Deluge (Twins of Petaybee Series #3)

Chapter 1 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 shanachiestoryteller, wise woman, and native healerwas wide-awake, sitting with her back and hands flat against the cave's sides, her buttocks and feet flat against the floor. SelMcCaffrey, Anne is the author of 'Deluge (Twins of Petaybee Series #3)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780345470065 and ISBN 0345470060.