The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [97]
After a moment of hesitation he decided not to flee. Jess had said that the wentals meant no harm. Caleb stopped in his tracks and braced himself. He stopped sinking.
The ankle-deep slushy water around his boots ran up his suit, covered his legs, then his waist. He felt tingling energy pass directly through the fabric, but there was no fundamental physical change in his cells. The wentals sensed him here. Were they trying to understand him?
Slowly, Caleb began to walk away from the crater back toward his cramped escape pod. The wentals followed him. His boots left clear footprints in the slushy ice. As he took more plodding steps, he saw identical footprints spontaneously forming ahead of him, a trail of ghostly steps marking a path all the way to his pod.
So, the wentals knew who he was and where he had come from.
Picking up the pace in the low gravity, Caleb returned to his small simple home. Silvery lines of liquefied water shot through the ice, and the glowing lights became brighter.
“Are you trying to communicate? What do you want?” he shouted into his suit radio. “By the Guiding Star, can you at least give me a hint?”
Either the wentals couldn’t speak in a language he understood, or they couldn’t pick up radio transmissions . . . or they simply chose not to respond. He waited outside the escape pod for a long time, watching the light show, but little changed.
When he cycled back through the airlock into his shelter, he was astonished to discover that all of his power sources, including his system batteries, were now fully charged. His gas exchangers operated at full capacity; he had plenty of air, water, and power. And with what he had retrieved from the satellite, he even had a little extra food.
The wentals were consciously trying to keep him alive. Caleb decided that, for once, he wasn’t going to complain.
* * *
67
Tasia Tamblyn
Talking with Rlinda Kett had gotten her worked up again, and Tasia was ready to launch every ship available with every weapon installed. She had wanted to charge after the Klikiss as soon as she got back with the Llaro refugees, but the faeros crisis on Theroc — and more recently, General Lanyan’s stupid attack on the shipyards — had sidetracked everyone.
Nevertheless, she and Brindle had time to plan and prepare.
Admiral Willis joined them in the admin complex, where wallscreens reported the large number of vessels in spacedock and temporary repair facilities. After the surprise EDF strike here, Willis had declined to send her ships back into the Osquivel docks for a complete refit and reconditioning. “We can’t afford to have them out of service right now, considering what might drop in our laps at any moment.”
On the screen, Tasia spotted a fast space yacht entering the Osquivel system. Since it broadcast an appropriate Confederation ID signal, the ship triggered no alarms, but Tasia perked up when she saw the pilots listed as Patrick Fitzpatrick III and Zhett Kellum.
“I heard Fitzpatrick had gone over to your side,” Admiral Willis mused. “Our side, I mean. Caused quite a scandal, considering who his grandmother is. Deserted the EDF and went off to points unknown. It could be useful to hear what he’s got to say for himself.”
The three went to meet the Gypsy as it docked. Since Fitzpatrick had been her nemesis during their training days on the lunar EDF base, Tasia couldn’t wait to see the expression on his face. When the space yacht’s hatch opened and he and Zhett stepped out arm in arm, his eyes went wide. “Tamblyn — and Robb Brindle? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Though years had passed, it was hard for her to forget all the mistreatment Fitzpatrick had heaped on her, how he had bullied her and sneered at her Roamer heritage. “Don’t expect a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.”
He looked away sheepishly. “Yeah, I was an ass back