The Ashes Of Worlds

by The Ashes of Worlds (v5. 0) [lit]

  “But the Saga — ” Ko’sh moaned.

  “You are a rememberer! We will remember in our hearts and minds. Do not lose sight of what this has bought us. Now Adar Zan’nh can rejoin the Solar Navy. Without the faeros pursuing him, he will free the Mage-Imperator.” Daro’h prayed that his father would someday find a way to pardon him for what he had done.

  As his head throbbed from the shockwave and his eyes burned from the flash, he made out a figure coming closer, a silhouette stumbling away from the holocaust. Daro’h tried to catch his breath, but his lungs burned. He shaded his eyes, then pointed.

  Yazra’h saw the young man staggering along, exhausted, stunned. She shouted, “It is Designate Ridek’h! He survived!” She began waving her arms.

  The brave boy looked burned, shell-shocked, but determined. He saw Yazra’h’s movement, though he seemed unable to hear her calling for him. Daro’h led the way, and they met him on the hillside. The Prime Designate caught Ridek’h just before his legs gave out. “You are safe now. You have escaped.”

  The boy blinked several times, disoriented. Finally he shuddered, then used the support of Daro’h and Yazra’h to get back to his feet. He turned and stared at the still-smoking impact site and the raging fires on the perimeter of what had been Mijistra.

  “I ran and ran,” he said, his voice ragged. “I did not look back. Not until now.” He began to cough, his chest spasming; the sounds turned into sobs.

  “Do you think Rusa’h is dead?” Yazra’h said.

  Daro’h stared at the holocaust. He could not imagine how the faeros incarnate could have survived that, but he was unwilling to assume anything.

  84

  Adar Zan’nh

  At the moment of obliteration, Adar Zan’nh seized his chance. The massive spacedocks and construction yards crashing down from orbit provided more than enough diversion for his nine warliners to escape from the faeros on Ildira. He felt a deep ache in his heart as his ships put distance between themselves and his beloved home planet.

  The beautiful, ancient city from which Mage-Imperators had ruled since the beginning of the Empire was no more. He knew what had been lost, knew that Ildira would never be the same. The impact was like a bright splash of blood and fire on the landscape. Mijistra . . . the Prism Palace. So much history, so much culture . . . all gone.

  And, he hoped, faeros incarnate Rusa’h as well.

  Yet the desperate tactic was their only hope of surviving as an Empire, perhaps even as a race. At last, the Adar had a mission he could expect to accomplish. If he could indeed rescue the Mage-Imperator from captivity, the Empire would be far stronger with its rightful ruler.

  “Even when we free our father, the war will not be over,” said Osira’h, who had asked to accompany him while her four siblings remained with the Prime Designate on Ildira. “Even if Rusa’h is dead, the faeros are still a threat.”

  Zan’nh looked down at the strange little girl. “All the more reason why we must free him.”

  “Yes, we must.”

  As the warliners raced away from the planet, they broadcast instant commands to Tal Ala’nh and his hundreds of waiting warliners outside the system. The Adar no longer needed to keep his plans secret. He could tell the cohort commander their objectives and reveal where the Mage-Imperator was being held. With all the fiery elementals stunned and distracted, the bulk of his Solar Navy prepared to depart en masse.

  Behind them, the faeros ricocheted like sparks in a frenetic storm. Zan’nh had hoped the conflagration of Mijistra would occupy them for some time . . . but as his nine warliners sped away, several of the fireballs streaked after them. They seemed attracted by the movement, seeking anything to destroy.

  “Increase acceleration. Prepare to activate stardrives.” He had not gained as much distance as he had hoped. With or without Rusa’h, the faeros could act.

  In the command nucleus, his well-trained soldiers worked like machines despite the dread that gripped them. They knew full well what was at stake.

  “The faeros are closing in on us, Adar.”

  His warliners strained to get out of the system, gaining speed, changing course, ready to activate their stardrives. An increasing number of fireballs followed them like flaming projectiles. “Tell Tal Ala’nh to set course for Earth and to depart immediately. We will follow as we can.”

  Osira’h said in a small voice, “Whether or not the impact destroyed him, Rusa’h learned what we intended to do, and so the faeros knew. They will still try to come after you. They know we are going to Earth.”

  “But they will not catch me.” Zan’nh flashed a hard smile at his half-sister. “We will have the Mage-Imperator back before they get there.”

  “Stardrives are ready, Adar,” said the helmsman.

  “Activate them.” On the screen he watched the ravenous flaming ellipsoids closing the gap. Tal O’nh had made an immeasurable sacrifice, not just of his life but of the heart of Ildira. Zan’nh refused to let it be in vain.

  The warliners leaped ahead, leaving the fireballs behind with a terribly scarred planet.

  85

  General Kurt Lanyan

  He wasn’t surprised that Admiral Willis and her rebel ships would simply run, but Lanyan was shocked that his own gunners couldn’t shoot down the Jupiter in the first volley of weapons fire. A target as big as a Juggernaut, flying right in front of them! The Thunder Child should have made swift work of it.

  He wondered if the systems were sluggish — some flaw in the robot repairs, perhaps? Or maybe the rebels had upgraded Admiral Willis’s ships more than just scouring off the EDF logo and painting a new sign on the hull plates. On the other hand, he could blame the botched job on new recruits, insufficient training, and even a dash of blind bad luck. And on Conrad Brindle.

  Of all the people he knew in the EDF, Brindle was one of the most dedicated and unshakeable. But at the crucial moment, he had intentionally placed his Manta in the line of fire, blocking shots that should have decapitated the rebel Confederation force. And it could not have been an accident.

  “Brindle, damn you — keep shooting! That’s an order. Admiral Willis is a mutineer. This is our chance to destroy them along with the Klikiss.”

  The other man’s answer was calm and cool. “I will not fire on them, sir. Our enemy is the Klikiss. In this battle, Admiral Willis is our ally.”

  Lanyan pounded his fist on the Thunder Child’s command console as Willis and her Confederation battle group beat a hasty and indignant retreat. The General attempted to pursue, but most of the jazer blasts went wild. His weapons officers must be either unskilled or insufficiently motivated.

  “General, this is insanity!” Once again, Brindle’s Manta crossed in front of the lead cruiser, blocking Lanyan’s clear line of fire and buying the rebel ships just enough time to get away. A jazer burst scorched the Manta’s lower hull. On the comm, Brindle’s face was filled with disgust. “General, cease fire immediately, or I will relieve you of command on the grounds that you are unfit to lead.”

  The soldiers on the Thunder Child’s bridge deck were clearly uneasy.

  Before Lanyan could respond, the supposedly neutralized Klikiss vessels began to open fire again, and this time his ships were the only targets in the vicinity. “What the hell?”

  Even after the total devastation down below, which should have killed the Klikiss hive mind ten times over, the giant swarmships had begun to move again. Apparently, they’d been stunned, but now the component craft buzzed around, seeking new targets. He had underestimated how swiftly the remaining components could coalesce into new alien conglomerate ships.

  Below, on the bubbling, seared landscape, craters opened up to reveal access holes to incredibly deep tunnels. Another wave of component craft emerged from undamaged hive complexes far underground.

  His gunners independently retargeted their weapons and began to shoot at the Klikiss that closed in on them. An explosion rocked the Thunder Child, sending it reeling off course.
The scattered alien vessels had now managed to reconstitute two complete swarmships, each of which molded its geometry into a gigantic cannon-barrel weapon. A crackling bolt spewed out of the nearest cluster and vaporized another of Lanyan’s Mantas. More than a thousand crewmen dead in an instant, one more EDF capital ship obliterated.

  This wasn’t good. Not at all.

  An announcement came across the command channel, a priority signal that preempted all other transmissions. “Attention EDF ships! This is Admiral Conrad Brindle. I have assumed command of this battle group. General Lanyan is hereby relieved of duty. We are leaving Pym. Return to Earth.”

  “You will not retreat!” Lanyan roared.

  Another explosion struck his Juggernaut, a bad one, ripping out two of his engines. His navigation officer struggled against a shower of sparks on her console to keep the gigantic ship from spiraling down to the planet.

  Hundreds of Klikiss component vessels continued pecking away at the Thunder Child. On the screen, Lanyan saw Brindle’s cruiser and two others pulling away. Only one other Manta survived, and he was relieved to see that it remained at his side. But the cruiser looked hopelessly crippled, with smoke pouring from prominent breaches in its hull.

  Sensing easy prey, the Klikiss closed in.

  He had expected Chairman Wenceslas to applaud his foresight for not only striking the bugs, but also wiping out the human traitors. Now, instead of a double victory, he had botched the whole mission. He could already imagine the scorn the Chairman would heap upon him as soon as they got back to Earth. Not one of the high points in my illustrious career. If there was any chance of salvaging the situation, he needed to arrive back at Earth before Brindle made his report. He needed to tell his side of the story first.

  “Get us out of here,” he snapped. “Maximum speed.”

  The navigator turned to him with an astonished, sickened look on her long face. “General, I can barely keep us in a stable orbit! Two engines damaged, all control linkages fried — we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Then activate our stardrives. I don’t care where we are. Get us away from this planet.”

  She frowned at him as if he were a mentally deficient child. “Too late for that, sir.”

  His Juggernaut was rapidly falling apart, and space was thick with Klikiss component ships still slashing and slicing. He hesitated only a second before opening up the comm channel again. He had to act before the retreating EDF ships could get out of range.

  “Admiral Brindle, we are declaring an emergency. I order you to return and assist us.” He swallowed hard. “We’re abandoning ship.”

  The Thunder Child’s bridge crew didn’t need to be told twice. They scrambled to escape pods. Loud Klaxons echoed up and down the metal-walled corridors. Entire decks were on fire, and hundreds of his crew were already dead from the numerous hull breaches.

  Lanyan continued to shout into the comm system, “Admiral Brindle, it is your obligation to retrieve our escape pods.” At any other time, the man would have obeyed without a second thought. He would have done his duty. But on the static-filled screen, Brindle and the surviving Mantas continued their retreat.

  The Klikiss kept pummeling the Thunder Child. When the deck started to split beneath him, Lanyan had no choice but to dash to the small escape pod built into his ready room. Everyone else had shot themselves away in the larger lifeboats, though with so many Klikiss ships in the vicinity, he doubted anyone would get away for long.

  On a viewscreen behind his desk he saw Admiral Brindle turning his Manta around to retrieve whatever pods he could, even though he put himself and his ships at great risk to do so. At least the man had a tiny bit of honor left.

  Lanyan jumped feetfirst into the round hatch and pulled the lid shut. He hammered the activation buttons that locked down the airtight seal, blasted free the retention bolts, and disengaged the pod. As the small chamber spun, Lanyan grew dizzy watching through the single observation port.

  In orbit above, the Thunder Child was little more than a skeletal structure held together by a few hull plates and connective girders. He saw other escape pods flying into space like the spores of a swollen mushroom, heading out to safety, but he was falling in the other direction, toward the planet’s surface, nowhere close to Brindle’s retrieval operations.

  As the pod decelerated through Pym’s atmosphere, the white expanse of desert and brackish lakes looked uninviting. The automated systems could manage an intact landing, but he didn’t know how he was going to arrange a pickup and rescue from down there. At least he was on the other side of the continent from where the repeated bombardment had annihilated the hive city.

  Slowed by its landing thrusters, the pod struck the ground and tumbled, scraping up a rooster tail of glittering gypsum powder and alkaline dust. His small window was completely covered, and Lanyan bounced around like a man going over a waterfall in a barrel. Stupid, not to have strapped himself in.

  As the pod finally came to a rest and his adrenaline slowly ebbed, shock still rang in his ears. He realized that the sharp pain indicated he must have broken his elbow. More stupidity.

  First things first. With one hand he found a first-aid kit and cracked open a dual stimulant/painkiller shot. That should be enough to keep him going. He couldn’t think very far ahead, though. Lanyan couldn’t believe that Brindle would not follow his duty and come to retrieve him, but for now he would be on his own. He’d have to live off the land and survive somehow.

  Next step, he activated the locator beacon on the off chance that someone would come back to scoop him up. He gathered a survival pack, a handgun — the only weapon stored aboard the pod — and braced himself as he popped open the hatch.

  Outside on the flat, white landscape he saw no towering insect structures, no alien buildings. Nevertheless, Klikiss were swarming out of deep tunnels, their spiny carapaces glittering in the sun, their scythelike limbs flailing in the air. Though his pod had landed many hundreds of kilometers from the heart of the Klikiss city, their tunnels apparently extended across and under the entire continent. He hadn’t killed all the bugs on Pym — not even close. And the breedex must still be alive and controlling them.

  Now Klikiss warriors were emerging to investigate the crashed escape pod. Millions of them. And they had spotted him.

  As the creatures scuttled forward, he held his weapon in his good hand, took careful aim, and fired. He kept firing. He counted thirty-eight splattered bugs before his charge pack was almost depleted. Swallowing hard, he decided he should keep the last shot for himself; the gun’s power levels read nearly zero. The stimulant burst he had given himself wasn’t working. His elbow ached like a son of a bitch.

  As chittering and clacking Klikiss surrounded his escape pod, Lanyan dropped back inside and sealed the hatch. Hunkering down, he could hear them pounding and scratching against the hull. The pod was not designed to serve as a bunker in an all-out attack.

  There was a long, ominous pause, then Lanyan heard cutting tools and sharp claws. In four different places, the wall of the vessel broke open. The enormous bugs clawed their way inside. Lanyan backed against the wall, holding his weapon.

  Everything was happening too fast, but he could accept reality. These things were monsters from his worst nightmare, and they came at him now, all claws, pincers, and mandibles. With a final defiant howl, he squeezed his eyes shut, pressed the weapon against his temple, and activated the firing stud.

  The charge pack had only enough energy left to burn his skin. Lanyan stared at the empty weapon in helpless dismay. The curved hull fell apart behind him.

  From all directions, the Klikiss swarmed over him. Their chittering, triumphant music drowned out his screams.

  86

  Deputy Chairman Eldred Cain

  Cain felt no emotion about this at all, which he found odd, since (unlike Chairman Wenceslas) he had never committed outright murder. But this was necessary. The assassination of the Archfather, the cold-blooded murder of former C
hairman Maureen Fitzpatrick, the appalling bargain with the black robots — Cain could not let the downward spiral go any further.

  Basil Wenceslas had to be removed, permanently.

  McCammon had helped Cain set up the trap, while Sarein had tried to convince the Chairman to consider less extreme alternatives to some of his actions, to no effect. Cain had chosen not to tell Sarein too much about the specific plot. She wasn’t so much weak as she was breakable. Nevertheless, she was part of what was about to happen, and she had performed admirably.

  After the “bolt of heavenly fire” had annihilated the outspoken Arch-father, the people flocked to their supposed savior, King Rory. Never before had Cain seen such an explosion of religious fervor. The most gullible people were also the most vociferous, and the Chairman encouraged the newsnets to carry only coverage that proclaimed the Archfather’s death to be a dark miracle, an unmistakable sign from God, a blow from Heaven.

  Though many were plainly skeptical, curious investigators could find no sign of what the true cause of the lightning had been. Cain suspected that Chairman Wenceslas had deleted all records of whatever he had used. Freedom’s Sword had proposed a handful of explanations, which the newsnets consistently mocked as “ridiculous conspiracy theories.”

  The murder of the Archfather was just one more terrible thing. There could be no saving Chairman Basil Wenceslas.

  Now on a bright morning, Basil rode with Sarein and Deputy Cain in his protected ground vehicle. The driver pulled up at the small parade field in front of the retooled compy factory, where a small receiving stand had been set up outside the wide warehouse doors.

  Modular warehouse annexes and squarish industrial structures were part of the manufacturing facility. This particular factory had been put online as a secondary complex to pick up the slack in assembling Soldier compies, but after the compy revolt it had become the primary site.