Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [224]
Patrick glanced from the young woman to her father, not hesitating for a moment. 'Of course it is. I… just don't know your ceremonies.'
That's all right, by damn. We make them up as we go along.'
Zhett chuckled. 'Right! You're the most hidebound Roamer traditionalist I've ever met, Dad.'
'Shhh. Don't give away my secrets. This young man's not part of the clan yet.'
They stood on a small private balcony of the Golgen skymine, rather than a large receiving deck or launching bay. Kellum might have forgiven Patrick for some of his transgressions, but the clan leader wasn't ready to make a complete show of acceptance just yet. The thin force-field barrier kept cold chemical breezes out, but Patrick still felt a rush of goose bumps tingle down his back as he touched Zhett.
'Thank you for accepting me among you, sir. And thank you for not making me walk the plank.'
'And you'd better not make me regret that decision, by damn.'
'I won't. I promise.' He couldn't take his eyes from Zhett, and he didn't think that his sense of wonder at finally being with her would ever wear off. 'I wish my grandmother could be here to see this. Your father and the old Battleaxe have a lot in common.'
Patrick could only imagine what Maureen Fitzpatrick's reaction would be when she learned that her blueblood grandson, with all his good breeding and family obligations, had chosen to marry a Roamer girl. His grandmother would be beside herself, but she had no say in the matter - which would probably bother the old woman more than anything else.
Kellum took the strip of fabric, lashed their wrists together, and cinched it into a knot. Patrick found it more comfortable to turn his hand palm-to-palm with Zhett's and intertwine his fingers with hers.
'Now you are bound together by the threads of your lives and the threads of your love. The knot is always there, no matter what others see.' He stepped back and propped his hands on his hips. He seemed to be expecting something.
'Now what am I supposed to do?' Patrick whispered.
Zhett leaned forward and kissed him long and deeply. When they finally ended their embrace, he said, 'Oh, I like that part.'
One hundred and thirty-eight
Sirix
Since first awakening from hibernation centuries ago, Sirix knew that the surviving black robots could trust no one. He had loathed the original Klikiss, he had known the Ildirans must eventually be destroyed, and he had learned to hate the newcomers - the humans.
He refused to believe his once-great was defeated.
Out of his fleet of stolen EDF warships, only twenty vessels remained, one of them a Juggernaut. A few independent groups of black robots had rejoined his ships, returning from various enclaves. But Sirix and his companions were still not safe. They had been hounded by the Klikiss, harried at battleground after battleground, driven onward.
His ever-shrinking core of loyal followers retreated from system to system. Over two-thirds of the Soldier compies had already been destroyed. Far more painful was the loss of thousands of unique black robots, powerful machines with long memories. All those comrades…
Sirix had planned to dominate the Spiral Arm by now, reacquire all of the Klikiss worlds, and annihilate the humans. Instead, on planet after planet, the returned Klikiss seemed invincible, their numbers inexhaustible. Though the robots had had EDF weapons and a strategic advantage, the Klikiss overwhelmed them repeatedly, destroying more of their battleships, and pursuing them with swarmships.
He would go to ground, for now. The ragtag vessels returned to what Sirix considered his place of origin, at least during this round of existence. The twenty warships arrived in the Hyrillka system and closed in on the far-flung ice moon where the first group of robots had been frozen for thousands of years. In their long-standing bargain - and deception - with the Ildirans, the robots had waited here, hidden in hibernation, until a Mage-Imperator had directed his workers to go to the Hyrillka ice moon and 'accidentally' reawaken them,