A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [173]
“Tell me what to do,” Jess said with absolute conviction. He remembered a phrase that had been used long before Roamers had ever taken to the stars. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the hydrogues were most certainly his enemy—a very personal enemy.
Take me to a water world, the wental said. Find an ocean and pour the liquid that is my body into a planetary sea. In that way, I will allow myself to spread and grow strong again. Then you must take more of my essence and go to another world, and another.
Jess’s eyes gleamed. Ever since his brother’s murder, his father’s death, and his necessary separation from Cesca, he had moved sluggishly, blindly. But now, he had a quest and a goal. He felt revived.
He couldn’t conceive exactly how this liquid entity could stand up against the deep-core aliens, but the wentals had grappled with the hydrogues before. The rules of this conflict were far beyond his comprehension.
“All right, I accept your mission. You may be the first wental, but before long, you will certainly not be the only one.”
Up inside the main cabin of the nebula skimmer, he reprogrammed the ship’s navigation systems, then sent a burst message to the other dispersed sailors, though it would take a long time for his transmission to reach any listeners.
Knowing there could be no turning back, Jess disengaged the cables, detached the huge scoop sails from his self-contained vessel, and then broke free of the filmy net. This was far more important than drifting aimlessly, immersed in his own regrets, hiding from everyone he knew. Now he finally had something to do.
The small ship separated, barely a speck against the background sheet of the vast collector sail. Jess flew toward the outer fringes of the nebula, gathering speed as he went alone to resurrect the wental and create a powerful ally for humanity.
90
TASIA TAMBLYN
The hydrogues struck again, and sparks flew from Commander Tasia Tamblyn’s bridge console. She had lost track of how many warglobes had already boiled out of Osquivel’s clouds, stirred up by the EDF bombardment.
Not only wasn’t this brash EDF operation a good idea, she thought, but Robb had died for nothing.
A fireshower of short circuits and sputtering flames erupted from the tactical station to her left. Her officers, already unnerved by the relentless destruction all around them, reacted in confusion. A jagged tree of blue lightning glanced across their bow, but mercifully caused little damage.
The Manta lurched from another heavy impact, and banshee alarms howled through the command decks, rendering the cruiser’s bridge even more chaotic than before. Emergency lights flashed, bathing the equipment in a crimson glow. Tasia wiped sweat out of her eyes and shouted a quick string of emergency commands in hopes of keeping her ship moving away from the battlefield.
Manning the Manta’s weaponry station, Sergeant Zizu toppled out of his chair as a discharge backed up through his jazer grid. One young lieutenant had the presence of mind to spray fire-extinguishing foam on the burning circuitry panels. The burned security chief crawled away, searching for a med-kit, and Tasia barked orders for a befuddled-looking sensor operator to take up the vacant gunnery station.
Below and around them, warglobes fired indiscriminately. Dozens of Remoras evaporated into brilliant sparkles. The fleet comm systems were a confused chatter of orders and counterorders, shouts of terror, and empty curses thrown at the deep-core aliens.
One of the huge Juggernauts had already been crushed and lay dead in space. Only a few lifetubes had shot out, carrying a pitiful handful of survivors. Tasia shouted for her crew to snatch any lifetubes in the vicinity as the Manta fought its way up and away from the rings.
The hydrogues kept coming, kept firing. Over the comm system, General Lanyan repeated his retreat order, calling for a complete withdrawal of all intact EDF ships. As if everyone weren’t already