The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [14]
Cesca followed him. “Unless we change the rules of engagement.”
A small crack opened up in the ground, and steam sighed out like the last gasp of another wental that had surrendered to its fate.
Ten thousand years ago the wentals and verdani had nearly been annihilated in the great war. Sorely beaten, the hydrogues were driven into their gas-giant planets, and the faeros took up residence in their stars. When hostilities had flared up again, the unresolved conflict triggered into full fury. But now the landscape of the Spiral Arm was quite different.
From his contact with the wentals, Jess knew that the faeros had nearly been defeated by the hydrogues until the fiery beings had changed their old chaotic tactics. The former Hyrillka Designate Rusa’h had caused that difference. He had fled into the fires of a nearby sun where the faeros consumed and joined with him, much as the wentals had with Jess and Cesca. As a living embodiment of the fiery creatures, Rusa’h had showed them new ways to fight, and they had overwhelmed the hydrogues at one battleground after another — and won. His guidance had made all the difference.
Jess stopped as these thoughts roiled through his head. When the wentals had been weak and few, they had saved him by permeating the tissues of his body, rescuing him from his exploding ship. Out of gratitude, Jess had led water bearers to disperse wental seedpools from planet to planet.
Now he and Cesca had an even greater challenge. Like Rusa’h, they had to take charge and guide the wentals in an effective fight. They had to show the watery elementals how to take aggressive action.
He turned to Cesca, and his eyes seemed to fill with steam as he looked at the blasted landscape. “It’s time for the wentals to be angry, time for them to become warriors — to fight in a way that is more than just defensive.”
Power surged through his bloodstream, and he felt an overwhelming urge to strike something. Jess wasn’t normally an angry man, but now with his hard fists, he struck the glassy eggshell surface and felt the baked barrier crack. He pounded again. Yes, he sensed something deeper here! The oceans of Charybdis had been blasted away, but there was always water, always life.
He struck a third time and broke through the crust. Water filled the hole he had made, liquid percolating from deep aquifers. The water was hot, near boiling. Steam drifted about — not putrid brimstone steam, but vaporized water. Wental water. More and more of it welled up, as if trying to break free.
Cesca thrust her hands into the thermal pool. Bubbling water spurted out of the hot spring and flowed across the baked ground. Another geyser blasted through the crust, where more wentals had awakened from the hot aquifers.
Cesca stood up and clenched both fists. “As we touch and spread these wentals, our just anger will charge them with fresh purpose. Together we will find new ways to fight back.”
Beside her, Jess felt the power sing through his body, assuring him that all of the wentals would awaken and follow them. “We have a new Guiding Star.”
* * *
6
Tasia Tamblyn
After escaping from the Klikiss on Llaro, the damaged ship limped back to the Roamer shipyards. Tasia refused to leave the piloting deck, afraid that if she let her attention waver, some other crisis would hit these beleaguered people.
“Almost there, Tamblyn,” Robb Brindle said from the copilot’s chair, afraid to relax unless she did. “Almost there.”
“You’ve been saying that for days.”
“And each time we’re closer to home, aren’t we?”
The ship had originally been sent to rescue Roamer detainees held in a small EDF