Up in orbit, he detected a lone warliner quietly departing from the abandoned shipyards. Rusa’h was well aware that Adar Zan’nh’s few Solar Navy ships continued to deliver supplies that helped the evacuees. but this particular warliner held ten thousand Ildirans, all of them seeking to escape to some distant colony in the Ildiran Empire. The pilot had loaded his warliner with as many survivors as it could carry and had flown off, intending to take them far from Rusa’h.

He could not allow that to happen.

Once the moving warliner had attracted the attention of the faeros, Rusa’h knew this was an acceptable sacrifice, his best compromise. He groaned, then surrendered to the need and unleashed the fireballs. They raced off to the new target.

From the Prism Palace, he watched through blazing eyes as the fireballs swiftly closed on the crowded vessel. Through thethism, he could feel both hope and terror emanating from the refugees aboard the warliner. Ten thousand of them. all desperate to find sanctuary on some other Ildiran planet.

At least they weren’t the people of Hyrillka. he drew some consolation from that.

The faeros ellipsoids strained, ravenous as they began the chase. When the ornate battleship detected the approaching fireballs, its flight pattern became erratic, heading back toward the complex of heavy spacedocks and industrial facilities, as if hoping to find a place to hide.

The desperate warliner tried to dodge through an obstacle course of girders and half-built ship frameworks. Flying magnificently, the Solar Navy pilot dove beneath a tethered stockpile of armored plating. As they streaked past, the weapons officer fired an energy blast that severed the clamps holding the plates in place. Vibrating from the impact, the metal sheets spread apart, twirling like an artificial storm of flat meteors.

The faeros careened into the plates, flashing into blinding brightness as they vaporized the metal, leaving only a shower of molten globules in their wake. The fireballs barely slowed.

After a brief attempt to hide, the warliner accelerated away from the abandoned shipyards at maximum thrust, trying to get far enough away for the pilot to engage his Ildiran stardrive. Three comets of fire clipped the rear engines, melting them. The warliner spun out of control, its solar sails flapping outward like loose and tattered garments. In a final gesture of defiance, the warliner’s captain fired all of his weapons at the oncoming faeros ellipsoids.

Flames surrounded the Solar Navy ship, ate through its outer hull, and incinerated the vessel. Ten thousand Ildiran refugees and many more Solar Navy crewmen flashed into a bright blaze. Every soulfire aboard was absorbed.

And the faeros grew brighter.

In the Prism Palace, Rusa’h sighed. He hoped that would keep them satisfied. for now.

12

Beneto

His body was more than human, an extended tree whose branches spread into space, whose trailing tendrils and mental roots connected with the overall worldforest mind. And now his body was on fire.

Beneto and his fellow verdani battleships had been orbiting Theroc as guardians, but the faeros had found a secret vulnerability in him, jumping through telink, seizing onto the union of wental and verdani that created his treeship body. Now, high above the continents, he felt the flames from below surge through his heartwood. He could hear the other treeships screaming.

He shouted his thoughts out to all green priests, thinking of the worldforest rather than himself.Give the trees your strength. Do not despair. Celli was right to remind him, and he tried to help her by concentrating on the efficacy of hope, the foolish but brave human drive to fight even when a battle seemed lost.

By treedancing, his little sister and Solimar had once reawakened the seeds of life in the worldforest. The verdani and their wental counterparts simply did not have the dogged, foolish determination to wring a victory from almost certain defeat — but humans did. Now, even as the elemental fires caught on his gigantic body and fought their way deeper into him, Beneto called to the remnants of green priests inside the other verdani battleships, insisting that they not give up.

Beneto made a defiant stand against the newborn faeros even as flames flickered at the thorny ends of his outermost branches. A chain of sparks ricocheted up and down the bark plates of his wide trunk, but he quenched the first waves of fire. There was hope!

Around him, the verdani battleships smoldered, on the verge of crossing the flashpoint and bursting into living bonfires. Far below, Beneto could feel the main worldforest struggling as young faeros flashed from tree to tree. The fiery elementals waged a fierce battle for each victory among the towering groves, but the trees could fend them off. It could be done! He had demonstrated that himself, and he wasn’t alone in his fight.

The other verdani battleships, along with green priests on the ground, were joining together. His sister Celli was one of the strongest fighters. She and Solimar used every mental skill they had to defend the forest.

Beneto’s thoughts thundered through telink.We can snuff out the faeros before their fire overwhelms us.

The verdani battleships shuddered as they pulled strength from the worldforest mind, wrung it from their own heartwood, forcing themselves to endure the pain.

The flames grew hotter and more insistent in Beneto’s body, and he could not entirely push them away. He struggled so hard that a long crack split along his thickest bough, and the glowing golden blood of his sap spilled out into space. The flames bit deeper, jumping into the point of weakness.

Nearby in space, two more verdani treeships lost their battle to possession by the elemental fires. They weakened, faltered, and then each spiny battleship became a corona of gleeful flames.

Even so, the infested treeships refused to let the faeros possess them. Rather than becoming full-fledged torch trees, the two lost verdani battleships intentionally allowed themselves to crumble into ash. Fragments of embers sparkled and drifted apart in space.

Although Beneto kept fighting, the flames ate at him, pushing deeper into his core, and he could not stop the burning.

13

Admiral Sheila Willis

With hundreds of small EDF craft in her battle group — Remoras, fuel tankers, cargo carriers, troop transports, and survey flyers — Willis was able to mount one hell of a bucket brigade. This wasn’t exactly something she had covered in basic training, but her people called up all their available databases on wildfire-fighting techniques. They would figure it out as they went along.

Using her own landed shuttle in the middle of a clearing as a field command post, she watched her display screens, frowning or cursing as images rolled in from recon flyovers. The Admiral activated the comm system and shouted, “I’d better see water dumping on these trees within the next five minutes, or you’re going to think serving under General Lanyan was a Sunday picnic.”