Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [151]
Five darkened satellite outposts orbited the chunk of rock and ice, shut down and drifting in space. During Kotto's heyday here, shipments of condensed supercold gas had been launched up to orbit, where these holding stations completed the reaction process, converting simple hydrogen into stardrive fuel. Nearly two hundred clan workers had lived here. Now all of them were dead.
Cesca leaned against the flexible hull membrane of the wental ship, peering at the debris scattered in the fused crater where the power reactor had overloaded. Radioactivity continued to sizzle, so that ice still flowed into slush. Melted-and-refrozen rivers sketched silver ribbons through the crust.
Their bubble ship landed on the lip of the refrozen crater, and Jess and Cesca emerged to stand out under the cold, black sky. The stars sparkled like ice chips with the brightest one, Jonah's sun, too far away to provide heat.
‘Did you want to repair this place?' Cesca asked. ‘Like we did at Plumas?'
Jess knew they could resculpt the surface, erase the crater and smooth over the crevasses, make the ice ready for Kotto Okiah to restore his facility here. But that wasn't his intent. ‘There would be no purpose to it. Kotto established the outpost here when ekti was in such great demand. Now, though, with skymining open and free again, there's no need. Jonah 12 should remain a memorial.'
She gave a bittersweet smile. ‘Do you think any Roamers will come to see it, to remember those who died here?'
‘I'm hoping for something else - a living memorial. Now that the wentals are so well distributed, I'd like to turn them loose here, let them recharge the ice the way they did with the comet I sent to Theroc'
He bent down, placed his palms flat against the hydrogen ice, and felt wental power flow out of him into the crust of the planetoid. He sensed more than saw the shimmer that permeated the ice, growing stronger as the inclusions of frozen water awakened, took on a semblance of life. He was pleased with what he had done.
Jess raised his hands and spoke directly to the water beings. ‘Is this place adequate for you?'
Wentals are widely dispersed. What we require now is to be made stronger. Not diluted.
‘There are so many wentals that they could never be made extinct again. Doesn't that in itself make you stronger?' Cesca asked.
We are numerous, but we all sprang from the same pool. If we continue to spread from the same droplet, eventually our powers become more diffuse. We need a new wellspring. We request that you locate other wentals that were lost in the great war, just as you found us.
Years ago, in his nebula skimmer, Jess had retrieved a small amount of the living water from inside a diffuse gas cloud. All of the subsequent wentals had sprung from that small amount of moisture.
‘But how do we find different ones?' Jess asked.
Search the ancient battlefields across the Spiral Arm, places where wentals died. If you go there, we will show you.
Ninety-five
Davlin Lotze
After the robots retreated, having caused a great deal of damage to the subhive, Davlin didn't have as much time as he had hoped for. None of the Llaro colonists did. The remaining Klikiss did not give them a chance.
Looking like a scarecrow, Margaret ran back from the damaged hive city, racing as if the monsters were pursuing her. Dead insect bodies and smashed robots still lay strewn all around. Bypassing the smaller entrance gaps, she entered through the hole blasted in the stockade wall and stood haggard in the glare of Llaro's midmorning. When she finally caught her breath, she shouted to Davlin and the milling colonists next to him. ‘The domates are coming for you! Now.' Her words cut like an axe blade through the morning air.
Davlin felt a sudden chill. ‘They're still reeling