On routine patrol with his maniple of warliners, Zan’nh demonstrated his resolve to the Ildiran people. He needed to be seen, to appear strong, though he was not at all sure the Solar Navy could protect the splinter colonies against the formidable enemies they now faced. But the people themselves must believe it, and so he would live up to their expectations.
He remembered when Adar Kori’nh had sat in his command quarters, earnestly focused on Zan’nh’s education. “Your doubt is an enemy’s greatest weapon. As Adar, you are a microcosm of the entire Solar Navy. If the leader himself is strong and confident, then so is the fleet.”
Zan’nh felt overshadowed by his great predecessor. The former Adar had been superior to him in tactical abilities and sheer courage, and it still hadn’t been enough to ensure victory. Kori’nh’s suicidal bravery had struck a great blow against the hydrogues, but he had not won the war by any means. The hydrogues continued to strike back.
Standing in the command nucleus prepared to give his next order, Zan’nh suddenly gripped the support rails, staggering with internal shock as he felt the powerful ripples of . . . Pery’h? His brother was dead!
When Mage-Imperator Cyroc’h had unexpectedly died, every living person in the Empire had reeled in utter disbelief, because the thism linked them directly to their leader. But the execution of the Designate-in-waiting sent only a shiver of unease through Zan’nh’s crew. He alone knew what the jolt signified.
“Prepare to change course.” His voice sounded strange and raw, but not broken. Decisive. “We must return to Ildira immediately! I have felt something through the thism.”
“Yes, Adar.”
The warliner’s bridge crew began plotting the course while they relayed Zan’nh’s command to the other forty-eight ships accompanying them. The well-organized maniple turned on its new course in perfect formation.
A clamor of alarms swept across the communications console. The surprised operator quickly responded. “You are correct, Adar. I’ve just received an emergency signal from”—he checked the details on his screen—“from the splinter world of Hrel-oro.”
“Hrel-oro?” That wasn’t what he had sensed at all.
Zan’nh turned to the projected message on the main display screen. The narrow reptilian face of a scaly kithman appeared, smoke-blackened and frantic, his slitted eyes blinking rapidly. “—attack. We cannot fight them! We don’t know what they want.”
Behind the scaly man came explosions and humming crackles. Overhead, a giant sphere drifted across the sky, and a few moments later five others came after it. Gouts of freezing icewaves flowed out. Colony buildings crackled and shattered. The reptilian kithman shouted, “Why have the hydrogues come here? Send assistance as soon as—” Abruptly the transmission cut off.
Zan’nh stiffened. The skin on his back crawled. “We won’t be going to Ildira. How close are we to Hrel-oro?”
“We can arrive in an hour, Adar. We are the closest warliners.”
“Accelerate as soon as you have the course plotted. Maximum speed.” Regardless of what had happened to Pery’h, the hydrogues were attacking an Ildiran splinter colony. This was his job, his element—exactly what Adar Kori’nh had trained him for, and Zan’nh did not intend to leave any blot on the memory of his mentor. “We will face the hydrogues. Let us show them what the Solar Navy is capable of.”
The maniple leaped across space, ready for the clash. He put his soldiers through preparatory drills at their stations. “We must be ready for what we find on Hrel-oro. Every weapon, every ship, every fighter. We have very little time.”
He turned about in the command nucleus and spoke to his crew. “On my tactical screen, upload all details of that colony. I want to know the terrain, history, and background. What is it the hydrogues might want there?” He ordered all seven of his septars, as well as Qul Fan’nh, commander of the full maniple, to review the material and provide suggestions if possible. Zan’nh scrutinized every available fact, absorbing the information.
Hrel-oro was a very dry and warm planet, much like one of the long-abandoned Klikiss worlds. It had no tall trees—barely any large vegetation at all—but the bleak landscape was full of desirable minerals and metals. Over a thousand years ago, the Mage-Imperator had instructed scalies to establish an efficient industrial colony there. Although many Ildiran breeds lived on Hrel-oro, the primary population belonged to the scaly kith. Scalies operated the mines dug through rusty-walled canyons and managed mineral-processing industries. They built solar-power stations out in the open desert and installed wind turbines where the canyons narrowed and the breezes whipped to a frenzy during the storm season.
Now, as the warliners raced to the site of the battle, Zan’nh reviewed reports about all previous hydrogue attacks on both human and Ildiran worlds. Some prior assaults had been retaliations against skyminers who trespassed on gas giants—a motive that was understandable enough. Other strikes on Corvus Landing, Boone’s Crossing, Hyrillka, and uninhabited Dularix strongly suggested that the hydrogues meant to eradicate the worldforest or all giant trees. Their grudge appeared to be ancient, and inexplicable.
Hrel-oro did not fit either pattern. It was as if the hydrogues were simply attacking out of spite. Attacking Ildirans.
The warliners raced toward the dry planet, arriving even faster than expected. Their weapons systems were already active. Scans showed a great deal of smoke and thermal emissions from the sites of known settlements.
“We’ve detected warglobes still in the area, Adar.”
“Full speed. I grant each septar autonomy to enter combat in whatever way you deem most effective. Hit them before they even know we’re here.”
The Ildiran battleships plummeted through the atmosphere with solar-power fins retracted to streamline the vessels. So far, few weapons had proved effective against the warglobes, but Zan’nh meant to pummel the enemy with everything he had. . . .
By the time the rescue warliners slammed into the hydrogues, the aliens had nearly finished their total destruction of Hrel-oro. The spiked diamond spheres cruised through the canyons, leveling wind turbines and collapsing the entrances to mineshafts. Black smoke rose into the air, and white frost crackled across the broken terrain in rivers of ice.
Forty-nine warliners—as many battleships as Adar Kori’nh had used to secure his triumph at Qronha 3—swooped in and unleashed high-energy projectiles like a swarm of stinging insects. Penetrating shells released destructive shockwaves as they smashed into the curved hulls. The alien globes spun about, their pyramidal protrusions crackling with a buildup of lightning.
Zan’nh clenched the support rail again, knowing that the hydrogues had the power to massacre his maniple. As Pery’h had been slaughtered.
Concentrated energy beams and kinetic projectiles continued bombarding the warglobes. The hydrogues struck back. Blue energy lanced out, ripping blackened troughs along the plated sides of the warliners.
A burst of lightning took one warliner’s primary engine sets offline, and the ship could not fight against Hrel-oro’s gravity. Zan’nh watched on his screens as the battleship commander wrestled with his failing systems, striving to correct the descent angle. Ahead, the flat desert landscape offered a clear field for an emergency landing. The warliner careened out of control, finally crashing, scraping, and slewing across the plain. Most of the crew would survive—if the hydrogues didn’t come back and obliterate the wounded vessel.
“Maintain your attack. Do not slacken.” Remembering Kori’nh’s words, he let no doubt creep into his voice. He had to be stronger than anyone else. He had trained his tals, quls, and septars in every way possible. They would do their best. They would not dream of failing him, any more than he would ever have failed the old Adar.
But the hydrogues seemed to be invincible.
Three enemy warglobes converged upon another Ildiran battle vessel. The diamond spheres began to play powerful energy discharges across the armor, cracking holes through the warliner’s thick hull. The captain shouted for assistance across the communications system.
Zan’nh ordered his warliners to defend their doomed comrades, but the hydrogue energy weapon proved overpowering. The trapped warliner split open, venting fuel and atmosphere, erupting as its internal systems were breached. Shrapnel flew in all directions. Parts of the hull broke off, and two of the saillike solar fins fluttered free over the desert like giant alloy kites.
The Adar reeled as he sensed the deaths of so many loyal crewmembers. These soldiers were under his command. He was responsible for these battleships, and within a few minutes he had already lost two great warliners. He searched his mind for an alternative, some other way to fight. But so far no strategy had proved effective against the diamond-hulled ships, except for the suicide tactic Kori’nh had used. Zan’nh would not resort to that—not yet.
Though perhaps he should. . . .
The hydrogues had not come to Hrel-oro to fight the Solar Navy. They had their own incomprehensible purposes. By now they were finished with their assault on the splinter colony.
Though the Ildiran battleships continued to harry them, the six spiked warglobes did one last halfhearted run on the structures below, blasting away all remnants of the Ildiran settlement. Then the six unscathed enemy spheres simply rose through the smoke-stained skies and departed at a leisurely pace.
Shouts of fear and anger, damage assessments, and casualty reports filled the communication channels. Zan’nh stared first at the images of destruction below, then at the departing warglobes.
“Adar, should I order the maniple to pursue?” demanded Qul Fan’nh, his face drawn and grim. “The hydrogues are getting away. Do we go after them?”
“No. It would be ineffective and dangerous.” Zan’nh expanded the image of the burning wreckage. The death of each soldier already pained him like a crystal knife thrust into his side. How had Adar Kori’nh dealt with it? “Our primary responsibility is to offer aid to our people down there, if any of them survive. I’ll not let any more Ildirans die because we were anxious to keep fighting a hopeless battle.” Victory against the hydrogues was obviously not possible here. Therefore, his priority must be to save Ildiran lives.
“All able-bodied soldiers report to the launching bays. Medical kithmen, break into teams—some to man the infirmaries aboard our warliners, others to go to the surface and tend any survivors we find.”
The Adar wanted to be personally involved with every phase, but he knew he could not. His job was to lead, so he would remain here to issue orders and manage all the pieces. He angrily thrust aside his confusion and the nagging whispers of doubt, and forced himself to set an example of how all Ildiran soldiers should behave. He quickly dispatched three unscathed warships to track down and assist the crashed warliner out in the desert.
“Get displays and updated maps of all the active mining operations down there. Some people must have survived the attack, but they won’t last long if they’re buried.”
He sent engineering crews and heavy excavators with large-scale earthmoving machinery to dig miners out of their collapsed shafts. Fire-suppression crews were also launched. Although the hydrogue icewave weapon froze and shattered anything it touched, the blue lightning blasts had started secondary fires—even if little remained intact for the fires to destroy.
Zan’nh stepped away from the command nucleus, his mind made up. He could not stay up here, away from the actual operations. Kori’nh had prepared him to be a hero. “I will be in the lead shuttle. Take me down to the surface so that I can see for myself.”
Later, when he finally stood among the smoldering debris of the splinter colony, when he could smell the smoke and dust and death in the air, Zan’nh was speechless. The Ildiran buildings were gone, and he heard pitifully few moans of injured or dying Ildirans.
To his astonishment, a large black shape emerged from the billowing sooty haze at the center of the devastation. The Klikiss robot moved with unsettling smoothness on clusters of fingerlike legs. Its extended arms had sharp joints that ended in crablike claws.
Zan’nh didn’t know how the Klikiss robot recognized him, how it knew to address the Adar in particular, but the looming ancient machine proceeded through the smoke and wreckage without hesitation. Its black carapace opened partway as if threatening to reveal a set of deadly weapons. Its scarlet optical sensors blazed, regarding him.
Zan’nh stood his ground. “What do you want? What are the Klikiss robots doing on Hrel-oro?” The black machines sometimes appeared on Ildiran splinter colonies; in fact, they had frequently offered construction assistance in unpleasant environments, such as moons or asteroids or the dark side of Maratha. But he didn’t believe that was why this robot was here.
In a buzzing voice, it replied, “Inform the Mage-Imperator that all agreements between Ildirans and the Klikiss robots are ended.”
The robot swiveled its body core to face the opposite direction. The stunned Adar watched, smelling smoke and blood from the massacre, as the hulking black automaton stalked off.