Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [32]
“And help the drogues? You’re crazy!”
“It’s worth it, just to scorch the blobs,” said a bedraggled Charles Gomez.
DD answered, “I believe the hydrogues intend to transport their cityspheres through dimensional gates to another gas giant. In all probability, they will take you with them. You should be safe.”
“If this is safe, buddy, then what do you consider dangerous?” Anjea Telton snorted.
As the flustered compy sought an appropriate response, Brindle sounded conciliatory. “Never mind that, DD. I know you’re doing what you can. Hey, will you be coming with us? Are the hydrogues taking you along, too?”
“I have very little information. I wish I could provide you with additional data.”
A sullen Gomez jumped away from the curved, translucent wall. Beside him, two men cried out in warning. DD looked up to see a looming form just outside the flexible barrier. Extending several jointed limbs, the armored beetle shape lunged through into the environment chamber. As the prisoners backed away, the compy recognized Sirix, his main tormentor. “DD, come with me immediately. Our ship is prepared.”
“We must ensure the safety of these human prisoners,” DD suggested. “The hydrogues may not properly care for them.”
“The hydrogues can eradicate them or save them, as they wish. This citysphere is ready to depart through the transgate, and we must not be part of the exodus.”
“Why not?” DD asked.
Brindle and the other human captives stared at the two machines, trying to follow the jackhammer electronic conversation.
“We have other priorities. Cease these delays.”
DD dutifully followed the big black robot back out of the membrane. He caught one last glance of Brindle, looking worried but determined as they departed.
Overhead, three more armored warglobes launched away from the citysphere.
Sirix guided the compy at a rapid clip until they reached their modified ship. One of the flowing hydrogues coalesced from a silvery flow on the ground, rising tall until it stood before Sirix in its human facsimile.
The hydrogue spoke in a far more complex language than DD could readily understand, but he grasped that a Torch wormhole had already been opened and that the cityspheres were about to evacuate.
Sirix clicked and hummed a response that seemed sarcastic, almost ironic. “The Torch weapon designed by our brutal masters and creators now makes humans as powerful as the faeros, if only temporarily. Now that the faeros have returned, you may consider humans irrelevant to your overall conflict. If, however, they can obliterate hydrogue planets at will, does that not make them highly relevant?” On multiple fingerlike legs, he moved forward to the sanctuary of his ship. “Repeatedly, they show their true destructive nature, which we have warned of many times before.”
A ripple flickered across the hydrogue’s body. Its language now seemed painfully clear to DD: “You Klikiss robots have our leave to destroy as many humans as you wish.”
Sirix swiveled his flat geometrical head. “We understand that your conflict with the faeros and the verdani currently saps your strength and attention, but we robots will do everything in our power to wipe out the human race and free their compies.”
The black robot scuttled to his deep-pressure craft and herded DD aboard. Several Klikiss robots had already set themselves up at the controls. Their ship launched immediately. As they plunged through a citysphere wall and rose away from the hydrogue metropolis, DD swiveled his optical sensors and watched behind them.
A dazzling white line split open in the fabric of the air, like a vertical mouth yawning wide. Giant hydrogue cityspheres shuttled through the immense maw of the transgate. Other conduit lines opened, and a second complex of faceted globes passed through to safety.
The black robots accelerated their ship up through the buffeting winds of deep clouds. They piloted a direct course out, ignoring all the strange life forms that floated in the bizarre habitation zones and stable layers of Ptoro’s atmosphere.
Then, far below,