Kevin Anderson - The Ashes of Worlds

The desperate warliner tried to dodge through an obstacle course of girders and half-built ship frameworks. Flying magnificently, the Solar Navy pilot dove beneath a tethered stockpile of armored plating. As they streaked past, the weapons officer fired an energy blast that severed the clamps holding the plates in place. Vibrating from the impact, the metal sheets spread apart, twirling like an artificial storm of flat meteors.

The faeros careened into the plates, flashing into blinding brightness as they vaporized the metal, leaving only a shower of molten globules in their wake. The fireballs barely slowed.

After a brief attempt to hide, the warliner accelerated away from the abandoned shipyards at maximum thrust, trying to get far enough away for the pilot to engage his Ildiran stardrive. Three comets of fire clipped the rear engines, melting them. The warliner spun out of control, its solar sails flapping outward like loose and tattered garments. In a final gesture of defiance, the warliner’s captain fired all of his weapons at the oncoming faeros ellipsoids.

Flames surrounded the Solar Navy ship, ate through its outer hull, and incinerated the vessel. Ten thousand Ildiran refugees and many more Solar Navy crewmen flashed into a bright blaze. Every soulfire aboard was absorbed.

And the faeros grew brighter.

In the Prism Palace, Rusa’h sighed. He hoped that would keep them satisfied. for now.

12

Beneto

His body was more than human, an extended tree whose branches spread into space, whose trailing tendrils and mental roots connected with the overall worldforest mind. And now his body was on fire.

Beneto and his fellow verdani battleships had been orbiting Theroc as guardians, but the faeros had found a secret vulnerability in him, jumping through telink, seizing onto the union of wental and verdani that created his treeship body. Now, high above the continents, he felt the flames from below surge through his heartwood. He could hear the other treeships screaming.

He shouted his thoughts out to all green priests, thinking of the worldforest rather than himself.Give the trees your strength. Do not despair. Celli was right to remind him, and he tried to help her by concentrating on the efficacy of hope, the foolish but brave human drive to fight even when a battle seemed lost.

By treedancing, his little sister and Solimar had once reawakened the seeds of life in the worldforest. The verdani and their wental counterparts simply did not have the dogged, foolish determination to wring a victory from almost certain defeat — but humans did. Now, even as the elemental fires caught on his gigantic body and fought their way deeper into him, Beneto called to the remnants of green priests inside the other verdani battleships, insisting that they not give up.

Beneto made a defiant stand against the newborn faeros even as flames flickered at the thorny ends of his outermost branches. A chain of sparks ricocheted up and down the bark plates of his wide trunk, but he quenched the first waves of fire. There was hope!

Around him, the verdani battleships smoldered, on the verge of crossing the flashpoint and bursting into living bonfires. Far below, Beneto could feel the main worldforest struggling as young faeros flashed from tree to tree. The fiery elementals waged a fierce battle for each victory among the towering groves, but the trees could fend them off. It could be done! He had demonstrated that himself, and he wasn’t alone in his fight.

The other verdani battleships, along with green priests on the ground, were joining together. His sister Celli was one of the strongest fighters. She and Solimar used every mental skill they had to defend the forest.

Beneto’s thoughts thundered through telink.We can snuff out the faeros before their fire overwhelms us.

The verdani battleships shuddered as they pulled strength from the worldforest mind, wrung it from their own heartwood, forcing themselves to endure the pain.

The flames grew hotter and more insistent in Beneto’s body, and he could not entirely push them away. He struggled so hard that a long crack split along his thickest bough, and the glowing golden blood of his sap spilled out into space. The flames bit deeper, jumping into the point of weakness.

Nearby in space, two more verdani treeships lost their battle to possession by the elemental fires. They weakened, faltered, and then each spiny battleship became a corona of gleeful flames.

Even so, the infested treeships refused to let the faeros possess them. Rather than becoming full-fledged torch trees, the two lost verdani battleships intentionally allowed themselves to crumble into ash. Fragments of embers sparkled and drifted apart in space.

Although Beneto kept fighting, the flames ate at him, pushing deeper into his core, and he could not stop the burning.

13

Admiral Sheila Willis

With hundreds of small EDF craft in her battle group — Remoras, fuel tankers, cargo carriers, troop transports, and survey flyers — Willis was able to mount one hell of a bucket brigade. This wasn’t exactly something she had covered in basic training, but her people called up all their available databases on wildfire-fighting techniques. They would figure it out as they went along.

Using her own landed shuttle in the middle of a clearing as a field command post, she watched her display screens, frowning or cursing as images rolled in from recon flyovers. The Admiral activated the comm system and shouted, “I’d better see water dumping on these trees within the next five minutes, or you’re going to think serving under General Lanyan was a Sunday picnic.”

“On our way, Admiral,” came a crackling voice. “First squadron ETA in four and a half minutes, just under the wire.”

The first Remoras and fuel tankers swooped low, then opened their cargo bays to dump water onto the blazing worldtrees. Smaller ships emptied their reservoirs, releasing water they had scooped from Theroc’s lakes. Steam gushed into the air, rising through the dense forest canopy.

The faeros blazed paradoxically brighter as they drew energy from the worldtrees to fight off the quenching water.

Willis heard a groan, saw Celli and Solimar hunched over their treelings inside the command shuttle, both of them connected through telink. The green priests had come aboard her shuttle to act as intermediaries. Their eyes were squeezed shut, faces drawn in identical grimaces as they fought with all their hearts and minds. Celli hissed in pain and gripped her treeling. She blinked, but didn’t focus on anything around her. Her words sounded hollow. “That hurt them, but not enough. The faeros are ravenous.”

The small ships, now empty, circled back toward the nearest sources of open water. “Second squadron inbound, Admiral.”

“The drenching will be continuous now,” Willis said. “I don’t care how tough these fires are. We’ll stomp them again and again until there’s nothing left but a puff of smoke.”

A second barrage of water hindered the further spread of the fire. The torch trees shuddered and thrashed as if undergoing some kind of internal conflict, an elemental battle that Willis couldn’t understand.

“Four more green priests have died,” Solimar announced. “They were unable to wall themselves off from the trees they were helping through telink.”

“Green priests have spread the alarm across other planets,” Celli said.

“For whatever good that’ll do us now,” Willis said.

“The wentals are also aware,” Celli said. “Jess Tamblyn and Cesca Peroni have arrived at Osquivel. Liona has told them what’s happening here.”

“And what can they do?”

“They can bring the wentals.”

As the third group of EDF water tankers cruised in, the flaming trees tensed, and the fires intensified at the crowns. Celli suddenly screamed, and Solimar reeled backward. The torch trees shot out tendrils of fire that curled upward like solar flares and incinerated two of Willis’s ships before they could dump their loads of water. Another blast of targeted fire raged from the clustered burning trees, vaporizing a large tanker.