Conrad’s forehead was deeply creased. “I don’t see any other uniforms. We can’t be the only EDF soldiers on this whole planet.”
“You are, at the moment,” Solimar said as the platform came to a stop. “But maybe more will come around.”
They entered a large room that had been hung with colorful thread-weavings and webworks. Wearing crowns made of insect wings and polished beetle carapaces, along with garments reminiscent of what they’d worn on Earth, the King and Queen greeted their guests.
Conrad stepped forward and saluted, as did Tasia and Robb. As the highest-ranking officer present, Tasia spoke for them. “Majesties, we present ourselves for duty. We are required to deliver our report to a commanding officer. May we speak with General Lanyan or his officer in charge?”
Tasia caught the look that flashed between Peter and Estarra. Peter said, “I am your commander in chief. Your King. You can report to me.”
“And we welcome you,” Estarra said. “Would you renew your oath of loyalty?”
Conrad looked troubled by the question. “Why should I need to do that? When has my loyalty ever been questioned?”
“Circumstances have changed, Lieutenant Commander.”
“So . . . where is Chairman Wenceslas?” Robb asked.
Peter’s voice became cold. “Chairman Wenceslas is no longer a part of the legitimate government.”
“He attempted a coup,” Estarra said. “We managed to escape here. We’re more than the Hansa now. The Confederation is a true representation of humanity.”
No one spoke for several seconds, as the three newcomers absorbed the unexpected information. Conrad asked, “But what about the EDF? What about General Lanyan?”
“Members of the Earth Defense Forces were either complicit in the coup attempt, or they failed to respond accordingly when informed of the Chairman’s illegal actions.”
“Remember the words of your oath,” Estarra said. “Your true loyalty is to the King.”
Conrad maintained a stony expression for hours, showing no hint of how he really reacted to the news. Tasia felt as if the planet had shifted on its axis . . . but then, she had never considered the Big Goose to be perfect in the first place. Maybe this change was for the better.
Later, after an evening meal, Tasia talked joyfully with many other Roamers, exchanging stories and reminiscing as she tried to pretend that everything was back to normal. Robb loved being with her and was clearly happy to be wherever she was, but his father grew increasingly anxious. They were shown to temporary quarters, and Tasia looked forward to having a spacious bed for a change.
When they had a few moments alone, Conrad announced that they should all leave. “We have to get out of here before they impound my ship and place us in custody.”
“Shizz, what are you talking about?”
“But why, Dad? We’re here. The King is here. We’ve done what we were required to do.”
“I’m not satisfied with the explanations they gave.” Conrad looked furtively around, as if someone might be eavesdropping. “I want to hear General Lanyan’s side of the story. I can read through the spin as well as anyone else. On Earth, I bet they’re telling a different tale.”
“What’s wrong with the explanations?” Robb was genuinely confused.
“No other EDF soldiers are here. That alone speaks volumes. Look around at this ragtag assemblage—a bunch of Therons, independent colonists, and Roamers! It can’t be the real Hansa.”
“Oh? Just a bunch of Therons and Roamers?” Tasia flushed. “You mean like my brother Jess, who saved us all? Like the people who sent verdani treeships to fight the drogues? You heard my uncles. This is the new government.”
Robb took a deep breath and thought for a long moment. “After seeing what we’ve seen, Dad, you know there’s a lot more to it than the official Hansa press releases. I don’t think we ever got the whole truth.”
Tasia said, “And you already know that what the EDF did to the Roamers was wrong.”
Conrad refused to believe, though. “Peter’s accusations are preposterous. As far as I’m concerned, if General Lanyan refuses to follow the King’s orders, maybe there’s something wrong with the King’s orders. Maybe Peter is the rebel with a handful of insurgents who refuse to follow the legitimate orders of the Hansa.” He looked at them sternly. “You’re both officers in the Earth Defense Forces. You know the chain of command. Returning to Earth is our only option at this point.”
“Shizz, not on your life! I joined the Eddies to fight the drogues, and instead I found myself persecuting my own people.” Tasia withdrew a small utility knife from her belt and began to snip the threads on her shoulder insignia. “I belong among the Roamers. Period. If that puts me on the opposite side from the EDF, I’d say now’s as good a time as any to resign my commission.”
Conrad glowered. “That makes you a deserter in my book, Captain.”
“I outrank you, Lieutenant Commander. I should order you to follow the King.”
The older man looked down his nose at her. “You just forfeited the right to issue any orders, ma’am, when you cut off your insignia.”
Robb was distressed. “Are you two crazy? What are you doing?”
Tasia trembled with the effort to contain her anger. “I no longer owe anything to the EDF, Robb. I know what the Eddies did to Rendezvous, an independent center of government. If the Roamers claim Theroc is where I’m supposed to be, and the King says this is where I’m supposed to be, then this is where I’m staying.”
Conrad shook his head sadly, already writing her off. “It’s obvious I can’t change your mind, ma’am. Let’s go, Robb. Your mother will be very glad to see you again.”
Robb, though, looked torn. “Wait a minute. I was captured by the drogues years ago. By all rights I should be dead. But it was the Roamers and wentals—and Theron treeships—that rescued me.” He reached out and took Tasia’s hand, embarrassing her. “I belong with Tasia more than I belong in uniform.”
Conrad’s face was stormy. “Not you, too! For a long time now, your mother and I thought you were dead. We just got you back. Please don’t do this.”
“I have to do what’s right. And so do you, Dad. Why not stay a while and gather more information before making a hasty decision? We’ll send a message to Mom.”
His father’s face was full of anguish. “I see that . . . that you’re not the same Robb, after all. I’m taking the ship and returning to Earth. This is your last chance to change your mind.”
“Why should King Peter let you just fly off?” Tasia asked.
“I’d like to see him try to stop me.” Shoulders slumped by a great weight of disappointment, Conrad stalked alone toward his ship.
“Wait!” Robb called after him. He loosened his grip and almost let go of Tasia’s hand.
Tasia sat in uneasy anxiety, not breathing and not moving. She had to let Robb make his own decision about what he’d do. But she prayed he would make the right one. When Conrad refused to turn around, Robb settled back and squeezed her fingers tighter.
“Seems to me like you’ve seen your Guiding Star,” Tasia said.
“Whatever that means.” He sounded very sad. They stood together and watched as Conrad Brindle boarded the EDF transport and fired up the engines. The ship rose above the high worldtrees of Theroc and disappeared into the sky.
22 KOLKER
In an open square in Mijistra, an exotic fountain shone under the light of multiple suns. The fountain generator created and then manipulated immense silvery bubbles filled with a roiling clear liquid, like the essence of a mirror. Surface tension made the bubbles undulate, their membranes rippling and reflecting the numerous suns in the sky, as if they were spotlights constantly in motion.
Seven self-absorbed lens kithmen had gathered around the bubble fountain, as though about to receive a strange communion. They squatted in solemn meditation, staring into the bubbles’ uneven surfaces, as if expecting the flares of light to reveal the sec
rets of the universe. Not one of them moved.
From a distance, Kolker watched, trying to learn from the lens kithmen by observing them. The fountain bubbles swayed as the internal plasma rose, then descended, perhaps to imply the constantly changing nature of knowledge. Kolker longed to know what they knew, to see what they could see. Lightsource, soul-threads, thism. He summoned the nerve to walk closer, paused behind two lens kithmen before stepping among them.
They moved aside to allow him access, but did not offer any overt invitation. Their starflare pupils had shrunk to the tiniest of pinpricks as ethereal light played across their faces. Unable to contain himself any longer, Kolker interrupted them. “Please tell me what is in there. What does the fountain reveal to you? I need to know. And I need to know how to touch and understand your thism.”
The lens kithmen seemed to think him either stupid or inferior. “Humans have no thism. They are not connected by the soul-threads. It would be fruitless for us to explain what you cannot possibly experience.”
Kolker stared at the reflective fountain until the light seared patches of color into his eyes. He was forced to turn away. “So one should never bother to attempt a seemingly impossible thing?” He couldn’t keep the bitter tone from his voice. “When facing the hydrogues, didn’t your own Mage-Imperator demand that you do the impossible? And did you not achieve that?”
The lens kithmen looked at him, even the ones on the opposite side of the fountain. They all seemed to be sharing uneasy thoughts. Finally the man on Kolker’s left said, “The Mage-Imperator gave us no orders to instruct you.”
Kolker turned away, colors still dancing in front of his eyes. He felt lost. The hole within him was deep, and he hadn’t found anything solid enough to fill it yet. He couldn’t even know if thism would be enough.
“Why would you want to do this?” one of the lens kithmen asked him. “It is not for you.”
Kolker refused to believe that, refused to surrender. Leaving the fountain, he climbed the steps of a monolithic building, sat down, and bent to stare into his prismatic medallion. He turned it one way and then another, so that flares of rainbows played across his face. Trying indefinable techniques, he concentrated on the light, remembered the thought tricks he used unconsciously when connecting via telink, and tried to clutch at the invisible, intangible straws of thism.
He sat motionless for hours, simply staring at the medallion and searching.
23 OSIRA’H
The only treeling on Ildira stood open to the sky, as high as Osira’h’s waist, rising from a misshapen lump of burned wood. The fronds were a delicate pale green, its thin trunk covered with golden bark plates. Though the girl wasn’t a green priest herself, the treeling seemed to call to her.
She brought her four half-breed siblings to stare intently at the tree and exercise their mental powers, as they had done among their mentalist teachers on Dobro. To try for more. The five of them ringed the tree. “We can do this. We have our mother’s abilities and our fathers’ thism.”
“But we have tried before.” Rod’h was not complaining but simply pointing out a fact. Nearest to her in age, her brother seemed the most interested in linking with the worldforest mind.
“And we will try again. And we’ll try tomorrow and the day after.”
With his penchant for practical and military matters, young Gale’nh had a different concern. “I do not understand the goal.”
That was the largest question, Osira’h knew. “The goal is to show the potential we have. We can do something that other people can’t do; I’m sure of it. The Empire worked for many generations just to create us.” Her gaze swept them all, and they caught her enthusiasm. Tamo’l and Muree’n were too young to understand what Osira’h was trying to do, but they happily joined in what seemed to be play. Playing was a new experience for them.
Together, they reached forward to touch the golden bark. Osira’h stroked the pale fronds. “Be careful. Don’t harm it,” she said when Muree’n grasped too tightly.
Even without telink, the half-breeds’ sensitivity to thism unified them. Rod’h joined her mind in much the same way as they had used their thoughts on Dobro to seek out and contact distant hydrogues. Their bond of thism—or was telink part of it as well?—connected them to one another in a private web much more powerful than the one other Ildirans shared.
Osira’h drove her thoughts into the treeling, sensing the leaves, the bark, the living heartwood, the roots—just as her mother’s memories showed her. She had opened the conduit of her mind to Nira, receiving a flood of thoughts and memories, and later learning to channel the vengeance of the worldforest itself through the treeling, through her mother, through her mind—and into the unsuspecting hydrogues.
Though they were enemies, the verdani and hydrogues had common ground, an elemental foundation. The worldtrees also shared synergy with the wentals, as they had proved in combining themselves to form huge verdani battleships. No doubt the faeros were similar as well.
Mentalists and lens kithmen talked about how the whole universe was connected in ways that no one, not even a Mage-Imperator, could see or understand. Osira’h believed that because of their unparalleled ties to both their green priest mother and the thism of all Ildirans, she and her siblings held a key. She knew it.
With her eyes closed, the girl followed the strands through the tree trunk into the neuronlike root fibers . . . and beyond. Her siblings followed. She expected a flash of a connection, but heard only whispers, distant thoughts, and ghostly voices, as of a vast audience that didn’t know the children were eavesdropping. “We are close!”
“I can sense it,” Tamo’l said.
“Keep concentrating,” Gale’nh added.
The outbursts were enough to disrupt Osira’h’s focus, and she rocked back on the balls of her bare feet. It was a tantalizing glimpse of what they could do. She felt that the five of them were about to find something extremely important, something that no green priest or Ildiran comprehended. The idea thrilled her. She would help her brothers and sisters achieve the apex of what their special breeding made possible. “We almost did it that time.”
Rod’h blinked. “I see what you have in mind now.”
Exhausted but excited, they gave up their efforts for the day. Tamo’l and Muree’n, eager for new distractions, stood and hurried across the shining rooftop to the precipitous edge, where they looked down into Mijistra. Gale’nh looked from Osira’h to his brother for explanations, like a boyish soldier needing to be debriefed.
Osira’h rubbed her temple, felt a throbbing ache. But even the pain could not diminish her exhilaration. “Tomorrow we will be closer.”
24 ANTON COLICOS
He had never wanted to return to Maratha again. Ever. That place held only nightmares and terrifying memories. But Anton certainly couldn’t let Vao’sh go alone to document the defeat of the black robots for the Saga of Seven Suns. Standing in the warliner’s command nucleus, he felt a clammy sweat dampen his skin. “Are you sure we want to do this?”
“I do not want to. But I need to.” The old rememberer blinked his soulful eyes. He had been uncharacteristically quiet. “Remember your heroic tales. A hero who has been through a terrible ordeal must face his fears and face his past in order to achieve redemption.”
“That’s true in stories, Vao’sh. But I never wanted to be an epic hero.”
The old man smiled. “And yet, you are.”
Yazra’h clapped him on the back with a blow hard enough to make him grab the rail for balance. “Soon we will destroy them all, Rememberer Anton. I will show you how Ildiran warriors deal with evil machines.”
“I wish you’d been there with us the first time.”
“I wish that as well.” Her coppery hair seemed alive, flowing around her head like a corona. She stared at the former resort planet as they went into orbit. “It would have been glorious.”
She had left her Isix cats on Ildira. Yazra’h loved to hunt with them, to run acr
oss the training fields, and even to roll or wrestle with the animals. But they would be of little use against hulking robots. Anton was sure she feared for her pets’ safety more than she did for her own.
Adar Zan’nh issued orders to the individual captains of the warliners. “We do not know what weapons or defenses the robots have. Recapturing Maratha might be a difficult battle, and we must be prepared for the fight.”
“We are looking forward to it,” Yazra’h said. “Without their hydrogue protectors, those robots cannot stand against us.”
Anton mumbled, “Well, they took us by surprise before.”
Yazra’h’s lips quirked in a smile. “You are frightened. Do not be. I promise to protect you.”
“I . . . I believe you.” Unfortunately, her assurances didn’t blunt the cluster of razor blades that had suddenly lodged in his stomach.
The circling warliners deployed scanners to pick up transmissions from the two antipodal cities. “Maratha Prime and Secda both seem to be dead.”
“As we anticipated,” said Vao’sh. All the colored lobes on his expressive face went deathly pale. Anton patted him reassuringly on the shoulder.
“However, we have detected significant electronic chatter and thermal signatures near the site of Secda.”
“That’s where the robots were digging tunnels and erecting their structures,” Anton said.
The septar transmitted from the second warliner, “I am deploying covert streamers to gather images of all locations. We will study Prime first.”
“Be careful that you are not observed.”
Like a school of metallic fish, Ildiran scout vessels dropped out of the warliner’s belly and cut through the night sky toward the location of Maratha Prime. In well-lit cockpits, the Ildiran pilots flew over what had once been a fabulous vacation city. The streamers spilled silvery light down upon the domes and outer settlements. What remained of Maratha Prime looked like the metal and crystal bones of a beached sea creature.
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