Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [221]
Near Earth, hundreds of warglobes had already been destroyed, but through the myriad forest eyes of his battleship, Beneto saw that many diamond globes still survived--enough to ruin Earth if they broke through the last line of defenses. And the remaining EDF ships seemed to be firing on each other.
The twenty green priest pilots saw their alien targets, instinctively agreed on where each would fly, and careened in amongst the fighting vessels. The huge flying trees dodged blasts from EDF jazers, plowed through clouds of shrapnel and shockwaves from exploded Ildiran warliners, and scraped past the sharp eggshell fragments of broken warglobes. Using the communications systems Solimar had implanted, Beneto transmitted their intentions to General Lanyan, but in the melee he did not think anyone was listening.
Upon seeing the treeships, the hydrogues recognized their mortal enemies. Warglobes abandoned the EDF vessels and spun in space to unleash wild gouts of withering icewaves and deadly blue lightning.
Fused into the treeship, Beneto felt something akin to pain as his outer bark scorched and branches were singed or frozen away. But he came close enough to wrap his thorny branches around the nearest warglobe in a galactic bear hug.
The diamond sphere fought back with the same weapon the deep-core aliens had used to annihilate the worldtree grove on Corvus Landing, where Beneto had died. He remembered the fear, the pain, the death--all those trees, all those colonists! His treeship felt the cold death of icewaves cauterizing several of his huge limbs, but he pulled his spiny branch arms tighter and tighter, squeezing until the diamond sphere cracked . . . and finally shattered.
Nineteen other verdani seedships engulfed warglobes as well, crushing them with insurmountable botanical strength.
Around them, the human EDF ships continued to fight each other. All Ildiran warliners but the flagship were already destroyed. And still several hundred hydrogue warglobes pressed toward Earth. Even twenty verdani battleships would not be enough to stop them from breaking through.
But still, they must try. Beneto and the other treeships launched toward the numerous warglobes. He stretched his thorny battleship arms again and embraced another diamond vessel, squeezing until it broke apart.
His determined comrades did the same.
130
ADAR ZAN'NH
The flagship of the Solar Navy hung useless in space. A nearby explosion had severely damaged their engines. The Adar's sensor-station operator doggedly repaired damaged control panels, pulling out fused circuit blocks, extracting spares from secondary systems that were no longer necessary. At last he got the tactical screens operating again so that Zan'nh could observe the scope of the continuing battle, even if his flagship could not participate.
They could do nothing but watch as the awesome tree battleships struck the warglobes. Zan'nh had never seen anything like them, could not imagine what could create such monstrous living vessels. So many forces had gathered to fight the hydrogues, but even the tremendous treeships could not block the hundreds of remaining warglobes. The hydrogues had sent an inexplicably large force against the EDF . . . or had the deep-core aliens intended to destroy the Solar Navy at the same time? The more he thought about it, the more he decided it must be true.
Through the thism, with his close connection to the Mage-Imperator, Zan'nh could already feel cold ripples, waves of deaths. Countless people were dying on Ildira--he felt the slaughter go through him like a spine-grating note. After the Solar Navy's turnabout here, the hydrogues must be brutally retaliating. They would have known of the betrayal instantly. He sensed that the Mage-Imperator still lived, but the Adar suspected the Prism Palace was under attack. Had the sixty watchdog spheres above Mijistra simply opened fire in retaliation, in punishment?
And he was trapped here, unable to move, unable to fight. The flagship's deck was tilted.