Kevin Anderson - The Ashes of Worlds

The young man nodded before remembering that the tal could not see him. “I will hold on to hope if you tell me to.”

The blind tal leaned closer to the fire and extended his hands as if to draw the light into his skin. “There is real reason for confidence, Designate. Though he has vanished, we know the Mage-Imperator is not dead. We can still sense him, however distant he may be. Jora’h lives.”

Ridek’h considered that. When the previous Mage-Imperator had poisoned himself, their entire race had been crippled by mental shock and misery. Likewise, all Ildirans would have felt Jora’h’s death like a discordant scream through thethism. Therefore, Jora’h remained alive. but where was he?

“Has he abandoned us?”

“I do not believe so. I must assume that something prevents him from returning.”

With the Mage-Imperator missing, Mijistra lost, and the faeros in the Prism Palace, this could well be the worst time the Empire had ever known. Ridek’h knew it was time to demonstrate his confidence, to rally the old veteran. “Tal, we have every opportunity to make things better. And I swear we will.”

21

Mage-Imperator Jora’h

Jora’h gazed at Nira, touched her cheek one last time, then stoically turned to follow Admiral Diente and his military escort.Diente. The Mage-Imperator barely acknowledged the man who had ambushed his flagship.

The Admiral’s claim that he had been following the Chairman’s orders did not exempt him from blame. By kidnapping him, Diente might have single-handedly doomed the Ildiran Empire, allowing all of Jora’h’s people to be consumed by the faeros.

The dark-haired officer showed little expression as he walked along. “We have finished our inspection and analysis of your warliner, Mage-Imperator. All seems to be in working order, and we’re ready to depart.”

“So, you fixed the damage your own EDF ships inflicted upon it?” Jora’h said, staring ahead. “Are you certain you understand Solar Navy systems?”

Diente answered crisply, “Our engineers acquired a working knowledge of Ildiran warliners when we helped repair many of your vessels after the hydrogue battle here. We put that knowledge to good use.” He paused, then added apologetically, “Our shots were precisely targeted when we subdued your ship. We caused no more harm than was absolutely necessary.”

“You cannot begin to know how much harm you have caused, Admiral.”

As he ushered Jora’h aboard the warliner, Diente gave a slight, stiff bow, but averted his dark eyes. “I will show you to your accustomed stateroom. However, once we depart, my orders are to allow minimal interaction between yourself and my crew. You are to have privacy and solitude.”

Jora’h felt a chill in his soul. Already missing Nira, he tried to reinforce the strength of his heart and mind against the coming ordeal. “And do you understand what that will do to me, leaving the other Ildirans here on the Moon?”

Judging by his mannerisms, he guessed that even Diente did not approve of what Chairman Wenceslas was doing. but then, the Chairman no longer sought approval from anyone. “I understand that I have no choice in the matter.”

Jora’h shook his head bitterly. “I thought humans always have a choice.”

“Then you don’t have all the pertinent facts. Follow me.” In leading him up the ramp and along the primary corridors, Diente made a point of showing him all the troops stationed aboard the warliner. “Though this is only a test cruise, we have five hundred EDF soldiers aboard. Please don’t make me do anything I would regret.”

“I am not a fool, Admiral Diente. I must stay alive so that I can save my people. No matter how long it takes.”

“We have an understanding, then.” Diente gestured him into his former elaborate cabin, the large stateroom he had shared with Nira. The entire vessel seemed cold and bleak without her, without his crew.

The Admiral sealed the door behind him. Jora’h did not check to see if it was locked. He didn’t want to know the answer.

Chairman Wenceslas had not bothered to see him off, though no doubt every moment, every movement had been recorded. The Chairman was probably smiling with smug self-congratulation for coming up with this strategy.

For now, with the warliner still orbiting above the lunar base, Jora’h could feel thethism from the Ildiran captives nearby. Later, though, when he felt the warliner’s engines powering up and the great Solar Navy ship began to cruise away, the tenuous lines became more diffuse, stretched out. His people quickly slipped farther away.

Jora’h sat by himself in his brightly lit quarters, clenching his hands, concentrating. He was the Mage-Imperator. He had to master his fear. Though the connection grew fainter with every moment, he could not allow his people to sense his anxiety through thethism. They needed to be strong now — stronger than ever.

When Admiral Diente engaged the stardrive and the warliner leaped into the emptiness of space, Jora’h felt those last strands snap like the strings of a delicate musical instrument played by rough and violent hands.

Gone.

He collapsed onto the comfortable bed, where he and Nira had shared their thoughts and hopes, where they’d had such quiet contentment. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if all the oxygen in the warliner had been sucked out into the frigid, unforgiving vacuum. He had never imagined such incredible emptiness.

Jora’h closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He spread his arms, concentrated, and threw his mind out into the void as far as he could. He searched for anyone, but he felt only cold madness clamoring at him.

“Iam the Mage-Imperator!” he cried through clenched teeth. His search continued for any friendly thought to help anchor him. But the universe was a vast and empty place.

To his horror, Jora’h realized that only a few seconds had passed.

22

Sirix

In the ruins of the Roamer outpost of Forrey’s Folly, Sirix and his black robots marched down the stone tunnels, penetrating deeper into the fortress asteroid. All of the weak human inhabitants were dead, and bodies lay strewn about.

Though the honeycombed asteroid was protected by erratically orbiting chunks of rock, it had been a trivial operation for Sirix’s robots to plan and carry out an invasion of the outpost. In one swift operation, they had collapsed the atmospheric domes, opened bulkheads to space, and broken through blast doors and into cargo bays. Some of the Roamers had tried to flee; others had attempted to defend the installation. Either way, they had been slaughtered. Per Sirix’s instructions, no one would be allowed to survive.

His two compy proteges, PD and QT, followed with brisk footsteps. At an access port to the base’s central computers, QT worked to connect to the systems. “Roamers often have fail-safes rigged to their computers. We must be cautious.” He paused. “Yes, an electrical and radiation pulse is poised to erase all stored information in the event of a security breach.”

Sirix spun his flat head plate. “Can you deactivate it to allow a scan of the database?”

“Yes.” The compies sounded anxious to please.

“Then do so.”

Because both compies were familiar with Roamer systems from previous conquests, PD and QT worked together until they had deactivated the automatic purging protocols. “We now have access to the data summaries, inventories, and lists of known facilities.”

While robot squads continued to explore the asteroid tunnels, rooting out the last few frantic survivors and killing them, the two compies took turns rattling off statistics about how many ships came and went to the asteroid outpost, how many metric tons of various ores were shipped away annually, how much raw metal the processing plants produced.

PD asked brightly, “Is this place acceptable, Sirix?”