Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [31]
“Take the time to understand, brother—hear what Imperator Rusa’h has to say. Then you will comprehend our motives and see that we are correct.”
“Stop killing my crew, and I will consider it.”
“The Adar seems to be under the impression that he is able to bargain,” Rusa’h said.
“I will demonstrate for him how little bargaining power he has, Imperator.” Thor’h turned to the blood-spattered guards. “Open fire as ordered.”
Qul Fan’nh’s warliner unleashed a merciless volley of kinetic-energy projectiles and energy beams. They slammed into the hull and engines of the nearest warliner. The huge Ildiran warship exploded, flame fronts and deadly decompression slaughtering thousands of crewmembers aboard.
The flash of light blinded Zan’nh, and he reeled backward against the command rail. The deaths played a cacophonous arpeggio of pain on his nervous system, crippling him. The screams through the thism were deafening. A full warliner! Thousands and thousands of innocent sacrifices!
Inside the besieged docking bay, Rusa’h said coldly, “You have three minutes, Adar Zan’nh.”
Chapter 13—ORLI COVITZ
Grieving and forlorn, Orli felt as devastated as the ruins of the Corribus colony. The girl stood by herself in the whistling breezes that picked up as soon as darkness fell. The wind careened along the narrow channel of the main granite-walled canyon, sighing plaintively. It carried the smell of smoke and burned flesh, along with moans that sounded like ghostly screams.
Orli was utterly and completely alone, the only person on an entire planet. Everyone she’d known here was dead, her fellow colonists, the few children her age, even her father. She was the only survivor of the massacre.
The Corribus settlement, once filled with dreams and possibilities, was nothing more than burned wreckage, melted debris strewn around what should have been a place of hard work and hope. Even the ancient Klikiss ruins had been obliterated. She had no place to go. And the images were fresh and raw in her mind.
Wandering off by herself, Orli had spent a day exploring isolated cliffside caves far down the canyon. From her high, safe vantage she remembered looking back toward the human town being constructed on this empty world as part of the Hansa’s new transportal colonization initiative.
Without warning, the deadly EDF battleships had swept in, using the Hansa’s greatest weapons to blow up the buildings and mow down the colonists. When the ships had landed to see the results of their devastation, black Klikiss robots had filed out accompanied by Soldier compies. Methodically seeking out the few hardy survivors who had managed to find scraps of shelter from the initial onslaught, the merciless robots had killed one after another after another, until everyone was dead.
Too far away to help, terrified for her own life, Orli had only been able to watch. A part of her had wanted to run out and fight the robotic attackers, or at least scream at them—but she was smart enough to keep herself hidden. Orli had huddled, shivering, until the evil machines packed up their EDF ships and flew away, leaving her here. Alone.
Had anyone ever been so stranded? Orli knew the planet was empty except for their tiny settlement. Their group had been the first to come through the transportal doorways and establish a Hansa presence on Corribus. Though she had to check it for herself, Orli assumed the destructive robots had obliterated the transportal too, blocking off all contact from the rest of human civilization. No one could come through to rescue her. No one on the outside even knew of the attack.
On the first night, she found the corner of a fibrous cement wall that had been erected millennia ago by the insectoid Klikiss race. Though blackened and crumbling, it formed a shelter where Orli could hold her knees and put her head down. She trembled as she waited out the night. Fear and ragged nerves prevented her from sleeping. Often she heard frightening, crackling sounds or the slumping collapse of walls as the last fires of the horrific assault nibbled