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...
Since returning to the ship was also impossible, they bivouacked in the town meeting hall, a long one-story job with a lot of carvings on the walls and the support beams. Missoni guessed that the long fire pit down the middle was for feasts of some sort. The hospital was larger, but they’d discovered that it was deserted and cold, the many windows already thick with the same frost that iced the inner walls. The long building was more centrally located, sturdily constructed, and free of frost inside, They built a fire and the smoke rose through a hole in the roof that sucked it out better than Missoni would have guessed. These people had acquired some technology in the last few years, it seemed. Not enough to keep the wind from blowing the smoke back down to choke them and keep a permanent haze between the tops of their hooded helmets and the ceiling, but it helped. The air on Petaybee was supposed to be pure and clean, so they hadn’t brought masks. Missoni used the tail of his muffler to filter out some of the smoke and the others followed suit.
They were an inhuman-looking bunch sitting there, smoke-reddened eyes glittering with tears as they watched the flames leap and dip, red, orange, yellow, white-blue, and some crackly green. The wind roared and shook the walls as if it would bring them down on top of the miserable collection of human beings. How the hell did people live here, and why would they even want to? Missoni wondered. He couldn’t imagine how even fur-bearing animals would live through a storm like this. Well, they lived in holes, didn’t they?
And that, he realized, had to be exactly what the people were doing. This whole place was supposed to be full of caves. People had gone into those caves and come out again thoroughly messed up. Maybe the reason some people stayed on this iceberg was that they had gone down there too and become even more messed up-enough that they actually thought Petaybee was fit for human habitation. Enough that they imagined they liked it.
“Okay,” he said through his helmet com. “What did you come up with on the data search?”
“Stacks and stacks of forms, sir, but when I brought them out, the wind snatched all but these last few out of my hands,” Private Murkowski said.
Ordinarily Missoni would have yelled at him, but under the circumstances he just grunted. “Parr?”
A soldier seated two down from Missoni withdrew a small case from his parka with a still-mittened hand and passed it to him. It held some chips that looked like they might work on the little computer Missoni carried in the breast pocket of his uniform blouse.
The mission had been aborted before the search was complete, but there were several handfuls of papers and a few more chips and drives. Mostly, Petaybean communications still seemed to be stuck in the hard-copy phase.
Missoni looked over the papers, not expecting to make much of them. He was right. Besides, even if he understood what was on them, there was a good chance he wasn’t supposed to know about it. He stacked them neatly beside him and laid a big rock from the fire pit on top of the pile. If they ran out of fuel before this storm blew over, the papers might come in handy.
Meanwhile he pulled the little unit from his pocket and popped in one of the chips from the container Parr had given him.
A woman with a clear concise voice said in a slightly embarrassed tone, “I do not often sing this but record it now at Sean’s insistence, for the sake of our children. He seems to think there will come a day when they’ll ask, ‘What did you do in the war, Ma?’ and this way I won’t have to sing it again in front of anyone. So here it goes. This is my song about what happened at Bremport Station. ”
CHAPTER 5
THE TWINS AND Sky stayed under Marmion’s house until the grounds were searched, then cautiously, quietly, swam as far out as they could in the direction of the freight lift.
Very slowly they lifted their heads from the water to hear what was happening on land. The three flitters were still there; guards were posted near the mansion, but there was no evidence of anyone else nearby.
What do you think? Is it clear?
Without warning, Sky jumped out of the water and onto the bank, where he stood on his hind feet and shifted his torso and head back and forth, listening. Men who eat river seals are not here, he announced.
With that assurance, Ronan hoisted himself ashore and, propelled forward with flippers and claws, reached the cover of some shrubs where he could shake himself dry and change. When he was once more clad in his dry suit, he stood watch-squatted, actually-while Murel changed, too. Then, while Sky scampered across the fake landscape in his undulating run, the twins crawled to the freight lift, trying to stay out of range of the surveillance cameras. When the door opened, they all leaped inside and Ronan pushed the button for the com center level.
The door began to open as soon as they reached it. Before they could stop him, Sky bolted through to scout ahead.
He only had time to say “Hah!” before they heard a sizzle, then a man’s gruff voice: “Got the little bugger.
What do you think? Is there enough of him to make a pair of boots?”
Before the door had fully opened, Murel forced her way out, shouting, “Hey, let him alone, you big bully!”
She just had time to see a short soldier holding a limp Sky aloft by the scruff of his neck when a hand whipped out and grabbed her neck, hauling her away from the lift. “Ow!” she said. “Cut it out. And let the otter alone!”
“Oh, is this yours?” the soldier asked in the same voice she’d heard from schoolyard bullies.
Behind her there was a scuffle, and Ronan was pulled from the lift as well.
The soldier holding her spoke into a handheld com. “This is the last of the children, sir.”
He listened to the reply, then clicked off the device.
“Lot of kids for a space installation,” Ronan’s captor remarked.
“There was a school here. The brass is interested in knowing what exactly these kids were taught.”
“How about the critter?” the soldier holding Sky asked. The otter wiggled in his grasp, apparently recovering from the stun shot.
“He’s their pet, apparently. Bring him along. He might be good to eat, or who knows, if these two know anything, they might get extra chatty if it means the animal keeps his skin on.”
Murel’s captor had relaxed his grip, and she twisted away, rushing at the man shaking Sky. Because he was holding the otter in one fist and his weapon in the other, his front was wide open. She butted him first in the belly and then, when he doubled up, in the nose with her own head. Before she heard the sizzle and felt a jolt of pain shoot through her, she saw the man drop Sky, who twisted in midair and was halfway down the corridor before he landed.
WHEN MUREL CAME to, she had a horrible headache and everything around her smelled strange.
She sat up in a tiny room occupied by several other girls. Most of them were preschoolers, too young to have been in classes with her, but two-Chesney Janko and Lan Huy-were familiar from her time at Marmie’s school.