Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [98]
Vao'sh remained silent and attentive, absorbing details to report back to the Hall of Rememberers. Yazra'h paced around the command nucleus, restless. Her Isix cats had accompanied them aboard the flagship, but during the journey she kept them in a large cargo chamber, where they would not disturb the crew.
"Tal, we are approaching the Durris trinary," said the navigator. Normally, the nearby triple-star system held nothing of particular interest, no habitable planets, no gas giants. The three suns of Durris had always shone brightly in the skies of Ildira--until the hydrogues and faeros had extinguished one of them.
Yazra'h looked first at Anton, raising her eyebrows, then at the boy Designate. "This is what we must see. I asked the tal to take this course on purpose." While the one-eyed commander called for the warliners in the cohort to reduce speed, Yazra'h looked at her young ward. "We should all observe this and remember it."
Maintaining perfect formation, the warliners closed in on the blot in space. The dead star was dark, still simmering with leftover nuclear reactions, but it had collapsed without the photonic pressure to support its own mass. Anton was not a physicist, and wondered what sort of fundamental changes--what sort of incredible weapons--were required to shut down a sun. Durris-B was no longer a star, just a tombstone.
"It's frightening," he muttered.
"And you should be frightened," Yazra'h said. "See what our enemies are capable of doing."
Ridek'h stared openmouthed at the image. "How can we stand against an enemy capable of . . . that?"
"The Mage-Imperator will find a way to save us." Yazra'h raised her voice, not just for Ridek'h's benefit, but for the entire command nucleus.
Tal O'nh silently touched his hand to his chest where, along with insignia of his accomplishments in the Solar Navy, he had attached a prismatic disk. Anton recognized it as a symbol of the Lightsource. Considering the Ildirans' innate horror of darkness and blindness, he wasn't surprised that a man who had already lost one eye would cling to a prismatic icon representing constant light.
"We have six suns remaining, and the Ildiran Empire will endure," Yazra'h said, as if she could make it so by commanding it. "The Empire must endure."
Tal O'nh added his support. "A Solar Navy officer lives for nothing else."
Anton knew that these words of encouragement were meant for the Ildirans on board, especially the young Designate, but he took heart from them nevertheless. It occurred to him that beneath Yazra'h's obvious physical strength, she was wiser than most people he had met. A scholar knew how to spot such things.
57
ORLI COVITZ
The mixed group headed through the Klikiss transportal to their new home. This place would be a fresh start, a second chance. With an odd sense of déjà vu, the girl lifted her chin, gathered her courage, and walked into the flat stone window. An instant later she walked out onto another new settlement world.
Llaro.
After all she'd been through, Orli Covitz wasn't sure about going to another former Klikiss world, but she didn't know where else she could live. Her overly optimistic father would have called Llaro a great opportunity. But he was dead now, along with everyone else on Corribus. She tried not to think about it.
Nevertheless, Orli had decided to join the Crenna refugees in their relocation. She had few possessions: her salvaged music synthesizer strips, some clothes, and a lot of bad memories. She was fourteen, an orphan, and a survivor.
Since reports about the obliteration of the Corribus colony had posted her waifish face across every conceivable newsnet, Orli had hoped that her real mother might reemerge. But nobody could find her. Orli shrugged. The woman had never been much of a mother anyway. Orli was better off by herself. Even here.
The lavender skies were lovely: pastel colors over an arid landscape. A relatively ambitious