“I am the Hyrillka Designate,” Rusa’h roared, flames flickering from his mouth.
Ridek’h flinched but did not back away. Though he expected to be incinerated at any moment, he would at least speak the message he had come here to deliver. “If you were a true Hyrillka Designate, I would not need to come here in order to beg for the lives of the Hyrillkan people.” He spread his arms and added an accusatory tone. “Look around you at the empty city. All Ildirans have fled Mijistra. Is this how you lead, how you represent our race? The people of Hyrillka — supposedly your people — are being decimated by the faeros. Have you visited the burned refugee camps to which they fled for safety? Have you touched the blackened bones of your own former subjects?”
Rusa’h seemed to waver. “The faeros do what they must.”
In that answer, the boy Designate received his first inkling that the faeros might not be entirely under Rusa’h’s control. This startled him. He had believed, perhaps falsely, that the fireballs were in the madman’s thrall. But what if the fallen Designate did not have as much power over the fiery creatures as Ildirans had all assumed?
“Why are you allowing so many of your people to be killed? Would a true Mage-Imperator allow it?” He took a step closer, defying the heat. “Neither is this how a Designate cares for his subjects. Why do you not protect them?” He stood there before the flaming man. “Both as Designate and as Mage-Imperator, you have failed them absolutely.”
Ridek’h had intended to challenge the faeros incarnate, to anger him and make him think. He realized he had succeeded in at least one of these goals when the fires around Rusa’h intensified with rage.
The hovering fireballs plunged down toward the Prism Palace.
78
Osira’h
With her special sensitivity to changes in the thism, Osira’h felt the disruption from Mijistra like a roar in her mind: vibrations, stresses . . . danger. She knew that Designate Ridek’h had arrived at the Prism Palace and confronted the faeros incarnate.
She raced down a mine shaft to gather her brothers and sisters, but they had sensed the threat too and were already running toward her. No one but the half-breed children of the green priest Nira could turn the thism against the flames that Ridek’h was facing.
Everyone else had already given up on the young Designate, assuming him to be dead. Adar Zan’nh and Prime Designate Daro’h had set events in motion that could not be halted. Tal O’nh was on his way up to the orbiting shipyards with a very small crew; together they would create an incredible diversion that should buy Adar Zan’nh all the time he needed to get his ships away unharmed.
“Concentrate!” Rod’h urged.
“We need to protect Ridek’h long enough for him to get away,” Osira’h agreed.
With his impetuous mission to Mijistra, the young Hyrillka Designate had unwittingly done his part in the bold and risky plan to rescue the Mage-Imperator, and now the half-breed children would not let go of him.
Sitting in a circle on the stone floor, the children joined hands and cast the thism net in their minds far and wide to create a sort of shield for the young man. Riding the thism forward, they found Mijistra, the Prism Palace . . . and brave Ridek’h, as he faced the flaming fury of the mad Designate, whose heat made the air blister and shimmer.
While he had the boy trapped, Rusa’h attempted to rip away his soulfire and add the fresh life force to the growing faeros — but Osira’h and her siblings cut him off. Combined, they protected the young Designate’s thism and all the threads that surrounded him with a sort of mental insulation, making him impervious to the first wave of attack.
Rusa’h blasted his victim, but he was unable to crash through the unexpected barrier. When the mad Designate could not seize the soulfire he wanted, he was momentarily stunned. But if the faeros incarnate should choose to lash out with physical, incinerating fire . . .
Run! Osira’h shouted to the young Designate through her mind. Come back to us!
Ridek’h heard them, but echoes of the mental shout also resonated through the barrier, and the faeros incarnate realized that someone was helping his victim. Burning Rusa’h stood nonplussed at the blackened dry mouth where the seven streams converged, curious about what could be powerful enough to prevent him from taking what he wanted.
Run, Ridek’h!
Osira’h caught a ripple of the young man’s thoughts, feeling his resolve as he faced death, his satisfaction that he had accomplished what he had wanted to. She shouted out again, penetrating his awareness with a glimmer of the plan that was under way to destroy the mad Designate and divert the faeros. Your work is done, Ridek’h. Go — we will help you escape.
Reeling, the boy scrambled from the blazing Prism Palace while the faeros incarnate was momentarily paralyzed with surprise. Ridek’h ran headlong down the well-trodden path that led away from the hill.
Nira’s five children found the strength to maintain their shield, but now the mad Designate came after them along the mental pathways. Tracing their thism connections, Rusa’h used all his strength to lash out at Osira’h and her siblings. But they thwarted him, diverting his concentration using the protective powers of thism and the verdani telink, as well as their own synergy.
Rusa’h bellowed in their minds, demanding to take all of their soulfires for the salvation of the Ildiran people. Osira’h could feel him battering at her mind, trying to rip information from her. The faeros incarnate sensed something was about to happen.
And young Ridek’h kept running.
In her mind, Osira’h felt the mad Designate become suspicious. He had caught a glimpse of the trap about to be sprung.
She clenched her brother’s hand tightly. They had to keep Rusa’h busy for at least a short while longer. The boy Designate had far to go before he could hope to escape the impending holocaust. The timing would be close.
Adar Zan’nh was ready to launch his ships. Prime Designate Daro’h remained in the cave shelter, prepared to seize back the Empire. Up in the shipyards Tal O’nh had implemented the initial stages of his plan.
The end was coming.
Somehow, in their efforts to protect Ridek’h, fear and anticipation trickled through the barriers the children had set up around themselves. A few revelatory thoughts slipped free — and the faeros incarnate caught a hint of what the Prime Designate planned to do. He knew his danger.
Osira’h could hear his flaming roar throughout the web of thism.
By the time he unleashed his fury from the Prism Palace, Rusa’h was no longer concerned about one defiant boy, but his own survival.
79
General Kurt Lanyan
General Lanyan had already faced the subhive on Pym with a small group of soldiers, and he had no interest in repeating the escapade, but Chairman Wenceslas hadn’t given him a choice. So, he kept reminding himself that this was an opportunity to show what he was made of. At least this time he had a strong enough military force to really do some damage to the bugs.
Though he was glad to be at the helm of a Juggernaut again, feeling secure in the giant ship’s mass and armor, he still had plenty of concerns. In a single Manta, Admiral Diente had been too easily overwhelmed. With the Thunder Child and seven accompanying Mantas, though, Lanyan had a great deal of firepower, including atmospheric-dispersal bombardment capabilities that would turn half a continent into a lake of molten glass. From what he had seen of Pym before, that could only improve the scenery.
This time, he vowed the Klikiss wouldn’t take him by surprise. Unlike Diente, Lanyan did not plan to negotiate.
As his ships approached, Lanyan transmitted over a coded channel (not that he expected the bugs were eavesdropping on EDF transmissions), “Admiral Brindle, I want this to be a swift and devastating operation. As soon as we acquire a target, drop the scorchers and level any structures down there. Wave after wave, constant bombardment. That should do the trick.”
“Yes, General,” Brindle said from the helm of his own c
ruiser.
He sat stoically in the command chair. He had to achieve a victory here that exceeded the Chairman’s expectations. He had ships full of armaments, and he would bomb the living daylights out of everything even remotely resembling a bug structure.
He would rather have been aboard his own Juggernaut, but on the other hand, it was gratifying to fly these once-stolen EDF ships, which the black robots had been forced to return. The Mantas and the Thunder Child had passed a complete detailed inspection; absolutely everything had checked out. Even so, Lanyan would never trust the robots again. He had lost too many good men to those tearing mechanical claws.
He had also lost plenty of men to the Klikiss — these particular Klikiss on Pym, in fact. He couldn’t wait to see how well these battleships performed.
On tactical screens, his weapons officers brought up projections of Pym, the location of the original Colonization Initiative settlement, and the site of the known transportal wall. The hive had spread out in concentric waves from the salty inland sea where the human settlers had built their colony.
Tactical officers on the eight ships divided up the approach, and as soon as the planet came into view, they began their attack runs. They had enough powerful flashmelters, thermal-wave warheads, and even a dozen old standby nukes that could peel the top layer of crust like an orange.
With the Thunder Child in the lead, the EDF vessels cruised in high above the chalky white landscape, the alkaline flats, and the rivers of tainted water. They dropped loads of atmosphere-dispersed armaments. Before the bugs even realized they were under attack, the initial bombardment sent deep shockwaves and additive blasts to wipe out a significant section of the hive complex for kilometers around. The nukes made the biggest flashes, but the new-design weapons caused deeper damage.
Destruction continued to rain down in the second run, flashmelters literally erasing parts of the expansive bug city, penetrating deep to hit even the lowest tunnel complexes. As he scanned the smoke and vitrified desert below, Lanyan felt real satisfaction. Nothing — no bug or human — would ever live here again.
While a human settlement would have responded with panicked confusion to the surprise attack, the Klikiss hive mind launched a smooth, efficient counterstrike. Lanyan was amazed that so much of their infrastructure remained intact even after such a hellish bombardment. He ordered another attack run.
Thousands upon thousands of Klikiss component ships shot like fireworks from protected underground bunkers. A roiling, coordinated cloud of them came directly toward Lanyan’s seven Mantas. Each alien component craft had only two energy-weapon cannons, but thousands of stinging blasts caused cumulative damage. Lanyan diverted his bombardment of the hive city below to turn his Juggernaut’s jazers against the numerous small ships.
“General!” Brindle reported, “we’ve got company coming in from above.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Four large cluster vessels were on the far side of the planet. We charged in too fast to detect them on our initial run, but now they’re on the way here.”
“Great, a cockroach cavalry.” On his tactical screens Lanyan watched four giant spherical masses composed of countless linked component ships. “Continue our bombardment of the ground colony while we can! Don’t let up.” Supposedly, once they managed to crush the central mind, the bugs wouldn’t know how to attack anymore. On the other hand, the hive mind might be aboard one of those swarmships instead.
He directed three of his Mantas to peel off from the main group and engage the giant clusters in orbit. When the Mantas opened fire, the jazer blasts carved away sections of the conglomerate vessels, but the swarmships simply recoalesced, shed their debris, and continued to bear down on them.
Lanyan swallowed hard. This was not good.
One of the swarmships shifted its internal structure to form a deep pit in its middle, like a giant cannon mouth. Lanyan was trying to figure out what kind of threat it posed when a gout of whitish-yellow light vomited out of the swarmship weapon. The lavalike beam played across the bow of the nearest Manta, peeling it down into slag.
Two more swarmships shaped themselves into similar weapons, but before they could fire, the EDF ships whipped about in evasive maneuvers. Their captains didn’t need specific orders to scramble. The huge energy blasts struck out repeatedly, at last destroying a second cruiser. The third Manta managed to evade, but Lanyan knew it was only a matter of time.
Below, an endless stream of component ships continued to launch from the burning hive cluster. With all the damage the Juggernaut and Mantas had already inflicted, he couldn’t understand how he suddenly found himself facing a hopeless defensive battle, when he’d been in the midst of a headlong punitive attack only moments before. He was supposed to arrive in great force, lay waste to the hive, then depart.
Considering how many alien vessels were all around them, along with the four swarmships closing in, Lanyan couldn’t even see a clear path to retreat. His ships were trapped here. Emergency alarms made a deafening clamor on the bridge. The Thunder Child no longer seemed so powerful.
Those waves of component ships fundamentally altered the tactical scenario. He had to change his approach, and fast. “Launch all Remoras for one-on-one dogfights. It’s the only way to deal with so many targets.”
With commendable speed, thousands of Remora attack ships streaked out from the five remaining Mantas and began to engage the Klikiss component vessels in individual battles. His pilots were good, their weapons training extensive, and they did a lot of damage . . . but Lanyan was sickened to count the tremendous number of casualties they suffered.
Suddenly, one of the huge swarmships received a furious blast from the rear, struck by a barrage of unexpected firepower. It broke apart into a disconnected cloud of component ships. High-energy shots continued to pepper the disassociated wreckage, slicing the cluster into pieces.
“What the hell was that?”
Dozens more ships roared in from outside — a Juggernaut, several Mantas, and some odd vessels that he didn’t recognize.
“This is Fleet Admiral Willis calling,” a voice drawled. “General, it looks like you could use some help. What’s it gonna be, allies or enemies?”
Lanyan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The new set of battleships opened fire on the Klikiss ships from above. Confederation battleships. The Juggernaut — Willis’s Jupiter, he saw — raked a swath of destruction through a second swarmship.
Speaking without authorization, Conrad Brindle responded on the open channel. “We’re sure glad to see you, Admiral! We appreciate your assistance.”
On a direct, coded channel, Lanyan scolded him not to open communications with the other ships.
A young man’s voice joined the conversation. “I kinda prefer fighting at your side, Dad. We should do it more often.”
A cheer went up on the bridge of the Thunder Child. Lanyan’s beleaguered Mantas responded with a surge of hope, lashing out at the Klikiss attackers with unexpected fury. The balance was still precarious, but maybe — just maybe — they could turn the tide against the Klikiss.
“About time you shot at the correct enemy instead of a made-up punching bag, General,” Willis said. “Any fool can see that we need to worry about these bugs, not a bunch of innocent traders and shipbuilders.”
Lanyan swallowed his pride and answered. “Any Klikiss you kill, Admiral, is one we don’t have to.” Not overwhelming enthusiasm, he supposed, but it was the best he could manage. He had vowed never to trust Willis again after the way she had completely humiliated him . . . more than once.
As a remarkable idea began to take shape in his mind, he transmitted to Conrad Brindle on the private, coded channel, “String the traitors along and let them take the brunt of enemy fire. Maybe we can kill two birds with one projectile.”
80
Deputy Chairman Eldred Cain
The Chairman looked much too smug when he invited the three of them to observe the Ar
chfather’s speech. He even brought out refreshments for Cain, Sarein, and Captain McCammon. The Chairman did not seem concerned, even though the discontented Archfather had written his own script. Lately, Cain found Basil’s calm and content moods more disturbing than his tantrums.
The Chairman took a sip of his ice water with lemon as he gazed at the familiar scene below. “When people grow complacent, they become sloppy, and right now we need everyone to serve the Hansa with full devotion and concentration. It is time to shake them up.”
“What are you planning, Basil?” Sarein said guardedly. It was clear the Chairman hadn’t consulted her about this any more than he had consulted Cain. “What is the Archfather going to say?”
“I have no idea.” He seemed actually jovial. “He disagreed with the speech I asked him to give, so he wrote this one himself. Still, I expect the audience will be quite amazed.”
“You don’t leave anything to chance,” Cain said. “You’re giving him just enough rope to hang himself.”
Basil chuckled. “Oh, hanging is much too primitive.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Next agenda item. Is my presentation ceremony on track for the new robots rolling off our assembly lines? Three days from now? I expect everything to be in order.”
Cain had made the arrangements, taking care of every subtle detail. “We’re ready for you, Mr. Chairman.”
“Good. After today, I expect the Hansa to run more smoothly.”
Before Cain could ask questions, the Archfather plodded to the podium dressed in his usual robes. His snowy white beard glistened in the sunshine under a perfectly clear blue sky. The crowds cheered on cue, and newsnet cameras recorded every movement, every word. King Rory was nowhere in sight.
The Chairman hushed them. “Observe.”
The Archfather activated the voice amplifier and spoke abruptly, without preamble, as if afraid the Chairman would shut him down at any moment. “Unison has been hijacked. Our religion. The condemnations I have issued from this podium were not my own. I, your Archfather, was coerced into making them. You have been tricked and misled. This is not what Unison is about.”
The Ashes Of Worlds Page 26
