Hidden Empire (66 page)
Adar Kori’nh knew that such warnings would do no good. The aliens had always refused to communicate before. This time, though,
the deep-core enemy faced more than an unarmed Roamer skymine. The well-armed Ildiran Solar Navy stood against them.
“Get me back to the lead warliner,” Kori’nh called to the pilot. “I must guide our response.” The cutter pilot flew faster,
recklessly, but they closed the distance to the enormous Solar Navy flagship.
As the maniple subcommander repeatedly broadcast his stern threats, the ominous crystal globe continued to emerge from the
clouds, blue-lightning weapons building up to a giant discharge. Kori’nh opened a channel to the lead warliner. “Don’t waste
time, Qul Aro’nh. These aliens have already proven their aggressive intent on numerous occasions.” He drew a deep breath,
committing himself and the Solar Navy. “Open fire!”
As escorts continued to stream down to the floating city, intent on evacuating as many inhabitants as possible, a second warglobe
broke through the clouds, rising toward the mining facility. Deep below, the Adar saw a third phosphorescent patch glowing,
emerging. How many were there?
“As you command, Adar,” Qul Aro’nh said and drove the front ranks of warliners in. They launched a full spread of kinetic
missiles that impacted in flashes of fire against the diamond hull, leaving only slight discolorations. Then Aro’nh shot his
banks of high-energy cutting beams, spears of orange fire that scorched tracks along the crystalline hull. One warliner pushed
forward for a closer strike.
In response, blue lightning bolts crackled from the spikes on the two alien warglobes. With a jagged blast of pure energy,
the deep-core aliens completely vaporized the nearest warliner. The other battleships reeled.
A gasp of sick dismay went through all the Ildiran troops. Adar Kori’nh could not believe what he had just witnessed, the
utter ease with which the enemy had destroyed one of the most powerful vessels in the Ildiran Solar Navy! Qul Aro’nh shouted
for his remaining warliners to regroup.
Escort ships loaded with refugees began to rise from the Qronha 3 skymine, while other transports landed. The workers onboard
the mining city were panicking. Kori’nh could hear their cries for help across the communications channels, but he could not
evacuate them any faster. Already the maniple’s docking bays were filled to capacity.
Small private ships began to fly away, personal leisure craft and tiny supply vessels designed to make regular shuttle runs
back to the main Ildiran system. But those spacecraft would never be sufficient to remove all of the people in the crowded
splinter colony.
A third diamond warglobe finally emerged from the clouds, and now the triad of enormous spheres hovered high above Qronha
3’s storms, blistering with lightning. They opened fire on the cloud city. The first shot blasted a reactor dome and vaporized
one of the crowded dwelling modules, murdering hundreds. Flames spread quickly.
The Adar felt a sick pain in his heart, a wrench through the
thism
for all the people who had just died. “Get me aboard my flagship!”
“Almost there, Adar.”
Up in orbit, Qul Aro’nh had focused five of his warliners, closing in on the nearest warglobe. The individual captains launched
every weapon on their defensive boards: high-energy beams, kinetic projectiles, even powerful planet-splitters.
The alien globes crackled with blue lightning again, striking six of the unarmed refugee-laden escorts, shattering them into
molten debris. Then, with another shot, the aliens took out a second section of the ekti-processing facility. The giant industrial
city reeled in the sky, already mortally wounded.
When his cutter finally docked in the flagship warliner, Adar Kori’nh raced to the command nucleus. In his own battleship,
Qul Aro’nh continued to drive forward, still firing, but causing no discernible damage to the warglobes.
The pilots of his escort ships, still involved in desperate evacuation activities, begged to be recalled now that they had
seen the hostile aliens blow up the refugee ships. Kori’nh sharply countermanded them. “I will not cease this rescue mission.”
Twenty escorts, overcrowded with panicked Ildiran escapees, docked inside the warliners and disgorged their passengers into
holding areas. Hundreds of cloud miners had been saved so far, but the total was barely a third of the splinter colony’s population.
The Qronha 3 floating factory was now completely in flames, its habitation spheres broken, its industrial facilities, condensation
towers, and distillers smoking, bent, and tangled.
Kori’nh demanded an update from all the maniple’s subcommanders. Five more escorts had lifted off from the doomed ekti-processing
facility. More than fifty small private ships had already escaped above Qronha 3’s atmosphere and requested to be picked up
by the warliners.
Ignoring the furious resistance of the Ildiran Solar Navy, the three alien warglobes closed in on the smoking factory. Maliciously,
with a concerted blast of jagged blue lightning, they demolished the entire sky city, blasting it into a dispersing cloud
of debris that dropped like meteors down into the planet’s milky storm systems.
Everyone onboard was dead.
Kori’nh summoned all the surviving ships in his maniple. “Gather up all the refugees you can. Escorts, return to your warliners
immediately.” His voice caught in his throat. Never in his life had he read of such an ignominious defeat, not in the long
glorious history of the Ildiran Empire! This debacle would be recorded in the
Saga of Seven Suns
for all later generations. “We must retreat. We must fly to safety.”
“But Adar!” Qul Aro’nh said over the communications system. “The Solar Navy does not flee. The shame of it—”
“K’llar bekh!
We have just rescued as many survivors as possible from the complex and we are bringing them aboard our warliners. I will
not see them all murdered now because of our bravado or pride. Our first duty is to bring the civilians back to Ildira and
deliver our report to the Mage-Imperator.”
Without comment, Qul Aro’nh ordered six of the seven warliners in his foremost septa to return to the maniple’s main grouping.
But the old subcommander’s own battleship continued to drive forward.
Sitting in his command nucleus, the Adar saw from his sensor readings that the conservative old Qul had set the power of his
stardrive reactors high enough to trigger a cascade overload. The lone warliner plunged toward the three diamond warglobes
that still hovered over the smoldering wreckage of the mining facility.
Kori’nh spoke sharply. “Qul Aro’nh, what is your intention?”
“As you instructed during our training exercises, Adar, I am attempting to employ nontraditional tactics. Perhaps this maneuver
will eventually become a standard routine in desperate situations such as this.”
Then the old subcommander cut off communication entirely. He had made up his mind and seen his path. Kori’nh could only watch
helplessly as the warliner’s rear ports glowed cherry red. The reactors would go supercritical within a few seconds.
All the people aboard, the Ildiran crew, the soldiers, the engineers … Kori’nh sensed their brooding terror, their determination,
their grim acceptance as the battleship headed toward oblivion. The Adar stood inside his command nucleus, knowing he was
responsible for the Qul’s actions. He had disgraced the man, yanked away his solid reason for existence, pushed him to this
extreme solution.
If only it works..
.
Qul Aro’nh drove his battleship toward the first warglobe. As he approached, the ship launched all of its remaining kinetic
projectiles and planet-splitters, while continuing a relentless bombardment with high-energy weapons. Already, Kori’nh could
see damage being inflicted. The other two warglobes rose up, blue lightning intensifying.
But before the alien weapons could lance out, Aro’nh’s ship collided head-on with the warglobe. Simultaneously, the stardrive
reactors reached their overload point, and the impact created a brief, intense new sun above the Qronha 3 clouds.
Kori’nh felt the blow like a dagger to his heart. But after all the casualties the enemy aliens had inflicted, at least the
brave martyrs aboard that warliner had not been helpless. Qul Aro’nh had chosen their fates for them, and—if the Adar had
anything to say about it—their sacrifice would be memorialized forever in the
Saga of Seven Suns
.
Aboard the flagship, as the sensor screens readjusted from the blinding overload, Adar Kori’nh saw that the first alien warglobe
was now a blackened husk, plummeting downward in the clutches of the gas giant’s gravity. Mortally wounded.
The other two diamond-hulled spheres reeled as if stunned. They appeared cracked and damaged from the shock wave, white jets
of high-pressure atmosphere bursting out from breaches in the spherical hulls. But they seemed to be recovering quickly.
Kori’nh knew the rest of his maniple and the rescued miners were doomed if he did not move immediately.
He had to think of the people first. Opening a channel to the surviving Solar Navy ships, he ordered a swift and complete
withdrawal of the forty-seven defeated warliners.
Kori’nh was in shock. He had just watched the utter rout of his battlefleet—the first such humiliating defeat ever recorded
in their epic history. But beyond even this shameful debacle and the unconscionable loss of life, the Adar felt a deeper despair.
He knew this was likely just the beginning.
Now the enemy aliens had declared war on the Ildiran Empire too.
R
eclining in his chrysalis chair beneath the Prism Palace’s skysphere, the Mage-Imperator basked in the focused sunlight that
shone through the curved walls. Overhead, birds and colorful insects flitted inside the giant open terrarium, held captive
by discourager fields. Sprayed mists congealed into a cloud onto which a hologram of the leader’s benevolent features was
projected at the top of a column of light from his enormous throne. His face looked down like a deity upon the pilgrims and
petitioners who came to see and worship him.
As it should be.
Through the
thism
, the Mage-Imperator sensed the tangled web of major events across the Empire. Such widely scattered thoughts and feelings
were most distinct when funneled through his sons, the Designates of other Ildiran colonies, but he could also feel the glittering
lights of other important people across the Empire: his military commanders, researchers, architects, even occasional pairs
of lovers whose passion sparked a glow bright enough to be noticed in the noise of billions of Ildiran souls. As Mage-Imperator,
he could juggle those sensations in the background while he concentrated on his benevolent duties at court.
Only he understood the priorities, the unpleasant necessities. Everyone else could remain in the dark, as far as he was concerned.
The Ildiran race served him in whatever he chose to do. He was the center of the Empire, and all lifelines radiated from him.
As he brooded, a delegation of five scalies came forward, heads bowed and backs bent. They had angular faces and long snouts
and moved with a fluid rapidity that gave them a reptilian flicker. The scalies were an Ildiran kith that worked in the equatorial
zones, maintaining arrays of shimmering solarpower collectors under always-glaring skies. They built windmill power generators
within narrow canyons that channeled the gusty breezes. Some scalies also worked in mines and quarries, excavating treasures
from rugged cliff bands.
Sitting forward in his chrysalis chair, the Mage-Imperator acknowledged the delegation. Their leader, wearing an oiled leathery
jerkin, approached with reverence. He wheezed, uncomfortable with the humidity in every breath he drew, and kept his head
bowed low.
“My Mage-Imperator,” he said in a raspy voice, “we have brought you a gift, our greatest discovery in the cliff quarries.
Our kith presents this offering to you in praise of your wisdom and the paternal care that makes our Empire thrive.”
The corpulent leader sat up with interest as burly laborers opened the doors at the far end of the reception hall. Working
together, they began to drag an enormous, heavy stone. Strong as they were, the workers seemed to have difficulty with such
a massive object.
The Mage-Imperator wondered if the scalies might have found a great meteorite buried out in the sands, but when the laborers
rotated the giant boulder, he could see that the face had been sheared off to reveal a raw bowl of stone encrusted with beautiful
crystals, colored with watery bands of amethyst and aquamarine.
“The most massive geode we have ever uncovered, Liege,” said the scaly representative. “Taller than the largest soldier kithman,
a treasure beyond compare. We offer it to your glory.”
The nobles, bureaucrats, and court functionaries gasped and twittered. Even the Mage-Imperator smiled. “I have never seen
a natural object so wondrous.”
