Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [7]
Back at the space battlefield at Osquivel, Roamers inspected the EDF wrecks to see what they could salvage. Zhett found a drifting lifetube that contained a weak Patrick Fitzpatrick. Although she nursed him to health, she could never let him return to his former life, because he knew too many Roamer secrets.
Destined to be the next Queen, Estarra arrived on Earth. When she finally met Peter, she felt a connection with him, but Basil kept them carefully apart. As the wedding preparations proceeded swiftly after the EDF defeat at Osquivel, she had little chance to get to know the man who would become her husband, but her sister Sarein arranged for them to have time together. During the spectacular wedding, Peter pointedly snubbed the Chairman, making Basil very angry. On their wedding night, the King and Queen felt they could be much stronger together, and perhaps even learn to fall in love with each other…
Prime Designate Jora’h sent resentful Thor’h back to Hyrillka to supervise the reconstruction activities after the hydrogue attack. Jora’h followed his suspicions, eventually discovering that Nira was indeed alive and held hostage on Dobro—and that her daughter by him, Osira’h, was being trained as a new Ildiran weapon. Feeling betrayed, Jora’h confronted his father and the Dobro Designate, neither of whom denied the accusations, insisting only that Jora’h must accept the truth for the good of the Empire. For days, Jora’h tried to commandeer a ship to Dobro so that he could see Nira again. When the ailing Mage-Imperator realized that the Prime Designate would never understand, he took his only course of action: A Mage-Imperator knows everything in the Ildiran racial mind through his connection with the telepathic force of thism. Jora’h would know his place once he became the next godlike leader. Therefore the Mage-Imperator poisoned himself, leaving his son no choice but to do his duty.
The death of the Mage-Imperator severed the telepathic bond holding the Ildiran race together, sending a mental shockwave across the galaxy. Jora’h collapsed, then dragged himself to his father’s deathbed. All around the Empire, Ildiran men cut off their hair and nearly went insane.
On patrol with the Solar Navy, Adar Kori’nh had felt helpless and resentful, his hands tied by clear orders that he must never engage the hydrogues. After the shocking death of the Mage-Imperator, though, he realized that, for once, he could act entirely on his own, without the leader observing his every action. He called forty-nine of his battleships and went to Qronha 3, the site of the first major Ildiran defeat by the hydrogues. Kori’nh remembered how one of his officers had destroyed an enemy warglobe by crashing his ship headlong into it. Now, when the hydrogues rose up to meet them, Kori’nh gave his orders—and all forty-nine of his battleships slammed into enemy vessels, reaping a great but costly victory, and earning himself a place forever in the Saga of Seven Suns.
Prowling hydrogues encountered Jess Tamblyn on his journey to disperse the wentals, ancient enemies of the deep-core aliens. The water entities told Jess that he had to survive. On their rash instructions, he drank a vial of the energized wentals just as the hydrogues destroyed his ship over a cloudy and uncharted planet. Jess later woke up, floating in an alien sea—charged with superhuman powers, but marooned and completely cut off from everything he knew, including his beloved Cesca…
The hydrogues next attacked