The worker moved to one side and tried to stride past her. Margaret interposed herself again, and gave its hard head carapace a sharp smack. “Listen to me!” She repeated her demands in the Klikiss language and supplemented her words by scrawling the main ideas in equation symbols in the trampled dirt.
“Food. For my hive.” She pointed to the stockade. “Food!”
Grudgingly, it seemed, the breedex sent instantaneous commands. Four workers emerged from one of the thick-walled storage vaults, carrying rough containers filled with mealy Klikiss cuisine. They delivered the containers to the walled-in town.
Davlin was impressed. “All right. Now let’s work on a water-delivery system.”
30 SIRIX
Klikiss warriors from Llaro streamed through the Wollamor transportal and crashed into the defensive line of Soldier compies. The compies were powerful fighters with tough body armor and reaction speeds far superior to those of any mere human. But they were no match for the vengeful warrior breed of insects.
Sirix retreated as fast as his artificial body could move, before it was too late. Klikiss were coming through the transportal, right here, and his main force of EDF ships was still in orbit. Sirix needed to get to his Juggernaut and use that firepower to eradicate the hateful creators all over again. He sent a burst to his two compies. “Get aboard the nearest troop transport.”
QT, his green-and-chrome skin filthy from the scuffle, said, “Would not one of the Mantas be a safer and more defensible refuge?”
He had already dismissed the possibility. “Such bulky ships will take too long to lift off. Their larger systems and their sheer mass will slow them down.” The two compies dutifully hurried to one of the shuttles on Wollamor’s blackened spaceport field. Other robots scuttled to individual Remoras and streaked off into the sky to save themselves.
Sirix could see great numbers of Klikiss warriors sweeping around to flank the landed cruisers, already marking the Mantas as targets. He gambled that the detestable creatures would not bother with the lesser ships—yet. Even so, the two vital cruisers would be lost! And more irreplaceable black robots.
He sent a wide-band signal commanding his comrades to retreat. Some of the black robots split open their carapaces, spread their wings, and flew—only to be shot down by warriors using bell-mouthed energy dischargers. The weapons were unlike any design Sirix had seen the prior incarnation of the Klikiss use. With wing panels burned and body cores shattered, the robots tumbled out of the sky.
As Sirix had feared, the two landed Mantas were under a full-blown attack. He considered them already lost. And he still didn’t understand why—how!—the Klikiss had returned.
In a desperate attempt to hold the line, Soldier compies threw themselves upon the Klikiss warriors. The compies cracked enemy exoskeletons and spilled insect bodily fluids. Dead insects piled up, yet more continued to stream through the transportal. This was not just a foray party, but a complete subhive army.
As if uprooting weeds, the insect warriors discarded the Soldier compies. They plucked artificial arms and legs from metal torsos, ripped the compies’ heads off, or simply smashed them aside. But the hundreds of military robots sacrificed so far had gained Sirix enough time to reach the troop transport. They had served their purpose.
PD and QT were already aboard, as were five other black robots. One was in the cockpit, firing up the engines.
Most of the retreating robots, however, headed automatically to the Mantas on the mistaken assumption that the large warships could protect them. Sirix could not save them from such a miscalculation. The engines would need at least fifteen more minutes before the cruisers could lift off. One of the Mantas began blasting away from any jazer port at a suitable angle to hit the Klikiss on the ground. Deadly beams ripped through the warriors, as well as any Soldier compies that happened to be in the way.
More Klikiss came through the transportal, different breeds: builders, harvesters, diggers. The breedex had already assumed victory on Wollamor.
One of the Mantas began to heave itself from the landing field but crashed as its engines were destroyed by concentrated fire from the bell-mouthed energy dischargers. Groups of Klikiss warriors rushed scientist and engineer breeds through gaps they had torn in the Manta’s hull, hurrying them aboard to take over or sabotage the Manta. Even fighting beside the remaining Soldier compies, those robots would not be strong enough. Sirix wrote them all off.
During the battle at Earth, he had lost many of his fellow robots, but he had never expected to fight the Klikiss. If he could get to orbit, though, and take refuge aboard his Juggernaut, he could eliminate the transportal and cut the insect warriors off from Wollamor.
Sirix sealed the troop transport and hurried to the cockpit. Any other black robots would have to find their own ways to escape. As they lifted away from the battlefield, he jacked into the communications systems and sent a signal burst to his ships in orbit. He called them down to stem the tide of Klikiss invaders. “We are leaving Wollamor. Destroy it. Destroy it all.”
As the transport rose higher, Sirix saw more insect warriors march through the transportal, fanning out over their new territory. They sifted through the wreckage of Soldier compies and black robots, as if to make sure the mayhem had been thorough.
The second grounded Manta exploded, flinging shrapnel across the field. More losses to tally.
Finally, descending under full thrust so that atmospheric friction heated their prows to a scarlet glow, the EDF ships soared down. From high above, jazers like hot blades chopped apart the Klikiss swarm. The insect creatures could not stand against this.
Though many weapons had been depleted during the battle at Earth, the Mantas dropped bombs, then six precision nuclear warheads. The Wollamor colony, all the invading members of the Klikiss subhive, and the transportal itself vanished in a flash. Wollamor was no longer a desirable location. Sirix was already revising and formulating his next step.
His shuttle climbed out of the atmosphere into the emptiness where his fleet offered the safety he needed. Smaller vessels rendezvoused with the remainder of the ships in space. Remoras carrying black robot survivors circled the main group of vessels in planetary orbit. Once again, Sirix found himself needing to reassess his strength, to regroup. More of his robots had been annihilated. What should have been a simple conquest of the Spiral Arm had turned against them.
The return of the Klikiss changed everything, and this could not have been an accidental encounter. The creator race was hunting down their robots.
Taking his fleet out of the Wollamor system, Sirix decided to go immediately to the burgeoning base on Maratha. There, he would gather reinforcements of black robots and powerful war vessels. Then they could stand against the Klikiss and the humans.
31 CHAIRMAN BASIL WENCESLAS
The spy flybys returned to the Hansa with a wealth of fascinating information. Lieutenant Commander Conrad Brindle had told him what to expect. Even so, Basil was surprised. Alone in his penthouse office, the Chairman studied the images with all the intensity of a chess master in the middle of a championship match. “Peter, Peter, Peter—did you learn nothing from what I taught you?”
He switched from one snapshot to the next, analyzing the traffic patterns and the spacecraft arrayed around Theroc. The flyby ships had streaked through the system, captured high-res images, and raced away before the Theron perimeter defenses could spot them. Basil traced pathways along the screen, running a categorization routine.
A lesser man might have taken time off, relieving the pressure of leadership by retreating for a few hours to talk with friends or play a game, but Chairman Wenceslas did not like games. Games were petty diversions for people who had nothing more interesting to do, killing time rather than accomplishing something. Basil always had something more interesting to do. His “game” was politics, and his playing board was the Spiral Arm. Now he faced the highest-stakes match in human history: the Hansa Chairman versus the rebel King. A talent
ed politician and well-educated leader with decades of experience against a street kid who had been given new clothes and a bit of training. Unlike the fairy tale of David and Goliath, this time Goliath would not lose.
On the spy image, Theroc’s forested continents appeared green and amazingly recovered from the hydrogue attacks. Most of the ships he saw were mere cargo carriers, ramshackle trading vessels that looked as if someone had assembled them from a boxed kit missing a few pieces. Roamers, of course. Some vessels still had the gall to carry Hansa markings. He repeated the images from both flybys, but saw nothing that presented any sort of military threat. Yes, only a month had passed, and with much turmoil. Even so . . .
“Peter, you can’t be that stupid.”
General Lanyan had already departed with the Jupiter to consolidate the Colonization Initiative planets as a first step toward reuniting the Hansa. Basil’s current goal was to identify the weakest—and potentially most vital—Hansa colonies that had boldly, foolishly, declared their independence.
But Theroc lay so exposed! The Chairman had never expected such an opportunity to present itself. A single concerted strike could decapitate the Confederation. He sat back from his screen and sipped from a glass of iced lemon water, his preferred drink now that he had given up cardamom coffee.
Seize the opportunity. This would solve all the Hansa’s problems and win the match in one breathtaking move.
He found Admiral Willis working with Cain in the EDF’s subsidiary admin office in the Hansa pyramid. She and the deputy stood among cheerful poster-projections of brave soldiers and spiked-diamond warglobes. “Damn, if this doesn’t get cheery recruits to sign up for the EDF, I don’t know what will,” Willis said with a snort. “Maybe we should just promise them free beer, while we’re at it.”
Cain was more detached. “Remember, we are trying to scrounge volunteers from the most stubborn segment of our population—those who didn’t step forward when our situation was most dire. We have to appeal to them somehow.”
“We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.” On the poster Willis tapped the freckled face of a new corporal who seemed immensely satisfied with his job. “This kid looks like he’s thinking EDF rations are the most delicious thing he’s tasted in his life.”
Basil interrupted them, his voice harsh. “We should not need to lure soldiers with promises and prizes. They should see our need, feel their obligation, and do what is right.”
Willis rolled her eyes. “Fat chance of that happening.”
Basil could not keep the resignation out of his voice. “I’m afraid you’re right.” He closed the door so that no one could overhear them. “Admiral, you wanted something significant to do?”
“Well, writing up rah-rah ads and monitoring a bunch of disorganized shipyards is not entirely up to the level of my capabilities.”
Basil frowned at her bitter tone. After Lanyan had left for Rheindic Co in her Juggernaut, Willis had done a solid job managing the shipyards, and—for all her grousing—he expected this recruitment drive to be reasonably successful, as well. But she could do so much more, if her heart was in the right place.
“I want you to save the Hansa, Admiral. I’ve come up with a mission that can end the rebellion, unify the human race, and put us on a direct road to strength and prosperity.”
Willis’s lips quirked in a smile. “That sounds significant enough.”
Cain rotated the projections of the template posters to the opposite side of the display table. The one in front had giant, bold letters positioned above an orbital image of Earth. EDF: NOW. The chain-of-stars logo arced over the black backdrop, while a small, blackened piece of space wreckage from an unidentifiable ship hung ominously in the foreground.
Basil stepped to the display table, inserted his encrypted datapak, and called up in large-scale format the succession of images from the spy flybys. Willis saw the implications immediately. “You want me to attack Theroc. You want me to overthrow the new Confederation.”
“I want you to bring it under control,” Basil corrected. “And arrest Peter. We’ll neutralize him and set an acceptable King back in place. That’ll be the end of all this nonsense.”
Cain kept his face stony. “Very dangerous, Mr. Chairman. Politically speaking, I mean.”
“If you want me to do this, it would be a damned good time to have my Juggernaut back,” Willis added.
“Nonsense. Look at the screen. Four or five Mantas should certainly be enough for a job like this.”
After a brisk knock at the door, Captain McCammon entered the recruiting office, looking apologetic. “You summoned me, Mr. Chairman?” His crimson beret sat at the perfect angle on his pale hair; his colorful uniform was immaculate. Basil had never stopped wondering how McCammon, with his flawless service record, could have botched everything so badly by letting Peter, Estarra, and Daniel get away.
As Willis replayed the images of the trader ships circling Theroc, the Chairman said, “Captain McCammon, we are about to engage in a dramatic operation. I require your assurance that the intractable green priest remains under your control and that he will not have a chance either to observe our preparations or communicate his suspicions through the treeling.”
McCammon’s brow furrowed. “Mr. Chairman, we’ve kept Nahton securely under house arrest, as you requested. His tree is over in the Royal Wing of the palace. It is not feasible that he could see or communicate any information whatsoever.”
Cain turned to the captain of the royal guard. “The Chairman intends to send an EDF battle group to conquer Theroc and seize King Peter. Obviously, we can’t let any green priest know this.”
Basil glared at the deputy. Cain simply didn’t understand the compartmentalization of power. “Captain McCammon did not require so much information.”
The guard captain reacted with surprise. “Theroc has always been independent, Mr. Chairman. To attack it using the Earth Defense Forces and kidnap the King—”
Basil cut him off. “If you hadn’t let Peter escape in the first place, we wouldn’t have this problem.” He touched his forefinger to his lips. “In fact, remind me why the royal guard still exists. Whom are you guarding, now that we have no King?”
“He’s babysitting a green priest, apparently,” Willis said, “just like I was babysitting shipyards.”
McCammon seemed very pale. “Might I inquire, Mr. Chairman, when we can expect to have a new King? The Hansa needs one.”
Basil suppressed a smile, noting that none of the recruitment ads mentioned anything about “fighting for the King.” “My alternative candidate has been in training for months now, since long before Peter left, but I’m being very cautious. We’ve made mistakes before.” Once Peter found out who the candidate was, he would go absolutely ballistic! “We’ve got important business to complete. This is no time to break in a mere trainee.” Basil gazed across the desktop at the projections and smiled. “If Admiral Willis is successful, we’ll have all the breathing room we need.”
He pointed to the EDF:NOW poster. “I like this one.”
32 TASIA TAMBLYN
Armed with the King’s instructions and blessing, Tasia and Robb were delivered to the shipyards at Osquivel by Denn Peroni himself.
“My dad would be proud of me for landing such a high position in the military,” Robb said. “If only it wasn’t the wrong military . . .”
“He’ll come around when he sees what’s happening on Earth,” Tasia answered.
“My father? He’s served in the EDF all his life.”
The first sight of the ringed gas planet brought up many disturbing memories for both of them. Robb had been captured by the hydrogues down in those clouds. Tasia had sent her devoted compy EA here to warn the Kellum shipyards about the impending arrival of the EDF. And she’d faced a horrific battle with the hydrogues here at Osquivel. Now that Roamer families were coming out of hiding, the rings were dotted with spacedocks and smelting operations.
“Looks like we’ve g
ot a lot of work to do here, Brindle,” she said. “Whip these people into shape, redesign ships to include armaments, and get a Confederation militia working before the Hansa can come after Theroc.”
Denn smiled at the pair as he docked his Dogged Persistence at the main admin asteroid. “You’ll have everything you need from me. Talk to anybody you like, requisition all necessary materials. Even enlist Kotto Okiah—he’s here and ready to help.”
Robb watched the seeming chaos of industrial structures drifting around in the rings, metal frameworks, glowing heat sinks, the sparkle of fabrication exhausts. “How are we ever going to pull it together?”
“Shizz, that’s easy. We don’t have to deal with Eddy bureaucracy.”
Tasia and Robb were granted temporary housing—“One room. We’ll share. Thank you.” Fresh off the trading ship, they settled into cramped quarters that were drilled out of a small floating rock.
Now that they were finally alone, their biggest shift was dealing with the changes in their relationship. After a quick and unimpressed glance through the thick glass of a single thirty-centimeter-wide window in their quarters, Tasia said, “You’re stuck with me, Brindle. Any regrets?”
During their imprisonment by the drogues, they’d been engrossed in their own survival. After being rescued, they had learned of the dramatic political shift, clashed with Robb’s father, changed allegiances. Now, at last, there was time to breathe, and to realize what they had done. Much as they might fantasize about it, Robb and Tasia couldn’t simply pick up from where they had been years ago. Too much had changed.
He answered honestly. “Of course I’ve got a few regrets. I hardly know where I am anymore, or where I’ll be tomorrow.”
“You’re feeling like a true Roamer then. Want to go back to Earth, after all, and make up with your parents?”
“And leave you?”
“Well, don’t expect me to go back to the Hansa!”
“Then I’m staying here. Guiding Stars and all that.”
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