Horizon Storms by Kevin J. Anderson Page A

rush up through layers of the atmosphere faster than thunder.
    Tasia packed all the vengeance she could squeeze into her low voice.
    “Go on and burn.”
    125PATRICK FITZPATRICK III
    He never grew tired of voicing his frustration. “Damned Roachers!”
    Patrick Fitzpatrick had repeated it often since he’d recovered from his injuries in the hydrogue attack—several times daily, in fact.
    Inside the big, echoing asteroid chamber that Del Kellum’s people used as a storage facility, burly Bill Stanna commiserated. “Yeah, I signed

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    up to fight drogues. Didn’t know I was gonna waste my time held hostage by space trash.” Though dedicated to the EDF, Stanna had no sophisticated specialties, no particular skills the training sergeants could identify.
    He was just a regular grunt, willing to do what he was told and ready to fight. “I’m not gonna do any more work for them.”
    Fitzpatrick sat stubbornly on the hard stone floor, combing his reddish-blond hair back in a never-ending attempt to keep it neat, even under these circumstances. “Damn right! And don’t think you have to, Bill.”
    Though he was tall, Fitzpatrick had an average build. Owing to his good breeding, he had handsome features and a strong jaw, but his nose was a little too sharp. His forehead showed a permanent crease between his hazel eyes from too many skeptical or disapproving frowns.
    “They can’t force us to work,” said Shelia Andez, a weapons specialist who had survived in a lifetube when her Juggernaut was destroyed over the Osquivel rings. She paced the claustrophobic room, looking at the haphazardly stacked crates of supplies. The rest of the EDF hostages had been sent out on other make-work details, and most of them were also refusing to cooperate. “Isn’t there a Geneva Convention or something? If we’re prisoners of war, the Roachers have to follow certain standards of treatment.”
    Fitzpatrick felt disgusted. “Even if there was an agreement like that, they probably couldn’t read it.” Stanna burst out with loud laughter, as if this was the funniest thing he had heard in a long time.
    “When we don’t do the work, our captors simply have the compies do it,” said Kiro Yamane, a cybernetics expert. He was a bit of an odd duck because he wasn’t a formal member of the Earth Defense Forces. Yamane was, however, a genius with an intuitive knowledge of robotics after working under Swendsen and Palawu in the compy-manufacturing centers on Earth. He had signed aboard the Osquivel battle fleet so he could assess the performance of the new Soldier model. “I can’t tell you how angry it makes me to see them use our sophisticated compies for . . . for grunt work.”
    “Better them than us.” Stanna plopped down next to Fitzpatrick. The two men stared at the crates they were supposed to move and rearrange.
    Thirty-two EDF survivors had been rescued when the space gypsies descended like parasites on the ruined ships in the Osquivel battlefield, 40

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    and they’d been held as hostages in the hidden Roamer shipyard for over a month now.
    Fitzpatrick’s mind raged at the injustice of it. By now, his parents, both of them ambassadors, should have filed protests and demanded that something be done. His grandmother, the powerful old political battleaxe, should have sent an investigation committee or a rescue squad. His whole family should be in an uproar at what had happened to him.
    But then his stomach sank. He was deluding himself. Yes, the Fitzpatricks would be outraged, but after hearing of the carnage in the rings of Osquivel, when so few EDF ships had limped away and gotten to safety, no one would suspect that he—or any of the others—might still be alive.
    The Roamers had their prisoners wrapped up in a package that was all so neat and tidy.
    Over the weeks as he’d observed the activities here, he was astounded to learn of the huge spacedocks where