David Weber - Path of the Fury

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Path of the Fury
By David Weber
Copyright © 1992 by David Weber
A Baen Books Original
Fourth printing, July 1998
Contents
Prologue
Book One:
Victims
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Book Two:
Fugitive
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Book Three:
Fury
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Epilogue
Vengeance Be Terrible
"You're saying we were set up," Cateau whispered.
"Exactly. You were supposed to be wiped out and 'push' the terrorists into massacring their
hostages, thus blackening the Cadre's reputation and branding the Emperor with the blame for a
catastrophic military adventure. That plan failed for only two reasons: the courage and
determination of your company and, in particular, of Master Sergeant Alicia DeVries."
Alicia glared at him, hands, taloned in hen lap under the table edge, and horror boiled behind
her eyes. Captain Alwyn and Lieutenant Strassman dead in the drop. Lieutenant Masolle dead
two minutes after grounding. First Sergeant Yussuf and her people buying the breakout from the
LZ with their lives. And then the nightmare cross-country journey in their powered armor, while
people — friends — were picked off, blown apart, incinerated in gouts of plasma or shattered by
tungsten penetrators from auto cannon and heavy machine-guns. Two-man atmospheric stingers
screaming down to strafe and rocket their bleeding ranks, and the wounded they had no choice
but to abandon. And then the break-in to the hostages. Private Oselli throwing himself in front of
a plasma cannon to shield the captives. Tannis screaming a warning over the com and shooting
three terrorists off her back while point-blank small arms battered her own armor and she took
two white-hot tungsten penetrators meant for Alicia. The terror and blood and smoke and stink as
somehow they held they held they held until the recovery shuttles came down like the hands of
God to pluck them out of Hell while she and the medic ripped at Tannis's armor and restarted her
heart twice. . . .
It was impossible. They couldn't have done it — no one could have done it — but they had.
They'd done it because they were the best. Because they were the Cadre, the chosen samurai of
the Empire. Because it was their duty. Because they were, by God, too stupid to know they
couldn't . . . and because they were all that stood between two hundred civilians and death.
To my parents,
who said I could.
Prologue
Blackness.
Blackness over and about her. Drifting, dreamless, endless as the stars themselves, twining
within her. It enfolded her, sharing itself with her, and she snuggled against it in the warm,
windless void that was she.
But it frayed. Slowly, imperceptibly even to one such as she, the warp and woof of darkness
loosened. Slivers of peace drifted away, and the pulse of life quickened. She roused—sleepily,
complaining at the disturbance— and clutched at the darkness as a sleeper might blankets on a
frosty morning. But repose unraveled in her hands, and she woke . . . to blackness.
Yet it was a different blackness, and her thoughts sharpened as cold swept itself about her,
flensing away the final warmth. Her essence reached out, quick and urgent in something a mortal
might have called fear, but only emptiness responded, and a blade of sorrow twisted within her.
They were gone—her sister selves, their creators. All were gone. She who had never existed
as a single awareness was alone, and the void sucked at her. It sought to devour her, and she was
but a shadow of what once she had been . . . a shadow who felt the undertow of loneliness sing to
her with extinction's soulless lack of malice.
Focused thought erected a barrier, holding the void at bay. Once that would have been
effortless; now it dragged at her like an anchor, but it was a weight she could bear. She roused
still further, awareness flickering through the vast, empty caverns of her being, and was appalled
by what she saw. By how far she had sunk, how much she had lost.
Yet she was what she was, diminished yet herself, and a sparkle of grim humor danced. She
and her sister selves had wondered, once. They had discussed it, murmuring to one another in the
stillness of sleep when their masters had no current task for them. Faith had summoned their
creators into existence, however they might have denied it, and her selves had known that when
that faith ended, so would those she/they served. But what of her and her selves? Would the work
of their makers' hands vanish with them? Or had they, unwitting or uncaring, created a force
which might outlive them all?
And now she knew the answer . . . and cursed it. To be the last and wake to know it, to feel the
wound where her other selves should be, was as cruel as any retribution she/they had ever visited.
And to know herself so reduced, she who had been the fiercest and most terrible of all her selves,
was an agony more exquisite still.
She hovered in the darkness which no longer comforted, longing for the peace she had lost,
even if she must find it in non-being, but filled still with the purpose for which she had been
made. Need and hunger quivered within her, and she had never been patient or docile. Something
in her snarled at her vanished creators, damning them for leaving her without direction, deprived
of function, and she trembled on a cusp of decision, tugged towards death by loneliness and
impelled towards life by unformed need.
And then something else flickered on the edge of her senses. It guttered against the blackness,
fainter even than she, and she groped out towards it. Groped out, and touched, and gasped in
silent shock at the raw, jagged hatred—at the fiery power of that dying ember that cried out in
wordless torment. It came not from her creators but from a mortal, and she marveled at the
strength of it.
The ember glowed hotter at her touch, blazing up, consuming its fading reserves in desperate
appeal. It shrieked to her, more powerful in its dying supplication than ever her creators had been,
and it knew her. It knew her! Not by name—not as an entity, but for herself, for what she was. Its
agony fastened upon her like pincers, summoning her from the emptiness to perform her function
once more.
Book One:
Victims
Chapter One
The assault shuttle crouched in the corral like a curse, shrouded in thin, blowing snow. Smoke
eddied with the snow, throat-catching with the stench of burned flesh, and the snouts of its energy
cannon and slug-throwers steamed where icy flakes hissed to vapor. Mangled megabison lay
about its landing feet, their genetically-engineered fifteen-hundred-kilo carcasses ripped and torn
in snow churned to bloody mud by high-explosives.
The barns and stables were smoldering ruins, and the horses and mules lay heaped against the
far fence, no longer screaming. They hadn't fled at first, for they had heard approaching shuttles
before, and the only humans they'd ever known had treated them well. Now a line of slaughtered
bodies showed their final panicked flight.
They hadn't died alone. A human body lay before the gate; a boy, perhaps fifteen—it was hard
to know, after the bullet storm finished with him—who had run into the open to unbar it when the
murders began.
One of the raiders stepped from the gaping door of what had been a home, fastening his belt,
followed by a broken, wordless sound that had become less than human hours ago. A final pistol
shot cracked. The sound stopped.
The raider adjusted his body armor, then thrust two fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly.
The rest of his team filtered out of the house or emerged from the various sheds, some already
carrying armloads of valuables.
"I'm calling the cargo flight in—ETA forty minutes!" The leader pumped an arm, then
gestured at a clear space beside the grounded assault shuttle. "Get it together for sorting!
"What about Yu?" someone asked, jerking his head at the single dead raider who lay entangled
with the white-haired body of his killer. Rifle fire had torn the old man apart, but Yu's face was
locked in a rictus of horrified surprise, and his stiff hands clutched the gory ice where the survival
knife had driven up under his armor and ripped his belly open. The leader shrugged.
"Make sure he's sanitized and leave him. The authorities'll be pleased somebody got at least
one pirate. Why disappoint them?"
He strolled across to Yu and grimaced down. Stupid fuck always did forget this was a job, not
just a chance for sick kicks. So sure of himself, coming right in on the old bastard just to enjoy
slapping him around. If the old fart'd had a decent weapon, he'd have gotten half a dozen of us.
The leader had chosen long ago to sign away his own humanity, but he would shed no tears
for the likes of Yu. He turned his back and waved again, and the assault party filtered back into
the smoke and ruin and agony to loot.
-=0=-***-=0=-
She came out of the snow like the white-furred shadow of death, strands of amber hair
blowing about an oval face and jade eyes come straight from Hell. Her foundered horse lay far
behind her, flanks no longer heaving, his sweat turned chill and frozen hard. She'd wept at how
gallantly he'd answered to her harsh usage, but there were no tears now. The tick pulsed within
her, and time seemed slow and clumsy as the icy air burned her lungs.
The communicator which had summoned her weighted one parka pocket, and she thrust her
binoculars into another as she moved through the whiteness. She'd recognized the shuttle class—
one of the old Leopard boats, far from new but serviceable—and counted the raiders as they
gathered about their commander. Twenty-four, and the body in the snow with Grandfather made
twenty-five. A full load for a Leopard, the emotionless computer in her head observed. No one
still aboard, then. That meant no one could kill her with the shuttle's guns . . . and that she could
摘要：

PathoftheFuryByDavidWeberCopyright©1992byDavidWeberABaenBooksOriginalFourthprinting,July1998ContentsPrologueBookOne:VictimsChapterOneChapterTwoChapterThreeChapterFourChapterFiveChapterSixChapterSevenChapterEightChapterNineChapterTenBookTwo:FugitiveChapterElevenChapterTwelveChapterThirteenChapterFour...

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