Metal Swarm

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “I’ll give them a place to go.” Davlin looked at each of their faces. “Start asking questions, figure out who wants to go, find resourceful people, because out there we’ll be scraping out an even tougher existence than they’ll be leaving behind.”

  Even before the Klikiss had arrived, Davlin had ranged far afield, exploring the countryside, noting interesting landmarks and anything that might prove useful. Now he had a good idea of where he wanted to go for a temporary staging area—a line of sandstone bluffs pocked with caves that the Klikiss would not be inclined to find. Places where refugees could defend themselves . . .

  Mayor Ruis was smiling. “You’ve been planning this.”

  “Yes, and I intend to leave.”

  Astonishment rippled around the room. Clarin said, “Davlin, you’re one of the smartest people we have. If you go—”

  “I need to find and set up a new hideout, a base we can use if things get too bad. Once you get a group of people, tell them to head east and keep to cover as much as they can. After a day or two of hard walking, they’ll come to some sandstone cliffs riddled with caves. That’s where I’ll be.”

  He assessed them again. “Now I have an important question to ask: One of the Remoras in the hangar has been disassembled. It needs to be put back together and made flightworthy. Does anyone have aeronautical knowledge, spacecraft design, engineering?”

  Clarin chuckled. “We’re Roamers! Most of us could take that thing apart and put it back together blindfolded—maybe even make it run better while we were at it.”

  Davlin could not hide his relief. “Then several of you should slip into the hangar and get to work. The Klikiss will destroy it sooner or later. You’ll want to be ready.”

  “Then . . . are you just going to walk out of here?” Ruis asked.

  “Not walk. I’m going to fly. I’m taking the other Remora.”

  In the dead of night, he climbed into the cockpit of the functional craft, activating the systems, looking at the status grid. With a starry field overhead and one small moon illuminating the landscape ahead, he powered up the Remora’s engines. While the breedex watched its hive, with the humans kept rounded up and helpless, Davlin flew out of the hangar.

  Before the Klikiss could investigate, he streaked away, hoping that the bugs couldn’t, or wouldn’t, track him. The other colonists looked to him for answers, and he intended to be worthy of their trust. He had to offer them a safe haven.

  38 ANTON COLICOS

  Hordes of black robots glistened in the slanted sunlight, though fire and smoke from the warliners’ bombardment blurred the sky. In the battle on the ground, Anton raced across freshly cratered terrain, trying to keep up with Yazra’h in the belief that she would save him. Judging by the look of bloodthirsty glee on her face, though, she intended to throw herself into the thickest part of battle, and maybe Anton should run in the other direction after all.

  Even after Adar Zan’nh’s thorough aerial attack, black robots continued to boil out of underground warrens. Anton would have preferred a few more days of aerial strikes with the Solar Navy’s weapons—at a safe distance. He tried to stay close to Vao’sh.

  Wielding a long staff tipped with an explosive sonic-discharger bulb, Yazra’h shouted and threw herself against one of the towering machines. When she struck the robot, it was as if it had been hit with Thor’s hammer. With a thunderous boom, the black machine crumpled to the ground, its internal circuits crushed.

  “I told you this would be glorious, Rememberer Anton!” she called over her shoulder, then led the way into the debris-strewn streets of what had been Secda. “Follow and observe.”

  In a show of confidence, Yazra’h had given Anton a projectile launcher that shot metal spikes as long and thick as his forefinger at supersonic speeds. Vao’sh carried an electronic scrambler, though he didn’t seem to know how to use it. One of the black robots flew overhead cradling an angular device, presumably a weapon, and Anton lifted his launcher. He fired one of the metal spikes and somehow, perhaps by accident, the supersonic projectile struck the robot and shattered its exoskeleton like a windshield struck by a heavy rock.

  “Excellent, Rememberer Anton!” Vao’sh sounded somewhat nervous. “I will include that in my retelling of this tale.”

  Anton helped the old rememberer with the electronic scrambler. “Thank you, Vao’sh—now do something that you can brag about yourself.” He helped the old historian blast two robots that came chittering at them.

  An alarm signal crackled from the landing party’s communicators. Adar Zan’nh’s voice was crisp and startling. “A Klikiss fleet has returned and they intend to attack. Prepare yourselves for additional ships.”

  Yazra’h tapped her earpiece as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “Klikiss? Do you mean more robots?”

  “No—the original Klikiss. Stay away from them. They have also come to destroy the robots.”

  Anton looked up to the sky. “I thought the Klikiss were extinct.”

  “Alas, once again the truth as recorded in the Saga of Seven Suns is . . . somewhat inaccurate,” Vao’sh said.

  Before Anton could get his mind around what the Adar had said, a flurry of ships dropped through the sky, hundreds of small identical vessels. A meteor storm of geometric dropships struck the ground, each one opening like a metallic seedpod as soon as it landed. Insectile creatures climbed out, looking like a paranoid sculptor’s approximation of the Klikiss robots. Just as compies had been designed by humans to have familiar bodily characteristics, so too the Klikiss race had built their robots to resemble themselves.

  Warriors swarmed out of the dropships in sacrificial numbers, advancing into the remnants of Secda. Seeing the return of the dead race, the black robots went into a frenzy, as if someone had poured gasoline into a hill of fire ants. The Klikiss hurled themselves upon the robots and tore them into scrap metal.

  “Talk about a grudge match,” Anton said.

  The remaining robots fought back vigorously, turning their violence against the Klikiss rather than the Ildirans. Anton fired his projectile gun several more times, shattering three enemy robots and saving the lives of Klikiss fighters, but the insect creatures were fixated entirely on the robots and took no notice. Though hundreds of Klikiss warriors were destroyed in the battle, they fought with wild abandon.

  Within an hour, all of the remaining black robots had been eradicated.

  The Adar summoned Yazra’h’s ground team back to the warliners. Fifty Ildiran soldiers had perished in the process of destroying nearly ten times that many black robots. Before reboarding the troop cutters, Yazra’h glanced at the smoldering ruins of Secda, the smashed and dripping exoskeletons of the Klikiss, the black debris of their robots. “Remember this, Anton Colicos. Remember the details, that you may tell the story in all of its grandeur.”

  They flew back to the warliners in orbit. As soon as they returned to the command nucleus, sweaty and grimy, Anton sensed the tension there aboard the ship. Adar Zan’nh faced the screen on which a large Klikiss warrior spoke through a translation protocol. All seven Ildiran warliners faced off against the clusters of interlocking Klikiss ships that reassembled like pieces of a mosaic into a large, formless swarmship.

  “We reclaim our worlds,” the Klikiss representative said. “We come to destroy our robots. We travel through transportals to inhabit worlds abandoned in our last Swarming.”

  “We fight the black robots as well.” Zan’nh kept his voice firm but calm. “You saw that here.”

  The Klikiss was not impressed. “Sharing an enemy does not mean shared goals. We will have our worlds back. All of them.”

  “Maratha was never a Klikiss planet. Maratha was part of the Ildiran Empire. We have assisted you in eradicating the robot infestation here. We are grateful for your efforts in the fight, but this planet is not yours to reclaim.”

  The Klikiss remained silent. Zan’nh stared at the screen without flinching.

  Anton thought of something new that
made him shudder. If the Klikiss were still alive and reclaiming their old planets, where had they come from? Rheindic Co was an abandoned Klikiss world. His father had been killed there and his mother had vanished, perhaps through the transportal. Had she blundered into the reawakening Klikiss race? He wished he knew what had happened to her. He wished he knew what was going to happen to him.

  Finally the Klikiss on the screen spoke again. “We have other planets. This world was not a Klikiss world.” The rest of the interlocking insect ships returned from the surface and joined the huge cluster vessel. Without sending another transmission, the alien swarmship departed.

  Anton let out a long sigh of relief. He still could not read all Ildiran emotions, but everyone here seemed rattled.

  “An unexpected turn of events,” Rememberer Vao’sh said.

  Anton nodded. “Or, as we say in an Earth story, the plot thickens.”

  39 KOLKER

  In front of the Prism Palace, seven streams of water came together and poured in a cascade down a wide gullet, gushing into chambers beneath the Prism Palace, from which they were piped back out into canals.

  Kolker found Osira’h and her siblings there near the edge of the flow. At the gurgling convergence, Muree’n, the youngest though not smallest of the children, fearlessly leaned over the wide, watery mouth, dropped stones in, and watched them disappear into the misty depths.

  Osira’h chatted with her brothers and sisters. “These streams make seven underground waterfalls. Underneath the Palace, you can walk around the pool, even follow the streams as they flow out through the bottom of the hill.”

  As a green priest, Kolker had been fascinated by the potential in these five half-breed children. He knew they shared a bond that few others could comprehend, stronger than either Ildirans and their thism or green priests and their telink. Did that give them a key to what he wanted to know?

  Several days earlier, he had gone to the rooftop greenhouse, surprised to find the five of them, led by Osira’h, playing around the single treeling. Since these children did not have access to telink, Kolker could think of no reason for them to hover around the small worldtree.

  But as he surreptitiously observed them, it became clear that these children were not playing. They were attempting something, joining hands, concentrating, almost praying. So Kolker had watched and was excited to see them make some kind of progress, a connection beyond telink.

  Since the lens kithmen had given him no help, he wondered if these children could offer insight. They had to know he was watching.

  Now, in spite of the background roar of the water, Osira’h sensed Kolker’s approach. “You’re a green priest. We’re going to the treeling. Would you like to come?”

  Kolker couldn’t have asked for more. “I would like to understand. I came to talk with you because no one else can answer my questions—not the green priests, nor the worldtrees, nor your lens kithmen.” He held up the crystalline medallion that Tery’l had given him. “I’ve been using this to search for the Lightsource, but I haven’t found it yet. I’m trying to do what the lens kithmen can do, but I’m missing something.” The spray from the gurgling water created a refreshing mist that lingered around the circular well. Rainbows reflected from the droplets. “I have no place else to turn.”

  “But we’re just children,” said Tamo’l in a small voice. Uninterested in the discussion, Muree’n dropped more stones into the rushing water.

  “What does he need to know?” said Gale’nh, as if Kolker weren’t there.

  The man wasn’t sure how to explain himself. “You are both human and Ildiran, the children of a green priest and also connected to the thism. I have telink, but I sense something more among Ildirans, especially in you.”

  Osira’h grinned. “You noticed. We aren’t like the others.”

  “You communicated with the hydrogues, tapped into that alien mind. You also linked with your mother to share memories. But I don’t understand how it all fits together.”

  “You will understand, because you want to. The lens kithmen don’t want to. Even my mother—our mother—is scarred in her mind. One day we’ll show her.” Osira’h’s small hand reached out and took his. “Come with us.”

  “We get stronger each time we do it,” Rod’h added.

  On the open rooftop, Osira’h looked at Kolker with her large, round eyes, and her downy hair fluttered in the breeze. “Don’t just watch. Try to feel what happens.” She and the other children bent down next to the treeling. “Now, just like we did it yesterday and the day before.” Her brothers and sisters joined hands, and their expressions synchronized, as if they were sharing the same thoughts.

  With one hand Osira’h touched the treeling. “Now you, Kolker. Open yourself through telink and see if you can find us.”

  He stroked the fronds while holding Tery’l’s medallion. Kolker stared at the dazzling light with his eyes and touched the worldforest with his mind. Unexpectedly, he found a new presence there: Osira’h, but more than Osira’h—a different set of thoughts, along with echoes of thism, he was sure.

  In a sense, the treeling was as much a symbol as the medallion was. The real connection was between thism and telink, soul-threads and worldforest. The very similarity was a pattern laid down throughout the universe. He had never seen how every person, animal, dust mote, and galaxy was connected.

  Osira’h, using her special bridging abilities on him in the same way she had when joining with the hydrogue minds, opened the way for Kolker, made him different. The lens medallion in his hands seemed to grow warm. The light burned brightly, both in his mind and in his eyes.

  Finally, in a way he could not verbalize, he comprehended. It all made sense to him, as if a switch had been thrown. The universe snapped into perfectly sharp focus. He had never imagined such color or such clarity. It was stunning!

  Better yet, he knew how to share it with others.

  40 SAREIN

  She arrived too late. The shooting was already over by the time she got to Estarra’s conservatory. When she saw the green priest, Sarein screamed.

  Red blood mixed with spilled potting soil on the floor of the greenhouse, and bright splashes of it stood out on Nahton’s emerald skin. His face still wore an expression of profound disbelief. With his last dying gesture, the green priest had reached out and managed to clutch a frond from the splintered tree. Was it for solace, to send a frantic message, or just reflex? She couldn’t tell if Nahton had succeeded in what he had wanted to do.

  Livid, McCammon shouted at the guards, but they didn’t acknowledge their captain’s reprimand. “I told you to stop. I gave you direct and explicit orders—”

  Basil came in, cool and analytical. He glanced around and nodded. “I see no problem here, Captain. These guards attempted to intervene, per their instructions.” He stepped closer to Nahton’s fallen body, not looking the slightest bit disturbed.

  McCammon paled, as if recognizing that something vital had been stripped from him.

  Sarein was shaking. She knew that Basil was to blame for this, but in her heart she felt the fault was her own. She had talked McCammon into this childish ploy to get Nahton to send a warning. If they were caught, she had expected a reprimand or, worse, a cold shoulder from Basil. But not outright murder. “Basil, Nahton was a green priest. He was a Theron citizen, an ambassador just like me.”

  “He was an enemy of the Terran Hanseatic League. His presence here confirms that. He was caught in the act. What these men did was for the benefit of everyone in the Spiral Arm.”

  “For the benefit of the Hansa, you mean.”

  “They are one and the same—and if you think otherwise, my dear Sarein, then I have greatly misjudged you.” Basil addressed the guards who still held their weapons. “Please tell me you got here in time.”

  The men looked away sheepishly. “Sorry, sir. The green priest was holding the treeling before we arrived. We don’t know what report he made.”

  A thunderstorm crossed
Basil’s face. “So King Peter and the Therons have been warned.” The news buoyed Sarein only slightly.

  Basil gave all of them a withering glare, then gazed down at Nahton’s body, as if the slain green priest had also disappointed him. “I despise it when simple instructions are not followed.” He tapped his fingers together, composed himself with a visible effort. “We can recover from this debacle. Admiral Willis’s Mantas are ready to depart in less than a week. There’s nothing Peter can possibly do in time—except write an eloquent surrender speech. And he’s going to need one.”

  Sarein could no longer control herself. “Basil, this isn’t right and you know it! He was a green priest.” But she knew nothing would change. “Do you realize that we’re completely blind? Earth has no way to communicate. Nahton could always have changed his mind, but now you’ve removed the possibility entirely. You’ve cut yourself off.”

  He whirled on her and said icily, “We were already cut off, and now so is everyone else.”

  A cleanup detail arrived, and orderlies moved to pick up the dead green priest. Sarein could only stare at the stain on the floor as the limp man was carried off. In normal times, Nahton should have been returned to Theroc for burial under a worldtree. In normal times, an aging green priest would allow himself to fall into the verdani mind and surrender his flesh as fertilizer for the forest. In normal times . . .

  Without saying another word, Basil motioned for the cleanup crew to carry on. Through narrowed eyes, McCammon studied his intractable men, who appeared satisfied with their actions. Sarein worried for him. If push came to shove, the Chairman could easily strip McCammon of his rank and replace him. Or simply make him disappear.

  In normal times . . . Sarein shook her head as she left the devastated conservatory. There was nothing left for her here. Nothing at all.