Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [3]
While Davlin Lotze was starting to settle in at his colony on Crenna, he saw hydrogue warglobes cruising overhead. The aliens did not attack, though they seemed to be searching for something. Through a telescope several days later, Davlin saw the hydrogues battling their mortal enemies, the faeros, within Crenna’s sun. The star began to die, and Davlin urged the colonists to take desperate survival measures. As the sun winked out, the seas and continents froze, and Davlin took a salvageable ship to find help. The colonists dug in and tried to survive as the atmosphere froze solid. Davlin managed to reach the nearby colony of Relleker, but the governor refused to help. Fortunately, Rlinda and BeBob arrived on a supply run and helped Davlin rescue the Crenna colonists, digging them out of their frozen bunkers.
The Klikiss robots took DD aboard an EDF battleship, part of a group of human ships they had stolen and modified. The battleships were now crewed entirely by reprogrammed Soldier compies, and DD learned that all Soldier models—widely distributed throughout the Earth military—contained insidious programming that the Klikiss robots could trigger at any time. As a test, the Klikiss robots took their stolen battleships to attack Corribus. Though DD tried to stop the robots, they proceeded to destroy the human colony there. Orli Covitz, exploring cliffside caves, looked on in helpless horror as the EDF warships obliterated the settlement, including her father and all her friends. She watched Klikiss robots and Soldier compies comb through the wreckage, kill the survivors, then depart. When Orli finally picked her way down to the burning settlement, she saw that she was the only survivor.
The Hyrillka Designate, still acting peculiar after his head injury, told his protégé Prime Designate Thor’h that he had seen the truth in visions, and that Mage-Imperator Jora’h (Thor’h’s father) was leading the Ildiran Empire to ruin. At first concerned at this talk of rebellion, Thor’h eventually threw in his lot with his deluded uncle. Rusa’h commanded the population of Hyrillka to consume the mind-altering drug shiing, which softened their thoughts and allowed him to seize control of them. He then publicly accused Jora’h of poisoning his predecessor. Claiming that he himself was the rightful Mage-Imperator, Rusa’h took on all the trappings of the Ildiran leader. Only the apprentice Designate Pery’h remained loyal to the Mage-Imperator. When he resisted the overthrow, Rusa’h and Thor’h imprisoned him.
While sending out an assassination team to kill Jora’h, the Hyrillka Designate executed Pery’h to distract his brother from the danger. The Mage-Imperator, saved by the quick actions of his bodyguard daughter Yazra’h, now knew that the mad Hyrillka Designate meant to overthrow the Empire. He dispatched Adar Zan’nh with a group of warliners to restore order to Hyrillka, not realizing he was sending them directly into a trap...
Isolated on her island, the captive green priest Nira secretly built a raft and escaped, drifting for days on an open body of water until she crashed on a barren shore, lost but alive—and free of Designate Udru’h at last.
On Earth, Cesca demanded that the EDF cease all attacks on Roamer outposts, whereupon Chairman Wenceslas dismissed her concerns and commanded her people to surrender and begin delivering vital stardrive fuel again. Cesca departed angrily, vowing that he would never find the secret Roamer locations. However, General Lanyan had decoded the navigation module from a stolen Roamer ship and learned the coordinates for Rendezvous. He sent a full military force to the asteroid cluster and completely destroyed the Roamer capital. Cesca and other survivors scattered, their center of government gone. They were now outlaws...
Chapter 1 — ADMIRAL LEV STROMO
Though Admiral Stromo was the ranking officer aboard the prowling Manta cruiser, he let acting commander Elly Ramirez make