Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [4]
Prime Designate Jora’h was told that his beloved Nira had been killed in a fire; the Mage-Imperator kept the Dobro breeding scheme secret from him, along with the fact that Nira was alive and well, being used as a test subject. After bearing OSIRA’H, Jora’h‘s own daughter, Nira gave birth to several more half-breed children. She had no choice but to perform the slave labor imposed on her and other human captives taken generations ago from a lost colony ship, the Burton. To ensure that no one from the Hansa discovered the breeding camp, the Dobro Designate ordered the destruction of the derelict Burton. Adar Kori’nh reluctantly followed his orders, but was disturbed to get rid of such a historic relic. The breeding program had to remain secret.
On Nira’s home planet of Theroc, Reynald searched for a suitable wife, accompanied by his younger sister ESTARRA, since he would soon replace his parents as the leader of his people. Their grandparents urged them both to choose a good match, since Reynald and Estarra had plenty of responsibility on their shoulders.
Cut off from the traditional business of skymining, the Roamers developed new schemes for obtaining fuel—from breaking down cometary ice to flying huge nebula sails. Eccentric engineer KOTTO OKIAH established a risky metals-processing colony on the extremely hot planet of Isperos. At the shipyards in the rings of Osquivel, Del Kellum showed Jess all he had done; his daughter ZHETT was clearly interested in Jess, but he was still in love with Cesca.
Jess’s sister Tasia was sent with a group of battleships to the rebellious Hansa colony of Yreka, where settlers were hoarding ekti. The EDF cracked down hard, first isolating and then raiding Yreka, confiscating all stardrive fuel for military uses; Tasia was uneasy that the EDF chose to turn their might against their own struggling colonies, instead of the real hydrogue enemy.
Chairman Wenceslas, who had been hoping that Margaret and Louis Colicos might unearth another weapon as useful as the Klikiss Torch, discovered that the archaeologists had vanished without a trace. Although their scholar son, ANTON COLICOS, had sent repeated inquiries about his missing parents, his letters vanished into the Hansa bureaucracy. Before Anton could learn anything, he received a surprise invitation from an Ildiran historian, REMEMBERER VAO’SH, to study the Saga of Seven Suns on Ildira. He eagerly accepted.
Chairman Wenceslas sent the merchant woman Rlinda Kett to Crenna to pick up an undercover spy, DAVLIN LOTZE, and take him to Rheindic Co in order to discover what had happened to the Colicos team. While on Crenna, Rlinda also met with her favorite ex-husband, BRANSON “BEBOB” ROBERTS, who had been drafted to fly EDF recon missions against the hydrogues but chose to go AWOL instead. Leaving BeBob behind, Rlinda took Davlin to Rheindic Co, where they found the bodies of Louis Colicos and the green priest, but no sign at all of Margaret or their compy DD.
Hapless kidnapped DD watched the evil Klikiss robots perform horrific tests on captured compies to “free” them from the programming that forced them to obey humans. DD also discovered that thousands of Klikiss robots, buried in a sort of hibernation, were being reawakened as part of their insidious schemes. The robots took little DD to the bizarre high-pressure cities of the hydrogues on a gas giant. There, DD learned that the Klikiss robots were forming a deadly alliance with the hydrogues against humans, but the little compy was helpless to stop their plans.
On Earth, King Peter and Basil Wenceslas were surprised when a Klikiss robot, JORAX, unexpectedly volunteered to let himself be dismantled for science. Jorax claimed that the Klikiss robots wanted to assist humans in the hydrogue war, and that the robotic technology could be used to create highly proficient Soldier compies. Peter was suspicious of the offer, but Basil saw too many possible benefits to turn