Free Horizon Storms by Kevin J. Anderson

remained mute, its eye sockets hollow M A G E - I M P E R A T O R J O R A ’ H
    31
    and empty, the smooth teeth grinning, as if the dead Mage-Imperator were laughing at his son’s predicament.
    Almost a century ago, no doubt Cyroc’h had faced the same knowledge and decisions when he, too, learned of the breeding program and the captive humans—like Nira. Had his father felt even a twinge of guilt, or had he simply grasped the new “resources” and turned them to the service of the Empire?
    Jora’h now regarded the glowing bones of his grandfather, who had been Mage-Imperator when the human generation ship Burton was found.
    For millennia, success had eluded the Ildirans in their ongoing efforts to create an interspecies bridge in the form of a powerful telepath who could meld thoughts and images with the hydrogues and represent both species.
    In a desperate twisted attempt to boost the experiments on the splinter colony of Dobro, his grandfather had decided to mix the bloodlines of the Burton descendants with talented Ildirans. The experimenters impregnated the human women, used the men as studs, and kept the breeding work going.
    As soon as possible, Jora’h swore he would go to Dobro and find his beloved Nira. As Mage-Imperator he had the power to free her at last from her breeding servitude, and he would also meet his daughter Osira’h. He would begin to make amends to her, and even to the enslaved humans. . . .
    He shuddered to think of the secrets that his father had kept, knowing his naïve son would not understand everything until he took his father’s place. He now knew about the part Ildirans had played in the previous hydrogue war, and he also understood why the peaceful Empire—which had supposedly never faced an outside enemy in a thousand years—main-tained such a large and powerful Solar Navy and kept such a vast stockpile of ekti in reserve. Everything had been in long-term preparation for the eventual return of the hydrogues—and the unreliability of the Klikiss robots.
    “Why did you allow the humans to test their Torch at Oncier, if you knew what might happen?” Even with full access to the thism, he could not understand his father. “Why would you take the risk, tempt fate?” Jora’h did understand, though, that the previous Mage-Imperator—and all Ildirans—had often underestimated or misinterpreted the ambitions of humanity. Had Cyroc’h never truly believed what the scientists of the 32

H O R I Z O N S T O R M S
    Hanseatic League meant to do? Perhaps Cyroc’h had simply not grasped the magnitude of human folly. . . .
    Jora’h frowned at the phosphorescent skull, determined to defy the untenable position in which he found himself. He felt a chill in the air, heard faint whispers, but he faced the judgmental bones of his predecessors. “Yes, Father, I will serve my people and guide them through every crisis, if it is in my ability to do so. But yours is not the only way. If I can find any other solution, I will change these paths.”
    His son Zan’nh, acting as Adar, had submitted an analysis of current ekti stockpiles, and the Mage-Imperator was dismayed to see how quickly their resources were being depleted. Despite contingency reserves, no one had anticipated that ekti production might cease entirely. The Empire required stardrive fuel to survive. Their stockpiles needed to be replenished.
    Zan’nh would soon take on the official mantle in command of the Solar Navy. His predecessor and mentor, Adar Kori’nh, had been killed along with a full maniple of warliners in a suicidal offensive at Qronha 3; all indications led them to conclude that the hydrogues had been driven from the gas planet, and the clouds were ripe for ekti harvesting again . . . at least until the hydrogues came back.
    That was something he could do, at least. The Empire faced challenges that forced Jora’h to consider desperate gambles. But refusing to try was far worse than taking risks.
    As he turned from