The Ashes of Worlds

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Goodbye, Basil.”

  Colonel Andez rushed up to meet him as soon as he disembarked. “Chairman Wenceslas, you’ve returned! There’s been a crisis while you were gone.”

  More than one, he thought. His body locked up, as if all his muscles had tightened to their breaking points. He felt a need to lash out at someone, and he turned as quickly as a viper. Andez gave him a smart salute, and he froze again, glad to see someone behaving as expected. “What crisis now?”

  She was visibly upset. “Did you give the order, Mr. Chairman? Did you authorize Deputy Cain to release Patrick Fitzpatrick and his wife from their holding cells? There’s no telling where those two are or what further sedition they might be spreading.”

  That surprised him. He had been so focused on Peter’s intractability, and then Sarein’s betrayal . . . but Cain, too? And Fitzpatrick on the loose? “What are you talking about?”

  “Deputy Cain freed them. He claimed he had the authority. He also released the hostage families of Admirals Diente, Pike, and San Luis — and now they’re denouncing you on all the newsnets! The deputy is nowhere to be found.”

  Basil could feel a flush creeping up his cheeks, but he clamped down on his temper. “Apparently, Deputy Cain and I have something to discuss. Find him. Bring him to my bunker.”

  Andez looked smugly satisfied. “Shall I send out search parties for Fitzpatrick as well? If we move quickly, we could possibly round up — ”

  “That is not for you to do anything about, Colonel Andez. Not my immediate priority.” He did not dare admit to yet another crack in his armor, a flaw in his own trusted inner circle. “I will take care of it. For now, escort me to my headquarters.” He needed to be away from the madness, somewhere he could think, where he could control every detail of his environment.

  “Yes, sir.” She led him briskly toward the projectile-proof vehicle in which she would transport him from the landing area. Even though she chose a route that avoided the worst of the demonstrations, Basil was shocked to see the sheer number of frightened fools demanding his resignation and the return of King Peter. People with too much time and too little mental acuity would follow any charismatic charlatan who promised to change their lives for the better.

  He turned away from the vehicle’s window, from the angry faces and shouting mouths, from the mob. He wished he had tens of thousands more troops under Andez’s control so he could round up every one of these demonstrators. But it was futile to continue cracking down. The stunnings, beatings, and arrests had only inflamed them further.

  Why did they blame him, when the problems were caused by people who didn’t listen to him? Did they think the Chairman could have negotiated with the flaming elementals, or the fanatical Ildiran Adar?

  Sarein and Cain should have known better, and yet they had deserted him, too. Apparently in killing McCammon he had executed the wrong traitor . . . or maybe he just hadn’t executed enough of them. Why were all those closest to him prone to weakness and betrayal? And Sarein . . . He saw a fringe of deep red around his vision.

  Goodbye, Basil.

  Yes, he very much wanted to go underground.

  Andez and four guards accompanied him through multilayered security checks into the headquarters building and to a lift that would plunge him down to his internal, windowless office deep beneath the Hansa pyramid.

  As soon as the elevator started its descent, though, security alarms began to ring. Andez touched the communications stud in her ear, listened. She visibly paled. Basil hated when other people knew more about what was going on than he did. “What’s happening?”

  “An invasion fleet just entered our solar system. Sensors have picked up eleven enormous vessels.”

  Basil leaned against the vibrating wall of the descending elevator, so that his knees wouldn’t buckle. “What sort of invasion fleet? From whom?” And, he wondered, exactly how big was “enormous”?

  The elevator came to a stop, and its doors hissed open. In the heavily reinforced command center, technicians rushed from station to station. The alarms were deafening. Screens displayed images from space.

  Andez touched the communication stud again and finally said in a husky voice, “It’s the Klikiss, sir. The Klikiss have come to Earth.”

  Basil pushed aside a technician and took his place at the primary display console. What the hell were the Klikiss doing here? Was this a belated response to General Lanyan’s botched attack on Pym? He tried to focus, dragging his mind from one thought to the next, as if each problem were a heavy stone he had to lift and discard.

  The eleven alien swarmships came closer, completely silent, absolutely terrifying.

  Basil’s diplomatic and administrative skills would presumably be useless against such creatures. Admiral Diente had proved that negotiation did not work, that the Klikiss did not understand human thoughts or expectations. They did not play by the same rules. They simply wished to eradicate anything in their way.

  And now they had come to Earth.

  He opened a channel, knowing that Peter was probably laughing at this turn of events. “General Brindle, prepare to stand in defense of Earth.”

  The older commander appeared as grim as a statue. “Fleet Admiral Willis has offered her assistance, and I intend to take her up on it.” Basil noted this wasn’t phrased as a request. Without waiting for his acknowledgment, the Goliath and the EDF ships formed a defensive line in space, their jazer banks powered up, their explosive projectiles loaded.

  A transmission came across all the common EDF bands, all private frequencies used by Hansa diplomats, all commercial channels — a buzzing voice filled with eerie, scraping tones.

  And it spoke in Trade Standard, needing no translation.

  “The breedex demands to see the Chairman of the Terran Hanseatic League. Basil Wenceslas must come aboard our swarmship. In person. Immediately.”

  136

  Sirix

  In the network of reconstruction frames orbiting above the Earth, Sirix was satisfied with the progress of the robot-specific ships, forty-two vessels of unorthodox design that had been assembled from the leftover components and raw materials the robots had scrounged. While Sirix’s ships looked like no more than unpressurized frameworks, they were essentially complete and could depart, or attack, at any time.

  In addition, his workers had nearly finished rebuilding fourteen more EDF ships. Once these vessels passed the ponderous human inspections, the Hansa would release thousands more new black robots . . . another major step forward for his plan. Chairman Wenceslas was so arrogant that he believed the robots could not deceive him again.

  Now, on the bridge of a newly repaired EDF Manta, Sirix waited for a human engineer to complete his tedious sign-off process. The inspector was a somewhat chubby man with a good-natured disposition, and he did his work at a maddeningly slow pace. He kept muttering to himself. “Gotta be careful. No sense in rushing. Can’t make mistakes.”

  And yet he did make mistakes, missing the extremely subtle modifications the robots had made in every one of the vessels.

  While he waited for the man to finish, Sirix fixed his crimson optical sensors on the shocking readings that were suddenly projected across the Manta’s long-range watchdog screens. Ships. Large ships.

  Klikiss swarmships.

  The clumsy human inspector took several moments to notice them. “What are those?” He jabbed a stubby finger toward the blips on the screen, as if Sirix wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

  The robot leader scanned through possibilities, assessing and rejecting options. He settled on the only possible alternative. “Those are swarmships,” Sirix said. “The Klikiss have come for us.”

  During his time aboard, the man had tried to be friendly to Sirix, chatting with him as if they were old comrades. “For you? What does that mean?”

  “It means my robots will require these battleships after all.” Sirix extended one of the long, articulated arms from his body core. This one had a se
rrated edge.

  “What — ”

  With a single sweep, Sirix severed the man’s head. It landed on the deck plates with a wet plop, rolled, then came to a stop.

  One other human worker stood close to the lift doors on the Manta’s bridge. He stared with wide eyes and turned to run. Two other black robots intercepted him and made quick work of tearing the man apart. At any other time Sirix would have relished the feeling of his hard pincers cutting through soft flesh. Now, his only concern was with the oncoming swarmships. Eleven of them, a larger Klikiss force than anything Sirix had ever encountered.

  The breedex sent a blaring signal across all channels, asking for Chairman Wenceslas by name, and suddenly, Sirix realized that he was the one who had been betrayed. While pretending to form a naïve partnership with the black robots, the Chairman had somehow been in contact with the insect race. He must have summoned the breedex here to exterminate them.

  Sirix transmitted an immediate command on a coded frequency to all of his black robots. “Power up our ships. Prepare to seize every EDF vessel that is functional. Kill all humans aboard, quickly and quietly if possible, so as not to trigger any immediate retaliation. Our highest priority is to depart before the Klikiss find us here.”

  137

  Margaret Colicos

  Margaret knew she was the only one with any hope of understanding the Klikiss. “I need to contact Chairman Wenceslas. He has no idea what he’s up against.”

  Anton let out a sarcastic snort. “He rarely does.” She had moved into Anton’s small apartment, and they had spent a fine few days together, catching up, recovering.

  But now the enormous insect vessels had arrived with enough firepower to eliminate what remained of the Earth Defense Forces and all the Confederation ships. And after the gigantic fissioning that had been about to occur on Llaro, Margaret doubted anything remained of Davlin Lotze inside that great, teeming hive mind. And yet the oncoming swarmships had known to ask specifically for Chairman Wenceslas. That gave her a flicker of hope. The One Breedex retained some memories . . . but memories could be turned against the human race, as well.

  She also recalled that Davlin Lotze had abandoned the Hansa and gone to live in obscurity on Llaro. Davlin had severed ties with the Chairman, strongly disagreeing with some of the man’s policies and activities. If some hint of his subsumed memories had percolated to the surface of the great hive mind, including a possible animosity against Chairman Wenceslas, then humanity might be in even graver trouble.

  No, the Chairman had no idea what he was up against.

  Using Anton’s private comm, Margaret got to work penetrating the Hansa bureaucracy with a dogged insistence. Years earlier, when she and Louis demonstrated the Klikiss Torch, Margaret had been granted direct access to the Chairman, and she still had some of those contact codes.

  Everyone was in crisis mode, but no one seemed to want to do anything. She spoke sharply with one person after another, drilling her way deeper into the system. Most people didn’t recognize her name, and those who did were dubious, since they had assumed her dead for years.

  Always helpful, Anton brought her a cup of tea. She took a sip. Earl Grey. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a good cup of Earl Grey. Anton had made no secret of the Chairman’s ham-handed actions against the Mage-Imperator, and how the Chairman had forced Anton to watch over Rememberer Vao’sh on the university campus so that scholars could ply him for information, and how Vao’sh had died from neglect. He was not at all impressed with the man.

  Abruptly, Chairman Wenceslas’s face appeared on the screen, startling her. “Margaret Colicos — a ghost from the past.” He paused for just a moment, then got down to business without any preliminaries. “You claim you have some specialized knowledge that can assist me with the Klikiss? I have not yet decided how to respond.”

  She met him with an implacable expression. “How to respond? Mr. Chairman, you are going to do exactly as the breedex demands. Get on a shuttle and go to the central swarmship, as the Klikiss requested — and take me with you. Perhaps I can help.”

  He seemed to resent the very idea. “I am still considering options.”

  “They can wipe out every living thing on Earth. Speak with the breedex. It’s the only way to prevent your extermination.”

  His voice was brittle. “How do you know so much about them?”

  She gave the man the bare bones of what had happened to her among the Klikiss. “You need me with you . . . as well as my son, Anton. The two of us will help guide you in these delicate conversations.” Out of range of the comm screen, Anton stared at his mother in surprise, since he was barely able to stifle his antipathy toward the Chairman.

  Basil Wenceslas stared coldly at her from the screen and finally nodded. “It’s a relief to see someone actually willing to meet their obligations. I will have a team retrieve you promptly.” Without a farewell, the Chairman severed the link.

  Within minutes — an astonishingly short time, considering the distance from the Palace District to Anton’s private apartment — an abrupt and insistent pounding came at the door. Colonel Andez and four men stood there in cleanup-crew uniforms.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Anton said. When Vao’sh had been dying of isolation, Margaret knew he had tried for days to get any help whatsoever.

  Andez answered with a supercilious scowl. “Your persistent demands to speak with the Chairman raised a red flag, and we had already been dispatched to observe and investigate the possible threat. While we were inbound, the Chairman changed our objective.”

  Wasting no time, Margaret strode out into the hall to head toward their vehicle. “Of course he did.”

  Chairman Wenceslas was already aboard his refueled diplomatic shuttle, impatient to go. As she and Anton rushed through the hatch, he looked at her sourly. Without giving them any chance to settle, he said, “So tell me what the Klikiss want, Dr. Colicos. Why did the hive mind ask to speak to me by name?”

  “I don’t know.” Her answer startled him.

  “You are not instilling me with confidence.”

  “It is not my intention to. I want you prepared. Realistically.” Margaret chose a seat across from him, as if she did this every day.

  Buckling in beside her, Anton grumbled, “The Hansa knew the Klikiss were a danger, that they had wiped out numerous colony worlds. You received reports, Mr. Chairman, but you didn’t take the threat seriously.”

  The Chairman twitched as if he’d been stung by invisible bees. “I take all threats seriously, but there are so many.” Margaret could tell he was nervous about the upcoming encounter. This situation was entirely out of his control, and Chairman Wenceslas obviously knew it. “General Lanyan and Admiral Diente were both killed by the Klikiss. From the presence of those swarmships, I’d say their aggressive intentions are pretty clear.”

  Margaret felt the rumble of vibrations through the deck as the shuttle’s engines powered up. “Then you must reach some sort of rapprochement. I suggest you comport yourself well with the breedex.”

  “I can’t wait to see what happens when they find out about your partnership with the black robots,” Anton muttered.

  “That worries me more than anything,” Margaret said, and she meant it. The Chairman had no grasp of the sheer animosity the Klikiss held toward their robots. She would guide him as best she could, getting him up to speed as they traveled to the swarmships.

  “I can handle it,” he said, as if it were no more than a difficult board meeting. He leaned back as the shuttle launched.

  138

  Chairman Basil Wenceslas

  Basil would have flown the diplomatic shuttle himself if he could, just so he didn’t need to worry about the pilot balking or overreacting. The man had been competent enough flying out to the Confederation flagship, but these jaw-dropping alien vessels were something else entirely.

  The fate of the planet hung in the balance — again. Alas, he could not do everything himsel
f. He had left King Rory behind and brought along Margaret and Anton Colicos, in the hope that their insights would be useful. He listened as Margaret told him as much as she knew about the insect race, about the breedex, the subhive wars, how she had been stranded among them for years, and how they had massacred and incorporated most of the colonists from Llaro. Basil wasn’t sure how much all this information would help. He didn’t need any help.

  At the end of the day, he was the only person he could truly count on. Once Basil finally faced the breedex, leader to leader, he trusted his own political skills to make the Klikiss be reasonable. Diente must have done something wrong in his earlier attempt.

  As the shuttle flew onward, Basil pushed aside his hatred for King Peter, and now Deputy Cain and Sarein. He did not worry about them. Not now. The Klikiss consumed his attention. Those other problems could wait. He clenched and unclenched his fists, drew a long, slow breath.

  The breedex had not included King Peter in the invitation. That was something, at least. Obviously, the Klikiss understood who was truly important here. Always thinking ahead, he wondered in a giddy moment if he might be able to strike some sort of bargain, provided he could communicate his needs to the breedex. Maybe he could convince this insect swarmship to destroy Peter and his Confederation ships. Now that would be a neat solution!

  He contacted the pilot. “Increase speed. Let’s get this over with.” The man must be sweating, but he didn’t argue with the Chairman’s orders.

  Basil called for an EDF escort as the diplomatic shuttle flew out to where the eleven swarmships waited beyond the orbit of the shattered Moon. While General Brindle remained ready in the Goliath, Admirals Pike and San Luis flew their Mantas on either side of the shuttle. Still not a terribly impressive procession.