Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [0]
The Saga of Seven Suns Book 05
Kevin J Anderson
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BOOKS BY KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Saga of Seven Suns
Available from Warner Aspect
Hidden Empire
A Forest of Stars
Horizon Storms
Scattered Suns
Of Fire and Night
Book 6 coming in July 2007
Available from Wildstorm/DC Comics
Veiled Alliances (graphic novel)
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TO DEB RAY,
Who was a dear friend long before she became such a devoted fan
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As the Saga grows, so does the list of people I rely upon. For help, advice, test reading, and hard work, I thank Louis Moesta, Diane Jones, Catherine Sidor, and Geoffrey Girard. The official editorial team of Jaime Levine, Devi Pillai, Ben Ball, and Melissa Weatherill did masterful work, as always. Stephen Youll and Chris Moore created fabulous covers for the U.S. and UK editions. My agents John Silbersack, Robert Gottlieb, and Kim Whalen at Trident Media Group make sure the series keeps getting the attention any author hopes for. And, as always, my wife Rebecca Moesta contributes more to my writing, and my sanity, than even she realizes.
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THE STORY SO FAR
The ongoing titanic war between the alien hydrogues and the faeros had already extinguished suns and destroyed planets. Determined not to be trampled on the galactic battlefield, the various groups of humans developed new weapons and forged powerful alliances.
The Hansa, led by Chairman Basil Wenceslas, ordered the Earth Defense Forces (EDF) to employ more Klikiss Torches, the superweapon with which they had unwittingly triggered the hydrogue war eight years earlier. The EDF also built armored "rammer" ships for suicide missions, crewing each rammer with expendable Soldier compies and a token human commander (one of whom was the Roamer recruit Tasia Tamblyn).
On the homefront, repeated failures drove Chairman Basil Wenceslas to make impulsive, often damaging decisions. King Peter and Queen Estarra rebelled against Basil's authority, which increased the animosity between the Chairman and the royal couple. When Basil ordered the Queen to terminate her new pregnancy because the unexpected baby did not fit with his plans, she and Peter leaked news of her condition to the media, through the secret assistance of Deputy Eldred Cain. With such an outpouring of public joy, Basil could not force the Queen to have an abortion, but punished her indiscretion by slaughtering Estarra's beloved pet dolphins.
The spoiled and uncooperative Prince Daniel--Basil's choice to be the next King--escaped from the WhisperPalace. After quite a scandal, the Prince was recaptured and forced to make a public apology. To keep Daniel from causing further trouble, Basil put him into a drug-induced coma, which unfortunately left the Chairman without a replacement for King Peter.
With the Hansa's war against the hydrogues going badly, Chairman Wenceslas turned his military forces against the Roamer clans, using the space gypsies as scapegoats. One major assault destroyed the Roamer government center of Rendezvous, scattering the clans. EDF ships hunted down hidden Roamer bases and sent prisoners off to the abandoned Klikiss planet Llaro.
Speaker Cesca Peroni hid out on the frozen mining base of Jonah 12, where miners uncovered and inadvertently reactivated a nest of hibernating Klikiss robots buried beneath the ice. The robots went on a rampage and destroyed the base. After Cesca succeeded in obliterating the scheming robots, she and the young pilot Nikko Chan Tylar crashed their ship while trying to escape.
Meanwhile Cesca's love, Jess Tamblyn--fundamentally changed by watery elemental creatures called wentals that inhabited his body--guided his volunteers to spread wental water across new planets. Along with the verdani (the worldforest on Theroc), the wentals were age-old enemies of the hydrogues, who had nearly exterminated them in an ancient war. By restoring the wentals, Jess created another powerful ally in the fight against the deep-core aliens.
Jess went to the water mines on Plumas where his uncles