“The city is destroyed,” transmitted one of the pilots.
Anton shook his head. “Not destroyed—dismantled.” Prime had suffered from no obvious explosions or attacks. Instead, the robots had stripped the buildings and walls, removing equipment, pulling out any processed material they could use.
“What would they want it all for?” Yazra’h said.
“We will find out when the scouts get to the hive at Secda,” Zan’nh said.
Flying low over the darkened landscape, the spy streamers rapidly crossed the continent to the other side of the planet. By the time they outraced the night, flying low enough to avoid any local detection systems the robots might have put in place, the scanners came upon the vast and strange complex the robots had created. Unseen, they transmitted images back to the approaching warliners. Before long, however, the robots would detect the Solar Navy force overhead.
The nearly completed city had been torn apart as well, its useful components cannibalized to build an immense and distinctive alien metropolis. Or a base. The rocky landscape was riddled with tunnels and shafts. Towers made of curving girders were weirdly reminiscent of the Klikiss ruins that Anton’s parents had spent so much time investigating.
“They are building ships,” Vao’sh said.
“A lot of ships.”
In the flatlands surrounding Secda, vessels were being assembled from newly extruded framework girders and hull plates. Like an infestation of roaches, hundreds of black robots scurried over the construction site. Bright sparks from welding arcs and assembly tools flickered in the growing shadows of the planet’s week-long sunset.
“Those are heavily armed vessels, designed as warships,” said Zan’nh. “The robots mean to attack something, or at least defend themselves against a very powerful enemy. What do they fear?”
Yazra’h didn’t care. “We will not give them a chance to complete their work.”
After the recon streamers finished their surveillance and soared back to the warliners, the robots went into a flurry. “We have been seen,” Zan’nh said.
“It is time to begin our engagement. I will gather soldiers and arm them with weapons for a ground assault.” Yazra’h turned to go. “Rememberers Anton and Vao’sh must chronicle our great battles. Will you join us?” She grinned.
Vao’sh sounded terrified as he answered. “Yes.” Anton swallowed hard.
Satisfied, she marched to the doorway, but the Adar shook his head. “Stay here for now, Yazra’h. Our primary function is to defeat and destroy the enemy robots and whatever base they are building here. The streamers have provided us with sufficient data to plan our attack. You will be part of the second phase. I will not needlessly risk lives.”
Anton felt a rush of relief, but knew the reprieve was only temporary.
Ignoring Yazra’h’s obvious disappointment, the Adar issued his orders. “All warliners, drop low to burn out the robot infestation before they can prepare their defenses. Launch cutters and streamers for surgical strikes. Warliners, prepare for large-scale assault.” The seven warliners sliced into Maratha’s atmosphere and thrust toward the nightmarish metal swarm. A flurry of smaller ships led the charge.
Anton studied the images the spy scouts sent back, and frowned as something changed. Coverings slid away from buried tube-shaped structures that pointed upward. “Hey, what are those cylinders mounted into the ground? Like an array of canisters, or”—before Anton could finish, the mouths of the cylinders spat forth blue-white gouts of energy—“cannons!”
The bombardment vaporized three of the approaching attack streamers. The remaining pilots scrambled out of formation, curved upward, and raced out of range. The robot cannons fired again, and the scatter of energy projectiles caught a streamer on its right wing, sending it into a spin.
Still descending, the big Solar Navy ships plunged toward the robotic base. The smaller ships began to open fire, striking any emplacement they could lock onto.
Zan’nh stood at the command rail, his face grim. Yazra’h was smiling. “Commence full-scale bombardment as soon as we are in range. Warliners, deploy all appropriate weapons. Destroy those cannons; then destroy the entire complex.”
As the remaining streamers shot away, the robots methodically prepared their defenses. Another barrage of energy projectiles forced the warliners to spread apart. The Solar Navy dropped thousands of explosive projectiles, followed by a cascade of energy beams that ripped up the landscape around the robotic hive.
A cluster of Ildiran bombs struck one of the partially assembled robot warships. Anton shielded his eyes from the flash and shockwave that turned the spacecraft into a glowing crater. Showering sparks flew in all directions as if someone had scattered the coals of a campfire. Chittering, pulsing electronic signals rattled through the warliner’s comm systems. Anton wondered what the robots were saying, but decided he didn’t really want to know.
As a wave of bombs struck a second robotic vessel at the ship construction grounds, the embedded energy cannons damaged a lagging warliner. The Solar Navy mercilessly pounded the hive tunnels, the pits, and the rebuilt city.
“Very soon the robots will not only be defeated, but obliterated,” Zan’nh said.
Vao’sh moved his lips, quietly mumbling words, as if rehearsing how he would tell the story to his fellow rememberers. Below, the robots scrambled to find effective shelter.
Yazra’h clenched and unclenched her hands as she watched the attack, obviously hoping that the Adar would leave some of the black machines for her to deal with personally.
25 MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H
With Yazra’h and Zan’nh gone off to recapture Maratha, Jora’h turned his efforts to the multitude of other tasks involved in restoring stability to his Empire. His staff assembled maps and a strategic inventory as the first step in reclaiming all that had recently been lost. Hyrillka, the center of Rusa’h’s rebellion, had been evacuated while faeros and hydrogues battled in the system’s primary sun. But perhaps now the world was habitable again. The Mage-Imperator sent a scientific team to Hyrillka to study the solar flux and monitor the climate. That would tell him if there was still cause for concern.
He also summoned Tal O’nh, the one-eyed military commander who had evacuated Hyrillka, along with Designate Ridek’h, the boy who would have been the leader there. Jora’h dispatched them on a procession across the worlds in the Horizon Cluster to inspect planets that had been damaged in the rebellion. Another key step in regaining Ildiran strength and unity.
So many pieces . . . so many fragments of the Empire now splintered apart, and only the Mage-Imperator could draw them together. How glad he was that his son Daro’h was returning from Dobro today! Now that the hydrogues were defeated and Rusa’h’s civil war was over, the Ildiran Empire needed its Prime Designate again. The Mage-Imperator wanted to see Daro’h as soon as his transport touched down.
A semicircular ledge extended from the Palace wing that was set aside as the domain of the new Prime Designate. The ledge was both a balcony and a landing pad, expansive enough to hold more than seventy Ildirans. Sadly, Nira had chosen not to join Jora’h. Her memories of Dobro were still raw, and though this young man had not asked for his position as Designate there, Daro’h still represented the terrible camps to her.
A few servant kithmen hurriedly strung reflective banners to thin poles with braided ropes. Others arranged food on such a sprawling array of tables that Jora’h wondered if the pilot would find room to land on the crowded balcony. Court rememberers stood listening and watching, ready to retell every aspect of Daro’h’s arrival. Bureaucratic kithmen determined which people were allowed to stand on the landing ledge and which must be relegated to nearby balconies. Guard kithmen stood at attention, pointing their crystal katanas to the sky.
Posturing for attention, anxious females were dressed in reflective solar-energy clothing, their scalps shaved, oiled, and painted with colorful designs. The women, many of whom were already on the breeding roster,
enthusiastically waved at the small ceremonial cutter as it came down. It was the Prime Designate’s job to have many children, from many kiths, and to begin a new generation of noble-born sons who would become his Designates-in-Waiting.
Daro’h’s life here would be much different from before. Because of his birth order, upbringing, and training, he had never believed he would be anything more than the Designate of Dobro. But everything had changed with the death of the turncoat Thor’h.
This time, the Mage-Imperator wouldn’t allow his son to lead a completely pampered life. A Prime Designate had many pleasant obligations and tended to follow hedonistic pleasures for a time, but Jora’h had suffered from the mistake of indulging Thor’h. Daro’h must be put through a trial by fire, beginning the moment he arrived.
Servant kithmen had polished the transparent tiles of the balcony ledge surface so perfectly that it looked as if the cutter were landing on clear air. The ceremonial vessel was embellished with sigils and colorful markings. With a cough of jets and a flare of heat, the cutter settled into place. Jora’h moved forward as the hatch began to open.
When Daro’h stepped out, however, the Mage-Imperator felt a sudden jolt in his heart, a twisting in his abdomen. The brooding pain he had felt in the thism intensified. His son actually flinched from the bright light of the six suns. The skin of his face was red and blistered, burned; his hands were as raw as if they’d been boiled.
“Daro’h! What happened?”
The young man seemed unsteady as he walked forward. His words gushed out. “Father! Liege. The fire is coming. The faeros! Udru’h is dead!”
“Designate Udru’h is dead? How? I sensed nothing!” How could Jora’h not have felt the death of his brother?
“Before he died, the faeros separated Udru’h from the thism. Cut off and . . . consumed him. It was Rusa’h, Liege. He is alive—and afire.”
Crisply, so that his tone penetrated Daro’h’s panic, Jora’h said, “Explain yourself, Prime Designate.” The bureaucratic kithmen, guards, and waiting females looked to the Mage-Imperator in confusion, as if he could dispel their anxiety and provide sensible answers.
When Daro’h drew a deep breath, a twinge of pain crossed his seared face. He explained how the faeros had come to Dobro, fireballs looming over the burned village. “Rusa’h is with the faeros. He said he would burn more, that he would burn you if you tried to stop him.”
“And why did he spare you?”
“Because I am a son of the Mage-Imperator. My thism connection to you is strong, but I believe he could have broken it, ignited it, if he wished to. I think he intended for me to warn you . . . so you would be afraid.”
Jora’h understood all too well. With the Solar Navy already devastated and the Ildiran people weakened, what chance did they have of standing against fiery entities as powerful as the hydrogues? However, the Mage-Imperator had not given in to the hydrogues, and the Empire had indeed survived.
“Daro’h, I need your strength. I need my Prime Designate.”
Through the thism, Jora’h sensed his son searching deep within himself. Now that he did not feel entirely alone, the young man found an inner courage that had not been burned by fear. “But how can we stop him?”
“By being Ildirans. Standing together, our race is stronger than any outside threat.” Jora’h clasped Daro’h’s forearm. “You and I will reinforce the thism as a Mage-Imperator and his Prime Designate should do. Do we know where Rusa’h will go next?”
“He said he would forge bonds wherever he needed them.”
26 FAEROS INCARNATE RUSA’H
Crenna’s dead star was the site of a faeros defeat in a battle that had extinguished a sun. Though countless hydrogues had perished, still the fiery entities had been beaten. The crushing blow had rocked the faeros.
That was before Rusa’h had joined them. As an avatar of the flaming elemental beings, he retained all of his human memories, passions, and ideas. Rusa’h had showed them a different way to fight. By sacrifice, by throwing overwhelming numbers against the hydrogues all at the same place, the faeros had incinerated the enemy, though at great cost to themselves. Their numbers had been decimated.
But perhaps he could help them, as well as achieve his own aims.
Rusa’h gazed through a curtain of flames as his fireball circled the dense gray corpse of Crenna’s sun. The nuclear fires at its core had been stilled, providing no more energy to hold the star’s layers against its own gravity. Once-habitable planets in the system were now cold and black, their very atmospheres frozen solid. Thermal energy still simmered from the layers of heavy gases, but it was not enough. At this distance, his faeros allies should have been frolicking in the magnetic arcs of solar flares, immersed in the boiling energy sea of the corona. Like flickering flames, they embodied chaos and entropy. The faeros consumed formal structures and rigid organization. They did as they liked.
Not any longer. Not here. They were nearly extinct. Chaos itself was out of balance. The very concept seemed a contradiction.
Though his body was composed of plasma and lava rather than flesh and bone, Rusa’h felt a memory of cold. He guided the fireball ship around the dark star once more, imagining the agony that had rippled through the faeros that had perished there.
Once, he had tried to guide the Ildiran race down a new path, but he had been forced to flee into the sun. After being engulfed by that inferno, though, his body had been changed rather than consumed. And now Rusa’h understood how he could influence the faeros to bring down the corrupt Mage-Imperator Jora’h—and save his people.
Now that he had joined the fiery entities, Rusa’h hoped to use his understanding of Ildirans to satisfy the faeros need for rebirth. At times, even the blazing elementals did not understand him, but they knew he burned with a longing for revenge, and for control.
Fulfilling a personal Ildiran need, Rusa’h had incinerated the treacherous Dobro Designate Udru’h. As he did so, he followed the soul-thread and drew on the potent fuel of Udru’h’s life force. When Udru’h’s dying spark added to the flames of the waning elemental beings, Rusa’h was astonished by the connection. How had he not seen it before? He could link the soulfire of the faeros to the soul-threads of thism. It was a revelation both for him and for the fiery entities.
Much as green priests had spread the worldtrees, Rusa’h could replenish the faeros. He could spark more faeros by burning soul after Ildiran soul, until the fiery beings became unquenchable. Rusa’h had begun his crusade to resurrect the dwindling numbers of the faeros, but at the same time he would be bringing his lost Ildiran people directly into the Lightsource.
There would be resistance, of course, but he would be doing a good thing, no matter how much pain it caused. Some of his people would be required to make an important sacrifice.
Rusa’h decided to go first to the worlds where he had already laid down new paths of thism. Those connections would allow him easy passage while he built up his strength. Entire planetary populations had no way to resist him. Leaving the dead sun at Crenna, he guided his fireball toward the Horizon Cluster, where countless souls were already ripe—waiting to be harvested.
In the days of Rusa’h’s spreading rebellion, Dzelluria had been his first conquest after subsuming the population of Hyrillka. He had declared himself Imperator and taken his followers to unsuspecting Dzelluria. Forcing young Designate-in-waiting Czir’h to watch, Rusa’h killed the old Designate, then compelled Czir’h to submit to the new thism. After the rebellion failed, however, the cowardly young Designate had groveled for the Mage-Imperator’s forgiveness, and the people of his planet poured themselves into reconstructing their capital, their cities, their lives. Now, with an entourage of blazing ellipsoids, Rusa’h returned to Dzelluria—to bring them the fire.
As his fireballs rolled in across the sky, Rusa’h saw how frantically everyone was working. Construction crews on tall scaffolding erected monoliths and fountains and raised statues in a furious effort to eras
e the scars of the previous takeover. It had been only a few months, but the main city already blossomed with taller towers and grander halls than ever before. The people thought themselves safe now in the Mage-Imperator’s thism web.
They needed to burn.
From his fiery craft, Rusa’h gazed down with enhanced senses and saw the young Designate standing with a lens kithman on a balcony, looking up into the sky, as if wondering why the sun was growing brighter. Another sun—several of them, in fact, that descended like huge meteors sheathed in flame. Czir’h watched the ellipsoids race across the sky toward him.
Rusa’h easily found the old, never-healed paths of thism in the young Designate’s mind. He cut Czir’h off from the soul-threads of the Ildiran race, completely isolating him; separating the lens kithman took even less time. With the hunger of the faeros behind him, Rusa’h did not see them as people, but as sparks. In a searing burst of energy that pulsed like lava through the thism, Rusa’h set loose the cleansing fire.
Czir’h and his lens kithman collapsed as the elemental blaze consumed their soulfires and made the faeros stronger.
Smiling, Rusa’h reached out to the rest of the people of Dzelluria.
27 CESCA PERONI
After the wentals had spread through numerous gas giants and bottled up the enemy hydrogues, Jess and Cesca returned to the primordial water planet of Charybdis. They finally had each other and looked forward to spending time away from the rest of the Spiral Arm. Just themselves.
As the silvery water bubble descended, the skies were gray and cloudy, gorged with living rain. Lightning bolts skittered like patterns traced by the baton of an orchestra conductor, releasing pent-up wental power. As soon as the sphere touched the steely waves, its surface tension vanished and the entire vessel mingled with the rest of the gathered wentals.
Freed and happy, Jess and Cesca swam together in the alien ocean. Countless essences flowed through them, voices echoing the thoughts of the widespread mind of the wentals. It was unlike anything Cesca had experienced in her previous life.
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