Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
And Tasia had no place to go. She had companions in the EDF with whom she worked, but she considered none of them close friends. There had been no one since Robb Brindle.
Though discretionary space travel was limited because of ekti rationing, as an EDF officer Tasia was welcome to any available seat aboard an outbound spacecraft. She would have liked to go back to the frozen
moon of Plumas and the water mines run by her clan. She hadn’t seen her brother Jess in ages, had heard no word from the Tamblyn family in the better part of a year. She did not know what was happening among the clans. But since Roamers kept the locations of their facilities secret, she could not simply hitch a ride on a normal Hansa transport to Plumas, or Rendezvous, or any obvious Roamer destination.
Given the choices, she decided to stay in the Earth solar system.
She made several more inquiries—as subtle as possible—to track down her missing compy. EA had gone off on her secret mission to warn Osquivel, using independent problem-solving routines to find transportation. Tasia could not make too much of an outcry about the compy’s disappearance, however, since EA had been performing an unofficial assignment at the time.
Because Roamer compies contained a great deal of information about the scattered clans, they each had internal security programming that would protect the data—at the expense of the compy itself. Tasia should have taken comfort from this, but EA was valuable, and beloved . . . and missing. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, Tasia could still do nothing about it, and she found herself alone with plenty of time on furlough.
She was most intrigued by the fleet of heavily reinforced “rammer”
ships the EDF had started to build in the asteroid shipyards, so she requisitioned an intrasystem shuttle to go see the thick-hulled behemoths being constructed. Since a trip to the nearby shipyards did not require an Ildiran stardrive, she easily received clearance for her visit.
The scheme might have a chance of succeeding, if the rammers could emulate what the Ildiran Solar Navy commander had done at Qronha 3.
According to reports, Adar Kori’nh had led forty-nine warliners on suicidal crash courses to wipe out hydrogue warglobes. And there had been no sign of drogues there since that devastating raid.
Seizing the opportunity, the Hansa had dispatched a cloud harvester to Qronha 3. The first shipment from the skymine had already arrived, and others were soon to follow. Tasia was amused at the pride the Big Goose showed at producing its own stardrive fuel, since Roamers had been doing it for generations. The new cloud harvester was far less efficient than Ross’s Blue Sky Mine, but it was the best the Hansa had at the moment. Sullivan 146
Gold’s shipments could not possibly keep up with the demand of the EDF
or the Hansa, but at least it was a gesture. . . .
The rammer-ship construction zone was a bustle of activity. As she flew in, she admired the complexities of the operation, the gigantic floating scaffolds and open warehouses in space where constructor pods and workers in engineering suits puttered about, assembling the vessels.
It reminded her of Del Kellum’s shipyards. Of course, Roamer ship-builders working together without military bureaucracy would have been able to do a faster and better job. She always felt a smug pride in the clans, compared with the bloated and cumbersome Hansa.
Oddly enough, though, the regular Roamer ekti shipments were late.
Her fellow Eddies looked to her for an explanation, as if Tasia could interpret clan behavior, but she had been cut off from the clans for so long that she had no idea what was happening at Hurricane Depot, with Del Kellum’s cometary skimmers, or at any of the other ekti facilities. She’d even heard rumors that Speaker Peroni had declared an embargo against the Hansa . . . but that didn’t make any sense, and no official news release had come from the Chairman. She was sure there must be some obvious explanation.
Tasia cruised her shuttle around the massive armored warships and imagined how each one would strike a single, deadly blow against the warglobes. Looking at the skeletal frameworks of the rammers, she could see that they were generally similar to a standard EDF Manta, but stripped down, with few amenities for a human crew. These rammers were little more than self-propelled hammers to crack open the crystalline shells of warglobes.
So far, the Klikiss Torches were the only absolutely reliable weapons the humans had used against the hydrogues, and since Tasia had successfully delivered her weapon at Ptoro, other gung-ho officers wanted to do their part. Chairman Wenceslas and King Peter had already authorized another three Torches to be used on gas-giant targets. . . .
More than anything else, Tasia wanted to strike against the enemy aliens, again and again. It would be months yet before these rammer vessels were completed, their structural spines and reinforcements inlaid, the massive engines installed. But she hoped to be there, volunteering for the mission, as soon as they were ready.
425CESCA PERONI
Now that she and the strangely different Jess were finally alone in the privacy of her office chamber, Cesca longed to throw herself into his embrace. But she couldn’t because of the dangerous alterations she saw in him. The power crackling from his skin, his body, had transformed him into a walking live wire.
“What’s happened to you? Explain to me how . . . how you’ve changed, Jess.” She looked at his handsome and sincere face, his blue eyes, his strong and straight nose, remembering when she had kissed him.
Standing as far away from her as the rock walls would allow, he held up his hands to keep her at bay. She saw the oily slickness of moisture covering his skin and the pearlescent garment. His face and hands had a translucent, almost shimmering quality, as if his flesh had taken on the eerie phosphorescence of deep-sea creatures. The recycled air around him smelled of ozone, as if charged with ions from an electrical storm.
“I’m alive, thanks to the wentals, but I am no longer human, Cesca. I myself don’t know half the things I can do . . . but it’s fantastic.”
“As long as the man I knew and loved is still inside there somewhere, Jess, then we can find some way to be together. Our Guiding Star will show us how.”
Again, Jess held her at a distance with a gesture. “This is bigger than just the two of us now, Cesca. There’s too much to do, too much I can do—for all of us. We have in our grasp the solution to our crisis. With the help of the Roamers, I can save not just one race, but two. Humans and wentals.”
She sat abruptly in the chair behind her desk, blinking back her confusion and frustration. “All right, you need to explain more than that. What are these . . . wentals?”
“Incredible water-based entities, potentially as strong as the hydrogues. And they’re inside my body now. Wentals and drogues were mortal enemies in a great conflict that occurred ten thousand years ago—and I’ve got to help resurrect them, so they can fight with us in this war.”
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“But what does that have to do with the two of us?”
Jess looked down at his hand and watched the water droplets trickling along his skin, moving as if alive. At long last, he told her what had happened. “My body contains great power, but it’s not completely in my control. I don’t dare touch anyone else because I’m sure to harm them.
I’m . . . different now, and I have a responsibility. There’s too much at stake here to think just of ourselves.”
Cesca nodded, keeping her sadness locked within. There was always too much at stake. And she always made the necessary sacrifices. That had been her lot, and she had accepted it when she became Speaker for all the clans. “It’s an impossible situation, Jess.”
“Give me time, Cesca. The wentals are amazing and powerful. I’ll find a way for us to do this together, to be together . . . somehow. You know my love for you is unchanged.”
“I know that, Jess. But it doesn’t make this any easier.”
He lowered his voice. “I didn’t ask for this power, but I have it, and it came with a price. For now, saving the wentals and defeating the hydrogues are my highest priorities.”
“Then let me help. In any way. Just ask.”
“I need to enlist the help of the clans. I can’t do this alone.” She noticed now that he was not breathing, that he took breaths only so that he could speak words aloud.
She remained behind her desk, trying to pretend this was just a business discussion. “I’ll arrange for you to speak to the Roamers. They’ll all want to hear your story, especially if you’re offering us a chance to beat the drogues.”
“Thank you.”
Later, as he and Cesca walked to the meeting chamber, Jess seemed terrified that he might accidentally touch her. His wavy brown hair hung lank and wet, and a play of luminosity beneath his moist skin hinted at the energy waiting to boil out of him, if he wasn’t careful.
She met his eyes, which brimmed with a glowing sheen, though not of tears, but as if an ocean of stars now filled his gaze. Simmering power and the scent of ozone poured from him, as if someone had connected his life
force to a set of generators and cranked the levels up far beyond the max-imum.
She stepped perilously close to him, wishing she could take his hand.
“Let’s go in together, Jess.”
Inside the hollowed-out grotto, the conversation was already an excited buzz as Jess and Cesca approached the podium. Several of Jess’s former friends called out encouragement; even from the highest tiers they could sense that something had altered within him. They all knew by now that he had arrived in a remarkable water-and-pearl spaceship.
Cesca raised her voice to silence the tumult. For the meeting, she wore a cape Jhy Okiah had given her, intricate embroidery on a dark blue fabric—the symbols of all the Roamer clans like constellations around the Peroni symbol, celebrating their heritage and familial connections. “We are Roamers! We thrive on the challenge of unusual tasks.” She lowered her voice, trying for a good-humored tone. “But never in our history can I recall anything quite as exotic as what Jess Tamblyn is about to describe to you.”
When he spoke to them, Jess did not need the voice amplification. She didn’t even see him take a breath, but his words carried like thunderclaps through the chamber. The audience sat in utter silence as he described how his nebula skimmer had collected interstellar gases and distilled the shattered body of a powerful entity, the last survivor of a race that was the mortal enemy of the hydrogues.
He continued smoothly and passionately, never hesitating, never searching for words. “Now I have come back to Rendezvous to ask for Roamer help. These beings have agreed to protect us against the hydrogues—but first we must make them strong again. I need anyone with a sturdy vessel to help seed the wentals throughout the Spiral Arm. Once their numbers increase, we will have a truly powerful ally.”
Nikko Chan Tylar shouted from one of the closest rows of seats, “We can all see how that wental has changed you, Jess. If we’re handling and delivering this superwater, how can we be sure the rest of us won’t be infected?”
A gruff voice called, “Shizz, if Jess Tamblyn can walk around in space without a suit, maybe some of us want that advantage! Why not drink some of the wental water for ourselves? How does it feel, Jess?”
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“I am an anomaly, and I hope I remain the only one,” he answered. “I can’t touch anybody, or the power surge would kill them like a bolt of lightning. Make no mistake, the wentals were forced to take this drastic action in order to save my life, but they will not let it happen again. Simple exposure to wental water will not lead to a similar . . . contamination.”
“How do we know these wentals are as altruistic as you say?” called Anna Pasternak. “What if we end up creating something as nasty as the hydrogues?”
Cesca gazed at the rapt audience, knowing some of them were convinced, others worried. “Remember that these wentals fought against the hydrogues ten thousand years ago. Jess says that they were also allies with the forest life force on Theroc. I see no reason to doubt him.”
Jess considered his answer. “I’m still a Roamer, and I’m asking you to trust me.”
“Good enough for me,” said Alfred Hosaki. “Roamers have always relied on each other. We have to rely on each other—especially now that we’ve cut off trade with the outside. If you want to be suspicious of everybody, go join the Big Goose.”
Out in the audience, Nikko shot to his feet so quickly that he needed to grasp an anchor bar to keep from floating upward in the low gravity.
“Then let me be the first to sign up for Jess. I’ve got my own ship. The faster we wipe out the drogues, the sooner we can all get back to the business of skymining.”
Cesca smiled. Jess would have plenty of volunteers.
435SuLLIVAN GOLD
Another full load of ekti launched from the cloud harvester, and Sullivan Gold felt like celebrating, or at least wrapping up the tanks with ribbons and bows. He stood on the administrative deck like a Napoleon, watching his workers like a hawk, and they pretended to be intimidated by him.
Everyone knew he was pleased with their progress so far. Sullivan wasn’t sure whether to credit his skilled management methods, or whether his crew just knew what they were doing.
“That’s three shipments in record time.” He grinned out at the placid clouds, standing behind the atmosphere-retention field of the open deck.
“If the Hansa wasn’t already paying me so well, I’d demand a bonus.”
Beside him, Kolker smiled, but his eyes were closed, his hands resting on the treeling as he communicated through telink. “Nahton is hurrying to inform Chairman Wenceslas and the King.” Distracted, Kolker bowed his head again, touching the treeling. “Oh, excuse me—something else is happening.”