Horizon Storms (35 page)

Zan’nh made a gesture for patience. “You can begin soon, Hroa’x. This is a necessary meeting, and it will take as long as it needs.”

Carrying his potted treeling in the crook of his elbow, Kolker led the way into the enclosed cloud-harvesting facility. Though Sullivan had never intended to hold board meetings or staff convocations on the cloud harvester—it was a rushed construction, not meant to be a full-fledged facility—the Hansa designs did include one large chamber complete with a long table and broad windows that looked out upon the clouds.

The green priest set his heavy pot on the end of the table and took a seat beside it. Without waiting for anyone else, he touched the thin trunk, and his lips moved silently as he sent a new report through the telink network. The Chairman would be eavesdropping, no doubt.

Sullivan paid more attention to his two important guests. Before the Adar’s arrival, he’d hurriedly asked the galley staff to set out a variety of dishes, some of them following Lydia’s own recipes. No one aboard the cloud harvester knew whether Ildirans preferred sweet confections or sa-vory snacks. What would impress them? Sullivan also set out several liqueurs, a pot of hot tea, and a pitcher of plain water, as well as a bottle of syrupy Passover wine that his wife had insisted he take with him.

“I tried to provide a variety,” he said to Zan’nh, indicating the refreshments with a flourish of his hand. “Please, take what you like, or ask questions. What would you prefer?”

Sullivan took a seat at the side of the table, but the miner kithman remained standing, pacing the room and gazing out the window. “I would prefer to begin skymining,” Hroa’x said. “Soon.”

Zan’nh let out a faint but long-suffering sigh. “Patience, Hroa’x.” He took a seat at the head of the table.

“Sullivan Gold, my father is the Mage-Imperator, and my predecessor, Adar Kori’nh, sacrificed himself to clear Qronha 3 of the hydrogues so that Ildirans might skymine again. Ildirans. Kori’nh’s memory will live in the Saga of Seven Suns. I will make certain of that. Why do you feel justified in claiming the spoils of that victory?”

Sullivan grasped the significance of the commander’s concern. “I . . .

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realize that your predecessor had no intention of achieving his victory so that humans could take advantage of the opportunity.”

“Cease your operations here, pack up your equipment, and return to Earth. You do not belong on Qronha 3.”

Sullivan spread his hands on the table. “Now, let’s not be too hasty, all right? Aren’t the Hansa and the Ildiran Empire good friends? Don’t we share a common enemy in the hydrogues? Our Earth Defense Forces have fought bravely and sacrificed themselves against the hydrogues, just as your valiant Adar did. With the attacks on our colony worlds, we’ve suffered plenty, too—and we did not ask for this war any more than you did.”

Zan’nh’s answer was quick and cold. “Humans ignited the Klikiss Torch and destroyed a hydrogue homeworld.”

“Well, you know it was never our intent to incite hostilities—and we’ve done everything humanly possible to atone for that mistake. Look, I’m just a skyminer trying to do my job.”

“As am I—but I can’t get started yet,” Hroa’x said impatiently. “These are old matters and irrelevant ones.”

“You bet they are,” Sullivan agreed with the gruff miner. He smiled reassuringly, attempting to increase his charm. “Say, neither of you has sampled any of the food or drink.”

“We do not require hospitality. And your food may not be perfectly compatible with our biochemistry.”

Sullivan covered his frown. Refusing hospitality? Did they fear poison?

He nibbled on a piece of cheese. “Maybe the Hansa made a brash and ill-advised decision to send a cloud harvester here without first obtaining permission from your Mage-Imperator. I can see why you’re upset. I wouldn’t want someone setting up a business in my family’s backyard, either. But this is a huge planet, after all—what does it hurt? We meant no harm, nor have we caused any that I can see. Our presence in no way hinders your efforts to produce as much ekti as you can. The sky is certainly big enough for both of us. Besides, isn’t there safety in numbers? We could help each other in the event of an emergency.”

“Help each other . . . in what way?” Zan’nh asked. “These facilities could never successfully defend against a hydrogue attack, alone or together.”

“Well, no, but other emergencies could happen, right?”

Hroa’x was impatient. “We waste time. Why squabble over boundaries that do not exist? Human cloud-harvesting activities will not diminish the hydrogen supply here. Instead of this discussion, I could be setting up my facilities. That is my priority. Diplomacy wastes too many valuable working hours.”

Sullivan suddenly saw something in the young Adar’s expression and realized with a flash of insight that Zan’nh wanted to resolve this standoff as much as he did. He was looking for a neat and acceptable end to the crisis.

Sullivan continued to smile, hoping the initial tension had begun to dissipate. “Please, Adar, let’s not make this into a conflict. How about this—Ildirans can set up as many ekti factories as you want, and I give you my word of honor that we’ll stay out of your way. Our efforts won’t hinder you at all.”

At the far end of the table, Kolker stroked his treeling and continued to report everything.

Sullivan pressed: “The Hansa needs the fuel as much as you do—in fact, it was another Ildiran, an Adar like yourself, who gave us the designs for your stardrive in the first place. Nobody had a problem with that. Surely you wouldn’t deny us the ability to fly our spacecraft?”

Zan’nh seemed as hard a negotiator as Sullivan. “If you were to remain here, on an Ildiran world that we have made safe for skymining, it would not be without a price. The Mage-Imperator would require a tax of some sort.”

Sullivan saw an opening for negotiation, the first move in the bargaining game, and he seized it. “Perhaps I could offer a small percentage of the ekti we produce.” Taking the initiative, he poured a glass of water for each of them, judging the other beverages to be questionable.

The Adar had still said very little, sitting rigidly upright; Sullivan wondered how much of it might be an act. In a conspiratorial tone, he said,

“Look, we haven’t been bothered by the hydrogues so far—but we may have only a limited time before that happens. We should all work hard to harvest as much ekti as we possibly can before it’s too late.”

“What sort of percentage do you offer?” Zan’nh asked. “I must take back something acceptable to my Mage-Imperator.”

Sullivan had never known Ildirans to be overly greedy, nor did they 214

seem to have experience at haggling, since they were all connected by an odd sort of telepathy. So he took a chance and initially suggested an insignificant fraction of the cloud harvester’s output, an exploratory gesture to open negotiations. To his surprise, Zan’nh accepted it immediately. Sullivan would definitely score points with the Hansa for this! In his heart, he knew that the Solar Navy commander had been more concerned with finding an honorable solution than making a profit.

“Very well. I’m glad that’s settled. We really should be friends through all this.” Sullivan reached out to shake the Adar’s hand again. “If we’re agreed, then we can all get to work. I’ll send a portion of our next cargo load directly over to your facilities.” Unconsciously, he wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead. “I’d like to celebrate our new spirit of cooperation. Would you be interested in—”

Hroa’x cut him off, turning to Zan’nh. “If our mission here is complete, Adar, must we waste further time? We should return to the warliners now and see to our sky harvester. I still have much to do before it is running at full capacity. Much to do.” The miner kithman turned his blunt-featured face to Sullivan. “These negotiations will become moot the moment the hydrogues return. Why waste another second?”

Zan’nh nodded. “And make no mistake, the hydrogues will return.”

585TASIA TAMBLYN

The hydrogue gas planet, dead now for thousands of years, was nothing more than a burned-out scar in space.

“No signs of life at all,” said Subcommander Ramirez. After deploying the Klikiss Torch at Ptoro, Tasia had managed to get her navigator and some of the other competent bridge officers promoted one grade. “Residual thermal readings, molecular and heavy-element by-products from

nuclear burning, but this obviously started out as a gas supergiant, not a natural star. Must have been Torched a long time ago.”

Chief Scientist Palawu’s analysis had identified twenty-one small, dead stars with anomalous signatures. As her survey ship approached the cold cinder, the sensors verified that this was clearly another remnant of an incinerated hydrogue world. Tasia felt a lingering anger tempered with smugness. “Glad we weren’t the only ones to give the drogue bastards a hotfoot.”

As soon as he learned of Palawu’s discovery, Admiral Stromo had called for an expedition to investigate these old hydrogue graveyards. This was the fourth such burned-out planet her survey team had visited.

As her Manta orbited the dim, lifeless world, Tasia’s crew took volumes of images. She imagined how this planet might have looked before the Torch, an immense ball of pale clouds, the sort of place where Roamers could have operated profitable skymines. Now, after millennia, the artificial sun had burned out all its raw fuel. Some of the exotic materials and su-permolecules left behind might have been interesting, but she doubted even eccentric Kotto Okiah would have had the nerve to poke into a place like that.

The EDF hoped that by performing postmortem analyses on these murdered planets they could learn more about the long-term effectiveness of the Torch. Tasia had the sneaking suspicion that General Lanyan simply wanted to gloat over places where the hydrogues had been resoundingly defeated.

In a few thousand years, Ptoro would look similar to this, burning out as all its fuel was exhausted. Oncier, too—if the drogues hadn’t already snuffed that one out, as Tasia had witnessed with her own eyes.

“Log it,” she said after two hours. “We’ve got the rest of this list to confirm.”

At their next stop, Tasia and her crew sat back in awe to see the system’s main star completely under siege. The gas giant itself was dark and cold, burned out long ago. Now the hydrogues were targeting the much larger central sun.

In a furious battle, ellipsoidal faeros fireballs swarmed upward, clashing against literally millions of warglobes that lunged in like piranhas. Bolts 216

of incredible energy lashed back and forth, while the hydrogues drove their diamond spheres through the fringes of the hot corona and skated over the outer layers of plasma, unleashing titanic weapons from above.

Tasia had seen a similar battle at the test site of Oncier, but that ignited gas giant had been only a small dwarf star—this was a full-size sun, a vastly larger battleground on which the hydrogues and faeros fought each other.

Giant loops of solar flares rose upward, spewing plasma flames that curled back around, falling into the roiling sun like blood spurting from a severed artery.

Warglobes pressed closer, swarming in space. The faeros defenders crashed into them, fireballs engulfing the diamond spheres so that both were obliterated. Volley after volley of hydrogue ships streamed in from outside the system, enough glinting reinforcements to blot out the star.

“Take your readings and let’s get the hell out of here,” Tasia said.

“Shizz, look at those blasts!”

A column of dense ionized gas rocketed up from the surface of the sun to engulf a flurry of warglobes, shattering the enemy vessels. Tasia wondered if the faeros themselves had tinkered with the mechanics of the star, altered its physics to use the flare as a weapon.

“What the hell are we doing in this war?” Sergeant Zizu said, his voice no more than an awed whisper.

More warglobes arrived, unleashing retaliatory strikes. Because a hydrogue gas planet in this system had been snuffed out by the Klikiss Torch long ago, Tasia wondered if the deep-core aliens bore a grudge. Were their memories long enough to harbor revenge for ten thousand years?

Of course they were.

Flares continued to shoot up like cannon blasts. Tasia slumped back in her command chair, once again feeling incredibly small in this enormous and ancient conflict.

“On the bright side,” she muttered, “with the faeros and the hydrogues kicking each other’s butts, they’re too busy to come after us.”

595KING PETER

Chairman Wenceslas has called another high-level Hansa meeting in secret,” OX reported to King Peter. “You asked me to inform you whenever I learn of such an appointment.”

“Thank you, OX. I think I’ll attend.”

Dressed in a Prussian-blue military outfit, his “serious business attire”

instead of the ceremonial robes he donned for public appearances, Peter arrived at the private conference room even before the Chairman and his cronies. When Basil entered with the pale and hairless Deputy Cain, he frowned to see the King sitting there, but did not otherwise acknowledge Peter’s presence.

General Lanyan arrived with a shadow of stubble on his cheeks that showed he was several hours past his scheduled shave, followed closely by Admiral Stromo, who carried a portable datascreen as well as hardcopy summary printouts. Deputy Cain sat next to the Chairman and they all waited in silence, flicking glances at Peter, who remained quiet, behaving himself.

Basil finally spoke. “Direct your attention to me, please. I called this meeting, not the King. General Lanyan, your summary of the Roamer problem?”

The military commander cleared his throat, collecting his thoughts.

“As you know, Mr. Chairman, for some time now our intel teams have had standing orders to gather any information on Roamer ship movements and possible hidden settlements. I’ve updated the analyses I compiled more than five years ago.” He looked down at his notes.