Diane Duane - Harbinger 2 - Storm At Eldala

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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 She wrote her first unpublished novel when she was eight,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

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.

Cover Art by rk post

First Printing: March 1999

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-85787

987654 3 21

ISBN: 0-7869-1334-7

21334XXX1501

Visit our web-site at www.tsr.com

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.

"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 of Sunshine'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 you were 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 with Sunshine'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 ever really 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 had really bothered Gabriel was

that he couldn't have a real bath.

The shower warning chimed. Gabriel scrubbed frantically, turning to rinse himself. Bang! The water valve

slammed itself shut, unforgiving. Gabriel stood there, steaming and wistful, trying to see over his shoulder

whether he had gotten the last of the soap off his back.

He got out, pulled a towel out of the dispenser, dried himself, and put the towel down the chute as well.

In the delivery-side hatch was his other shipsuit, rigorously clean and a little too stiff for his tastes. Gabriel

shook it out, slipped into it, stroked the seam closed, and did a couple of deep knee-flexes to let the

fabric remember where he bent. He paused before the minor to make sure the nap of his hair was lying in

the right direction before walking out.

The place smelled of hot food—something Helm had brought over from Longshot with him.

"I swear," Gabriel said as he came up the hall, pausing by one of the storage cabinets to get out a

tumbler, "I don't know where you get that stuff from. It's not like you don't shop in the same places we

do. Why does your food always smell so terrific?"

"It doesn't dare do otherwise," said the rough gravelly voice in the sitting room. There was Helm

Ragnarsson, sitting immense in the foldout guest chair, which had extended itself valiantly to its full extent

in both dimensions but was sagging under Helm's massive and muscular bulk, originally engineered for

heavy-planet and high-pressure work. "Here you are finally," Helm said. "Still wet behind the ears."

"Yeah, thanks loads," Gabriel said. "I'm going to have to fix that thing again, you know that? We should

make you bring your own chair." He turned to Enda, picked up the kalwine bottle sitting by the steaming

covered casserole on the table, which was now folded down between the chairs. "Refill?"

"Yes, thank you, Gabriel," she said, and held out her glass.

Gabriel poured for them both, then lifted the lid of the casserole. "What is this?"

"Eshk in red brandy sauce," Helm said.

"Now you did not buy that at the package commissary at Iphus Collective," said Enda. "Helm, confess.

You cooked it."

Helm grinned, and the look made Gabriel think that the top of his head might fall off. There was always

something unexpected about this huge, near-rectangular brick of a man with his meter-wide shoulders

and his iron-colored hair, suddenly producing one of these face-wide grins. It was the kind of smile you

could imagine a carnivore producing at a social gathering of prey animals. "And if I did?" Helm said.

"Then I think we should eat it," Gabriel said. "Plates?"

Enda reached under the table. "I have them here. Helm, tongs or a fork?"

"Tongs, please."

Gabriel went and got the third freestanding folding chair from his bunk cubicle, came back, set it up, and

fell to with the others. There was not a lot of discussion during this period, except about the sauce, which

had even Helm breaking out in a sweat within a matter of minutes.

"I thought you said humans developed a resistance to this kind of spicery," Enda said, looking from one

to the other of them.

"Eventually," Helm said.

Gabriel was unable to speak for the moment and resigned himself to suffering in silence and drinking

more wine.

Finally the edge of their hunger was blunted enough to talk over the afternoon's simulation, its high points

and low, and the ways in which Gabriel and Enda's reactions could improve to deal with the combat

situations—particularly those little ball bearing ships that had been attacking them. Ships of the same kind

had pressed Gabriel and Enda here in Corrivale and over in Thalaassa as well. All this side of the Verge

was buzzing with rumors of them now, ships of a strange construction, appearing from nowhere,

vanishing again. Nothing more had been seen of them around here, but this did not make Gabriel feel any

better about the area or their prospects in it.

"You didn't call me in for this practice session so close to our last one without reason," Helm said, wiping

his mouth with a paper cloth and folding it carefully.

"No," Gabriel said. "I think we should be thinking about leaving."

"I suppose it will come as something of a wrench for the locals," Enda said. "They have been coming to

depend on our custom . . ."

"And on us paying their outrageous prices," Gabriel muttered. "Well, no more."

"You have decided, then."

"Since when is it 'I'?" Gabriel asked.

Enda leaned back and sighed, giving him a look that might have translated as affectionate exasperation.

"Gabriel, I have been wandering around this part of the worlds for a long time. My opinion about where

we take Sunshine is simple. I don't care. I am delighted to defer to you in this regard. Where shall we

go?"

"Someplace with work," Helm said. "I mean, there's not much money in staying here. If work were the

only problem, you'd have angled your jets and moved right after we got back from Thalaassa, since I

don't think you want to work in this system any more. Well, about time, is all I can say."

"I'm surprised you haven't said anything about it before now," Gabriel said.

"Before you made up your mind?" Helm said as he put his feet up. "No point. You're still a typical

shiphead—all strong-and-silent stuff until it's actually time to move. Then get up and do it with no

warning. Which is smart. The best starfall is the unadvertised one."

"A masterly summation," Enda said. "Perhaps, Helm, you will tell us as well what Gabriel now has in

mind, for this has been a matter of interest to me also."

Helm snickered. "I'd go into futures trading if I could do that." He leaned back and looked at Gabriel.

"What's the word?"

Gabriel shook his head. "I haven't found out anything further here about the people responsible for getting

me cashiered," he said, "and the money in this system isn't worth the trouble of staying. At the same time I

hate getting too far away from the Grid, but it's also occurred to me that the need to be close to the data

had obscured a possibility . . . and I thought we might look into doing some infotrading."

Enda bowed her head, a "thinking" gesture. Gabriel glanced at Helm.

"Big profit margins there," said Helm. "Big risks, too. You have a software or hardware crash while

you're transiting with live stuff from a drivesat relay, or you run into some kind of transportation problem,

miss a starfall, drop the data, and suddenly there are people suing you from here back to the First

Worlds."

"Not somewhere I'd been planning to go at this point," said Gabriel.

"Not someplace you'd ever go again," Helm muttered, "if you lose a load of data. Lawyers . . ." He

shivered. "But the profit margins . . ." He looked as thoughtful as Enda. "Twenty to fifty percent on a

load, if you pick somewhere just opening up. 'Course places like that are dangerous too."

"I had thought," Gabriel said, "about hiring some armed backup."

Helm grinned from ear to ear. His ship was full from core to shell with weaponry of all kinds. But then

Helm was a mutant, and unless you were a mutant who was also tired of life, armament out in these less

than perfectly policed spaces was a good idea. Too many humans considered being a mutant some kind

of treason against the human genotype to be punished in any way that wouldn't get you caught. Helm

clearly did not intend to be caught assisting anyone in this kind of rough justice by lacking the kind of

hardware that would dissuade them.

"Where were you thinking of going?" Helm said. "Got to consider fuel, victualling—"

"Terivine," said Gabriel.

Enda nodded sidewise. "It would make sense," she said. "Terivine has become a common enough

waystation for ships doing the runs between Corrivale and Aegis, and Lucullus as well, but the place is

not heavily populated . . ."

"That's not a huge problem," Gabriel said. "Besides the colonists, there's a considerable presence of

scientists studying the riglia, those avian sentients they found. They need to move their data back and

forth at something better than the crawl they'd get from using unscheduled infotraders. Tendril and Aegis

both have to move administrative information pertaining to their colonies there. It looks like a good small

market for a beginning infotrading business."

"You have obviously been doing your research," Enda said, "so you will know what kind of competition

is there."

"Not much," Gabriel said. "Two firms work the system at present. One's native, a one-ship company

called Alwhirn. Another is a licensee, Infotrade Interstellar Aegis."

Helm's eyebrows went up. "Isn't Infotrade Interstellar a subsidiary of VoidCorp?"

"These days, what isn't?" Gabriel said wearily.

"Us," said Enda. She pursed her lips in an expression that made her look unusually like a disapproving

grandmother.

"You think they don't know it?" said Helm. "But here you sit in the system, bold as brass plate, as if they

didn't dare touch you."

"They do not," Enda said, "for the moment. Not after we put so sharp a thorn in their side at Thalaassa

and Corrivale, and Gabriel became the hammer to drive it in. They would be eager enough to repay him

the trouble. The Concord would be quick to lay that at their doors if they tried that now. However, once

we move elsewhere ..."

That was always the problem. Since the vast expanse of the Verge began to reopen, the stellar nations

had been moving in with various degrees of eagerness, acquisitiveness, or plain old-fashioned greed.

Trade was opening out again, or for the first time. The wars that had cut off the Verge from the rest of

humanity for so long had kept major trade routes and infrastructure from being established. Now what

should have happened a quarter century earlier was beginning to happen again and in a rush. Every stellar

nation or multistellar-national with the funds to spare was expanding into this area, hunting markets to

master and resources to exploit. Systems that were backwaters ten years ago had become trading

crossroads of considerable wealth and power. Through such systems, like Corrivale, Terivine, and Aegis,

the huge cruisers of the stellar nations passed, both to trade and to find ways to extend their own

influence. Mutual-assistance treaties, joint-use agreements for planets or whole systems, "understandings"

and "gentlemen's agreements" could result in a world becoming the property of a stellar empire or

company based thousands of light-years away. VoidCorp was probably the least principled of these.

Once a software company, VoidCorp was now an interstellar power with many systems under its

domination and many more becoming increasingly entangled in its web of interlocking corporate

affiliations, treaties, and licensing agreements.

Gabriel sighed. "If we try to force ourselves into a position where we don't go anywhere that VoidCorp

goes, we won't have a lot of choices. I don't like them any better than either of you do, especially

considering that some part of VoidCorp Intelligence may have had something to do with setting me up.

There are millions of VoidCorp Employees scattered across space who've never heard of us, won't have

a clue who we are, and even if they're told, they may not care."

Enda frowned. "I would not be too sure. We only liberated about a thousand sesheyans that the

Corporation is sure should be Employees. That the Concord declared them not to have been so is

fortunate, but it will not count for much with VoidCorp."

"I.I. Aegis is just a licensee," Gabriel said, "local people running the business with VC equipment and

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AbouttheAuthorDIANEDUANEwasborninManhattanin1952,aYearoftheDragon.ShewasraisedonLongIsland,intheNewYorkCitysuburbs.Shewroteherfirstunpublishednovelwhenshewaseight,illustratingitherselfincrayon.Aftermanyyearsofstudyinstruggle,shestormedintothesciencefictionworldin1979withTheDoorintoFire,publishedbyDe...

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Diane Duane - Harbinger 2 - Storm At Eldala

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