Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [46]
When Daro'h stepped out, however, the Mage-Imperator felt a sudden jolt in his heart, a twisting in his abdomen. The brooding pain he had felt in the intensified. His son actually flinched from the bright light of the six suns. The skin of his face was red and blistered, burned, his hands were as raw as if they'd been boiled.
'Daro'h! What happened?'
The young man seemed unsteady as he walked forward. His words gushed out. 'Father! Liege. The fire is coming. The faeros! Udru'h is dead!'
'Designate Udru'h is dead? How? I sensed nothing!' How could Jora'h not have felt the death of his brother?
'Before he died, the faeros separated Udru'h from the . Cut off and… consumed him. It was Rusa'h, Liege. He is alive - and afire.'
Crisply, so that his tone penetrated Daro'h's panic, Jora'h said, 'Explain yourself, Prime Designate.' The bureaucratic kithmen, guards, and waiting females looked to the Mage-Imperator in confusion, as if he could dispel their anxiety and provide sensible answers.
When Daro'h drew a deep breath, a twinge of pain crossed his seared face. He explained how the faeros had come to Dobro, fireballs looming over the burned village. 'Rusa'h is with the faeros. He said he would burn more, that he would burn you if you tried to stop him.'
'And why did he spare you?'
'Because I am a son of the Mage-Imperator. My connection to you is strong, but I believe he could have broken it, ignited it, if he wished to. I think he intended for me to warn you, so that you could be afraid.'
Jora'h understood all too well. With the Solar Navy already devastated and the lldiran people weakened, what chance did they have of standing against fiery entities as powerful as the hydrogues? However, the Mage-Imperator had not given in to the hydrogues, and the Empire had indeed survived.
'Daro'h, I need your strength. I need my Prime Designate.'
Through the , Jora'h sensed his son searching deep within himself. Now that he did not feel entirely alone, the young man found an inner courage that had not been burned by fear. 'But how can we stop him?'
'By being Ildirans. Standing together, our race is stronger than any outside threat.'Jora'h clasped Daro'h's forearm. 'You and I will reinforce the as a Mage-Imperator and his Prime Designate should do. Do we know where Rusa'h will go next?'
'He said he would forge bonds wherever he needed them.'
Twenty-six
Faeros Incarnate Rusa'h
Crenna's dead star was the site of a faeros defeat in a battle that had extinguished a sun. Though countless hydrogues had perished, still the fiery entities had been beaten. The crushing blow had rocked the faeros.
That was before Rusa'h had joined them. As an avatar of the flaming elemental beings, he retained all of his human memories, passions, and ideas. Rusa'h had showed them a different way to light. By sacrifice, by throwing overwhelming numbers against the hydrogues all at the same place, the faeros had incinerated the enemy, though at great cost to themselves. Their numbers had been decimated.
But perhaps he could help them, as well as achieve his own aims.
Rusa'h gazed through a curtain of flames as his fireball circled the dense grey corpse of Crenna's sun. The nuclear fires at its core had been stilled, providing no more energy to hold the star's layers against its own gravity. Once-habitable planets in the system were now cold and black, their very atmospheres frozen solid. Thermal energy still simmered from the layers of heavy gases, but it was not enough. At this distance, his faeros allies should have been frolicking in the magnetic arcs of solar flares, immersed in the boiling energy sea of the corona. Like flickering flames, they embodied chaos and entropy. The faeros consumed formal structures and rigid organization. They did as they liked.
Not any longer. Not here. They were nearly extinct. Chaos itself was out of balance. The very concept seemed a contradiction.
Though his body was composed of plasma and lava rather than flesh and bone, Rusa'h felt a memory of cold. He guided the fireball ship around