Cesca raised her eyebrows. “Jess Tamblyn, are you really doubting Roamer ingenuity?”

He took hope from that, and with his fingers still dripping, he began to walk across the wasteland. Understanding the wentals all too well, he did know what the largest problem was. “Wentals and verdani are forces of life and stability. Hydrogues and faeros are the embodiments of destruction. When they clash, the chaos and aggression inevitably overwhelm the quiet and peace. The wentals don’t know how to fight effectively against an enemy like this.”

Cesca followed him. “Unless we change the rules of engagement.”

A small crack opened up in the ground, and steam sighed out like the last gasp of another wental that had surrendered to its fate.

Ten thousand years ago the wentals and verdani had nearly been annihilated in the great war. Sorely beaten, the hydrogues were driven into their gas-giant planets, and the faeros took up residence in their stars. When hostilities had flared up again, the unresolved conflict triggered into full fury. But now the landscape of the Spiral Arm was quite different.

From his contact with the wentals, Jess knew that the faeros had nearly been defeated by the hydrogues until the fiery beings had changed their old chaotic tactics. The former Hyrillka Designate Rusa’h had caused that difference. He had fled into the fires of a nearby sun where the faeros consumed and joined with him, much as the wentals had with Jess and Cesca. As a living embodiment of the fiery creatures, Rusa’h had showed them new ways to fight, and they had overwhelmed the hydrogues at one battleground after another — and won. His guidance had made all the difference.

Jess stopped as these thoughts roiled through his head. When the wentals had been weak and few, they had saved him by permeating the tissues of his body, rescuing him from his exploding ship. Out of gratitude, Jess had led water bearers to disperse wental seedpools from planet to planet.

Now he and Cesca had an even greater challenge. Like Rusa’h, they had to take charge and guide the wentals in an effective fight. They had toshow the watery elementals how to take aggressive action.

He turned to Cesca, and his eyes seemed to fill with steam as he looked at the blasted landscape. “It’s time for the wentals to be angry, time for them to become warriors — to fight in a way that is more than just defensive.”

Power surged through his bloodstream, and he felt an overwhelming urge to strike something. Jess wasn’t normally an angry man, but now with his hard fists, he struck the glassy eggshell surface and felt the baked barrier crack. He pounded again. Yes, he sensed something deeper here! The oceans of Charybdis had been blasted away, but there was always water, always life.

He struck a third time and broke through the crust. Water filled the hole he had made, liquid percolating from deep aquifers. The water was hot, near boiling. Steam drifted about — not putrid brimstone steam, but vaporized water.Wental water. More and more of it welled up, as if trying to break free.

Cesca thrust her hands into the thermal pool. Bubbling water spurted out of the hot spring and flowed across the baked ground. Another geyser blasted through the crust, where more wentals had awakened from the hot aquifers.

Cesca stood up and clenched both fists. “As we touch and spread these wentals, our just anger will charge them with fresh purpose. Together we will find new ways to fight back.”

Beside her, Jess felt the power sing through his body, assuring him that all of the wentals would awaken and follow them. “We have a new Guiding Star.”

6

Tasia Tamblyn

After escaping from the Klikiss on Llaro, the damaged ship limped back to the Roamer shipyards. Tasia refused to leave the piloting deck, afraid that if she let her attention waver, some other crisis would hit these beleaguered people.

“Almost there, Tamblyn,” Robb Brindle said from the copilot’s chair, afraid to relax unless she did. “Almost there.”

“You’ve been saying that for days.”

“And each time we’re closer to home, aren’t we?”

The ship had originally been sent to rescue Roamer detainees held in a small EDF camp, but none of them had expected to fight a planet full of Klikiss. Damned bugs!

“Almost there,” Robb said again.

“Enough already.”

The Osquivel rings were a wide, sparkling disk, paper thin in relation to the bloated gas planet they encircled. Clear infrared signatures marked the largest industrial operations dispersed throughout the orbiting rubble: spacedocks and construction bays, admin asteroids, storage bunkers, independent complexes that specialized in ship construction or component fabrication, debris plumes that fanned out into space like rooster tails.

Tasia sent out their ID signal and requested an approved approach vector. In the large passenger compartment, the refugees began to get restless. Looking through the windowports, they watched the gas giant growing larger and larger.

“Is that a Roamer base?” Orli Covitz entered the pilot deck, her interested eyes fixed on the front screens.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? Bet you’ve never seen anything like it.”

Hud Steinman, a scrawny old man who always looked disheveled, came up next to the fifteen-year-old girl. “Lookscrowded. How many different habitation domes and industrial facilities do you have?”

“Exactly enough,” Tasia said. “No, strike that. We could use a few more. We’re building up the Confederation’s military against the Big Goose. and now we’ve got the bugs to worry about, too.”

“It’s probably noisy,” Steinman grumbled.

“If you prefer Llaro, we could send you back,” Robb teased.

“We’re docking within the hour,” Tasia said. “There’ll be quite a few Roamer families anxious to welcome us. Go tell everyone to get ready.”

“All we have are the clothes on our backs,” Orli said.

“And lucky to havethat,” Steinman added.

As their ship came into the center of the complex, numerous craft converged around the largest artificial structure. Small cargo pods and transport flitters raced in from other complexes as people gathered to welcome the refugees. Once Tasia gave them an earful about what had really happened at Llaro, she expected to rile up the whole Confederation before any more human colonies were trampled by the waves of returning Klikiss.

While she docked at the hub and went through the tedious lockdown and verification procedures, the eager passengers crowded against the hatches. Finally, after the equalization lamps blinked green, Tasia opened all four side doors at the same time and extended the ramps. In a flood, the survivors of Llaro exited into the bustling complex. Many looked shell-shocked. Many wept. Some couldn’t stop laughing.