Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [104]
The seven ships came in low, flying in perfect formation as if re-enacting a skyparade. But their only audience consisted of ghosts and blackened ruins.
The Wollamor settlement was devastated, both the original Klikiss city and the new human town. The hivelike buildings had been levelled. Hillsides, once riddled with Klikiss tunnels, had collapsed. Several destroyed ships were strewn across what had been the colony's landing field. Analysis confirmed that the wreckage had once been EDF heavy cruisers.
Zan'nh was distressed by the total massacre he saw. Had the robots struck here, as they had at Maratha Prime and Secda? Or had the returning Klikiss done this? No one had an answer for him as his warliners passed overhead, circled, and came back. 'Send ground teams down. We must understand what occurred here.'
Ildiran investigators spent the rest of the day combing over the wreckage before returning with their report. They found numerous dead Klikiss bodies, a large pile of burned human bones, destroyed black robots, and EDF Soldier compies.
Adar Zan'nh could not postulate a reasonable scenario for what had happened. But as he looked at the grisly images, his condescending attitude and smug dismissal washed away. Not even the most naive colonists deserved to have such a fate befall them. He felt genuine sympathy, anger, and urgency. He had not expected this horrific and appalling genocide.
This was much too terrible to ignore.
'Recall all teams and prepare for immediate departure. We must get to the other known human settlements. And we must hurry.'
Sixty-one
Anton Colicos
The Hall of Rememberers was closed for five days during I the tumultuous change. I Anton and Vao'sh watched as burly workers used curved bars to pry loose the diamondfilm sheets on which the Saga of- Seven Suns had been etched. The workers strained, and a brittle plate split at a jagged angle. When the sheets were originally mounted in the Hall of Rememberers, they were designed to be indestructible. No one dreamed they would ever be removed or changed, that the Saga would be rewritten. The workers strained to pry off another section.
Diamondfilm sheets of shattered history fell to the floor. Though the workers did not read the epic, all Ildirans listened to rememberer performances. Many of them knew portions of the Saga by heart. They had been raised, as had their parents and their parents before them, to believe that the epic was infallible. They were aghast at the idea that anything could be amiss with the record.
Because of his academic experience back on Earth, Anton knew how much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth could occur when fundamental revisions were imposed upon an entire discipline. You mean, the Earth goes around the Sun, not vice versa} In human history, such controversy had led to the burning of more than one heretic at the stake - and humans were accustomed to debate and revisions. Ildirans, especially rememberer kithmen, did not cope well with change.
Some rememberers turned away from the process. Chief Scribe Ko'sh held onto a wall for support, all the colour had drained from his facial lobes, leaving them a whitish-grey. Vao'sh looked equally stricken, but he nodded to the workers as if giving them permission to proceed. 'It is the Mage-Imperator's will.'
'But how could the Mage-Imperator do this?' Ko'sh said.
Anton tried to sound optimistic. 'We will have the new sheets etched and mounted very soon. Craftsmen are working on them as we speak.'
Ko'sh, who had been in charge of perfecting each line before any new section was added, breathed heavily, as if hyperventilating. 'We will have to learn the Saga all over again, not just the young rememberers or the new graduates, but all of us, Vao'sh! We must discard much of what we spent our lives learning. This is worse than the Lost Times.'
'Not discard, but correct. We are rectifying an error that has been perpetuated for far too long.'
Anton had seen rememberer children brought into this great Hall to