S. L. Viehl - Bio Rescue 01 - Bio Rescue

Bio Rescue

S. L. Viehl

Bio Rescue 01

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

click for scan notes and proofing history

Contents

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Praise for Bio Rescue

“Like Anne McCaffrey, only with more aliens… entertaining.”

—SF Crowsnest

“The book’s strength lies in the aquatic nature of the main species in it… and

the issues of interspecies interaction that it raises.”

—Booklist

“Viehl does a good job of telling the story, with believable alien as well as

human characters and with more romantic emphasis than you usually see in SF.”

—SFRevu

“Viehl excels at world building and characterization, bringing the planet K-2

to life and populating it with a diverse cast of native and alien species. Dair is

a strong-willed, tough military commander… A rousing adventure tale mixed

with space opera and a bit of romance, this is a fast, enthralling read that leaves

behind a strong message about tolerance and open-mindedness.”

—Romantic Times

“An undeniable sense of light-footed fun… Viehl brings a lot of helpful

personal experience to her militarily edged fiction… [Her] combination of

space opera and oceanic species promises to chart new waters.”

—The Agony Column

“An awesome beginning to what could easily become a series of stories…

just as superb as Blade Dancer… this novel catches the reader on page ONE

and refuses to release the imagination until the last page has been turned. I

simply cannot recommend this title highly enough. Brava!”

—Huntress Book Reviews

Also by S. L. Viehl

Stardoc

Beyond Vallaran

Endurance

Shockball

Eternity Row

Blade Dancer

Afterburn

ROC

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

Toronto,

Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin

Canada Inc.)

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Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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Victoria 3124,

Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand

Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London

WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a

division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a

Roc hardcover edition.

First Roc Mass Market Printing, August 2005

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

Printed in the United States of America

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no

part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),

without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and

the above publisher of this book.

publisher’s note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not

assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and

destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher

has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the

Internet or via any other means without the permission of the

publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only

authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage

electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the

author’s rights is appreciated.

For my stepdad, Anthony J. Sabella,

with love and gratitude.

You’ll always be

the father of my heart.

ACKNOWLEDEMENT

My thanks to James Milton for many brainstorming sessions that contributed

much to this novel, and to the members of the Pro Write group for allowing me

to share the experience.

You guys are the best.

Bio Rescue

CHAPTER

ONE

^ »

Most Allied League pilots didn’t like flying around Hsktskt displacer

blockades. It was about as intelligent as ’Zangians swimming bloody near a

starving mogshrike—they only did it if they weren’t particularly attached to

their tails.

But Jadaira hadn’t become a pilot to preserve her ass.

“I’ve got a ship on screen,” Burn said over her headgear. “Vector

ninety-three degrees, one-forty east, seven solar, midfield.”

Dair didn’t think anyone from her squadron had been foolish enough to

blunder off course into an orbital minefield, but she switched to flight band and

checked anyway. “Somebody going sand-belly on me?”

All of her pilots answered, by the numbers and in position.

“Acknowledged.” Relief made her ease back in her harness. So far the

pilots’ pod kept their losses at zero, but with all the war junk floating around,

that could change. Rapidly. “Burn’s found himself a stray. Saree, drop down

and have a look, if you would.”

Through the viewer Jadaira watched as her wing lead pilot rolled out of

patrol formation and flew a short parallel to the field. Saree’s strafer made a

silver flash against the star-strewn blackness as she came about.

“Target acquired, Commander,” her wing leader transmitted. “Freighter

class. Could be a League transport.”

The League had pulled out of the Pmoc Quadrant months ago, and the war

had kept them so busy they hadn’t come back to visit. Still, the ship could be

carrying reinforcements to the front. “LTF or passenger?”

“Too small to be troop. Debris trail’s half a kim wide.”

No military pilot would have left that kind of scatter, no matter how

smashed-up his ship was. It would be like begging for a rogue or a merc to

attack.

“Refugees.” Dair shifted her grip on the controls as she considered the

situation.

Her patrol could provide safe escort through the system for anyone fleeing

the war, if necessary, but this was different. She couldn’t send more than one

ship in to guide the blunderer out without risking triggering the whole minefield.

Also, the patrol’s primary mission was search and destroy, not search and

rescue.

There were really only two options. She could try to get them out, or she

could watch them blow up. “Feeling toothy today, Ensign?”

Her gunner’s voice acquired a mocking edge. “You have to ask,

Commander?”

Dair recalled Saree before she broke formation herself. “Maintain safe

distance until we’re clear. Keep an eye out for more strays; sometimes these

lost pups travel in pairs.” She hesitated. “Onkar, if we blow this, you’ve got the

pod.”

Her second-in-command didn’t like her giving him orders, mainly for

dominance reasons. When there was a threat to the pod in the water, males

became aggressive, and very protective of females. Flight training had cured

her male pilots of most of that, but Dair knew Onkar still resented her

outranking him. Telling him he could take over only if she was dead was just

another subtle volley in the silent war between them.

He tossed back one of his own, not so subtle: “I’ll note the regs violation on

my incident report.”

Of course he would. Onkar noted everything.

He’s probably rehearsing how he’ll give orders already, she thought as she

entered the field. Duo, keep my tail in one piece.

The Hsktskt were rather unimaginative when it came to setting up displacer

mines, and the best way to enter a field of them was from an angle. Each of the

proximity-sensitive mines had been programmed to randomly rotate positions,

and carried enough charge to blast a nice-size hole through any slow-moving,

unprotected hull. A snap to get around, if one was an experienced fighter pilot.

Unfortunately, the League transport pilot wasn’t. Dair saw that as soon as she

made visual contact, and watched his inexpert maneuvering set off three more

mines. “Oh, not good.”

“Mouth-breather,” Burn muttered.

“Have a little sympathy for the handicapped, cousin.” She disengaged all

auto controls and powered up the boosters. “Be slick now; here we go.”

Flying fast and straight was the only way to keep from triggering more mines.

Fast Dair could do; straight was the challenge. While she avoided colliding

with the mines in their immediate flight path, Burn began targeting the rows

ahead of them and shooting out a corridor in front of them. Impact shock waves

from the explosions battered the hull, but the strafer was uniquely designed to

acquire, absorb, and then shed displacer fire. Constellations rippled as the

blasts rolled off them in steady, light-bending sheets.

“Transport on center screen, Dair. Vector fourteen degrees, thirty-eight east,

point-two-five solar.” Burn made a rude sound with his gill vents. “Lurching

through on a single thruster, the finless pup.”

She still had to make sure she was trying to kill herself for a friendly.

“Initiate structure scan.”

“Acknowledged.” The gunner performed the sensor sweep and patched the

data directly to her screen. “It’s League standard. Debris trail’s fouling the

readings, but weapons and stardrive appear inactive.”

The civilian pilot must have shut them down to reduce his energy emissions;

so he apparently had some brains. “Signal and advise him to cut his engines and

hold position.”

Burn relayed her orders as he cleared the last of the mines between them and

the transport. As it came fully into her visual field, Dair swore. The ship was a

passenger freighter, designed to haul lots of beings through space but do little

else. And it was a flying wreck, riddled with impact craters, hull panels

scorched, and engine cowlings close to collapse. What she could see of the

fuselage appeared intact, but in some places, probably not for long.

“I’ve received a response,” her gunner said. “Ship’s the Hemat, private

passenger transport out of Sol Quadrant.” A sharp clik of disbelief came over

Dair’s headset. “Cousin, you’re not going to believe this.”

“Try me.”

“He’s warning us off.”

She changed her mind—the pilot was an idiot—and switched on her

transcom. “Transport vessel Hemat, this is the Wavelight, PQPM Commander

Jadaira mu T’resa. We’re here to provide assistance. Power down your engines

and stand by.” And quit acting like a jerk.

The voice that replied sounded clipped and unpleasant. “We do not require

assistance, Wavelight.”

Of course they require assistance; any half-wit can see that. But quadrant

regulations as well as her own colonial charter required her to respect the

wishes of any species that refused aid. If they said no, she would have to leave

them alone. Her ’Zangian instincts had no problem with that. In the water, the

unhealthy or crippled were abandoned, driven off, or went on their own to an

isolated, sacred place to die.

Only Dair wasn’t completely ’Zangian.

Perhaps she’d heard him wrong or had inadvertently offended him. “Say

again, Hemat, and please provide your status.”

“We do not require assistance, Wavelight.” The pilot’s voice came through

the transcom, harsher than before, almost like a growl. “Most of the systems on

board, including our navcomm, have been destroyed.”

He can’t find his way out of the field, that’s all? “Copy, Hemat, we’ll guide

you out. What’s your destination?”

“We were in route to Kevarzangia Two, but—”

“Not a problem,” she cut in on his relay before he could hand her more

nonsense. “That’s our home base. We’ll escort you.”

The voice grew nastier as the pilot snapped out his response. “Wavelight, I

repeat, the Skartesh are not in need of your assistance. This is not your

concern.”

“Skartesh.” Burn produced a weary sigh. “As if we needed more of them.”

“Hemat.” She fiddled with her panel, creating artificial interference. “Hemat

, do you copy? Your signal is breaking up again.”

“Dair,” her gunner cut in over her ruse. “The bloody mines are grouping.”

That meant the disturbance they’d created within the blockade field had been

large enough to trigger a mass detonation sequence. AKA the worst thing that

could possibly happen.

Enough chitchat. “Hemat pilot. Hold your position until we pull ahead

fifteen kim, and then follow our track. Push your throttle through the gate as

soon as we’re clear.”

“Unacceptable.” He was actually snarling at her now. “I repeat—”

Dair never found it difficult to be genial toward other starjocs, but even her

good nature had limits. “Look, pilot, all these floating blasters have just gone

communal. Whether we stay or not, they’re going to converge on our present

positions and blow. You and I have about a minute and thirty seconds to clear

the field, or make our peace with our respective deities.”

There was a moment of static, then, “Negative. Abandon the field; I repeat,

abandon the field.”

Dair could have fiddled more with the relay, but whatever coy game the

Skartesh pilot was playing aggravated her. “Okay, friend, here’s the situation: If

you stay, we stay. Should you change your mind, maintain visual contact and

prep to get the hell out of here. Wavelight out.” She terminated the signal.

“Do we really have to die for a bunch of Skittish?” Burn wanted to know.

Part of Dair didn’t want to. The Skartesh—commonly referred to as the

Skittish—had been forcibly evacuated from their homeworld by the Allied

League. Skart’s solar system had been one of the first engulfed by the war

between the colonizing League worlds and the reptilian raider-slavers of the

Hsktskt faction. As a result, the displaced lupine aliens were rapidly becoming

the most numerous species on K-2. Because of the strange and often disruptive

nature of their behavior, few of the land dwellers on K-2 wanted any more of

them to transfer in. The native ’Zangians weren’t as judgmental, but the tensions

the cult created among the other colonists had everyone worried.

Certainly no one would have called the Skartesh a species to die for.

But Dair felt sure she could get them out intact. “Lock a range and bearing

scanner on him. Tell me the minute he twitches.”

“Are we staying if he doesn’t?”

She routed power to the stabilizers. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re stubborn, demented, and you bluff like a Trytinorn dances.”

Burn made the strumming sound of ’Zangian mirth. “But then those have always

been your best qualities.”

“That and I picked you as my gunner.” She checked the position of the nearest

clustering probes.

Dair flew over the Hemat and took up position in front. She eased her hold

on the control grips and watched the screen as Burn targeted the rows ahead and

started blowing out a new conduit. Once he’d opened a linear avenue wide

enough to accommodate the freighter, she throttled forward and shot into the

open conduit. Five kim. Ten kim.

Come on, come on, she thought as she watched the scanner. Quit being such

a nail-head and shake your tail.

Fifteen kim. Slowly the freighter began to follow their track.

“Appears he’s not quite as sand-belly as we are,” Burn said.

“So much for my dream male.” The knot in her chest eased, but only

momentarily. Turbulence rocked the strafer as she navigated the channel of

clear space Burn had made. Rolling the ship helped them endure the buffeting,

but the sluggish freighter couldn’t do the same.

“Commander, he won’t withstand much more.” Her voice of reason patched

another sweep of the Hemat to her console. “They’re barely maintaining

environment as it is.”

They’d have breathers on board. They had to. “Patience and persistence,

cousin.”

“What about the mines?”

She ran the sharp edges of her top teeth over her bottom lip. She had to divert

the clustering mines away from the Hemat, which they’d locked on as the bigger

target. Only one way to do that in a blockade field.

Dair knew there were plenty of ways to die in space. It was a vast,

unfriendly void that supported life only if it brought along with it its own heat

and atmosphere. She took small comfort in the fact that being blown up by

displacer mines was one of the more merciful ends.

At least they’d die fast.

Dair made her decision. “Burn, punch me another hole, wide spread,

forty-four degrees port. Make it sloppy.” She changed the rate of their

emissions, making it appear as if the strafer were a very large, very damaged

troop freighter.

The gunner clicked his teeth once and then released a long breath through his

vents. “Duo, that’s pissing blood.”

“Exactly.” She signaled the freighter. “Hemat pilot. Stay on course and don’t

follow us. As soon as you’re clear, signal my squadron. They’ll guide you

home.”

“Commander—”

“Don’t debate this with me, pilot.” She hated being curt with a stranger, but

they had no time for diplomatic niceties. “Follow orders or bid us, your

passengers, and your posterior farewell.”

Her gunner opened a second, larger swath through the port side of the field,

and she abruptly veered off. The concentration of fire and destruction, along

with their engine output, acted like a magnetic field on the blockade units, and

drew them away from the transport to crowd in around the strafer.

Like any killing machine, the mines went for the biggest chunk of bait.

“Deep with you, Jadaira mu T’resa,” Burn said.

Hearing the ’Zangian united-upon-death farewell made her shoulders shake,

but Dair didn’t laugh out loud. Gunners were so fatalistic—and sensitive—and

her cousin was no exception. “At your side, Byorn mu Znora.”

As the grouping mines began exploding in chains, the shock waves turned

into direct contact displacer hits— something the hull couldn’t shrug off.

Although the cabin environment remained secure for the moment, Dair

automatically pulled on her breather and locked her arms into the control grips,

to prevent her hands from being jarred from the console.

What was it her academy instructor had said? Learn to fly through hell and

you’ll always find home on the other side.

The explosions were so close and dense that her viewer became occluded,

and Dair had to rely on console readings to follow the narrowing channel. A

few kilometers more and they’d be clear, but the communing blasters were

already closing off the end and forming a wide, deadly wall. Sealers around the

overhead canopy began to whine. She knew her ship better than anyone; the

strafer would never hold together long enough to punch through this mess.

Sorry, Dad, Teresa. I had a good run.

Sonic fire registered on her screen, making her jerk. She leaned forward;

almost convinced it was a ripple. But it wasn’t. “Someone wants a

court-martial.”

Burn’s response was lost to the blasts as the squadron moved in on the

blockade wall, and vaporized enough mine chains to punch out an exit for them.

As the last impact wave hit them, Dair’s console screen shattered, and plas

shards floated lazily over to bounce off her faceplate. She lost all data display.

“Ensign, where is our lost pup?”

“Sixty-one degrees starboard, Commander. Now clear of the blockade.”

Dair needed to make sure their interior atmosphere was intact, and she

wasn’t going to take the pilot’s word for anything. “Hemat pilot, hold your

position; we’re coming around to dock with you.”

She turned in a tight circle to fly a pass beside the transport when something

glittered in the corner of her right eye. A half second later, something slammed

into the side of the ship and sent them into a whirl.

S. L. Viehl - Bio Rescue 01 - Bio Rescue

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