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...
Although they aimed to cause as much chaos as possible, Yana had a particular goal in mind. Dating from the days when Petaybee was the property of the company, equipment had been installed at Space Base to facilitate takeoffs from the usually frozen surface. Ships docked on Petaybee in specific places. The three docking bays contained sockets into which, in winter, the ships could insert their sterns and keep their hulls free of ice, thanks to built-in radiant thermal units. This arrangement was not unique to Petaybee. The company controlled many planetary properties with harsh and frigid conditions, and their installations on all of them contained the same sockets-nicknamed “bun warmers”-so company ships and others with reasons to take off and land there were equipped with special controls to activate the coupling. The bun warmer’s controls on company ships were linked both to the bridge and to engineering.
Locating the underside of the bridge-control panel, Yana disengaged the coupling, then pocketed the chip critical to its operation, grinning evilly to herself. This was the part of the plan that should empty the ship of personnel so her team could hijack it.
Rick and Pet were also busy making life difficult for the ship’s crew. Raj’s plan was to leave the firefighters to it while he merrily raided the ship’s armory, diminishing its number of incendiary devices and purloining much of the ammunition. That should further slow the crew’s undoing the damage the team was wreaking on their vessel without announcing the presence of intruders.
Pet now quietly reconnected the main corridor’s security cameras and microphones. Without lights, the cameras picked up only the disembodied glows moving eerily if swiftly down the corridor in the direction of Engineering. Their havoc wreaked, Johnny, Pet, Raj, and Yana ran down the corridor to hide in plain sight amidst the crowd outside Engineering.
The crowd, including the officers, commented on the suddenness of the power outage, the lack of lights, the lack of heat and what to do about it, and cursed Petaybee roundly for its storm, its winter, and its general lack of hospitality. Funny how, although most of the troops had lived a good part of their lives in space, many of them born on stations or ships, there was still that atavistic part of human nature left over from long-ago Terra that associated bad storms with loss of power, or at least lost amenities such as heat and lights. In space, the ship was a biosphere, totally self-contained. When docked, except for the bun warmers, the same was also true. An earthquake might topple or swallow the ship, a flood could cover it, but blizzards normally would have no effect on internal functions. With all of them distracting one another while the captain attempted to deploy specific people to fix specific problems, no one was addressing the problem the saboteurs wanted them to worry about.
Yana gave a huff of impatience and saluted the captain, her borrowed uniform and correct military demeanor her best disguise. It was a bit risky but they could hardly wait for the crew to discover the larger problem for themselves. In the blizzard raging outside, the hull would be iced over in a few minutes and it would be impossible to leave the ship, much less the planet. “Sir, the hull is freezing.”
“Engineer, get those generators back online. Our connection with the bun warmer must have been broken when the power went down. Meanwhile, all personnel not essential to reestablishing interior function suit up for the outdoors and bring all handheld torches and thermal devices you can find to thaw the hull.”
Troops ran in all directions, and Yana ran toward the air lock with them. This was the part of the plan where she was to return to Petaybee, while Johnny, Rick, Pet, and Raj took the ship and the few remaining crew members into space. For a hastily devised plan, it wasn’t bad. It should work.
WE HAVE A couple of days until they bathe again, Murel said finally. So we should plan what to do until then.
After such a long stretch of doing nothing while in the brig aboard the ship, she felt anxious to get started with the heroic, rescuing part of their mission. But they needed to understand where they were and what went on here before they blundered back onto shore.
We could try infiltrating the soldiers’ camp, Ronan suggested. One bald kid probably looks pretty much like another to them, and we could suss out the com situation.
Yes, but if we get caught doing that, it’s all over. Besides, that camp is pretty remote and there doesn’t seem to be a proper docking bay for a full-sized ship. Anyway, I didn’t spot one from the air. I’ll bet the long-distance relay equipment is back on the mainland. Instead of hanging out here until the next bath day, let’s see how far it is from here to the mainland and if we can swim there and back before we try to meet Rory again. It didn’t take all that long to get here by flitter, but it’s probably farther than the average human can swim safely or it’d be no good for isolating the kids, would it?
Odd, when you think about it, she added. Why are they keeping the kids so far from the parents? If they mean to use families as leverage to get information from prisoners, you’d think they’d want their hostages handy, wouldn’t you? I don’t think we are meant to be hostages, actually. I think they’ve got some other purpose, but I’m beached if I know what it is.
We’ll know more once we talk to Rory again, Ronan said, poising on the ledge and leaning forward, nose down and ready to dive. For now, last one in is shark bait!
Except for being warmer, the sea here was much like Petaybee’s; it was especially similar to the part near Petaybee’s new volcano. Only a few leagues from their rock the smell of sulfur grew strong as the sea floor began spiking black smokers, the chimneys made from the hardened mineral content of the subterranean gases escaping through the crust. The creatures dwelling there paid them no more mind than did the giant white clams and crabs on Petaybee. Bouquets of red and white tube worms blossomed on the outer slopes of some of them and lined crevasses in the floor. They evaded the worst of the superheated, acidic waters by swimming close to the surface, working their sonar, alert for sharks, whales, other seals, or schools of tasty fish.
There were a lot of fish, but they detected no other marine mammals whatsoever, much less sea monsters.
That’s a bit odd, don’t you think? Ronan said.
Not really, Murel replied. Remember that everything-well, almost everything-that came to Petaybee was stocked there by the company. Maybe they didn’t see any reason to put seals here, or whales or the other species.
There goes our clever disguise.
Maybe, or it could be everything migrates away from here about now, or there’s mating going on elsewhere, or any number of reasons we don’t know about. Murel was actually relieved that they hadn’t had to explain themselves to the resident sea creatures yet. That was always assuming the creatures shared thought patterns in similar language-she had read somewhere that long ago, on Terra, when the world had grown up of its own accord, the animals of the seas were thought to speak languages as varied as the peoples on the land. But she thought that if the company had stocked all of its client worlds, surely all of the creatures would speak a version of Standard, similar to the universal human tongue. She wondered if they’d think she and Ro spoke it with a Petaybean accent, or dialect. Even if they could understand each other, that didn’t mean that the animals here, including seals, would be friendly. Most species were at least somewhat territorial, and families of seals would not necessarily welcome interlopers such as themselves.