Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [185]
All of the soldiers aboard still resonated with the sacrifice of Septar Jen'nh, who had bought the escape of the other warliners without hesitation. Jen'nh had done it for Ridek'h. And so far the young Designate did not know what he had done to deserve it.
Tal O'nh sensed the boy's inner turmoil. ‘Our priorities have changed, but you remain the Designate. You are our connection to the Mage-Imperator. Hyrillka is yours, and these remaining ships are yours.'
‘Hyrillka is nothing. Everyone there is dead.' ‘That is why it is so important for us to get to Ildira--to tell the Mage-Imperator and Adar Zan'nh. They must prepare to fight the faeros.'
After their violent escape from Hyrillka, the six warliners had huddled in empty space, completing emergency repairs, and now they were finally returning to the Prism Palace. Ildira's six close suns were the brightest stars on their viewing screen. Ridek'h could not wait to be back home. Safe.
As the warliners moved forward, some of the stars grew brighter. The bright dots moved, swirling like glowgems in a wind-blown fire. They came closer, grew larger, expanded. They were not stars at all.
Tal O'nh immediately sounded the alarm, calling the Solar Navy to their battle stations. The faeros! The faeros are coming again.‘
Ridek'h gasped. ‘But we used our stardrive engines to escape them. How did they track us?'
The old tal's faceted blind eye gleamed in the ever-brightening glare from the viewscreens. ‘They did not need to track us. Rusa'h would have known we intended to come here. To Ildira.'
‘How can we fight them? Our weapons were not effective before.'
‘We run. Full acceleration. All ships - race for home!'
The acceleration drove Ridek'h back against the command rail. But the gigantic fireballs closed in with remarkable speed from all directions, closing a trap around the warliners. The faeros changed something all around them. The boy Designate suddenly felt as if he had stepped into an abyss. The always-comforting security net of vanished as the fiery elementals cut him off, Rusa'h and the faeros had somehow isolated every Ildiran aboard the six ships. Every soldier in the command nucleus groaned in dismay. Even Tal O'nh reeled. Everyone felt lost and disoriented. They were completely isolated from the thought network that joined all Ildirans.
Without orders, one of the six warliners turned and plunged headlong into the wall of faeros, trying to break away. But the ornate battleship could not survive the incredible heat. The warliner melted, broke apart, its hull sloughing off into droplets of molten metal moments before the ekti tanks exploded.
With the death of the warliner, the fireballs seemed to grow brighter, like a fire blazing after fresh wood was added. Ridek'h reeled at the thought of all the lost lives, but did not feel the expected stabbing pain in the . An entire crew dead - and he was cut off! The faeros had plucked the hapless Ildirans from the soul-threads and taken those lives for themselves.
‘Hull temperature rising,' announced the sensor chief.
The flames roared closer, forcing the trapped ships to come to a halt. A blazing ellipsoid loomed in front of the warliner, as if it somehow knew the boy Designate was aboard.
O'nh faced the dimmed screen, as defiant as he could manage. All the filters had been raised, blocking out most of the intense light. Ridek'h forced himself not to act terrified.
The rippling, gaseous outer skin of the faeros ship shimmered and boiled like a cauldron. To his horror, Ridek'h saw that the discoloured blotches and convection cells were more than just differing temperatures. Each superheated bubble that rose to the surface wore a face, the screaming face of a lost and tortured soul that the faeros had consumed. Ridek'h bit back an outcry.
Here were the bright life sparks of the scientific team that had been killed on Hyrillka, here, too, must be