The Ashes of Worlds

“I give you my word, Dad — it wasn’t us!”

Estarra spoke up. “Please, General, let us help you pick up the survivors.”

Robb could see that his father held his hands on the firing controls of his weapons. Finally, after a long, tense moment, Conrad’s shoulders drooped and he nodded. “We could use the help.” He called out to his tactical officer, “Review the records on those ships. Get to the bottom of this!” The connection cut off.

“You heard the Queen,” Robb said to his helmsman. “Let’s go pick up some escape pods.”

On the main viewscreen, throughout all the fuss, the swarmships hung motionless. They displayed no reaction whatsoever.

149

Tasia Tamblyn

Llaro was a tomb.

With the hard dry ground crunching under her feet, Tasia trudged through the ruins, looking for any signs of life. All the insect hive structures, tunnels, and expanded towers were empty and silent.

Tasia sniffed the air. “Right now, I’m more interested in answers than in the Klikiss themselves. Maybe they vanished again, just like they did thousands of years ago. I just want to make sure they’regone.”

KR and GU followed close on Kotto’s heels, recording data with their optical sensors. DD marched along with clear enthusiasm. “If we find Margaret Colicos, she will explain what happened here.”

“DD, you were with the Klikiss for a long while. Can you make a guess?” Orli said.

The Friendly compy paused to reassess the overrun former colony. “It is possible that the breedex dispatched its warriors through the transportals to attack or consolidate other subhives. Maybe they are no longer here because they are. elsewhere.”

Tasia sighed. “Then we’ll have to go elsewhere to look for them. We’ve got to test that Siren.” She glanced at Kotto. “What does your Guiding Star say?”

“I generally follow my own calculations instead of my Guiding Star. My mother never could understand that.”

“Not really an answer to my question, Kotto.”

Looking concerned, Mr. Steinman said, “Before we go looking for those bugs, I need to know one thing. If your gadget works, it’llwork, right? Immediately? We find the bugs, we zap them, and we’ll know within seconds?”

Kotto pondered for a moment. “In theory, the transmission of harmonic melodies should impose almost instant paralysis on the Klikiss — maybe even initiating hibernation.”

“And if it doesn’t work, we’ll figure that quick enough, too,” Steinman said. “But first we’ve got to find some bugs to use as guinea pigs.”

“All right, then, here’s my idea,” Tasia said. “If the Klikiss went to some other planet, we have to track them down. We can use the transportal. First, we disconnect the Siren from our ship and use antigrav handles to carry it.” She glanced at the tall transportal structure the Klikiss had erected in the middle of the Llaro hive. “Then we pick coordinate tiles and start shopping for planets. As soon as we find a bunch of Klikiss, we give them an earful of your Siren.”

DD brightened. “I know of many viable Klikiss centers. I can suggest alternative worlds where the breedex might have gone.”

Tasia nodded. “All of you compies, help us move the equipment; then we’ll start our bug hunt.”

After DD had compiled a list of target planets, he was obviously disappointed when the first two coordinate tiles opened only to silent, dusty planets similarly abandoned by the Klikiss. He seemed discouraged.

The third time, however, as soon as the transportal wall cleared and they stepped through, Tasia found herself facing hundreds of Klikiss diggers, excreters, and constructors expanding a vast insect metropolis. The creatures turned toward them, raising claws, chittering interrogatories.

“Bingo!” Tasia cried. “Serenade them, Kotto.”

The eager engineer activated the Siren, and Tasia instinctively covered her ears, though Kotto had given them each a set of noise-canceling plugs. Originally, he had been puzzled by this request, since the Siren’s blast should have no effect on humans, until Tasia pointed out that it would still beloud.

A warbling sonic thunderstorm belched out of the device. The signal didn’t sound like a melody by any definition Tasia knew, and fully half of the frequencies were beyond the range of human hearing. Even with earplugs, the sonic bombardment was bone-shaking.

Steinman winced, backing away, while Orli pressed her hands flat against her ears. The three compies just stood under the noisy barrage, listening and analyzing. Kotto didn’t seem bothered by the noise at all.

The Klikiss, though, were mesmerized. They paused, seemingly fascinated. All of the sub-breeds turned their armored heads toward the transportal in a perfectly synchronized motion, directing their faceted eyes at the droning sound. Then, with a simultaneous dissonant squeak, the bugs froze, like short-circuited robots.

Kotto stared. “I believe it worked.”

Steinman, who seemed to have read Kotto’s lips, yelled, “Then shut that damn thing off! It’s pounding right through my eardrums.”

Kotto shut down the device, and the subsequent silence was like a void in the air. The Klikiss did not move.

“Are they dead?” Tasia asked.

“I believe the signal has forced them into their hibernation mode,” DD said.

“Good enough for me,” Orli said.

Steinman looked at the immobilized insect bodies. “That’s damned impressive.”

“Judging by their bodily configurations, these sub-breeds appear to have been members of a subhive different from the Llaro Klikiss,” DD said. “They might be part of a larger consolidated hive mind, or perhaps a tenuously connected group of. leftovers.”

Tasia grabbed the antigrav handles and hauled the bulky Siren back through the transportal wall to empty Llaro. “Definitely a successful test. Now we can get down to business.” As soon as they had all returned, the trapezoidal frame shimmered back to solid rock. She turned to DD. “Give us some more possible coordinate tiles. I plan to keep hitting the bugs until we knock out whatever’s left of all the subhives.”

150

Chairman Basil Wenceslas

In the center of the alien swarmship, the breedex spoke in a shuddery voice that did not sound at all like the cool and collected Davlin Lotze.“You were not lying, Basil Wenceslas.” The voice carried an odd and annoying note of surprise.“The black robots are destroyed.”

“Then you saw the trap I planted for Sirix,” Basil exclaimed, unable to conceal his joy and relief. “A fatal defect. I caused it. All the new robots shut down as soon as they tried to open fire.”

“The black robots are destroyed,”the breedex said again, finally sounding satisfied.“Every one of them. At last.”

Margaret Colicos looked strangely at him. “Sirix killed my Louis. I am glad he’s gone.” Beside her, Anton put his hand over hers.