Scattered Suns (47 page)

Chapter 98—JESS TAMBLYN

Hair damp and wavy, blue eyes bright, Jess stood outside on the surface of the ice moon. Even in the hard vacuum, an oily sheen of water covered his pearlescent garment; his skin tingled with ozone. Jess’s feet, hands, and face were bare, but the energy of his body kept his flesh warm and protected.

With senses enhanced by the water entities, he could see down through the thick sheet of ice as if it were no more than a distorted windowpane. He walked alone over the surface, past the cylindrical cermet wellheads, past the insulated outpost shacks and the lift shafts that led far beneath the ice sheet. He tried to remember. It had been so many years since his mother’s fatal accident...

Jess didn’t know how far she had gone, where the crack had swallowed her vehicle. He walked for more than a kilometer until he saw a wide silvery scar, a poorly healed gash through the frozen crust.

Long ago, Karla Tamblyn’s surface rover had fallen through ice and slush. She’d been unable to pry herself free, and once her vehicle began to sink, she was doomed. Slowed by the closing jaws of solidifying water, she had dropped deeper and deeper until the glacial ice enfolded her rover. She’d been able to transmit her goodbyes for almost two hours as her batteries gradually ran out and the cold closed in. When water cracked through the thick insulated windows, the submerged rover had flooded, and Karla had been overwhelmed, frozen solid—inaccessible for nineteen years. Locked away, imprisoned, with no Roamer funeral, no way for her family to see her one last time.

Now, though, her son had the ability to reach her.

Standing atop the refrozen crevasse, Jess clenched his hands and felt a ripple of wental energy course through him. He could do the impossible.

With his affinity for water itself, Jess shifted his thoughts and sank through the frozen lattice of ice. He had a target this time: the small wreck of a drowned surface rover. He descended as if through gelatin, seeing his way deeper and deeper. Even with the protective film around him, he felt the increasing cold.

Strangest of all, he actually sensed his mother down there, felt her existence. Determined to bring her back, if only to give her a proper Roamer farewell, Jess moved laterally. He parted the frozen water and let it fold behind him until he hovered like an insect in amber before the sunken rover. The vehicle had come to an equilibrium in the hardened slush. Its windows had been smashed open by the pressure, its interior filled with metal-hard ice.

But Jess plunged in as if the barrier was not there. Inside, he saw a solidified human form like a statue in the driver’s chair. Her arms were spread out, as if welcoming the embrace of death. For some reason, Karla had opened her helmet’s faceplate at the last moment. He had heard of people in the last stages of extreme hypothermia who experienced inexplicable physical reactions, hot flashes that made them attempt to tear off their clothes.

Karla’s face was frozen, her eyes open, her mouth set in a contented line, not quite a smile, but certainly not fear of impending death. She’d been at peace in the end. She’d had time to say her goodbyes, to accept her fate, knowing no one could ever come to rescue her. Jess remembered that day as one of the longest in his life, gathered with his father and Ross and Tasia in the communications shack. She hadn’t sounded surprised by anything they said, just happy to hear their voices as she slowly faded...

Now, with energized water flowing around him, Jess moved his hands, sketching out lines like a sculptor mapping a block of marble. With nothing more than a thought, he cut Karla Tamblyn free of her icy prison. Carrying her body, still surrounded by a shell of solid ice, he drifted backward until he emerged from the wrecked rover.

All around him, he melted and flowed a pathway through the ice, which immediately re-formed behind him. To him, water was an infinitely mutable environment. He surrounded them with a bubble that rose through the barrier.

Looking up through hundreds of meters of solid ice at the dim glow of daylight far above, he willed himself to rise with his mother in his arms. Never had he felt so grateful for the wental abilities; at last, he could make use of them in a way that would not hurt other human beings.

Reaching the surface, Jess kept his mother encased in the sheltering block of ice. After so much time, he did not want her fragile body damaged by exposure to hard vacuum. He made his way to the wellheads and the external markers of the Plumas water mines. Then, choosing his path carefully, he sank again, paralleling one of the lift shafts until he reemerged beneath the frozen crust.

Under the light of the artificial suns he rested Karla’s body on the icy shelf. As if shaping clay, he ran his bare palms over the outside of the block, letting just a spark of wental energy trickle out so he could smooth the sheath. He let a bit of the power fade its way inside, seeking the tiny spark that Jess saw within his mother’s frozen form. The water around her began to glisten with diamond droplets, brighter than ice.

His three uncles hurried out from their heated enclosures. “By the Guiding Star!” Wynn cried. “Is that Karla? Bram’s sweet wife Karla—”

“How did you ever find her, Jess?” Torin asked.

“The wentals helped me. I have let the water entities touch—”

Jess suddenly reeled as images, words, and thoughts sang through the wentals within him, a message picked up by the other dispersed water entities. One of his volunteers, a water bearer...Nikko Chan Tylar! He had found Cesca, and they were in great danger.

“I have to go,” Jess barked. “The base on Jonah 12 has been destroyed. Cesca’s in trouble.” He ran toward the lift shaft and the vertical passage that would take him out to his wental starship.

His uncles stared after him, then turned uneasily back to the frozen but slowly melting shape of Karla Tamblyn. “But...what do we do with
her,
Jess?”

Overwhelmed by the desperation in Nikko’s wental message, Jess turned. “She’ll be protected—she’s been like that for years already. Keep the ice cold.”

“That won’t be too difficult.” Wynn frowned at the ice pack around them.

“I’ll come back.” Jess raced for his water-and-pearl ship, consumed with worry for Cesca, hoping he would get to her in time.

Chapter 99—DOBRO DESIGNATE UDRU’H

The Dobro Designate and Adar Zan’nh disguised themselves roughly with components from the dead guards’ uniforms. They confiscated the weapons, though both men knew they could never survive if all the brainwashed crewmen stood against them. With only two people to take over an entire warliner, they had to be much more subtle, and there wasn’t much time. The battleship would reach Dobro soon—and Udru’h knew the trap that waited for them there.

“The Mage-Imperator was forewarned about the threat to Dobro. He will destroy this ship rather than allow it to take over another Ildiran colony. We need to break Rusa’h’s hold on this crew before we arrive.”

The Adar appeared haggard and lost, as if the burden upon him had been doubled. “But how are—” Udru’h waited, letting him think through the possibilities. Then it dawned on Zan’nh. “Ah! The cargo hold is full of shiing!”

The Designate nodded. “The rebels intended to use it to subsume Dobro’s populace, but that can work both ways. Shiing will temporarily break this crew’s connection to any
thism
network, whether it belongs to Rusa’h or to the Mage-Imperator.”

Zan’nh’s brow furrowed. “They’ll be disoriented, detached from any guidance at all. They won’t know what to do.”

“Are you not the Adar? Then
command
them. Are you a good enough leader to reassert order and reason upon your own crew?”

A faint smile curled Zan’nh’s lips, and he showed his teeth, glad to be something other than a pawn. “Yes, I am. That’s how Adar Kori’nh achieved his greatest triumph when the old Mage-Imperator died.”

Udru’h looked down his nose. “Yes, but he ended up destroying himself and all his warliners. I would prefer a different outcome.”

Zan’nh’s eyes sparkled, and his mind seemed to grow stronger with each passing minute. “If we succeed in this, it will be a story worthy of Adar Kori’nh.”

“No, it will be a story worthy of the
Saga of Seven Suns.
”

Taking their weapons, the two made their way down back passageways and service shafts, creeping from deck to deck. Even when they were inevitably seen from a distance, they maintained their composure. Because Rusa’h’s rebels were blind to any
thism
but theirs, they did not challenge Udru’h or Zan’nh.

While the warliner flew toward Dobro, Prime Designate Thor’h and the rest of the maniple would be attacking another splinter world, spreading shiing and trapping new followers in mad Rusa’h’s web. It had to stop.

Udru’h and Zan’nh would begin to turn the tide by recapturing this warliner, and by saving Dobro and its people, both human and Ildiran.

In the cargo levels, they found thousands of cylinders full of shiing gas, lined up, row upon row, ready to be unleashed upon the population of Dobro. The nialia production fields on Hyrillka had been working at extraordinary levels to create enough of the drug to meet the needs of the spreading insurrection.

Zan’nh hauled out canisters and brought them to the warliner’s ventilation systems. None of the Solar Navy crewmen ventured into the isolated storage chambers; until the warliner arrived at Dobro itself, they had no need for the compressed shiing.

As Zan’nh connected the canisters to the ventilation system, Designate Udru’h went to an emergency station at the cargo bay’s hatch and found two breathing films to be used in the event of a disaster. He handed one of the soft, pliable membranes to the Adar. “Rusa’h insists that we must come over to his network willingly, that we can’t be forced, but so much shiing would still distort our thoughts. I don’t want to take that chance—do you?”

The younger man shook his head. “I intend to keep my thoughts clear and my determination firm.” They applied the breathing films to their faces. Fortunately, shiing gas would not penetrate the skin.

Udru’h double-checked the preparations with the tanks. “Since we’ve got to succeed the very first time, I propose we unleash a massive dose to rip this crew free from the Hyrillka Designate’s control.”

The Adar still frowned. “If we detach all of these rebels from Rusa’h’s corrupted
thism
web, won’t he sense them slipping away? He will feel a hole in his network and know that it is unraveling.”

“And what can he do about it?” Udru’h raised his eyebrows. “He will be as powerless to stop it as Jora’h has been.”

“But even when we soften Rusa’h’s hold, how do we reconnect them with the Mage-Imperator? I cannot force them back into the legitimate network of
thism
. I’m not strong enough.”

“Neither am I.” Udru’h’s eyes burned brightly above the gelatinous breathing film. “But at least they will be free of Rusa’h’s corruption.”

The two men opened the canister valves and began dumping shiing gas into the warliner’s ventilation system. The stimulant hissed out in a long sigh. It would spread like venom in a body’s bloodstream, sweeping through the battleship’s ducts and chambers, finally reaching the command nucleus.

Udru’h nodded. “Good. Now let us hope it works before your father’s ships destroy us. He is on his way.”

Chapter 100—TASIA TAMBLYN

Sure that the Hansa skymine was already destroyed, Tasia found the flight to Qronha 3 to be maddeningly long. En route, the Soldier compies performed their tasks exactly as she instructed, but they were damned poor company.

Instead, EA was Tasia’s only friend—even if she was drastically changed. As a Listener model, she was programmed to be a companion, a sounding board, and over the years she had developed a genuine rapport with first Ross, then Jess, then Tasia. As Tasia talked with her, uploaded more of her carefully edited memories, even scanned some of the embarrassing old files from the Governess compy UR, she saw EA developing a personality again. It was somewhat different from her old friend, but at least the Listener compy was another step closer to her old self...

Finally, the sixty rammers roared into the Qronha system. Tasia watched the Ildiran gas giant grow brighter and larger on the ship’s viewing screens. Making contact with her fellow dunsels, she laid out detailed plans for their assault against the drogues. “Check your forward sensors. See if you can find any survivors from the cloud-harvesting facility.”

As the Soldier compies began a scanning sweep, Sabine Odenwald transmitted from her rammer, “This isn’t a rescue mission, Commander. The EDF already wrote off that skymine.”

“Besides, we don’t have the facilities to take aboard refugees,” Hector O’Barr added from his own ship.

Tasia could only think of Ross dying as his Blue Sky Mine was destroyed. If there were any survivors here, she would have to find a way to help them. After checking the quick recon results, however, she knew it was a moot point. “Nothing left anyway but a smear of smoke and a few pieces of debris that haven’t figured out how to fall yet.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and got back to business. “We’ll insert into high orbit and look for drogues down there. We already know they’re spoiling for a fight.”

“Let’s give ’em one!” Darby Vinh let out a foolish giggle.

“You’ve done plenty of drills,” Tasia said. “Be prepared to jump into your evacuation pods. Once we see warglobes, there’s no more practice.”

From high orbit, the sixty rammers scanned the clouds with their sensors. When they spotted the wreckage of a floating facility much larger than the skymine, Tasia’s Roamer experience helped her to identify the materials and old-fashioned configuration of a majestic Ildiran cloud-harvesting city. Apparently, the drogues had destroyed human and Ildiran facilities indiscriminately.

As the rammer fleet cruised around the planet, suddenly the Soldier compies chittered to each other. With machine efficiency, they activated alarms and announced a full battlestation alert even before Tasia saw what they had detected. Part of her was impressed at the speed with which the military robots responded. Even so, wasn’t
she
supposed to be in command?

“Hey, could I have a heads-up, please?”

Then she saw. The six Ildiran warliners were a spectacular but unexpected sight. The colorful alien ships hovered above the clouds, their feathery solar sails extended in all directions. “Why are they here?”

“Unknown,” one of the Soldier compies answered. “They have no weapons powered up.” Nearby, EA offered no comment, but she seemed to be observing with keen interest.

“Should we take preemptive action, Commander?” Erin Eld called over the communication link. “Fire a few rounds before they—”

“They’re probably trying to find survivors from their own cloud-harvesting complex.” She turned to the nearest Soldier compy. “Open a channel on a standard Solar Navy frequency. I want to talk to their septar.”

When the compy had done so, Tasia put on a welcoming smile. “This is Commander Tamblyn of the Earth Defense Forces, responding to an emergency signal from our skymine. We’ve come to get even with the hydrogues. You’re welcome to join in the brawl with us, if you like.”

The Ildiran response was a long time in coming, as if they were debating the matter. The Solar Navy septar answered only briefly: “Not at this time.” Then, without further explanation, the gaudy battleships lifted away from Qronha 3, retreated from orbit, and left the system.

“What was that all about?” Tasia asked.

“Some allies,” Odenwald said.

“Doesn’t matter. We didn’t expect their help anyway. Let’s get closer to those clouds and start hunting.” Tasia decided it was time to roll up her sleeves and get to work. “Smoke them out.”

The six commanders transmitted taunting demands and rude ultimatums into the clouds. Since the hydrogues wouldn’t understand the nuances of human language, she let the other five have free rein with their curses and insults, calling the deep-core aliens by the foulest names. If their mere presence and their verbal goads didn’t work, the rammers carried several high-yield atomic warheads to help flush out the drogues, like teasing a vicious guard dog.

Everything was ready. The rammer ships’ hot engines were dancing on the edges of the red lines; overloads would come easily after a short sprint of acceleration. None of the Soldier compies seemed bothered by their impending fate. Neither was EA, though Tasia was determined to take the Listener compy with her in the evacuation pod.

Far more quickly than they had dared to hope, the provocation worked. Numerous spiked spheres climbed out of the cloudy depths, as if they had lain in ambush all along. When she saw the speed of the coordinated response, a strange thought crossed Tasia’s mind.
It’s as if they knew we were coming. What if the drogues attacked the Hansa skymine just to lure us here?

One after another, like bubbles in a pot coming to a boil, the hydrogue spheres kept appearing. The sheer number of them made her dizzy. “Count ’em! Let me know how many there are.”

“Seventy-eight hydrogue warglobes detected so far,” announced one of the Soldier compies.

“By the Guiding Star, we don’t have enough—” Then she stopped. “We’ll do what we can. Make ’em hurt.”

From the bridge of his rammer, Tom Christensen shouted out, brash and foolish, “Pick on this, bastards!”

The Soldier compies remained diligent at their stations. EA stared fixedly ahead. Tasia guessed it would take about ten seconds to get inside the evac pod and launch herself away from the free-for-all.

The Ildiran Solar Navy’s commander had perished along with forty-nine warliners in a similar attack that had deeply wounded the hydrogues. Now that the deep-core aliens had come back to Qronha 3, Tasia’s rammer fleet would deal another serious blow to the enemy.

At least she hoped so.

Warglobes continued to rise around them, an overwhelming number. Tasia cast one final glance at EA, then set her jaw.

“It’s not everybody who gets a chance to have their names misspelled in the history books,” she said. “Prime the engines and prepare for ramming speed!”