Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
258
“They were compies. I didn’t figure they’d need to do any sightseeing.” Kellum shrugged and ran his finger along the data charts. “But look here. Whatever that is, it clearly doesn’t belong with the rest of the material.”
“Maybe it’s more EDF wreckage,” Zhett suggested. “It could have drifted in toward the planet.”
“But the signature’s all wrong.”
She lifted her chin. “Well, are you going to stare at a computer screen all day long, or are we going to go have a look at it?”
He grinned at her. “By damn, let’s go.”
“Just so you know, I’m flying, Dad. No arguments.” Kellum knew better than to disagree.
Cruising along at a speed that made her father uncomfortable, Zhett spiraled into the densest inner ring. Some of the reprogrammed Soldier compies accompanied their scout vessel as outflyers, plotting a safe course and issuing preliminary warnings of dangerous debris. To distract himself from his nervousness, her father talked . . . and talked.
“I’ve noticed you spending quite a bit of time with that young Eddy commander Fitzpatrick.”
She shrugged to cover her flush of embarrassment. “I torment him mercilessly, but it’s hard not to. His very personality demands that I push his buttons, and he never disappoints me with his response.”
“Well, see if you can push a different button and get him to do some work for a change. Do you think they’re adjusting to their new life here?”
Zhett snorted. “Not at all.”
“Well then, I don’t know what to do with them. It’s time they learned to be useful. After all, they’re adopted family members now, not prisoners.”
Zhett dodged three crisscrossing meteoroids. “I doubt they’ll ever think of themselves that way, Dad. So far, the thing they’re best at is being pains in the ass.”
“Not a particularly useful skill. So what do you think of that young man? He’s handsome, and your age, and—”
“Dad, have you noticed the debris field I’m flying through? Please let me concentrate.”
“Of course.” The slight upturn of his lips was maddening, but her cut-
ting him off had not just been an excuse. She did need to focus on her piloting.
Now the outflyer Soldier compies zipped in, flanking her, guiding her on the safest path. She jerked the altitude-control thrusters right and left, hardly daring to blink. Beside her, her father went pale and gripped his seat. The compy ships took a heavier toll; their hulls got damaged and battered, but Zhett’s vessel suffered only minor dents, and a small star-shaped impact on the thick viewport.
Kellum calmed himself by studying the scan readings on a small console screen. “We’re getting close now.”
Zhett gestured with her chin. “Up there. Something’s a lot more reflective than the rest of the rocks.”
Sparkling with reflected light from the clouds of Osquivel, one object shone like a diamond in a pile of gravel. Rocks formed a thick, protective coterie of obstacles around the valuable treasure. The compy outflyers circled, dove in, and indicated a safe course for Zhett to follow.
The object’s distinctive geometrical shape made it stand out as much as its shining hull had. The sphere, studded with spiky protrusions, drifted alone, abandoned in the dense minefield of rocky debris.
“It’s a drogue ship,” Zhett whispered. “Look at it.”
Kellum bit his lower lip. “One of the smaller ones, not a full-blown warglobe.”
She maneuvered closer, then jumped in her seat as a rock hammered the hull of their ship with a sound like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil.
Zhett steadied them, all the while concentrating on the round alien globe.
“I bet it was killed during the battle, Dad. The Eddies did cause some damage.”
“I’m not picking up any power readings or life signs . . . though I wouldn’t know what the hell to look for. Back off a minute and let the compies get closer. See how it reacts.”
The outflyers approached the small alien sphere, but the hydrogue vessel did not respond. “Shizz, it’s probably been drifting out here all this time. The drogues certainly haven’t missed it.”
Her father grinned hugely. “Well, in that case—it’s finders keepers for us.”
Zhett’s scout ship suffered several more impacts—including one that 260
would require minor repairs—as she cautiously pulled away from the densest cluster of debris, while Kellum sent instructions to the robotic outflyers.
Working together, the reprogrammed Soldier compies rigged tractor beams to the slick surface of the dead alien ship and pulled it slowly out of its nest of broken rocks and into a safer zone. Several meteoroids ricocheted off the sphere’s hull, but left not so much as a scratch. The compy grappler pods looked, on the other hand, as if they’d been used as punching bags.
Her father was already full of ideas about the relic. “Could be the biggest treasure in this whole battleground. Imagine it, my sweet, our very own drogue ship! Roamer engineers can figure out how it ticks, then maybe we’ll incorporate some of those techniques into our own vessels.”
The gas planet Osquivel loomed in front of them like a skeptical eye watching everything they did.
“That’s why, as soon as we get back to the main complex, I’m going to track down Kotto Okiah. If anybody can decipher the thing, he can.”
715NIKKO CHAN TYLAR
Since he was carrying wental water and distributing the powerful entities to uninhabited planets, Aquarius seemed the perfect name for his ship.
Years ago, Nikko and his father had cobbled the vessel together from several falling-apart wrecks that belonged to clan Tylar. After pulling out of skymining operations on Ptoro, they had owned plenty of salvaged spaceships and cargo haulers, pieces of equipment that no longer served any purpose. Nikko had added more cargo space, engines with greater range, and larger fuel tanks. More recently, he’d installed specialized containers
for holding wental-energized water samples. Aquarius was a fine, if odd-looking, starship.
Jess Tamblyn had dispatched his water bearers to unexplored spots in the Spiral Arm, using old Ildiran starcharts and planetary surveys. Not only would this quest distribute the wentals and help the entities grow strong enough to fight hydrogues, but Nikko and his comrades would also find unclaimed planets that the Roamers could use. A winning prospect all around.
Wandering about without a schedule or specified destination was perfect for Nikko’s talents and sensibilities. He rarely arrived where or when he was expected, and now he didn’t need to worry about the embarrassment of getting distracted. The throbbing wentals stored in containers be-lowdecks didn’t seem to mind. The water creatures lived on a different time scale, exhilarated just to know that the tides of the Spiral Arm would soon turn.
Nikko entered his next proposed destination into the log, which he would alter after the fact if he decided to end up somewhere else. “I think . . . we’re going back to Ptoro,” he said aloud, hoping for some sort of response. After all, Jess had been able to communicate with the wentals even before he’d “joined” with them. “I know there’s no water there for you, but I promise to find you some right after we see Ptoro. It could be interesting. No one’s been there since the Eddies used the Klikiss Torch.
I’ll take images to show my parents, even though they both hated Ptoro.”
As he thought of his family history, Nikko wondered if the wentals could sense the information in his head. His great-grandfather had bought an old Ildiran skymining monstrosity on Ptoro, and for two generations clan Tylar had operated the rig, though it wasn’t very efficient. They got by, but the Tylars never made enough profit to upgrade the systems. His father, Crim, resented having to run his grandfather’s boondoggle.
The clouds had always been cold on Ptoro. The antique cloud-harvesting complex had made creaking noises, and Crim had complained about it all his life. Nikko had spent the years of his youth shivering on the skymine, looking down at the iron-gray cloud tops.
Crim’s wife, Marla Chan, had come from an asteroid greenhouse complex that grew fresh food for Roamer settlements. Because the Chan greenhouses were always warm, bathed in sunlight, Nikko’s mother had never 262
taken to the frigid clouds and drafts of Ptoro. Thus, when the hydrogues demanded that all ekti harvesting cease, Crim had been more than happy to withdraw his skymine, find a way to sell it for scrap, then take the money and invest in the Chan greenhouses. Now he and Marla worked happily under the bright sunlight, growing food.
Nikko, though, was too restless. A true Roamer, with the urge to wander from place to place, he’d found decent employment delivering ekti supplies and making runs to Roamer outposts. He liked the excitement of Rendezvous or Hurricane Depot, but he could tolerate the noise and bustle for only so long before he needed to climb back aboard and go cruising alone.
This mission with the wentals was the perfect job for him.
The navigational calculations to Ptoro were not particularly difficult, since he had been there many times before. When he arrived at the former gas giant, he ran scans to detect any leftover EDF survey ships or technical observation platforms in the vicinity. But he saw only a new blazing ball where there had once been a cold, gray world.
The Big Goose had blown up the whole planet and, Nikko hoped, taught the drogues a real lesson.
As he orbited closer to the roiling, hot seas, he saw ellipsoidal clumps of flame that moved in random directions, independently . . . clearly alive.
Like Earth porpoises playfully swimming in the incandescent gas layers, they rose and plunged as if reveling in their new territory. The faeros.
Nikko smiled with wonder. He’d never expected to see the fire-based entities with his own eyes.
Be cautious. The words rang inside his head. The wentals were talking to him, as they had done with Jess Tamblyn in his nebula skimmer.
“Is there something to worry about? Didn’t the faeros help humans against the hydrogues on Theroc?”
They are capricious, untrustworthy. Their alliances are veiled. Right now they may stand against the hydrogues, but that could always change.
Since his ship had no weapons, Nikko flew up and away from Ptoro, even more thrilled that the wentals had finally communicated directly with him than he was by seeing the faeros. . . .
In a nearby star system, the old Ildiran starcharts showed an unnamed planet that had broad oceans and icy seas. He decided to go there. He
studied the destination and coordinates again and caught a navigation mistake before he entered it, realizing he had transposed two digits on the astral grid.
When he had finished his calculations, Nikko eagerly tried to press the conversation with the wentals. “Faeros, wentals, hydrogues. Say, what was that ancient war about, anyway? Why were you fighting the hydrogues in the first place? Why did you ally with the worldtrees, and . . . what did the faeros do to make you distrust them so much? Did all wentals fight on the same side?”
He felt the thrumming presence inside his skull. Wentals are essentially the same entity. Although we exist in different locations, our minds and thoughts are linked.
“Just like the worldtrees, then.”
In a similar fashion, though in the past there have been occasions when some parts of the wental body became . . . tainted.
Curious, Nikko waited, but the water entities sent him no further thoughts. “What do you mean, tainted? Like bad water?”
The subtle details would be incomprehensible to you, as are the specifics of our war.
“Well, you could at least try me.”
The water beings sent him a series of confusing images, flashes of hydrogues and wentals, towering fire-creatures and withering forests. He felt the horror and dismay of the cosmic war, and was astonished to learn that the insectoid Klikiss—and even the Ildirans!—had been a part of it. Nikko still didn’t know what the powerful noncorporeal entities had been fighting about in the first place, but the reasons no longer mattered. He flew his ship in a daze.
As a young man he had spent years on Rendezvous attending classes, learning about Earth governments and clan history. The Governess compy UR had fielded endless questions, because Roamer children didn’t comprehend the struggles the human race had faced.
“I’ll bet the original reasons for your war were stupid or trivial,” he muttered now. “That’s the way human conflicts always are.”
The Aquarius streamed forward at high speed. Jess’s plan required a substantial investment in ekti, but Speaker Peroni and all the clan elders had agreed. After all, since the embargo on selling ekti to the Big Goose, the 264
Roamers had a modest surplus, and what better use could there be for the stardrive fuel than to help the clans develop an all-powerful ally against the drogues? Nikko was glad to be doing his part.
When he saw a blip on his console, he came out of his daze. They must be approaching their destination . . . but the star system was not where he’d expected it to be. Scowling, he checked the coordinates, compared them with the Ildiran charts, and realized he had started from the wrong zero point. He sighed, deciding not to admit that he had gotten lost.
Again. This place was as good as any.
He adjusted his course and scanned ahead. The star system—he didn’t even know if it was on his charts—had one small planet, on which he detected a broad ocean. “Ah, here we are. A new home for you.”
In their storage tanks, the wentals seemed satisfied. We will reproduce and spread, and our strength will increase yet again.
Nikko entered orbit and wiped perspiration from his brow in relief.
This was quite a lucky break. “Just stick with me and I’ll take you all over the Spiral Arm, one way or another.”
725DAVLIN LOTZE
Since Crenna was just a farming colony, its people did not own much scientific, analytical, or technical equipment. Davlin had little to work with as he attempted to understand the recent storm of warglobes that had passed overhead.