sometime soon, because you'll do very well.'
He saw the slightly gloating looks cross both their faces. They both have elections. Oh my.
'That's all for now,' said Gabriel and reached out to cut the comm connection. 'I'll speak to you later.'
'You might at least say 'thank you,' ' grumbled the Inoan negotiator.
'When I've seen the ships,' Gabriel said as he waved the data solid at her and cut the link.
An hour later the ships began to drop into the Rhynchan atmosphere. There was already markedly less of it than there had been-less that was breathable, anyway. The sky was getting more pallid, a side effect of the clathrating nitrogen, Enda told Gabriel. When it reached its palest, all the oxygen would be inaccessible. Gabriel did not plan to be here that long.
The problem now was that the capacity of the ships that the Phorcyns and Inoans had sent was not terribly large. 'It'll have to be two runs,' Gabriel said to the captain of Orniol, one of the first ships to load-a drive-capable Phorcyn emergency vessel usually used for medical transport. 'They told us only one,' said Orniol's captain, a short stocky woman with what seemed a perpetually mournful look. 'Out here and straight back to Phorcys.'
'I hate to break this to you,' Gabriel said, 'but that will still leave something like fifteen hundred people down here while the rest of the atmosphere goes bad. It's not acceptable. I'll get on to your upper-ups again if I have to, but I tell you, if I have to do that I won't like it, and they won't like it. And I promise you, neither will you.'
Gabriel turned and stomped off to supervise the loading of another of the ships, Glatha, which appeared from the condition of its cargo bays to have been doing garbage hauling. Beggars can't choose, Gabriel thought as sesheyans with small bundles of their personal belongings started to pile into it. Dear stars, when I think about what Hal had to go through putting fancy toilet seats in the shuttles for the Phorcyn and Inoan delegations. He tried to calm himself. It was not easy.
The loading seemed to take forever, and a couple of the ships were still not here. One more landed while he watched. Gabriel kept looking up at the sky, and finally there came a moment when it seemed to be getting no paler. What was that flicker? he wondered. 'I think night is coming,' Enda said softly from behind him.
Gabriel shivered. Something worse was coming. 'Get them in,' he said. 'Hurry! We have to leave.' 'What? Gabriel-'
He could only look at her and run for Sunshine.
That was when the plasma fire began raining down around them.
Screams and roars of fear broke out. The sesheyans caught in the open dove for the caves. Those nearest the ships crowded into them, and the ships sealed up. Engines began to heat-the ships' captains had no desire to be on the ground for a second longer. Ships began lifting. Gabriel pelted toward Sunshine with Enda hard behind him.
As he ran, he yelled into his handheld, 'Helm, heads up! The body snatchers are here!' 'What?'
'Ball bearing-shaped ships! Fire on them! Hit everything you can, and for all sakes don't let any of them hit you! Then follow us. We've got to get out of here!'
'Where?'
It's going to have to be drivespace, Gabriel thought, horrified. We're not ready, but there's nowhere else to go. 'Grith!' he yelled. 'Make for Grith! But we need cover!'
'Can do,' Helm said, very calmly. 'Boy, Delde Sola's gonna owe me for this one when we're done.' Gabriel and Enda dove into Sunshine, strapped in, and closed her up. In the back areas were several frightened sesheyans, all of them rather young, who had been sightseeing while the loading was going on. Now they were locked in for good or ill.
'Hang onto things, kids,' Gabriel yelled as he fastened the final strap, 'and whatever you do, don't let go!' He had to stop. Sunshine's lifters were shaking him all over the place.
'All ships, all ships, drivespace as soon as you're out!' Gabriel yelled into the public comms as Enda flung them upward into the atmosphere. 'Make for the homeworld! Make for the sesheyan sanctuary!' He could only hope they understood. He was not going to mention names or coordinates over public comms at this point.
A scream and babble of answers came back, terrified, confused. 'Affirmative, understood.' '-can't do it, we don't have stardrive!' '-no supplies, we're-' '-stay and fight-'
'Just go!' Gabriel shouted. 'We'll lead! Those of you that can't follow, make for Phorcys, full speed! Don't let them get you out in the dark. Make them do it in the sunlight where people can see! Go on, run for it! The rest of you with stardrive, follow us!'
Sunshine leaped upward into the middle atmosphere. The swarm of enemy ships was only a few kilometers above them now. Oh, dear heaven, the other sesheyans- For there were perhaps another thousand of them fleeing back into the caves. Would they be safe there? Would the body snatchers decide there was nothing left to lose and simply wipe them out, taking them all to make soldiers? Cut their wings off, steal their souls-
Gabriel wiped his wet face and cursed. The JustWadeln software was already up, and Enda was already in it. Gabriel pulled the fighting field down over him, picked one of the small round targets that was hurtling at them, cursed it soundly, and fired. It sidestepped. He fired again-
He did not remember much of that fight afterwards. Gabriel kept hearing screams and was uncertain where they were coming from: comms on the ground, comms in space, perhaps from the other four ships that had lifted with them, and that were clustered in very loose order around Sunshine, heading into the upper atmosphere. That paling sky was stitched with plasma fire, ships were diving in all directions, and Gabriel fired and fired at small round ships that would not stay still. Then suddenly a gravelly voice said, 'Sunshine, I've got one more cherry.' Gabriel ungritted his teeth. 'Pop it. When?'
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
