As expected, the inventor had brought a shipful of gadgetry with him. “You never know what might come in handy,” he said, as he walked down the exit ramp while Tamblyn finished shutting down the systems in the cockpit. He looked over his shoulder, back toward the ship. “I’ve brought some friends along. I find them very helpful in my work. at least nondistracting. They’ve never been aboard a skymine before.”

Three compies descended the ramp after him; each had a different body coloration, two of them Technical models, the last a Friendly. Kotto flushed. “Well, those aren’t friends, they’re compies. although at times I think of them as friends.” Finally, a teenaged girl and an older man came down the ramp. “I was talking about these two — Orli Covitz and Hud Steinman.”

Steinman seemed a bit seasick; Orli, though, stared around her at the huge open skies of Golgen, the high clouds, and the bright sunlight, and she smiled in delight. Tasia Tamblyn emerged from the piloting deck, wiping her forehead and shading her eyes from the sun.

“I’ll find quarters for you all. Plenty of extra room.” Kellum gestured toward the other three. “Have a look at whatever you like — just don’t break anything. Tamblyn, you know your way around a skymine. Give them a tour.”

Tasia took her two companions off across the deck. “Look at what Kotto’s brought,” she called back at Kellum. “It’s a military necessity. Jess put him up to it.”

Kellum turned to the inventor. “Now what have you concocted? I’m sure it’s intriguing.”

“Oh, definitely.” He jumped right into his excited spiel as they tromped up the ramp. “New defenses — a genuinely novel concept. We’re dispersing them throughout the Confederation. although I don’t have a clue why the faeros would attack you out here. They’ve never shown any interest in gas giant planets. Jess Tamblyn and Speaker Peroni told me to make sure the Confederation is ready, though.”

Kellum paused in his step, startled. “Faeros? Here? By damn, what are you talking about?”

“They challenged me to develop new weapons to use against the fireballs, and they gave me some wental water to work with. Incredible stuff. Lots of potential.”

When the two men entered the large cargo bay, Kotto increased the illumination. Bright light shone down on the gleaming hydrogue derelict that sat next to what looked like some kind of satellite transmitter dish.

“Why did you bring that damned drogue sphere?” Kellum demanded. Intellectually, he knew the hydrogues were defeated, and he hoped never to see them again, but the reminder was quite unsettling.

Kotto glanced at it. “Oh. never mind, that has nothing to do with the wental weapons. And this other device is a prototype to be used against the Klikiss. I was expecting to test it soon — which is the main reason why Tasia Tamblyn came along, as a matter of fact.” He seemed to realize he had gone off on a tangent and brought himself back to the point. “First, though, I’ve got to deliver and install the new wental weapons.”

Kellum shook his head. “So you brought everything along with you, just in case?”

“One never knows when some component or other might be useful. The Klikiss Siren needs a bit of tuning up when I get the time, and I might find another way to test the derelict. My investigations are never finished.”

“So what’s this amazing new weapon?”

Like an excited boy, Kotto went to a large cubical bin, punched in an access code, and slid open the top. The container’s interior was frosty, shimmering with a bluish chemical light that emitted no heat whatsoever. Faint wisps of steam wafted upward like the breath of an ice ogre. Kellum peered inside to see dozens of cylindrical objects with pointed ends, like artillery shells as long as his forearm and a hand-span wide.

“That’s frozen wental water,” Kotto said. “Projectiles. I fashioned them with the help of the wentals, of course — I couldn’t do anything without their cooperation. They’re the right caliber to fit into the standard projectile cannons that the shipyards installed as defenses in most Confederation vessels.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Kotto grinned. “Frozen wentals, explosive bullets to shoot at the faeros. I don’t really know what’ll happen, but I assume that if a fireball gets shot with that kind of shell, the effects would be. extreme. Frankly, I’m not anxious for a chance to test it out, since that would mean finding some faeros. But better to be prepared for anything, don’t you think?”

Kellum couldn’t disagree.

“Fashioning them was quite interesting — I simply made some calculations and communicated to the wentals what I wanted them to do. Then they shaped themselves, cooled down into solid ice, and — voila! — perfect artillery shells. I wish everything was that easy.”

As the two men emerged from the ship’s hold, Kellum looked up into the yellowish skies. He was startled when proximity alarms howled throughout the skymine complex. “Nowwhat?”

Over the intercom, voices bellowed for all skyminers to man their stations, telling any armed craft to launch immediately. “More than eight hundred large ships inbound! No, make that a thousand!”

Tasia Tamblyn came sprinting back, her face flushed. “Kellum, do you have a green priest on the skymine? I can send a message to Osquivel — call for Confederation reinforcements.”

Frantic Roamer ships were launching from the lower decks, and the sky was filled with a chaos of unfiled flight plans. More craft streaked away from nearby skymines. Kellum sprinted to an intercom and demanded a report, though his people had little more information to give him. “Even I didn’t think the Eddies would come back with cojones that big. We are in deep poop.”

“We’re in deep something,” Tasia said. “I’m surprised the Eddies have any ships left after the debacle on Pym.”

Kotto Okiah, standing perplexed next to them, furrowed his brow and stared at the numerous distant shapes that had begun to appear at high altitude. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. That’s way too many ships, and they’re not behaving like Eddy raiders.”

Descending through the sky in a great parade with colorful solar sails deployed, hundreds of Ildiran warliners approached the skymining levels. The ornate alien ships reminded Kellum of the frilly angelfish he had once kept in his aquariums. Behind the first wave came another, and another.

“It looks like the whole Solar Navy.” He let out a long breath. “By damn, what are we supposed to do against this?” He sprinted toward the lift with the others following. He had to get to the ops center and at least pretend to be in charge. Hewas in charge, and people would want him to make decisions.

The warliners had broadcast no message. As soon as he reached the control room, Kellum sent a loud message to the incoming ships, as well as his own. “Don’t shoot! There’s no need for any weapons fire. We have no beef with the Ildiran Empire.” On the outer tactical screens, he saw hundreds more warliners locked in orbit, forming a full cordon around the gas giant. “This is Del Kellum, chief of this skymine complex. And I’d very much like some explanations.”