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...
It is a slide, Sky told him, his sleek body quivering with anticipation. Slides always work.
We have to try, Murel decided. We can’t come this far and then give up because we are too scared.
Marmie may not be scared, but I bet the little kids from Halau are.
Too bad Kushtaka doesn’t have a normal com system here that people could understand, Ronan said. We could just hail the station, tell them what’s happened, and go home.
As they spoke, they were positioning themselves close to the pool of what looked like ordinary water.
That was where the beam would start once Mraka and Puk activated it.
The new ship is entering now, Kushtaka told them. This is the proper time. Mraka, Puk, now!
The pool emptied into a swirling light-filled column that snaked past the hull of the other ship and into the station’s docking bay. It looked extremely insubstantial.
Count to three, Murel said.
You going first or shall I? Ronan asked.
A sleek brown form shot past them both. Hah! Sky cried. Good sliiiiide!
Ready, set, go! the twins said together, and jumped into the beam after him.
It had its own gravity and its own temperature control, and was overall a much more complex instrument than the tame whirlpool it seemed back on Petaybee. It supported them until they slid onto the deck, wet from the beam, bumping up against Sky, who had slid to a stop next to an already docked shuttle.
In the center of the bay, only one technician saw them as they flopped across the floor on flippers and belly to cover, where they could change into their dry suits.
He blinked once, then was called to task by a coworker and returned his attention to helping the big ship dock.
Peering around the docked shuttle, Murel saw Sky watching the big ship get berthed. Once more the little otter stood on his hind legs and did his cute back and forth examination of the people who had finally come to look at the adorable otter. He kept saying “Hah! Hah!”
That was when the twins decided to run out into the bay yelling, “Sky! There he is! Bad otter, Sky, running away from us like that.”
“You kids need to get yourselves and your animal out of here,” the bay chief told them, striding up. “This is no playground.”
“We know that, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“They got the otter, sir, but what about the seals?” the technician who had seen them asked.
“What seals?” his boss demanded. “This is Versailles Station, Conrad. Not Sea World. Get a grip.”
The chief walked away shaking his head over the way some people let their kids run wild, but Conrad watched Ronan and Murel suspiciously as Sky hopped onto Murel’s shoulder and they headed for the nearest com room to carry out their mission, rushing too fast to note the designation of the new ship or to see the first of the company brass disembark.
CHAPTER 3
BY THE TIME the Piaf docked at Gwinnet Incarceration Colony, the ship’s cat, Zuzu, and her mistress, Adrienne, had abandoned their attempts to have the cat act as morale officer for the Kanaka children trapped aboard the liner when the Company Corps impounded it.
Zuzu liked the children and did not like to hear them cry, but she wanted to cry too, seeing the soldiers’ heavy boots stomp past and hearing them bark orders at her friends. She spent much of her time huddled beneath whatever bunk or chair Adrienne chose.
When the ship docked and the soldiers clamped restraints on Adrienne’s hands and shackles on her feet before leading her and the other crew members away, Zuzu stayed huddled. A long time had passed without anyone returning before she crept out and slunk from one cabin to the next trying to find someone she knew.
Only the lounge seemed to be occupied. The children were there, but they were strangely quiet, where only a few minutes ago Zuzu had heard them screaming and crying for their mothers. None of the mothers were there, though three female soldiers stood among the small quiet bodies that lay on the bedding in the middle of the lounge, all breathing, Zuzu noticed, all apparently sleeping.
Zuzu slunk around the wall and the corner of the huge tank that had been used to hold first the sea turtles and then the sharks from Halau, where her crew had also rescued the children and their families. It was a good hiding place. She could watch without being seen, and felt safe enough to grab a quick nap before she heard the tramp of boots once more in the Piaf ’s corridors.
Where was the crew? Adrienne, Steve, Madame, no one was returning? Only the soldiers? Zuzu wanted to cry. She had been with Adrienne since she was a tiny kitten. Adrienne loved, fed, and protected her.
All of the crew were her friends, but Adrienne was her special friend, the closest to a mother she remembered. Like the children in the lounge, Zuzu was suddenly orphaned.
The Piaf had been her home most of her life too, but she could not stay here while the soldiers ran it.
Many of them smelled bad, spoke loudly and angrily, and stomped around so much she was glad she didn’t have a long flowing tail, like some cats.
Her tail was a tidy curl atop her rump, the legacy of ancestors who were Japanese bobtail cats, a very superior and elevated sort of feline. She had never met one, but Adrienne told her about them and assured her that hers was a distinguished lineage.
A little dark woman came aboard with the soldiers and marched from child to child, inspecting each one.
Then, with something in her voice that sounded like Zuzu felt when the food in her dish was not her favorite flavor, the woman said, “The transport is ready for these children. They may all go to the island.”
“Mama!” a kit barely old enough to say the word screamed, and hauled at the little dark woman’s trousers with his grubby fist.
“Be still, child,” the woman said. “Your mama is not coming back to the ship. If you want to see her again, you must follow the nice corporal and do exactly as she says. She will take you on a nice ride to somewhere that you can play while you wait.”
The female soldiers lined the children up and herded them out of the lounge. This time Zuzu followed, slinking, crouching, hiding behind things and under things until the last child and then the little dark woman were leaving the ship. Taking her life in her own paws, Zuzu whispered out behind them. She did not follow the children to the waiting flitter, however. It would not be going where their mothers were, and so it would not go where Adrienne and the crew were. She did not like the little dark woman, but the woman seemed to know things. She strode toward a building with two tiers of lights from the portholes and a great many more lights strobing the ground between the building and a high fence.
At a gate, the small dark woman showed a tag she wore around her neck to the guard, and he opened the gate, not noticing anything so small and stealthy as a brown-and-gray mottled cat who slipped in at ground level on the heels of the woman. “Welcome to Gwinnet, Dr. Mabo,” he said politely.
WHEN AISLING TOLD him that she had seen his kids swimming out into the river, Sean Shongili swam as fast as a seal possibly could, but he was not fast enough. The kids had a substantial head start on him, hours since the time Aisling had seen them and Sean awoke to notice that they were gone. It was a long swim out to the coast, and though he called them repeatedly, he received no answer.
An hour or so before he reached the coast, he was suddenly pushed back by a high tide of salt water. He felt the alarm of other sea creatures in the vicinity, as well as Nanook and Coaxtl. Surfacing, he saw the cats, colored lights washing over their fur, lift their whiskered faces to watch the city-vessel of the alien otters spinning upward, brightly lit, into the still-dark sky.