Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [6]
He stepped onto the bridge and scanned the crew. The strange young female green priest, Clydia, sat at her station, touching her treeling and daydreaming, as usual. The hairless woman wore only shorts and a loose shirt, no shoes, no rank insignia (other than the numerous tattoos that adorned her emerald skin). Although he viewed green priests as basically savages, he was glad to have use of Clydia's instant communications. Many other battleships were crippled by long transmission times.
The bridge crew consisted of a tall Egyptian weapons officer, Anwar Zizu, who, judging both by appearance and actions, might have been carved from oak; a communications officer whom Stromo couldn't remember having met before; two scan operators; and a pair of Soldier compies monitoring routine stations. When no one noticed his arrival, Stromo loudly cleared his throat. A young ensign who had taken over the nav console--Terene Mae, if he remembered her name right--snapped to attention. "Admiral on deck!"
Commander Elly Ramirez turned in her chair. "We're on final approach to the Qronha system, sir."
"This is just a routine pickup and run." He took the command seat that Ramirez surrendered. "We'll snatch the escape pods, turn around, and head back to Earth. The dunsel commanders can give a full report on the operation."
Ramirez smiled. "It'll be good to have Commander Tamblyn back aboard, Admiral. I've never felt entirely right about taking this Manta from her."
"She followed orders, Commander Ramirez. As a Roamer, Tamblyn wasn't cut out for our recent missions." Not interested in hearing any more, he looked at the viewscreen and saw the visible disk of a gas-giant planet. The glare from Qronha's binary star flared off to the edge of the screen. "Is that Qronha 3?"
One of the sensor operators made an adjustment to filter out the extraneous light. "Yes, sir. We should be within range in less than an hour."
"Any emergency messages? Locator blips from the escape pods?"
"We're still far away, sir," Ramirez said. "The transmitters on the pods aren't very powerful."
Stromo leaned back. "Carry on." For a while, the ship's humming was peaceful, relaxing, and he caught himself nodding off. He rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to stay awake. He hoped he hadn't actually snored.
"Still no response," the communications officer said.
"We're scanning ahead now, searching for debris or any hot engine traces," said the sensor operator.
Stromo's brows beetled. "If sixty rammers smashed into a bunch of drogue warglobes, there should have been quite a fireworks display. Aren't you detecting residual energy and radioactivity yet?"
"No, sir. I find very faint traces deep in the clouds, but they seem to be the leftover components from the cloud-harvesting station. Not the rammers. No sign of Ildiran ships either."
Stromo frowned. "But there must be something. We're only a day behind the rammers."
Reaching the bloated planet, they found no blips from the escape pods, no remnants of explosions, no wreckage. "Keep looking until you find some answers," he growled. "Sixty rammers don't just vanish without a trace."
3
MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA'H
Hydrogue warglobes filled the skies of Ildira, ready to obliterate the PrismPalace. Even under the light of the six surviving suns, Mage-Imperator Jora'h felt as if a heavy shadow had fallen across his skysphere chamber.
He had returned to his dais inside the great Palace, and the hydrogues would send down their emissary soon, at which time Jora'h would begin the most important conversation in Ildiran history. Never had a Mage-Imperator faced a more dangerous and frightening crisis or decision. Now all the centuries of planning and intricate schemes seemed weak and insufficient. Sitting in his chrysalis chair, the bitter knowledge that his empire was about to change chilled Jora'h to the core.
His half-breed daughter Osira'h had brought them here, exactly as he had requested. And now what?
The Mage-Imperator was about to face beings so powerful that they could