Of Fire and Night (43 page)

107

NIKKO CHAN TYLAR

T
he turnout at Charybdis was even larger than Nikko had prayed for. All those Roamer volunteers ready to deliver wentals! Obviously, a lot of people held a grudge against the drogues. The new arrivals came to the stormy water world with the utmost resolve. At least he could be sure this conflict would not be lost due to a lack of enthusiasm or manpower.

The planet-sized ocean surged and swelled, crashing against the scattered rocky landing areas. The turbulent environment made a profound impression even on hard-bitten Roamers who thought they had seen it all.

Nikko landed the
Aquarius
near some big Roamer ships donated by Del Kellum and other skymining families from Golgen. Zhett Kellum flew one of the cargo haulers herself, insisting (repeatedly and loudly over the open comm channels) that she was as good a pilot as any other clan could dredge up. No one challenged her assertion, certainly not Nikko.

Fourteen water tankers from Plumas arrived, along with many smaller craft, so it was only a matter of loading the ships and telling them where to go with their holds full of wental water—and that was an administrative problem he did not relish. Nikko Chan Tylar had never been good at organizing even his own routes and schedules. Speaker Peroni was supposed to be here soon to help him.

Nikko’s fellow water bearers had spread the word of the impending assault across the Spiral Arm. They had called volunteers to the numerous ocean worlds where clan volunteers would fill their ships with the potent water before flying off to every known drogue-infested gas giant. So far, well over a hundred Roamer craft had been drawn into the overall operation. In small clusters, the ships could hit an overwhelming number of hydrogue worlds. Soon enough, the enemy would have no place to hide.

But it had to be a coordinated effort. Roamers were notoriously independent, and Nikko couldn’t let them fly off wherever they chose. Some key planets might be missed while others were hit twice. If the wental distribution took too long, the drogues might find some way to block it. Or they might escape in their warglobes.

Nikko had no idea how many hydrogue gas giants there were. Hundreds? Thousands? Thanks to the renewed skymining operations at Golgen, the Roamers at least had enough ekti to make all those runs . . . but unless it was organized, the whole plan would be one big mess!

He already had a headache.

He went outside to the barren, spray-swept black rocks where Roamers milled about next to their ships, impatient to get moving. Del Kellum and several other clan heads were good organizers, but he didn’t delegate the work to them, yet. (They probably wouldn’t have listened to him anyway.) He glanced up at the sky, hoping to see Speaker Peroni.

Finally, he decided to get started by having the ships load up. Nikko was sure he could handle that part, since the wentals knew what they were doing. When he directed the battered Plumas tankers to hover above the restless waves and open their cargo doors, Caleb Tamblyn transmitted skeptically, “I don’t know if our pumps can handle this. The tankers were designed to use hydrostatic pressure from beneath the ice caps.”

One of the Tamblyn twins—Nikko wasn’t sure whether it was Wynn or Torin—added on the same channel, “We might have to use buckets or barrels for the little ships. But we’ll fill up that way if we have to.”

Nikko didn’t have any doubts. “Just sit back and watch. Trust me, that water
wants
to get aboard.”

The ocean itself took care of the rest. Rising up, the living waves poured themselves into the voluminous holds. Amoebic streams of water, acting like pseudopods, lifted up in defiance of gravity. Wentals flooded into every storage hold of the volunteer ships.

While activity continued in a blur around him, Nikko stood on the rocks, smelling ozone-laden air. The cargo operations went on for hours, as ship after ship of every configuration came down, checked systems, jockeyed for position even though the ocean was huge, then took aboard the strange water. Similar scenes were doubtless happening on other wental distribution worlds as groups of Roamer ships filled up, preparing to deploy their secret weapon.

Upbeat, Nikko transmitted across the comm circuit, “Once you all deliver this water to your designated gas giants, the wentals will spread through the clouds like an unstoppable flood. The drogues won’t know what hit them.” He laughed. “Or maybe they will, but they’ll still lose.”

“The Eddies didn’t do much good when they knocked their thick heads against the drogues at Osquivel,” Zhett Kellum said sourly. “It’ll be a pleasure to show them how it’s done.”

“Sounds better than a Klikiss Torch, by damn,” said her father. “At least we’ll still have a planet left when we’re done!”

Near sunset, another small Roamer vessel arrived. As the straggler descended to the edge of the water, a thick arm of living ocean rose up to form a liquid landing platform, safely apart from the rocky archipelago where the other diverse craft had settled down. The ship rested calmly on the shimmering platform, buoyed up by the silvery-blue shelf. Even before she emerged, confident and alive with her power, Nikko guessed that it was Speaker Peroni. His shoulders sagged with relief.
She
could organize the whole operation!

The Roamer volunteers gathered around. Most were defiant and eager to launch a strike against the drogues. She swept her gaze across all the people, obviously pleased by the size of their ragtag force.

“Jess just sent me a message through the wentals. He is going to make an immediate assault on Qronha 3—but that will be only one of many simultaneous strikes. Hydrogue gas giants are located all across the Spiral Arm. The wentals have dispatched detailed navigational information to all the water bearers and their respective teams, sorting gas giants by distance from each distribution world. There will be no overlap in targets. Everyone will know exactly where to go.”

“We haven’t made any assignments here yet, Speaker Peroni,” Nikko said.

She looked around. “With all the ships here, I’m guessing we have at least fifteen separate distribution groups. I will provide updated charts and specific target worlds for each group. With us, and all the other squads from the various distribution worlds, we can take care of hundreds of drogue gas giants in a few days’ time.

“When they come under attack, the hydrogues will probably try to jump through their transgates to other gas giants. But if we hit everywhere at once, they’ll have no place to go, no way to escape. We can’t allow them to keep a single foothold. We must leave no safe worlds for them to run to.” The Roamers cheered, ready for the fight.

On their starcharts, Speaker Peroni outlined the upcoming offensive. Datapoints scattered across the Spiral Arm marked the extent of the hidden hydrogue empire. As the Roamer volunteers shared information and compared charts, a restless Nikko paced around his odd-looking ship. Everything was ready.

Before they all climbed aboard their separate ships, however, Cesca pointed out across the restless waves. Nikko felt his heart thrum, like the string of a plucked musical instrument.

The Charybdis sea stopped churning, and the waves flattened in an eerie calm. A cigar-shaped projectile shot upward like a missile fired from underwater. The spindle-shaped torpedo was made entirely of wental fluid formed into a new ship. Before the first wental torpedo had disappeared into a sky full of storm clouds, five more silvery ships rocketed out of the waves. Then another ten.

Nikko tried to follow the torpedoes with his eyes, but they flew too fast, vanishing into the sky. “If the wentals could do that all along, then why do they need us? And all our ships?”

Speaker Peroni smiled. “Those are intense kernels of wental energy, as different from the water in your tankers as diamond is from coal. The wentals can create only a few of them—but, ah, the blows they will strike!” She paused as if receiving a message. “We’d better get back to our ships and launch. Jess is about to reach Qronha 3.”

108

GENERAL KURT LANYAN

M
ore than a dozen EDF perimeter scouts sounded alarms at the same time. The unidentified armada diving into Earth’s solar system was so enormous that sensors went off like popcorn bursting in a superheated flame.

“Hundreds of targets, General! Looks like almost a thousand!”

Permanently stationed aboard the
Goliath,
Lanyan rallied his last-ditch defensive forces, pulling every remaining Manta, weapons platform, and gunship together to form what he hoped would be an impenetrable cordon for their final stand. “Everybody awake! Looks like this is it, here they come. If that’s the hydrogues, form a wall that they’re not going to get through!”

With a ricochet of communications bursts, the platcoms and Manta captains announced their readiness. Ships scrambled in from opposite sides of the system and high outer orbit. Lanyan ordered all weapons hot and ready to fire, jazer banks charged, projectile weapons loaded into railgun tubes. Like angry hornets, Remora squadrons flew out, ready for the most intense dogfight in history. Sensor hits from the unknown vessels filled the screens like a whiteout snowstorm. He actually uttered a prayer. A sincere one.

“Message coming in, General,” said the
Goliath
’s communications officer.

“The drogues want to talk? Put it on screen.”

“Not the hydrogues, sir.”

An image of the proud Ildiran Adar resolved in front of him. “By order of the Mage-Imperator, I am here to deliver two cohorts of Solar Navy warliners to assist in the defense of the Earth, each one fully armed and ready to fight.”

The sensor blips resolved into Ildiran vessels, each one adorned with streamers, antennae, and solar sails. Lanyan had never seen a prettier sight. “
Two
cohorts? That’s almost seven hundred battleships!”

“Six hundred eighty-six. Upon further consultation, the Mage-Imperator decided to double our commitment, due to the extreme importance of this upcoming battle. The hydrogues will strike at Earth very soon.”

Excited conversation buzzed around the
Goliath
’s bridge. Lanyan grinned. “You’re a very welcome sight, Adar. Allow me to escort you to Earth.”

The EDF ships formed a parade, while hundreds of Ildiran warliners followed like fish in a perfectly coordinated school. As the mixed fleet approached Earth, the Solar Navy vessels went into a well-practiced set of maneuvers, as if showing off for observers. Each warliner was nearly as large as a Juggernaut, but they pirouetted around each other with clockwork precision. Though the General had often made quiet and deprecating comments about the stagnant alien Empire, he was certainly impressed by the prowess and coordination of their pilots.

“I hope they can fight as well as they can dance,” Lanyan said.

Once the ships in the combined fleets were in place, General Lanyan requested to meet with Adar Zan’nh face-to-face aboard his flagship. “I’ve always wanted to see one of your warliners up close, Adar.”

The Ildiran commander was surprisingly evasive. “Perhaps later, General. For now we prefer our privacy.”

“Uh, sure.” As soon as he switched off the communication line, the General frowned. “Anybody else get the impression that was one of those invitations where ‘later’ actually means never?”

His new executive officer, Kosevic, nodded. Kosevic was a thin man with short bronze hair and eyes set just a little too wide. “Certainly sounded that way to me, General.”

For this all-important defense, the General had hoped to use his former adjutant, Patrick Fitzpatrick III. In spite of that distressing confrontation during the young man’s recent welcome-home party, Lanyan had requested his assignment to the
Goliath,
but Fitzpatrick was conveniently nowhere to be found. Lanyan suspected the kid’s grandmother had something to do with that. Maybe Fitzpatrick needed to have the silver spoon taken from his mouth and shoved somewhere else. . . .

For the moment, though, Lanyan kept puzzling over the Adar’s reply. “If the Ildirans would send seven hundred warships to help us against the drogues, why be paranoid about letting us go aboard? Is he hiding something?”

The exec was equally troubled. “And I’m wondering how in the world
Ildirans
know the schedule of a hydrogue assault fleet. What sort of intelligence and espionage techniques do they have?”

Lanyan heaved a long sigh. “We’ll leave it for now. The last thing in the world I want to do is stir up trouble with our new best friends.”

109

CHAIRMAN BASIL WENCESLAS

B
asil stood with his face close to the angled glass and looked out into the falling night. He stared at the firefly lights of small commercial transport vehicles racing across the dark skies. Seen from atop the Hansa HQ, the Palace District was a magnificent sight. Though the Ildiran Solar Navy had come through with their promises, Basil was too preoccupied to feel any great relief.

Peter tried to kill me!

Orange flames curled from the cupolas and towers of the Whisper Palace, each torch symbolizing a world that had once signed the Hansa charter. It was all a sham. After the withdrawal of EDF protection, how many of those planets still felt any loyalty to Earth? The hydrogues would no doubt come and extinguish the rest of the torches. Peter had caused this all to spin out of control.

The self-important bastard tried to kill me!

Reflected against the darkening window, Basil’s face looked gaunt and drawn. He had been endlessly weary and agitated, struggling with so many burdens, trying to solve each crisis faster than a new one could occur. He would have to order his medical specialists to give him better stimulants. Though he wasn’t yet scheduled for another rejuvenation treatment, he would feel more alert, refreshed, and competent if he underwent the procedure. He couldn’t recall the last time he had even allowed himself the release of sex with Sarein. Now he had assigned her a much more difficult task—dealing with her sister the Queen. . . .

They tried to poison me, and now Pellidor is dead!

Deputy Cain seemed anxious. “Nahton insists he has an important report for King Peter. He’s been trying to deliver an urgent message since yesterday. Maybe we should hear what he has to say.”

“He was already informed to give his message to me, or give it to no one. The green priest needs to be reminded who’s in charge.”

Cain looked deeply displeased. “That’s exactly it, sir. He’s decided to say nothing. We’re in the dark. I feel strongly that it’s a tactical error to cut ourselves off from vital intelligence. We should make an exception in this case.”

“That green priest can communicate everywhere, instantly, via telink. Should I give Peter a chance to secretly slip a message to the whole Spiral Arm? I don’t think so.” Basil fumed. “We cannot allow Nahton to keep his delusions that the King actually matters. Peter’s reign is finished. Permanently.” Basil turned from the window to stare at the pale deputy. “He tried to
assassinate me,
Mr. Cain. Prepare for an immediate transition of power.”

A servant compy delivered a fresh pot of cardamom coffee, but Basil ignored it. Not surprisingly, he had lost his taste for the beverage.

The deputy was being deliberately obtuse. “Do you have proof the King was behind this? I have seen no results of the investigation. Mr. Pellidor appeared to be the man responsible.”

Basil’s scowl turned into an outright sneer. “And we must continue to let media reports reflect that. Damn Peter!” Thanks to the way the King had worked his twisted plan, and Sarein’s misguided method of protecting Basil, the newsnet crews had all the proof they needed. Franz Pellidor had served him well for many years as a useful and committed expediter and a man who knew how to keep secrets. But even though he was obviously uninvolved with the poisoning attempt, Pellidor had already been convicted by the public.

Basil had to endorse that popular perception and tar the reputation of his friend and ally. He had no choice but to make Pellidor look like a corrupt, evil conspirator. He could never let the King, even a miserable disappointment like Peter, seem to be at fault. If word got out that the King had actually attempted to murder the Chairman, the scandal would rock the already terrified and confused populace.

But Peter and his pregnant Queen would pay the price. Oh, yes. Sarein had already been given her instructions. It was time for Basil to see who his allies were . . . if he had any left.

With a wave of intense weariness, he sat behind his cluttered deskscreen. “Raymond Aguerra looked like such an exceptional candidate, on paper. Our watchers, including Mr. Pellidor, observed him for more than a year. He had a terrible life, no future, very little potential. And we gave him everything. Why would he fight us?” He pounded a fist on his desktop, and the pot of coffee clinked against its tray. “I should have eliminated him at the first sign of trouble and started fresh, like we did with Prince Adam.”

“Adam? I am not aware of—”

“No one is. He was to have been Frederick’s successor, but we realized our mistake in time. The matter was resolved cleanly and quietly. But with Peter it’s too late. We’ll have to do a great deal of damage control.” Basil knotted his fingers together. “Of course, if the damned hydrogues come, there won’t be much of human history left to rewrite.”

He sighed. “Maybe we have a chance, thanks to the Ildiran warliners. At least
somebody
proved to be reliable and did what he promised to do. Once we get rid of the King and Queen, we can start over again with a clean slate.”

“Forgive me for speaking frankly, Mr. Chairman, but are you convinced Prince Daniel is truly our best alternative?”

“No, I am not. However, Daniel is all we have left.”

“Would you like me to talk to King Peter about his resignation? I can find an appropriate political excuse and send him and his Queen into quiet exile. At least Peter would still be available if Daniel turns out to be . . . even worse.”

“That is not an option! Peter has shown his true colors again and again.” Basil glared at his deputy. “Why are you getting squeamish, Cain?”

“I’m offering rational alternatives, Mr. Chairman. That is the job for which you appointed me.”

Even Cain sounded on the verge of insubordination! “There are no alternatives, rational or otherwise.” It was difficult to hide his disappointment in his chosen deputy. Basil rubbed his itchy eyes. He wanted to be alone. “You’re dismissed. You have your instructions. I’ll take care of the . . . messier details personally, if you are incapable of doing so.”
Damn, I could really use Pellidor now
.

Basil watched him go, considering.
Maybe it’s time for me to seek another heir apparent as well as a new King
.