Диана Дуэйн - Storm At Eldala

About the Author
DIANE DUANE was born in Manhattan in 1952, a Year of the Dragon. She was raised on Long Island, in the New York City suburbs. She wrote her first unpublished novel when she was eight, illustrating it herself in crayon. After many years of study in struggle, she stormed into the science fiction world in 1979 with The Door into Fire, published by Dell Books.
Duane now lives with her husband in County Wicklow in Ireland, along with four cats and several seriously overworked computers. A Campbell Award nominee, Duane is the author of nineteen acclaimed novels of science-fiction and fantasy. Five of these were from the New York Times best-selling STAR TREK novels. She also authored a popular "Wizard" series of young adult fantasies published by Delacorte/Dell.
In her spare time, Duane travels (Switzerland being a favorite destination), studies German, dabbles in astronomy, and spends time weeding the garden.
ALTERNITY is a registered trademark owned by TSR, Inc. STAR*DRIVE and the STAR*DRIVE logo are trademarks owned by TSR. Inc.
For T.R. and Lee . . . because Marines do more than drink coffee
STORM AT ELDALA
©1999 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or aliens, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of TSR, Inc.
Distributed to the hobby, toy, and comic trade in the United States and Canada by regional distributors.
Distributed worldwide by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and regional distributors. STAR*DRIVE and the TSR logo are trademarks owned by TSR, Inc.
All TSR characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned by TSR, Inc.
TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. All rights reserved. Made in the U.S.A.
Cover Art by rk post
First Printing: March 1999
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-85787
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 ISBN: 0-7869-1334-7 21334XXX1501
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When Heaven is about to confer great office upon a man, it first exercises his mind with
suffering, and his sinews and
bones with toil:
it exposes him to poverty and confounds all his undertakings. Then it is seen if he is ready.
Meng-Tse, Sol, 6 B.C.
Chapter One
STRUGGLING INSIDE Sunshine's fighting field, Gabriel Connor flung himself and their small ship through space while the plasma bolts of their pursuers arrowed past on either side of him, so close he could have sworn he could feel the heat straight through the hull. He stared frantically around him into the darkness, but there was nowhere to go. They were surrounded.
This time, for sure, this time we 're going to die.
We cannot keep this up much longer, Enda's seemingly disembodied voice came to him from somewhere on the other side of the field. She was handling gunnery, having a talent for it, but the gift seemed not to be serving her well today.
There are too many of them left, she said, and we are running low on power. Gabriel glanced at the power readouts inside the gunnery field. They were down to ten percent on both sets of weapons. His big gun, the rail cannon on top of Sunshine, was recharging, but not quickly enough. It wanted another thirty seconds, and whether it was going to get them was uncertain. Gabriel tumbled the ship to make sure of the field of fire. One of the little ball bearing ships that had chased them out into the depths of the Corrivale system came plunging through his sights. He took aim with the plasma cannon and fired. Clear miss.
He cursed, the sweat running down his back and tickling, but there was nothing he could do about it. Slow down, Enda cried, make them count!
He saw her take aim and fire at another of the ships as it plunged past them. She scored a hit, but not a killing one. The ship arced away, leaking atmosphere in a ghostly silvery veil, but its engines were untouched.
How many now?
The targeting software says sixteen, Enda said.
Gabriel cursed again and tumbled the ship once more, wishing that he did not have to handle piloting as well as firing. The attack unfolding around them was a standard englobement with ten small vessels at the vertices and six stitching in and out of the defined space. The enemy craft held Sunshine at the optimum locus of the englobement.
There were tactics for this kind of engagement, and Gabriel had tried all three kinds. He had used the "place holder," where you shoot from optimum locus because it's the best position. That had worked only as long as the gunnery power was at optimum power. He had then tried the pattern-breaker approach in which you killed enough of the englobers to make the number of ships at the vertices ineffective. Unfortunately, Sunshine's weapons had begun to run low just as this approach began to work.
There were still sixteen of them and no realistic hope of reducing the numbers to the critical eight or below. There was nothing left but the rush-and-break, the set of moves enacted simply to escape. This Gabriel hated, first because he suspected these little ships could outrun them; second because he suspected they would chase Sunshine straight into the welcoming field of fire of the big ship that had dropped them out here in the distant dark of Corrivale's fringes. Also, he hated to run. Marines didn't run. They fought.
But you're not a marine any more.
Surprising, still, the access of fury that simple statement could provide him. He was not one of those people in whom rage clouded the vision. For Gabriel, things became clear—entirely too clear.
Three of the ships holding the vertices closest to Gabriel moved closer together to stop the break, but he could see that one of them was slightly out of alignment. He twisted Sunshine off to the left, and the enemy ship followed.
Mistake, Gabriel thought, as he flipped without warning, coasting backward on his inertia and letting the nearest ship have it with the forward plasma cannon. Enda, warned by who-knew-what touch of fraal precognition, was already firing that way. She hit another of the little round ships as Gabriel hit a third. From all the targets, metal cracked and splintered outward; vapor spit out under pressure and sprayed away as snow. More sluggish materials slopped out, went rigid and tumbled away in frozen lumps and gobbets with the shattered remains of the vessels that had emitted them. It was Gabriel's first close look at the destruction of one of these ships, and it confirmed what he had thought earlier.
Undead. The pilots had been people once. Humans, fraal, sesheyans, weren . . . The important thing was that they weren't those people any more. This killing was a kindness.
Gabriel!
He barely reacted in time as the set-of-three came diving at them. The englobement had been reduced to thirteen and was less viable than it had been, but it was still all too effective. The ten vessels holding aloof were defining the interior again, this time on the vertices of paired pyramids.
There were more places for Sunshine to break out; the faces of the solid were wider now. Gabriel spun Sunshine on her longitudinal axis, raking all around with the plasma cannon. The set-of-three dived away but still in unison.
Got to break that up, Gabriel thought and glanced hurriedly at the indicator for the rail cannon. It was
only up to sixty percent. It wouldn't even fire until eighty,
Enda was firing. Gabriel fired too, his plasma cannons down to twenty percent now. Bolts from their adversaries shot right past him, blinding and scorching him. Gabriel preferred to work with the ship's sensors acting like his own nerves—there were times when the effect could mean the difference between being alive and dead. We'll see if it's enough this time, he thought. Maybe, just maybe—
The rail cannon was up to sixty-five. Just a few minutes, he thought. Come on, Sunshine, just a few minutes more—
It all happened at once. The three ships broke formation, two to the right and above, one below and to the left. Enda concentrated on the two. Gabriel fired at the one but missed. He felt the scorch raking up Sunshine's underbelly, and then he felt another bolt hit. He yelped, the ship lurched upwards, possibly saving them both from being killed right then, but another bolt lanced down from above, hitting the rail cannon.
It blew. Gone, the rails twisted all askew; it wouldn't fire anything now.
The englobement dissolved as the other little vessels registered the destruction of the one weapon that had been keeping them at a distance all this while. It was gone now; they could swarm in and take Sunshine at their pleasure.
Enda was firing nonstop. Gabriel was firing at anything he could see, and the fury was helping again. Along with the utter terror, he was burning with the knowledge that they were both about to be killed. It was amazing how life became not less intense at such a time, but more so, a fury of life, ready to burn itself out but not give up.
One hit, then another, blowing up so close to Sunshine that the entire ship shook, but it was not going to be enough. More plasma bolts came stitching in from behind, and Gabriel cried out in agony and rage as one of them hit the engine compartment.
Then came an intolerable glory of light off to one side, a burning pain all up and down Gabriel's side, as if someone had thrown burning fuel on him. He rolled Sunshine away from the pain. He had just enough power left in his emergency jets to do that. The first light had just been the "pilot" detonation. Now came the secondary one, and Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed tight.
The little ships were fleeing in all directions, but six of them were caught together as the squeezed nuke went off. The remainder knew they had no chance against Sunshine even damaged as she was. They kept running.
Space grew still and dark, and in it Sunshine drifted, tumbling gently and losing power. Gabriel sat there gasping in the darkness of the fighting field as the power ebbed away, the weapons losing what little charge they had left.
"Okay," said a gravelly voice from out in the darkness. "That went pretty well, I thought." "Helm," Enda said sternly. "You were not supposed to do that." "Aw, Enda, you're too rough on the two of you."
Gabriel knew what the words meant, but he found them hard to believe at the moment. It's the software,
he told himself. But his brain insisted that he couldn't let down his guard, that something terrible might still happen. Those little ships were only fighters. They could not have come all this way by themselves. Somewhere around here was the fortress ship or dreadnought that would have dropped them. It could not be allowed to find Gabriel and Enda, not alive—not even dead and in one piece. The pilots of those little ships were reminders enough that there were some fates worse than death.
"All the same, we cannot be constantly relying on overarmed allies to come sweeping in out of the darkness to save us!"
"I thought that was what you kept me around for."
Even through the fear, Gabriel had to grin. "He's incorrigible," Gabriel said, still gasping for air. "You should know that by now."
"Maybe I should," Enda said with a sigh. "Meanwhile, let it go now, Gabriel. This has been enough exercise for one day. Shut it down."
Gabriel reached out in the fighting field to the glowing collection of virtual lights, indicators, and slider controls that appeared within his reach. One slider well off to his right was pushed right up to the top of its course. He reached out and pulled it down.
Reality ebbed out of everything. The blackness of space melted away to the virtual gridlines of the system's training mode . . . and it was all a dream. Gabriel's muscles unknotted themselves for the first time in about five minutes.