Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [174]
79 ADAR KORI'NH
The cohort of Ildiran warliners finally departed from the stark world of Dobro. Adar Kori'nh felt relieved to move on to the next military assignment. He could never escape a feeling of uneasiness when visiting this grim system, although he acted under the Mage-Imperator's orders. What the Dobro Designate continued to do on that planet seemed dark, horrible to him. Even humans did not deserve such treatment.
Through the all-seeing eye of the thism, Mage-Imperator Cyroc'h understood far more than the most well-trained Adar. A Mage-Imperator was more than any other Ildiran, the sum of their race, its pinnacle; his actions, thoughts, and decisions dictated the entire story of the Ildiran Empire. Kori'nh could not challenge the decision, but that did not make him condone the darker necessities. The Mage-Imperator knew what was best for all Ildirans, even if some people had to pay a terrible price.
It was not Adar Kori'nh's place to understand everything.
He muttered a quiet curse and sagged into the rounded seat of the lead warliner's command nucleus. Even though the Mage-Imperator knew best, even if the outcome served the Ildiran race in some mysterious way, Kori'nh did not believe these sinister Dobro experiments could ever be viewed as heroic deeds. They would never be included in the Saga of Seven Suns.
"Our course is set for the Hyrillka system, Adar," said the navigator, himself a septa commander who had been taken from his smaller grouping of ships to serve on the vanguard warliner. The navigator and all of the bridge crew looked similarly relieved to be departing from Dobro.
At Hyrillka, on the edge of the Horizon Cluster, they would perform one of the Solar Navy's more traditional duties. His full cohort of fabulous warships would engage in spectacular sky parades to demonstrate the performance skills they had learned. The jovial Hyrillka Designate loved such spectacles and enjoyed hosting feasts and celebrations to honor Ildiran accomplishments.
Recently, the Mage-Imperator had encouraged increasingly grand exhibitions, even commanding Adar Kori'nh himself to lead the next aerial parade to commemorate the leader's birth anniversary. After so many years of flawless service, the Adar had grown bored with these childish displays of boisterous bravado. He wanted to do something more significant, more substantial.
But after seeing the unpleasantness on Dobro again, he was glad to participate in an event that was far less emotionally taxing.
The cohort of warliners cut like hatchets through space, continuing in perfect formation toward the Horizon Cluster. When the stardrives had powered up to cruising speed, he excused himself. "I will be in my quarters, reviewing military strategy."
His crew knew their tasks, and he expected no problems. In fact, during his full military career, he had never expected problems. The Solar Navy was a magnificent fleet, the best ever created in the Spiral Arm...yet for many long Ildiran generations they'd had no real enemy to fight. He had never understood why the succession of Mage-Imperators, for thousands of years, had insisted on maintaining such a huge military force when they faced no outside threat.
But a Mage-Imperator knew many things, understood much about the galaxy and the living story of their race.
Kori'nh sat in his cabin and studied the Saga, a private copy of certain relevant portions he always kept aboard his flagship. Many times he had been tempted to employ a rememberer for the fleet, a dedicated historian to regale the soldiers with heroic tales between their duties. But Kori'nh suspected he was the only one with such a specific and obsessive interest in military history.
The Ildiran race was a unified organism, composed of billions of people connected through the gossamer threads of thism. Ildirans had no outside enemies, no internal strife, no major civil wars. Except for one tragic story, which Kori'nh reread, adjusting the blazer panels in his quarters to a high brilliance that more closely simulated Ildira's