Deluge Book Three of The Twins of Petaybee

by McCaffrey, Anne; Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann

• ISBN13: 9780345470072
• ISBN10: 0345470079
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-03-24
• Publisher: Del Rey

Summary

InterGal Corporation has long desired to exploit the resource-rich Petaybee. But the planet and its guardians, led by Yana Maddock and Sean Shongili, along with their twin children, Ronan and Murel, have successfully thwarted every attempt by the Corporation to impose its iron-fisted dominion. Until now. With a bold move, InterGal's military arm has dispatched an invading force to subdue the planet once and for all. While their parents work to foil the assault, Ronan and Murel are captured and sent to a desolate prison world where an old enemy, Dr. Mabo, waits to continue her cruel experiments on the shape-changing siblings. The twins' only hope of escape lies in the uncharted seas of the prison planet. But in the murky depths, something else is waiting. . . .

Author Biography

Anne McCaffrey, the Hugo Award—winning author of the bestselling Dragonriders of Pern novels, is one of science fiction’s most popular authors. She lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland.
www.annemccaffrey.net

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, winner of the Nebula Award for her novel The Healer’s War, is the author of numerous fantasy novels. She has co-authored ten other novels with Anne McCaffrey. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
www.eascarborough.com


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

Chapter One


The sentient world Petaybee, its northern continent blanketed in snow, appeared deceptively serene. Cold enough to freeze a sneeze in midair, but peaceful beneath its dark sky, it seemed an easy target for the troops whose arrival disturbed that peace.

Although they knew that the people in the village of Kilcoole were hostile and armed, the Company Corps soldiers did not worry unduly about resistance. Their landing was unannounced and they believed unexpected, so their superiors were confident that the soldiers could simply storm into house after house, waking the villagers and hauling them from their beds while they were still befuddled by sleep.

Instead, the soldiers were the ones who were befuddled as they slammed open unlocked door after unlocked door to find vacant unheated rooms with ice frosting the inside walls. Wild animals darted down the street or across it but no domestic beasts or human beings remained in the village.

The sergeant in charge of the ground mission regarded the village suspiciously. “Fan out and search but be damned careful,” he ordered. “These people are hunters. They won’t be far and they’ll be watching us.” He returned to his flitter, kept running and warm by the driver, and called the captain on the com. They’d hoped the blade of the Petaybean winter would still be a few weeks away but it seemed they were out of luck. Much of their equipment would be useless now with the extreme cold. “They’re gone, sir.”

“I doubt that, Sergeant,” the officer replied. “They must have been warned. Now we’ll have to pursue them outside the village on their own turf. I’ll consult High Command. Meanwhile, search the houses and see what intelligence you can gather. The gover- nor’s mansion is a log cabin at the end of the street nearest the river. Seize records of any kind, books, computers, storage chips— anything. If they make grocery lists in this godforsaken hole, I want those too. Governor Shongili has a laboratory west of the village, according to our sources. Search that in the same manner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you can make a bonfire out of the place.”

“With respect, sir, if we do that we lose the chance to catch them when they try to return home.”

“It’s minus ninety degrees Fahrenheit, Sergeant. If they can’t return home, they’ll have to show themselves to seek other shelter. Once the village is leveled, we’ll search the surrounding villages and see if they’re hiding there.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

But as they fanned out to search the houses, snow began falling. It wasn’t supposed to be possible for snow to fall at such extreme temperatures, but this weird world was a law unto itself, or so the residents seemed to believe.

As if it wasn’t cold enough already, a killing wind began to drive the falling snow into the soldiers’ thermal-masked faces, into the open doorways, scraping huge drifts from the piles on the ground and flinging them against the houses. The sky grew white too, and within moments the sergeant couldn’t see his own mitten when he put it in front of his face.

“Take cover,” he yelled, and maybe his troops did, but his voice was blown away on the wind.

Less than three miles away but nearly a half mile underground, the occupants of Kilcoole were awakening.

Clodagh, the community’s shanachie—storyteller, wise woman, and native healer—was wide-awake, sitting with her back and hands flat against the cave’s sides, her buttocks and feet flat against the floor. Self-appointed disciples of the planet and would-be students of Clodagh’s—Brothers Shale and Granite, and Sister Igneous Rock—watched her, trying to fe

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Excerpted from Deluge: Book Three of the Twins of Petaybee by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
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