The Ashes of Worlds

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Basil realized that everyone in the underground command chamber was staring at him. After a long moment of silence, one of the technicians interrupted. “Mr. Chairman, we just detected three more impacts in the southern Atlantic Ocean. They’ve generated tidal waves. Within the hour they will hit the Brazilian coastline. An evacuation call has been sounded, but most of the people probably won’t have enough time.”

  Basil clenched and unclenched his fists, imagining that Peter himself had hurled those asteroids down to where they could cause the most damage. Cain said again, more insistent now, “Mr. Chairman, we cannot turn down the help.”

  “Very well, let him pretend — but I’m not fooled.” Basil turned away, feeling defeated. Then his thoughts shifted, and he let a slow smile cross his face. Yes, he did possess one last secret weapon he could turn against Peter. He hadn’t expected to be so direct, but now the opportunity had fallen into his lap.

  He had seen the numerous surveillance files of the Aguerra family taken long before “King Peter” had been introduced to the public. Basil knew how much Raymond/Peter had loved his mother and little brothers. Peter would cling to any hope that poor little Rory had survived. That boy would be a perfect lever to force Peter back in line. Fortunately, Basil had no such sentimentality.

  110

  Jess Tamblyn

  For weeks the water bearers continued their travels across the Spiral Arm, conveying the new warrior wentals, locating fresh seedpools, bringing powerful reservoirs back to Theroc. Now Jess and Cesca needed to see what Kotto Okiah had managed to develop in cooperation with his sample wentals.

  Traveling toward Golgen, Jess could never forget what had happened here to Ross, but he and Cesca had to keep their Guiding Star in sight — defeating the faeros and ending this elemental war once and for all.

  But when their water-bubble ship approached the yellowish gas giant, they were astonished to see hundreds, possibly more than a thousand, Solar Navy warliners in orbit and cruising through the atmosphere above the skymines.

  Though Jess could not understand why so many ships were here, Cesca gave him a knowing smile. “I think the Ildirans are in the same fight that we are.”

  Though Del Kellum had offered his largest conference room for the war council, the chamber still felt crowded with eager audience members. Before the meeting began, Kellum paced back and forth, arranging for refreshments and trying to look busy. Eighteen people took seats at a long milky-white table, while others crowded against the walls. Jess and Cesca remained by themselves at the far corner, isolated and haloed by elemental power.

  Tasia glanced at her brother and smiled, looking as sure of herself as she’d ever been. Kotto was there, full of news to share about his new weapons developments. Mage-Imperator Jora’h and Adar Zan’nh, garbed in ornate, uncomfortable-looking clothes, took seats side by side. Wearing only a brief shift, the green priest Nira held on to her new treeling, and the girl Osira’h remained attentive at her mother’s side.

  Cesca had been right in her initial assessment: They were all in the same fight, against the same terrible enemies. And, together, they might be strong enough to win.

  Wisps of pinkish clouds drifted like gauze over the room’s wide rectangular skylights, sending faint shadows across the boardroom table. Jess’s eyes were bright as he listened to the Mage-Imperator talk about the faeros incarnate and how the predatory fireballs had destroyed Earth’s Moon.

  Listening carefully, Jess assessed the audience. He knew the determination of the Mage-Imperator and the Solar Navy, knew that the Roamers and green priests were ready, and knew that King Peter and the Confederation would offer any resources they could. The verdani had already fought the faeros in their worldforest, but as the water bearers returned to Theroc, the trees and the warrior wentals had suggested a new concept to combine their strengths, now that the giant tree battleships had proved too vulnerable to the faeros fires.

  Yes, the allies now possessed many ways to fight that they had not previously used against the flaming elementals.

  “Rusa’h is still searching for me,” the Mage-Imperator said. “No doubt he will go back to Ildira. That is where he expects me to go.”

  “Then Ildira is where we will confront the faeros,” Cesca said. “We can bring all of our allies together and fight with everything we have.”

  Adar Zan’nh seemed hungry. “I have more than a thousand warliners ready to engage in the battle.”

  Kotto, who had been scribbling on a touchpad throughout the discussion, spoke up from where he sat at the far end of the table. “Sure, but you can’t just keep crashing your ships into things — that’s not the way to win.” He shook his head. “I’ve designed some exciting new wental weapons, though I haven’t had the opportunity to test them yet.”

  “Thank the Guiding Star for that,” muttered Boris Goff.

  “I would like to consider these weapons,” the Adar said. “Can they be adapted to our warliners?”

  Kotto shrugged. “The wentals were perfectly happy to shape their water however we like. If you provide me with specs for your warliners’ projectile launchers, I’ll see what I can do.” He glanced down at his touchpad, made a note, then looked up at Jess. “But the wental water you gave me was only enough for about a hundred frozen artillery shells, which I already delivered to the Roamer ships in the vicinity. If we’re going to attack the faeros on a large scale, we’ll need thousands more. Tens of thousands!”

  “We’ve got to be smart about this,” Tasia interrupted. “No half-assed measures. If we go to Ildira, it’ll likely be our last, best chance against the faeros. We need to make it count.”

  “The clouds of Golgen are laden with moisture, all of which is infused with wental energy,” Cesca said. “We can draw on some of that water to make new frozen shells, and we can bring water from other wental planets to build up a large stockpile. Yes, we’ll be ready for the faeros at Ildira.”

  “The wental water here is holding the hydrogues in check,” Jess pointed out. “We don’t dare deplete too much of it.”

  The young girl Osira’h had remained quiet beside Nira, but now she spoke with a strange, obsessive look in her large eyes. “And what about the hydrogues? They hate the faeros more than anything.”

  Del Kellum gave a loud, angry retort. “Even more than they hate humans? After all the destruction they caused, all those skymines wrecked, thousands and thousands of Roamers dead?”

  “Including my brother,” Jess said.

  Mage-Imperator Jora’h looked at his daughter. “The hydrogues cannot be trusted. They destroy. They betray. I made that mistake once, and we are not that desperate.”

  “But if the faeros are so powerful, we need equally powerful allies to defeat them,” Osira’h insisted.

  “We have the wentals,” Cesca pointed out, and that ended the discussion.

  111

  Nikko Chan Tylar

  Even though he had been stranded and miserable for weeks, Caleb Tamblyn didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave Jonah 12. He fussed and dithered inside his makeshift shelter, gathering his few possessions, although Nikko couldn’t see anything worth keeping among the bits of wreckage.

  Even the wentals seemed enthusiastic and impatient to depart, thawing themselves from the chunks of ice and flowing voluntarily into the cargo hold of the Aquarius. The whole icy planet was by now infused with them, and they were strong and eager to fight the faeros.

  Finally, Crim put his foot down and told Caleb, “Enough of this, man. Get aboard the Aquarius — we’ve got places to go, wentals to deliver, wars to win!”

  After boarding the ship, Caleb took one last look at the rough, frozen landscape, and sealed the airlock hatch behind him. Nikko raised the Aquarius from the ice, keying in the next set of coordinates. Following their timetable, all the water bearers were supposed to rendezvous back at Theroc. Thanks to Jess and Cesca, the water elementals now held a spark of courage and determination as they rallied to stand against the f
aeros in ways they had never fought before.

  Caleb hunched behind the two seats in the cockpit, relieved and excited now that they were finally on their way. Nikko accelerated away from the small frozen planetoid and headed out of the system.

  “You sure you set the right course?” his father asked.

  “I double-checked the nav calculations while we were waiting for Caleb to gather all his things.”

  “Oh. So you had plenty of time then.”

  Caleb made a sour face at him.

  They hadn’t gone far, though, before the wentals on the Aquarius began to churn. Thrumming through the deck and bulkheads, straining inside the hold, the living water sent out a wordless signal of alarm. Nikko knew what it meant. He quickly sent out a sensor sweep.

  Nine swollen fireballs shot toward them from the outskirts of the Jonah system. Having sensed the water elementals inside the ship, they meant to destroy the Aquarius and its precious cargo.

  Caleb’s voice turned into a squawk of anger and fear. “I bet those are the same bastards that got my water tanker.”

  Nikko frantically reversed course and looped around, squeezing everything he could from the Aquarius’s engines. The sudden acceleration smashed him and his father back against their seats, while Caleb stumbled and fell to the deck.

  The ship raced away — and the fiery ellipsoids rushed after them. Nikko tried to guess the limits to which he could push the hybrid vessel. “I can’t engage the stardrives yet.”

  “Then just dodge the fireballs, boy!” his father said.

  “Sure, I’ll get right on that.” Nikko made another radical course change and dropped back down into the Jonah system. He could sense the wentals boiling and angry, and suddenly he knew what he had to do. The watery entities made him realize it. “I’m heading back to the planetoid.”

  Caleb yelped, “Where are you planning to hide down there?”

  “We’re not going to hide. The wentals want me to go there. They’re extremely agitated right now.”

  “No kidding.” Crim’s teeth were clenched tightly together. “I thought you said you couldn’t communicate with them.”

  “Not entirely, and not clearly, but . . . I can feel that it’s what they want.” He felt the anger of the wentals onboard, a pounding sense that was entirely different from their previous passivity.

  The nine faeros poured after them, trailing fire. Nikko dodged like a maniac, but he didn’t see how the pool of wental water aboard his ship could fight off the fireballs pursuing them.

  Nikko hurtled toward Jonah 12, which looked like no more than a speck of cosmic lint in the vast black emptiness. The planetoid glinted, its icy surface reflecting the distant sunlight. At the wentals’ insistence, Nikko calculated an orbital vector, swinging low. He would practically scrape his underbelly on the crater rims and the frozen mounds of low mountains. It was going to take some fancy flying.

  He couldn’t imagine what the wentals had in mind, but he trusted them implicitly.

  With the faeros careening in its wake, the Aquarius whisked like a swift-moving shadow across the rugged landscape. His father and Caleb were so frightened they didn’t even criticize his flying, and Nikko’s terror helped keep his concentration as focused as a laser. He didn’t know how much longer he could fly like this.

  The relentless fireballs pressed ever closer, and curtains of heat rippled out, melting the surface wherever they touched.

  Then, as the Aquarius cruised over the wide melted crater from the reactor explosion, the trap was sprung. Emerging from where they had been locked in the ice, wentals erupted as great, gushing geysers.

  The faeros could not back away or change their course swiftly enough from the cannon blasts of charged water. Like watery volcanoes, the surge of liquid struck the nine ellipsoids. More living water streamed from the thick ice and engulfed the faeros, who could not fight back. The warrior wentals snuffed out the elemental fires.

  A surge of exhilaration rushed through his bloodstream as Nikko raced away in the Aquarius.

  “Neat trick,” Caleb said, “and a very auspicious start to this big battle you keep talking about.”

  The three laughed out loud with relief. Nikko’s father clapped both of the others on the shoulders. “Now let’s head to Theroc and get on with it.”

  112

  Robb Brindle

  Days after their arrival, Robb stood with Fleet Admiral Willis aboard the Jupiter, gazing out at the Earth with feelings as jumbled as the scattered chunks of lunar debris. This place had been Robb’s home, where his parents had been stationed throughout his youth, where he had first filled out the forms to join the EDF, eager to go out and fight the hydrogues.

  Robb felt a great hollowness in his chest each time he saw the rubble field of the Moon. Nothing left but shattered rocks flying in all directions. He had undergone his initial training at the EDF base there, the same base where he’d met the cocky Roamer recruit Tasia Tamblyn. . . . He wished Tasia could have accompanied them on this mission, but she had flown off with Kotto Okiah to Golgen and points unknown, hoping to help him test his Klikiss Siren.

  No, coming back to Earth to face this extraordinary disaster — that was his own job.

  He hadn’t seen his mother in years, and he and his father had parted under difficult circumstances when Robb chose to remain loyal to King Peter rather than to the Hansa. It shouldn’t have been a choice that either one had to make. At Pym, though, Robb had seen some hint that his father might be softening his position, maybe understanding the rot in the command structure.

  Today there could be no avoiding General Conrad Brindle. The new commander of the Earth Defense Forces was coming aboard the Jupiter to discuss the situation with Admiral Willis. Robb had no doubt that would be an interesting meeting.

  When the huge group of Confederation ships had arrived at Earth, the EDF met — or confronted — them, led by the ominous Goliath and a far greater number of repaired ships than they had ever expected to see. After a few tense moments, the Confederation ships had grudgingly been allowed to get to work.

  Despite their diligence, the EDF ships had been managing to catch only about one percent of the Earth-intersecting objects. It was impossible to detect and deflect all of them, but with so many additional experienced helpers, Robb hoped to increase that success rate to at least ninety percent.

  Still, it took only one extinction event . . .

  Admiral Willis had dispersed her ships and the Roamer privateers, and they plunged into the task with dogged determination. Showing off, the clan volunteers worked like hyperactive ants repairing a damaged colony. The Admiral was initially flustered by the independence of the Roamer pilots, who did not fall neatly into her guidelines, adhere to the chain of command, or use standardized procedures. However, when they spread out in their mishmash of unique craft, they worked just fine without oversight.

  Thousands of clan ships — mostly cargo vessels and scout flyers — accompanied the orderly squads of Confederation-marked Remoras. They flew wide and thorough search patterns with their sensors attuned for any faint readings. Each time they found a questionable object, they planted a small pinger to broadcast the rock’s location so larger battleships could intercept it in time. Roamer craft reported back to the Jupiter, dumping their navigation logs to provide the Confederation with an ever-growing database of celestial hazards. Computers projected a bird’s nest of orbital lines, and Robb’s mind reeled at the huge number of significant objects — with many more waiting to be found.

  “Never thought I’d say it,” Willis commented, lounging back in her command chair, “but this looks like a job too big even for the Roamer clans — and those people are insane!”

  “Insane? Or desperate?”

  “One often leads to the other.”

  Emergency crews had to prioritize which fragments posed the largest potential danger. Using concentrated jazer fire, powerful explosives, and some of Willis’s stockpiled nukes, the Confederation ships b
roke the largest objects into chunks small enough to theoretically burn up in the atmosphere. Some giant fragments were far enough away that carefully planted explosions deflected them into safer orbits, easing the problem at least temporarily.

  Experienced Roamer scouts quickly showed the stodgier EDF pilots how it was done. Squadrons of ships combed the nearby volume of space all day long, searching the emptiness and back-calculating the projected paths of lunar rubble.

  Several more repaired EDF ships had been released from the robot construction complexes to join the scout fleet. Every new vessel helped. Even so, Robb didn’t view the black robots too kindly. After being held prisoner inside a gas giant by hydrogues and black robots, knowing how the robots had betrayed Tasia, and how they had hijacked much of the EDF fleet, Robb remained suspicious.

  On the main screen on the Jupiter’s bridge, he saw the large open-architecture vessels that Sirix and his comrades were building for themselves, right in view of Earth. The alien configurations had been adapted from old Klikiss plans. Why would Chairman Wenceslas allow them to do that? It defied belief.

  Willis’s executive officer reported to the bridge. “The EDF command shuttle has just docked, ma’am. General Brindle will be here momentarily.”

  She looked at Robb, knowing full well what she was asking. “Would you please escort him up to the bridge?”

  Robb’s stomach was in knots, but he forced a smile that fooled no one. “Sure, Admiral. I’d be happy to.”

  His father came alone, leaving his protocol officers aboard his shuttle. Robb knew the man liked to do things himself. General Brindle. He still couldn’t get used to his father’s title. Of course, he himself was now “Commodore.”