Deluge
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: The Twins of Petaybee #3
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Deluge». Краткое содержание книги:
Meanwhile, the powerful and avaricious Company is making another attempt to take over the world of Petaybee for its resources, and the twins parents, Yana and Sean, along with the entire planet, must fight for the independence of their sentient world once and for all...
“Nor can we risk you, Yana, but I don’t see that stopping you,” Sinead said tartly, pulling on her parka and shouldering her rifle.
MISSONI AND HIS troops listened to the woman on the recorder sing her song about a Corps legend-the massacre at Bremport Station -with interest that would have been astonishment were they not still so exhausted from fighting the storm. The voice was accompanied by a drum; in the background the wind howled, moaned, and whined around the building, now and then making a sound like the ruffling of the feathers of a gigantic bird.
When she’d finished, he cut off the recording, though there was room for plenty more data. “How did she know about Bremport, Sarge?” Inuye asked. She was fairly new to the Corps.
“You heard the lady, Private. She was there. Before she was turned by the locals, Major Yanaba Maddock was one of us, a decorated officer who served with distinction at several bases. She was invalided out after Bremport and sent here for retirement. It’s in the data banks on the ship. You can look it up.”
“I guess she had to stay here because the Corps wouldn’t listen to her poetry,” Murkowski scoffed. “Got herself a captive audience and didn’t want to leave.”
“I heard it was because she fell for the head scientist here,” Parr said.
“Sex is a lot more likely a motive than poetry,” Inuye said.
“Shut it,” Missoni said. “She was an exemplary officer before her injury. Show a little respect for the person she was. Any of us could be wounded and sent to where we’d be dependent on the goodwill of the locals to survive. When and if that happens to me, I hope to show more loyalty, but I’ve seen even worse things happen to even better people once they’re no more use to the Corps. Break out your rations. We’ll eat, sleep, and by then maybe the storm will have calmed down some.”
Murkowski grumbled, “Should have confiscated some of the food in the cabins. It’s not like they’re going to be using it any time soon.”
They had each brought along only one ration packet, thinking to strike quickly, take their prisoners, and return to the ship. Screw that scenario. “When the storm lets up, go back and collect whatever food you can find and bring it back here,” Missoni told them. “We may need it, and we don’t want them to have it.
We may have to wait them out, and a siege doesn’t work unless someone is starving. I’d rather that not be us.”
His com crackled, but he couldn’t make out any kind of message. The verbal one was lost in the general howl, and when they tried a text message, it fragmented into an unintelligible sparkly geometric design.
Pretty but useless.
When the men finished eating, Missoni posted a sentry at the longhouse’s only door. “If the storm lets up, wake me,” he told Murkowski. Then he and the others made themselves as comfortable as possible on the building’s floor. He was asleep before his head touched the floor.
CHAPTER 6
MURKOWSKI GRUMBLED TO himself. He was tired too, and more than likely the storm would play out before his watch was up, so he’d have to help when the search resumed.
He paced himself to keep awake. He walked back to the fire and added another couple of logs from the pile near the pit. The smoke made a pewter haze that hung from the roof to just above the level of the floor. Several guys coughed and sneezed in their sleep. That storm had to break soon, or they’d all die of smoke inhalation. The wind sounded like it was trying to rip the roof off. What kind of a cold-blooded idiot would want to live in this freezer, anyway?
He slouched back to the door, and realized that in spite of the noise still coming from the roof, the storm seemed to have calmed a little. The door was flanked by two small windows, but each of them was black as space. He picked up the huge board toggle that barred the door, lifting it aside so he could see out.
He hoped the draft would wake up some of the other guys.
The door opened inward, which was a good thing since three feet of snow was now drifted against it outside. Was it his imagination or had the wind finally deafened him? Either way, he couldn’t hear it as well. He stuck his head and shoulders out over the snowdrift. Something landed on his back, forcing his face into the snow before he could yell for help.
YANA PATTED THE track cat, Orca, on the broad black flat place between his ears. The cat sat down on his prey, draping one paw casually over the side of the man’s face. The soldier’s snow-encrusted eyes opened as he struggled to turn his head. He took in the slow extension and retraction of three-inch-long claws covering his left ear and tickling his left cheek and the corner of his left eye. Yana put her mittened forefinger to the portion of her muffler masking her lips, indicating that he should be quiet, and he responded with a flick of his eyelids since he was too intimidated by the claws to make a larger gesture.
Meanwhile, Raj, Pet, Johnny, and Rick slipped past her and into the longhouse on padded mukluk feet.
Each of them was better trained than most of the sleeping troops. They silently removed the rifles and sidearms, then returned to the doorway and joined Yana while Pet and Johnny carried armloads of snow to dump on the fire. They scuttled back to the door as the hiss and steam and sudden cold woke some of the soldiers, who grabbed at the air where their weapons used to be.
Yana, Raj, and Rick kept weapons trained on the soldiers until their friends were clear, then stepped back and signaled Orca to release his prey. The cat stood up after a long lazy stretch and bounded over the fallen man and off toward the woods.
The man on the ground reached for Yana’s leg, but as soon as he used his body weight to support his reaching hand, he sank deeper into the snow and his mitten fell three inches short.
When he looked up, he found himself staring into the barrel of Raj’s weapon.
Yana pointed to the other soldiers, and Raj barked, “Crawl.”
When the man had backed through the snowdrift into the lodge, one of the soldiers called, “You folks are making things worse for yourselves. It’s not like we walked here on our own. There’s a ship full of more like us waiting behind. You can’t win this one. We just need to talk to the governors and straighten this thing out.”
“That’s not how we heard it,” Johnny said. “You came to haul them off to die in prison as you did Madame Marmion. We won’t allow you to murder these people.”
“You don’t want to go to war with the Company Corps, son,” the spokesman said.
“I’m not your son and at least two of us here outrank you,” Johnny told him, though he didn’t explain how.
“You got weapons trained on my people, you all outrank me,” the man said.
“You do as we say and you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Johnny told him. He beckoned Yana, Pet, and the others inside, near the doorway.
“One by one, step forward, you first,” Pet Chan said to the spokesman. The man obeyed. “Remove your parka and pants,” she told him.
“You’re going to let us freeze?”
“Just trading,” Johnny answered. He took off his own parka and snow pants, borrowed from Sean, and put on the surrendered garments, noting the stripes on the parka sleeve. “Thanks, Sarge.”
While he changed, Pet and Raj relieved the sergeant of his com, his knife, his ID tags, and his wallet.
When they’d finished searching him, they allowed him to put on Johnny’s clothing.
They searched the other soldiers in the same manner and forced two women in the party to trade with Yana and Pet, and two other men to swap with Raj and Rick.