A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [209]
Overhead, the ominous warglobes hovered like spiked fists. A glow of energy crackled from the pyramidal tips. The emissary said, “Tell us, and we will let humans live.”
Drawing courage and comprehension from a flood of information deep in the database of the sentient trees, Beneto said, “I refuse. The worldforest is greater than myself or any human.”
The trees grew more determined, giving the green priest strength of will. He no longer felt fear as much as powerful defiance. Long ago, the once-spreading worldforest had covered thousands of planets—and it had been nearly eradicated. The hydrogues had been driven back into their gas giants; other combatants had also suffered, becoming extinct themselves.
“Then your race shall know the consequences.”
“We will fight you.” The words did not seem to come from Beneto’s throat, but originated elsewhere, from the minds of other green priests or from the worldforest. “We have weapons the hydrogues cannot imagine.”
The ground stirred and writhed at the base of the emissary’s sphere, as if a swarm of rodents tunneled underneath its surface. Some part of Beneto knew what was happening. He blinked in amazed anticipation.
Whiplike roots thrust upward with glistening tips made of a wood harder than any substance Beneto could identify. They rose like stingers and stabbed the crystalline walls. Hissing and sizzling, the tips burrowed through the diamond barrier and plunged into the emissary’s containment chamber.
The worldtree tendrils sealed their punctures, draining off incomprehensible amounts of pressure, sucking out the poisonous atmosphere. The tangle of roots drove in, growing, thrashing, filling the alien sphere.
The hydrogue emissary lost its precise imitation of a human form as it wrestled with the strangling serpentine roots. More tips plunged through the bottom of the sphere, deeper, beginning to crack the perfectly curved crystal walls.
Activating unseen engines, the emissary tried to lift the sphere off the ground, to escape, but the roots held it down. The sphere strained higher, pulling at the grasping roots, but the woody tissue remained strong, unbreakable. Fissures like white traceries of frost appeared on the transparent diamond walls.
Beneto watched the struggle, his faith and determination firmer than ever before.
The trapped hydrogue emissary struggled, but the liquid-crystal creature seemed to be dying, losing its form, dripping its quicksilver substance like acid over the furious roots.
The wild thicket continued to thrash, engulfing the hydrogue’s soft form until finally the alien collapsed into nothing more than an oozing silvery stain. The roots pushed deeper into the containment globe, finally shattering it into smoking debris that left only a mass of blackened and dying roots in the middle of the worldtree grove.
But the victory was small and short-lived. Overhead, the giant warglobes began to move.
Beneto looked up, his triumphant expression shifting to one of resignation. Before the town’s helpless colonists could find any meager defense or shelter, the deep-core aliens launched their retaliation against the whole planet.
Spiked spheres swept low over Corvus Landing, spreading vicious gouts of freezing steam like poison gas. The icewave withered the grain fields, turning them instantly into blackened dust.
In the town, Mayor Hendy continued to shout hopeless evacuation orders. Many settlers hopped onto vehicles and raced toward their outlying homes or took shelter in underground structures. The buildings had been built to withstand rough storms, but nothing would be proof against the hydrogue onslaught.
Stables and corrals were blasted into frozen, sparking splinters. Arcs of blue lightning ripped smoldering gashes across the landscape. Panicked goats ran in all directions, bleating and fleeing…dying in a flash.
In only a few minutes, the four warglobes had devastated thousands of acres of crops, turning the carefully seeded and fertilized territory into a zone