Scattered Suns (57 page)

Chapter 122—KOTTO OKIAH

Uncertainty was an unusual feeling for him. The possibility of his own folly turned Kotto’s insides to ice water. But as the group of Roamer ships plunged toward the diamond warglobes above Theroc, he knew he would never get a better chance. It was good to test a concept in actual practice.

Seven Roamer ships from Osquivel flew like sparrows into a hurricane, ready for a direct fight against the hydrogues. Beside him, his freckled pilot—Jared Huff—wore a cocky, half-mad grin. “Here we go, Kotto. Looks like the drogues are just waiting for us!” Huff had worked with Kotto in the ring shipyards, swiftly putting together stacks of the simple devices. “I hope those doorbells of yours work.”

“We have verified all the calculations,” KR said. “There is little logical reason for an error.” Kotto had insisted on taking the two technical compies with him, rather than leaving them back at the hydrogue derelict.

“We must prove the concept by testing the doorbells in a realistic environment,” GU added.

“A 'realistic environment' could get us all killed,” said Jared.

“We’ll see in a minute.” Kotto was intimidated by the amount of faith the Roamers had put in his single idea. They
believed
in him. “Of course they’ll work.” He squeezed his eyes shut as Huff accelerated.

He had performed the calculations over and over, but innovative concepts always carried a certain degree of risk and uncertainty. He’d experienced enough setbacks in his career to know that reality didn’t always conform to engineering projections.

A dozen enemy spheres swooped through the high atmosphere of Theroc, diving down to spew icewaves or crackling blue lightning over the scarred worldforest. The warglobes were so intent on exterminating the verdani that they paid no attention to the insignificant Roamer vessels.

Kotto transmitted to the other six ships. “Um, is everybody ready?”

The warglobes were coming up fast. Kotto had a hard time grasping the sheer size of those incredible spheres. By quick estimate, he calculated they were over a hundred times larger than the small derelict he had explored. What if they did not operate on the same principle? His whole plan could fall apart—

“Kotto, you seem to be wool-gathering again,” GU said.

“Kotto, if we don’t release your thingies soon, we’re going to smash right into those drogues. That would be embarrassing, and not too effective.”

“Right! Everyone deploy doorbells. Launch the membranes now.”

Before the hydrogues took notice of the newcomer ships, the cargo doors opened and thousands of thin mats scattered out like giant confetti. Each about two meters square, the rectangular sheets fluttered down and moved toward their targets like gnats following the smell of sweat. After dumping their loads, the Roamer ships sped away as the alien vessels plunged toward the giant trees.

Like high-tech flying carpets with adhesive backing, the blizzard of membranes spread out. Kotto had given them only simple propulsion systems, assuming that hitting the side of an enormous warglobe should not be difficult. Though most drifted uselessly away, some of the mats hit their targets and clung to three of the diamond spheres.

“Ding-dong! Anybody home?” Kotto’s eyes burned because he was afraid to blink even for an instant.

As soon as they adhered, the membranes began cycling slowly through acoustic modes, increasing amplitude, thumping and vibrating. One of the resonance mats finally hit upon the warglobe’s correct vibrational frequency, and Kotto saw a bold square-shaped crack appear in the diamond hull.

The hydrogues didn’t know what had hit them. The doorbell mat triggered a hatch to open, just as Kotto had done on the small derelict sphere. The same principle on a much grander scale. On the other side of the same sphere, a second resonance doormat triggered the frequency, and another cavity formed in the hull.

From inside, the hydrogues’ ultradense atmosphere blasted out like a rocket jet. The warglobe tumbled, spun, and wheeled like an ancient Chinese firework. Huge pillars of condensed atmosphere spewed away.

The Roamers whooped and cheered. “Like a balloon that somebody let the air out of,” Jared said with a loud laugh.

“Exactly as predicted,” KR said.

Careening out of control, the first warglobe struck a glancing blow against one of the other alien ships, then ricocheted into space as its atmosphere vented. Inside, the hydrogues would probably die from the decompression. There was no way they could regain control, even if they survived.

Almost simultaneously, the second and third warglobes vented, sending two more of the alien spheres into reckless tumbles. Other warglobes now rose out of Theroc’s atmosphere and began to converge on their unexpected attackers.

Kotto saw them coming. “Uh-oh. Do we have enough membranes to deploy again, Jared?”

“We’ve got quite a few—we worked round the clock, remember? But those little mats are slow. Now that the drogues are warned, they can dodge them.”

“Dump them all anyway. It’ll be like dodging raindrops. The drogues can’t miss every one of them.”

The first opened warglobe still sputtered. Its atmosphere mostly drained, it continued spinning away, dark and dead.

The Roamer ships dispersed the rest of the doorbells.

“Okay, we’d better scatter,” Jared said.

“Be my guest.”

The clan vessels raced away, but the responding warglobes were faster. An electric bolt lanced out, vaporizing one of the seven Roamer ships. Kotto made a strangled sound. “Just keep flying!”

Jared worked the controls, dodging and spinning. “On the bright side, this beats using the Klikiss Torch to blow up an entire planet.”

“Pat me on the back later. Right now, use both hands to control the ship.” Kotto felt nauseated, but he didn’t dare vomit.

Even so, he was pleased his idea had proved effective. The resonance doorbell technology was easily copied, swiftly and cheaply manufactured. Finally the humans had a way to stand up against the enemy. He hoped he would live to see the end of the war, rather than die a hero here.

One of the pursuing warglobes slammed into several drifting adhesive mats, which immediately clung to its hull. Two new openings burst through the diamond shell, triggered by the vibrational pattern. The doomed warglobe crashed like a self-propelled wrecking ball into another hydrogue sphere, smashing the pyramidal protrusions and sending both warglobes in opposite directions.

“That’s five down!” Jared said with a loud hoot.

But more warglobes came after, and the Roamer ships could not fly away fast enough.

Kotto checked the statistics on his screens. None of their little cargo ships had any more adhesive mats to throw in the way of the pursuers. They had used them all. “This doesn’t look good.”

“A conundrum,” KR said.

But Jared was staring in amazement at what he saw across the dark blanket of space. “Hey, Kotto? What is that? It can’t be a
comet
. Look how it’s moving. By the Guiding Star, it’s faster than—”

A streaking sphere of ice, like a fingerpaint smudge of luminescent white, hurtled toward them, trailing a wake of mist behind it in a long, arcing tail.

The nearest warglobe opened fire behind them.

Chapter 123—CELLI

Half of the warglobes had pulled away from the forest to pursue the harassing Roamer ships. According to chattered reports over the communications systems, several of the giant diamond spheres had been destroyed. Destroyed!

Celli looked from Solimar to her parents in disbelief. “We shouldn’t underestimate anybody these days.”

Overhead, crackles of icewaves and blue lightning continued to pummel the clustered worldtrees. Solimar winced, clutching Celli as he felt the silent screams of the trees falling under the onslaught. She held on to him, supporting him and drawing strength from him in return.

The bruised skies above flickered with the backwash of the battle far, far overhead. Her attention was divided between the chaos outside and the rapid-fire conversations among the Roamer ships. Kotto Okiah and his vessels seemed to be in trouble. The hydrogues had rallied and turned on them. She heard frantic shouts, a crash, then something barely understandable about a...comet?

“Look! It’s changing course by ninety degrees!”

“No comet can—”

“I have to drop us down at six Gs, so I hope I don’t crack a rib. Hang on.”

“Look out!”

A long pause and then, “There goes another warglobe—it popped like a faceplate meeting a sledgehammer. We’re safe enough for now.”

“That comet thing must be on our side. The drogues aren’t very good at making friends.”

“Could be their personality. Or their conversational skills.”

Sensing something from the trees, Solimar stared out at the rustling, agitated forest and then up into the sky, his face alight with awed anticipation. “Celli, come here! You’ll want to see this.”

Below, the Beneto golem stood in the middle of the clearing, wooden arms outstretched, and all the trees seemed to be straining with him. “The wentals!” he called out, sounding as surprised as the rest of the Therons. “The wentals are still alive! And they have come!”

Out in space, Jess Tamblyn’s supercharged wental comet plunged toward Theroc. Trailing discarded ionized gases in a long plume, the living projectile homed in on its ancient enemies. The comet struck the atmosphere, screaming as it began to burn up, but never slowing as it hurtled toward the last of the attacking warglobes.

Celli watched the hydrogue ships congregate high over the fungus-reef city. The aliens clustered in a defensive formation and launched concentrated webs of blue lightning, but nothing could stop the supercharged celestial object. At the last instant, the diamond spheres scattered, hoping to offer a less cohesive target.

In response the comet itself fragmented. The frozen chunks separated like individual warheads, flying toward the remaining warglobes. Each fragment shifted, crackling with an inner light. Sonic booms thundered through the air, followed by massive explosions as each cometary shard hammered into a hydrogue ship.

Vanquished, the broken warglobes split apart, and the wreckage fell crashing to the forest. Vengeful verdani folded over, bending to fetter the remnants of their enemies’ ships with lashing fronds. With a relentless grip, the iron-hard trees completed the destruction.

Her face turned toward the sky, Celli discovered she was crying and laughing at the same time, unable to believe what had happened. Solimar hugged her. “All the warglobes are destroyed! The Roamers defeated the other ones out in space.” He paused, obviously receiving a message through telink. “No...two warglobes have escaped. One is damaged.” He grabbed her by the waist and swung her around. “But we’re saved.”

Idriss and Alexa could not believe what they were hearing. Gasping and laughing with giddy disbelief, Celli said, “Come on, let’s go down to the forest.”

Amazed Therons gathered in relief and gratitude as they realized that the worldforest had been rescued again—this time not by fiery elemental beings, but by a strange living comet. And the Roamers.

Overhead, where the ice mountain had disintegrated, clouds of vapor spread out. The flash-melted residue from the wental comet drifted to the ground in droplets of exotic rain. Green priests met in the clearing. Celli and Solimar ran to stand by her uncle Yarrod.

The rain came down in a gentle fall, invigorating and alive. The pleasant dampness made Celli’s flesh tingle. Wental-charged droplets moistened the ash-strewn ground of Theroc and infused the soil with new life.

As Celli watched, her mouth open in surprise, curling shoots, pale leaves, and stalks sprouted from seeds and root remnants that were suddenly rejuvenated—a thousand times more vibrant than when she and Solimar had danced across the forest. Rain from the vaporized wental comet spread across the land, helping to revive the rest of the worldforest.

Beneto walked among the shaken people. The falling rain drenched his wooden form, making his grain-patterned skin look more lifelike than ever. “It seems we have more allies than even the worldforest anticipated. Long ago, the wentals were powerful enemies of the hydrogues. But the hydrogues, the faeros, even the verdani, believed they were extinct.” Then his expression hardened. “And now the hydrogues
know
that the wentals have come back.”

Chapter 124—ANTON COLICOS

Space was vast, empty, and their ship drifted utterly alone. The infinite void extended in every direction: up, down, on all sides. Anton Colicos felt as if they were falling no matter which way he looked.

He had never paid much attention to the distances between the scattered worlds, especially not within the Ildiran Empire. He couldn’t recall how many days he and Vao’sh had traveled aboard the passenger liner to Maratha in the first place; he and the rememberer had been too absorbed in getting to know each other.

Now, although the automated systems assisted even a novice pilot like him, Anton was afraid that in the gulf of space he would never locate Ildira. “You’d think with seven suns in the vicinity, it couldn’t be too difficult to see.” Fortunately, all Ildiran ships used their capital planet as a zero point for nav systems, and the built-in guidance routines could always find their way home.

He did not, however, know how long Rememberer Vao’sh would last.

After escaping the massacre at Secda, the old storyteller had been plunged into the equally devastating horror of utter isolation. As they sat together in the small ship, Anton made every effort to keep conversing with him.

“We’ve got plenty of time.” He smiled brightly and forced enthusiasm into his voice. “Why don’t I tell you some Earth stories? It might fill the hours, keep your mind off things—at least until we can stumble upon another Ildiran ship or find our way to an inhabited planet.”

Vao’sh blinked at him, dazed. His body sagged as if he had no strength to hold himself upright. His large eyes were bleary and unfocused, and the multicolored lobes on the rememberer’s expressive face had gone dull and gray.

“Our situation reminds me of a classic human story called
Robinson Crusoe,
” Anton said. “It was written in the eighteenth century by an English author named Daniel Defoe.” Vao’sh blinked again, as if struggling to focus, and Anton could see he had part of the rememberer’s attention. “Crusoe was a castaway, shipwrecked on a deserted island. He lived alone for a long time until finally he encountered a native whom he named Friday. Friday became his close companion, a faithful follower. The two of them lived alone on their island and found a way to make it their home. Sounds like the two of us, Vao’sh.”

A shudder of anxiety rippled through the rememberer’s body. He looked sadly at his companion, but forced a question to show his interest. “And did they die? What happened?”

“Oh, another ship eventually found them. Crusoe was rescued and told his story to the rest of the world.” He patted his friend’s shoulder. “That’s what you and I will have to do, as soon as we get back.”

Anton quickly went through his repertoire of stories about desert islands and how brave shipwrecked heroes managed to overcome the odds: Jules Verne’s
Mysterious Island,
Wyss’s
Swiss Family Robinson,
then the more tragic
Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
But the rememberer’s attention faded, and Anton wondered if he was making their situation worse by reminding Vao’sh of how humans had courageously survived such isolation as no Ildiran could ever tolerate.

So he changed his approach and told humorous anecdotes, clever fables, absurd parables. Anton kept thinking of how all the others in the skeleton crew had been killed. He explained the human condition of agoraphobia, in which some people were terrified to be in the open among crowds of people. Vao’sh couldn’t imagine that; if anything, Ildirans suffered from the reverse condition.

As they continued to wander through the emptiness, their vessel sent out a constant distress signal, and Anton prayed for rescue. He couldn’t tell if they were close to any Ildiran splinter settlement. He didn’t want to end up lost forever, like his mother.

After Anton had finished sharing five particularly silly fables in a row from Aesop, Vao’sh allowed himself to be drawn into a discussion about the differences between pure fiction and the metaphorical parables humans used to teach lessons, and the historical truth as reported in the
Saga of Seven Suns.

“We are not always as accurate as we like to believe,” Vao’sh said in a grave voice. “Long ago, an epidemic wiped out so many rememberers that their successors created enemies to fill out the
Saga
.”

“Created them? What are you talking about?”

Colors finally flushed across the rememberer’s face. “I am about to reveal a secret of which only the greatest of my kith are aware. After the firefever destroyed an entire generation of Ildiran storytellers, after so much of the
Saga of Seven Suns
was lost, we invented the Shana Rei from our imaginations. It was a patch to fill in the gaps, a driving force for new stories.”

This revelation went against everything Anton understood about the Ildiran historians. “You’re saying the Shana Rei are made-up bogeymen?”

“The Shana Rei do not exist. They have never existed. But since the peaceful Ildiran Empire faced no real threats, we had no real heroes. Our glorious history
required
heroes. Therefore, ancient rememberers invented a mythical antagonist. At first, the stories were part of an apocrypha, but the Mage-Imperator himself commanded that they be included as truth in future versions of the
Saga
. For thousands of years, Ildirans have believed without reservation. I am ashamed that I have contributed to unnecessary fears among our race. A historian should never fabricate history.”

Anton reassured him. “But a
storyteller
does what is necessary to influence his audience. Who is to say that the rememberers’ stories of the Shana Rei are not more inspirational than the truths that were lost? Your listeners were entertained by the great battles and they cheered for Ildiran heroes that fought in that imaginary war.” He shared a wry, sad smile. “Far worse things have been done in history.”

After Rememberer Vao’sh revealed his secret, it seemed as if a burden had been lifted from him. But alone and without the comfort of crowds, the Ildiran historian’s energy waned with each passing day. Once so enthusiastic and supportive of his fellow Ildirans when he told dramatic stories, the rememberer was unable to battle his own terror and loneliness.

Their ship flew onward, skirting the stars of the Horizon Cluster, wandering in the general direction of Ildira. The strength seemed to flow out of Vao’sh, and he dwindled visibly on the fourth and then fifth day after their escape from Maratha.

Anton did not sleep, knowing that if he didn’t keep up the drone of conversation, his friend might slip away. He was utterly exhausted, his imagination squeezed dry from telling every story he could think of, from classic epics to popular entertainment loops. He tried telling jokes, but the rememberer didn’t understand most of the punch lines. Finally, Vao’sh began to shudder uncontrollably and slipped deeper into his miserable isolation.

“I wish I had
thism
to share with you.” Anton clasped his companion’s arm. “That’s one thing humans don’t have to offer.”

After so long without sleep, forcing himself to stay alert for the sake of his friend, Anton could sustain his wakefulness no longer. Vao’sh had spoken not a word in more than six hours, gazing straight ahead in a vegetative state. Anton’s throat was sore from constant talking. Their supplies were minimal, and very little water remained. Unable to hold his eyes open, at last he dozed off. He had no idea how long he slept, but it was a healing rest, as intense as a coma...

Anton awoke to an insistent buzzing. The comm panel blinked, and he sat up in alarm. Outside, bright lights swooped closer—Solar Navy scouts patrolling the outer perimeter of the Horizon Cluster!

Anton fumbled with the system. “Yes, we’re here! Please. We need help!”

The Solar Navy acknowledged, and rescue ships approached. Anton’s heart swelled. It was over at last. They had made it.

He turned to Vao’sh beside him and saw that the rememberer stared helplessly at nothing, completely catatonic.