Kevin Anderson - The Ashes of Worlds

In the midst of this, Sirix led his black robots to attack the Llaro subhive. After so much damage had been done to his robots, he wanted to destroy every breedex he could find. The ferocious attack by the black robots, as well as the desperate fighting from the colonists, caused a great deal of damage to the Klikiss. In the turmoil, Orli, DD, Hud Steinman, and many others managed to get away. When they finally reached Davlin’s distant hideout, the refugees didn’t know where they could go or how they could find safety.

Margaret Colicos, though, had insisted on remaining behind. Back at the blasted stockade, she watched in dismay as the victorious Klikiss devoured the human survivors in order to acquire their memories and genetic material, after which the wounded breedex underwent a massive fissioning to expand its hive and recover from its losses.

Stinging from his defeat on Llaro, Sirix pulled his remaining robots to safety and tried to come up with a new plan. During his attack on the Llaro breedex, he had lost many of his irreplaceable comrades. While the Klikiss could recover from their casualties, black robots were unique storehouses of ancient experiences. PD and QT suggested an unusual solution — that Sirix should seize an appropriate manufacturing facility and build new black robots. These replacements would not have the memories of the lost robots, but they could become a key part of Sirix’s army. The black robots searched for a suitable facility they could take over.

Many of the Llaro colonists were Roamer prisoners, and they had not been forgotten. Tasia Tamblyn, Robb Brindle, and Nikko Chan Tylar (whose parents were both detainees on Llaro) flew a rescue ship to Llaro, expecting to see a handful of bored EDF guards and a lot of surly colonists and detainees. When they arrived, though, they ran into the Klikiss. Caught unprepared, Tasia’s ship was shot down; it crashed in a remote ravine, where it lay damaged, needing significant repairs before it could fly again. They were found by Davlin Lotze and taken back to the hideout, where they all made plans to repair the ship and fly away to safety, far from Llaro.

Just as they completed fixing the ship, however, the Klikiss captured Tasia, Robb, Orli, Nikko, and Davlin. They were brought back to the hive city and held as raw material for the next upcoming fissioning. Margaret Colicos and DD agreed to help free them. When another powerful subhive attacked the Llaro breedex, the chaos of Klikiss fighting Klikiss gave the prisoners the opportunity they needed. They had only to get back to Tasia’s repaired ship, load it up with the rest of the refugees, and go. Davlin remained behind, using Orli’s synthesizer strips to play a music that paralyzed the hive mind. After making it possible for the others to escape, though, he found himself trapped.

Orli and her friends reached their ship, with the Klikiss in hot pursuit. When Margaret tried to go with them, anxious to be away from the insect creatures, the Klikiss warriors singled her out and refused to let her get away. They also crushed her music box, removing the only weapon she had. Having retrieved the rest of the survivors, Tasia flew off, sad at being forced to leave Davlin and Margaret behind.

Davlin almost got away from the Klikiss. He reached one of the transportals and tried to pass through, but he was caught. Gravely injured, he was brought before the breedex, which was on the brink of another fissioning. The singular larva of the new breedex came forward to Davlin, interested in the independent and troublesome human. Before it could subsume him, though, Davlin threw himself on the breedex larva, trying to impose himself upon it. The hive mind swallowed him up.

After Adar Zan’nh eradicated the black robots on Maratha and delivered his startling news about the Klikiss, Nira urged the Mage-Imperator to send Solar Navy assistance to other besieged human colonists on former Klikiss worlds. Zan’nh was reluctant to do this, since he believed the humans had caused their own problems by settling planets that did not belong to them. However, when he witnessed how many innocent humans had been massacred on several devastated colonies, he was deeply moved. Arriving at another besieged world, he used an ancient translating routine to convince the breedex to release the captive colonists.

After their return from Maratha, Anton Colicos and Rememberer Vao’sh were given an unexpected task — to remove the lies and correct the errors in the supposedly infallibleSaga of Seven Suns. This caused great distress among other rememberer kithmen, particularly the conservative Chief Scribe Ko’sh, but no one could refuse the orders of the Mage-Imperator.

From Ildira, the green priest Kolker continued to spread his telink/thismphilosophy like a new religion, even converting many green priests on Theroc. Sullivan Gold, refusing to be converted despite pressure from Kolker and Tabitha Huck, left Ildira and returned to his family on Earth. Meanwhile, Kolker also converted the Roamer trader Denn Peroni, Cesca’s father, and he became an outspoken advocate of the marvelous new philosophy.

After leaving General Lanyan and the EDF, and “borrowing” his grandmother’s space yacht, Patrick Fitzpatrick III searched among the Roamers for his lost love, Zhett Kellum. He finally found her on the gas giant Golgen, where the Roamers had reestablished skymining operations. His reunion with Zhett did not go as expected, however; she refused to speak to him. Trying to come clean, Patrick confessed what he had done earlier, destroying a Roamer trading ship to eliminate a witness; though General Lanyan was ultimately responsible for the murder, Patrick had given the order to fire. After a trial, Patrick was sentenced to “walk the plank” over the open cloudy skies. He bravely accepted his fate, but at the last minute Zhett spoke on his behalf and convinced her father to pardon him. Patrick then became a strong supporter of the Confederation and transmitted a damning message that squarely laid the blame for the Hansa’s problems on General Lanyan and Chairman Wenceslas. Upon hearing this message, Basil rebuked Patrick’s grandmother, former Chairman Maureen Fitzpatrick, for the actions of her grandson.

King Peter and Queen Estarra continued strengthening the Confederation. Seeing the King and Queen as potential allies against the Klikiss and the faeros, Mage-Imperator Jora’h announced that he would travel to Theroc and publicly proclaim an alliance between the Ildiran Empire and the Confederation. Nira accompanied him, as well as Anton Colicos and Rememberer Vao’sh. Standing together under the worldtrees, the Mage-Imperator and the King swore a firm alliance. This was truly the death knell for the few remnants of the Hansa still loyal to Chairman Wenceslas.

Upon learning of Jora’h’s announcement, the Chairman took drastic measures. He ordered Admiral Esteban Diente to take a powerful EDF battle group to intercept the Mage-Imperator after he departed from Theroc. Admiral Diente was appalled at the orders, but he could not refuse, because the Chairman had taken his family hostage.

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/thismreligion. 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.