Horizon Storms Read Online Free PDF

hydrogues’ icewave or horribly burned cadavers drawn into a mummified fetal position as muscles and sinews tightened in the heat. Far too many had died, both trees and humans.
    But Celli forged on, her feet sending up puffs of ash. Each living tree she could report would be one little victory for Theroc. Each such triumph would gradually tip the scales against the despair the hydrogues had brought.
    As she explored in slow, broad zigzags through the devastation, the surviving trees were few and far between, but she touched each one briefly, murmuring words of encouragement and hope. Scrambling on her hands and knees, she climbed through a tangle of toppled trees as wide as a house. Though the jagged branches scratched her, she pressed forward and reached an artificial clearing in which all the trees had been knocked down in a circular pattern, as if something huge had exploded there, leaving an open area at the center.
    Celli caught her breath. In the middle of the circle of destruction, she saw a curved shell of smoke-blackened crystal, the shattered fragments of what had been an alien warglobe. Pyramid-shaped protrusions thrust like claws through the spherical hull sections.
    A hydrogue ship.
    She had seen these awful things before, though this warglobe was nothing more than a fractured wreck, half of it strewn around the clearing.
    Celli couldn’t help but clench her fists while her lips curled in an angry but triumphant snarl.
    Thus far, the EDF—for all their sophisticated weapons—had achieved little success against the hydrogues’ diamond armor. Celli was sure the Earth military would be interested in having a specimen of an enemy warship that they could analyze up close—and she intended to give it to them, if there was any chance it might help in the fight.
    Flushed with her discovery, Celli raced back toward the fungus-reef city, happy to have good news to share at last.

    6

H O R I Z O N S T O R M S
    25MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H
    Mere days after his ascension, Mage-Imperator Jora’h went to watch the handlers prepare his father’s corpulent body for its dazzling incineration.
    He had never expected to become Mage-Imperator under such circumstances, but the Ildiran Empire was his to rule now. Jora’h wanted to make changes, to improve life for his people, to make amends to those who had suffered . . . but he was bound by obligations and commitments, forced to continue schemes he had not previously known about. He felt trapped in a web woven from myriad sticky strands—unless he could find a way around them.
    But first, before he could face those tangled responsibilities, Jora’h had to preside over the funeral of his poisoned father.
    Attender kithmen carried his chrysalis chair into the chamber where the dead Mage-Imperator had been laid out for his final preparations.
    Jora’h sat silently on the spacious levitating throne, looking down at the slack features of his father. Resenting him.
    Treacheries, schemes, lies—how could he endure everything he knew?
    Jora’h was now the mind, soul, and figurehead of the Ildiran race. It was not appropriate for him to curse his father’s memory, but that didn’t stop him. . . .
    The previous Mage-Imperator had killed himself, seeing his own death as the only way to force his son to inherit the Empire’s cruel secrets. Jora’h was still reeling from the revelations. Much as he disliked what he had learned, he understood the rationale for those hateful deeds. He had never suspected the hidden danger to the Ildiran Empire or the slim, desperate hope of salvation, which could be achieved only if he continued the experiments on Dobro.
    Jora’h was handsome, smooth-featured, with golden hair bound back into a braid that would eventually grow long, like his father’s. Over time, his classic features might change, too, as he evolved into his sedentary, supposedly benevolent role. His sheltered life as Prime Designate had not M A G E - I M P E R A T O R J O R A ’