Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [118]
The Adar had still said very little, sitting rigidly upright; Sullivan wondered how much of it might be an act. In a conspiratorial tone, he said, “Look, we haven’t been bothered by the hydrogues so far—but we may have only a limited time before that happens. We should all work hard to harvest as much ekti as we possibly can before it’s too late.”
“What sort of percentage do you offer?” Zan’nh asked. “I must take back something acceptable to my Mage-Imperator.”
Sullivan had never known Ildirans to be overly greedy, nor did they seem to have experience at haggling, since they were all connected by an odd sort of telepathy. So he took a chance and initially suggested an insignificant fraction of the cloud harvester’s output, an exploratory gesture to open negotiations. To his surprise, Zan’nh accepted it immediately. Sullivan would definitely score points with the Hansa for this! In his heart, he knew that the Solar Navy commander had been more concerned with finding an honorable solution than making a profit.
“Very well. I’m glad that’s settled. We really should be friends through all this.” Sullivan reached out to shake the Adar’s hand again. “If we’re agreed, then we can all get to work. I’ll send a portion of our next cargo load directly over to your facilities.” Unconsciously, he wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead. “I’d like to celebrate our new spirit of cooperation. Would you be interested in—”
Hroa’x cut him off, turning to Zan’nh. “If our mission here is complete, Adar, must we waste further time? We should return to the warliners now and see to our sky harvester. I still have much to do before it is running at full capacity. Much to do.” The miner kithman turned his blunt-featured face to Sullivan. “These negotiations will become moot the moment the hydrogues return. Why waste another second?”
Zan’nh nodded. “And make no mistake, the hydrogues will return.”
Chapter 58—TASIA TAMBLYN
The hydrogue gas planet, dead now for thousands of years, was nothing more than a burned-out scar in space. “No signs of life at all,” said Subcommander Ramirez. After deploying the Klikiss Torch at Ptoro, Tasia had managed to get her navigator and some of the other competent bridge officers promoted one grade. “Residual thermal readings, molecular and heavy-element by-products from nuclear burning, but this obviously started out as a gas supergiant, not a natural star. Must have been Torched a long time ago.”
Chief Scientist Palawu’s analysis had identified twenty-one small, dead stars with anomalous signatures. As her survey ship approached the cold cinder, the sensors verified that this was clearly another remnant of an incinerated hydrogue world. Tasia felt a lingering anger tempered with smugness. “Glad we weren’t the only ones to give the drogue bastards a hotfoot.”
As soon as he learned of Palawu’s discovery, Admiral Stromo had called for an expedition to investigate these old hydrogue graveyards. This was the fourth such burned-out planet her survey team had visited.
As her Manta orbited the dim, lifeless world, Tasia’s crew took volumes of images. She imagined how this planet might have looked before the Torch, an immense ball of pale clouds, the sort of place where Roamers could have operated profitable skymines. Now, after millennia, the artificial sun had burned out all its raw fuel. Some of the exotic materials and supermolecules left behind might have been interesting, but she doubted even eccentric Kotto Okiah would have had the nerve to poke into a place like that.
The EDF hoped that by performing postmortem analyses on these murdered planets they could learn more about the long-term effectiveness of the Torch. Tasia had the sneaking suspicion that General Lanyan simply wanted to gloat over places where the hydrogues had been resoundingly defeated.
In a few thousand years, Ptoro would look similar to this, burning out as all its fuel was exhausted. Oncier, too—if the drogues hadn’t already snuffed that one out, as Tasia had witnessed with her own eyes.
“Log