The Ashes of Worlds

by Kevin J. Anderson

  At some point during the operation, the soldiers smashed the imagers recording the incident. The abrupt termination of the broadcast would probably cause even more consternation among the real members of Freedom’s Sword. Patrick doubted these guards knew what they were provoking.

  Her face flushed with self-importance, Shelia said, “If you don’t cooperate, we’ll stun you and drag you by your feet to one of the troop transports.”

  “Oh, we wouldn’t dream of being uncooperative,” Patrick said.

  They were placed in electronic restraints. He walked alongside Zhett, his head held high. The fear in his chest was no more than a dull, persistent ache. After all, he reminded himself, he’d been sentenced to death before.

  119

  King Peter

  Estarra’s large brown eyes were full of suspicion when she heard Basil’s surprise invitation. “You don’t actually believe the Chairman’s making a peace gesture, do you?”

  “Of course not, but I don’t think he’ll try anything stupid. He needs us.”

  Any reasonable person might have responded with gratitude for all the aid the Confederation brought to Earth, but not Basil Wenceslas. Though he kept pretending the Hansa was thriving and under his complete control, even Basil could not ignore the disaster.

  Young King Rory had invited Peter and Estarra (their royal titles intentionally omitted) to attend a banquet in the Whisper Palace “in recognition of assistance given,” with no specific acknowledgment of the Confederation or anyone by name. It was the sort of thing that should have incensed Peter, but he let it flow past him. Childish word games were not his concern. He did, however, want to know what the Chairman had up his sleeve.

  And then there was Rory . . .

  He was even more interested in meeting the familiar-looking King, with his dark eyes, dark hair, and olive complexion. It had been almost ten years since the Chairman’s henchmen had killed Peter’s mother and his brothers, Michael, Carlos . . . and Rory. Rory.

  He couldn’t believe Basil would have thought so far ahead as to fake the boy’s death and then keep him hidden on the off chance that Peter would cause problems someday. And why would the Chairman have bothered with Prince Daniel if he already had Rory in reserve? It implied a mind-boggling depth of long-range planning, a tortuous chain of paranoia . . . and profound patience.

  It was exactly the way Basil Wenceslas worked.

  Peter had to see for himself.

  “We’ll take a full guard escort. We’ll also be monitored by our own imagers, not just the Hansa’s propaganda patsies.” He tried to sound confident. “And we’ll take OX with us to record, analyze, and advise.”

  Basil could not afford any more bad press. As a bellwether of the public’s dissatisfaction, the Chairman was condemned daily in postings, demonstrations, and random acts of arson or vandalism. The cleanup crew tried to snuff all the negative news stories, but they leaked out with greater and greater vehemence.

  Peter had been observing the newsnets with interest. Just that morning, Patrick Fitzpatrick and Zhett Kellum — supposed ringleaders of Freedom’s Sword — had shaken up the population with the vivid broadcast of their brutal arrest. That had only inflamed the protesters more.

  Basil was not going to be in a good mood when Peter and Estarra arrived.

  He and Estarra dressed in their finest clothes with distinct touches of Theron and Roamer fashion, a carefully balanced mixture of pomp and practicality. He gathered a guard escort of former EDF crewmen, Roamers, Hansa colonists, and the Teacher compy, as well as a complete “documentation” team to record and broadcast the event in real time, uncensored. All of them had instructions to watch for any signs of treachery from the Chairman.

  With the concentrated efforts of nearly a thousand new ships Peter had brought, the threat of a major asteroid strike had diminished dramatically. Peter was far more worried about Basil.

  Fleet Admiral Willis scowled, fidgeted, and finally spoke up. “This just doesn’t feel right. We know about the executions he ordered. We’re sure he was responsible for blasting the Archfather of Unison. You saw with your own eyes what he did to former Chairman Fitzpatrick. He’s thrown subtlety right out the window with the baby and the bathwater. If the Chairman sees a chance, he’ll take it. What are your orders if things do go south?”

  Peter pondered. “If necessary, carry out a surgical strike on the Hansa HQ or the Whisper Palace, one that minimizes casualties but is sure to deliver justice. The people of Earth aren’t responsible for the Chairman’s reckless actions. Don’t make them suffer any more than they already have.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, King Peter.”

  Estarra took his hand, and along with their well-armed ceremonial escort, they boarded a specially outfitted diplomatic shuttle. Peter had mixed feelings about going back to the Palace District. On the chaotic and dangerous night of their escape, they had flown off while tremendous battles raged around them. Back then, the two of them had done what they thought best for humanity.

  Now perhaps he could come back and fix things.

  120

  Del Kellum

  A Solar Navy cutter flew down through the turbulent air battles to pick up the Mage-Imperator. Jora’h raised his hands to signal the Ildiran ship, which touched down on the skymine’s open deck, its engines still roaring for an immediate departure.

  Before the cutter opened its hatch, the green priest peered down into the clouds where the derelict had vanished some time before, but she saw no sign of her daughter. Both of them were distraught by what the half-breed girl had done, though Jora’h said he could tell through the thism that Osira’h remained alive.

  Kellum didn’t know what the girl hoped to accomplish, and he wasn’t holding his breath for a miracle to happen. Jora’h took Nira’s arm and pulled her toward the small Solar Navy ship. “She is gone now — she will succeed, or she will fail. It is up to her.” Once he got the green priest aboard the cutter, Jora’h shouted into the noise, “Join us, Del Kellum! Adar Zan’nh will do everything in his power to keep us safe.”

  Kellum shook his head. “It may sound corny, but the captain’s supposed to go down with his ship. Live in the sky, die in the sky . . . that’s an old Roamer saying.”

  As more explosions rumbled overhead, and a fireball streaked so close to the top of the skymine that it melted some of the high towers, the Solar Navy pilot insisted that they had to depart. Kellum stood his ground, refusing to leave, and finally with a brisk wave of farewell, the Mage-Imperator and Nira flew off.

  He thought longingly of his dear Shareen Pasternak, killed on a skymine that had been destroyed by hydrogues. And now a little girl had gone down in hopes that the hydrogues would rescue them. How ridiculous was that? He shook his head. As a counterpoint to these dismal thoughts, he clung to the satisfying knowledge that at least Zhett and Patrick had gotten away. They must be safer on Earth. . . .

  Now that his beloved skymine was nothing more than a gigantic, lumbering target, Kellum had to make the call. Swallowing hard, he slapped the main intercom button so hard he hurt his palm. “This is Del Kellum — listen up! I’m sounding a full evacuation of this skymine. All personnel, get to a ship. Any ship you can find. I can’t guarantee you’ll be safer out in the open, but we’re sitting ducks here.”

  Most of his workers had anticipated the announcement. Dozens of ships, including tiny maintenance vehicles with a range of no more than a few kilometers, sprang away from the lower decks, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the skymine. They wanted to be far from the huge facility when the faeros circled in.

  Countless ellipsoids swooped and looped like aimless sparks searching for victims, hunting down any escaping vessels. Most of the Roamer defenders had depleted their icy projectiles and were now running.

  Flaming creatures closed in on all the skymines. Nearby, six fireballs threw their fury against a helpless cloud harvester owned by clan Hobart. Exhaust towers crumpled and
melted; gas storage tanks burst, spewing a jet of flames to knock the levitating facility off its axis. The flames peeled away the armored structural plates, dismantling the whole facility. Finally, the lower ekti tanks ruptured, and the Hobart skymine’s emergency signals and calls for assistance abruptly ceased. The gigantic wreck became a roiling mass of smoke and explosions. Its altitude engines failed, and the once-graceful city tumbled down into the deep clouds.

  Kellum watched it mournfully, wondering if this disaster was similar to what Ross Tamblyn had experienced as his Blue Sky Mine fell apart in the air.

  Below he saw an unnatural storm cell bubbling up from the stirring layers of mist, and his heart froze as an ominous, yet terribly familiar, spiked diamond vessel breached the clouds like some spherical sea leviathan. “Oh, hell . . .”

  Another one rose, then another.

  As the faeros continued to throw themselves at the Solar Navy warliners, and the Roamer ships expended their last few ice projectiles, an armada of hydrogue warglobes rose up to meet them, shrouded in glittering wental mist.

  121

  Jess Tamblyn

  With their water sphere skimming atop the cloud banks, Jess and Cesca called upon the watery entities within the depths of Golgen, drawing sparkling smoke into a windy vortex. Diaphanous wisps of sentient fog curled toward the fireballs, ready to strike.

  Jess could feel the warrior wentals around and within him thrumming with unaccustomed fury. Faeros! He nursed that anger into a determination that he fed back to the wentals as he led the charge upward. The sky was so full of vessels in chaotic motion that even the vast gas giant seemed crowded.

  Though the rising mist looked deceptively ethereal, whenever it touched a fireball, the result was like a boiler explosion. The watery entities seethed with animosity. This was vengeance for the devastation of Charybdis. Yes, the wentals had learned. . . .

  Jess could sense the faeros incarnate in one of the largest fireballs, another corporeal presence guiding the elementals — an avatar like himself, and yet entirely different. Jess could feel Rusa’h like a burn on the skin, a fire in the mind. This man had single-handedly changed the war with the faeros and taught them how to defeat the hydrogues.

  Jess knew that Rusa’h must be the wentals’ main target.

  Cesca understood as well. “If we can defeat him here, then there will be no need to go to Ildira. He chose this battlefield. Now let’s turn it against him.”

  Sparking a deep and implacable determination among the wentals, the two directed their water ship up toward the central ellipsoid. Rusa’h led his charge to find and destroy the Mage-Imperator among the numerous Solar Navy warliners, but so far he had been unsuccessful.

  A sudden intense turmoil occurred from below, though — different from the battle above. He could feel what was about to emerge. Cesca looked at him, startled. “Hydrogues.”

  Hydrogues, the wentals said inside his mind. They will fight here.

  Jess could not curb his surge of anger and disbelief. “The drogues will turn on us! It’s like letting loose a wolf to fight a mad dog.”

  The wentals, though, responded with a firm confidence Jess did not feel. We will keep them chained.

  When the clouds parted, a large armada of spiked spheres shot into the open, bright skies — dozens, and then dozens more. And tumbling along with them, drawn up by the warglobes, came the small derelict. From inside the diamond globe, Osira’h used her communication systems. “The hydrogues are outraged that the faeros have come to their world. I convinced them to help turn the battle.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Cesca said.

  We are warrior wentals. We learned to fight from you, said the voice inside him. We learned to consider alternatives. The hydrogues do not battle for us, or for humanity, but for themselves. They fight only to destroy faeros, nothing more.

  “I compelled them, as I did before,” Osira’h said. “They have accepted limited terms.”

  The wentals will contain them.

  Jess was not entirely reassured, but he accepted the wentals’ confidence. Osira’h had acted independently, and the water elementals believed there was some advantage to unleashing the deep-core aliens, at least for the moment.

  Bottled up in the high-pressure depths, the hydrogues had stewed in their own anger for far too long. Now, with elemental chains loosened, numerous warglobes flew upward. Their abiding and ancient loathing of the fiery elementals far exceeded their relatively new resentment for humans. They chose their targets, and they did not waver.

  Diamond spheres rocketed into the flaming ellipsoids, unleashing skittery patterns of blue electrical bolts. The fireballs pulsed and struggled, and some of the weaker ones diminished like candle flames extinguished by the wind.

  But even as the warglobes raced into the clash, tendrils of wental vapor clung to them in a strange symbiosis. When the hydrogue spheres approached a group of fireballs, the sentient mists expanded and lifted up in filmy nets to snarl the faeros.

  The hydrogues spewed their shattering cold weapons in icy white ripples that weakened and then extinguished the fireballs. Previously, the warglobes had used those terrible frigid blasts to lay waste to the worldforest, and Jess felt his stomach roiling as he observed them now. He doubted the deep-core aliens had any interest in earning forgiveness or redemption.

  But they were certainly wreaking a lot of unexpected destruction here.

  As the faeros fought back, however, one of the warglobes exploded, its shattered diamond hull raining back down into the clouds. Several other hydrogue ships were wiped out as well, but more of them emerged from the depths.

  “Jess, we have to reach the faeros incarnate,” Cesca said.

  He shook free of his anger. “You’re right — let’s keep our eyes on the target.”

  Intent again, Jess drove their water sphere up into the path of Rusa’h’s blazing ellipsoid. He could sense that although the other avatar was shaken by the sudden turnabout, he would not back away. He continued to dart among the Solar Navy ships, intent on finding the Mage-Imperator and destroying any warliner that got in his way.

  Jess and Cesca pulled the atmospheric wentals along with them in a stream of water vapor that circled with a sharp wind into an ever-tightening spiral and coalesced into a misty tornado. Jess did not intend to let the faeros incarnate harm Mage-Imperator Jora’h.

  The cyclone of fog wrapped like a straitjacket around Rusa’h’s fireball. Jess felt buffeted by the faeros incarnate’s surprise; the other avatar could sense them, too, but Rusa’h had not previously encountered anyone else like himself. Jess and Cesca took advantage of his disorientation and threw the energized water against the flaming shield.

  Rusa’h’s charge against the Solar Navy faltered as he struggled to fight off the watery hurricane. Jess guided his wental ship in circles, harrying the faeros incarnate and spiraling in. The flames diminished even though Rusa’h fought back. Sending a coordinated mental shout, Jess and Cesca called upon the wentals — and the hydrogues — to concentrate their attack here.

  The battle swiftly turned. Many spiked warglobes fought beside the Roamer ships, which had expended all their frozen projectiles. Wentals splashed up to seize and smother numerous fireballs. Sparks flew everywhere, and ashes dropped down into the endless atmosphere.

  Just as more wentals and hydrogues surged forward to the faeros incarnate, Rusa’h surrounded himself with dozens of fireballs to form an intense barricade. Finally, the burning man broke free of the misty cyclone. Obviously weakened as he limped higher into the sky, he called a retreat from Golgen. When another wave of warglobes shot out of the clouds, the faeros pulled together and sped away. With a surge of strength, Jess and Cesca raced after them, but the surviving fireballs vanished in a dazzling group.

  Though they had failed to stop the faeros incarnate, Jess felt his heart swell to see the flaming enemies retreat. The local communications equipment crackled with a thousand overlapping cheers, while others hurl
ed curses at the faeros, which had dwindled to mere sparks in the sky.

  Though many warglobes had been smashed in the air battle, the remaining hydrogues hovered, like vicious attack dogs straining at a leash. They wanted to pursue the fireballs into space, to escape from Golgen and run free again — but Jess refused to allow that. He still felt a knotted anger toward the hydrogues, a bitterness that he could not let go, no matter how many faeros they had extinguished.

  Jess prepared for another fight to restrain them. He expected the deep-core aliens to turn on the wentals. But the wentals surrounded the warglobes with strands of fog, and the surreal chains held them in place.

  From her derelict Osira’h transmitted, “They will not fight to help us. They will not join in the battle for Ildira. They will stay here.”

  We would not allow them to leave, the combined wental voice said.

  “Good,” Jess said. “The risk would be too great.”

  Slowly, the warglobes were drawn back down into the clouds of Golgen, their prison, their home. Although the hydrogues were still contained, still defeated, Jess wondered if they felt some gratification at having beaten their enemies. He was glad for what they had done, but that was all.

  When he spotted Osira’h’s small diamond sphere among the hydrogue warglobes, though, he realized that it had begun to fall back down with them. Cesca saw it too, and urged their wental ship down into the thick gas layers, darting toward the derelict. They snagged the ship, and as they pulled it back up toward the damaged skymines and the regrouping Solar Navy warliners, the half-breed girl sent another message.

  “Did you hear Rusa’h’s thoughts?” She did not wait for them to answer. “He is taking all of the faeros to Ildira.”

  122

  King Peter

  He thought he was prepared for this moment, but Peter still came to a faltering stop when the gold-inlaid doors swung inward. At the end of the long banquet table sat Rory, looking directly at him.