Jora’h resented that he had to imprison the humans. Sullivan Gold and his crew were heroes who had rescued Ildiran skyminers from a hydrogue attack; and the scholar Anton Colicos had survived a Klikiss robot massacre and saved Rememberer Vao’sh. By the rules of honor, those men and women should have been rewarded. Instead, since they had seen the warglobes, Jora’h had no choice but to keep them under guard. He feared he would never be able to let them go.
He despised being trapped like this!
“Yes, Liege. I will make the arrangements. The trader is already on his way.” She bowed, then ran off, colored light dappling her smooth skin. Jora’h began to make his way back down to the dais and his duties.
In an attempt to show respect, the Roamer man dropped to one knee before the chrysalis chair, then looked up with an infectious smile. His long brown hair was tied in a ribbon, and he wore a fine outfit embellished with clan markings. He seemed very pleased with himself.
“This ekti comes from a cometary processing facility, where we strip out the hydrogen and convert it to stardrive fuel. It’s a difficult and costly process, Your Majesty.” He shrugged. “The hydrogues haven’t left us many alternatives.”
Ever since the beginning of the hydrogue war eight years ago, the production of stardrive fuel had dwindled to a trickle, and the Empire’s vast stockpiles were now severely diminished. “We will pay your price,” Jora’h said. Humans worried overmuch about rising and falling expenditures, trying to trick their commercial partners into greater or lesser payments. Ildirans, on the other hand, operated as aligned pieces in a large, interconnected network.
Peroni grinned. “I have some good news for you, though. The Roamer clans are skymining again! We found at least one gas giant cleared of the hydrogues. There’ll be plenty more ekti to come. This could be the start of a long and profitable partnership between humans and Ildirans. I’m sure of it.”
“We thank you for your trust.” Jora’h’s heart felt cold and heavy inside his chest. Yet the hydrogues intended to exterminate all humans . . . and the Ildirans just might be forced to help them do it.
30
SULLIVAN GOLD
The Hansa skyminers hated being held hostage inside the Prism Palace. Tabitha Huck slumped onto a bench, scowled at the guarded door of their spacious chambers. “A damned odd way to say thank you.” She glared at the muscular guard woman who prowled the corridors with her vicious-looking panther pets. “You do a good deed and just look what happens.”
Sullivan took a seat beside her. When the hydrogues attacked Qronha 3, the Hansa workers had been ready to evacuate, but the Ildirans had no way to escape. After a wrenching decision, Sullivan had ordered his crew to save the doomed Ildirans, at great risk to themselves. “We couldn’t just leave them all to die, Tabitha.”
“Maybe we should have! We lost one of our own escape modules while the drogues were attacking, and now we’re stuck here. If we’d evacuated while the warglobes were busy destroying the Ildiran facility, we’d be home right now.”
Sullivan put a paternal hand on her arm. “But would you be able to sleep at night?”
Tabitha looked sideways at him. “I’m willing to take tranquilizers.”
Sullivan watched the silhouette of Yazra’h pacing in the hall. The lean guard looked in on them and scanned their forlorn faces. “Stay here until we release you again. You are not to leave these rooms for the next two hours.”
“Why? What’s changed?” Sullivan barged toward the door. “What did we do wrong?”
“It is not my place to explain.”
“Our loved ones need to know we’re all right,” he pleaded. “Can you at least provide a treeling for my green priest, so we can send a message? Tell our families we’re still alive. Please, it would mean so much to him. To all of us.”
Kolker was the most desperately affected member of his crew. The green priest had always been loquacious, talking endlessly through his treeling with his comrades across the Spiral Arm. But Kolker had lost his treeling during the destruction of the cloud harvester and now was utterly cut off from his beloved telink. He was more than just lonely, more than sad. He was like an addict forced to endure a prolonged withdrawal. And it was all so unnecessary! Why was the Mage-Imperator doing this to them?
“I have other duties.” With an abrupt dismissal, Yazra’h stepped away from the door and closed it behind her.
Tabitha scowled as the guard woman departed. “The Ildirans wouldn’t be doing this unless they had something to hide.” She shook her head, her forehead furrowed with unanswered questions. “I tell you, something smells fishy—and it isn’t caviar. What were all those warglobes doing over the Prism Palace? As soon as we saw that, we got sent to our rooms.”
Sullivan went to the green priest and touched his bare shoulder in sympathy. Deeply depressed, Kolker sat silently by himself. Although his skin was a bright and healthy emerald green from the abundant sunlight, he needed contact with the worldtrees.
Kolker raised his heavy head, as if he sensed something unexpected. His expression showed a glimmer of surprise, even a faint shadow of optimism—and it had nothing to do with what Tabitha or Sullivan had said. “I thought it was just a desperate hope, but it’s not my imagination! I know that now. There really is something here.” The green priest looked directly at Sullivan. “There is a treeling in the Prism Palace—and I will find it.”
31
ANTON COLICOS
Come with me to the Hall of Rememberers,” said Vao’sh. “You have never seen the sanctuary and headquarters for my kith, where all stories begin and end. I have not been there since I awakened from my nightmares.”
Anton brightened. “I’d love to! And not just because it’ll get me out of the Prism Palace for a change.”
Ever since the warglobes had come and gone, the Ildirans were panicky and suspicious. With good reason, he supposed . . . but why restrict his movements? Anton got the impression that he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to, and now his hosts watched him more closely than ever. What could a skinny and preoccupied scholar do against the Ildiran Empire? Anton finally asked the question. “Why won’t anyone tell me the reason I can’t go home? I’d really like to know.”
Vao’sh frowned. “You have not accomplished your purpose in coming here, Rememberer Anton. Are you anxious to leave?”
“I’m not anxious, but it makes me uneasy. My father was killed at an archaeology dig years ago, and my mother is still missing. I’m so out of touch. What if there’s news? I just don’t like being kept in the dark.”
Vao’sh rocked backward. “In the dark? We would never do that to you!”
Anton placed a reassuring hand on his friend’s forearm. “It was just a figure of speech. Don’t worry.” He saw he wasn’t going to get an answer.
Moving briskly, the rememberer led him down a long hall and out through the arched side entrance of the Prism Palace. A winding path descended the elliptical hill to the extensive city. The view was so breathtaking that he barely noticed the pair of silent and muscular guard kithmen accompanying them.
“Will Yazra’h come with us?”
“I believe the Mage-Imperator has currently assigned her to other duties.”
Anton felt disappointment mixed with a small measure of relief. The intimidating woman had been his diligent guardian since he’d returned from Maratha with a catatonic Vao’sh. She didn’t seem like the type, but Anton knew that she enjoyed his stories. He awkwardly suspected that Yazra’h wanted something more from him.
One of the most impressive buildings in Mijistra was a storehouse of records for the kith responsible for writing, memorizing, and preserving the Saga. Vao’sh hurried up the polished stone stairs, obviously excited. The two guards took up their positions outside the huge hall and waited. Anton barely spared them a glance. Where in the world did they think he might go?
He entered, thinking of all the university lecture halls he had haunted before he’d been invited to study the
Saga of Seven Suns. This was quite different from anything he had seen before.
Row after row of sequential wall panels formed a labyrinth, each segment delicately engraved with long lines of precise letters. The wall sections were giant diamondfilm sheets etched with the approved stanzas of the Saga, line after line after line. Just inside the doorway, a group of rememberer children, their faces showing prominent lobes, stood rapt before the writing-covered walls. The children stared at the stanzas and mumbled to themselves, repeating what they read, over and over until they had burned each word into their brains.
“They learn the Saga from beginning to end,” Vao’sh explained. “A rememberer will spend half of his life absorbing all the stanzas until he can recite it without error. The story must be told without a single change.”
Anton gave a wry smile. “I hate writers who keep editing even after a story is finished.” As he and Vao’sh continued past scrollwork pillars and mirrored fountains, rememberers stood before each of the text-covered wall panels, memorizing and reciting. “They’re getting older from one segment to the next.”
“The youngest rememberers begin their training just inside the entrance. Once they perfect the first segment of the Saga, they move to the next plate on the wall, progressing year by year until they have absorbed the whole epic.”
Anton laughed. “And I thought Earthbound academia was tedious!”
At the core of the Hall of Rememberers, scribes quietly and intensely discussed their work, crowded around tables. Middle-aged storytellers pored over stacks of records. Working together with a single goal, they compiled and critiqued one sheet after another, adding new lines to the never-ending Saga.
The ceiling swept upward in a gigantic chimney above a huge brazier that burned with bright flames. Discarded sheets were cast into the hot fire, destroying unacceptable drafts. Once each line was finished, discussed, and approved, then—and only then—was it scribed in permanent diamondfilm that would eventually be mounted onto the walls within the Hall of Rememberers.
“The accurate recording of events is as important as the events themselves.” The lobes on Vao’sh’s face flushed a chameleon palette of colors. “A society that does not remember is not worth remembering. It is a core Ildiran belief.”
Although human epics were often embellished myths that served a purpose beyond the mere chronicling of facts, Ildirans took every mark of recorded history literally. Only Vao’sh’s kith—and presumably the Mage-Imperator—knew that the legends of the Shana Rei were false, made up to add drama and conflict to the Saga. But if the Shana Rei were fictional, then might not other parts of the Saga of Seven Suns be suspect?
As he watched the rememberer kithmen scribbling and discarding draft stanzas, Anton realized that “history” was literally being made before his eyes. An apprentice threw another sheaf into the brazier, where the flames consumed more unacceptable lines.
Vao’sh walked from one table to the next. “Right now, my comrades are writing the story of Adar Kori’nh, from his evacuation of Crenna after the blindness plague, through his struggles against the hydrogues, to the final battle in the clouds of Qronha 3.”
“Your Adar Kori’nh certainly earned his place in the Saga.”
Vao’sh smiled. “Within months, rememberers will discuss the inclusion of our long trek across Maratha and our battles with the Klikiss robots.”
Anton gasped. “I came to study your history, not make a mark on it. You mean I . . . we—”
“You are no longer a mere observer of historical epics, Rememberer Anton. You will soon become part of one.”
32
ADMIRAL LEV STROMO
They kept up the fight for two full days, losing ground a centimeter at a time. But still losing.
After the mutinous Soldier compies killed Sergeant Zizu, taking the security chief down in a flurry of broken bones and last spurts of weapons fire, Stromo saw that only he and Commander Ramirez remained alive on the Manta’s bridge. He’d heard enough panicked transmissions across the intercom to know the compies were massacring everyone else aboard. Frightened bridge crewmembers had tried to evacuate, but the corridor was stacked with the bodies of dead soldiers. And the compies kept coming.
Below, Qronha 3 looked maddeningly peaceful, exhibiting no sign of rammers or hydrogue warglobes. His Manta was all alone and vulnerable.
“Admiral!” Ramirez tossed him a charge pack for his twitcher. “This is the last one.”
Stromo’s hands were trembling, but he managed to snap in the replacement pack. He had drained his weapon stalling the oncoming robots, but the stunned Soldier compies reasserted their programming and came forward again.
He jerked his head toward the captain’s prep room adjacent to the bridge. “If we go in there, we could barricade the door.”
“It won’t last long, sir.”
“Doesn’t need to! Remember the emergency ladder?” It had seemed an odd protective measure when the Mantas were designed, an escape hatch in case the commanding officer needed to slip away from the bridge. On the other hand, he’d sat on enough EDF committees to know that planning sessions often mutated in strange directions.
Ramirez’s face remained grim. “That’ll take us down a deck. Then what?”
“One step at a time, Commander.” First, he wanted to get away from here. He would worry about the next stage later.
“Good idea, sir. Go!”
As the Soldier compies battered aside the last-ditch barricades and surged onto the bridge, Stromo bolted toward the small private chamber. At one time, using the military robots had seemed the perfect solution to make up for the shortfall of recruits and the loss of so many fighters in the hydrogue war. Now there was so much fresh blood on the deck that he could barely run without slipping.
Before following him into the dubious bolt-hole, Ramirez paused at the command station and fiddled with the systems. Stromo skidded to a stop at the prep room. “Come on, Ramirez! I can’t hold this open forever.”
“Just a minute, sir.” She worked furiously, sweat dripping from her brow, paying no attention to the oncoming compies. “Another second . . . one second.”
Stromo swallowed hard. Even once sealed, this door wouldn’t hold long. What was she doing? Well, he could no longer be responsible if Ramirez insisted on staying at her station. That was her choice. He had to make a command decision. He turned to the door controls.
She finally finished her routine and hit the activate button. As she sprinted toward him, sparks flew from all the bridge stations like a chain of firecrackers. Ramirez was actually grinning as she burst into the prep room with him. Stromo slid the door shut, sealing it. “What the hell was all that? You’ve cost us time!”
“Disabled the primary systems, sir. Now those compies won’t have access to my ship, no matter what happens.” He should have thought of that himself. It was clear the compies wanted this Manta for something.
Only seconds after the door sealed, compies began to pound on the barricade; dents formed in the metal. This wasn’t an armored chamber. The door was little more than a privacy screen for the ship’s commander to have strategy discussions with his underlings or perhaps deliver a stern lecture to a recalcitrant crewmember.
“Quick!” Stromo gestured toward a tiny closet with an access hatch in the floor. “Go first.” He didn’t know what might be down there.
Ramirez lifted the hatch to expose the ladder and in a smooth movement slung her feet through the hole. Stromo scrambled down more awkwardly. “There’s a cargo lift down at the end of this main corridor,” he said, breathing heavily as he lowered himself rung after rung. “Maybe we can make it to the hangar deck. Grab a Remora or a personnel transport.” His feet dropped to the floor with a thud, and he nearly lost his balance. “Then we’ll fly out of here.”
“Are you sure there’s no one else left alive aboard, Admiral?”
“Even if they are, we can’t save them. Come on, hurry up.”
He sprinted
down the corridor, and Ramirez easily paced him. She made no comment, but she was smart enough to know their chances. Everyone had to be responsible for his or her own welfare.
“Watch out, sir!” Two Soldier compies lunged out of a side corridor. Ramirez fired a long blast with her twitcher and knocked them aside.
Ahead, the corridor seemed to go on forever, with any number of chambers and branching hallways where compies might be lurking. He hesitated, his face red, his heart pounding, but he knew they had to keep moving.
When more compies emerged, Stromo blasted repeatedly with his twitcher, but the military robots seemed inexhaustible. He nearly tripped on a fallen compy; in an automated spasm, the metal arm reached out to grab him, but he jumped away.
Ramirez fired her own twitcher, blast after blast. “At this rate we’ll drain our charges before we even get to the lift!”
Stromo sprinted ahead, concentrating on the wall controls and the closed lift door. Barely able to hold himself upright as he panted and wheezed, he slapped the summoning sensor. The indicator lights raced as the fast cargo elevator shot up to Deck 2. Only a few seconds more!
“Hurry, Ramirez! The lift is coming.” He could feel the wall vibrate, hear the machinery humming.
She fought to catch up. Three cabin doors slid open. The rooms should have been crew barracks where off-duty personnel rested and relaxed. Four compies emerged, covered with blood.
Ramirez fired shorter bursts with her twitcher, just enough to divert the machines, but now compies crowded the passageway. They came toward Stromo, and he fired at them, extravagant with his weapon’s energy; in such a dire situation, no half-assed effort would succeed.
Ramirez couldn’t shoot the compies fast enough. Her charge pack ran out.
Stromo meant to go help Ramirez, but he saw that his twitcher had only enough energy to fire two more significant bursts—not nearly enough to save her, not nearly enough to let him get away.
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