Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [198]
"A real disaster story," Anton muttered.
115
JESS TAMBLYN
Jess's wental vessel plunged like a bullet toward the cloudy gas giant. Together with the water elementals, he would fight the drogues, and he would bring Tasia and the other human prisoners out alive. Because of all the wentals had learned from him, they understood his drive, his connection to his family, his love for other individuals.
Though reinforcements would arrive soon, Jess did not intend to wait--not if Tasia was down there. As he struck Qronha 3's rarefied atmosphere, plunging headfirst into an impossible struggle, the wentals roiled inside and around him, spoiling for a fight. He wouldn't be doing this alone.
Water droplets sprang from the surface of his ship, rushing through the clouds in an explosive release of wental power, dancing from one atmospheric water molecule to another. Wental energy crackled and spread, splashing into the layers of gases like colored dye spreading through a jar of liquid.
The first strike.
Descending, Jess peered through the curved walls but could see only storms and mists outside his vessel. Inside his mind, the wentals described their expanding fight, though in terms he could barely comprehend. In the same way they had tamed storm-wracked Golgen, the wentals now exerted a stranglehold on this planet.
Suddenly hydrogue warglobes boiled up all around him. Blue lightning lanced out to strike the wental-infused cloud decks. Jess careened away from one spinning warglobe, narrowly escaping a crackling bolt of energy. With a sharp maneuver, he dodged again, then plunged deeper.
He barely avoided ramming a warglobe that emerged from a thundercloud; the hydrogue did not see him, did not open fire, apparently too preoccupied fighting its elusive enemies. As he streaked past, Jess noted that the warglobe's polished diamond exterior was becoming pitted, eaten away as if by acid. The wental moisture was corrosive to them.
Guiding the small ship, Jess dodged, sweeping ever downward. Ten more warglobes rocketed up from the depths and into the fray. The deep-core aliens must have a significant base or city somewhere far below. Jess had to find it, had to find his sister.
The dense atmosphere pressed in around his vessel's shell like a spherical vise, trying to crush it, but the wentals wouldn't allow that. Jess wouldn't allow that. With part of his mind connected to the soul of the ship, he followed the fading wakes of the drogue vessels back to their origin.
The air thickened to a heavy soup around him. Water drops split from the walls of his spherical vessel like splatters of molten metal from a burning meteor. As each energy-charged raindrop flew into the air, new wentals seeded the clouds and spread like a poison.
Exhilaration rushed like a white torrent through him. With sheer force of will, Jess maintained the integrity of his vessel even as the wental water sweated away. Parts of the mother-of-pearl framework sloughed off as the support ribs pulled together to hold the ever-diminishing ball of water. Infused with the wentals, he could survive out in the hostile environment, just as he could live in the open vacuum of space. But he had to keep some reserve to protect his sister and the others.
As organic mists of long-chain aerosols blurred his vision, Jess identified the awesome hydrogue citysphere: a cluster of geometric domes and interlinked enclosures, structures impossible to comprehend. From here, on this very planet, the hydrogues had launched warglobes to attack helpless humans . . . all those ruined Roamer skymines . . . Ross's Blue Sky Mine.
Focusing the intensity