A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [234]
Jess felt exhilarated and confident, as if a new power sang through his veins. Why had he waited so long? All along, his own bad decisions and concern about public opinion had stalled him…when apparently all Roamers had seen their mutual attraction for years. His father had trained him to be a tough businessman, devoted to the clan’s holdings—yet when it came to negotiating a lifetime of happiness with Cesca, he had been completely inept.
The path had been wide open for them, but they had procrastinated. Neither of them had acted on their opportunities. For love, he and Cesca should never have been willing to delay.
As Jess passed through an undeveloped and uninhabited solar system, he scanned the navigation charts, pinpointing another cloudy world with sterile oceans and untouched seas. A good place to seed a second congregation of wentals.
He had just noted it in his log when suddenly the strange water entity reacted with alarm and dread. An outside jolt of fear shot through his nervous system. “What is it?”
Then the ship’s sensor alarms went off, detecting a large and powerful craft plummeting toward them from the fringes of the system—a warglobe. The hydrogues came after him at incredible speed, obvious in their destructive intent. Reacting instinctively, Jess punched his engine controls, and the ship lurched forward with a burst of increased speed.
Over the past several years, dozens of Roamer vessels had never arrived at their expected destinations, vanishing without a trace. Some people had explained the losses as accidents in the harsh vastness of space; others, more inclined to look for conspiracies, had blamed the Hansa and the EDF.
How many of the lost ships, though, had succumbed to hydrogue attacks?
With the increase of hostilities, had the deep-core aliens decided to attack any human ship they encountered?
Then another possibility occurred to him. Jess touched the vial of water in his pocket. “Have they sensed you? Do they know the wentals are back?”
No, but they must not discover us. You cannot be captured, or the hydrogues will know that we are alive. It is too soon.
“There aren’t very many hiding places out here.”
Clenching his jaw, Jess accelerated toward the unnamed cloudy planet, using all of his flying skills. Tasia had been a more accomplished pilot, but Jess and Ross had drilled their sister on evasive maneuvers—and now he had to remember how to do all those things for himself. Not only was his own life at stake, but also the lives of the resurrected water entities that could fight these terrible enemies.
“Tell me, how do I fight them? How do I get away?”
The wental offered no viable solution. We are too weak, too few for now. We cannot defeat a warglobe.
With the predatory hydrogue closing the distance, Jess reached the isolated cloudy world, hoping he could elude pursuit in the atmosphere. He squeezed all possible speed from the engines, but this vessel had been designed as part of a nebula skimmer; it was little more than a habitation and control module with engines and a processing deck—made to drift on cosmic winds, not to fight.
He closed his eyes, trying to see his Guiding Star, then accelerated beyond the maximum levels of the engines, pushing harder, heading on a steep dive into the planet’s thin upper atmosphere.
And the warglobe came after him. Blue lightning crackled from its spiked protrusions, and the searing weapon lanced out. The bolt struck nearby with an ionization burst and shock wave that fried several of Jess’s systems and darkened a smear of cloud.
His fingers danced across the controls, working around damaged systems and circuits, but his vessel tumbled through the turbulent atmosphere, out of control. The hull shuddered, the deck vibrated, straining to hold itself together. He managed to straighten his vector just enough so the ship did not immediately burn up.
The wental’s forceful words rang in his mind. You must not be captured. The hydrogues cannot learn about the wentals.
“I’m trying!” Jess