Her globe cruised over the stellar maelstrom below. Convection cells the size of continents boiled up, changing the gaseous landscape every moment. Thanks to many layers of dense filters, her eyes could tolerate the sight. She watched a large dark stain appear on the star, a duller red than the bright orange of the surrounding photosphere—a magnetic storm, a starspot. It was a gateway, as more fiery ellipsoids emerged and then sank back into the layers of hot gas again.
Osira’h came out here in the shielded globe so she could have solitude, peace among the faeros. It helped her to feel that everything was in balance.
Because they were a communal race, any individual Ildiran felt uneasy to be alone, but Osira’h was different. As the daughter of the green priest Nira and Mage-Imperator Jora’h himself, she was strengthened by myriad other connections.
Osira’h was never truly alone because her mind was tightly bound with her halfbreed brothers and sisters. Her four siblings could also feel the faeros, though their connection was not as strong as hers. Gale’nh had his place in the Solar Navy, Tamo’l had her medical research on Kuivahr, Muree’n was being trained by Yazra’h with dreams of becoming the greatest Ildiran fighter ever. Rod’h was the closest of her siblings, the most similar to her; they had the strongest telepathy of the halfbreeds. They shared much and helped each other, but despite their strengths, she and Rod’h were misfits among the Ildirans.
The Dobro breeding program had spent generations trying to breed a savior, and Osira’h had done her job. Her potent telepathy had brought the faeros and the hydrogues to their metaphorical knees at the end of the Elemental War. The enemy was defeated, the war over. She’d been invaluable in bringing the titanic enemies under control—but now what was she supposed to do?
She had finished her life’s work when she was still a child.
Oh, the Empire revered and celebrated Osira’h, but they didn’t understand who she was. The Ildirans were proud of her, although in some small corner of their minds—she could feel it through the thrumming of the thism—they were afraid of her, didn’t know what to do with her.
Rod’h felt their unique predicament even more sharply than she did. He hadn’t even been given the chance to serve his reason for being—a potential savior with nothing to save. Osira’h had been triumphant, and Rod’h was merely the backup. An unnecessary spare.
She hoped to keep her brother’s disappointment from hardening into bitterness. She wished Rod’h could be with her at Wulfton. They could have been watching the faeros together, trying to understand them better. But he had refused, claiming he wasn’t interested.
Beneath the observation globe, a fireball rocketed up like a bullet ejected from the star. The living thing shot past her craft, curious, sensing her. Inside her mind, Osira’h could hear ethereal voices and noises, the fiery intensity of faeros thoughts: a wash of defeat, withdrawal… not resentment, but limitation. Even in her closest contact with the fiery beings, Osira’h had not been able to understand why they turned their capricious behavior on both sides of the conflict.
The hydrogues were similar, as were the watery wentals. The verdani—the worldforest mind that manifested in all the trees of Theroc—was the most easily accessible sentience. Green priests like her mother had long been able to tap into the verdani mind, read the thoughts of the forest, share the knowledge stored there.
Concentrating now, Osira’h opened up to the fireball that hovered in front of her shielded globe. The flames brightened and swirled, and the ellipsoid spun before it shot off to swim with other faeros in a solar flare. Osira’h felt an afterimage in her brain, a warm tingle from the strange alien presence.
As her globe drifted, she closed her eyes and cast her thoughts out along the thism web. She listened to the simmering power of the elementals, the crackle of the faeros, the humming of the hydrogues that slumbered uneasily in their gas-giant planets, the sighs of the wentals across open bodies of water, the whisper of verdani voices like leaves blowing in the wind.
But there was also an uneasy background static… ghost voices stirring in the fabric of the universe. She could hear it more loudly than any of her siblings.
As she concentrated, Osira’h heard an unexpected crack, a sudden strengthening of the telepathic bond with her brother Gale’nh. She knew he had departed on the Kolpraxa for the far boundaries of the Spiral Arm—and now she heard him cry out in her mind. A pitch-black coldness flowed from him, a shadow fell across his thoughts, and Gale’nh suddenly went silent in her mind.
She knew something terrible had happened to him, to the Kolpraxa, to all the Ildirans aboard it in the unexplored void of deep space.
When her vision snapped back into focus and she saw the faeros still bobbing in the depths of the star, Osira’h felt no warmth from them, only urgency. A panic? Even the faeros were afraid!
She activated the engines of her observation globe and raced up above the stellar corona. She transmitted to the astronomers at the astronomical research station to prepare a ship for immediate departure for Ildira.
She had to report to the Mage-Imperator.
THIRTY-FIVE
GENERAL NALANI KEAH
After General Keah returned to the Lunar Orbital Complex at Earth for a tedious meeting with her Grid Admirals—all quiet on every front, as expected—she insisted on heading out again. She didn’t bother to manufacture a reason; she felt more effective if she kept moving.
The Lunar Orbital Complex was the administrative heart of the CDF, with enclosed military bases, spacedocks, construction yards, and civilian habitats. Although Theroc was the Confederation’s capital, the military headquarters remained at Earth in the rubble of the Moon. Traditional Theron culture didn’t have the infrastructure to support a major military complex (those gigantic verdani battleships orbiting Theroc, however, scared the crap out of Keah every time she went for an official visit).
Her Juggernaut was the most powerful ship in the CDF, and she liked to think of it as her office. With a green priest on her flagship, she could be contacted immediately, wherever the Kutuzov might be. The real command center was where she was.
The Juggernaut continued its long patrol, accompanied by nine Manta cruisers selected from the various grids, “taking them out for a test drive.” This time, Adar Zan’nh also joined them with a septa of graceful Solar Navy warliners. During this joint exercise, all the ships followed the more optimistic scenario that the CDF and the Solar Navy would operate together against an outside enemy. Keah preferred that option. She and Zan’nh had already traded formal dinners on each other’s flagships along the way.
Following a previously agreed-on course, the patrol group headed toward a cold gas giant named Dhula: a world with rusty red clouds orbited by a crowd of small moons. Dhula lay at the fringe of Ildiran space, unclaimed and unremarkable. Its atmospheric composition made the planet an unlikely candidate for ekti skymining; it was too isolated for human colonists to take notice, nor did the Ildirans seem interested in the world.
Under the pretext of their patrol, though, General Keah could have a look at the moon cluster, take a few readings. Maybe someone in the Confederation would figure out what to do with Dhula, or maybe it was no more than a planet on a list, a destination for these military exercises. She could live with that.