David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Gallen debated in his mind whether to warn the Qualeewoohs that Felph wanted them dead. Judging from how they acted, the fool birds would probably demand to return to the palace for execution. So Gallen said, “You’ll find an oasis two hundred kilometers to the northeast, but you won’t be safe there. Men may hunt you. Continue on till you get to the great tangle.”

“Negative to the fourth degree,” Aaw said. “We owe blood debt. We must pay. The ancestors tell us so.”

“We can’t take your lives,” Gallen said. “Human law won’t allow it. You are forgiven the blood debt.” Gallen unsnapped the canteen from his belt and poured water into an indentation in the rock so the birds could drink. “Go in peace.”

Gallen turned and climbed down from the rock, heading for the ship, acutely aware that behind him, Zeus had not yet moved.

Zeus eyed Gallen’s back, tense, as if considering Gallen’s rationale. If Zeus did not attack now, if he did not slay the Qualeewoohs here, he’d lose the opportunity. Gallen used the sensors in his mantle to study the big man.

At last, Zeus followed, leaping down from rock to rock. “Stinking, ignorant savages,” he murmured.

The Qualeewoohs flapped their wings, glided downhill, then circled the ship, gawking, and flew off to the north.

Gallen stood watching them leave, when his mantle sent a warning that rang in his head. “Warning-imminent attack!

Gallen ducked and spun to block, imagining Zeus was attacking, but Zeus only startled backward in surprise. Gallen’s mantle continued. “Fifteen heavy battle cruisers have exited hyperspace at one hundred kilometers. Neutron mines have fired into orbit.”

From the Nightswift , Maggie shouted through the hatch.

“Gallen, get in here!” Apparently she was getting the same news.

“Neutron mines?” Gallen asked his mantle as he ran for the ship. The heavy mass of densely packed neutrons made it almost impossible to navigate a jump into hyperspace, the gravitational distortions caused by the mines could send a ship slamming into a star or crashing into a planet. If Gallen left Ruin now and hit a mine, his ship might even tear apart in the upper atmosphere. Yet there was a secondary danger: if the mines were set too close to Ruin’s gravity well, they’d get pulled in like meteors-meteors heavy enough to shoot through the planet’s crust like bullets, creating a global catastrophe. Enough neutron mines placed in low orbit could decimate a world.

Gallen reached the ship, jumped into the hold, ran to the bridge. Their little cruiser was fast, very fast for a civilian vessel, but it lacked weaponry and didn’t have enough armor for combat. Maggie stood at the console, looking about, obviously upset.

“Identify those ships!” Gallen ordered the ship’s AI, hoping against all odds that for some reason he couldn’t fathom, human boats would be in the sky.

The ship’s AI answered in its damned neutral voice, “Six dronon Golden-Class vessels, and nine dronon War Hives. Sensor jammers have just been initiated. All radio contact is now impossible. I cannot confirm new arrivals of ships, nor can I verify the locations of mines.”

Gallen looked at Maggie. “Six Golden-Class vessels!” she breathed.

“What does that mean?” Zeus asked.

“The dronon Lords of the Swarms are here-all of them,” Gallen said.

Maggie asked, “Ship, with the jammers on, can the dronon read our position?”

“So it’s true, what Arachne said?” Zeus asked Gallen. “You and Maggie really are the Lords of the Sixth Swarm?”

“Negative,” the ship answered Maggie. “The dronon cannot read our position unless they make visual contact.”

Maggie glanced back to Gallen. “We need to get under cover. The palace?”

Gallen shook his head, thinking furiously. “No, your scent is everywhere there.” The dronon would obviously send Seekers. And in his mind, he saw a vision of clouds, of the towering storms above Teeawah. Felph said they raged there almost constantly.

“Ship,” Gallen nearly shouted, “take us to Teeawah. Get us under the clouds, top speed.”

With a lurch, the ship hurtled forward. Gallen feared the moving ship would show easily on dronon scanners, but he only hoped that now, having just reached Ruin, the dronon wouldn’t have had time to begin extensive planetary surveillance. Besides, even if they had, he imagined, the tangle was huge. He could hide in that mess for weeks.

For twelve long minutes his ship hurtled through the sky at mach fifteen, fast enough so the heat shielding on the ship’s hull began to flame. Gallen’s heart raced; his breathing came uneasy.

Almost as soon as he saw thunderheads looming, lightning at their crowns, they slowed, bursting into their envelope. Under sullen skies, the tangle gleamed wet. Dark purple trees thrust up in exotic corkscrews or folded on themselves like nautilus shells; others towered like giant hairs.

As the ship maneuvered through this growth, the wind drove rain against the viewscreens in steady sheets.

The storm here had worsened over the past two days. Gallen had never seen a deluge like it, as if the heavens poured out all the waters in the world.

Gallen changed course, let the rains cool the burning hull. He imagined how the ship must look from outside this behemoth oozing steam. If the dronon used infrared sensors, even these clouds might not hide the ship. Gallen only hoped that the rain would cool the hull soon.

The ship soared over something huge and pale, slightly pink, like a blind snake void of pigment, worming its way through the trees. The creature must have been two hundred meters long. and eight meters in diameter.

Zeus studied the viewscreen. “Mistwife,” he said. “It must be hungry to hunt in daylight. It comes up from the ocean.”

“At the bottom of the tangle?” Gallen asked. “Yes,” Zeus said. “They live in deep water and hunt on nights when rain slicks the trees.”

Perhaps they are amphibious, Gallen decided, or perhaps like large worms. In any case, it sounded as if they needed moisture. As the ship soared past the creature, Gallen suddenly saw dozens of others like it, worming their way out of the tangle.

“It’s excited,” Zeus said. “It senses our movement.”

Then Gallen understood. There were not dozens of mistwives. This was a single organism. He suddenly envisioned it, like an enormous anemone, sending up tentacles to fetch food. Yet Gallen found that almost impossible to imagine. The ship was two thousand meters above sea level, yet this creature sent dozens of tentacles up through the tangle, questing, searching for food. How large was a mistwife? How powerful?

Gallen didn’t want to find out.

He soared under the storm, counting on the steady throb of lightning, the ionization of the atmosphere, to shield him from the dronon’s electronic detection. The ship began to pick up urgent broadcasts from Lord Felph.

That could only mean that the dronon had turned off their signal jammers, so that they could begin their hunt. Gallen dared not answer Felph’s calls.

And be dared not stay airborne. The dronon would search the planet via conventional radar and with imaging detectors. The constant lightning that speared through the clouds should make it difficult for the dronon to search with infrared, but Gallen couldn’t be certain. If the clouds thinned, if the lightning slowed even for a few moments, he might be found.

The wisest course would be to land immediately, but not near this mistwife. It might crush the ship. Gallen wondered if he could find a region that would be safer, more secure.

But it wasn’t a hiding place that he wanted. They could hide in the tangle, maybe for weeks, but they’d run out of food, if the dronon didn’t find them first.