Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [204]
The encounter vessel’s lower jets sputtered, and another plume burst out. Anjea was trying to activate the engines and get away. The prisoners shouted for her to hurry.
The Klikiss robots found the hatch mechanism. They tore at the controls and easily broke the seal, ripping open the heavy door and disengaging the plate from its solid hinges.
Hydrogue atmosphere pounded into the encounter chamber like a battering ram. Rising like ghosts made of molten silver, the hydrogues poured through the opening.
As the humans watched in horror, the aliens ejected first one half of the exoskeleton shell, then the other. Even if Anjea had managed to get back inside the protective skin before the Klikiss robots breached the hatch, she was now crushed and splattered into a biological jelly.
Robb fell to his knees inside their confinement chamber. The other prisoners groaned.
The Klikiss robots spent the next hour using their claws and metal tools to dismantle Robb’s encounter vessel plate by plate, until the components lay strewn in a pile of wreckage.
Chapter 103—DENN PERONI
Returning to Plumas with a cargo load of unusual Ildiran items for trade, Denn detoured past what was left of Hurricane Depot. Both he and Caleb Tamblyn wanted to see what a mess the Big Goose had made of things.
Two Roamer salvage ships were already combing through the wreckage in hopes of retrieving items of value. The salvage pilots—one from clan Hosaki, one from Sandoval—sent their best-guess orbital projections to help the Dogged Persistence make its way through the treacherous rubble of what had been a popular Roamer gathering point.
“Damn the Eddies!” Caleb muttered as he saw the blackened scar on one of the tide-locked planetoids. “There won’t be much left to salvage down there.”
Because the scattered clans were still assessing their situation, exchanging information was vital. Denn and Caleb told them about their surreptitious trade on Yreka and with the Ildiran Empire. The salvage pilots replied with news that somehow Jess Tamblyn had made the gas giant Golgen safe for skymining again. On the other hand, numerous clan merchants had been seized, and the Chan greenhouses had been hit. Intercepted media reports were full of lies and exaggerations that made Roamers out to be shiftless cowards.
Denn hunched over his controls. “How can anybody swallow that slag? After so many years of trade with us, even Hansa people should know better.”
The Sandoval pilot wasn’t so surprised. “In a time of war and rationing, folks have no choice but to accept whatever reports come their way. They don’t hear anything else.”
“Bad to worse,” Caleb grumbled. “Next they’re going to claim that clan heads steal babies and drink their blood in sinister ceremonies.”
Denn sighed. “At any other time I’d say you were being ridiculous.” He looked out at the rubble, saw glints of metal that had once been Hurricane Depot. “Any word about all the hostages they took from here? Or Rendezvous, or anyplace else?”
“Not a peep,” said the Hosaki salvage pilot. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they put them into labor camps and called them prisoners of war.”
“Bastards!” Caleb said.
Denn clenched his jaw. On a delivery to Earth’s Moon base last year, his own ship had been impounded on a bureaucratic pretext. He’d been left to cool his heels, trying to work through the red tape. Later, he learned that he’d been detained so that evidence could be planted to frame him for a supposed Roamer assassination plot against the King. But King Peter himself had uncovered the plan and used his own connections to free Denn and send him quietly on his way. Few Roamers trusted the Hansa, but at least Denn could credit something good to the young King.
“Let’s go,” Caleb said. “I’m anxious to get back to Plumas and get back to work. You’ll spend a few days with my brothers before you set off again?”
Denn shrugged. “Most