Horizon Storms (3 page)

the buildings were not finished. Eager to show the dark-fearing Ildirans the thrill of a “haunted house,” Anton convinced a group to visit the dark-side construction site, where the black robots diligently worked. Later, as the day season ended, all tourists left Maratha, and only a small skeleton crew remained behind during the long night. Anton and Vao’sh also stayed, waiting as the darkness fell. . . .

At the Roamer base on the near-molten world of Isperos, Kotto Okiah’s systems began to break down. Though he struggled to hold the base together, too many components failed, and he knew they were doomed. Kotto sent an urgent call to the Roamers, who responded with rescue ships. But the solar flares increased and the hellish environment was so harsh that the ships began to overload as they tried to take the refugees to safety. Before the rescuers fell to the punishing storm, however, fiery ellipsoidal ships emerged from the sun itself. At first the panicked Roamers feared they were under attack, but the fireballs—the faeros—actually protected them until they could get away. . . .

Back at the space battlefield at Osquivel, Roamers inspected the EDF

wrecks to see what they could salvage. Zhett found a drifting lifetube that contained a weak Patrick Fitzpatrick. Although she nursed him to health, she could never let him return to his former life, because he knew too many Roamer secrets.

Destined to be the next Queen, Estarra arrived on Earth. When she finally met Peter, she felt a connection with him, but Basil kept them carefully apart. As the wedding preparations proceeded swiftly after the EDF

defeat at Osquivel, she had little chance to get to know the man who would become her husband, but her sister Sarein arranged for them to have time together. During the spectacular wedding, Peter pointedly snubbed the Chairman, making Basil very angry. On their wedding night, the King and Queen felt they could be much stronger together, and perhaps even learn to fall in love with each other. . . .

Prime Designate Jora’h sent resentful Thor’h back to Hyrillka to supervise the reconstruction activities after the hydrogue attack. Jora’h followed his suspicions, eventually discovering that Nira was indeed alive and held hostage on Dobro—and that her daughter by him, Osira’h, was being trained as a new Ildiran weapon. Feeling betrayed, Jora’h confronted his father and the Dobro Designate, neither of whom denied the accusations, xx

insisting only that Jora’h must accept the truth for the good of the Empire.

For days, Jora’h tried to commandeer a ship to Dobro so that he could see Nira again. When the ailing Mage-Imperator realized that the Prime Designate would never understand, he took his only course of action: A Mage-Imperator knows everything in the Ildiran racial mind through his connection with the telepathic force of thism. Jora’h would know his place once he became the next godlike leader. Therefore the Mage-Imperator poisoned himself, leaving his son no choice but to do his duty.

The death of the Mage-Imperator severed the telepathic bond holding the Ildiran race together, sending a mental shockwave across the galaxy.

Jora’h collapsed, then dragged himself to his father’s deathbed. All around the Empire, Ildiran men cut off their hair and nearly went insane.

On patrol with the Solar Navy, Adar Kori’nh had felt helpless and resentful, his hands tied by clear orders that he must never engage the hydrogues. After the shocking death of the Mage-Imperator, though, he realized that, for once, he could act entirely on his own, without the leader observing his every action. He called forty-nine of his battleships and went to Qronha 3, the site of the first major Ildiran defeat by the hydrogues.

Kori’nh remembered how one of his officers had destroyed an enemy warglobe by crashing his ship headlong into it. Now, when the hydrogues rose up to meet them, Kori’nh gave his orders—and all forty-nine of his battleships slammed into enemy vessels, reaping a great but costly victory, and earning himself a place forever in the Saga of Seven Suns.

Prowling hydrogues encountered Jess Tamblyn on his journey to disperse the wentals, ancient enemies of the deep-core aliens. The water entities told Jess that he had to survive. On their rash instructions, he drank a vial of the energized wentals just as the hydrogues destroyed his ship over a cloudy and uncharted planet. Jess later woke up, floating in an alien sea—charged with superhuman powers, but marooned and completely cut off from everything he knew, including his beloved Cesca. . . .

The hydrogues next attacked Corvus Landing, where Estarra’s brother Beneto made his home. The aliens sent a small ship to Beneto’s worldtree grove, demanding to know the location of the main worldforest. The trees came alive and destroyed the emissary, but the larger warglobes obliterated the colony and all the worldtrees. Beneto remained connected through the forest, reporting what was happening up until the last minute. . . .

Friction continued between King Peter and the Chairman, especially after Basil made Peter issue an abortion decree to reduce the populations of struggling colonies. The King wanted to think and rule for himself—which did not sit well with Basil, especially since Peter did not agree with all of Basil’s actions and decisions. The Hansa even announced the existence of “Prince Daniel,” a replacement-in-training for Peter, should he continue to be intractable. Peter christened and dispatched a survey group of EDF battleships, crewed primarily by Soldier compies, with only a few token humans aboard; the ships went to observe a hydrogue planet . . .

and vanished without a trace.

While studying the Soldier compies, the Teacher compy OX discovered enough troubling details to make the King’s suspicions stronger. Peter issued a royal order to shut down the compy factories until the copied Klikiss technology was better understood. Basil angrily countermanded the order, since the Hansa desperately needed Soldier compies for the war. This was the last straw for him; the Chairman put into motion an assassination plot that would remove King Peter and Queen Estarra, while implicating the annoyingly independent Roamers in the crime. With the help of OX

and Estarra, Peter foiled the plot, but now the King and the Chairman knew they had to watch each other every moment.

Finally learning the location of the worldforest, a massive fleet of hydrogue warglobes arrived and immediately began to destroy Theroc. Led by Reynald, the Therons tried to fight back against the hydrogues. Mother Alexa and Father Idriss evacuated the people to the lower levels, but even that was no use. The towering trees retaliated, crushing some of the enemy warglobes, but they quickly faltered. Unexpectedly, faero fireballs arrived, joining the forest in its fight against the hydrogues. The titanic battle obliterated many hydrogues and faeros, and the collateral destruction lit great portions of the worldforest on fire. Reynald’s youngest sister CELLI was caught high in a burning tree, only to be rescued by a young green priest.

Reynald himself died in the treetops when a dueling fireball and warglobe crashed into the canopy. Eventually, the faeros drove off the hydrogues.

The enemies departed, leaving the worldforest in burning ruins.

When Tasia’s compy EA returned from secretly warning the Roamers about the Osquivel offensive, Basil intercepted the compy and tried to interrogate her. But EA’s automated systems wiped her memory core, shut-

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ting her down. Suspicious, Basil ordered scientists to study EA; as far as Tasia knew, her compy had never arrived back from her mission. Meanwhile, Tasia went to inspect the site of the original Klikiss Torch test, where she was surprised to discover the hydrogues and faeros engaged in a giant struggle in the burning star itself. Eventually the hydrogues extinguished the sun, killing the faeros. . . .

Receiving good news at last, Basil listened as Davlin and Rlinda described the new Klikiss transportal system they had discovered on Rheindic Co. The dimensional gateways required no rare ekti. Basil seized the opportunity and announced a new colonization scheme to send people to abandoned Klikiss worlds through the transportals—essentially establishing a new network that would bypass the fuel shortages.

On Ildira, Jora’h ascended to become the new Mage-Imperator and endured a castration ceremony that gave him access to all thism and the entire truth. He suddenly understood the terrible plots his predecessors had arranged; he didn’t know how he could endure it, but he had to continue the distasteful work. On Dobro, while Designate Udru’h was away attending Jora’h’s ascension, Nira escaped from the breeding barracks long enough to meet with her daughter Osira’h, to whom she was mentally linked. While they were joined together for just a moment, Nira telepathi-cally revealed her past and everything she knew about the awful things that were being done on Dobro. As Osira’h reeled from the knowledge she had been given, Nira was dragged off by Udru’h’s guards and clubbed. No longer able to sense her mother, Osira’h began to turn her thoughts against Designate Udru’h and his schemes. . . .

King Peter and Queen Estarra, still fearful for their lives because of Basil’s machinations, looked into the sky at the stars, knowing that out there the war between hydrogues and faeros continued, and that sun after sun was winking out. . . .

HORIZON STORMS

15CELLI

Though blackened by flames, the surviving worldtrees on Theroc remained defiant in the aftermath of the nightmare that had befallen them. Skeletal branches twisted upward, frozen in agony, as if warding off an unexpected blow from the skies. Damaged bark had sloughed away like leprous scabs. Many of the trees had been mortally wounded. The forest itself was a morass of dead branches and half-fallen trees.

Celli, the youngest child of Mother Alexa and Father Idriss, could not look at the painful ruins without blinking back tears that came too readily to her large brown eyes. At eighteen, she was skinny, tomboyish, with a dusting of light freckles on her mocha skin. She had a shag of short, corkscrewy auburn hair that she cut only when it got in her way. Soot and ash scuffed her cropped, fitted top that left her midriff bare and her short flutter skirt that added a splash of color. Normally she had a bright smile beneath her upturned nose, but of late there had been few occasions to smile.

After the hydrogues had been driven back, it had taken all the remaining energy of the worldforest, a herculean effort from the Therons, and the assistance of a delayed rescue fleet from the Earth Defense Forces to bring the wildfires mostly under control.

Even so, whole continents lay wasted. Some patches still burned, and smoke rose into the blue sky like stains drawn by bloody fingers. Green priests and Theron laborers regularly gathered at central meeting places to face the endless task of recovery.

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Each day, Celli joined them. With every breath as she ran along, the sour stench of burned pulpy foliage caught in her throat, and she knew that she would find the smell of roasting meat and burning wood nauseating for the rest of her life.

When she had first arrived at what remained of the fungus-reef city, an enormous shelf mushroom that had coalesced over the centuries, she gazed up at it with a fresh sense of shock. The host tree had been badly burned and the fungus reef half-destroyed, the carved-out pocket rooms unsuitable for habitation.

In a trampled clearing beneath the damaged fungus reef, her parents—though overwhelmed by the enormity of the task—did their best to organize the weary, red-eyed workers. Idriss and Alexa had officially retired from their leadership role and made Celli’s oldest brother, Reynald, their king. But he had been killed in the hydrogue attack. She remembered her last vision of him, standing defiantly atop the worldforest canopy as the hydrogues and faeros battled overhead. . . .

Today, though, as on every other day since the hydrogue attack, no one would stop to mourn or dwell on thoughts of all those who had died. To pause right now in their labors, even out of pure grief, would have been too self-indulgent. There were countless trees and people that could yet be saved, if only there were hands enough to do the necessary work. That was why all Therons who were not too severely injured returned without complaint to the tasks that must be done. Celli, like every other Theron, grieved while on the move.

Her brother was lost along with so many others, including three of Celli’s close friends. Including her other brother, Beneto, a green priest killed when the hydrogues attacked Corvus Landing. Every day, moment by moment, Celli worked to the point of exhaustion, trying to avoid the worst of the pain. She didn’t dare think too long about Lica, Kari, Ren, for fear that the grief might immobilize her.

Before the hydrogue attack, Celli and her friends had spent their days amusing themselves in the forest, never thinking much beyond the next day or two. She would practice treedancing moves, and Ren was particularly good at catching condorflies. Lica and Kari both liked the same boy, but he hadn’t noticed either one of them. How they had all laughed and played together, never expecting anything to change . . .

None of them had ever guessed that enemies might lie beyond the sky.

Celli, the baby of the family, was now the only one of her siblings left on Theroc, since her sisters Sarein and Estarra both lived in the Whisper Palace on Earth. In the past, her sisters had often accused her of complaining too much; now the worries and discomforts of her youth seemed petty and meaningless. For the first time in her life, Celli felt both a spark of independence and the weight of real responsibility. And she was determined to help her people get through this tragedy. The problem seemed impossibly large, but she lifted her chin and gritted her teeth.

Like Celli, the Theron survivors possessed a new determination that formed a tough veneer over their despair. The people had been unprepared for such a holocaust, but this desperate time had revealed an inner resolve, as they simultaneously shored up the worldforest and drew comfort from it.