He listened, cruising above the silent clouds, passing over Dasra’s equator and then traversing the gas giant’s southern hemisphere. As before, once the probes reached a certain depth, the transmissions suddenly broke off, changing to static and then silence. Each device was destroyed far sooner than the environmental conditions could have harmed the rugged components.

Obviously, the deep-core aliens were the cause.

Gas-giant planets were common in the Spiral Arm, and many probe runners like himself were investigating them. If the probe destructions were an accurate indication, the deepcore aliens were astonishingly widespread. The EDF, as well as the human population, was beginning to realize just how prolific their enemy was, how far-flung this heretofore unsuspected empire. They seemed to be everywhere.

When the last probe transmissions abruptly ended, Branson Roberts made ready for his dignified but rapid retreat, as on his two previous excursions. This time, though, flashing lights appeared deep within the pea-soup clouds. The glowing movement seemed to be tracking the rapid passage of the Blind Faith.

Roberts scanned the clouds and the brightening lights, feeling a glacier form in his stomach. It looked like a cluster of thunderstorms climbing deliberately toward the upper atmosphere. Lightning strikes crackled, and a windy vortex swirled, as if preparing to open up and disgorge a massive object.

As the submerged lights grew more brilliant, more ominous, Roberts leaned on his ship’s controls, disengaged the safety protocols, and powered up all the enhancements the military had installed. “Time to get the hell out of here.”

Firing the stardrive’s turbochargers, he shot away from the rings of Dasra and streaked out of the system at maximum speed.

91: ADAR KORI’NH

91ADAR KORI’NH

With tensions increasing among the humans and the mystery of the marauding aliens still unsolved, Adar Kori’nh kept one maniple of his fleet in the vicinity of Qronha 3. The Mage-Imperator gave him explicit orders to place a ceremonial protection fleet at the ancient Ildiran ekti-harvesting city, so, for appearances, Kori’nh remained with the forty-nine ships led by the recently demoted Qul Aro’nh. By their very visibility, the warships would ease the unreasonable fears of the cloud miners. The rest of the vessels, commanded by Tal Zan’nh and Tal Lorie’nh, continued back to their home port, ready to respond to any real emergency.

Qronha 3 was the nearest gas giant to Ildira, a large planet bright enough to be visible by telescope even in Mijistra’s permanent daytime. Ages ago, the Ildirans had built their first cloud-harvesting facility here. The scoops and reactors had operated continuously for dozens of centuries, producing the hydrogen allotrope, though in recent years, it was only a token amount.