A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [78]
The Hyrillka Designate squawked over the communications channel, “Adar Kori’nh, you must evacuate our entire population immediately! We have no shelter against this attack.”
“Designate, there aren’t enough ships, and there isn’t enough time. We have only four warliners left, and I cannot disengage them from the battle.”
The hydrogue sphere launched a sidelong volley that scraped one of the four warliners but caused only moderate damage. The battleship limped away to repair its systems, while the remaining three continued to hammer ineffectually at the enemy.
“But, Adar, you have to save them!” The Designate sounded incredulous, as if unable to believe the Solar Navy could be anything but invincible. Kori’nh thought Rusa’h had watched too many military pageants.
He realized what he must do. “I am sending a rescue shuttle down to your citadel, Designate. I will take you to safety, along with the Prime Designate and his son. That is my highest priority.”
“You can’t leave all my people to die,” the Designate wailed. “My performers, my advisers…my beautiful pleasure mates!”
“I cannot save them.” The Adar’s heart wrenched as he gave orders for his personal warliner to withdraw from the engagement. He snapped to one of his crewmen, “Dispatch a personnel transport, right now! Cram as many people aboard it as possible, but make sure you get the Designates.” The soldier raced off to the flight deck. “The rest of you—”
“Adar, look!” interrupted one of the tactical technicians, his voice cracking with strain.
Kori’nh glanced into the ruddy skies to see a second warglobe descending toward the inhabited surface. Its energy weapons began to crackle without mercy as it joined the onslaught of the first alien ship.
39
RLINDA KETT
The voyage to Rheindic Co was lonely and dull, even though Rlinda had a passenger. The tall, reticent black man was less of a companion than a void of silence.
As soon as they had lifted off from Crenna, Davlin Lotze was ready to bury himself in his work. “I assume Chairman Wenceslas provided dossiers and briefing materials?”
She shrugged her broad shoulders. “He loaded files into my computer before I left. Knock yourself out.” She waved him toward a workscreen and he immediately began scanning the information. “I haven’t checked to see if the files are passworded.”
Lotze regarded her with hard mahogany eyes. “Yes you have.”
Rlinda didn’t know whether to be offended or amused that he saw through her so easily. “Well, I do have a right to know what’s aboard my ship, Mr. Lotze—including information.”
The quiet spy smiled as he scanned the screen. “All the files are public domain anyway.”
“Are you just a bad conversationalist, or do you fall all the way into the ‘antisocial’ category?”
“The Crenna settlers liked me well enough.” Lotze looked up from his screen, pausing the playback of summaries and reports. “I have no objection to your presence, but this assignment requires my full attention right now.”
Lotze kept to himself for the next several hours, poring over the records and reports, memorizing the Colicoses’ Rheindic Co updates, as well as earlier work on Llaro, Pym, and Corribus. When he finally took a brief break to eat, Rlinda crossed her arms over her chest. “You suspect foul play in their disappearance?”
“At the moment, we aren’t even sure they disappeared. We know only that contact was cut off.”
“Hmmm, could be someone retaliating against them for discovering the Klikiss Torch? When you get right down to it, that was the start of this hydrogue mess. Plenty of people are pissed off.”
“And so are the hydrogues. We shall see what we can find once we arrive.”
As the golden tan planet grew larger in the viewscreen, Rlinda used the ship’s intercom to call Lotze from his cabin. There wasn’t room for the tall man to sit in the cockpit, but he watched the approach to Rheindic Co as if comparing these details with the archive records.
Without asking her permission, Lotze leaned over the control panels and activated the ship’s general scanners. “I know the approximate location of the