A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [247]
Kori’nh gripped the command rail and looked around him. He sensed a grim determination in the crew. They had felt beaten, but now they saw a chance to make an effective retaliation, at last.
He’d given strict orders to a single septa of streamer scouts: The seven small ships were to remain away from the fray, keeping themselves safe so they could document this decisive battle. Afterward, they would fly immediately to Ildira and make their report, to describe to the new Mage-Imperator what the Solar Navy had accomplished here.
Kori’nh made one last important, defiant broadcast to the skeleton crews on each warliner. “Here and now, we forever earn a place in our Saga. Can any Ildiran ask for a more noble end?”
Behind him, the stardrive engines roared with strain as the reactors built toward supernova power. Already, the command nucleus felt furiously hot.
Warglobe after warglobe hurtled toward them. He muttered, “Let the enemy witness their own folly.”
On the target screen he watched as the first great warliner, its aft engine cones white-hot and unable to dispel the furious exhaust, slammed into the foremost warglobe like a hammer into an anvil. The Ildiran and hydrogue battleships both erupted in a splash of intolerable fire so intense that it momentarily burned out the flagship’s forward sensors. Like a doorway to the higher plane of the Lightsource. Everyone could see it.
Above and to starboard, another nova explosion wiped out a second warglobe. The aliens hadn’t yet comprehended Kori’nh’s devastating final intent. “We have taken them by surprise, for a change.”
His warliner drove forward, and Kori’nh could not blink, staring fixedly as clouds whipped past the bow. His own chosen warglobe target reared up on them, vast and geometrically perfect. The Adar saw the translucent hull and the complex geometrical city contained within the supposedly impenetrable walls.
Bore’nh looked at him. “Only a few seconds now, Adar.”
Kori’nh watched the alien ship growing larger, approaching faster. Electrical bolts leaped from one pyramidal protrusion to another, but his own vessel was traveling much too fast to be thrown off course now. Their engines had already reached the peak of cascade overload.
Nothing would stop them.
In the final instant, he allowed himself a smile, washing away all the doubts and disappointments of his military career. This was perfect.
The warliner struck the immense globe just as the engines could no longer contain the buildup. Kori’nh kept his eyes open to the last, as all the universe was swallowed in a burst of blinding white light.
127
SAREIN
Standing beside Basil Wenceslas at the observation stand for the much-anticipated honeymoon parade, Sarein felt the exhilaration in the crowds all around her—except from Basil. The Chairman seemed more distracted than usual, his gaze distant, his responses snappish.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him in a low voice, maintaining her smile for any observers. Trumpets played a fanfare based on the recognizable melody of the marriage symphony that had been composed for Peter and Estarra’s wedding. The happy tumult of the crowd was a constant background roar.
The Chairman looked at her, his suave face clenched in a barely controlled frown, as if he were bothered by her presence next to him. Sarein briefly saw him as a stranger. Finally, he said, “Some problems should never arise in the first place. We’re all supposed to be on the same team with the same goal, yet half of our failures come from weaknesses in our own camp.” He turned back toward the RoyalCanal. “That is inexcusable.”
Observation dirigibles carried VIP observers over the WhisperPalace, offering a prime view of the slow-moving canal that wound for miles around the Palace District. Program announcers proclaimed that