Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [37]
Karla raised her hands. Her dark hair thrashed in tentacles energized with static electricity. Ablaze with cold fire, she opened her mouth and spoke in a hollow voice. "Water flows where it wishes." Karla bent her fingers and clenched her fists. Power crackled through her skin, but her eyes were oddly blank. "Liquid has no form."
Dozens of the deep-sea nematodes swam forward as if they were the reanimated woman's foot soldiers. Their round mouths were studded with tiny diamondlike teeth for chewing through thick ice. Or people.
"Cannot propagate. Trapped . . . contained." Karla turned her ivory face toward the ceiling where the artificial suns shone down. Her voice boomed. "Water flows where it wishes."
She launched a shockwave. Invisible balls of lightning rippled through the air and hammered into the low ceiling. The inner surface of the jagged dome cracked, and ice-melt water began to flow down. "Chaos and randomness is the natural state. Order is offensive."
The force in her voice was enough to send them all reeling. A torrent of rain poured down around Karla. Large chunks of ice cracked from the ceiling and tumbled into the ocean. Waves surged around her, as if she were a typhoon incarnate. "Water flows where it wishes."
Karla's ice pedestal began to move toward the shore where the terrified humans stood. She brought destruction with her.
20
MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA'H
A Mage-Imperator was supposed to protect his people, but each deception made Jora'h damn his obligations more. How could even the leader of an Empire stand against beings powerful enough to smother whole stars? Jora'h felt as if he had stepped on a trapdoor and was now falling into an endless pit. How could he resist without bringing the destruction of his entire civilization? What choice did he have? Many times he had cursed his father and all the Mage-Imperators before him.
Three days ago, the warglobes had departed, yet their threat hung in the air like the long-fading note from the end of a musical composition. He would never forget the look of hurt, disappointment, and disdain Osira'h had given him when he'd capitulated to the alien emissary. But now that he knew the hydrogues could ransack her thoughts and cull whatever information they wanted, he had to make her believe that he was a failure. In truth, he might yet fail, but he did not want the enemy to know all the things he might plan against them.
Secretly, the Mage-Imperator knew there was one last chance, if he had the freedom to make the attempt. If his people did not let him down. The hydrogue emissary had warned that they would return soon to issue their abhorrent demands and force him to betray humanity. He must have another option by then.
But first, he would need to send Osira'h away, so she--and the hydrogues linked to her--could not see what he was doing.
He called his daughter to his private contemplation chambers. The girl stood straightbacked before him, exuding the same inexplicable power that had been strong enough to force the hydrogues to obey her. "You summoned me. If you require my service, then I am ready to help." The troubled girl seemed to hope that she'd underestimated her father.
Her eyes flicked to the prized Theron treeling that sat on a shelf, a gift from Queen Estarra of Earth. Every time Osira'h looked at it, Jora'h wondered if she felt the sort of calling that her mother did.
"And how would you help me?"
"By following your plan, Liege." It was not a question. She herself had done the impossible, and now she expected him to do the impossible as well. "You asked me to bring the hydrogues to Mijistra. Therefore, you must have a plan. You are the Mage-Imperator."
"I did what I had to do, Osira'h. Without some kind of appeasement, the hydrogues would have leveled our planet