Of Fire and Night (52 page)

133

SIRIX

A
board his stolen EDF Juggernaut, the Klikiss robot assessed what remained of his military force. Actual events were greatly at variance with what he had anticipated.

Knowing the hydrogue scheme, Sirix and his fellow robots had made a perfect plan to participate in the annihilation of the human homeworld. Flown by reprogrammed Soldier compies and independent Klikiss robots, these military ships should have been unstoppable against the disorganized remnants of the Earth Defense Forces.

He had committed serious errors. Sirix had never anticipated that enormous treeships would join the conflict. He had never believed
humans
could mount an effective defense against such overwhelming numbers. He had not expected Roamers to arrive with an unprecedentedly effective weapon against the warglobes.

In all of his calculations, Sirix had also dismissed the Ildirans as a threat. Ages ago, as part of his bargain with the Klikiss robots, the Mage-Imperator had vowed never to create sentient machines. After the robots discarded the agreement, Sirix had never counted on a half-breed girl with unexpected telepathic powers to help the Ildirans negotiate with the hydrogues. He had also not expected the Solar Navy to turn against the far superior warglobes. Mage-Imperator Jora’h had cast aside the alliance like so much worthless debris, even though he knew the hydrogues would retaliate. It defied reason.

Now it was no longer possible for Sirix to complete the original objectives. It annoyed him.

The robot-hijacked battleships were identical to those commanded by General Lanyan. The stolen Mantas and Thunderheads outnumbered real EDF ships, and this time they had preemptively disabled all of the guillotine protocols. General Lanyan could not use that insidious trick again.

By displaying stock images of now-dead grid admirals, Sirix had expected to slip cleanly among the EDF vessels and open fire. But humans had a surprising ability to distinguish the subtlest details in each other’s features and behavior. The deceptive images of human commanders had been taken directly from EDF records, but the surviving soldiers somehow detected the ruse.

Suspicious human captains challenged the holographic simulacra with ridiculous trivia that could not be found in EDF databases. They asked opinions about sports teams or gossip about celebrities and medialoop stars. Neither the Klikiss robots nor the Soldier compy poseurs could answer swiftly or correctly. Real EDF ships easily identified the infiltrators.

Sirix had underestimated these vermin. Simulations and analyses did not allow adequate understanding of chaotic biological intelligences.

Now, from his damaged Juggernaut, General Lanyan distributed target lists of robot-controlled ships. A third cohort of Ildiran warliners added their weapons to the remnants of the EDF. Verdani treeships continued to attack the few hydrogues that had managed to elude the Roamer doorbells.

What should have been a simple victory was turning into a rout.

Sirix had already lost a third of his stolen ships—and he required those vessels for cleansing human inhabitants from other planets. Unless he retreated with his remaining vessels now, he would not be able to recapture the former Klikiss colony worlds. That was his priority.

Faced with defeat, Sirix decided to save the rest of his ships. Otherwise, the overall mission—not just this single battle—would fail.

Watching the last hydrogues being wiped out, he reached the only logical decision. In a burst of machine language, his instructions rattled across all functional robot-controlled battleships. “Retreat. Salvage our military craft. Withdraw from the fight.”

He repeated his transmission to make certain all of his counterparts understood. With extrapolative programming, they should have already reached the same conclusions on their own. “Disengage from the conflict.”

In unison, with precision that would have made even the Adar of the Solar Navy proud, the robot-controlled vessels spun about. The stolen EDF battleships fired up their engines and fled swiftly into space.

134

JESS TAMBLYN

T
he alien citysphere shrank into the misty distance as Jess guided his wental bubble out of Qronha 3. Hydrogue domes, chambers, and pyramids were still visible through the colored fog, though a living mist continued to thicken around the bizarre metropolis. Wentals had penetrated to the core layers, approaching the citysphere itself. Diamond warglobes hurtled past, battling their intangible enemies with icewaves and deadly blue lightning, which had little effect.

“I didn’t think we’d escape this easily,” Tasia said.

Robb Brindle made a strangled sound. “You call this
easy,
Tamblyn? Maybe you hit your head on something—”

“There’s more to come,” Jess warned. “Count on it.”

With hydrogues and wentals colliding all around them, no one expected the immediate threat to come at them from below. On her knees, peering through the soap-bubble hull, Tasia cried out, “Shizz, Jess—Klikiss robots after us! Lots of them.”

From the alien metropolis, a swarm of black machines cracked open their armored carapaces, spread their wings, and activated propulsion systems. They flew after the escaping ship like a swarm of metal locusts.

Smith Keffa’s face contracted with fear as the Klikiss robots closed the distance, their multiple articulated limbs extended. “They’re coming to kill us. Damn machines! Leave us alone.”

The first black robot slashed past, and skittering mechanical claws ripped the wet membrane. Jess used his fluid control to instantly seal the breach and re-form the protective film as fast as the robot swept by, but dozens more attackers buzzed closer. The ship was already flying upward at the greatest speed Jess could attain. There were so many of them. So many.

Jess shouted to the elemental voices in his head, demanding help, but the wentals sang back,
We are unable to assist. The battle is joined, and the hydrogues are fierce
.

Another Klikiss robot slammed into the bubble and somehow held on with its burring, slicing claws. The healing membrane immediately closed against the deadly atmosphere, but the robot worked its bulk through the bubble wall, like a bizarre and horrific baby being born.

Belinda screamed. With a wild cry, Keffa pushed off the bubble wall and flailed forward to tackle the heavy robot. The force of his leap drove both him and the robot out through the membrane with a hollow
pop
. As soon as they passed into the superdense atmosphere, the man was crushed to a splatter-smear of flesh and blood. The robot spun away, falling as it tried to reorient itself.

Now only six captives remained, and more Klikiss robots surrounded Jess’s ship. The escape bubble rose toward the upper atmospheric layers, but not nearly fast enough. The black robots swarmed higher, their beetle wings flapping, their propulsion systems driving at high speed.

Unable to do anything more himself, Jess again pleaded with the wentals. In his head, the elemental voices answered,
The robots are not our primary enemies
.

“They’re
my
primary enemies right now! If you don’t do something, we’re going to die.” After an interminable pause, the wentals grudgingly agreed.

Diamondlike water vapor condensed out of the moisture-laden slipstreams. Living wet fog folded around the flying robots, individual packets of mist that began as gauzy cocoons, then condensed into bubbles of water. Within moments, the pursuing robots were encased in what looked like giant raindrops. The black machines struggled inside the blobs of liquid, and then, in a snapping instant, the water cocoons froze solid, encapsulating the robots. The nodules of ice dropped away like hailstones.

Tasia and Robb hurled smug insults at the robots. The other captives sat in shock. Belinda huddled with her eyes closed, as if counting the seconds until they could be far from there.

Jess shot their ship through the highest layers of the atmospheric battlefield, and the gaseous air grew thinner. “We’re almost to the edge of space.”

Before the wental ship could escape into orbit, a group of six already corroded warglobes gave chase. “Shizz, don’t the drogues have bigger problems right now?” Tasia said.

Jess answered, “In us, they see an enemy they believe they can destroy. Hold on!” He sent the bubble into a wild pinball spin.

“Still think this is easy, Tamblyn?” Robb held his stomach as if he were about to vomit.

The half dozen warglobes followed the escaping bubble, lumbering closer as if to roll over the ship with brute force. No matter how much speed he urged from the wental vessel, Jess lost ground. He could not avoid all six hydrogue spheres. They would be on him in moments.

“We came so close,” Tasia groaned. “Dammit, we came so close!”

Finally the ship tore free of Qronha 3’s atmosphere and shot out into clear, empty space. Behind them, the last veils of indistinct mist faded as the churning clouds continued their elemental battles.

Space beyond the planet was crisp and black, unhindered by obstacles, but Jess found no sanctuary there. The warglobes hounded them like howling wolves, their hulls scarred and close to cracking. He dodged a lance of blue lightning, but couldn’t go any faster.

With no place to hide, he swept downward again, grazing the edge of the atmosphere. The gigantic world rolled past below, and dark battle stains spread through the clouds.

And a miracle rose over the bright edge of the gas giant, backlit by the distant sun: a tangle of branches and thorns, huge limbs extending from an armored core trunk. Seven of the new verdani battleships Jess had helped create, ready to intercept any fleeing warglobes.

Jess drove his small protective sphere straight toward the treeships.

Tasia cried, “Jess, what are you doing? Look at those things!”

“Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Closing in, the pursuing warglobes tumbled after Jess’s tiny bubble. They didn’t seem to understand the threat of the treeships until it was too late.

Extending huge, thorny branches, the flying trees seized the already damaged alien globes. Blue lightning bolts sizzled out, along with icewave spurts, but the spiny treeships ignored the searing energy. They embraced the warglobes with their thick limbs and
squeezed
. With silent explosions in empty space, the warglobes crumbled. Jagged shards tumbled slowly back into Qronha 3’s deep atmosphere like so many smashed components of a Roamer skymine. Leaving the wreckage of hydrogues behind, the verdani treeships climbed away from the gas giant and soared off in search of other targets.

Carrying his frightened passengers far from their hellish hydrogue prison, Jess flew off to safety and freedom. They were cramped in the water-bubble ship, but Tasia and her companions would have endured anything to get away from their captors.

Jess groaned when an EDF ship appeared over the planet. It was a large scout, a troop transport rather than a battleship. After a tense moment, Jess recognized the vessel and its pilot. “Conrad Brindle, I told you to go back to Earth.”

“I came to help,” the pilot transmitted.

Suddenly excited, Robb grabbed at Tasia’s arms. “Is that my father? What’s he doing here?”

“If he’s offering a real toilet and a bunk to sleep on, I’m there,” Tasia said. “Shizz, right now even spampax sounds delicious.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Jess said. The EDF scout vessel approached, drawing closer to the wental bubble. Jess sent out the message “I’ve got a few people who would like to come aboard, Commander Brindle. They belong with you more than with me.”

“Nobody knows where we belong anymore,” Tasia said.

Robb answered, “We sure as hell belong away from that nightmare.”

“No argument from me there, Brindle.”

“I have seats for them all,” the man answered. “I can take them back to Earth . . . or wherever they want to go.”

135

FORMER PRINCE DANIEL

A
s the effects of the twitcher wore off, Daniel struggled to regain control of his unreliable body. He had never experienced a sensation like that, falling through the transportal. It felt as if his body had been folded, turned inside out, flown forever in an instant—then dropped intact somewhere far, far away.

It had been nighttime in the Palace District when Peter and Estarra threw him through the dimensional doorway, and the sudden sunlight was so bright that his eyes hurt. He couldn’t wait to get back at them. Even if they were the King and Queen, they had no right to do this to him—
him
! Those two would soon be ousted, and
he
would be the new King. Nobody could treat a King this way.

Daniel rolled to one side on the uneven ground, flapped his numb hands, and tried to find his footing. The sky was dusty brown, and the air smelled awful, like dirt, wet weeds, slimy mud . . . even poop. What was this place?

Though his muscles continued to misfire, Daniel lurched to his hands and knees, caught his breath, then squatted on his heels. When he looked around, the distances seemed huge. He was up on a slope, and the horizon was very far away. He saw tall grasses, square patches of crops, and small human figures moving in a wide fertile valley. Colorful prefab houses were aligned in a tiny town that might have looked quaint if he’d seen it in a nostalgic videoloop.

Weatherworn Klikiss towers poked up from the plain, but they had crumbled to little more than nubs, like rotted teeth. He couldn’t identify this particular planet, but all pictures he had seen of Klikiss colony worlds looked the same to him anyway. He’d never had any intention of visiting one.

Behind him, the transportal wall was the only nearby structure. He used it to support himself as he got to his feet and brushed off his clothes—pajamas and a robe, certainly not the finery in which he wanted to be seen. Worse, he had pissed himself. It was so unseemly for a King, or even a Prince.

Indignant, Daniel raised his voice and started yelling for guards, for the Chairman. Someone was bound to hear him. He rubbed his muscles, gradually getting back full control of his body.

“Hello?” he shouted again. “Why doesn’t somebody answer?”

He waved his arms, drawing the attention of the dark-clad workers tilling the crop patches. The distant group began to come toward him, but they didn’t seem to be in a hurry. With a heavy sigh, Daniel trudged to meet them halfway.

The ground was muddy with irrigation and—yes, indeed—he distinctly smelled poop. He couldn’t wait to tell Chairman Wenceslas what Peter and Estarra had done to him. They were going to be in so much trouble!

As he approached the group of men, he saw that they all carried dirty farm tools—rakes, hoes, shovels. One even led a plow horse! They looked hot and sweaty in their rough clothes. Every man sported a wide-brimmed hat, and most had facial hair that was untrimmed and unstyled. Perhaps they hadn’t been able to find a barber to join them on their colonization initiative.

When the men came closer, Daniel almost gagged. He’d never smelled so much body odor before. The farmers didn’t even seem to notice. At least they appeared peaceful and friendly, smiling beneath the shadowed brims of the hats.

“Welcome to Happiness,” said the first man to arrive. “We weren’t expecting visitors, but we’re pleased to have you join us.”

“I don’t intend to join you. I’m the victim of a heinous crime, and I demand your assistance. I am Prince Daniel, soon to be King of the Terran Hanseatic League. You all owe me your allegiance.” He expected gasps of awe or bows of deference; instead, the bearded men looked at him curiously. They introduced themselves faster than he could remember any names.

“We are just neo-Amish farmers,” said the leader, who called himself Jeremiah Huystra. “We established this bucolic settlement here as a bastion of the old ways, one step closer to Eden.”

Daniel spluttered, wondering how anyone could call this dirty, primitive place an Eden. “I insist upon priority treatment. I’m your Prince.” He gestured toward the Klikiss transportal wall behind him. “Send me back to the Whisper Palace, where I belong.”

Jeremiah and the other neo-Amish farmers shrugged. “Oh, we don’t use that thing anymore. None of us knows how, and we don’t wish to. We stopped receiving shipments from the Hansa a while back, and I doubt we’ll get any more. But that is a blessing, since we came here to be left in peace.”

The enormity sank in. Daniel blinked his blue eyes several times, looking around this primitive planet that someone had had the nerve to name
Happiness
. Peter and Estarra had planned this! They knew he would be stranded here without any hope of getting back.

As if he’d been hit with a twitcher again, the Prince dropped to the ground and began to sob. His hands made fists and pounded the unyielding dirt.

Jeremiah Huystra put a strong hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Do not despair. You have nothing to fear.” Huystra handed him a crude homemade hoe. “You are welcome to join us. We can always use another worker.”