He thought longingly of his dear Shareen Pasternak, killed on a skymine that had been destroyed by hydrogues. And now a little girl had gone down in hopes that the hydrogues wouldrescue them. How ridiculous was that? He shook his head. As a counterpoint to these dismal thoughts, he clung to the satisfying knowledge that at least Zhett and Patrick had gotten away. They must be safer on Earth.

Now that his beloved skymine was nothing more than a gigantic, lumbering target, Kellum had to make the call. Swallowing hard, he slapped the main intercom button so hard he hurt his palm. “This is Del Kellum — listen up! I’m sounding a full evacuation of this skymine. All personnel, get to a ship. Any ship you can find. I can’t guarantee you’ll be safer out in the open, but we’re sitting ducks here.”

Most of his workers had anticipated the announcement. Dozens of ships, including tiny maintenance vehicles with a range of no more than a few kilometers, sprang away from the lower decks, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the skymine. They wanted to be far from the huge facility when the faeros circled in.

Countless ellipsoids swooped and looped like aimless sparks searching for victims, hunting down any escaping vessels. Most of the Roamer defenders had depleted their icy projectiles and were now running.

Flaming creatures closed in on all the skymines. Nearby, six fireballs threw their fury against a helpless cloud harvester owned by clan Hobart. Exhaust towers crumpled and melted; gas storage tanks burst, spewing a jet of flames to knock the levitating facility off its axis. The flames peeled away the armored structural plates, dismantling the whole facility. Finally, the lower ekti tanks ruptured, and the Hobart skymine’s emergency signals and calls for assistance abruptly ceased. The gigantic wreck became a roiling mass of smoke and explosions. Its altitude engines failed, and the once-graceful city tumbled down into the deep clouds.

Kellum watched it mournfully, wondering if this disaster was similar to what Ross Tamblyn had experienced as his Blue Sky Mine fell apart in the air.

Below he saw an unnatural storm cell bubbling up from the stirring layers of mist, and his heart froze as an ominous, yet terribly familiar, spiked diamond vessel breached the clouds like some spherical sea leviathan. “Oh, hell. ”

Another one rose, then another.

As the faeros continued to throw themselves at the Solar Navy warliners, and the Roamer ships expended their last few ice projectiles, an armada of hydrogue warglobes rose up to meet them, shrouded in glittering wental mist.

121

Jess Tamblyn

With their water sphere skimming atop the cloud banks, Jess and Cesca called upon the watery entities within the depths of Golgen, drawing sparkling smoke into a windy vortex. Diaphanous wisps of sentient fog curled toward the fireballs, ready to strike.

Jess could feel the warrior wentals around and within him thrumming with unaccustomed fury.Faeros! He nursed that anger into a determination that he fed back to the wentals as he led the charge upward. The sky was so full of vessels in chaotic motion that even the vast gas giant seemed crowded.

Though the rising mist looked deceptively ethereal, whenever it touched a fireball, the result was like a boiler explosion. The watery entities seethed with animosity. This was vengeance for the devastation of Charybdis. Yes, the wentals had learned.

Jess could sense the faeros incarnate in one of the largest fireballs, another corporeal presence guiding the elementals — an avatar like himself, and yet entirely different. Jess could feel Rusa’h like a burn on the skin, a fire in the mind. This man had single-handedly changed the war with the faeros and taught them how to defeat the hydrogues.

Jess knew thatRusa’h must be the wentals’ main target.

Cesca understood as well. “If we can defeat him here, then there will be no need to go to Ildira. He chose this battlefield. Now let’s turn it against him.”

Sparking a deep and implacable determination among the wentals, the two directed their water ship up toward the central ellipsoid. Rusa’h led his charge to find and destroy the Mage-Imperator among the numerous Solar Navy warliners, but so far he had been unsuccessful.

A sudden intense turmoil occurred from below, though — different from the battle above. He could feel what was about to emerge. Cesca looked at him, startled. “Hydrogues.”

Hydrogues,the wentals said inside his mind.They will fight here.

Jess could not curb his surge of anger and disbelief. “The drogues will turn on us! It’s like letting loose a wolf to fight a mad dog.”

The wentals, though, responded with a firm confidence Jess did not feel.We will keep them chained.

When the clouds parted, a large armada of spiked spheres shot into the open, bright skies — dozens, and then dozens more. And tumbling along with them, drawn up by the warglobes, came the small derelict. From inside the diamond globe, Osira’h used her communication systems. “The hydrogues are outraged that the faeros have come to their world. I convinced them to help turn the battle.”

“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.