Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [151]
No amount of preparation could make them completely ready when the hydrogue attack finally came. And it was coming. Sullivan was sure of it.
In the last hours of darkness, unable to sleep, he stood on the chilly observation deck and looked down into the clouds. The air that penetrated the atmosphere-condensing field smelled strange tonight, with a crackle of static energy that prickled the fine hairs on his arms. He and the green priest made a habit of spending an hour or so together before sunrise, watching the distant lights of the Ildiran sky-harvesting city as it sought hydrogen-rich updrafts.
Kolker cradled his precious treeling, always wearing a preoccupied smile as he listened to a background conversation that no one else could hear. Sullivan didn’t mind; he felt no need to be talking all the time.
The cloud harvester had sent another ekti shipment back to the Hansa. Under his management, the facility was even more productive than the most optimistic projections. He had received congratulatory messages from King Peter and Chairman Wenceslas, and his wife Lydia had informed him that the extraordinary bonuses were going to put all the grandchildren through college.
Things were going well.
In the darkness, Sullivan saw an unexpected whirlpool form in the bottomless sea beneath the harvester’s trailing whisker sensors. Beside him, Kolker stared into the churning soupy mists as a knot of lightning skittered through the storm’s gaping mouth.
“I don’t like the look of this,” Sullivan said. In the expanse of clouds separating the Hansa facility and the Ildiran complex, more bursts of lightning erupted.
The door from the control deck behind them whisked open. Tabitha came running out, her face pale. “Sullivan! We’ve got major activity on the sensors—”
Directly below the observation deck, the thick clouds spread apart, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Tabitha skidded to a halt as all three of them caught their breath in awe. The green priest gripped his treeling, as if it were an anchor.
Electrical bolts traced lines from cloudbank to cloudbank, eerily silent except for muffled, delayed thunder from far below. Then, like legendary leviathans heaving themselves into open air, six enormous warglobes rose through the nightside ocean. Even from a distance, Sullivan could see sparks of blue-white power that crackled from the diamond hulls.
Tabitha could not tear her eyes from the looming diamond spheres that continued to ascend, growing larger every second. Sullivan grabbed her arm. “Snap out of it! They’re not coming for a social call, and we’ve got to save the crew!”
Running so fast that she nearly stumbled, Tabitha charged back into the control center. Loud alarms shrieked through the decks of the cloud harvester. Men and women off-shift staggered out of their cabins, bleary-eyed and half dressed, but they did not question what was happening. Sullivan had never played tricks on them with surprise drills; they knew this was the real thing.
Leaving the green priest out on the observation deck, chattering a desperate report to his treeling, Sullivan charged into the control center. Tabitha and three coworkers stood by display screens and a sectional diagram of the facility. Sirens and buzzers rattled the metal walls.
From the day of its deployment, Sullivan had understood that his cloud harvester was probably doomed. His crewmen scrambled to evacuate, and Sullivan was glad to see so many of them automatically following the procedures. Through the wide window, he watched more of the deadly warglobes emerge from the clouds. The deep-core aliens had no need to hurry.
“We’re screwed,” Tabitha said.
During drills, the crew usually took half an hour to complete the evacuation procedures, but with their lives really on the line, they might find an extra burst of speed. Sullivan prayed they would