Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [130]
'We're not just people anymore, Jess,' she said. 'Our actions could have significant consequences. By the Guiding Star, what'll we do with ourselves?'
'Before you start making decisions, let me show you exactly what we're talking about.' He smiled at her. 'Exactly what we have inside us.'
Knowing what they would find there, he brought their vessel to a brooding gas giant planet whose clouds smouldered with storms. The rust-coloured bands now seemed tied in knots. She recognized the world as Haphine, but the whole aspect of the planet had changed from the last time Cesca had been here, only a month earlier. 'Why are we here? I thought the hydrogues were defeated.'
'They are. You defeated them.'
'Well, I had some help from the wentals.'
The bubble ship dived into the ever-thickening mists, and Jess could feel echoes of the water entities permeating the clouds. He knew Cesca could sense it, too. The wentals responded and connected with the energy inside their ship and inside their very cells. Though Haphine had once been a hydrogue stronghold, he sensed no sinister anger in the energy here. The deep-core aliens were contained.
They sank into the clouds, surrounded by the gas giant's immensity, and Jess began to feel a chill. The volume of Haphine's atmosphere was orders of magnitude greater than any terrestrial planet's, incalculably vaster than any area the Roamers had settled. With all that open and unoccupied space came its own loneliness. Not a single human being lived on this entire planet, no Roamer skymines, no settlements on the scattered moons.
Finally they encountered an encrustation of domes and segmented jewel spheres, honeycombed clusters, strange geometric connections that formed an alien metropolis. The brightly coloured, interlinked shapes had been designed by the deep-core aliens at a density that would have crushed any organic matter. He had seen these places before. 'Each gas giant has many of these cityplexes.' --:'“
But the hydrogue city was empty and dead, destroyed. Domes were collapsed and many of the crystalline walls eaten away by wental corrosives.
Cesca was astonished. 'Wentals did this?'
'We did it, by bringing them here.'
'The hydrogues attacked us. They started this war.'
'But it wasn't a new conflict, and this time they lost. The hydrogues are still here, just like the wentals weren't entirely destroyed when they were defeated the last time. But the balance has certainly shifted.' The water-bubble vessel circled the ruins of the cityplex, and Jess and Cesca both stared. 'Wental power was sufficient to cause this disaster, and yet the two of us have the strength to do other things as well.' He touched her, feeling the tingle through her skin. 'We can build instead of tear down, create instead of destroy.'
As soon as he said it, he knew Cesca could feel the surge of possibilities within herself. 'Without question, Jess. Where do we go first?'
The wental ship took one last flight around the hydrogue city. 'Back to Plumas, of course.'
* * * * *
The ice moon glittered in the distant starlight, its frozen surface illuminated by station lights and demarcated landing zones. The Roamer communication bands were filled with conversations between tanker ships, repair crews, and groundside excavators. Jess could see that the pumping clusters had been erected again, transfer domes, docking stations, and access huts were now aglow. The frozen crust showed tracks and melt marks from the increased traffic. But underground, he knew the water mines would be a different story. His mother - no, the tainted wental that had possessed his mother--had caused so much damage.
Beneath the kilometre-thick ceiling, they found Caleb, Wynn, and Torin Tamblyn bossing crews of borrowed engineers from Osquivel who wrestled with spare excavation and construction equipment. Jess's uncles yelped when