Of Fire and Night (5 page)

9

DOBRO DESIGNATE UDRU’H

F
rom his residence outside the fenced-in breeding camps, the Dobro Designate frowned at his unconscious “guest.” The disgraced Thor’h was maintained in a comatose state by a crippling dose of shiing.

It was better than the young man deserved for his part in the awful Hyrillka rebellion, Udru’h thought as he regarded the slack face.
We all have to endure the echoes of our past indiscretions. But you have an easy way out.

His idealistic protégé Daro’h seemed uneasy in the well-lit room. “Thor’h was the Prime Designate. The Ildiran Empire would have been his.” Daro’h looked up at his mentor, whom he would replace as soon as the Designate deemed him ready. “Why would my brother do this? Why would he break from our father’s
thism
and try to destroy the Empire?”

“He did not wish to destroy it, simply to remake it. Some men are misled fanatics who adhere to incorrect ideals and beliefs. Others are selfish and impatient for power. Some are simply fools.” He smirked. “The Prime Designate was all of those things.”

The young man lay like a corpse on the narrow bed. Udru’h hoped the traitor was swimming in nightmares or smothering in guilt over what he had done, but Thor’h’s face showed neither honor nor peace. “Unlike my brother Rusa’h, Thor’h had no excuse for his behavior.”

“You can excuse the mad Designate? But you betrayed him yourself and brought down his rebellion! What of all the deaths he caused?”

“The Hyrillka Designate exhibited a clear shift in his personality after his head injury. He had delusions, believed he saw a new route to the Lightsource, and was prepared to pave that path with the blood of any Ildiran who did not join his corrupted
thism
network. He was insane. Why else would he have flown his ship into Hyrillka’s sun?” Udru’h looked down at Thor’h in disgust. “But the Prime Designate knew exactly what he was doing. That is why I despise him. It would have been better if he had died in the conflict. He remains a stain on the Ildiran psyche.”

In further expansions of the
Saga of Seven Suns,
Udru’h realized that the Hyrillka revolt would be chronicled with great care. Rememberer kithmen would show the utmost tact, accurately representing the facts yet shading the heroes and villains in such a way as to preserve the grandeur of the Empire. No matter what the lower kiths believed, the truth was a flexible thing.

“Fortunately, no one knows he is here,” Daro’h said.

“And we will keep him so drugged with shiing that he cannot reconnect with the
thism
. He no longer deserves to be part of it.” Even after such vile betrayal, Jora’h was too weak to command the execution of his own son. Instead, he had ordered Designate Udru’h to hide Thor’h and make sure he never again felt the
thism
. The planet Dobro already had more than its share of dark secrets.

Designate-in-waiting Daro’h had offered no complaints or naïvely stern judgments when he’d been told about the genetic experiments, the human captives taken from the generation ship
Burton
. Instead, he accepted the reasons for the overall scheme, and the secrecy. Daro’h did not try to second-guess the Mage-Imperator or his predecessors. He was a smart young man, despite his sheltered upbringing at the Prism Palace. Udru’h was very proud of him.

A commotion and shouts came from the main part of the Designate’s dwelling. Daro’h looked up with a hopeful expression. “Maybe someone has found the missing green priest.”

“I doubt it, though that would solve many of my problems.”

When Udru’h had revealed to the Mage-Imperator that his beloved Nira was alive after all, he had considered the matter to be over. He had promised to retrieve the green priest woman from her isolation, but like one last slap in the face, she had escaped, leaving no clue as to where she had gone. He had to find her again before the Mage-Imperator suspected anything had gone wrong. After having to lie to Jora’h so many times, he could not return to the Prism Palace and say he had failed again. He needed to find Nira, and he had very little time to do so.

Sealing comatose Thor’h in his chamber, Udru’h hurried off with Daro’h at his heels. Standing breathless beside four advisers and guard kithmen, a glitter-eyed courier waited anxiously. “Designate Udru’h! Adar Zan’nh has sent me here with a report. Hundreds of hydrogue warglobes fill the skies over Mijistra!”

Daro’h gasped. “Have they come to attack?”

“No, the girl Osira’h is with them. My team was sent on the fastest ship to relay this message to you. Osira’h succeeded. Dobro has succeeded!”

Udru’h felt a weight lift from him as the courier finished his report. Jora’h still needed to make a pact with the hydrogues no matter what the cost; nevertheless, centuries of work had paid off. All his training and devotion to the half-breed girl had helped her fulfill her destiny! He missed Osira’h, but he had done what was necessary. If she had failed, then Udru’h would have sent her brother Rod’h on the same mission, and each of her half-breed siblings would have gone until every possible chance was exhausted.

Then, as a guard kithman ushered the courier out of the room, Udru’h realized that this turn of events gave him a second chance, an unexpected reprieve. If a hydrogue armada was now over the Prism Palace, the Mage-Imperator would be completely preoccupied. He had more time to find Nira!

“Daro’h, we must take advantage of this opportunity. While the Mage-Imperator is distracted with other obligations, we must locate his green priest. If we hurry, we may never need tell him she was missing. Find her!”

“But we already went to the island—”

“Perform a full-scale search across the whole southern continent if necessary. Do everything you can—except give up. I have disappointed the Mage-Imperator too often.” Udru’h lowered his voice. “He may not have been willing to kill Thor’h . . . but if I tell him that I have lost Nira yet again, he will surely command my execution.”

10

QUEEN ESTARRA

N
ow that news of her pregnancy had spread, the public demanded frequent sightings of the Queen. As a diversion for the increasingly anxious populace, the Chairman allowed her to roam occasionally so she could be seen. He generally saw Estarra as no more than a pawn to force the King’s cooperation.

She hoped he continued to underestimate her.

Estarra found Nahton in one of the mesh-enclosed butterfly pavilions on the roof. The court green priest stood alone in the sunlight, letting the butterflies flit around him, their wings like kaleidoscopic jewels. Seeing him, she remembered how on Theroc she and Beneto had watched a worm hive hatch, how Rossia had told her of his encounter with a terrible wyvern.

Nahton was her only source of news from home; he gave her updates about her parents, about her tomboy sister Celli, about how the forest had resurrected a copy of her brother Beneto. Sarein had only recently returned from Theroc, but Estarra had not yet had a chance to meet with her. Sarein would not tell her anything that Nahton had not already described, though.

The court green priest was a tall man with a long face and a quiet disposition. His face and shoulders were embroidered with tattoo symbols that indicated the training he had completed before being sent to Earth. “Queen Estarra! It always pleases me to see a fellow child of Theroc.”

“It would please us both even more to see Theroc itself. It’s been so long.” She let beautiful orange and yellow butterflies cluster around her, drawn to her perfumes and skin oils as if she were a particularly attractive flower.

Estarra missed the worldforest, her expansive fungus-reef home. Right now, with the weight of humanity on her shoulders and the baby coming in three months, she wanted her mother to hold her. How could she explain about the butchered dolphins, about the numerous veiled threats on her life and Peter’s, about how the Chairman wanted to kill her baby just because it didn’t fit with his plan? Father Idriss and Mother Alexa could not help from far-off Theroc. Sarein was here on Earth, and she might be Estarra’s last resort, but the Queen worried about her sister’s loyalties.

Instead, with no one else to turn to, Estarra expressed her fears to Nahton. He looked unsettled but not surprised by her revelations. “I am a green priest, a son of Theroc. My loyalty is to the worldforest, and then to you, Estarra—and the King. The Chairman, though . . . the Chairman has not earned my trust.” He then turned a reassuring smile toward her. “But take heart. Something remarkable has happened at Theroc, summoned by your brother Beneto. They have traveled for thousands of years, giant tree—”

Suddenly, blond Mr. Pellidor marched out onto the rooftop. His face was flushed, his eyes narrowed with edgy impatience. “Queen Estarra, it is not safe for you to wander by yourself.”

“I am perfectly safe with Nahton.” His concern for her was as false as the smile she gave him in return. Had he been eavesdropping?

“It is not the green priest we are worried about. I will escort you back to the Royal Wing. Now.”

“I thank you for your concern for my safety.” Her voice was clipped, her eyes flashing with clear skepticism about Pellidor’s true reasons for pursuing her. With a sniff, Estarra stepped past him. She knew he was the man who had killed her dolphins, on the Chairman’s orders.

Before leaving, she glanced at the green priest. Their eyes met, but she didn’t dare ask out loud what message he would send to her parents. She had told him enough. There was nothing Pellidor or the Chairman could do to prevent Nahton from communicating, short of removing all the treelings from the Whisper Palace. She never got to ask him about the marvelous surprise the worldforest and Beneto had brought to Theroc.

Pellidor took the Queen by the arm. Though revolted by his touch, she made a conscious effort not to brush his hand away. He walked her briskly from the roof.

11

CELLI

W
hen the majestic verdani battleships landed on Theroc after their long journey, the people stared in awe. Celli grabbed her friend Solimar’s hand and squeezed so hard she nearly broke his fingers. The jagged shadows of the enormous trees cast a hush over all the forest wildlife.

The nearest treeship filled much of the blue sky. As it lowered itself, the long bottom branches bent to the ground like thin, delicate legs; the rest of the incredible boughs stretched upward, back toward space. The curving leafless branches ended in immense thorns, longer and sharper than the deadliest spear. The base of the huge trunk terminated in a rounded armored bulb, trailing long root tendrils like sensor antennae. These whipping, thrashing threads touched the Theron soil and gently probed into the dirt of their near-forgotten home.

A second spiny vessel towered in the distance, and a third settled nearby in the devastated worldforest. Then dozens more, until almost two hundred had come to Theroc.

Looking at the enormous branches overhead, Celli felt the majesty about them, an organic construction even more impressive and terrifying than the rooted worldtrees themselves. When her eyes burned, she realized she had forgotten to blink.

Beneto seemed to know what was happening, and he was not afraid. Her wooden brother stood motionless in the clearing near the fungus-reef city, as if his sculpted feet had taken root. His smooth grain-streaked face looked satisfied as it tilted upward. “They will stand guard above Theroc.”

She thought of her sister Estarra, who served as the Hansa’s Queen. “What if the hydrogues attack somewhere else? What about Earth?”

Beneto turned his polished face to her. An alchemical mixture of blood and sap now flowed through his artificial body. “This war is far more extensive than Theroc or Earth, larger than humans or Ildirans. This fight can be won only with a wealth of allies. Fortunately, the hydrogues have created many powerful enemies.” He gestured to the forest that was bursting with fresh green after the deluge from the vaporized comet. “Already the wentals have joined us, and we are stronger.”

That much was readily apparent. After the Theron people had spent months clearing, rebuilding, and replanting, the trees now exploded with life after being drenched with water from the wental comet.

Standing next to her, still holding Celli’s hand, Solimar said, “In the first war, wentals and verdani clashed with the far superior might of the hydrogues. They nearly drove themselves to extinction, but then the faeros turned against the enemy as well.”

Beneto said, “Faeros shift their loyalties like a candle flame flickering in the wind. Sometimes they may fight the same battles as we do, but they are not necessarily our allies. We hoped the enemy was vanquished so long ago, driven back into their gas-giant planets. But after hiding for thousands of years, the hydrogues have recovered from their wounds.”

His wooden face seemed sad. “Sometimes it is easier to leave an issue unresolved, but it is never wiser. The worldtrees and their allies must not make that error again.”

Beneath the jagged shadow of multiple verdani battleships, the grounded worldtrees shuddered as thoughts rippled through their interconnected mind. Celli sensed millennia of rage, fear, and hurt there.

The golem’s expression shifted. “The hydrogues are already battling the faeros, and they will never survive the wentals and the verdani as well. Now that the treeships are here, we will go on the offensive.”

12

ADMIRAL LEV STROMO

F
or two days the Manta continued its search for signs of the rammer fleet, lifepods with the human captains, or even hydrogue wreckage. The crew expected Stromo to know what to do, but he’d never been briefed for a situation like this. The original orders were straightforward.
Fetch any escape pods you can find and come home. Report how much damage the rammers caused
. It shouldn’t have been complicated.

From the Manta’s bridge, Clydia had sent a message to the Whisper Palace’s green priest, and Nahton dutifully passed along the question. Distracted by the arrival of a small hydrogue derelict and thirty EDF survivors from the battle of Osquivel, Chairman Wenceslas promptly sent back an unhelpful response: “Continue searching. Further instructions to come.”

Stromo was uneasy around this pastel gas giant, where hydrogues had recently obliterated a Hansa cloud harvester and, quite possibly, all sixty EDF rammers. One Manta cruiser wouldn’t do much good if warglobes showed up again.

He turned his command chair toward the preoccupied green priest. “Any word from the Chairman yet? How long does he want us to wait here?”

The green priest stared down at the feathery fronds of her potted plant, stroking the treeling as if it were a pet. When she withdrew from telink, Clydia took a second to center herself. “The Chairman suggests that you tune a receiver to the following frequency and boost the gain.” She rattled off numbers. Even though she herself sat at the comm station, she did not know how to use the sophisticated equipment.

“What’s that supposed to do?” Stromo asked.

Without suggesting an answer, Elly Ramirez hurried over to configure the receivers. Clydia continued to recite: “Run any signal through a descrambler. The Chairman thinks you might receive a message.”

Stromo felt even more confused. “There aren’t any habitable worlds around here, and no ships that we can find. Where would a signal come from?”

“Apparently, a Listener compy was planted aboard the rammers to keep watch on Commander Tamblyn and attempt to gather intelligence about the Roamers.” Ramirez glanced up, incensed at the green priest’s words. “You should be able to tap into the surveillance software. If the compy is in range, this may allow you to trace where the rammers have gone.”

The Admiral looked around nervously. “Any sign of hydrogues yet? What if they detect us eavesdropping?”

“This is a very-low-intensity broadcast for espionage purposes, sir, tailored to blend in with background noise until extracted with our specific algorithms. It was designed not to be detectable.”

“Designed so that the
Roamers
can’t detect it. Who knows what technology the drogues have? Stay alert. Be ready to move at the first hint of trouble.”

When Ramirez finished her adjustments, the bridge viewing screen filled with static as if an electronic dust storm had swept over the cruiser. Gradually, images formed as the signal was strengthened and reinforced; descramblers stripped out noise and extraneous feedback. Then the picture clarified.

Stromo felt as if someone had hit him on the back of the head. Hard.

The viewer showed a group of humans huddled inside a bizarre cell whose walls looked like jeweled gelatin. Closest to the surveillance imagers was a scuffed and disheveled Tamblyn; next to her sat a dark-skinned young man who looked oddly familiar.
Brindle
. Yes, that was his name—the volunteer who had gone down in a diving bell to contact the drogues just before the battle of Osquivel. Robb Brindle! But how in the hell did a young man who vanished at Osquivel on the other side of the Spiral Arm show up here at the edge of the Ildiran Empire?

Stromo saw a small group of downcast and weak-looking humans. Were they still aboard one of the rammers? Prisoners of war? And who had captured them? This was all too confusing. “Where the hell is that signal coming from? Find me the rammers!”

“Doesn’t make sense, Admiral.” Ramirez looked up. “But it looks like the signal originates within the gas giant. Deep down.”

“Impossible! Nobody can survive down there.”

The pair of sensor operators also checked their readouts. “Confirmed, Admiral. They’re inside Qronha 3.”

Then, into the image stepped a Klikiss robot. The beetlelike machine moved its sharp-pointed appendages in a clearly threatening manner. The captives cringed away.

Stromo already had plenty of suspicions about the black robots, especially after what he had seen on the crushed Hansa colony of Corribus, after hearing the unbelievable report from the survivor girl Orli Covitz. “What in the hell is
that
thing doing there?”

The two Soldier compies manning bridge stations suddenly froze, as if receiving a signal. Stromo glanced at the military robots in disgust. “Now what’s wrong with them?”

“Check their stations, Ensign Mae,” Ramirez said.

Mae left her nav console and ran a quick diagnostic of the closest compy to see if some feedback might have influenced them. “There’s nothing—”

Both Soldier compies moved with astonishing speed. The nearer one spun its flexible torso, reached up, and clamped a viselike metal hand around Mae’s throat. Before she could try to claw free, the compy’s other hand grabbed her head and twisted, as if unscrewing a lid. Mae’s neck snapped like kindling.

In the same instant, the other compy lunged toward the second sensor operator (Stromo still couldn’t remember the young man’s name). The military robot rammed a polymer-sheathed metal fist into the crewman’s sternum with the force of a jackhammer and exploded his heart. He fell to the deck before blood could even seep out of his smashed chest.

No more than two seconds had passed. While the Admiral sat unable to believe what he had just witnessed, the bridge crew erupted in panic. The green priest almost knocked over her potted tree, but caught it in time.

The two compies turned from their initial victims toward Stromo and Ramirez, as if homing in on rank insignia. Ramirez dove for the command chair, shoved the Admiral away, and fumbled with a side compartment.

While the first compy lunged forward like an asteroid on a collision course, Sergeant Zizu threw himself against the other one. Despite the military robot’s greater mass, the security officer knocked it off balance.

Ramirez finally succeeded in activating the thumb-lock and withdrew a twitcher weapon, a sidearm that delivered a powerful stun impulse to take down unruly humans. She adjusted the output to maximum and fired a disruptive impulse directly into the first compy’s face. Though it was not meant to affect circuitry, the pulse was enough to disorient the compy’s programming.

By now the tackled compy had recovered its balance. With a single blow, it knocked Zizu aside and plowed forward with the Admiral in its sights. Stromo scrambled away from the chair.

Ramirez did not hesitate. With cold fury in her eyes, she played the twitcher beam over the second compy’s core as it lurched toward them. She continued firing the beam until smoke and sparks boiled from the implanted circuits. A meter away from them, the military robot collapsed into a petrified metal-and-polymer statue.

Then the first attacking compy straightened as its systems reset themselves. It reacquired its target and began to move, still orienting itself. Sergeant Zizu detached the metal chair from a bridge station and, yelling at the top of his lungs, brought the chair’s shaft down like a club on the compy’s neck. The robot’s head bent, neck cables snapped, and Zizu struck again and again. The compy shuddered, then dropped like scrap metal to the deck.

Stromo backed to the other side of the bridge until he bumped against an empty station. Rattled and wheezing, he shook his head. “This is not possible! Simply not possible.”

The crewmen stared at their two slain comrades. Ramirez recovered first, double-checked the second compy to make sure it remained inactive. Her face was flushed, her brow furrowed. “Admiral, remember when King Peter warned us about the Soldier compies and the Klikiss programming? He tried to shut down the factory.”

Stromo mopped his forehead. “That was just a false alarm. Everything worked fine. No problems.”

“Admiral, there is definitely a ‘problem.’”

“Maybe these two were just flukes,” Stromo said in a watery voice, expressing a hope that even he did not believe. Ramirez gave him a withering glance that came close to crossing the line into insubordination.

“We just saw a Klikiss robot on the screen. What if it sent some sort of signal?” Zizu suggested.

Stromo made himself sound strong and confident. He knew Ramirez was going to make the suggestion herself, so he decided to say it first. “Extreme precautions, Commander. Let’s switch off all the Soldier compies until we can figure out what went wrong here. No sense in taking chances.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say, Admiral.”

However, when Stromo reached to activate the full-ship intercom, Ramirez cautioned him. “Do you really want to let the Soldier compies know what we intend to do? They might switch into defensive mode. Instead, let’s dispatch specific teams to isolate and deactivate the compies.”

Knowing he should have thought of that, Stromo nodded. “I hope we have enough time.”