Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [70]
It was breathtaking.
Then the heart of the worldforest spoke to her more clearly, more terribly. She felt a distant, unformed fear of an ancient enemy. Fire.
Destruction.
The death of worlds.
Groves of treelings withered, whole civilizations died, and only a tiny vestige of a galaxy-spanning worldforest had survived here, isolated on Theroc.
Nira couldn't cry out, could not decide whether these terrible images and fears were history, or prophecy. Then she saw giant spherical ships, like spiked globes made of ice, a hidden empire engaged in a titanic war. They were coming.
Shaken by the vision, but giddy with her new connection to the worldtrees, Nira finally emerged from the smothering, nurturing hold of the sentient forest. Her heart hammered, and the prophecy weighed heavy in her mind and heart. This wasn't what she had expected at all.
Nira walked along as if in a daze, stepping through the bog without even looking at the ground. The feline reptiles moved away from her as if they could sense that she now wore the forest's protection. As the sunlight splashed her arms and thighs, Nira noticed without surprise that her flesh had turned a pale green. Now her epidermis was impregnated with symbiotic algae, a verdant tone that would supplement her body's strength through photosynthesis. As she aged, the green would darken.
Nira touched her close-cropped hair, and the stubbly fuzz fell out like grains of pollen. Even her eyebrows and eyelashes dropped away.
In her mind now, she could hear the trees like constant companions, an organic database and a half-sleeping mind all around her. It would always be there for her. She would never experience utter silence and aloneness again. The knowledge felt glorious, the infinite thoughts and memories...along with the terrible fear of an impending disaster. How was she to deal with it all?
With rapid footsteps and a determined expression on her face, Nira raced back to the settlement where she could at last join the other green priests as a full member of their order. And she had to warn them of the danger the worldforest had shown her.
When Nira breathlessly described her awesome vision to Yarrod, though, the green priests around him simply nodded. Their faces showed bleak foreboding.
"We already know," Yarrod said.
33 GENERAL KURT LANYAN
Because he was the commander of the Earth Defense Forces, General Kurt Lanyan could use the full facilities of the war simulations room any time he wished. Filled with computers, holographic projectors, interactive systems, and detailed navigational charts, the sealed chamber was the most sophisticated and expensive room on the entire Mars EDF base for Grid 1.
In here, with all the resources and intelligence data compiled over nearly two centuries of interaction with the Ildiran Empire, Lanyan could get his answers...or at least make reasonable guesses. Many questions remained about the culture, habits, reactions, and secrets of the alien civilization, and the General wanted to be prepared for any possibility.
During early Terran expansion into the solar system, before humans had access to the Ildiran stardrive, the EDF had taken possession of Mars as its sole property. The lifeless red planet had become a training base and military headquarters, operated as an outpost and staging area. The rugged Martian landscape provided any number of obstacle courses and survival scenarios. The thin atmosphere allowed Remoras to simulate aerial maneuvers with an easy switch over to space combat in the vacuum above. Lanyan loved it here.
After giving orders that he was not to be disturbed, the General had sealed himself into the war simulations room. He called up the complex virtual systems he had developed from years of testing, toying with possibilities, modifying