Review
"From the opening paragraph--perhaps the most skilled lead into any combat story yet written--to the conclusion, this is SF at its best."
--Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning,
US Army (Ret.)
Author of The Only War We Had and Inside Force Recon
--Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning,
US Army (Ret.)
Author of The Only War We Had and Inside Force Recon
Book Description
The battered GammaLAW mission to Aquamarine had barely succeeded in ending the war with the world-destroying aliens, the Roke. The key to victory lay deep within Aquamarine's terrifying sentient ocean, and Commissioner Dextra Haven was determined to reveal those secrets at all costs.
But she and the Exts were running out of time--the Aquamarine natives were dead-set on destroying the Oceanic, which controlled their lives with its awesome powers. And the Roke, hidden behind one of Aquamarine's moons, were preparing to strike. All talk aside, it was a do or die proposition . . .
But she and the Exts were running out of time--the Aquamarine natives were dead-set on destroying the Oceanic, which controlled their lives with its awesome powers. And the Roke, hidden behind one of Aquamarine's moons, were preparing to strike. All talk aside, it was a do or die proposition . . .
From the Back Cover
"From the opening paragraph--perhaps the most skilled lead into any combat story yet written--to the conclusion, this is SF at its best."
--Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning,
US Army (Ret.)
Author of The Only War We Had and Inside Force Recon
--Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning,
US Army (Ret.)
Author of The Only War We Had and Inside Force Recon
About the Author
Brian Daley's first novel, The Doomfarers of Coramonde, was published on the first Del Rey list in 1977. It was an immediate success, and Brian went on to write its sequel, The Starfollowers of Coramonde, and many other successful novels: A Tapestry of Magics, three volumes of The Adventures of Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh, and, under the shared pseudonym Jack McKinney, ten and one half of the twenty-one Robotech novels. He first conceived of the complex GammaLAW saga in Nepal, in 1984, and worked on its four volumes for the next twelve years, finishing it shortly before his death in 1996.
Brian was enthralled by the Star Wars saga and very excited by the possibilities it afforded for popularizing science fiction for a mass audience, so he was very pleased to be chosen as the author for the first Star Wars spin-off novels, the three volumes of The Han Solo Adventures, one of which became a New York Times bestseller. He continued his association with Star Wars by writing the radio plays for "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Return of the Jedi."
The morning following the wrap party for the recording of the radio play "Return of the Jedi," Brian Daley died, of complications due to the cancer he'd been battling for a year.
Brian Daley was a Vietnam veteran, a great writer, and a great guy. We at Del Rey miss him.
Brian was enthralled by the Star Wars saga and very excited by the possibilities it afforded for popularizing science fiction for a mass audience, so he was very pleased to be chosen as the author for the first Star Wars spin-off novels, the three volumes of The Han Solo Adventures, one of which became a New York Times bestseller. He continued his association with Star Wars by writing the radio plays for "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Return of the Jedi."
The morning following the wrap party for the recording of the radio play "Return of the Jedi," Brian Daley died, of complications due to the cancer he'd been battling for a year.
Brian Daley was a Vietnam veteran, a great writer, and a great guy. We at Del Rey miss him.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The swell of muddy water and tangled wreckage surging east from the burst Optimant dam heaved the GammaLAW upward far more effortlessly than had the tetherhook that had snatched her off Periapt. The great hydrodynamic buffet canted the SWATHship's triple bows ten, then twenty, and finally twenty-five degrees into the air. Insufficiently braced despite Captain Chaz Quant's orders, people in the pilothouse were sent struggling and staggering against the aft bulkhead. Quant, clinging to the rail under the forward windows, felt the ship being hurled up the mounded face of the waters as if something alive had bucked her free of Aquamarine itself. Having had a few minutes to think through this latest crisis facing the LAW mission, he understood that even if the rising waters failed to claim his ship, other, more daunting hazards awaited her downriver.
The GammaLAW, trembling and straining, took the monster swell threatening to overcome her helm regardless of the three people fighting the wheel. Loose gear went crashing; rigging, equipment, and repair tackle overlooked in the rush to secure the decks rang and beat like rioting inmates hammering at the bars of their cells. As never before, Quant thanked the structural strengthening that had been done to reinforce the vessel for the tetherlift and transport to Aquamarine. Sewage-dark water carrying fishing boats, bodies, and everything the turbulence had stirred up from Ea's bottom broke around the bows, splashing against the pilothouse windows and wetting the very top of the signal mast.
GammaLAW groaned and thrashed like an animal resisting quicksand, but at last the bows topped out and began to depress once more, biting deep into the waves and sending more spray aloft. Quant held his course for the teeth of the flood and called for twenty knots, all ahead standard. A reassuring compliance came from the engine room telegraph, and there was a quick feeling of response as the mains sent steady power to the actuator-propellers. Quant knew it was an illusion, however, and in moments others on the bridge realized it as well.
"Navigation reports that we're making sternway, sir," Eddie Gairaszhek relayed. "True speed and direction do not correlate with relative readings of inertial tracking gear and positioning radars."
While the GammaLAW was moving at speed through the water around her, the entire volume of the descended Pontos Reservoir was moving in the opposite direction at an even greater velocity. His ship had triumphed over the initial bludgeoning of the flood and had marshaled her engines in the nick of time, but against being flung backward she was powerless. To the southern end of the lake and the land beyond she was being carried. It was there, Quant understood, that the brute physics of the contest would be played out. If the volume of water was of sufficient size and force, if Ea and the river headwaters that drained it could not divert enough of the stupendous spill, the GammaLAW probably would be washed high and dry. And hard aground--if indeed she lived through the grounding at all--she would be easy pickings for the Aquam and impossible to refloat with the limited resources left to her company.
Settling into the contest he had foreseen from the mo-ment the dam had burst, Quant called for additional turns on the actuators, racing to position the GammaLAW safely for the inevitable receding of the Pontos flood. He pitied any Aquam caught along the southern lakeshore or the river when the waters began to scour their way toward Aquamarine's single ocean, the Amnion, yet he hoped against hope that outlets downriver would provide vents for the deluge's energy and mass.
The ship was still being battered and shaken, as if fighting her way against some spring thaw in Hades, as all around her washed debris, wreckage, and drowned Aquam bodies stripped naked by the force of the waters. Quant called for ten more knots, but the GammaLAW remained trapped in the flow.
Eyewash descended slowly from the zenith. All through the long afternoon the ship fought her lonely battle, frothing the brackish, debris-laced water, while Quant stood at his post and watched out for turbulence-borne debris that could foul or damage the actuators.
Unspooling the aerostat to its maximum length had allowed him to keep an eye on the outgushing at the broken dam, but the camera failed to supply him with an adequate view of the falling water level of the Pontos Reservoir itself. A regional map suggested that the floodplain south of Lake Ea would absorb most of the vented waters. The GammaLAW would be safe there, but reaching the floodplain would require squeezing through the narrows at Fluter Delve, where the Dynast Piety IV ruled, much as Grandee 'Waretongue Rhodes did at Wall Water.
As dusk yielded to evening, the ship continued to be pushed kilometer by kilometer toward the place called the Lowdowns at Ea's southern extremity. Quant supposed that many aboard wondered why he didn't simply drop anchor or even put both hooks in the mud. Not only was the bottom treacherous, however, digging in the ship's heels would make her a target for sizable chunks of debris turned into hydro-missiles by the vicious propellant of the Pontos.
Two hours after midnight inertial tracking reported that the ship had officially crossed the demarkation of what had been Ea's shoreline only that morning. The SWATHship was still pushed deeper inland, with trees and human bodies more common in the water now. As difficult as it was to get a reading through the particulate filth and floating wreckage, it became clear that the bottom was shoaling out. Bowing to the inevitable, Quant countermanded the forebodings of engineering by ordering an increase in speed.
Pushed stern-first toward the so-called Dales, where the ship was in real danger of being set aground, she waged her battle in good order, and within an hour she appeared to be making headway.
Quant noticed Gairaszhek on the starboard wing of the bridge, training vision enhancers on the water. Moving next to him and following his glance, Quant spotted what the lieutenant had been watching--another drowned Aquam. This one, though, was a child, its gender impossible to discern, the current quickly bearing it away.
"We came abreast and left it behind fast, sir," Gairaszhek explained with a gulp. "I, I believe we're gaining on the current. MeoTheos. Forgive me for being so happy to report that."
He was right. Meter by meter the SWATHship was forging back through the aroused waters. Ea was still rising, but with less force.
At dawn, when the ship had recrossed the now-imaginary line of the lakeshore, Dextra Haven requested a moment of Quant's time with a gratifying acknowledgment of how busy he was. Quant teleconferenced with her over their special command circuit from the port wing of the bridge.
"I know it's early to ask your conclusion, Captain," she began, "but we need to be thinking about mission contingencies. Is it all over for us on Lake Ea?"
Recalling the deep V in the dam, he answered with little hesitation. "Affirmative. For this year, at any rate. Once the flood subsides, there'll be insufficient reservoir to keep the lake levels up. Halfway through the dry season Ea will be a string of shallows dotted with sandbars and islets. We're bound to run aground if we stay."
"So it's downriver, then?"
"There'll be hundreds of kilometers of navigable water there--even in the last of the Big Sere."
"You realize that that means traversing the narrows under the Dynast Piety's stronghold?"
"It's literally unavoidable," Quant told her.
"His nephew, Knocknet, was killed during the insanity at Wall Water. The dynast may very well consider himself to be in a blood feud with us."
Quant grunted into the headset. "Then I wish you all success with diplomatic efforts, Madame Commissioner. But we'll need to move soon, the risks notwithstanding."
Haven was silent for a moment. "Captain Quant, exactly what happened to the dam?"
"Zone, madame. For my money, Colonel Zone happened to the dam."
"Why in God's name would General Delecado open fire on the dam curtain?" Quant was asking the rawboned colonel himself later that morning.
Zone was standing at the far end of the CIC conference table, looking bored by the proceedings. Shortly past dawn a rigid inflatable boat had returned him and some dozen others to the GammaLAW. Except for Delecado, Senior Captain Feelie Shumakova, and two of Zone's severalmates, it was the same group that had left for the dam the previous day aboard the general's Hellhog helo in response to a WHOAsuit beacon that had been observed in the lake.
"How many ways do you want me to say it?" Zone told Quant, Haven, Major Lod, and the rest. "We spotted a bunch of Aqs in a small floater throwing someone overboard. When Daddy D saw the Ext uniform, he snapped and went to triggers. Strafed the raft, then planted both pods of missiles into the dam. There would have been no way to stop him even if we wanted to.
"Thing was, one of the missiles went off short while we were still within burst diameter. Knocked the Hellhog out of the air just before the dam let loose. Daddy D, Captain Shumakova, Digger Taraki, and Strop never made it to the RIB. We managed to ride out the flood and conduct a search, but no bodies were recovered."
Zone didn't look bereaved or regretful, which, Quant suspected, was very canny of him, for it would have been out of character. It was too early to know how the rest of the Exts felt about the story Zone had brought back from the dam, but Dextra Haven certainly wasn't buying it.
"I want it on record that I don't believe a word of this," she told the table. "Three days ago Colonel Zone found it necessary to kill Wix Uniday...
The GammaLAW, trembling and straining, took the monster swell threatening to overcome her helm regardless of the three people fighting the wheel. Loose gear went crashing; rigging, equipment, and repair tackle overlooked in the rush to secure the decks rang and beat like rioting inmates hammering at the bars of their cells. As never before, Quant thanked the structural strengthening that had been done to reinforce the vessel for the tetherlift and transport to Aquamarine. Sewage-dark water carrying fishing boats, bodies, and everything the turbulence had stirred up from Ea's bottom broke around the bows, splashing against the pilothouse windows and wetting the very top of the signal mast.
GammaLAW groaned and thrashed like an animal resisting quicksand, but at last the bows topped out and began to depress once more, biting deep into the waves and sending more spray aloft. Quant held his course for the teeth of the flood and called for twenty knots, all ahead standard. A reassuring compliance came from the engine room telegraph, and there was a quick feeling of response as the mains sent steady power to the actuator-propellers. Quant knew it was an illusion, however, and in moments others on the bridge realized it as well.
"Navigation reports that we're making sternway, sir," Eddie Gairaszhek relayed. "True speed and direction do not correlate with relative readings of inertial tracking gear and positioning radars."
While the GammaLAW was moving at speed through the water around her, the entire volume of the descended Pontos Reservoir was moving in the opposite direction at an even greater velocity. His ship had triumphed over the initial bludgeoning of the flood and had marshaled her engines in the nick of time, but against being flung backward she was powerless. To the southern end of the lake and the land beyond she was being carried. It was there, Quant understood, that the brute physics of the contest would be played out. If the volume of water was of sufficient size and force, if Ea and the river headwaters that drained it could not divert enough of the stupendous spill, the GammaLAW probably would be washed high and dry. And hard aground--if indeed she lived through the grounding at all--she would be easy pickings for the Aquam and impossible to refloat with the limited resources left to her company.
Settling into the contest he had foreseen from the mo-ment the dam had burst, Quant called for additional turns on the actuators, racing to position the GammaLAW safely for the inevitable receding of the Pontos flood. He pitied any Aquam caught along the southern lakeshore or the river when the waters began to scour their way toward Aquamarine's single ocean, the Amnion, yet he hoped against hope that outlets downriver would provide vents for the deluge's energy and mass.
The ship was still being battered and shaken, as if fighting her way against some spring thaw in Hades, as all around her washed debris, wreckage, and drowned Aquam bodies stripped naked by the force of the waters. Quant called for ten more knots, but the GammaLAW remained trapped in the flow.
Eyewash descended slowly from the zenith. All through the long afternoon the ship fought her lonely battle, frothing the brackish, debris-laced water, while Quant stood at his post and watched out for turbulence-borne debris that could foul or damage the actuators.
Unspooling the aerostat to its maximum length had allowed him to keep an eye on the outgushing at the broken dam, but the camera failed to supply him with an adequate view of the falling water level of the Pontos Reservoir itself. A regional map suggested that the floodplain south of Lake Ea would absorb most of the vented waters. The GammaLAW would be safe there, but reaching the floodplain would require squeezing through the narrows at Fluter Delve, where the Dynast Piety IV ruled, much as Grandee 'Waretongue Rhodes did at Wall Water.
As dusk yielded to evening, the ship continued to be pushed kilometer by kilometer toward the place called the Lowdowns at Ea's southern extremity. Quant supposed that many aboard wondered why he didn't simply drop anchor or even put both hooks in the mud. Not only was the bottom treacherous, however, digging in the ship's heels would make her a target for sizable chunks of debris turned into hydro-missiles by the vicious propellant of the Pontos.
Two hours after midnight inertial tracking reported that the ship had officially crossed the demarkation of what had been Ea's shoreline only that morning. The SWATHship was still pushed deeper inland, with trees and human bodies more common in the water now. As difficult as it was to get a reading through the particulate filth and floating wreckage, it became clear that the bottom was shoaling out. Bowing to the inevitable, Quant countermanded the forebodings of engineering by ordering an increase in speed.
Pushed stern-first toward the so-called Dales, where the ship was in real danger of being set aground, she waged her battle in good order, and within an hour she appeared to be making headway.
Quant noticed Gairaszhek on the starboard wing of the bridge, training vision enhancers on the water. Moving next to him and following his glance, Quant spotted what the lieutenant had been watching--another drowned Aquam. This one, though, was a child, its gender impossible to discern, the current quickly bearing it away.
"We came abreast and left it behind fast, sir," Gairaszhek explained with a gulp. "I, I believe we're gaining on the current. MeoTheos. Forgive me for being so happy to report that."
He was right. Meter by meter the SWATHship was forging back through the aroused waters. Ea was still rising, but with less force.
At dawn, when the ship had recrossed the now-imaginary line of the lakeshore, Dextra Haven requested a moment of Quant's time with a gratifying acknowledgment of how busy he was. Quant teleconferenced with her over their special command circuit from the port wing of the bridge.
"I know it's early to ask your conclusion, Captain," she began, "but we need to be thinking about mission contingencies. Is it all over for us on Lake Ea?"
Recalling the deep V in the dam, he answered with little hesitation. "Affirmative. For this year, at any rate. Once the flood subsides, there'll be insufficient reservoir to keep the lake levels up. Halfway through the dry season Ea will be a string of shallows dotted with sandbars and islets. We're bound to run aground if we stay."
"So it's downriver, then?"
"There'll be hundreds of kilometers of navigable water there--even in the last of the Big Sere."
"You realize that that means traversing the narrows under the Dynast Piety's stronghold?"
"It's literally unavoidable," Quant told her.
"His nephew, Knocknet, was killed during the insanity at Wall Water. The dynast may very well consider himself to be in a blood feud with us."
Quant grunted into the headset. "Then I wish you all success with diplomatic efforts, Madame Commissioner. But we'll need to move soon, the risks notwithstanding."
Haven was silent for a moment. "Captain Quant, exactly what happened to the dam?"
"Zone, madame. For my money, Colonel Zone happened to the dam."
"Why in God's name would General Delecado open fire on the dam curtain?" Quant was asking the rawboned colonel himself later that morning.
Zone was standing at the far end of the CIC conference table, looking bored by the proceedings. Shortly past dawn a rigid inflatable boat had returned him and some dozen others to the GammaLAW. Except for Delecado, Senior Captain Feelie Shumakova, and two of Zone's severalmates, it was the same group that had left for the dam the previous day aboard the general's Hellhog helo in response to a WHOAsuit beacon that had been observed in the lake.
"How many ways do you want me to say it?" Zone told Quant, Haven, Major Lod, and the rest. "We spotted a bunch of Aqs in a small floater throwing someone overboard. When Daddy D saw the Ext uniform, he snapped and went to triggers. Strafed the raft, then planted both pods of missiles into the dam. There would have been no way to stop him even if we wanted to.
"Thing was, one of the missiles went off short while we were still within burst diameter. Knocked the Hellhog out of the air just before the dam let loose. Daddy D, Captain Shumakova, Digger Taraki, and Strop never made it to the RIB. We managed to ride out the flood and conduct a search, but no bodies were recovered."
Zone didn't look bereaved or regretful, which, Quant suspected, was very canny of him, for it would have been out of character. It was too early to know how the rest of the Exts felt about the story Zone had brought back from the dam, but Dextra Haven certainly wasn't buying it.
"I want it on record that I don't believe a word of this," she told the table. "Three days ago Colonel Zone found it necessary to kill Wix Uniday...
