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  Storm at Eldala

  ( Harbinger - 2 )

  Diane Duane

  As Gabriel Connor and his companion Enda scratch out a living among the more dangerous stars of The Verge, they stumble upon an astonishing revelation from out of the depths of time.

  Storm at Eldala

  by Diane Duane

  For T.R. and Lee... because Marines do more than drink coffee

  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 heldSunshine 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 toSunshine 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 rolledSunshine 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 s
queezed nuke went off. The remainder knew they had no chance againstSunshine even damaged as she was. They kept running.

  Space grew still and dark, and in itSunshine 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 werenot 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.

  "Better?" Enda said.

  "Much."

  "Then come out of it, now. I do not see why you feel you must drive yourself so hard, just for an exercise."

  "It's a human thing," he said, taking another breath for the appreciation of it not being his last. "You wouldn't understand."

  He could sense Enda putting her eyebrows up. A couple of moments later Gabriel was alone in the field. He took his time about getting out, shutting down instruments, making gunnery safe, and checking the pieces that purported to have been made safe. It was not that he didn't trust Enda, but partners checked one another's work when weapons were involved. Besides, said that nasty hard-edged part of his mind, someday you might have to do all this yourself. Get used to the possibility now so that when it catches you by surprise, you will survive. She would want it that way.

  He finished his checks, then made the small movement of mind that folded the fighting field away from him. A moment later he was sitting in the normal lighting ofSunshine's narrow cockpit looking over at Enda.

  "Helm," she said as she unbuckled her restraints, "do not change the subject." "I got tired of fighting for their side," Helm said. "Besides, you were winning."

  "You should have let the business take its course regardless," Enda said. "That is the purpose of these exercises, so I am told." She glanced over at Gabriel, who was wiping the sweat off his face.

  "How did we do?" he said to the air.

  "Twenty-six minutes," said Helm. "You should be pleased with yourself. It's precious few engagements that run much longer than fifteen these days, especially with numbers like that. You're getting a better tactical sense, that's certain."

  "He is also running himself ragged," said Enda, watching Gabriel mop himself up with the cleaning cloth that he had started to keep by his seat for these exercises. "Are you all right?"

  "I was nearly dead, I thought," Gabriel said, still finding it hard to talk without gasping for air."Boy, is that real. It's worth it, even if I do hate it more than anything."

  "Well, you were the one to discover how effective it is," Enda said, levering herself out of the left-hand seat and standing up to take a good long stretch. "It is not my fault if the 'deep limbic' implementation of the fighting software deprives you of any sense that this is a simulation. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the programmers at Insight."

  "They'd probably just say that there's no difference between a simulation and the real thing if the simulation's real enough," said Helm. "Like to see some of them out here testing the software under conditions like this."

  Gabriel made a face.

  "It might be amusing," Enda said to Helm. "Anyway, I do not see that it makes the experience of fighting any less useful for Gabriel if, during the fight,he feels as if is real. Surely that should sharpen one's reactions. The more frequently that particular reaction is sharpened — the terror and coping with it — the easier it should get for you, or so it seems, from what I know of human habituation training. Am I wrong?"

  "Not in the concrete sense," Gabriel muttered. "I just don't like to have to do the laundry after every session."

  "You do the laundry after every session anyway," Enda said, wandering out of the pilot's cabin and back toward the little living area, "whether we work out in limbic mode or not. Sweat, you keep telling me, is something no marine can ever put up with."

  "The problem's not the sweat," Gabriel said, more or less under his breath. Then he laughed and pried himself out of his seat.

  Even though he had been using the fighting field every day for six months now, it still sometimes came as a shock to Gabriel how cramped the cockpit felt by comparison when he came out. The beauty of the Insight "JustWadeln" weapons management system was to make you feel as if youwere the ship — moving freely in space with your weapons available to you in the form you liked best.

  At any rate, Gabriel was becoming more expert withSunshine's gunnery software all the time. He thought he would probably never master the cool grace-in-fire that Enda displayed. It constantly bemused him how someone so peaceful and serene could be so very good at gunnery.

  "Guns are the soul of rationality," Enda had said to him late one night. "They have a certainty of purpose, and they fulfill it— when they don't jam — and like any other fine weapon, they pass on some of that certainty to their users, if the user is wise enough to hear what the gun has to say to him."

  To hear this coming from a delicate ethereal-looking fraal who might mass forty-five kilos if she put on all the clothes she owned, turned Gabriel's brain right around in his head. What guns mostly said to him was,Shoot me, shoot me! Yes, oh yes! — with various appropriate sound effects. Nonetheless, Enda's communion with her gunnery was something to be envied, and Gabriel occasionally listened to see if the guns had anything further to say to him on the subject.

  He walked down into the living area and found Enda already ensconced in one of the two fold-down chairs in the sitting room, talking to Helm again over comms and looking as fresh as if she had not been in battle for the better part of half an hour.

  "How do you do it?" he asked her.

  She looked at him with amusement. "I pull the chair down, like this—" "Never mind," Gabriel said. "When did he say he was coming?"

  "Twenty minutes. We can finish debriefing as soon as you're done playing with the new hardware."

  "Good," Gabriel said, grinning, and walked on down to the little laundry room to get rid of his present shipsuit, which smelled as if it had seen better days.

  Gabriel shoved his clothes down the chute, clamped the hatch closed and hit "Cycle." Straightening, he looked at the newly installed shower cubicle and dallied with the idea of a real water shower. Might as well do it while we're close to someplace where water's cheap. If it everreally was, when you were part owner in a spacecraft, when mass cost money to lift, and noncompressible mass twice as much.

  Finally, he opted for a steam-and-scrape cycle, with ten seconds of water
at the end. Gabriel punched the options in, let the machine get itself ready. To save time, he stood over the sink, wet his head, and took a squirt of shampoo out of the in-bulkhead dispenser.

  Getting grayer, Gabriel thought, scrubbing for a few moments in front of the mirror. And why not? The last six months would probably be enough to gray anybody out a little bit. Still, his father hadn't gone gray this fast, and he couldn't remember his mother ever saying anything about early gray running in her family. Gabriel had never thought about this before, but now that he was interested, there was no way to ask — or maybe no one to ask. He hadn't heard from his father since before. .

  The shower chimed, letting him know it was ready for him. Gabriel got in, closed the door tight, and hit the control for the steam.

  After a few minutes, through the ship's structure Gabriel could feel the very faint bump and rock, which meant someone was at the airlock. He's early, Gabriel thought, turning to catch the steam. Probably wants to chat with Enda without me in the way.

  The steam stopped. Gabriel lathered up in a hurry from the scrub dispenser set in the wall and peered through the steamy glass at the mirror where he could see nothing. He knew what would be visible there. He was looking more lined than he ought to at twenty-six. The stress. We've been through a lot in the last half-year. When things even out, when we find work we like better, when the money settles down to a steadier income.

  When I find out who framed me.

  That was the underlying problem, the one not likely to be solved any time soon. That was what they were probably already settling in to discuss out in the sitting room, Enda over a tumbler of kalwine, and Helm over something stronger.

  Gabriel shook his head, scattering water and lather. The water spat down from the shower head above, and he started counting so as not to be caught with soap all over him when it ran out. Every drop would be recycled, of course. It had not been like this on his old ship, which had water to spare. Whole bathtubs full of it, Gabriel thought. Hot. You could splash it around. There had been times over the past six months when, while hunted from one world to the next, shot at, driven into hiding, kidnapped and attacked with knives and guns and God knew what else, the thing that hadreally bothered Gabriel was that he couldn't have a real bath.