Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [203]
'Faeros ships! The faeros have returned,' shouted one of the Ildirans.
'Turn about and get us back to Ildira,' Tabitha said.
Her crew challenged the new warliner's engines, accelerating as much as the untested systems could bear. One of the control boards burned out and another reacted sluggishly, but the huge ship began to pick up speed and pull away from the suddenly flaring star. Faeros boiled out of the cooling stellar depths by the thousands, flew into space like sparks from a cosmic grinding wheel, and disappeared from the Ildiran system.
Ten of the ellipsoids closed around Tabitha's warliner, like a flock of birds going after the same slow-moving insect.
Down in Mijistra's sunlit square, Kolker bit back a cry. He could feel Tabitha's fear reverberate inside him, inside all of them. Ten huge comets of flame loomed up, their surfaces a tapestry of ghostly, screaming faces.
A booming voice echoed in Tabitha's mind and across the warliner's comm systems. 'What is this ? I have found your j soul-threads - but who are you?'
'Kiss off!'
The faeros voice sounded intrigued. 'You are human, yet you have a conduit into the r like that human we consumed with the wentals… You also have a conduit that extends to… ah, the worldforest! The verdani mind,'
As more and more faeros streamed out of the reawakened sun, the ten fireballs tightened their circle around the warliner until the hull began to melt. Alarms shrieked from every main system. In the command nucleus, the consoles slumped into molten metal. The front section of the bridge exploded, but even the vacuum of space could not extinguish this kind of fire.
Kolker lost contact with Tabitha aboard the ship, feeling the pain like a sword thrust into his chest.
But it wasn't over. The dominating presence of the former Hyrillka Designate roared along the new soul-threads that Kolker himself had so carefully laid down. The voice hammered into his mind. 'I demand your soulfires to strengthen the faeros. You have given me the way.'
While thousands of fireballs raced out into space, ten of them led by Rusa'h moved implacably toward Ildira. Kolker could not block the faeros incarnate from his mind, from his or telink. Without opening his eyes he could see his other converts staggering. Two of them fell to their knees as they spontaneously caught fire.
Kolker struggled to block the searing lines and cut his converts off from the revelations - the vulnerability - that he had shared with them. But he could not save them, could not save himself. The faeros fire streamed like acid through his mind and through his body. Then, with a last flash and a spark, he became one of many dissipating curls of smoke in the air.
One hundred and twenty-five
Orli Covitz
The Klikiss held Orli and her companions inside the old city. Though she had struggled against the hardening goo, the insect warriors had torn her backpack away from her. The breedex seemed to recognize what the synthesizer] strips were and intentionally deprived the girl of them.
In addition, Orli was kept separate from Tasia, Robb, Davlin, and Nikko - because of her music, like Margaret Colicos? - and she felt very alone. DD had also been led away, and she had no idea what had become of the little compy. After removing her resin restraints and throwing her into a dusty, hard-walled cell, the Klikiss had stretched resinous excretions like prison bars across the chamber opening. The others were kept in a larger chamber down the tunnel, all of them without food or water.
At least Orli was close enough to shout to her companions and hear what they were doing, she could even see them if she pushed her head partway through the gummy barricade. The resin had an oily feel and smelled like burned plastic.
'We could work together, rip loose some of these web bars,' Nikko said. He threw his shoulder against the rubbery