A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [130]
“That is a splendid idea, Thor’h.” He surprised his son into a brief relieved smile. “My first instinct is to protect you and keep you here on Ildira, but I myself lived too sheltered a life. It did not adequately prepare me to take up the mantle of Mage-Imperator. You are going to become Prime Designate at a younger age than I did, yet your request shows that you are already learning. Yes, I agree—Hyrillka needs you.”
“Thank you, Father.” Thor’h seemed to be caught between grief at his uncle’s grim prognosis and delight to be going back to the planet he had called home for so many years.
Jora’h opened the door and shouted for bureaucrats, work supervisors, and representatives of the Solar Navy. “You and I need to plan this together, Thor’h. The rebuilding operations on Hyrillka must be a complete success, a grand foundation for your own eventual rule.”
Now Thor’h looked overwhelmed at what he had gotten himself into, but in the face of Jora’h‘s enthusiasm, his son could not back down. The Prime Designate brought a dozen kith representatives into his chamber, and they spent hours choosing the crews of Ildiran workers and engineers that would accompany Thor’h back to the Horizon Cluster.
66
DEL KELLUM
At home in the rings of Osquivel, Del Kellum smiled as he dropped flakes of dried food into the tank of graceful angelfish. Raven-haired Zhett bounded in without signaling her presence, so startling him that he spilled all of the crumbly bits into the open tank at once, much to the delight of the striped fish.
He brushed off his palm. “What is it, my sweet?” For the past two days, she’d been away delivering supplies and inspecting spacedocks and shipyard smelters. He carefully reseated the lid on the fish tank.
Then he noticed the urgent look in her dark eyes. “Dad, Nikko Chan Tylar just brought this warning from Speaker Peroni.” Zhett handed him the message as if it were an explosive. “The Eddies are on their way here.”
Kellum looked at the information with awe, then dismay, then fierce determination. “We’ll have to dismantle everything. Hide some of it, leave some of it, destroy the rest. Freedom comes first. Profits and convenience are secondary.”
They sounded the alarms and called an all-hands meeting. The best guess, according to the information forwarded by Tasia Tamblyn, was that they would have no more than three weeks.
Inside the windowed administrative facility, Kellum stood dressed in a many-pocketed jumpsuit embroidered with the usual clan designs. He and Zhett had discussed priorities and coordinated work teams. They had done the calculations and knew how hard they would have to work—and how soon everyone would need to be evacuated, one shipload at a time.
Zhett said, “Even if we can’t cover all signs of our mining, we can downplay it enough so that if they find anything, the Eddies will think this is a small-time operation. Maybe the drogues’ll keep them so preoccupied they won’t bother with a bit of litter in the rings.”
“Now, there’s something to hope for,” Kellum said, frowning. He looked at the graceful fish in his tank swimming about without a care in the universe.
Annoyed with her long hair drifting in the low gravity, Zhett used a band to tie it behind her head before she peered down at the spreadsheets again. Kellum didn’t know what he would ever do without his daughter. Whenever he saw Zhett’s face, the dusky beauty reminded him of her long-lost mother…or even feisty Shareen Pasternak, who should have been his second wife.
He finally made a hard decision. “We’ll shut down and evacuate all the cometary distillation work, but leave the components where they are high outside the system. The smelters and collection chambers are as large as asteroids themselves, but it’s dark up there and diffuse. Coming in from above, the Eddies’ll see the planet and the rings, but they’re not gonna go chasing random chunks