Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [200]
Now Cain looked appalled. 'You're talking about kidnapping the Mage-Imperator? Are you trying to start a war with the Ildiran Empire?'
'Don't be so melodramatic'
'Honestly, Mr Chairman, I am not. I'm absolutely certain that--'
Basil cut him off. He was getting tired of Cain's disapproving looks and comments. 'I have considered the consequences and made my decision. The Solar Navy was severely damaged -probably more so than our Earth Defence Forces - and you know how the Ildirans are. Once we have the Mage-Imperator, they won't be able to function for themselves. A bunch of sheep without a shepherd. We have the military strength, and we'll soon have the bargaining chip we need.'
Cain stared bleakly out the window, as if imagining the whole
Palace District in flames. 'I would beg you to reconsider, sir, but it wouldn't do any good. Would it?'
Basil gave him an icy glare. 'My primary grudge is not with Jora'h, but with Peter - constantly provoking me, trying to make me look like a fool. But I'll be happy to deal with the Mage-Imperator as well, if he forces me to do so.'
The deputy stood. 'You are stepping off a cliff, Mr Chairman. I hope you understand that.'
'We'll see who's right, Mr Cain.'
'Alas, sir, we will.' He turned to go. 'Now if you'll excuse me, I have preparations to make.' Cain was sweating. Basil didn't know what sort of preparations the man was talking about, nor did he care. He began to formulate the exact orders he would give Admiral Diente, and how he could make sure the man would not disappoint him, as so many others had.
He touched his deskscreen, called up Diente's file, and tracked down the location of all of his family members. Two daughters, a son, five grandchildren. That should be sufficient collateral. Yes, Diente would do as he was told.
One hundred and twenty-two
Cesca Peroni
Inside the water-bubble ship, she and Jess communed with another pool of wentals they had scooped up from a diffuse L nebula. Cesca still couldn't grasp the scope of how many of the water elementals had been ripped apart in the ancient war, but her senses were becoming attuned, strengthened, extended.
Suddenly she felt shock and turmoil among the wentals, as if someone had struck a loud gong. An agonized cry resonated through the fabric of the universe.
Jess grabbed her as they drifted in the contained water of their ship. 'I don't know what it is. The other nebula wentals… something awful, flames--' They both experienced a horrific mental scream. Wentals, murdered! And they knew it was the faeros.
Cesca could see it, feel it. 'They were dragged into a sun.' A cluster of the fiery beings had struck a Plumas tanker in the Jonah system - with her father and Caleb Tamblyn aboard!
More ripples, more elemental tremors. Worse, a much larger group of faeros was attacking elsewhere, a breathtaking force of thousands upon thousands of fireballs.
'Charybdis!'Jess shouted, his voice torn. Inside their shimmering ship, the newly retrieved nebula wentals swirled around them. Cesca tried to bite back a moan, but the furious pain seemed to be everywhere. Her father, Charybdis, so many wentals--
As if her eyes had opened onto a distant, foreign place, she saw more than the energized water in which they drifted: a churning alien oceanscape studded with a few lifeless black rocks that poked above the water. She recognized the primary world where Jess had re-established the wentals, where she herself had been healed and changed. Where she and Jess had gotten married.
All the seas on Charybdis were alive, impregnated with wental power. Now, as cluster after cluster of faeros swooped above the vast ocean, the sentient waves rose up in defensive formations. The very clouds themselves pulled together for battle.
Angry faeros appeared--first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands - all of them miniature suns, blazing bright. Like stars going nova, they scorched away the churning clouds, sent steam gushing in all directions. '
As the fireballs descended into the seas, the wental oceans