Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [195]
They descended to the construction site, while Sirix continued to transmit requests for information. On the ground dozens of robots clustered around a large containment structure. The power levels were throbbing.
DD shifted frequencies in his optical sensors and saw in infrared that the structure was blazing hot. The uncontrolled thermal output swelled visibly second by second. Finally the robots on the ground acknowledged Sirix’s insistent signals and transmitted a burst summary of what had happened.
DD intercepted and translated the message, swiftly concluding that there was no way to stop the runaway supercriticality of the reactor. Sirix reached the same conclusion and immediately shifted course. “I am aborting our landing. We must escape.”
For once, DD agreed with the black robot. Their angular ship accelerated away. According to the compy’s interpretation of the readings from the runaway reactor pile, less than a second remained—
With a sudden flash and a burst of energy, the containment structure vaporized. The shock front mowed down the Klikiss robots clustered around the reactor pile, flattening the large escape ships and disintegrating everything in its way.
The increasing shockwave rose much faster than Sirix’s ship. Accelerated protons tore through the robotic craft like a high-energy blizzard. DD anchored himself, knowing that the destructive pulse could not be stopped.
The nuclear blast slammed into them from behind. Structural girders smashed, plates buckled, and an explosion erupted from one of their own engines. In a blur of articulated arms, Sirix grappled with the controls, extending four more insect appendages to manipulate numerous systems.
Far below, the Jonah 12 base was a white-hot pool, an expanding bonfire that vaporized frozen hydrogen and methane, melting structures as it continued to spread outward in a vast crater.
Burning and damaged, the robot ship tumbled out of control, careening into empty space.
Chapter 98—JESS TAMBLYN
Hair damp and wavy, blue eyes bright, Jess stood outside on the surface of the ice moon. Even in the hard vacuum, an oily sheen of water covered his pearlescent garment; his skin tingled with ozone. Jess’s feet, hands, and face were bare, but the energy of his body kept his flesh warm and protected.
With senses enhanced by the water entities, he could see down through the thick sheet of ice as if it were no more than a distorted windowpane. He walked alone over the surface, past the cylindrical cermet wellheads, past the insulated outpost shacks and the lift shafts that led far beneath the ice sheet. He tried to remember. It had been so many years since his mother’s fatal accident...
Jess didn’t know how far she had gone, where the crack had swallowed her vehicle. He walked for more than a kilometer until he saw a wide silvery scar, a poorly healed gash through the frozen crust.
Long ago, Karla Tamblyn’s surface rover had fallen through ice and slush. She’d been unable to pry herself free, and once her vehicle began to sink, she was doomed. Slowed by the closing jaws of solidifying water, she had dropped deeper and deeper until the glacial ice enfolded her rover. She’d been able to transmit her goodbyes for almost two hours as her batteries gradually ran out and the cold closed in. When water cracked through the thick insulated windows, the submerged rover had flooded, and Karla had been overwhelmed, frozen solid—inaccessible for nineteen years. Locked away, imprisoned, with no Roamer funeral, no way for her family to see her one last time.
Now, though, her son had the ability to reach her.
Standing atop the refrozen crevasse, Jess clenched his hands and felt a ripple of wental energy course through him. He could do the impossible.
With his affinity for water itself, Jess shifted his thoughts and sank through the frozen lattice of ice. He had a target this time: the small wreck of a drowned surface rover. He descended