The Ashes of Worlds

by Kevin J. Anderson

  One of the EDF ships suddenly exploded. The eruption took everyone by surprise. Flames and shrapnel hurtled outward in an expanding, roiling ball where the Manta had been.

  Robb yelped. “Who opened fire?”

  Like a chain reaction, a second Manta erupted in flames, its fuel tanks bursting. A Thunderhead went next, then one of the two newly repaired Juggernauts, the pride of the reconstituted fleet.

  Taking his own initiative, the Jupiter’s weapons officer shouted, “Targeting main swarmship! They’re firing on us — ”

  “Don’t shoot!” Robb hadn’t seen the Klikiss clusters initiate any action at all.

  “We have to help them!” Estarra cried.

  Sarein looked dismayed. “But I don’t see any weapons fire.”

  Another Manta exploded. The comm channels were filled with frantic, angry chatter. In a tumultuous reaction, the EDF battle group scrambled, powering their engines up, pulling their vessels into a defensive formation, ready to open fire.

  Robb jumped to his feet, letting the command chair spin behind him. “Sound General Quarters — all alarms! Everybody prepare for attack from any direction. Dammit, what’s causing those explosions?”

  Another Manta cruiser broke apart in a gush of flames. The succession of explosions continued all along the EDF line. Admiral Willis veered her own ship away from the debris.

  General Conrad Brindle’s face appeared on the communication screen, yelling at Robb. “What the hell have you done?”

  Robb frantically searched for the comm button on the Jupiter’s command chair. Even before he opened a response channel, he was already yelling, “It’s not us! We didn’t do it!”

  “You have attacked the Earth Defense Forces. With our backs turned! We trusted you, but Chairman Wenceslas warned me — ”

  He cut his father off. “I never gave the order. Check your readouts — we’re not firing.”

  Admiral Willis bellowed from the bridge of her Manta. “Mr. Brindle, you’d better have a damned good explanation for this.” Robb couldn’t tell if she was referring to him, or to his father.

  Two disabled EDF battleships careened into each other. Explosions burst the hulls and spewed atmosphere. Flames spat through the breaches and ignited fuel vapor in empty space. Four more EDF ships mysteriously exploded. The rest of the ships had no place to run.

  After a few seconds he realized that only EDF ships were suffering, not a single Confederation vessel.

  It didn’t make any sense. Robb shouted, “I need confirmation! Make absolutely sure none of our ships have opened fire. Were any Confederation jazers or projectiles launched?” He was positive none of his ships would have initiated a strike on the EDF vessels — especially with the Klikiss looming over Earth.

  Everyone on the Jupiter’s bridge ran from station to station, calling up data, yelling at one another. Estarra was staring in disbelief at the burning wrecks that drifted away from the defensive line.

  The EDF was in ruins. Ships continued to spontaneously explode. Twenty of them, then thirty, then more.

  “Every single target was an EDF ship,” the weapons officer said. “Fifty-three destroyed so far.”

  Sarein cocked her head to the side. “Could this be sabotage? Could someone have planted explosives aboard?”

  “Confirmed,” said the tactical specialist. “The detonations are not the result of weapons fire.”

  More ships exploded in a chain reaction. Seventy ships. Eighty-seven. Ninety-two. Escape pods shot like dust motes out into space, but very few soldiers had managed to escape.

  “All those people,” Estarra said. “How can we stop it?”

  Though the Goliath was unharmed, it could still explode at any moment. The EDF Juggernaut spun and charged toward the Jupiter, its jazer banks powering up.

  “The Goliath is coming for us!” the navigator warned.

  “Get me a communication link back to my father. I need to talk with him — now!”

  Estarra took a place at his side in a show of strength. “I can speak on behalf of the Confederation.”

  “If he’ll listen! The Hansa’s been telling him to distrust us for months, and now he must think all that paranoia was warranted.”

  “Channel confirmed, sir.”

  “Dad, those detonations were internal to your ships! Your fleet must have been rigged.” When no more explosions occurred for several minutes, Robb watched the remaining EDF ships warily. They all seemed to be ticking time bombs.

  Finally, from a corner of the main screen, Conrad Brindle glowered at him. “Rigged, how? Almost a hundred ships, Robb — two-thirds of my fleet — with full crew complements! This is exactly the sort of thing the Chairman told us to watch out for.” The older man’s face conveyed the extent of the disaster more clearly than any sensor readout could. Distracted, he shouted into a different speaker, “All intact ships, prepare to retrieve escape pods.”

  Admiral Willis flew her Manta in beside the Juggernaut, jumping into the conversation. “Check your records, General. I’ll bet my last paycheck that every one of those ships was repaired by the black robots.”

  “I give you my word, Dad — it wasn’t us!”

  Estarra spoke up. “Please, General, let us help you pick up the survivors.”

  Robb could see that his father held his hands on the firing controls of his weapons. Finally, after a long, tense moment, Conrad’s shoulders drooped and he nodded. “We could use the help.” He called out to his tactical officer, “Review the records on those ships. Get to the bottom of this!” The connection cut off.

  “You heard the Queen,” Robb said to his helmsman. “Let’s go pick up some escape pods.”

  On the main viewscreen, throughout all the fuss, the swarmships hung motionless. They displayed no reaction whatsoever.

  149

  Tasia Tamblyn

  Llaro was a tomb.

  With the hard dry ground crunching under her feet, Tasia trudged through the ruins, looking for any signs of life. All the insect hive structures, tunnels, and expanded towers were empty and silent.

  Tasia sniffed the air. “Right now, I’m more interested in answers than in the Klikiss themselves. Maybe they vanished again, just like they did thousands of years ago. I just want to make sure they’re gone.”

  KR and GU followed close on Kotto’s heels, recording data with their optical sensors. DD marched along with clear enthusiasm. “If we find Margaret Colicos, she will explain what happened here.”

  “DD, you were with the Klikiss for a long while. Can you make a guess?” Orli said.

  The Friendly compy paused to reassess the overrun former colony. “It is possible that the breedex dispatched its warriors through the transportals to attack or consolidate other subhives. Maybe they are no longer here because they are . . . elsewhere.”

  Tasia sighed. “Then we’ll have to go elsewhere to look for them. We’ve got to test that Siren.” She glanced at Kotto. “What does your Guiding Star say?”

  “I generally follow my own calculations instead of my Guiding Star. My mother never could understand that.”

  “Not really an answer to my question, Kotto.”

  Looking concerned, Mr. Steinman said, “Before we go looking for those bugs, I need to know one thing. If your gadget works, it’ll work, right? Immediately? We find the bugs, we zap them, and we’ll know within seconds?”

  Kotto pondered for a moment. “In theory, the transmission of harmonic melodies should impose almost instant paralysis on the Klikiss — maybe even initiating hibernation.”

  “And if it doesn’t work, we’ll figure that quick enough, too,” Steinman said. “But first we’ve got to find some bugs to use as guinea pigs.”

  “All right, then, here’s my idea,” Tasia said. “If the Klikiss went to some other planet, we have to track them down. We can use the transportal. First, we disconnect the Siren from our ship and use antigrav handles to carry it.” She glanced at the tall transportal structure the Klikiss had erected
in the middle of the Llaro hive. “Then we pick coordinate tiles and start shopping for planets. As soon as we find a bunch of Klikiss, we give them an earful of your Siren.”

  DD brightened. “I know of many viable Klikiss centers. I can suggest alternative worlds where the breedex might have gone.”

  Tasia nodded. “All of you compies, help us move the equipment; then we’ll start our bug hunt.”

  After DD had compiled a list of target planets, he was obviously disappointed when the first two coordinate tiles opened only to silent, dusty planets similarly abandoned by the Klikiss. He seemed discouraged.

  The third time, however, as soon as the transportal wall cleared and they stepped through, Tasia found herself facing hundreds of Klikiss diggers, excreters, and constructors expanding a vast insect metropolis. The creatures turned toward them, raising claws, chittering interrogatories.

  “Bingo!” Tasia cried. “Serenade them, Kotto.”

  The eager engineer activated the Siren, and Tasia instinctively covered her ears, though Kotto had given them each a set of noise-canceling plugs. Originally, he had been puzzled by this request, since the Siren’s blast should have no effect on humans, until Tasia pointed out that it would still be loud.

  A warbling sonic thunderstorm belched out of the device. The signal didn’t sound like a melody by any definition Tasia knew, and fully half of the frequencies were beyond the range of human hearing. Even with earplugs, the sonic bombardment was bone-shaking.

  Steinman winced, backing away, while Orli pressed her hands flat against her ears. The three compies just stood under the noisy barrage, listening and analyzing. Kotto didn’t seem bothered by the noise at all.

  The Klikiss, though, were mesmerized. They paused, seemingly fascinated. All of the sub-breeds turned their armored heads toward the transportal in a perfectly synchronized motion, directing their faceted eyes at the droning sound. Then, with a simultaneous dissonant squeak, the bugs froze, like short-circuited robots.

  Kotto stared. “I believe it worked.”

  Steinman, who seemed to have read Kotto’s lips, yelled, “Then shut that damn thing off! It’s pounding right through my eardrums.”

  Kotto shut down the device, and the subsequent silence was like a void in the air. The Klikiss did not move.

  “Are they dead?” Tasia asked.

  “I believe the signal has forced them into their hibernation mode,” DD said.

  “Good enough for me,” Orli said.

  Steinman looked at the immobilized insect bodies. “That’s damned impressive.”

  “Judging by their bodily configurations, these sub-breeds appear to have been members of a subhive different from the Llaro Klikiss,” DD said. “They might be part of a larger consolidated hive mind, or perhaps a tenuously connected group of . . . leftovers.”

  Tasia grabbed the antigrav handles and hauled the bulky Siren back through the transportal wall to empty Llaro. “Definitely a successful test. Now we can get down to business.” As soon as they had all returned, the trapezoidal frame shimmered back to solid rock. She turned to DD. “Give us some more possible coordinate tiles. I plan to keep hitting the bugs until we knock out whatever’s left of all the subhives.”

  150

  Chairman Basil Wenceslas

  In the center of the alien swarmship, the breedex spoke in a shuddery voice that did not sound at all like the cool and collected Davlin Lotze. “You were not lying, Basil Wenceslas.” The voice carried an odd and annoying note of surprise. “The black robots are destroyed.”

  “Then you saw the trap I planted for Sirix,” Basil exclaimed, unable to conceal his joy and relief. “A fatal defect. I caused it. All the new robots shut down as soon as they tried to open fire.”

  “The black robots are destroyed,” the breedex said again, finally sounding satisfied. “Every one of them. At last.”

  Margaret Colicos looked strangely at him. “Sirix killed my Louis. I am glad he’s gone.” Beside her, Anton put his hand over hers.

  Basil ignored them, focused only on the seething hive mind. “I helped you. I made the black robots vulnerable so the Klikiss could wipe them out. I set the wheels in motion long before you arrived.” With both Sarein and Cain stabbing him in the back, Admirals Pike and San Luis deserting him, and Peter’s rebellion, Basil found himself grasping at straws. But the Klikiss were the biggest prize of all. Given the proper incentive, maybe the One Breedex could overwhelm all of the Hansa’s other enemies. “You owe the Hansa due consideration. We’re partners. You have no reason to harm us. You need me.”

  But the hive mind no longer showed any vestige of Davlin Lotze. In fact, it seemed more Klikiss than ever, as if thrown into bloodlust by crushing the last robots. He had thought that might be the end of Klikiss aggression, but now the creatures were ready to move on Earth.

  Margaret and Anton looked very uneasy. The domates and warrior insects standing guard outside the central chamber shifted their serrated limbs and edged closer, poised to kill the hostages.

  Suddenly, though, the warriors jittered and froze, as if they had all been stunned at once. The shapeless breedex mass quivered and cringed, and the simulated face reappeared. “What is happening? Klikiss . . . paralyzed . . . shutting down . . .” The artificial face slumped into millions of writhing components, but the voice continued. “Subhive remnants . . . one after another. Too many losses from my mind . . .”

  The breedex mound writhed through a series of configurations — faces of other human colonists, random Klikiss heads, and then nothing more than a soupy, staticky mass. “Losing segments of my mind. Treachery! Destroy — ”

  Basil didn’t know what was happening; apparently, neither did Margaret Colicos. She spoke in a crisp voice. “What trick is this, Mr. Chairman? A new EDF weapon?”

  “I’d love to take the credit, Dr. Colicos, but I have no idea what’s happening.”

  A shockwave rippled through all of the Klikiss warriors in the breedex chambers, and every insect nearby froze in place. One domate collapsed, falling in front of an arched doorway.

  At the center of the chamber, the breedex became a quivering disconnected mass. Even the buried persona of Davlin did not respond.

  Throughout the swarmship, and presumably all the other swarmships, the Klikiss had gone catatonic. If someone else — the Confederation? — had developed a weapon, Basil did not want to remain aboard the swarmship. With the monstrous creatures locked in place, he didn’t dare waste this opportunity.

  “We’ve got to get out of here while the Klikiss are incapacitated. This meeting is at an end.” He felt hamstrung, not knowing how long the paralysis would last, and he could not guess how the erratic breedex would react if, or when, it regained consciousness. He did not want to be here when it did. “Run.”

  Neither Margaret nor Anton argued. They had seen the Davlin personality subsumed. Together, they hurried along the twisting organic corridors, trying to remember the way back to the shuttle. When they finally reached the landing chamber, they found Klikiss warriors standing around the diplomatic ship like nightmarish sculptures. Their armored forelimbs were raised, spiny head-crests tilted back as if ready for attack. They didn’t move.

  “Open!” he shouted to the pilot. “Open, dammit!” The hatch slid aside, and he bounded up the ramp.

  “Mr. Chairman, you’re alive!” the pilot cried.

  “Obviously. Get the engines started.” This strange species paralysis could end at any moment — or, if the Confederation was behind this, Peter could try to blow up the swarmship, and he’d certainly have no scruples about doing it while the Chairman was aboard.

  With a lurch that threw the passengers off balance, the shuttle lifted from the slick resin floor, and the pilot guided them away. They accelerated out of the mouthlike cavern and emerged from the core, passing through an atmosphere-containment field and heading toward the closely packed component ships that served as an indistinct external shell. But rather than forming a rigid barrier,
the component ships now drifted aimlessly, spreading apart.

  Although the small alien vessels provided an overall geometrical shape to the swarmship, they were not physically connected. Gaps between the listless component craft gave the pilot just enough room to squeak between them. Within moments, they were free and flying away from the alien vessel into blessedly open space.

  Then Basil spotted the wreckage of his EDF ships. He took in the disaster at a glance: the debris, the dying fires, the twisted ruins of General Brindle’s command. The carnage was appalling.

  The Confederation battle group, however, was unharmed.

  “Damn you, Peter,” Basil yelled. “Damn you!”

  151

  Nikko Chan Tylar

  We just barely got away from the Klikiss on Llaro, and we scraped past the faeros on Jonah 12,” Crim Tylar muttered. “Now look what you’ve gotten us into, Nikko.”

  “Yes. That’s my plan.”

  Following the thousands of small tree-bubbles that swept like a deadly hailstorm toward Ildira, the Aquarius and the other water-bearer ships plunged into a bizarre battlefield: wental-encased treelings, mist-swathed Solar Navy warliners, and Confederation vessels from Golgen. Nikko felt the exuberance of the warrior wentals singing through the hull, the new determination that Jess and Cesca had poured into them.

  Then the firestorm suddenly increased as blazing reinforcements belched out of the nearby suns. Even though a misty wental sheath protected the Aquarius from the faeros, he didn’t think there was enough moisture to stop the sheer number of fireballs. But he flew into the fray, nevertheless.

  His ship’s hold still held a small reservoir of the energized water taken from Charybdis, and those wentals were restless, eager to join the battle. Some of them had formed themselves into icy projectiles, which Nikko’s father and Caleb loaded into the ship’s gunports.

  As soon as they got close enough to the wild fireballs, Caleb launched the frozen artillery shells with great pleasure. While Confederation ships concentrated their attack close to Ildira, the water bearers and the wental-encased treelings fought their own battle, heading off to stop the blazing reinforcements emerging from the suns. Caleb shot his projectiles, annihilating one faeros after another. Unfortunately, he soon ran out of shells.