Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [201]
Agony ripped Cesca's heart. This couldn't be happening! The faeros scorched the wental reservoir, incinerated the oceans. Although the watery elementals lashed out with extensions of themselves and extinguished numerous faeros ships, the rain of fire continued. No matter how many fireballs fell smoking into the dwindling bodies of water, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of faeros kept coming.
Inside their distant, protected bubble she blindly reached out to clutch Jess's hand. She welcomed his tight grip on hers, welcomed that small physical pain that was nothing compared to the horror and loss she was seeing on Charybdis. She screamed.
Their ship raced toward Charybdis, but they were much too far away to help. It would take them days to get there. They could bring no other wentals to add their strength. As the blazing destruction continued, Cesca and Jess struggled to understand why the fireballs had turned their vengeance against the wentals. Even the wentals did not comprehend the sheer fury.
Cesca's tears flowed, dissipating into the living liquid. As they continued to observe the last moments of the attack, the nebula water inside their own vessel grew hot - and began to boil.
One hundred and twenty-three
Adar Zan'nh
On their return from dropping the human colonists at Dobro, the Adar's septa encountered five burned warliners drifting in space. The crew was gone, thousands of Ildiran soldiers incinerated where they stood, now nothing but dark stains on the decks, at their damaged stations, sealed in their quarters. Each deck resounded with aloneness.
Aboard the processional flagship, Zan'nh found only Hyrillka Designate Ridek'h alive along with old Tal O'nh, blind and driven nearly mad by the darkness and sheer isolation.
Terrified to be on a ghost ship that reeked of cremated flesh, the boy had withdrawn into himself. Ridek'h lay curled on the deck, trembling with horror, when an anxious boarding party made its way into the warliner's command nucleus. 'Faeros! The faeros came. Rusa'h…' His words rasped out like ashes.
Zan'nh had found no further sign of the fiery creatures on Dobro, and knew of no reported incidents at other splinter colonies. The Mage-Imperator, however, had sensed something more and more wrong in the and sent scouts out to investigate. Apparently none of them had returned.
And now this! Such an inferno taking the lives of thousands of Ildiran soldiers should have resonated like an agonizing scream through the - yet he himself had felt nothing. Was it possible that even the Mage-Imperator did not know?
Tal O'nh, his face burned, stared forward with two blackened and scabbed eye sockets. They cut us off. Burned the soul-threads and consumed our crew. All those people… Rusa'h said they would replenish the faeros.'
'How long ago?' Only by coincidence had Zan'nh detected the darkened ships on his trip back to the Prism Palace.
'Two days… maybe more,' Ridek'h said. 'Forever. Alone. Hard to tell.'
If they had been stranded any longer, Zan'nh realized, these two would have gone completely insane.
In a ragged voice, O'nh added, The faeros were heading to Ildira.'
One hundred and twenty-four
Kolker
Now that Kolker saw and knew far more than ever before, it did not matter to him where his body was. Standing placidly in a park not far from the Prism Palace, he felt he could be everywhere. He no longer even needed the treeling.
With his eyes half closed, Kolker sensed at least five of his converts nearby, humans who had stayed in Mijistra to work. He knew they would all spread the word. By now, even some Ildirans were listening, he had finally gotten