Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [152]
Chapter 74—JESS TAMBLYN
After guiding his water-and-pearl ship across the vast emptiness for several days, Jess approached Plumas, viewing the system through the liquid curves of his vessel. Vivid memories fueled an energy inside his heart that had nothing to do with the power of the wentals.
Home. It was a concept that even Roamers clung to.
Jess had grown up with his older brother and younger sister in the sheltered settlement under the frozen crust. He’d worked every day, learning the family water business, prepared to follow tradition. Plumas had a huge reservoir of liquid water and a shallow gravity well for easy transfer to Roamer ships. The demand would never diminish, and the Tamblyn clan’s Guiding Star seemed bright and clear and strong.
Who could have guessed that Jess’s family and their future would unravel like poorly stitched embroidery on a clan jumpsuit?
His mother had been killed on Plumas almost twenty years ago, her body forever frozen in a deep crevasse. The Tamblyn clan had moved forward, prospering and unified, until Ross and their father parted ways in a harsh falling-out, leaving Jess in the middle of so much friction. He should have done more to bring them together again. He’d waited for a good opportunity, assuming he would have time after tempers died down. No one had imagined that hydrogues existed, much less that they might rise up from the clouds to destroy Ross’s Blue Sky Mine.
Another few threads unraveling...
Jess had been there to comfort his father, but old Bram had died of grief. Then his sister had run off to join the Eddies and fight the hydrogues. These days, the EDF was attacking Roamer settlements instead. What was Tasia doing?
More and more frayed threads...
His four uncles ran the water mines, while Jess and his fourteen volunteer water bearers went about their vital mission, spreading the wentals to empty worlds, to the clouds of Golgen, to a spectacular living comet cruising across space. The elemental beings grew stronger and stronger, preparing for their ultimate conflict. Soon, the battle would be engaged.
Despite the flood of alien energy within him, Jess could not forget that he was still human. He still loved Cesca and longed to be with her. He wanted to know where his sister was, hoping she was still alive among the Eddies. He wanted to do something to help his people, his family. Otherwise, what did these wental powers benefit him?
The exotic spherical ship hovered above the glacial surface of the ice moon, and Plumas filled his view like a polished opal. Jess looked down at the wellheads and pumping stations surrounded by igloo-style hangars, large water-tanker ships for delivering supplies to settlements, and elevator passages that descended to the subcrustal settlement.
Staring through his ship’s filmy hull of contained water, Jess remembered every hillock, every block of ice down there. When they were younger, he and Ross had driven across the landscape in insulated rovers. The two brothers had been reckless in the low gravity, gaining too much speed, jumping narrow fissures, crunching vacuum-stretched icicles that oozed out of pressure joints in the crust. Even after so many years, the jittering tracks of their vehicles were still visible as sketch lines. Back then, carefree times had seemed the normal way of things.
Jess set his wental vessel down on the floor of a crater, coming to rest near a trio of large-bore wellheads. The water-mine workers would have sounded alarms down below. He was sure by now that his uncles would know what had happened to him. They must have heard of the speech he had given to the gathered clans at Rendezvous.
Rendezvous...which was now no more than drifting rubble, thanks to the brutality of the Earth Defense Forces. Should he not use his newfound abilities to make a difference for his people, as his water bearers had demanded? Imagine what would happen if he landed his exotic wental ship in front of the Whisper Palace on Earth. Would the Hansa Chairman