Horizon Storms (2 page)

vesters to Jupiter. For several days all was quiet, but then warglobes engaged the EDF in a terrible battle. Tasia and Robb survived, although the battered human ships limped away, beaten. . . .

Before anyone learned of the humiliating defeat, Basil presided over King Peter’s coronation, designed as a show of hope and confidence. Peter, hiding his hatred for Basil, was drugged into cooperation. Feigning paternal pride, Basil promised the new King that if he behaved, they would find him a Queen. . . .

On Ildira, Nira discovered that she was pregnant with Jora’h’s child, but before she could tell him, the Mage-Imperator dispatched Jora’h on a diplomatic mission. Then, in the stillness of a sleep period, brutal Ildiran guards captured Nira and stabbed to death her mentor Otema, who was too old for the breeding pens. Nira was turned over to the evil Dobro Designate for genetic experimentation. . . .

At the Roamer capital of Rendezvous, Speaker Okiah challenged the resourceful clans to find alternatives to skymining, then abdicated her position in favor of Cesca. Jess watched the woman he loved take her place as a strong leader, realizing she was farther away from him now than ever before.

On distant Rheindic Co, the Colicos team discovered an arcane transportation system, a dimensional doorway controlled by complex machinery. Though the Klikiss robots insisted they remembered nothing, Margaret was able to translate archaic records. Apparently the robots themselves had been responsible for the disappearance of their parent race and were also involved in an ancient war with the hydrogues! Surprised by this news, Margaret and Louis rushed back to their camp, only to find that their green priest had been murdered and all communication cut off.

Working with their faithful compy DD, Margaret and Louis barricaded themselves in the cliff city, but the sinister Klikiss robots broke through. Although DD attempted to defend his masters, the robots captured him, taking care not to hurt a fellow intelligent machine. At the last moment, Louis got the “transportal” functioning, opening a doorway to an unknown alien world. He urged Margaret through. Then, before he could join her, the gate closed—and the robots were upon him.

*

*

xiv

For five years, the hydrogue war continued; the human race and the Ildiran Empire struggled to cope with the loss of stardrive fuel. King Peter announced strict rationing schemes, taking public blame for the act while Basil Wenceslas made all the real decisions. Roamer daredevils led by Jess Tamblyn and DEL KELLUM—a clan head who ran shipbuilding operations in the rings of the gas planet Osquivel—made hit-and-run sweeps on gas giants, grabbing ekti before the hydrogues could strike them; many missions ended in tragedy.

Prime Designate Jora’h was told that his beloved Nira had been killed in a fire; the Mage-Imperator kept the Dobro breeding scheme secret from him, along with the fact that Nira was alive and well, being used as a test subject. After bearing OSIRA’H, Jora’h’s own daughter, Nira gave birth to several more half-breed children. She had no choice but to perform the slave labor imposed on her and other human captives taken generations ago from a lost colony ship, the Burton. To ensure that no one from the Hansa discovered the breeding camp, the Dobro Designate ordered the destruction of the derelict Burton. Adar Kori’nh reluctantly followed his orders, but was disturbed to get rid of such a historic relic. The breeding program had to remain secret.

On Nira’s home planet of Theroc, Reynald searched for a suitable wife, accompanied by his younger sister ESTARRA, since he would soon replace his parents as the leader of his people. Their grandparents urged them both to choose a good match, since Reynald and Estarra had plenty of responsibility on their shoulders.

Cut off from the traditional business of skymining, the Roamers developed new schemes for obtaining fuel—from breaking down cometary ice to flying huge nebula sails. Eccentric engineer KOTTO OKIAH established a risky metals-processing colony on the extremely hot planet of Isperos. At the shipyards in the rings of Osquivel, Del Kellum showed Jess all he had done; his daughter ZHETT was clearly interested in Jess, but he was still in love with Cesca.

Jess’s sister Tasia was sent with a group of battleships to the rebellious Hansa colony of Yreka, where settlers were hoarding ekti. The EDF cracked down hard, first isolating and then raiding Yreka, confiscating all stardrive fuel for military uses; Tasia was uneasy that the EDF chose to turn their

might against their own struggling colonies, instead of the real hydrogue enemy.

Chairman Wenceslas, who had been hoping that Margaret and Louis Colicos might unearth another weapon as useful as the Klikiss Torch, discovered that the archaeologists had vanished without a trace. Although their scholar son, ANTON COLICOS, had sent repeated inquiries about his missing parents, his letters vanished into the Hansa bureaucracy. Before Anton could learn anything, he received a surprise invitation from an Ildiran historian, REMEMBERER VAO’SH, to study the Saga of Seven Suns on Ildira. He eagerly accepted.

Chairman Wenceslas sent the merchant woman Rlinda Kett to Crenna to pick up an undercover spy, DAVLIN LOTZE, and take him to Rheindic Co in order to discover what had happened to the Colicos team. While on Crenna, Rlinda also met with her favorite ex-husband, BRANSON

“BEBOB” ROBERTS, who had been drafted to fly EDF recon missions against the hydrogues but chose to go AWOL instead. Leaving BeBob behind, Rlinda took Davlin to Rheindic Co, where they found the bodies of Louis Colicos and the green priest, but no sign at all of Margaret or their compy DD.

Hapless kidnapped DD watched the evil Klikiss robots perform horrific tests on captured compies to “free” them from the programming that forced them to obey humans. DD also discovered that thousands of Klikiss robots, buried in a sort of hibernation, were being reawakened as part of their insidious schemes. The robots took little DD to the bizarre high-pressure cities of the hydrogues on a gas giant. There, DD learned that the Klikiss robots were forming a deadly alliance with the hydrogues against humans, but the little compy was helpless to stop their plans.

On Earth, King Peter and Basil Wenceslas were surprised when a Klikiss robot, JORAX, unexpectedly volunteered to let himself be dismantled for science. Jorax claimed that the Klikiss robots wanted to assist humans in the hydrogue war, and that the robotic technology could be used to create highly proficient Soldier compies. Peter was suspicious of the offer, but Basil saw too many possible benefits to turn it down. The robot was dissected, and many of the Klikiss robot programming modules were immediately copied, adapted, and put into production.

While sleeping with Sarein, Basil complained that the aloof green xvi

priests would be extremely valuable as communication tools in the war, but they refused to help. Sarein suggested a plan to strengthen ties between Theroc and the Hansa: Her sister Estarra should marry King Peter. When they attended Reynald’s coronation ceremony on the forested world, Basil and Sarein offered this plan to the new leader of Theroc, and he accepted.

When Estarra learned the news, she was at first surprised and alarmed—she had never met Peter—but her friend, the eccentric green priest ROSSIA, encouraged her to give the alliance a chance. Estarra communicated with her brother Beneto, serving as green priest on Corvus Landing, and he wished her well. Sarein then spoke to the gathered green priests and convinced nineteen of them, including her uncle YARROD, to volunteer to help the EDF.

After his little sister’s engagement to the King, Reynald sent a marriage proposal to Cesca Peroni. Though she was in love with Jess and continued to meet him for secret assignations, they had never formalized their plans.

Now, for the good of her people, she considered the proposed alliance with the Therons. Jess urged Cesca to accept the offer, regardless of her feelings for him. To make the choice easier for her, he signed up for a long and lonely voyage to collect ekti in one of Del Kellum’s nebula skimmers; he launched from the Osquivel shipyards and flew off alone into space, leaving Cesca to do what she must.

On Ildira, the Mage-Imperator revealed to Prime Designate Jora’h that he was dying and that Jora’h would soon have to take the throne. Adar Kori’nh escorted Jora’h to the pleasure planet of Hyrillka to retrieve his eldest noble-born son, THOR’H, who was destined to replace him as the next Prime Designate. Thor’h resented his change of status from his soft life and pouted when his father told him he must prepare for his new duties. The Adar’s warliners put on a spectacular performance for hedonistic DESIGNATE RUSA’H.

Before they could depart, a group of hydrogue warglobes swept in to destroy Hyrillka. Designate Rusa’h was seriously injured as the citadel palace collapsed around him. Although Adar Kori’nh and his warliners were resoundingly trounced, he managed to escape with Jora’h, Thor’h, and the unconscious Rusa’h.

When they returned to Ildira, the dying Mage-Imperator instructed Kori’nh to abandon weaker colonies in the Ildiran Empire to consolidate

their strength. Kori’nh saw this as a devastating blow: For the first time in millennia, the Empire was shrinking—and under his watch! While Rusa’h remained in a coma, the Mage-Imperator revealed to Jora’h details of an ancient hidden war, in which the hydrogues had been allied with fiery beings known as faeros against watery entities called wentals and a forest mind called the verdani. Jora’h realized that the sentient worldtrees on Theroc must be the verdani, and he began to suspect that his beloved Nira might not have died in the convenient way his father described.

In the Ildiran breeding barracks on Dobro, Nira told the prisoners stories about what life was like for free humanity. Unfortunately, they had been experimental subjects for so many generations that they could not imagine freedom. Designate Udru’h trained Nira’s daughter Osira’h to enhance her mental powers. Udru’h brainwashed the little girl to believe that she was the savior of the Ildiran race in the struggle against the hydrogues.

When Nira and other prisoners were put to work fighting a brush fire in the hills, Nira tried to escape, rushing to scrub trees and attempting to use her green priest abilities to call for help. But the trees were silent, and she was captured, beaten, and dragged back to the camps.

General Lanyan went on a survey cruise with Tasia Tamblyn’s old nemesis, Patrick Fitzpatrick III. They encountered a lone Roamer cargo ship; after confiscating its load of ekti, Fitzpatrick quietly destroyed the ship and its captain, careful to leave no witnesses. Later, the EDF battle group responded to a distress call from a planet under attack by hydrogue warglobes. Aided by an innovative idea from Tasia, they rescued many of the colonists, but they could not fight the hydrogues. Tasia’s lover Robb Brindle chased after the departing enemy, tracking them to the ringed gas planet Osquivel, the site of Del Kellum’s secret Roamer shipyards. When Robb reported his find of the debris to the EDF commanders, General Lanyan decided to make an all-out attack on Osquivel. Knowing that the hidden Roamer facility would surely be found, Tasia sent her loyal compy EA off to warn Speaker Peroni. Meeting with the EDF commanders, Robb proposed a risky scheme to go down in an encounter vessel in a last attempt to communicate with the hydrogues before the EDF attacked; it was almost certainly a suicide mission.

When EA delivered her warning, the Roamers at Osquivel scrambled to hide their shipyard before the EDF could arrive. By the time Tasia and xviii

her fleet came to the ringed planet, the Roamers had completed their work.

Robb descended in his diving bell, offering a last chance for negotiation, but his transmissions cut off abruptly. When hydrogue warglobes opened fire, Robb was presumed dead, and General Lanyan ordered a full-scale attack, using the new Soldier compies. The battle was a massacre of human ships. Zhett Kellum and her father watched the disaster from their hiding places in the planet’s rings. Ship after ship was destroyed, and the scattered EDF finally declared a retreat, leaving fallen comrades behind. Tasia barely managed to drag her cruiser away; Patrick Fitzpatrick’s ship was destroyed. Utterly defeated, the remnants of the fleet limped home. . . .

Cesca traveled with celebratory Roamer ships to formally accept Reynald’s offer of marriage. Jess was far away, alone, on his nebula skimmer, collecting hydrogen, other gases, and water molecules. Gradually sensing that he was no longer alone, Jess realized that the water was somehow alive, and he began to communicate with it. He had gathered one of the supernatural beings, a wental, which told him about the ancient war against the hydrogues. Jess now had a new mission: If he dispersed this wental to other water planets and helped it grow strong again, humanity could have a powerful ally against the hydrogues. He took the wental to an empty ocean world, where the entity miraculously spread; then Jess departed to find another candidate planet.

On Rheindic Co, searching for information about Margaret Colicos, the spy Davlin Lotze accidentally discovered how to activate the Klikiss transportals and was whisked to another planet, while Rlinda Kett could only watch helplessly. Through experimentation, Davlin activated the transportation system again and spent days hopping from planet to planet, until he finally found his way back to Rlinda, who had nearly given up on him. Though exhausted and near starvation, Davlin was also exhilarated—he had discovered a new means of interplanetary travel that did not require the embargoed stardrive fuel ekti!

Still without word of his missing parents, Anton Colicos traveled to meet with the historian Vao’sh at the Prism Palace, where he learned about Ildiran tales and culture. After spending time on the main world, he and Vao’sh were assigned to the resort planet of Maratha, which was in constant sunlight for half the year and full darkness the other half. Klikiss robots were constructing a second city on the opposite side of the world, but