusting his trading schedule as he received news (much of it out of date). With the angry Roamers ready to chew up metal ore and spit out nails, Denn got little more than rumors, tall tales, and a lot of admitted ignorance from the other outposts he visited.
    He learned that his daughter Cesca was holed up on a small planetoid called Jonah 12 on the other side of the Spiral Arm. In her capacity as Speaker she had sent out messages calling for the clans to hold steady and prepare for rebuilding now that Rendezvous was destroyed. Denn worried about his daughter, but he was sure Cesca could handle the brunt of the Roamers’ emergency—probably a lot better than he could!
    He heard positive news as well. Nikko Chan Tylar had been passing the word that Golgen was free of hydrogues—a gas giant was safe for skymining again! Denn decided to help spread the word, at least until Cesca made some sort of official pronouncement.
    Forrey’s Folly was the largest metal asteroid in a strip of rubble around a cool orange K2 star. While coalescing, the sun had lost its grip on most of the material in its primordial cloud and hadn’t had enough mass left over to create any planets worth counting. But Forrey’s Folly was a large ripe fruit ready to be plucked: Metals were simply there for the taking, and mining tunnels honeycombed the asteroid.
    Numerous stony satellites orbited the large oblong rock, low-density moonlets that the metal asteroid had captured in its wanderings through the rubble belt. The small satellites whirled like a group of moths around a bright flame. Though computer models could predict the orbits, the paths changed frequently as the moonlets collided and ricocheted off each other.
    A century ago, Karlton Forrey had been the first Roamer to invest money in mining equipment and bring his clan ship here for excavations. Before his family or machinery could be shuttled down, though, Forrey had miscalculated the orbits of the stony moonlets. Collisions sent rocks careening like giant birdshot into his temporary habitation ships. Most of Forrey’s family had died, and all the equipment was ruined. A misplaced decimal point, incalculable consequences. Thus, Forrey’s Folly had earned its name.
    As the
Dogged Persistence
approached, Denn checked and rechecked his calculations, transmitting ahead for the current listing of safe paths. As he came within visual range, he