Kevin Anderson - The Ashes of Worlds

His weapons officers fired at the evacuating cargo escorts, aiming carefully and missing intentionally. The barrage, however, was merely a diversion so that tiny pingers could attach to the hulls without the Roamer pilots noticing. The locator beacons would activate later so that Lanyan could track the cargo escorts to other fuel-distribution depots. If the EDF made a diligent effort, they could unravel the whole Roamer network and find all of their hidden facilities.

As the raid commenced, Lanyan ignored the outraged cries and threatening comm messages from the skymine managers. “Prepare to be boarded,” he transmitted to the largest facility. “With your unconditional surrender, we can eliminate — or at least minimize — casualties.”

A gruff voice yelled back at him, “This is Del Kellum, and I’m in charge of this skymine. I do not — repeat,do not — grant you permission to land.”

Lanyan chuckled. “Exactly how are you going to stop me? With harsh language and a disapproving look?” He switched off the transmission, stood up, and stretched.

An hour later, from a troop transport filled with heavily armed EDF soldiers, Lanyan looked out at the enormous floating city with its many decks and docks, its antennae, sensor probes, and observation balconies. TheGoliath hung nearby, huge and ominous in the sky. Admiral Brindle had already reported a swift victory at his assigned skymine, as had the other EDF Mantas. Chairman Wenceslas was going to be pleased when he heard how much stardrive fuel this operation would yield.

Before disembarking, the General checked his uniform, quickly combed his dark hair, and surveyed the guards ready to exit the transport with him. Lanyan thought of the successful commanders he had learned about in military school, their proud victory speeches on conquered ground. He wanted to make a memorable impression here when he set foot on the beaten skymine and showed everyone that he was not to be trifled with.

The hatch opened, and he stepped proudly down the ramp. “I hereby take control of this new facility in the name of the Hansa.”

A group of agitated Roamers waited for him. He recognized bearded Del Kellum, with his barrel chest and his angry expression. Next, he saw a completely unexpected young man, who would have looked more familiar had he been wearing an EDF uniform.

“General Lanyan,” said Patrick Fitzpatrick III, “I see my new opinion of you was absolutely correct.”

5

Jess Tamblyn

Once, Charybdis had been a primeval ocean world whose turbulent seas hosted countless thriving wentals. And then the faeros had come.

Jess and Cesca had not been here when angry fireballs had rained down to blast the elemental seas, but now they stood together on the smoking ruin of the planet. The air was laden with heavy sulfurous steam, the cadaverous smell of dead wentals. He drew a deep breath, felt the anger burn through him.

This is war.

“The Roamers can help us,” Cesca said, her voice brittle with fury at the sight of the blackened, glassy landscape that had once been a calm and fertile sea. “We should ask the clans to join our fight.”

Kneeling, Jess put his fingers in a warm, scum-covered puddle. The water felt oily and dead. He shook his head, trying to find an independent reservoir on Charybdis.Something must have survived. “What possible weapons could Roamers devise against them?”

Cesca raised her eyebrows. “Jess Tamblyn, are you really doubting Roamer ingenuity?”

He took hope from that, and with his fingers still dripping, he began to walk across the wasteland. Understanding the wentals all too well, he did know what the largest problem was. “Wentals and verdani are forces of life and stability. Hydrogues and faeros are the embodiments of destruction. When they clash, the chaos and aggression inevitably overwhelm the quiet and peace. The wentals don’t know how to fight effectively against an enemy like this.”

Cesca followed him. “Unless we change the rules of engagement.”

A small crack opened up in the ground, and steam sighed out like the last gasp of another wental that had surrendered to its fate.

Ten thousand years ago the wentals and verdani had nearly been annihilated in the great war. Sorely beaten, the hydrogues were driven into their gas-giant planets, and the faeros took up residence in their stars. When hostilities had flared up again, the unresolved conflict triggered into full fury. But now the landscape of the Spiral Arm was quite different.

From his contact with the wentals, Jess knew that the faeros had nearly been defeated by the hydrogues until the fiery beings had changed their old chaotic tactics. The former Hyrillka Designate Rusa’h had caused that difference. He had fled into the fires of a nearby sun where the faeros consumed and joined with him, much as the wentals had with Jess and Cesca. As a living embodiment of the fiery creatures, Rusa’h had showed them new ways to fight, and they had overwhelmed the hydrogues at one battleground after another — and won. His guidance had made all the difference.

Jess stopped as these thoughts roiled through his head. When the wentals had been weak and few, they had saved him by permeating the tissues of his body, rescuing him from his exploding ship. Out of gratitude, Jess had led water bearers to disperse wental seedpools from planet to planet.

Now he and Cesca had an even greater challenge. Like Rusa’h, they had to take charge and guide the wentals in an effective fight. They had toshow the watery elementals how to take aggressive action.

He turned to Cesca, and his eyes seemed to fill with steam as he looked at the blasted landscape. “It’s time for the wentals to be angry, time for them to become warriors — to fight in a way that is more than just defensive.”

Power surged through his bloodstream, and he felt an overwhelming urge to strike something. Jess wasn’t normally an angry man, but now with his hard fists, he struck the glassy eggshell surface and felt the baked barrier crack. He pounded again. Yes, he sensed something deeper here! The oceans of Charybdis had been blasted away, but there was always water, always life.

He struck a third time and broke through the crust. Water filled the hole he had made, liquid percolating from deep aquifers. The water was hot, near boiling. Steam drifted about — not putrid brimstone steam, but vaporized water.Wental water. More and more of it welled up, as if trying to break free.

Cesca thrust her hands into the thermal pool. Bubbling water spurted out of the hot spring and flowed across the baked ground. Another geyser blasted through the crust, where more wentals had awakened from the hot aquifers.

Cesca stood up and clenched both fists. “As we touch and spread these wentals, our just anger will charge them with fresh purpose. Together we will find new ways to fight back.”

Beside her, Jess felt the power sing through his body, assuring him that all of the wentals would awaken and follow them. “We have a new Guiding Star.”

6

Tasia Tamblyn

After escaping from the Klikiss on Llaro, the damaged ship limped back to the Roamer shipyards. Tasia refused to leave the piloting deck, afraid that if she let her attention waver, some other crisis would hit these beleaguered people.

“Almost there, Tamblyn,” Robb Brindle said from the copilot’s chair, afraid to relax unless she did. “Almost there.”

“You’ve been saying that for days.”

“And each time we’re closer to home, aren’t we?”

The ship had originally been sent to rescue Roamer detainees held in a small EDF camp, but none of them had expected to fight a planet full of Klikiss. Damned bugs!

“Almost there,” Robb said again.

“Enough already.”

The Osquivel rings were a wide, sparkling disk, paper thin in relation to the bloated gas planet they encircled. Clear infrared signatures marked the largest industrial operations dispersed throughout the orbiting rubble: spacedocks and construction bays, admin asteroids, storage bunkers, independent complexes that specialized in ship construction or component fabrication, debris plumes that fanned out into space like rooster tails.