"He's dead." Cesca clenched her teeth in fury, then grabbed Nikko's arm as he stood staring. "We'll mourn him later. Right now Right now we've got to get off of Jonah 12!" we've got to get off of Jonah 12!"

Behind them, more robots scuttled over the terrain, relentlessly closing the distance. Cesca muttered a curse and knew they would have to leave Purcell's body with the other fallen Roamers. She and Nikko raced to the ship, hoping they could take off before the robots caught them, and before the reactor blew.

Chapter 97-DD.

As their sharp-angled ship entered the outer system where the last Klikiss robots hibernated, Sirix continued to tell DD horrifying stories about his progenitor race. The Friendly compy was much more disturbed to know that the robots' plans for the extermination of the human race were about to begin.

Upon approaching the distant planetoid that held the final cluster of dormant robots, Sirix discovered a great deal of unexpected activity. "I detect numerous Klikiss language transmissions. These robots should not have been activated yet. Something is wrong."

Their ship descended toward the small icy world, and the glowing base camp suddenly came into view. Sirix displayed the full complex on their tactical screens. "Those are indications of human technology. Your creators have come to this world before us."

Now DD was interested. "A human habitation? Did they awaken the robots by accident?"

"That is an advantageous possibility. Our remaining companions appear to have nearly completed their own work. They have independently acquired materials and components from the humans there."

Acquired. DD saw to his dismay that the human settlement was destroyed; no doubt the people had all been massacred, just like the colonists on Corribus.

Transmitting his identity and mission, Sirix flew toward the central base where a flurry of reactivated machines moved about. "I detect anomalous power levels and unusual energy buildup. There are many simultaneous transmissions from the robots on the ground."

"It sounds like they're distressed." DD spotted a blip of engine exhaust as a ship lifted off from the planetoid's surface. Even with the limited scan, he recognized the configuration of a human ship. Someone was still alive down there.

A ragged human voice came over the communications system, a frightened-sounding young man. "Incoming ship, back off! Jonah 12 is going to get awfully hot in a few seconds. I'm not kidding-" The voice cut off in sudden alarm as the pilot realized he was not in contact with a human vessel.

Sirix swiveled his head toward DD. "If humans have discovered our secret enclave of Klikiss robots, we cannot allow them to escape and spread a warning. This is a crucial time in our plans."

Sirix changed course toward the human vessel as it raced up out of Jonah 12's gravity well. DD heard a hum of systems, hydraulic machinery locking into place. Sirix said, "Until now, DD, you have been unaware of the weapons systems built into this craft."

"You do not have to kill them," the compy pleaded.

"It is necessary."

Without delay, Sirix launched two heavy-artillery projectiles, which streaked toward the human ship. Shouting, the pilot spun his craft, wildly changing course. The projectiles soared in, converging in space.

The escaping vessel swooped and corkscrewed, but one of the targeted projectiles slammed into its engines. The explosion sent the human spacecraft into a tumbling dive, out of control. DD watched the ruined ship plummet toward the icy surface. It fell near the horizon and struck a frozen outcropping, crashing far from the robot-infested base camp.

"Now I can concentrate on what has agitated the other robots," Sirix said. "The human pilot implied that a disaster is about to occur."

DD desperately wanted to scan for survivors, to help them, but Sirix would never allow it.

The black robot said, "You need not be concerned, DD. A team of Klikiss robots can go to the crash site and dispatch any human still alive, as we did on Corribus."

They descended to the construction site, while Sirix continued to transmit requests for information. On the ground dozens of robots clustered around a large containment structure. The power levels were throbbing.

DD shifted frequencies in his optical sensors and saw in infrared that the structure was blazing hot. The uncontrolled thermal output swelled visibly second by second. Finally the robots on the ground acknowledged Sirix's insistent signals and transmitted a burst summary of what had happened.

DD intercepted and translated the message, swiftly concluding that there was no way to stop the runaway supercriticality of the reactor. Sirix reached the same conclusion and immediately shifted course. "I am aborting our landing. We must escape."

For once, DD agreed with the black robot. Their angular ship accelerated away. According to the compy's interpretation of the readings from the runaway reactor pile, less than a second remained- With a sudden flash and a burst of energy, the containment structure vaporized. The shock front mowed down the Klikiss robots clustered around the reactor pile, flattening the large escape ships and disintegrating everything in its way.

The increasing shockwave rose much faster than Sirix's ship. Accelerated protons tore through the robotic craft like a high-energy blizzard. DD anchored himself, knowing that the destructive pulse could not be stopped.

The nuclear blast slammed into them from behind. Structural girders smashed, plates buckled, and an explosion erupted from one of their own engines. In a blur of articulated arms, Sirix grappled with the controls, extending four more insect appendages to manipulate numerous systems.

Far below, the Jonah 12 base was a white-hot pool, an expanding bonfire that vaporized frozen hydrogen and methane, melting structures as it continued to spread outward in a vast crater.

Burning and damaged, the robot ship tumbled out of control, careening into empty space.

Chapter 98-JESS TAMBLYN.

Hair damp and wavy, blue eyes bright, Jess stood outside on the surface of the ice moon. Even in the hard vacuum, an oily sheen of water covered his pearlescent garment; his skin tingled with ozone. Jess's feet, hands, and face were bare, but the energy of his body kept his flesh warm and protected.

With senses enhanced by the water entities, he could see down through the thick sheet of ice as if it were no more than a distorted windowpane. He walked alone over the surface, past the cylindrical cermet wellheads, past the insulated outpost shacks and the lift shafts that led far beneath the ice sheet. He tried to remember. It had been so many years since his mother's fatal accident...

Jess didn't know how far she had gone, where the crack had swallowed her vehicle. He walked for more than a kilometer until he saw a wide silvery scar, a poorly healed gash through the frozen crust.

Long ago, Karla Tamblyn's surface rover had fallen through ice and slush. She'd been unable to pry herself free, and once her vehicle began to sink, she was doomed. Slowed by the closing jaws of solidifying water, she had dropped deeper and deeper until the glacial ice enfolded her rover. She'd been able to transmit her goodbyes for almost two hours as her batteries gradually ran out and the cold closed in. When water cracked through the thick insulated windows, the submerged rover had flooded, and Karla had been overwhelmed, frozen solid-inaccessible for nineteen years. Locked away, imprisoned, with no Roamer funeral, no way for her family to see her one last time.

Now, though, her son had the ability to reach her.

Standing atop the refrozen crevasse, Jess clenched his hands and felt a ripple of wental energy course through him. He could do the impossible.

With his affinity for water itself, Jess shifted his thoughts and sank through the frozen lattice of ice. He had a target this time: the small wreck of a drowned surface rover. He descended as if through gelatin, seeing his way deeper and deeper. Even with the protective film around him, he felt the increasing cold.

Strangest of all, he actually sensed his mother down there, felt her existence. Determined to bring her back, if only to give her a proper Roamer farewell, Jess moved laterally. He parted the frozen water and let it fold behind him until he hovered like an insect in amber before the sunken rover. The vehicle had come to an equilibrium in the hardened slush. Its windows had been smashed open by the pressure, its interior filled with metal-hard ice.

But Jess plunged in as if the barrier was not there. Inside, he saw a solidified human form like a statue in the driver's chair. Her arms were spread out, as if welcoming the embrace of death. For some reason, Karla had opened her helmet's faceplate at the last moment. He had heard of people in the last stages of extreme hypothermia who experienced inexplicable physical reactions, hot flashes that made them attempt to tear off their clothes.

Karla's face was frozen, her eyes open, her mouth set in a contented line, not quite a smile, but certainly not fear of impending death. She'd been at peace in the end. She'd had time to say her goodbyes, to accept her fate, knowing no one could ever come to rescue her. Jess remembered that day as one of the longest in his life, gathered with his father and Ross and Tasia in the communications shack. She hadn't sounded surprised by anything they said, just happy to hear their voices as she slowly faded...

Now, with energized water flowing around him, Jess moved his hands, sketching out lines like a sculptor mapping a block of marble. With nothing more than a thought, he cut Karla Tamblyn free of her icy prison. Carrying her body, still surrounded by a shell of solid ice, he drifted backward until he emerged from the wrecked rover.

All around him, he melted and flowed a pathway through the ice, which immediately re-formed behind him. To him, water was an infinitely mutable environment. He surrounded them with a bubble that rose through the barrier.

Looking up through hundreds of meters of solid ice at the dim glow of daylight far above, he willed himself to rise with his mother in his arms. Never had he felt so grateful for the wental abilities; at last, he could make use of them in a way that would not hurt other human beings.

Reaching the surface, Jess kept his mother encased in the sheltering block of ice. After so much time, he did not want her fragile body damaged by exposure to hard vacuum. He made his way to the wellheads and the external markers of the Plumas water mines. Then, choosing his path carefully, he sank again, paralleling one of the lift shafts until he reemerged beneath the frozen crust.

Under the light of the artificial suns he rested Karla's body on the icy shelf. As if shaping clay, he ran his bare palms over the outside of the block, letting just a spark of wental energy trickle out so he could smooth the sheath. He let a bit of the power fade its way inside, seeking the tiny spark that Jess saw within his mother's frozen form. The water around her began to glisten with diamond droplets, brighter than ice.

His three uncles hurried out from their heated enclosures. "By the Guiding Star!" Wynn cried. "Is that Karla? Bram's sweet wife Karla-"

"How did you ever find her, Jess?" Torin asked.

"The wentals helped me. I have let the water entities touch-"

Jess suddenly reeled as images, words, and thoughts sang through the wentals within him, a message picked up by the other dispersed water entities. One of his volunteers, a water bearer...Nikko Chan Tylar! He had found Cesca, and they were in great danger.

"I have to go," Jess barked. "The base on Jonah 12 has been destroyed. Cesca's in trouble." He ran toward the lift shaft and the vertical passage that would take him out to his wental starship.

His uncles stared after him, then turned uneasily back to the frozen but slowly melting shape of Karla Tamblyn. "But...what do we do with her, her, Jess?" Jess?"

Overwhelmed by the desperation in Nikko's wental message, Jess turned. "She'll be protected-she's been like that for years already. Keep the ice cold."

"That won't be too difficult." Wynn frowned at the ice pack around them.

"I'll come back." Jess raced for his water-and-pearl ship, consumed with worry for Cesca, hoping he would get to her in time.

Chapter 99-DOBRO DESIGNATE UDRU'H.

The Dobro Designate and Adar Zan'nh disguised themselves roughly with components from the dead guards' uniforms. They confiscated the weapons, though both men knew they could never survive if all the brainwashed crewmen stood against them. With only two people to take over an entire warliner, they had to be much more subtle, and there wasn't much time. The battleship would reach Dobro soon-and Udru'h knew the trap that waited for them there.

"The Mage-Imperator was forewarned about the threat to Dobro. He will destroy this ship rather than allow it to take over another Ildiran colony. We need to break Rusa'h's hold on this crew before we arrive."

The Adar appeared haggard and lost, as if the burden upon him had been doubled. "But how are-" Udru'h waited, letting him think through the possibilities. Then it dawned on Zan'nh. "Ah! The cargo hold is full of shiing!"

The Designate nodded. "The rebels intended to use it to subsume Dobro's populace, but that can work both ways. Shiing will temporarily break this crew's connection to any thism thism network, whether it belongs to Rusa'h or to the Mage-Imperator." network, whether it belongs to Rusa'h or to the Mage-Imperator."

Zan'nh's brow furrowed. "They'll be disoriented, detached from any guidance at all. They won't know what to do."

"Are you not the Adar? Then command command them. Are you a good enough leader to reassert order and reason upon your own crew?" them. Are you a good enough leader to reassert order and reason upon your own crew?"

A faint smile curled Zan'nh's lips, and he showed his teeth, glad to be something other than a pawn. "Yes, I am. That's how Adar Kori'nh achieved his greatest triumph when the old Mage-Imperator died."

Udru'h looked down his nose. "Yes, but he ended up destroying himself and all his warliners. I would prefer a different outcome."

Zan'nh's eyes sparkled, and his mind seemed to grow stronger with each passing minute. "If we succeed in this, it will be a story worthy of Adar Kori'nh."

"No, it will be a story worthy of the Saga of Seven Suns. Saga of Seven Suns."

Taking their weapons, the two made their way down back passageways and service shafts, creeping from deck to deck. Even when they were inevitably seen from a distance, they maintained their composure. Because Rusa'h's rebels were blind to any thism thism but theirs, they did not challenge Udru'h or Zan'nh. but theirs, they did not challenge Udru'h or Zan'nh.

While the warliner flew toward Dobro, Prime Designate Thor'h and the rest of the maniple would be attacking another splinter world, spreading shiing and trapping new followers in mad Rusa'h's web. It had to stop.

Udru'h and Zan'nh would begin to turn the tide by recapturing this warliner, and by saving Dobro and its people, both human and Ildiran.

In the cargo levels, they found thousands of cylinders full of shiing gas, lined up, row upon row, ready to be unleashed upon the population of Dobro. The nialia production fields on Hyrillka had been working at extraordinary levels to create enough of the drug to meet the needs of the spreading insurrection.

Zan'nh hauled out canisters and brought them to the warliner's ventilation systems. None of the Solar Navy crewmen ventured into the isolated storage chambers; until the warliner arrived at Dobro itself, they had no need for the compressed shiing.

As Zan'nh connected the canisters to the ventilation system, Designate Udru'h went to an emergency station at the cargo bay's hatch and found two breathing films to be used in the event of a disaster. He handed one of the soft, pliable membranes to the Adar. "Rusa'h insists that we must come over to his network willingly, that we can't be forced, but so much shiing would still distort our thoughts. I don't want to take that chance-do you?"

The younger man shook his head. "I intend to keep my thoughts clear and my determination firm." They applied the breathing films to their faces. Fortunately, shiing gas would not penetrate the skin.

Udru'h double-checked the preparations with the tanks. "Since we've got to succeed the very first time, I propose we unleash a massive dose to rip this crew free from the Hyrillka Designate's control."

The Adar still frowned. "If we detach all of these rebels from Rusa'h's corrupted thism thism web, won't he sense them slipping away? He will feel a hole in his network and know that it is unraveling." web, won't he sense them slipping away? He will feel a hole in his network and know that it is unraveling."

"And what can he do about it?" Udru'h raised his eyebrows. "He will be as powerless to stop it as Jora'h has been."

"But even when we soften Rusa'h's hold, how do we reconnect them with the Mage-Imperator? I cannot force them back into the legitimate network of thism thism. I'm not strong enough."

"Neither am I." Udru'h's eyes burned brightly above the gelatinous breathing film. "But at least they will be free of Rusa'h's corruption."

The two men opened the canister valves and began dumping shiing gas into the warliner's ventilation system. The stimulant hissed out in a long sigh. It would spread like venom in a body's bloodstream, sweeping through the battleship's ducts and chambers, finally reaching the command nucleus.

Udru'h nodded. "Good. Now let us hope it works before your father's ships destroy us. He is on his way."

Chapter 100-TASIA TAMBLYN.

Sure that the Hansa skymine was already destroyed, Tasia found the flight to Qronha 3 to be maddeningly long. En route, the Soldier compies performed their tasks exactly as she instructed, but they were damned poor company.

Instead, EA was Tasia's only friend-even if she was drastically changed. As a Listener model, she was programmed to be a companion, a sounding board, and over the years she had developed a genuine rapport with first Ross, then Jess, then Tasia. As Tasia talked with her, uploaded more of her carefully edited memories, even scanned some of the embarrassing old files from the Governess compy UR, she saw EA developing a personality again. It was somewhat different from her old friend, but at least the Listener compy was another step closer to her old self...

Finally, the sixty rammers roared into the Qronha system. Tasia watched the Ildiran gas giant grow brighter and larger on the ship's viewing screens. Making contact with her fellow dunsels, she laid out detailed plans for their assault against the drogues. "Check your forward sensors. See if you can find any survivors from the cloud-harvesting facility."

As the Soldier compies began a scanning sweep, Sabine Odenwald transmitted from her rammer, "This isn't a rescue mission, Commander. The EDF already wrote off that skymine."