Of Fire and Night

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Jess was alone now and unhindered, clear of the protective shell of his wental ship. Although he stood in the impossible environment wearing only his white gossamer suit, the water elementals flowing through his bloodstream preserved his tissues.

  When he found his sister, he would have to re-form the protective bubble, create a new water ship. That problem didn’t seem any more insurmountable than the other hazards he had already knocked aside. First, though, he had to figure out where Tasia was being held.

  Jess hurried through the confusing labyrinth of the citysphere. Far away, unaffected by the destruction caused by the wental droplets, other liquid-crystal hydrogues slithered through hollow structures, climbed monoliths, and entered geometrical grottoes. A new barrage of warglobes cruised high overhead, launching to the upper atmosphere.

  Jess hurried. When faced with this crisis, how long would it be until the deep-core aliens disposed of their human prisoners? His sister and her fellow captives were somewhere in this geometrical nightmare. Were they being held as hostages, strange zoo specimens, torture subjects?

  Then, with a lurch, the entire citysphere began to move. He felt the great mass slowly accelerate. Far outside the metropolis, a ragged line appeared in the swirling soup of sky, a vertical tear not only in the atmosphere, but in the fabric of space itself. The dimensional line opened, yawned wide like a gaping mouth to swallow the bizarre citysphere.

  A hydrogue transgate.

  Fear shot through Jess as he realized what they were doing. To shake off the overwhelming attack of the wentals, the deep-core aliens intended to abandon Qronha 3 and vanish to another one of their gas giants. He couldn’t let the hydrogues get away! They would take Tasia with them.

  Then Jess felt an external exhilaration swell around him. A tingle rushed toward him like a fusillade of gunshots. Turning his head, he felt something outside streak past the citysphere like a bullet, a silvery spindle composed entirely of living water, directly on course. A wental torpedo. The cigar-shaped projectile dove in, plunging, tunneling.

  As the yawning transgate opened, the wental torpedo struck the dimensional line, collapsed, dissolved, and detonated. The liquid energy exploded across the gateway. The opening dwindled, collapsed, and disappeared.

  The giant citysphere rumbled to a halt in the gas giant’s atmosphere, throwing Jess off balance. All across the hydrogue empire, wental torpedoes were likewise disabling transgates, so the deep-core aliens could not join forces or flee the concerted attack.

  Now the hydrogues had no way to escape from the Qronha 3 battleground.

  123

  KING PETER

  Leaving the Whisper Palace, they rushed into the dark and confused night. Peter and Estarra marched Prince Daniel so swiftly that the young man had no time to ask questions. OX led them out through a side gate, across a courtyard, past a statue garden, and finally to the main plaza.

  Though excited at first, Daniel soon became skeptical, then suspicious. “If this is a coronation, why would Chairman Wenceslas want me to leave the Palace? That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “He needed to find a safer place for you,” Peter said. “Remember, we’re under attack.” OX crisply marched across the flagstoned plaza, leading the way.

  “But shouldn’t there at least be some celebration? Where is everyone?”

  In answer, echoing air-raid alarms pealed through the dark city. Estarra pointed toward the extinguished lights throughout the Palace District, the rows of shadowy buildings. “Everybody’s hiding inside their houses, glued to their media feeds and hoping they survive. You can inspire them.”

  Peter added with emphasis, “If the EDF and Ildiran lines crumble, then the hydrogues will lay waste to Earth.” But he knew that if he and the Queen escaped, there would be a strong, new leadership for all of humanity.

  The Prince’s face became blotchy. “Then I might not be King for very long. Shouldn’t we get to shelter? A King should be kept safe, no matter what happens to Earth.”

  “It’s just ahead, Daniel.” Peter tried to sound reassuring. “Right there.”

  Illuminated by small emergency lights instead of great glowing banks, the hydrogue derelict sat outside like a trophy. Even the research teams had been evacuated. When Peter saw how many guards stood watch over the alien ship, however, he realized this was going to be more difficult than he had expected. Basil must have been paranoid that the hydrogues would come to retrieve their vessel. “Don’t they have more important duties right now?”

  “It was the weak spot in the plan,” Estarra muttered.

  Daniel saw their destination. “The derelict? Why are we going there?”

  “Because that is where we must go,” OX said innocently.

  Estarra dodged the question. “If Earth is under attack, can you imagine a more secure place than inside an armored hydrogue ship?”

  Daniel was clearly wrestling with the question, not trusting them, but he had been slapped down enough times that he probably couldn’t imagine the royal couple having the nerve to rebel against the Hansa. Of course, that wasn’t how Peter interpreted what they were doing. This was for the good of the human race. “Right over here, Prince. They’re waiting for us inside.”

  Estarra closed in next to Peter. They couldn’t show any concern now.

  The guards warily raised their weapons. “Halt! No one comes closer, by order of the Chairman.”

  “The Chairman? Shouldn’t you be more concerned with the orders of your King?” Peter said.

  He felt the twitcher inside his pocket, a fully charged one taken from the fallen guards at Daniel’s doorway. Estarra looked at him, and he could read her expression. Whatever it takes. From the shift of her arm, he knew she was also holding her weapon.

  Boldly leading Prince Daniel, OX continued forward. “You have no authority to stop King Peter, Queen Estarra, and Prince Daniel.”

  Given time, Peter might have bluffed his way inside the derelict, but it was more likely the guards would contact Basil. He couldn’t risk that. As a flash of recognition and relief crossed the nervous guards’ faces, the King and Queen drew their twitchers and played the wide-dispersal stun beams across the five men. Taken completely by surprise, the guards began to spasm and twitch, unable to control their muscle impulses. Three of them succeeded in yanking out their own projectile weapons, but no one had a chance to fire.

  Daniel gaped at the uniformed men as they all crumpled, his eyes wide and round. Whirling toward Peter and Estarra, he spotted the twitchers in their hands. His face turned an uneven red, and he couldn’t seem to find his voice. Peter saw the instant in which all of the young man’s suspicions clicked into place. Bawling for help, Daniel broke away and tried to run. Peter dialed the twitcher down to its lowest setting and fired a pulse at Daniel’s legs.

  The Prince collapsed. The disruptive impulses ricocheted through his central nervous system. Even his back twitched. The Prince tried to cry out, but his voice was weak. His legs had turned to rubber, and he could barely manage to flop on the ground.

  Now the derelict lay open and undefended. “Estarra, OX—we’ve got to get him inside.”

  As Peter worked with Estarra and the compy to pull the young man to his feet, he noticed that Daniel had lost control of his bladder, wetting his loose pajama pants and the front of his robe. It was probably the least of the indignities he would suffer in the near future. Holding the arms of the twitching Prince, who continued to mumble incoherently, they hauled him past the stunned guards and into the alien sphere.

  “Carry him up this ramp, and I will begin my preparations,” OX said.

  Letting the compy lead the way, Estarra and Peter dragged Daniel into the derelict’s central room. The Teacher compy marched up to the hydrogue’s trapezoidal wall. “I have already uploaded all the information compiled by the research team from Deputy Cain’s datapacks, as well as relevant data from Chief Scientist Palawu and the Roamer engineer Kotto Okiah. This system functions very much along standa
rd lines.” OX swiveled his head, and his golden eye sensors glowed. “I spent six hours completing a coordinate transform. Judging from a preliminary test the scientists performed yesterday, I believe it will work.”

  “Is there a risk?” Peter glanced at Daniel, whose eyes were wild and uncomprehending. Drool dribbled from the right corner of his mouth; he didn’t have the muscular control to form words, though he made faint whining sounds.

  OX stared at the alien coordinate glyphs, then turned toward the King. “No greater risk than in using any Klikiss transportal. Provided I have properly transformed the coordinates, I have selected an appropriate place to send him.”

  Desperate to recover, Daniel twitched his arms, but to no avail. Peter and Estarra held him still, grunting with the effort. Peter doubted the young man could comprehend why all this was happening to him, but he decided it was best not to explain. “Don’t worry, I’m sure OX picked the perfect location for you.”

  Daniel made a mewling noise as the Teacher compy attempted to work the controls of the hydrogue transportation system. After linking his own systems to the alien command deck, OX selected one of the coordinate tiles while busily reprogramming the unit. The transgate misted, shimmered, then grew ready. “I have been successful. You may send him through.”

  Daniel made a last uncoordinated thrash, but Peter and Estarra lifted him. When his wife winced with the effort, Peter hesitated, looking at her swollen abdomen with concern. “Maybe you shouldn’t be—”

  “I’m not helpless, Peter. This is life or death.” With a silent count to three, they swung Daniel through the transgate wall. Peter hoped they weren’t accidentally dumping the conceited and ill-behaved Prince into a deadly environment, but he trusted OX. He always had.

  With barely a twitch, Prince Daniel vanished through the flat barrier, swept off to one of the settlements claimed in the Klikiss colonization initiative. The hydrogue transportal wavered, then grew opaque again.

  Peter looked at Estarra. “Well, at least one of us is safe—even though Daniel will never thank us for it.”

  “I didn’t get the impression Daniel liked much of anything.” Estarra wistfully looked at the transportal as OX reset the systems. “Too bad there’s no doorway direct to Theroc. That’s where we need to go.”

  The Teacher compy stepped away from the transgate controls. “No, Queen Estarra. For that, I will need to fly this ship.”

  124

  GENERAL KURT LANYAN

  Aboard the beleaguered Goliath, Lanyan yelled for his weapons officers to fire indiscriminately. “Plenty of targets to choose from. Just shoot anything that’s shooting at us.” He wished he knew what the hell was going on.

  First, all the Ildiran warliners had turned against the EDF, then they’d turned again, throwing themselves at the warglobes in a suicidal melee such as Lanyan had never seen. Nearly seven hundred ships had sacrificed themselves all in the space of a few minutes—what a monumental massacre!

  The drifting wreckage of incinerated warliners and exploded hydrogue spheres had turned the battle zone into a demolition derby. Flaming fuel chambers, heavy engines, and rotating hull plates flew past like a meteor storm. Continuing explosions spangled space, as if the Goliath sat in the middle of a Coronation Day fireworks show. Lanyan’s ships had to fly evasive maneuvers and dodge shrapnel while they continued to fire. Any hope of rigid battle formations had gone straight out the airlock.

  And then there were the damned Soldier compies and Klikiss robots to contend with. An overwhelming number of hijacked EDF vessels plowed into the fray, looking exactly like Lanyan’s own ships. It was hard to know which ones to shoot at.

  Tactical officers scrambled to keep track of ID blips, but the hijacked vessels plunged and wove through the disordered fleet until no tracking systems could maintain a lock. “They’re swarming around like a cloud of drunken gnats.”

  “General, each one is transmitting the same IFF signals.” Kosevic wiped sweat from his face. “Our targeting computers think all those ships are EDF vessels.”

  “We know they’re not, so start shooting at them. Now! Fraks and carbon-carbon slammers might not work against warglobes, but they’ll sure as hell rip the guts out of an EDF ship.” His eyebrows knit together, and his cold, pale eyes focused on the screen. “And please try not to take out our own ships while you’re at it. We don’t have many to spare.” Still, he saw no way around it.

  Close in among the EDF ships, the robot-controlled infiltrators blasted away. The concentrated jazer volley tore a Thunderhead weapons platform into a mass of broken deck plates and a cloud of venting atmosphere.

  Lanyan lurched to his feet. “All right, there’s a bloody target for you! Put a marker on every ship that opens fire on one of ours.”

  The Goliath swiftly destroyed the attacking Manta. Marching back and forth between the Juggernaut’s weaponry stations, Kosevic rallied the gunners to shoot at other likely hostiles, but the targeting computers were overwhelmed. “General, now that we’ve opened fire as well, nobody can tell who’s attacking and who’s defending.”

  Lanyan slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair.

  On the screen, the images of two grid admirals—Peter Tabeguache and Kostas Eolus—overlapped with frantic signals. “General, why are you firing on us? We recaptured some of our ships, and we’re here to help the Hansa!”

  Lanyan regarded the images with a gimlet eye. “Oh, really? Then why did you start opening fire?”

  “We thought your craft were the ones hijacked by compies,” pleaded Eolus.

  “We had no way of knowing,” Tabeguache said.

  Lanyan blanked the comm transmission. “Hit Eolus’s signaling tower with an EM burst. I want to rattle that ship.” He saw his exec’s hesitation. “I was tricked by Admiral Wu-Lin once. I don’t trust either of those Juggernauts any farther than I can throw them.”

  After the weapons officer sent out the precision scrambler burst, the image of the Grid 5 admiral dissolved on the screen. The hologram vanished, revealing instead a sinister Klikiss robot hunched over the Eldorado’s bridge controls.

  “Doesn’t look like Admiral Eolus anymore,” Lanyan said, not surprised. “Now you’ve got another target. Go!”

  Officers raced to their stations, and jazers and fraks pummeled the turncoat Juggernaut, damaging its engines, ripping holes through its hull. Admiral Willis’s ships also swept in and opened fire. At Lanyan’s signal, more grouped EDF ships pounded the flagship that had belonged to Admiral Tabeguache.

  Flying erratic patterns to evade the counterattack, the hijacked ships continued to swoop in among the EDF defenders. As the Goliath wrought plenty of mayhem, one more robot-controlled Juggernaut hurtled toward them, unleashing a barrage of projectiles. Lanyan saw the vessel coming and shouted for evasive action. The Goliath pivoted on its axis, but the compy-controlled vessel struck home. Two of Lanyan’s main engines exploded. A jazer lance slashed through the starboard hull, splitting open seven decks.

  “Put everything into the weapons and shoot at that damned Juggernaut—everything we’ve got left!”

  A flurry of slammers hit the underbelly of the robot attacker with enough force to send the hijacked ship reeling off course.

  “Jazer banks are almost drained, but I’ve got one engine online, enough to maneuver us out of here,” Kosevic said. “We’ve got to retreat, General. We’re a sitting duck.”

  “We’ve still got a few weapons, Mr. Kosevic, and I intend to keep causing damage until my last breath. Figure out which grids these vessels came from, contact the Mars base, and get me someone who can provide their guillotine protocol codes. We’ll pull the plug one way or another.”

  He turned and snapped at a frozen weapons officer. “You! Did I tell you to stop firing?” The startled crewman scrambled with his targeting systems and launched the rest of his fracture-pulse explosives.

  Even though the ship’s intercom was damaged and his signal could go to only a handful of the survivin
g crew, Lanyan said, “Let me be perfectly clear: If we surrender here, then we surrender Earth—and that’s not going to happen today.”

  125

  CHAIRMAN BASIL WENCESLAS

  Even inside the Hansa’s war room with the doors guarded and the walls reinforced, Basil did not feel safe. If the hydrogues got past General Lanyan’s defenders, they would come straight to the Palace District. A single hydrogue barrage could obliterate this building.

  Basil sat at the main observation table while tactical experts and ground-based EDF officers clamored for updates, studied real-time reports, and tried to stay one step ahead of the battle occurring in space. He hid his clenched hands under the table. “It’s not as if this was a surprise! We had plenty of time to prepare for this. Humanity failed itself.”

  Even paler than usual, Deputy Cain flitted from station to station like a grim ghost. “There was nothing else we could have done, Mr. Chairman.”

  “We should have known!” Basil raised his voice. “Every living human being in the Terran Hanseatic League was aware of the threat—so why didn’t they give me their best work? Now it’s their own damned fault. They knew what was at stake. I was trying to lead them, but my plans can’t succeed without a little cooperation. Why do people keep letting me down? One”—he raised his fist from under the table and pounded it down—“after another”—he pounded again—“after another!”

  Tactical experts enlarged the images on their screens, trying to keep track of the myriad moving vessels. “Three complete EDF battle groups have just arrived at Earth. But they’re shooting at General Lanyan’s vessels.”

  “Of course they’re shooting—it’s the battleships stolen by the damned compies! The Klikiss robots must have had an alliance with the hydrogues all along.”

  Cain locked his hands behind his back. “We can’t determine exactly what is happening, Mr. Chairman. At first it seemed as if the Ildirans had betrayed us, but then they launched against the warglobes. From these energy signatures”—he pointed to glowing smudges of static—“hundreds of ships have already been destroyed: EDF vessels, Ildiran warliners, and hydrogue spheres.”