Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [0]
The Saga of Seven Suns Book Six
Kevin J Anderson
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Acknowledgements
After six books in the Saga, I come to rely more and more on the advice and expertise of my colleagues. As always, my special thanks go to my readers and editors, Rebecca Moesta, Jaime Levine, Louis Moesta, Diane Jones, Catherine Sidor, Libby Vernon, and Kate Lyall-Grant; my agents John Silbersack, Robert Gottlieb, and Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group, and my cover artists Stephen Youll and Chris Moore.
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To TIM JONES
Who has taken me on countless real-life adventures to keep my imagination stoked for creating fictional ones.
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The Story So Far
Eight years of war against the alien hydrogues destroyed planets and suns and wiped out entire populations, both on human-settled worlds and on splinter colonies from the Ildiran Empire.
Instead of uniting the factions of humanity against a common enemy, however, the stresses of war created internal struggles. Hopelessly outmatched against the hydrogues, the Terran Hanseatic League (Hansa) turned against an enemy they knew they could defeat, the scattered Roamer clans, declaring them outlaws for refusing to supply ekti, the stardrive fuel. The Roamers had good reason to break off commerce with Earth after discovering that the Earth Defence Forces (EDF) had destroyed a Roamer cargo ship flown by Raven Kamarov. Nevertheless, the EDF hunted down and destroyed Roamer settlements, even the centre of government itself, Rendezvous. The EDF detained many prisoners of war from this conflict at the colony on Llaro, a planet abandoned by the long-vanished race of the Klikiss.
While the scattered clans tried to forge a new government, Roamers found a group of black Klikiss robots frozen on Jonah 12, where Cesca Peroni, the Speaker for the clans, had gone into hiding. Many enclaves of these robots had been awakened around the Spiral Arm, and the machines went on a rampage, destroying the Jonah 12 facility. Cesca was rescued by the young pilot Nikko Chan Tylar, but the robots shot their ship down, and Cesca was critically wounded in the crash.
The Klikiss robots, led by Sirix, had been mysterious fixtures for years, claiming not to remember their origin. All the while, they plotted to eradicate humanity, just as they claimed to have exterminated the original Klikiss race. After turning against archaeologists Margaret and Louis Colicos in the ruins on Rheindic Co, the robots killed Louis, but Margaret escaped, vanishing through a reactivated Klikiss transportal. Sirix also kidnapped the Friendly compy DD and tried to convert him to the robots' cause. Explaining that humans were evil for enslaving their compies, Sirix 'freed' DD from his programming restrictions. Instead of being grateful, DD used his newfound freedom to escape. He vanished through another Klikiss transportal, going in search of lost Margaret. Sirix and his robots, meanwhile, continued their sneak attacks on human colonies, including an old Klikiss world called Corribus.
The only survivors on Corribus were the girl Orli Covitz and the hermit Hud Steinman, rescued by the trader Branson 'BeBob' Roberts and eventually delivered to a new home on Llaro. After bringing them back, however, BeBob was arrested by EDF commander General Lanyan, on old charges of desertion. Despite the best efforts of his ex-wife Rlinda Kett, BeBob was sentenced to be executed. Rlinda and former Hansa spy Davlin Lotze saved him. During the escape, BeBob's ship was destroyed, and Davlin faked his own death so that he could quietly retire. Rlinda and BeBob fled in her ship only to be captured by the Tamblyn brothers, Roamer water miners on the ice moon of Plumas.
Jess Tamblyn had left Plumas to continue spreading and reawakening the wentals, watery elemental beings that had saved his life by charging his body with energy. Although this had endowed Jess with incredible powers, he could no longer touch another human being. Long ago, his mother Karla Tamblyn had fallen into an icy crevasse on Plumas, and her body had never