invaders were simply incinerated as bolts of blue energy wiped them away, leaving little more than black streaks to mark the places they had stood. The raptor took hits, half a dozen of them, but the shoulder-fi?red weapons didn’t pack enough of a wallop to hole the machine, so the surviving variants had no choice but to retreat into the harbor, where the water would protect them from further harm. Tepho continued to fi?re as the amphibians pulled back, but Shaz ordered his mercenaries to conserve their ammo and was the fi?rst to take notice of the fact that some additional combatants had arrived on the scene. The combat variant saw the wings sweep in from the south, circle above, and fi?re down at the phibs. Then, just as Shaz was about to warn Tepho, what looked like a yellow comet arced high above the village and exploded at the center of the harbor. There was a boom, as a huge geyser of water shot up into the air and hung there for what seemed like a minute but was actually little more than a second or two. The column of water was translucent, which meant that Shaz could see the phib bodies suspended within the spout, along with what might have been large sea creatures and the remains of fractured boats. Then, as the geyser started to collapse, the combat variant realized what would happen next. He yelled, “Run!”
and turned in order to follow his own advice. The tidal wave ramped up the steeply shelving beach, exploded over the seawall that had been built to protect the village, and sent fi?ngers of frothy seawater raging up Wattl’s streets. Tepho had just started to turn the raptor around when the water hit, lifted the machine off its pods, and carried the construct a good thirty feet before putting it down again. But the water would be forced to return, the technologist knew that, which was why he directed the raptor into a side street and took refuge behind a sturdy stone house. The seawater ran back toward the harbor a few moments later, where it poured over the seawall, taking most of the dead phibs along with it.
Tepho knew his machine couldn’t stand up to a comet like the one that had just caused so much destruction, and was already in the process of making a run for it, when a detachment of Lord Arbuk’s wings dropped a wire net over the raptor. It might have been possible to blow holes in the mesh with his energy weapons, but that was before a team of twelve angens appeared at the other end of the waterfront, wheeled to bring a huge mortar to bear, and were immediately released. Tepho took one look at the artillery piece, knew that it had produced the comet, and tilted his weapons up toward the sky. Or tried to, since the netting got in the way and kept the administrator from opening the canopy as well. Once it became clear that both the phibs and the strangers had been neutralized, Arbuk’s carriage rattled through the village and down onto the seawall, where with some help from Hitho Mal, the fat man was able to exit the coach. The netting had been removed from the raptor by then, thereby revealing a machine ten times better than the one that resided in his war museum. “Look at that,” the nobleman said approvingly, “it’s practically new! And who, pray tell, is the strange-looking cripple?”
Tepho, who had heard every word, stood trapped between two members of Arbuk’s household guards. And rather than mount a suicidal attack on the nobleman’s troops, Shaz, Phan, and all the rest of the administrator’s mercenaries had allowed themselves to be disarmed.
“I’m told that the cripple was piloting the machine,” the sensitive whispered into his superior’s ear. “And, judging from the thought forms that hover around him, he’s very angry. It seems he’s sensitive about his appearance, which, interestingly enough, bears a close resemblance to the man who leveled the village of Kine.”
Arbuk nodded. “Yes, I can see the resemblance. Still, anyone who likes to kill phibs can’t be all bad, so let’s see what the rascal has to say for himself. We’ll put him on the rack if he proves to be too obstreperous.”
That being said, the nobleman waved Tepho forward.
“My name is Arbuk, Lord Arbuk, and you are?”
“Tepho, sire, Omar Tepho,” the off-worlder responded carefully. The comments about his body, plus the fat man’s tendency to talk about him as if he wasn’t there, were infuriating. But the technologist was powerless to do anything about it.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Arbuk replied evenly. “Or it might be, depending on what you’re up to. Now, if you would be so good as to enter my carriage, we will retreat to a more comfortable location. Once there I’m going to ask you where you came from, how you got here, why you chose to destroy the village of Kine, and what makes the island of Buru so important to you. Shall we?”
Having been stripped of all power, Tepho had no choice but to agree. Especially given the fact that the fat nobleman was very well informed. A pair of footmen boosted the off-worlder up into the coach. Arbuk and Milo followed. Once inside, the nobleman couldn’t help but feel pleased with himself. But what Arbuk didn’t know, was that Tepho was wearing the real prize, who, thanks to his ability to link up with Socket, was watching the whole scene from the very edge of space. The carriage jerked into motion, wings wheeled high above, and the villagers of Wattl began to bury their dead.
Lassa Pontho swam up into one of the bubblelike meditation pods that fl?oated in and around the city of her birth, sat on the curvilinear seat, and took air straight into her lungs rather than through her gills. Spread out around her, in a valley between two undersea plains, lay the city of Shimmer. It consisted of fourteen domes of various sizes, each having dozens of locks and a variety of purposes. Seen from a distance, and bathed in shafts of sunlight that slanted down from the surface, the city looked like something from a fantastic dream. Gardens of brightly colored plants swayed in the cleansing current that fl?owed through the valley, shoals of tame fi?sh patrolled the rocky bottom, and sleek sea sleds came and went, each trailing its own stream of bubbles. Shimmer had been built hundreds of years before, back when the artifi?cial satellite called Socket had fi?rst been commissioned, and thousands of phibs had been brought in to work on projects related to the newly created tides. And, thanks to the power provided by their precious tidal generators, the variants had been able to sustain their underwater culture during the years since.
But the land-lords were not only jealous of what the phibs had but determined to bring their society down and profi?t in the process. That fact had everything to do with the disastrous raid on the village of Wattl, a raid that had been justifi?ed by the loss of phib fi?shing boats but was actually part of a larger effort to keep the norms landbound, lest they build ships and use them to attack phib cities. But even more worrisome was the fact that those who survived the raid reported that the land-lords had deployed a new weapon, a machine that walked upright on two legs and was equipped with powerful energy weapons. All of which suggested that the norms were in the midst of an unprecedented technological resurgence.
Further evidence of that could be seen in the reports submitted by paid agents. They claimed that three ironclad warships were being built inland, where they were safe from coastal raids, and would eventually be transported to Esperance by rail. And once the vessels arrived, Lord Arbuk and his cronies would probably launch them as quickly as possible and immediately put to sea. There was no way to know which phib city they would attack fi?rst—but Shimmer was closest to the harbor.
But could paid agents be trusted? They were norms, after all, therefore automatically suspect. Pontho had very little choice but to trust them, however, since it was almost impossible for a phib to pass as a norm and vice versa. The mayor’s reverie came to an end as a series of beeps came in over her headset. “Yes?”
“Sorry to interrupt,” a male voice said respectfully, “but one of our security came in with a couple of pirates in tow.”
Pontho felt a twinge of annoyance. Couldn’t they handle anything without her? “So?”
