Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [12]
Kotto nodded absently as their small ship flew on. "I'm not complaining that reinforcements came at a good time. Even so, we proved the principle, right? Our only mistake was in not bringing enough doorbells. We can fix that. Massive quantities--that's what we need."
Before leaving Theroc, Kotto had copied the blueprints, then sent the ragtag group of Roamer captains out to find any clan fabrication center to make more of the doorbells. As soon as he got back to the Osquivel shipyards, Kotto would make sure Del Kellum began manufacturing them by the thousands. From now on, nobody needed to be defenseless against hydrogue depredations.
Unlike his mother, Kotto wasn't a politician (and he'd never envied her role as Speaker), but he wanted to send doorbells to Hansa colonies as well. He mused, "If we help the Big Goose wipe out the drogues, maybe they'll stop being so pissy toward the clans."
"Please define ‘pissy,' Kotto Okiah," GU said. The compies loved learning, so Kotto provided a rough explanation of the term.
KR said, "You suggest that if we assist the Terran Hanseatic League, they will show their gratitude by calling a halt to their attacks on Roamer facilities?"
"Makes perfect sense to me. We shouldn't have to be enemies. But then, that's not my area of expertise. I'll leave it to the professionals."
"Another conundrum," GU said.
"Yes, a conundrum." He flew toward Osquivel, anxious to get back to work on that fascinating hydrogue derelict. He'd been cut off from news, but he had already thought of twenty new tests to run on the alien systems and was particularly intrigued by the transportal he found inside. Letting the two compies take care of the ship, he made notes and sketched out some ideas. . . .
When Kotto arrived at the ringed gas giant, however, he found no sign of the Roamer shipyards. The whole planet seemed completely abandoned.
"Hello? Where is everybody? I've got good news." He hoped that such a message would be enough to bring out anyone who might be listening. "Hello?"
The entire facility--smelters, storage rocks, habitation domes, space- docks, ore processors, construction frameworks, everything--was empty.
KR and GU continued transmitting on the frequencies commonly used by Roamers. "Perhaps the hydrogues destroyed them all," GU suggested.
"Don't be a pessimist," Kotto said, though his stomach knotted at the very suggestion.
As they flew around the languid rubble of the rings, Kotto found no sign of the hydrogue ship he had so carefully mothballed far from any other stations. "The derelict's gone, too! Somebody took it!"
Confused, fearful, even a bit angry, Kotto piloted the ship down into the main shipyard complex. He encountered debris and abandoned scraps, but few intact structures--and no signs of life whatsoever. The whole place had a haunting aura of emptiness, as if the shipyards had been plundered and then discarded. Nothing useful remained.
"I detect signs of a struggle or an accident," KR said. "But the damage does not appear significant enough to have disintegrated all facilities and personnel."
GU added, "This appears to be an intentional departure. Perhaps an evacuation."
Kotto stared at the readings as he circled the rings twice more. "The shipyards are all gone. Not wiped out--just . . . gone, as if Del and his crew pulled up stakes and vanished."
What could have driven off a man like Del Kellum? Could the EDF have done this--just like they destroyed Rendezvous? He cringed to think of it. And they'd taken the derelict! How was Kotto supposed to find anybody now--Del Kellum, Speaker Peroni, his mother, anybody?
"Just when I thought we were fresh out of conundrums."
7
DENN PERONI
After centuries of skin-of-the-teeth survival, Roamers never expected things to go exactly as planned. The unforeseen happened with alarming regularity.
Denn Peroni had left the water mines of Plumas, still nursing a hangover and wondering how he had gotten drunk enough to join the Tamblyn brothers in the crackpot piracy scheme that had ended in the capture of a Hansa merchant