The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [7]
After Mage-Imperator Jora’h made his promises to King Peter, he felt that he had strengthened the Ildiran Empire. However, Rusa’h and the faeros had just begun their worst ravages. They tracked down Denn Peroni and Caleb Tamblyn, who were flying a water tanker filled with wentals, and destroyed the ship near the icy planetoid Jonah 12. Denn was killed, but Caleb escaped in a lifepod and was marooned. The faeros also went to the primary wental planet of Charybdis and overwhelmed the living seas with their flames. Jess and Cesca could feel the agony of the dying wentals, but by the time they arrived the oceans had been scorched, the planet burned. The faeros had declared war on the wentals.
An armada of fireballs emerged from the dead Ildiran sun of Durris-B, reigniting the star and flooding out like a meteor shower. When Tabitha Huck took a newly built warliner on a shakedown cruise, the faeros were able to sense her presence because of her conversion to the telink/thism religion. They destroyed her and the new warliner, then flew toward Ildira, where they also targeted Kolker and all his converts there. Mijistra began to go up in flames.
Prime Designate Daro’h, left in charge of the Prism Palace, was forced to flee as the faeros incarnate Rusa’h came for him, demanding to know where the Mage-Imperator was. Osira’h and her siblings used their unique powers to protect the Prime Designate and Yazra’h; they all escaped through water channels beneath the Prism Palace.
Returning from his rescue of the human colonists on Klikiss worlds, Adar Zan’nh found the burned warliners of Tal O’nh’s septa. As soon as O’nh and Designate Ridek’h warned him about the impending holocaust on Ildira, Zan’nh raced off with his ships. When they arrived, the Solar Navy warliners attempted to battle the fireballs, but they had no effective way to combat the living fire. The Adar did, however, rescue Daro’h, Yazra’h, Osira’h, and the other half-breed children. But they needed the leadership of the Mage-Imperator.
On his flagship warliner, Jora’h could sense the horrific events unfolding on Ildira. Through her treeling, Nira received news that the faeros were burning Mijistra, but her contact abruptly ended when the lone treeling in the Prism Palace turned to ash. Desperate to get back, Jora’h ordered his warliners to increase speed — only to run into Admiral Diente’s EDF battleships. Diente fired upon the warliner, damaged its engines, and captured the Mage-Imperator. Despite Jora’h’s urgent pleas about the disaster on Ildira, Diente escorted him and all the Ildiran captives to the EDF base on Earth’s Moon. Chairman Wenceslas came to see the prisoners, pleased at his easy victory, and told the Mage-Imperator that he must remain a “guest” of the Hansa until he abandoned his alliance with the Confederation and denounced King Peter.
The faeros had conquered Ildira, and Rusa’h installed himself in the Prism Palace. Now that he had discovered the telink/thism pathways through his other victims, the faeros incarnate was able to follow them back to the worldforest. Suddenly, green priest converts on Theroc burst into flame. From there, the hungry elemental fire spread to the towering worldtrees. The forest on Theroc began to burn.
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1
Admiral Sheila Willis
Ten Mantas and one giant Juggernaut cruised across empty space, leaving Earth behind — possibly forever, as far as Admiral Willis was concerned. Though her ships still bore the markings of the Earth Defense Forces, their crews no longer served the Hansa. No, not after everything they had seen.
Chairman Wenceslas would have called them mutineers. How could anyone not feel bitter about that?
There’d been a time when Willis was young and naïve (or perhaps just insufficiently jaded), when she had thought all