Horizon Storms by Kevin J. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

you?”

    16

H O R I Z O N S T O R M S
    The pop-eyed priest bobbed his head. “Oh, certainly the worldforest wishes the hydrogues to be defeated—or at least neutralized. But more than anything else, I want to go back home. The worldforest has been terribly injured, and like all green priests, I can hear it calling. I should be there helping to replant and rebuild.”
    “But you volunteered to help the EDF, and you’re a vital link in our communications,” Tasia said. “We need you.”
    He scratched his green cheek. “When everyone needs you, Commander, you’re forced to choose who has the greater need.”
    “Well, it isn’t really your choice to make, once you’ve joined up with the military and given your word.” Many times, Tasia herself had wanted to return home to her clan’s water mines on Plumas, but she didn’t have that option—and neither did Rossia.
    “I should tell you, Commander,” Rossia said, “that other green priests have been grumbling across telink, on other worlds, on other ships. They all feel the call of the worldforest. Not all of them can resist. We simply volunteered our services, remember. We did not formally join the Earth Defense Forces.”
    She frowned at him as the work of installing the Klikiss Torch continued. “I would rather be someplace else, too, but we all have to keep up the fight. We each need to follow our Guiding Star, not be distracted by other flickers of light.”
    Rossia gave his jerky nod. “A true green priest sets down roots of conviction, and is not blown about like a featherseed in the breeze.”
    “Pick whatever metaphor you prefer. But you know the drogues are not going to stop attacking. In all probability they’ll go back to Theroc to finish the job they started.”
    “All the more reason for the green priests to go home and help protect the worldforest.”
    Tasia frowned at him. “On the contrary—all the more reason to stay with the EDF and hope we kick the stuffing out of them. How can you possibly protect the trees if you’re standing beside them on a planet that’s under attack? The full-blown military has a better chance than a handful of green priests do.”
    Rossia touched the potted treeling he always kept with him, reticent and deep in thought. “Perhaps. I do not intend to leave, Commander Tam-

    D D
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    blyn. Many green priests have forgotten that the forest itself asked us to assist you in the struggle. We have all suffered losses in this war.” He shook his head slowly. “And we all make sacrifices.”
    55DD
    Though his memory core was already filled with service modules, specialized task programming, and decades’ worth of experiences, DD still had the unfortunate capacity to keep holding memory after unpleasant memory. He wished he could erase them all, but the experiences were burned irrevocably into his computer brain.
    The Friendly compy had been held hostage for years by the evil Klikiss robots, and now they had taken him below the sky oceans of a hydrogue gas giant called Ptoro. The little compy endured day after day within the alien cityspheres, which were hundreds of times more immense than even the largest hydrogue warglobes.
    Continuing their quiet treachery against humans, the Klikiss robots engaged in incomprehensible vibrational discussions with the liquid-crystal beings, a sophisticated and unusual form of communication that was part music, part lyrical visual pattern disruption, part something that was beyond DD’s ability to understand. It was far too complex for him.
    When he’d been with the Colicos xeno-archaeology team, DD had known his place, known his duties, but the ancient robots had insisted on
    “freeing” all competent computerized companions from their servitude.
    With their unnecessary vendetta, the Klikiss robots meant to exterminate all humans. An alliance with the hydrogues extended their power and abilities far beyond what they could have achieved on their own.
    Inside the shimmering walls