The view shifted, and Lanyan looked in cold amazement at the diamond-hulled warglobes and their crackling blue lightning as they tore the second of Oncier’s moons to pieces.

Diluted from its long passage across space, the fuzzy transmission continued to ripple against their receivers like faint stirrings against a boat on a quiet pond. Lanyan and his crew watched with bone-chilling horror as the scientists continued to send desperate messages, pleading for mercy, trying to understand. The alien attack continued. No wonder nothing remained.

No, the General realized, this wasn’t the Ildirans at all. Something new. Something worse. These monstrous alien ships were unlike anything he had ever seen, even in his nightmares.

When all four of Oncier’s moons had been annihilated, the alien crystalline ships converged upon the unarmed observation platform. The electric lances arced out again, engulfing the observation platform in a single brilliant flash, and the signal finally cut off.

By then, Lanyan had absorbed more than he had ever wanted to see.

48: CESCA PERONI

48CESCA PERONI

Because Cesca was not at Rendezvous where she was expected to be, the urgent message and news packet took an extra week to reach the Speaker’s protégée. The message runner had already delivered his unsettling report to Jhy Okiah, who had dispatched the young man and his supercharged spaceship to find Cesca beneath the ice on Plumas.

The message runner rode the passenger lift down through a pumping channel in the ice. He stepped out into the frigid cave and called out to anyone who could hear him: “Cesca Peroni! Is she still here? I have an urgent message from Jhy Okiah.”

Though she spent most of the time indoors near heaters, Cesca had felt restless after the grim funeral for Ross. She had suited up to pace across the ice shelf, looking up at the glittering colors embedded in the solid sky. “I’m Cesca. What is it?” she said, putting an edge into her voice. Obviously this young man hadn’t come looking for light conversation.

Now Jess and Bram Tamblyn emerged to see the visitor. Accompanied by her silver-skinned compy EA, Tasia emerged a moment later, as if reluctantly intrigued by the interruption.

The message runner had blond hair and brown eyes, with the square jaw and distinctive nose of the Burr clan, but the embroidered symbols on his insulated vest showed that he also claimed blood ties with the Maylors and Petrovs. “A Goose scientific station was destroyed at a gas giant, along with four moons!” he said, reaching into his left pocket, then finding nothing, searching the three pouches sewn into the right side of his jacket. He finally pulled out a displayer.

“By the Guiding Star, another gas giant?” Jess said. “One of ours? Was there a skymine in place?”

“No. It was Oncier, the world they just ignited to make a sun.”