The Ashes of Worlds

“I don’t believe this,” Cesca said.

We are warrior wentals. We learned to fight from you,said the voice inside him.We learned to consider alternatives. The hydrogues do not battle for us, or for humanity, but for themselves. They fight only to destroy faeros, nothing more.

“I compelled them, as I did before,” Osira’h said. “They have accepted limited terms.”

The wentals will contain them.

Jess was not entirely reassured, but he accepted the wentals’ confidence. Osira’h had acted independently, and the water elementals believed there was some advantage to unleashing the deep-core aliens, at least for the moment.

Bottled up in the high-pressure depths, the hydrogues had stewed in their own anger for far too long. Now, with elemental chains loosened, numerous warglobes flew upward. Their abiding and ancient loathing of the fiery elementals far exceeded their relatively new resentment for humans. They chose their targets, and they did not waver.

Diamond spheres rocketed into the flaming ellipsoids, unleashing skittery patterns of blue electrical bolts. The fireballs pulsed and struggled, and some of the weaker ones diminished like candle flames extinguished by the wind.

But even as the warglobes raced into the clash, tendrils of wental vapor clung to them in a strange symbiosis. When the hydrogue spheres approached a group of fireballs, the sentient mists expanded and lifted up in filmy nets to snarl the faeros.

The hydrogues spewed their shattering cold weapons in icy white ripples that weakened and then extinguished the fireballs. Previously, the warglobes had used those terrible frigid blasts to lay waste to the worldforest, and Jess felt his stomach roiling as he observed them now. He doubted the deep-core aliens had any interest in earning forgiveness or redemption.

But they were certainly wreaking a lot of unexpected destruction here.

As the faeros fought back, however, one of the warglobes exploded, its shattered diamond hull raining back down into the clouds. Several other hydrogue ships were wiped out as well, but more of them emerged from the depths.

“Jess, we have to reach the faeros incarnate,” Cesca said.

He shook free of his anger. “You’re right — let’s keep our eyes on the target.”

Intent again, Jess drove their water sphere up into the path of Rusa’h’s blazing ellipsoid. He could sense that although the other avatar was shaken by the sudden turnabout, he would not back away. He continued to dart among the Solar Navy ships, intent on finding the Mage-Imperator and destroying any warliner that got in his way.

Jess and Cesca pulled the atmospheric wentals along with them in a stream of water vapor that circled with a sharp wind into an ever-tightening spiral and coalesced into a misty tornado. Jess did not intend to let the faeros incarnate harm Mage-Imperator Jora’h.

The cyclone of fog wrapped like a straitjacket around Rusa’h’s fireball. Jess felt buffeted by the faeros incarnate’s surprise; the other avatar could sense them, too, but Rusa’h had not previously encountered anyone else like himself. Jess and Cesca took advantage of his disorientation and threw the energized water against the flaming shield.

Rusa’h’s charge against the Solar Navy faltered as he struggled to fight off the watery hurricane. Jess guided his wental ship in circles, harrying the faeros incarnate and spiraling in. The flames diminished even though Rusa’h fought back. Sending a coordinated mental shout, Jess and Cesca called upon the wentals — and the hydrogues — to concentrate their attack here.

The battle swiftly turned. Many spiked warglobes fought beside the Roamer ships, which had expended all their frozen projectiles. Wentals splashed up to seize and smother numerous fireballs. Sparks flew everywhere, and ashes dropped down into the endless atmosphere.

Just as more wentals and hydrogues surged forward to the faeros incarnate, Rusa’h surrounded himself with dozens of fireballs to form an intense barricade. Finally, the burning man broke free of the misty cyclone. Obviously weakened as he limped higher into the sky, he called a retreat from Golgen. When another wave of warglobes shot out of the clouds, the faeros pulled together and sped away. With a surge of strength, Jess and Cesca raced after them, but the surviving fireballs vanished in a dazzling group.

Though they had failed to stop the faeros incarnate, Jess felt his heart swell to see the flaming enemies retreat. The local communications equipment crackled with a thousand overlapping cheers, while others hurled curses at the faeros, which had dwindled to mere sparks in the sky.

Though many warglobes had been smashed in the air battle, the remaining hydrogues hovered, like vicious attack dogs straining at a leash. They wanted to pursue the fireballs into space, to escape from Golgen and run free again — but Jess refused to allow that. He still felt a knotted anger toward the hydrogues, a bitterness that he could not let go, no matter how many faeros they had extinguished.

Jess prepared for another fight to restrain them. He expected the deep-core aliens to turn on the wentals. But the wentals surrounded the warglobes with strands of fog, and the surreal chains held them in place.

From her derelict Osira’h transmitted, “They will not fight to help us. They will not join in the battle for Ildira. They will stay here.”

We would not allow them to leave,the combined wental voice said.

“Good,” Jess said. “The risk would be too great.”

Slowly, the warglobes were drawn back down into the clouds of Golgen, their prison, their home. Although the hydrogues were still contained, still defeated, Jess wondered if they felt some gratification at having beaten their enemies. He was glad for what they had done, but that was all.

When he spotted Osira’h’s small diamond sphere among the hydrogue warglobes, though, he realized that it had begun to fall back down with them. Cesca saw it too, and urged their wental ship down into the thick gas layers, darting toward the derelict. They snagged the ship, and as they pulled it back up toward the damaged skymines and the regrouping Solar Navy warliners, the half-breed girl sent another message.

“Did you hear Rusa’h’s thoughts?” She did not wait for them to answer. “He is taking all of the faeros to Ildira.”

122

King Peter

He thought he was prepared for this moment, but Peter still came to a faltering stop when the gold-inlaid doors swung inward. At the end of the long banquet table sat Rory, looking directly at him.

Estarra’s grip tightened on Peter’s arm, but he didn’t take his eyes from the young man’s face. He searched for a flicker of recognition, but Rory (or whoever he was) let nothing noticeable slip. Peter searched his old memories, trying to clarify the images of his little brother, then fast-forwarding to the present.