Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
“Yes,” Cesca said. “We can’t forget who we are.”
44
Inside the hydrogue citysphere beneath the clouds of Ptoro, droning emergency signals pounded like hammer blows through the impossibly dense atmosphere. DD didn’t know which way to run.
The deep-core aliens, flowing masses of quicksilver, shimmered as they moved through the chaotic sculptures that made up their metropolis. The geometric buildings shifted and changed like three-dimensional jeweled mosaics locking into place in preparation for a large-scale evacuation.
Colors flared brighter.
Though the Friendly compy did not comprehend what the impossibly alien hydrogues did or said, he could see that the creatures were agitated.
What was the emergency? The black Klikiss robots—whom DD found to be somewhat more comprehensible, but just as monstrous—scuttled about with a clear urgency of their own. Finally, he intercepted one of the beetlelike robots. “Please tell me what is happening.”
The robot swiveled his angular head and skewered the Friendly compy with his blazing optical sensors. “The Earth military has arrived at Ptoro.
Upper-layer scouts are observing them even now. They have already deployed the preparatory apparatus for the Torch weapon designed by my cursed progenitors. Some of the hydrogues will mount a defense while the cityspheres open transgates and evacuate this world. We robots will also depart immediately in our ships.”
The thrumming emergency tone made the metal and polymer components of DD’s artificial body vibrate. “What about me? Am I to escape as well?”
“Sirix will deal with that matter. We have crucial preparations to make.
Do not interfere.” The big robot lurched off through the dense atmosphere and vanished through a segmented crystalline wall. The facets rearranged themselves, and the other machine was gone.
DD looked through the bubble-domed skies and saw dozens of warglobes rising out of the citysphere. The diamond-hulled battleships rocketed upward, like spined cannonballs shot into the clouds.
D D
45
The brave EDF soldiers out there would soon face an overwhelming force.
When his masters Margaret and Louis Colicos had ignited the first Klikiss Torch, they had never intended to harm anyone and had not even known of the hydrogues’ existence. This time, though, the EDF was deploying the Klikiss Torch as an outright act of war. Hansa diplomats and military officers had repeatedly attempted to discuss a peace, but the hydrogues would not negotiate. The liquid-crystal creatures considered humans somewhat interesting as playthings in their unusual tests and experiments, but ultimately irrelevant now that they had far more powerful enemies abroad in the Spiral Arm.
DD, on the other hand, could think of nothing more important than to push his way into the environment chambers where Robb Brindle and his fellow human prisoners were being held. As the emergency continued to build, no one hindered the little compy’s movements, ignoring him entirely. All the hydrogues and Klikiss robots were too preoccupied with their frantic evacuation.
Inside the chamber, the haggard-looking prisoners lurched to their feet. “DD!” Brindle said. “Tell me you’re bringing us good news, man.”
“Unfortunately, I am not. Are you aware of the turmoil occurring in the hydrogue citysphere?”
Several captives pressed against the curved gelatinous walls to peer outside through the translucent membranes. “We can tell they’ve got their underwear in a twist,” Brindle said. “But who can understand those blobs?”
“The Earth Defense Forces have arrived, and they have already launched an anchor point for a wormhole. They intend to ignite Ptoro with a second Klikiss Torch.”
A few of the captives raised their fists and hooted. “’Bout time they got serious!”
“Another Torch!”
“The drogues can’t fight it, can they?”
Anjea was the loudest. “That’ll show the bastards, give them a hotfoot. Mess with the EDF and you get burned.”
“Uh, I don’t want to rain on your parade, folks,” Brindle said, “but we’re all sitting at ground zero here.”
46
Some prisoners moaned with dismay; others looked as if they didn’t care.
“Is there a chance we can evacuate?” Brindle said, looking quickly around. “Anything we can do to stop the Torch?”
“And help the drogues? You’re crazy!”
“It’s worth it, just to scorch the blobs,” said a bedraggled Charles Gomez.
DD answered, “I believe the hydrogues intend to transport their cityspheres through dimensional gates to another gas giant. In all probability, they will take you with them. You should be safe.”
“If this is safe, buddy, then what do you consider dangerous?” Anjea Telton snorted.
As the flustered compy sought an appropriate response, Brindle sounded conciliatory. “Never mind that, DD. I know you’re doing what you can. Hey, will you be coming with us? Are the hydrogues taking you along, too?”
“I have very little information. I wish I could provide you with additional data.”
A sullen Gomez jumped away from the curved, translucent wall. Beside him, two men cried out in warning. DD looked up to see a looming form just outside the flexible barrier. Extending several jointed limbs, the armored beetle shape lunged through into the environment chamber. As the prisoners backed away, the compy recognized Sirix, his main tormen-tor. “DD, come with me immediately. Our ship is prepared.”
“We must ensure the safety of these human prisoners,” DD suggested.
“The hydrogues may not properly care for them.”
“The hydrogues can eradicate them or save them, as they wish. This citysphere is ready to depart through the transgate, and we must not be part of the exodus.”
“Why not?” DD asked.
Brindle and the other human captives stared at the two machines, trying to follow the jackhammer electronic conversation.
“We have other priorities. Cease these delays.”
DD dutifully followed the big black robot back out of the membrane.
He caught one last glance of Brindle, looking worried but determined as they departed.
D D
47
Overhead, three more armored warglobes launched away from the citysphere.
Sirix guided the compy at a rapid clip until they reached their modified ship. One of the flowing hydrogues coalesced from a silvery flow on the ground, rising tall until it stood before Sirix in its human facsimile.
The hydrogue spoke in a far more complex language than DD could readily understand, but he grasped that a Torch wormhole had already been opened and that the cityspheres were about to evacuate.
Sirix clicked and hummed a response that seemed sarcastic, almost ironic. “The Torch weapon designed by our brutal masters and creators now makes humans as powerful as the faeros, if only temporarily. Now that the faeros have returned, you may consider humans irrelevant to your overall conflict. If, however, they can obliterate hydrogue planets at will, does that not make them highly relevant?” On multiple fingerlike legs, he moved forward to the sanctuary of his ship. “Repeatedly, they show their true destructive nature, which we have warned of many times before.”
A ripple flickered across the hydrogue’s body. Its language now seemed painfully clear to DD: “You Klikiss robots have our leave to destroy as many humans as you wish.”
Sirix swiveled his flat geometrical head. “We understand that your conflict with the faeros and the verdani currently saps your strength and attention, but we robots will do everything in our power to wipe out the human race and free their compies.”
The black robot scuttled to his deep-pressure craft and herded DD
aboard. Several Klikiss robots had already set themselves up at the controls. Their ship launched immediately. As they plunged through a citysphere wall and rose away from the hydrogue metropolis, DD swiveled his optical sensors and watched behind them.
A dazzling white line split open in the fabric of the air, like a vertical mouth yawning wide. Giant hydrogue cityspheres shuttled through the immense maw of the transgate. Other conduit lines opened, and a second complex of faceted globes passed through to safety.
The black robots accelerated their ship up through the buffeting winds of deep clouds. They piloted a direct course out, ignoring all the strange life forms that floated in the bizarre habitation zones and stable layers of Ptoro’s atmosphere.
48
Then, far below, where the largest concentration of cityspheres had hovered only moments ago, a dazzling new sun erupted, appearing with remarkable suddenness. The Klikiss Torch system had slammed a neutron star into the gas giant’s core, triggering a full gravitational collapse.
All the remaining hydrogue cityspheres plunged through their transgates and the dimensional lines slammed shut. They had escaped, leaving only their guardian warglobes behind to retaliate against the human army.
DD had to adjust his sensors. The robots fled Ptoro so rapidly that the framework of their ship, designed to withstand the greatest of stresses, shuddered and rattled, threatening to break apart.
Then the whole planet caught on fire.
155TASIA TAMBLYN
Warglobes boiled out of the clouds of Ptoro. As the displaced neutron star caused the gas gaint to implode, scatters of lightning ricocheted off the clouds in eruptions of light that broke through from the first surge of a newborn star’s ignition.
“Shizz, look what we flushed out of the bushes,” said Tasia with a grim smile. “I guess they don’t like the present we just sent them.”
“Can’t take it back. Nothing they can do now except run.” Elly Ramirez chuckled, but her tense posture hinted at her level of anxiety.
Ensign Terene Mae made a disconcerting groan as the Manta’s viewer magnified the oncoming spiked spheres. “Doesn’t look like they’re running, Commander. They’re coming right at us.”
“Normally, I wouldn’t presume to guess how the drogues think,” Tasia said. “Right now, I’m fairly certain that they’re pissed off.”
Heedless of the warglobe threat, Sergeant Zizu read from the weapons displays in front of him. “Our deepest sensor buoys have been destroyed,
presumably by the ignition shockwave. The flamefront is rising.” He turned, grinning.
Several EDF Mantas shifted position to face the enemy spheres. Their armaments included fracture-pulse drones—shaped charges designed to shatter thick diamond material—and carbon slammers that would break carbon-carbon bonds in the crystalline structure.
“Battle stations!” Tasia said over the shipwide comm system.
Sergeant Zizu scanned the tactical readouts. “Slammers and fraks are in the launch tubes. Ready.”
Tasia nodded. “Escort cruisers, disperse and prepare to offer some covering fire!”
Blue lightning arced from point to point on the warglobes as the aliens discharged their weapons. Deadly bolts lanced toward the EDF targets, ripping streaks along the thick hull plates, bursting some bulkheads. The Mantas reeled and turned their damaged sectors away from further pummeling. New reinforced armor prevented the warships from being destroyed outright.
Tasia gripped the arms of her command chair. “Shizz, I’m not going to stand on ceremony—open fire whenever and wherever you see fit. Keep shooting as you pack up and retreat. It’s the better part of valor to escape now—let the Klikiss Torch do its stuff!”
The escort battleships launched a storm of jazer blasts and detonating charges. The hydrogues responded with even greater fury. Tasia’s bridge crew cried out in dismay when three drogue spheres converged on a single escort Manta, pounding it repeatedly until it was blown apart. Debris spread out in a cloud of wreckage, atmosphere, and bodies.
A second Manta exploded as the EDF ships accelerated, pulling away from the collapsing gas giant. More and more of the hydrogues kept coming, surrounding the EDF ships and cutting off their escape. Tasia’s only glimmer of pleasure was to see Ptoro beginning to glow with purifying fires from below. She’d had quite enough of the damned aliens.
“Come on, quit spinning your jets and take us out of here.”
“Hydrogue warglobes are pursuing, Commander!”
From far outside Ptoro’s orbit, a streak of fire rocketed past Tasia’s cruiser, a blazing ball as large as any warglobe, heading toward the dying planet. Then came a second, a third, and then ten more.
50
“What the hell was that?” Ramirez said. “A meteor?”
Tasia knew. All around them in space, the incandescent ellipsoids were like moths gathering around a kindling flame. “The faeros,” she said with a quiet breath. She had seen them before, fighting a losing battle at the artificial star of Oncier. Now, though, the fireball entities and their blazing vessels greatly outnumbered the hydrogue spheres. The inferno ships careened into the warglobes like exploding suns, shattering the diamond-hulled spheres.
The hydrogues immediately turned their crackling blue lightning upon the faeros, ignoring the insignificant human battleships. The EDF crews responded with a mixture of stunned silence and crazily enthusiastic cheers.
“Shizz, don’t waste any time!” Tasia bellowed so loudly her voice cracked.
“We’ve got a distraction—let’s get the hell out of here.”
An even more strenuous volley of jazer blasts and targeted hull-breakers flew out, but Tasia told her weapons officers to stand down.
“We’re like a little mouse in a battle between two mammoths. Just move out of the crossfire. No sense in having more of our battleships destroyed here and now.”
As Ptoro continued to brighten, as its core collapsed and nuclear fires were sparked deep within, the faeros combatants smashed into the flotilla of warglobes. Diamond spheres and flaming ellipsoids pirouetted around each other like closely orbiting planets. Blinding arcs like solar flares and coronal loops intersected with blue lightning bolts.
The EDF ships continued to accelerate in their retreat, leaving the gray gas planet warming with inner flames.