Of Fire and Night (8 page)

17

KING PETER

A
nother pointless social ceremony. Wearing uncomfortable regal attire, King Peter attended an innocuous banquet to present service medals to local Palace District businessmen. Basil Wenceslas sat at the reception table, dapper in his perfectly cut business suit. His expression was cool, his gray eyes placid except for when Peter met his gaze. Didn’t the Chairman have anything better to do with his time?
Or is he that worried about me?

This was a far cry from rallying the human race to stand firm against the hydrogues, but at least the Chairman hadn’t ordered Peter to deliver incendiary lies about the Roamers. Not today. Basil seemed to feel that if he was tough and unyielding, then everyone would bow to his instructions. But the Chairman’s hard-line stance against the clans had backfired, and even his staunch supporters realized that their “victory” of destroying Rendezvous was pointless. The Roamers were scattered, and the Hansa still had no supplier of stardrive fuel.

Peter did not respond well to that sort of coercion, either. When the puppet King reacted by blatantly breaking the rules, Basil had retaliated by attempting to assassinate him and Estarra, and later by slaughtering the dolphins as a sick punishment.

Peter pretended to cooperate, if only to keep his wife and unborn child alive. He didn’t take his eyes from the Chairman, who sat with calm confidence. He truly hated the man. Peter had to stay one step ahead of him, be smarter, more careful—and that was difficult when Basil Wenceslas had the resources of the entire Hansa behind him.

Lately, while the media clamored for comments from the Whisper Palace about Estarra’s “blessed pregnancy,” Basil kept the King and Queen out of the public spotlight as much as possible. Reporters and pundits had begun to make increasingly agitated comments, wanting to know why the royal couple weren’t seen more often. Grudgingly, the Chairman brought the King out for minor activities, separate from Queen Estarra. Such as this banal ceremony, a tedious bureaucratic duty dance that interested few people except for those directly involved. Apparently, Basil was confident the King could do no damage here.

Seven royal guards were stationed along the walls, ostensibly to protect King Peter, but more likely to keep him in line. The head of the royal guard, Captain McCammon, stood like a statue, as uninterested in the presentation of awards as Peter himself was.

Deputy Eldred Cain, the quiet and pale-skinned man who had secretly helped Peter and Estarra, was not in attendance. Cain was even more averse to public appearances than Basil Wenceslas, not that he was missing anything here.

Wearing a wooden smile, the King held up a ribbon and medal for the audience to admire. “For service to humanity and for his tireless work with local charities, I give the Hansa’s Medal of Glorious Commendation to Dr. Anselm Frick.” Applause pattered around the table, and the roly-poly surgeon ambled forward, mumbled his acceptance speech, and returned to his seat. Before the King began to announce the fourth and final recipient, he heard a commotion outside the room, saw the royal guards tense. The newsnet representatives turned their imagers, hoping for something interesting to happen.

A half-clad green-skinned man pushed his way through the door. “Who dares to prevent a green priest from delivering a vital message to King Peter?” Nahton demanded. Although the court green priest brought frequent messages from Theroc to Queen Estarra, he seldom had anything urgent to report. He was usually a calm and quiet man; Peter had never seen him so agitated.

After years in the Whisper Palace, Nahton was fully aware that the King was merely for show and that Basil himself pulled all the strings. But the Chairman had never shown respect for the green priest, ignoring his repeated requests for aid to devastated Theroc. Nahton knew his real allies in the Palace.

Peter barked at the leader of his royal guards; these men were supposed to at least pretend they served him. “Captain McCammon, that man is my official green priest. Allow him to pass if he has a message for me.” He looked down his nose, intentionally embarrassing the guard captain. “Or are you trying to protect me from a
green priest
?”

The audience at the banquet chuckled at the absurdity. The captain adjusted the maroon beret on his bleached-white hair, then glanced in Basil’s direction; the Chairman gave a slight nod.

Nahton came forward and called out in a loud voice, suddenly giving all the media representatives a headline. “King Peter, it is a massacre! Urgent telink messages have come in from many green priests aboard EDF ships. Soldier compies are rising up throughout the battle groups, attacking the crews and seizing the ships. They’ve already killed thousands.” He looked at the King as if beseeching him to do something. “I have felt the deaths of five green priests already. It is a simultaneous revolt, on ship after ship!”

Basil lurched to his feet, but all eyes were on the green priest and the King. “Compies killing human soldiers?” Peter cried. “How could the compies coordinate a coup like this? The light-speed delay alone would make communication—”

“The revolt must have been programmed or timed somehow. Your Majesty, this massacre was well planned.”

Other mysteries suddenly became clear to Peter. “Admiral Stromo hasn’t been able to find a trace of our sixty rammers—and they were all crewed by Soldier compies.” His voice was ominous.

Nahton said, “I reported a disturbance with Soldier compies aboard Admiral Stromo’s Manta yesterday. Malfunctioning compies killed two crewmembers on the bridge. I gave the message directly to Chairman Wenceslas. Were you not informed, Your Majesty?”

Peter spun to where Basil stood at the side of the room. “I knew nothing of this! Who decided to keep this information from me?” He knew full well it had been the Chairman. Now everyone else did as well.

“The news was to be in your next briefing,” Basil said in an icy voice.

Peter glared. “If this really is a revolt—and if you had been more diligent, Mr. Chairman—perhaps we could have sent out a cautionary advisory! The first incident occurred more than a day ago! With telink we could have sent a warning in seconds.”

“I am no longer in contact with Admiral Stromo’s Manta. Their green priest has been murdered,” Nahton pointed out. “I believe most other crewmen aboard are dead as well.” He didn’t even look at the Chairman. “Now the crews aboard all EDF ships are under attack.”

“And we could have prepared them,” Peter said.

Seizing his chance, he turned up his voice amplifier to drown out any words the Chairman might speak. He could not let Basil use this for his political purposes, nor could he let the Chairman cover it up the way he had tried to brush aside all previous concerns about the reliability of the Soldier compies. He took no satisfaction in learning that his fears had been justified all along.

Peter glared daggers at Basil as he said for all to hear, “We missed our chance a long time ago! Everyone will recall that I expressed my suspicions about using Klikiss programming in our Soldier compies. I tried to shut down the manufacturing facilities as a precaution, but they were reopened against my better judgment.” He looked directly at the Chairman. “That was a poor decision, based on extremely bad advice.”

Basil was already making his way toward the podium, his face a storm of emotions. Peter knew how the Chairman hated to admit errors, knew Basil would try to deal with this disaster quietly, minimize its seriousness. He wouldn’t mind if more people died, just so the Hansa could save face.

But Peter had the full attention of the media cameras, and the audience was listening. A King had to do what needed to be done, and no one could openly countermand him during such an emergency.

His face turned hot as he thought of all those Soldier compies with built-in triggers that activated at the same time. Peter acted on impulse. “If this rogue streak is intrinsic to their programming, then every recently manufactured Soldier compy is a time bomb ready to explode—and our factory is still producing them.” He addressed the royal guards in a tone of unmistakable command: “Shut the compy factory down immediately. Alert all local defense forces to contain the Soldier compies, should they react. Bring in the silver berets. We can’t take chances.”

The royal guards hesitated while Basil fought his way toward the podium amidst the turmoil. Peter didn’t wait. “Captain McCammon! You have your orders.” The media imagers turned toward the balking guards.

Dr. Anselm Frick stood and flashed his new service medal, as if it gave him some sort of military rank, and started shouting. “You heard him, man! It’s treason against the King, this is. Do as you’re ordered!”

“What are you waiting for?” someone else yelled, appalled at the guards’ hesitation. Other audience members began to demand action.

Standing firm, Peter said, “Captain, do your duty or be relieved of it.”

Finally, his words seemed to sink in. McCammon snapped orders, and the royal guards hurried from the room, calling on their comms to organize an operation around the Palace District’s huge Soldier compy factory.

Peter knew he was far overstepping his authority, but he had to show his strength. The people would admire him for it, though he shuddered to think how Basil would retaliate as soon as the crisis abated.
If
it abated.

18

JESS TAMBLYN

L
ike a bullet made of water and pearl, Jess’s vessel shot through energy-laced storm clouds alive with wental essence. The sea was a churning froth the color of molten lead. In this primordial planet’s sterile ocean, he’d begun his long, strange quest to bring the elemental beings back to life. His volunteers had named the planet Charybdis after the deadly whirlpool encountered by Odysseus.

Here, if Jess could convince them, the wentals would repay their debt.

With a knot in his stomach, he repeated the question he’d asked Nikko a thousand times over the past several days. “How is Cesca?”

“She’s cold, clammy. Her skin looks funny, and there’re dark spots of pooling blood inside. She drifts in and out of consciousness. Jess, I don’t think she has much time left.”

“The wentals can still help her.” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice.

Below, on one of the rare patches of solid ground, black rocks glistened with wild spray. Jess’s vessel floated above the patch of upthrust rock and released the
Aquarius,
like an insect gently depositing an egg on the surface of a leaf. The small Roamer ship rested on the barren spit of land, its regrown hull sheathed in living water. While it was suspended in the larger wental vessel, tiny aquatic creatures had furiously made repairs. With corals and metals, the wental-guided creatures had grown scablike excrescences to patch and reinforce the hull. The
Aquarius
was now an amalgam of Roamer technology and wental imagination. The much larger wental craft landed beside it.

Nikko bounded out of the hatch. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. Wearing his white fiber garment, Jess stepped through his ship’s hull membrane. He felt energized in the ozone-rich air, sensing the great force ready to be hurled against the hydrogues. His primary goal was to channel some of that power to save Cesca.

Jess turned to face the stormy ocean, felt wental essence writhing through the moisture-laden air. The water entities spoke to him, their voices thrumming.
Because you want this so badly, there is a great risk of creating a tainted wental. You do not understand the consequences. Not to yourself. Not to us
.

“What if I’m willing to take the risk? For her sake?” Jess wrestled with what the water elementals were saying. “How can a wental be tainted? I distilled a single wental from the nebula and helped you grow. I thought you were all the same being, one giant dispersed entity.”

We are a single entity with many parts. And like an enormous body, some parts can become infected. Witness
.

Without words, the wentals flooded him with memories and concepts, like a Plumas pumping station bursting its pipes, gushing images all at once. In his mind and his heart, he
understood
the power and danger of a tainted wental.

The memory images came from millennia ago, before the wentals had been obliterated. He saw an Ildiran commander—he did not know the rank, a septar perhaps?—accidentally bathed in a wental mist on a strange alien planet. The wental had been sorely wounded in a direct clash with a blazing faeros fireball. Ildiran worlds had been annihilated in the numerous elemental battles of the ancient war. Ildiran cities were leveled, whole continents laid waste, planets cracked open and crumbled into rubble, suns extinguished. The septar knew his Mage-Imperator could not protect the Ildirans, who were sure to be wiped out.

The desperate septar, standing in the smoking ruins of what had been a spectacular city, was drenched by the falling wental. His desire to save his Empire, and the weakness of the wounded water entity, left them both open for a fusion such as Jess and the wentals had experienced.
For the best of reasons
.

The Ildiran septar swelled with a locked power, separate from the other wentals. His body could barely contain the energy, yet he could not disperse it and help it propagate. The septar somehow managed to return to his battleship, but the singing energy discharge flooded the decks, immediately killing the entire crew. Wrapped together, wental and Ildiran flew the great ship into battle. The energy was so great that the warliner itself broke apart, but the strength of the tainted wental held the conglomeration of wreckage together in a flying cloud of destruction.

A tainted wental exists only to break down order. It disrupts any solid form, increasing entropy, making the universe more fluid. A living engine of chaos
.

The septar/wental attacked the marauding faeros, but it also exploded Ildiran battleships, razed cities, blasted empty asteroids, not recognizing the difference between ally and enemy. Finally, the combined might of six faeros fireballs dragged the tainted wental into a sun, where the entity was dissociated into molecules. The rest of the water entities could not even grieve.

A tainted wental is a mutation locked into physical form
, the voices tried to explain.
Because of its twisted nature, a tainted wental cannot propagate, and the energy buildup can be released only in violent bursts. Trapped in a loop of itself, it is separate from the rest of the wental mind. And because of this it hates us as much as it hates any other enemy
.

“How often does it happen? Just because you had one bad experience—”

Another shower of images cut him off. This memory seemed even older. The creature was like a giant upright beetle with gray-green leathery skin, the breedex of a Klikiss hive at war with all other hives. A rival infestation had appeared on an adjacent continent, and the new Klikiss reapers had already devoured armies of drones and builders. If the breedex did not destroy the enemies, consume them, and incorporate their chemical memories into its progeny before the next great Swarming, that hiveline would become extinct.

At the time, the wentals had just begun their war with the hydrogues and the faeros. The Klikiss race was a strange civilization new to the elemental beings, and the wentals considered recruiting the insectoid creatures into the struggle. The breedex had communicated its need to them, and the wentals did not understand the consequences of acquiescence. Linked with wental power, the swelling breedex had devoured all ten of its domates without even listening to their songs, then burst its carapace and sprouted new segmented limbs without fissioning to create a new swarm. Infused with the tainted wental, it smashed the rival breedex and turned all the new Klikiss towers to dust. As the storm built inside her, unstoppable, the breedex tore the continent itself apart.

The rest of the wentals fought back, unable to believe the monstrosity they had created. The rampant release of so much power cracked the planet to its core. Though the tainted wental was finally extinguished, the battle mortally wounded the world. Gravity shifted, the landmasses were turned inside out, and all life there died.

That is a tainted wental, Jess Tamblyn. That is what could happen here
.

He still didn’t understand. “Why? Just because I want it so badly? Cesca is a good person, the leader of the clans. How could she create such a horror?”

We only know the danger
.

Jess had made up his mind, though. “Enough! You distract me with esoteric and meaningless philosophy while she’s dying. I accept the risk. I know her heart. Bring her out here, Nikko. Carry her if you must.”

“It’ll hurt her even more, Jess—”

He had hurt her so much. “She is already dying.”

At the young man’s urging, Cesca began to stir. Nikko draped her arm over his shoulder and helped her out of the
Aquarius
. Somehow, she saw Jess, focused on the sunlight and sea, and clung to a faint thread of life. She swayed, and Nikko let her gently down onto the dark, exposed rock of Charybdis.

She must come to the water herself. You cannot help her
.

Jess knelt beside her and felt his heart ripping in half. Without Cesca, how could he live? He stood at the edge of the reef between the slick stones and the crackling ocean, cursing the wentals and their ridiculous rules and restrictions. “You’re killing her!”

It must be entirely her decision, entirely her action
.

“Cesca, if you love me, do one last thing for me. Drink the water and live. Let the wentals join you, and you’ll be like me.” Only a few feet away, the ocean stilled itself. Wentals manifested in the waves, stretching the water in narrow fingerlike protrusions reaching up to assess Cesca. “Or you’ll die.”

“But if I . . . I’ll be . . . like you?”

The wind around them seemed alive with whispering voices.

“Your body will be charged with wental energy, like mine.” He would not lie to her. “That means you’ll never be able to touch another human being without harming them. You’ll be isolated like me. It’s a terrible thing, Cesca, but I don’t know how else to save you.”

She wrestled out one word of a question, then another. “Touch . . .
you
?”

He had not wanted to coerce her with that tantalizing thought. “We will be two of a kind, Cesca. Separate from the rest of our race.”

“But together.” Now she didn’t hesitate. Jess moved aside to let Cesca crawl painstakingly forward to the edge of the surf. “Guiding Star . . . clear.”

He tried to encourage her. Just a few seconds more. Another meter or two. He sensed that the wentals were afraid. Jess closed his eyes, remembering Cesca the way he had loved her, how they had secretly tried to be together for so long. How could she possibly become a danger? The memory images of tainted wentals seemed foreign to him, unreal.
That will not happen to her
.

Cesca scooped a handful of the shimmering water. Quicksilver droplets trickled between her fingers. She brought the water to her face with trembling hands and drank a mouthful. With a gasp, she began to shudder.

She lurched forward, and her body plunged into the water. It was part baptism, part drowning. She vanished beneath the surface.