The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [244]
The ranks of Klikiss parted as the tiger-striped domates moved forward in a regimented march. Without pausing, they carried the dispersed breedex through the pulsing transportal.
As soon as the domates were away, the first ranks of warriors filed after them in a march that lasted more than an hour. Then came the workers, harvesters, excreters, scouts . . . one sub-breed after another, line after line in an awesome but orderly mass exodus from Llaro.
Margaret and Anton watched from their vantage. “Davlin is taking the seeds of the hive with him.”
The Klikiss flowed through the transportal in an endless stream, evacuating to an unidentified new world. The scientist sub-breeds remained beside the transportal, watching the passage of all the insects until the last yellow-shelled borers scuttled through.
Then the scientist creatures fiddled with the engraved circuitry and controls at the base of the trapezoidal frame. Satisfied, the Klikiss technicians plunged through the frame — all except one.
When the others were gone, the sole remaining Klikiss touched the transportal controls, and the stone doorway melted back into solidity, cutting off the passage to the other world. Sparks flew from the circuitry network, and parts of the coordinate tiles melted, permanently disabling the transportal.
His work finished, the Klikiss scientist died.
When she saw the dead scientist crumpled next to the opaque trapezoidal wall, Margaret was reminded of the lone Klikiss cadaver she and Louis had found inside the cliff city on Rheindic Co, also lying beside a transportal. Now she understood how the last remnants of the insect race had escaped from the black robots and the hydrogues.
And she understood what Davlin had done.
Margaret and Anton made their way down to the stone frame and looked at the vast and empty insect metropolis all around them. “The breedex picked a new planet, one that wasn’t marked on the normal coordinate tiles, so we’d never find them. Then the scientist sub-breeds destroyed the transportal to cover their tracks. I don’t expect even our best experts could figure out where the Klikiss have gone now.”
Anton nodded sadly. “It seems like a good ending to the hive song.”
His mother agreed. Davlin was gone, the Klikiss were gone, and she finally felt that her work was done.
* * *
172
Jess Tamblyn
Back at the ruins of Rendezvous, where the formerly inhabited asteroid facilities and artificial domes had once been strung together in a loose cluster, Jess gazed wistfully at the debris through his ship’s windowport. Dozens of Roamer craft flitted around, locking onto the largest pieces of the wrecked governmental complex and using their powerful thrusters to nudge the rubble back to a common gravitational center. Others used momentum cannons to fire rock pellets into space, gradually easing the asteroids into place.
“At one time, we could have used wental power to realign all of those pieces,” Jess pointed out. “Now I feel . . . at a loss.”
“Now we feel normal,” Cesca said. “We’re Roamers, and that’s good enough for me.”
Though they no longer had the presence of the water elementals inside them, the intimate mental touch had come to them one last time after they had left Ildira. The wentals are exhausted, but we survive. The verdani sacrificed much, but they survive, as well. Jess and Cesca had felt weary, but gratified by what they had accomplished. The hydrogues are contained within their gas giants, and the faeros within their suns. Chaos has been controlled, life still thrives, and balance has been achieved once again, at last.
“Yes, life thrives,” Cesca agreed with a cryptic smile, pressing a hand against her belly.
“Then we’ve won,” Jess said.
The wental voice was silent for some time. The war is over, and all factions have survived, it said. That is our victory. Then the voice was gone.
Jess and Cesca rode in a small Roamer ship that had been given to them, since they could no longer fashion a water-bubble craft