The Rowan
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Tower and the Hive #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Rowan». Краткое содержание книги:
The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos and Jupiter's Callisto.
An orphaned young girl, simply called The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb. She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation, and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.
Tut-tut! And it's running dark. Ignoring the basic laws of spaceman ship! That seems to be upsetting the Fleet more than its size.
No, that's a cover for the pure funk even admirals are feeling over my evaluation. They're making contradictory preliminary assessments, demanding that I increase the resolution. I did: it's on the max right now. What do they think I've got on this skiff? A portable sun for illumination?
The Rowan refined the contact with Jeff sufficiently to see, through his optics, what he and Mauli were viewing on the skiff's scanners: a darkness that flowed across the backdrop of stars. Quite a Leviathan, isn't it? I understand why adrenaline is pumping through your veins Leviathan? An interesting choice of phrase, my love.
Jeff Raven, if you go in any closer to that… that menace, I'll kill you, she added, abruptly seized by a gut-generated terror.
Jeff chuckled. That'll teach me a lesson. Rest easy, cariad, I'm as close as I care to get, and closer than Mauli or the good Captain Lodjyn think wise.
Do they hear anything useful?
Well, Mauli does and she doesn't. She's let me merge and I can sense great industry and bustle, orderly activity, and some areas with no sound at all. I think the damned planetoid was once just that and has been hollowed out for its travels. Mauli's picking up a lot more than I am: six or more different mental entities. His tone became attenuated as he spoke to her privately. Mauli's in a muck sweat of terror from the level of "dedication"… purpose is too weak a word… that she perceives. I'm taking us back before the poor kid dissolves.
Even the Captain's sweating and throwing out fear phenomes.
Rowan: When Deneb was attacked, the merge didn't sense any great dedication, purpose, or intelligence from the occupants of those vessels.
Jeff: You're assuming that the ship we deported from our system went scimming back to this big Mama?
Rowan: Why not? You thought then that they were softening Deneb up for an invasion. Why couldn't they have been preparing the planet for the arrival of what's bearing down on Deneb now?
Jeff: And the "mother" ship is why only females sense its intent?
Rowan: Don't you dare snicker!
Jeff: Believe me, dear heart, whatever reservations I might have privately entertained at the outset are null and void. We are in big trouble and I thank all the Powers of Balance for my mother's long ear!
As it is, we're going to have to plan our campaign against that Leviathan very carefully. That's the hard place, and Deneb's the rock and we - Mankind - are between it. There was a brief pause. And so I've just informed Earth Prime! This time he also has no reservations.
In the second pause, Jeff chuckled wryly. However the League may well just argue us all to our deaths. Would you believe it? They are now debating the ethical point of whether we have the right to interfere with the approaching vessel simply on the grounds that it might - get that, might - have hostile intentions?
Rowan, aghast: You can't mean it?
Jeff, sardonically: Now just how do we prove hostile intent? They haven't launched any missiles - yet - that I can lob at Earth and scare the doubters.
Afra: You said Leviathan is clearly on a course to Deneb, did you not?
Jeff: Yes, Afra, I did and the squadron's computer all confirm that. Unless this Leviathan decelerates when it reaches Deneb's system, present calculations confirm that it will smash right into Deneb VIII. Captain Lodjyn is extrapolating the repercussions of such a collision.
Reidinger: It will NOT come to that! Talent does not bust its balls for the Nine-Star League to have them disregard a considered warning of imminent invasion of a possibly hostile force of unknown potential.
Jeff: And what have you in mind, Earth Prime?
Reidinger: I am in conference with the Nine-star League Councillors and you may rest assured that they will be persuaded to act, not argue.
Ah, good! My first order from the Councillors is to dispatch the flagship Beijing to the Denebian system. It will deploy one-half. All beyond Deneb's helipause, the Welcome and Identity modules which were so successful with the Antarians sentients not dissimilar to the beetle-type species of the first assault.
Rowan, exasperated: Of all the stupid face-saving ploys!
Haven't we TOLD you that the main sentience of this vessel is motivated by destruction, the annihilation of Deneb VIII?
Reidinger: Oh, I agree with your evaluation, Angharad. I am further ordered to dispatch the Moscow, the London, and the Newyork to redeploy defensive mines one-half inside the heliopause.
Jeff: Bluebells all in a row?
Reidinger: Under the premise that a warning shot across the bows ought to be universally understood.
The Rowan snorted.
Jeff: Remind the captains of those vessels to get the hell out of the way before that thing gets within fifty-thousand klicks of the space mines.
Reidinger: Now we wait!
Rowan and Jeff in simultaneously expressed disgust: Wait?
Reidinger: Wait! That's the trouble with you youngsters.
You don't know when to bide your time.
Jeff: Not when it's my planet that's the target.
Reidinger: It was before and you were rescued. However, in addition to my official instructions, and Reidinger paused significantly, I have sent out a discreet alert to all Primes and Talent above grade 4, regardless of their discipline. Does that precaution reassure you?
Jeff, diffidently: Not exactly, for I fail to see what Talent will be able to do against that Leviathan!
Rowan: Able for what action?
Reidinger, malicious chuckle: I thought you'd grasp the essentials more quickly. Mull it all over, will you, while we're waiting. And, in this interval, Jeff, I want you to proceed to Deneb. Angharad, please join him there but I would request that your son remains on Callisto.
Jeff: Now, wait a minute Rowan, beginning to catch a glimmer of what Reidinger held so tightly in his most private mind: No, Jeff I should be on Deneb to augment Isthia. Then as soon as we know and Jeran is safer away from the furor. It could overload him.
And Reidinger most certainly doesn't want that, do you, Peter?
Reidinger in a growclass="underline" No!
The Rowan did not like leaving Jeran behind: She would miss him keenly but, between the other women on the Station and Afra, he would be lovingly supervised. So she settled in her capsule and calmly waited for the generators to hit the proper revolutions before she, with Afra and Mick assisting, 'ported to Deneb. When she entered the Denebian Tower, she noticed the signs of stress in the faces of those who had maintained the Watch.
"If we swallow any more sedatives, we won't be able to hear a damned thing," Isthia said bleakly. However, as she gave the Rowan a quick embrace of welcome, her incredible energy seemed undiminished, bright red and tangy. "There's a bottom to the well and a long dry period if I dip in too often. But those things will NOT have my planet." The red of her deepened.
"What does Besseva say now?" the Rowan asked, missing the clairvoyant from those on duty.
Isthia gave a diffident shrug. "She's gone into a deep trance, trying to penetrate the shell of that - what did Jeff say you named it? Leviathan…" she went on when the Rowan put the word in her mind, "to see what's inside. It's damnably frustrating to have an unknown assailant." "The Councillors wish to believe that they may not be hostile," the Rowan said in a saccharine tone of voice.
Isthia was not the only one in the Tower to have a poor opinion of that belief. Then the Rowan took a spare couch and joined the minds merged on the approaching vessel. It had shortened the distance to heliopause considerably. Jeff: Get set to catch me, will you, loves?