Horizon Storms (68 page)

Yazra’h calmed her predatory felines. “Father, the Empire cannot endure without a Prime Designate. You must choose—”

“I have already made my choice,” he said. “It is only through a missed chance of genetics that Zan’nh—my true firstborn son—was not slated to become Prime Designate. His service has been exemplary, and I have com-

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plete faith in him. I could not ask for a more worthy successor.” Zan’nh’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to protest, but the Mage-Imperator continued. “Therefore, until such time as this matter is resolved, until Thor’h is brought back here and faces me in the skysphere hall, Adar Zan’nh is the provisional Prime Designate.”

Zan’nh looked as amazed as all the listeners; he couldn’t stop himself from swearing under his breath. “Bekh!”

Yazra’h looked over at him and offered a small smile of approval.

Jora’h heard the mutters of astonishment. He had already bent too many time-honored protocols in the Ildiran Empire. He had dared to emerge from his chrysalis chair and set foot on the unhallowed floors. He had selected his own daughter to be his primary protector instead of a member of the warrior kith. And now he had appointed Zan’nh, not even a purebred noble, to be the next Prime Designate. How much more would the people tolerate?

Jora’h clenched his jaw. As much as is necessary.

He was the Mage-Imperator, and he must stand steady like an immov-able rock rather than bend and blow in all directions like a blade of tall grass. His commands bound all of his race, except for those people who were blinded by Rusa’h’s treacherous manipulations.

He reached out to clasp Zan’nh’s forearm. “Speak with me if you ever have qualms about taking over your role.”

“I am your Adar, Liege. I have no qualms.” The feeling Jora’h sensed underlying his son’s stony confidence implied otherwise.

Jora’h smiled at him, not fooled. “Yes, you do. But we can be stronger together.”

“I . . . will serve in whatever capacity the Mage-Imperator deems appropriate.” Zan’nh looked down at the polished stones on the floor. “Until such time as order is restored.”

Jora’h felt a slight loosening of the tight responsibilities that clamped around his heart. “Adar, your orders are to go to Hyrillka, seize Rusa’h and my duplicitous son Thor’h. Bring them back to the Prism Palace, where they will face the judgment of their Mage-Imperator. Take a full maniple of warliners so that the Hyrillkans do not resist.”

Ildiran against Ildiran. The advisers in the skysphere hall looked appalled and apprehensive. Their Mage-Imperator was sending a massive mil-

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itary force against his own brother, their own people. Such things simply did not happen in the Empire. Only once before in all the history chronicled in the Saga of Seven Suns had Ildirans faced a civil war, and the outcome had left a scar for centuries. Jora’h hoped he could resolve this problem in a less bloody fashion . . . but it did not appear likely.

The Adar clasped his hands to his heart in the traditional salute.

“Liege, even though Qul Fan’nh’s maniple suffered losses during the recent battle at Hrel-oro, I believe his ships should accompany me to Hyrillka. The soldiers in that maniple are worthy, and I wish to reward their courage by showing my faith in them.”

Jora’h nodded, his heart warmed by the idea. “Let it be done. You must depart with all due haste.” He lowered his voice, leaning closer. “Others have been twisted by Rusa’h, and our danger grows worse day by day.

This rebellion cannot be allowed to grow.”

Dismissed, Zan’nh marched off to do his duty.

Now the Ildiran leader also had to deal with the hydrogues. From Zan’nh’s report of the Klikiss robot’s grim statement in the wake of the attack on Hrel-oro, Jora’h knew he could no longer delay the inevitable. The solution, much as he dreaded it, was obvious.

Spurred to action by the changes and crises that faced him, the Mage-Imperator turned to his primary advisers. “Lastly, send a message to the Dobro Designate. Tell him . . .” Jora’h paused, but the truth was unavoid-able. “Tell him the Klikiss robots have betrayed us. Instruct him to send Osira’h to me. She must be ready.”

1185SuLLIVAN GOLD

On Qronha 3, the Ildiran and human skyminers maintained their uneasy truce, but Sullivan Gold wanted to cement their ties. They were colleagues, after all, not competitors. They should help each other out.

They had a common enemy and a common goal. There was no reason at all to be aloof. Lydia would have scolded him for not being a good neighbor, for not taking over a gift of food or inviting the Ildiran miners for drinks. But he doubted Hroa’x would be interested in socializing.

However, when Sullivan undertook a brash project that he thought the Ildiran skymine chief might find interesting, he decided to shuttle over to the big Ildiran skyfactory. It was the sort of thing good neighbors did, in a spirit of cooperation and mutual need. He approached unannounced, and the Ildirans did not receive him with any particular warmth, but at least they didn’t warn him off. He usually handled this sort of situation with persistent friendliness.

Sullivan landed on one of the breezy decks high above the gas giant’s clouds. Stepping out, he stared at the immense complex. The Ildirans did everything on an overblown scale, with bulky equipment and inefficient ekti reactors and ten times as many people as the work required. Ildiran personnel were everywhere—not just miners and reactor operators, but their families, support staff, maintenance technicians, and innumerable others. He would love to send a team over just to tinker with their machinery, pump it up a little, improve it . . . but he supposed that would be in bad form.

By now his lead engineer, Tabitha Huck, had already launched her unmanned explorer drone; since it would take almost an hour to descend to the appropriate depth, he should have enough time to talk to the reticent Hroa’x.

Sullivan wandered around inside the huge skyfactory complex. Apparently Ildirans weren’t overly concerned with external security; none of them paid him much attention, until he stopped one to ask for directions.

It was a woman, bulky and broad-shouldered, her features just a bit too 436

alien to be attractive to him. “Please tell me how to find your chief skyminer Hroa’x. We’re old friends.” She looked at Sullivan as if assessing whether to answer his question, then pointed up a steep metal stairway.

Inside a humid and noisy chamber, Hroa’x was inspecting the pumps and compressors that throbbed like the slow heartbeat of a sleeping giant.

The skyminer looked at his human counterpart. His eyes were heavy-lidded with lack of interest. “I do not have time to give you a tour today, Sullivan Gold. Your business here will have to wait.”

Sullivan conjured up his most winning smile, which had never failed to tip negotiations in his favor. Though the chief skyminer had not raised his voice, Sullivan needed to shout above the din. “Oh? Even if it’s an emergency?”

“Is it?”

Sullivan shuffled his feet. “Not really, but I’m sure it’s something you’ll want to see. Trust me!”

The small communicator at his hip chimed. “We’re in position, Sullivan,” Tabitha Huck said. “Shouldn’t be long until we close in on those anomalies.”

Sullivan gestured to his Ildiran counterpart. “That’s even faster than I expected. Come on, Hroa’x. I’ll explain on the way up to your control center.”

The Ildiran miner grudgingly led the way to a high tower nexus where dozens of Ildiran technicians and crewmembers operated monitors and the long, trailing sensor-whiskers of the big facility.

“After looking at the logs, we estimated the depth at which your Adar Kori’nh encountered the hydrogues. Considering that forty-nine warliners sacrificed themselves, we assumed there might still be some wreckage that had descended to an equilibrium depth in the vicinity. Our first wave of tiny scanners found several floating density anomalies, and so today my lead engineer sent down an unmanned explorer drone capable of providing real-time imagery.” His eyes sparkled. “We might even be able to see the wrecked warglobes. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Hroa’x turned to him. “Why would you wish to do that? You are a skyminer, not a military officer or a rememberer.”

Sullivan worked with one of the Ildiran technicians to adjust their screens to the appropriate band. When they began to receive the explorer

drone’s signals, the screen showed only swirls of clouds and vapors, barely distinguishable from random static. “Your military commander sacrificed himself and a lot of battleships to drive the hydrogues from Qronha 3. It was . . . a historically significant event. We can witness part of it here.”

“I am not a rememberer. It is not my task.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody as single-minded as you.” Sullivan tried a different approach. “On Earth, about five centuries ago, we built a fabulous luxury ship called the Titanic, which was considered the greatest passenger vessel of all time. But it sank in a supposedly unreachable portion of our oceans. Because the Titanic was such an intriguing icon, lots of explorers made risky descents into the depths just so they could see the wreck. The ship grew into a cultural fascination, and finally it became a memorial.”

The skyminer’s expression did not change. “I fail to see any relevance to our situation.”

Exasperated, Sullivan said, “All those dead warglobes, and any Solar Navy ships we can find, are each like the Titanic. You defeated the aliens here on Qronha 3. Aren’t you proud of that? Wouldn’t your rememberers like to see what’s left, if only to include it in the Saga of Seven Suns?

Wouldn’t your Adar Zan’nh be interested? It might score you some points with him.”

“I do not need to earn any advantage with the Adar.”

The screens flickered, and Sullivan saw a brief shape, a glint, and then a shadow. The explorer pod changed directions and moved in. Tabitha’s voice came over his communicator. “We’ve got something, Sullivan.”

He tapped an acknowledgment, still waiting for Hroa’x to understand what he was saying. “Okay, I can see I’m not getting through. Look, we’re doing this on our own initiative, Hroa’x. Our cloud harvester is operating at full capacity, and the crew doesn’t have much to do except check the monitors and switch out ekti tanks when they’re full. We planned this project in our spare time. It seemed like a good use of our off hours.”

“My crew can always find work to do,” Hroa’x said.

Sullivan couldn’t conceive what all these Ildirans did to keep themselves busy. “Ah yes, work expands to occupy the number of people available.” He chuckled, but the chief skyminer found no humor in the comment. “Look, there’s no downside here. We aren’t asking you to par-

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ticipate, so there’s no risk or cost at all to you—but I intend to share with you all the images we take. Why not? We’re good neighbors, and I thought the Ildiran Empire would find them useful. Any military information has ramifications for our skymining activities—for defense and preparation, if nothing else.”

Hroa’x finally gave a stiff nod, to indicate that this was an acceptable reason for the odd investigation.

On the screen, the perfectly geometrical shapes of two looming warglobes drifted into view as the explorer drone centered in. The immense spheres studded with triangular protrusions looked like electron micro-graphs of pollen spores. One sphere was cracked open from a giant explosion, no doubt the impact of a Solar Navy warliner; it hung dark and quiet, like an empty shell made of blackened diamond. The second warglobe appeared intact, but just as dead.

Seeing the awesome images, Hroa’x stiffened, finally impressed and uneasy. The Ildiran workers muttered in both fear and surprise.

“No energy sources detected, Sullivan,” Tabitha said. “Those warglobes are at ambient temperature, not emanating in any frequency band.”

“Keep looking . . . but be careful.”

“I’m going inside the broken one,” Tabitha said. “Yes, I’ll do it carefully, Sullivan. Don’t have a stroke.”

The view from the explorer drone swerved around as it approached the open wound in the dead hydrogue sphere.

“Exercise caution. Extreme caution.”

“I already promised you that. They’re dead, Sullivan.”

Sullivan had been excited to see if he could find these wrecks, but now he didn’t want to provoke any response. What if something had survived?

Lydia would have scolded him for not letting sleeping dogs lie. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The explorer drone cruised through the wide-open wreckage, puttering along serpentine corridors and upside-down geometries, doors that were in the wrong places, cubes and pyramids connected with troughs that looked like circuit lines. It was all utterly incomprehensible to him.

“We’re recording these images for our next dispatch back to the Hansa,” Tabitha said.

“Make sure the Ildirans have full access to this data as well.”

“I don’t suppose they’ll share the research expenses?” she said snidely, as if she had forgotten Hroa’x and the others were listening.

“This is a gesture of our good faith. What helps us against the hydrogues helps everyone.”

“Whatever you say.”

As Tabitha took images for the better part of an hour, the wondrous strangeness built up to a surfeit of incomprehension. Hansa scientists and EDF experts would scrutinize every second of footage, but Sullivan couldn’t stare forever. Hroa’x already looked anxious to get back to the work routine that called him like an alcoholic’s obsession for a drink.

Tabitha’s explorer finally retreated, following her recorded path back out of the dark wreckage into open space, then began to cruise closer to the less-damaged hydrogue sphere. Its outer surface was stained, as if from a blast of heat, but the shell had not cracked or shattered.