Diane Duane - Starrise at Corrivale

iir-p 1 ii

Ten seconds.

"All ships," Gabriel said down comms, "cluster close on me, five seconds, then scatter. Afterwards, head for atmosphere's top and make starfall. Don't wait!"

More screaming erupted. But suddenly the view around Sunshine's cockpit had entirely too many ships in it, entirely too close. Around them, he could see ballbearings closing in. Don't let them shoot, he thought. For them, it doesn't matter if we're dead, and oh, I don't want to be dead that way. He kept firing. "Now," Gabriel said softly down comms. The other ships scattered outwards, and suddenly he was left surrounded by too many of the spherical ships. Enda held them there. Gabriel glanced briefly at her then said, Now's the time.

She wrenched them sideways. White hot beams of plasma scalded past the cockpit windows as Sunshine tumbled and dove out from under the crowd of ships. Then Enda kicked the system drive in at full power, the air screaming in protest against her skin as Sunshine fled upwards. Behind them, the world went white.

They were at nearly twenty kilometers. A squeezed nuke shouldn't do too much harm at this altitude, Gabriel thought rather desperately. Nothing that the atmosphere becoming useless in a few hours wouldn't do anyway.

To the thousand people down there that we couldn't get off before they came. A thousand people!

"Starfall," Enda said to the other ships, "now!" A thousand people.

The next five days were less easy to bear for Gabriel. They were full of fear. Aboard Sunshine, there was not that much physical discomfort. They were carrying enough supplies to feed the sesheyans who had been on board when takeoff became imperative, but there was no contact with the other ships to see in what condition they had made their own starfalls, whether the people aboard them were mostly well, or how they were now. Gabriel knew for a fact that three of the four ships that had arrived had only a little food and water on board, despite his demands. Someone had messed up, or there had been no time, or ... There had been little time for explanations. They would be getting hungry over in the other ships, and thirsty. They would not know what awaited them on the far side when they made starrise at Corrivale.

Gabriel had his own fears about that. VoidCorp loomed large in them. He doubted that the body snatchers would turn up near Grith. They did seem to prefer the dark. Had there been more of them waiting to descend on Rhynchus after the escape? Even if there had not, would the other ships get there in time to remove the remaining sesheyans before the air ran out?

There were no answers. There would be none until they made starrise, and perhaps not for a good while after that. Gabriel, for the time being, could only spend as much time with the sesheyan youngsters as he could, showing them how to play the non-Grid based games on the entertainment system and trying to comfort them when they were afraid- which was fairly often. They did not know where their parents were and without that basic certainty, they would not talk about much of anything else. Gabriel came to recognize the sound of sesheyan weeping, a kind of breathy gasp. It kept him up at night. Five days, though, eventually passed. Gabriel strapped himself back in and looked somberly looked over at Enda as the digits on the clock in the tank slipped away. Despite the fact that another possible fight loomed ahead, they were both unsuited. Even if they had sufficient e-suits for everyone to wear, their models would not fit the sesheyans in size or design and it didn't seem right to ensure their own safety while leaving their passengers in danger.

"How are your hunches running?" Enda asked. Less than a minute remained on the countdown.

Gabriel shook his head. "Not a whisper. You?"

"Mine have been regrettably silent."

"Do your people think that means something bad?"

"Some of my people," she said, smiling just slightly-a very sad smile-"think it means you are already dead. Granted, those people would mostly be mindwalkers to whom my normal state of mind would be a pitiful thing indeed. So I do not take them too seriously."

Gabriel nodded. "Enda," he said. "If those body snatchers ever get close to us-"

"I will not be a willing participant," she said, "believe me."

"I don't want to be either," Gabriel said.

She looked at him and blinked slowly, hiding the great blue eyes for a moment. "I will see to it," she said. "Thirty seconds," Gabriel called to the youngsters in the back. "Get strapped in." "Right," they said, more or less in chorus. They had not been speaking in staves, and Gabriel found himself wondering whether they usually did so at home and whether he was going to have to pay some kind of outrageous faceprice to their parents for teaching them awful habits.

The seconds ticked by. Twenty . . . ten. There was nervous shuffling in the back of the ship. Gabriel tried to swallow, finding his mouth too dry.

Zero.

Light sheeted down around them as they made starrise. It was red, red as blood that light, and surely it was an illusion that it seemed to run more slowly than usual, slicking down from the cockpit windows to show Corrivale's welcome blast of sunlight off to the left. And off to the right-darkness.

Massive, an elongated teardrop shape with VoidCorp insignia, lazing in toward Hydrocus. It could not have been more than ten kilometers away from them, and it still looked immense. Gabriel tried one more time to swallow, then gave it up. There were five other smaller vessels with it, gaudier in their livery- reds and golds and gunfire blues-but all of them wore that insignia, and all their guns were shivering with the electrostatic discharge that suggested they were ready to fire.

Around Sunshine, first one other of the refugee ships made starrise in a blast of purple, and then a second, mostly green streaked with yellow. The third did not appear. Timing error? Gabriel whispered in the fighting field. Or did it jump at all? Never mind, and he cried to the other ships, "Scatter!" They did, possibly knowing it was the only way to save their lives. The smaller VoidCorp ships went off in pursuit of them severally; one held its place, the biggest of them, hanging above Grith, waiting. Have you got another of your little toys aboard?

Gabriel thought. He watched that ship carefully to see if it started anything like the maneuver he had seen the earlier VoidCorp ship practicing above Grith. I don't have a weapon that would make a dustgrain's worth of difference against that. . . but if necessary, Sunshine could punch a real good hole in her updecks, possibly destroy her bridge, certainly leave her in no position for any fancy maneuvering. Enda ... he said in the field.

Gabriel, Enda said, sometimes you are very audible indeed, or rather, your imagery radiates well. She shivered. Possibly I am having some contaminating influence upon you. At any rate, if you think you must exercise such an option for the lives at stake, the price is more than fair, I would say. Gabriel swallowed hard, twice. Always nice to have support from a partner, he said, and as the VoidCorp vessel started to move slowly toward Grith, Gabriel started to choose his target, getting ready to tell the computer what to do.

The fire of starrise broke out not five kilometers away, sheeting down in ferocious blues around a sleek shape that Gabriel knew more than well. Falada's twin, with premonitory corona discharge shuddering around her weapons, all primed and ready to go: Schmetterling. She rose out of the darkness. Along with her, five other smaller ships, cutters or light cruisers with all their gunports shivering with blue-black fire, ready to go.

Gabriel looked at Schmetterling and gulped again, then he said down the comm connection to the other ships in his group, "People, get back here quick! Close up around me in a hurry and don't move after that!"