Fall of Angels

Fall of Angels

 
by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Copyright © 1996

Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet

Maps by Ellisa Mitchell

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

Tor® Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com

For David Hartwell

Who was willing to look at something different from the beginning

INITIAL CHARACTERS

Crew of the United Faith Forces' frigate WINTERLANCE

  
RYBA
    
Captain, also a Sybran nomad

  
NYLAN
   
Chief Engineer, half Sybran

  
SARYN
   
Second Pilot, half Sybran

  
AYRLYN
  
Communications Officer, non-Sybran

  
GERLICH
 
Weapons Officer, Sybran, nonnomad

  
MERTIN
  
Logistics Officer, Sybran, nonnomad

Marines attached to the WINTERLANCE

  
FIERRAL
 
Commanding Officer

  
BERLIS

  
CESSYA

  
DENALLE

  
DESINADA

  
ELLYSIA

  
FRELITA

  
HULDRAN

  
ISTRIL

  
JASEEN
  
Also a combat medtech

  
KADRAN

  
KYSEEN

  
LLYSELLE

  
MRAN

  
RIENADRE

  
SELITRA

  
SHERIZ

  
SIRET

  
STENTANA

  
WEBLYA

  
WEINDRE

Part I - THE FALL

I

"THERE WERE ANGELS in Heaven in those days, and there were demons, and the demons were the creators and the creation of chaos...

  
"In that distant battle between the fires of the demons and the ice lances of the angels, the very skies twisted in upon themselves, and the angels, who came from cold Heaven, were cast down and strewn across the stars.

  
"Those angels, the first and last from far Heaven, when they found the world, knew not where they were, nor could they see even the stars from whence they had come. And they descended unto the Roof of the World.

  
"There they built the Citadel of the Winds, the tower called Black, with those chained lightnings yet they had retained, carving unto themselves a high refuge and a reminder of their past.

  
"So as they had come, so earlier had come those from the lands and heritage of the demons, and those were men who believed not that women should wear blades nor speak their minds and thoughts.

  
"In the time of that first summer came armsmen, inspired by the demons, and there were battles across the Roof of the World, and blood ...

  
"Thus continued the conflict between order and chaos, between those who would force order and those who would not, and between those who followed the blade and those who followed the spirit.

  
"Of the great ones were the angel Ryba, Nylan of the forge of order and the fires of Heaven, Saryn of the dark blades of death, and Ayrlyn of the songs. ..."

        
Book of Ayrlyn

        
Section I

        
[Restricted Text]

II

"WHAT ARE YOU going to do when you get back to Heaven? Visit your family?" asked Saryn in a low voice, barely audible above the hiss of the ventilators. As second pilot, she had control of the Winterlance while the captain dozed in the command couch. Saryn's eyes were glazed, her mind half on the neuronet.

  
"I'll probably think about that when the time comes. Might be a long time," pointed out Nylan. "Headquarters has extended all flight officers' tours another two years." The engineer's thoughts flicked across the power net, only a section of the full neuronet, as he answered.

  
"Why don't they just say that we're stuck until we drive the demons out?"

  
"Top angels-excuse me, Cherubim and Seraphim- express their commands more temperately." Nylan cleared his throat. "Where are we headed?"

  
Saryn expressed a mental shrug through the net. "I've got the coordinates, but the captain didn't say why. We're positioning for an underspace jump, and awaiting further orders."

  
ALLNET CALL! ALLNET CALL!

  
As the neuronet alert jabbed through his thoughts, Nylan stiffened and glanced around the bridge of the United Faith Forces' frigate Winterlance.

  
Ryba-the captain-hit the net so quickly, her thoughts cold and clear across the neuronet, that Nylan wondered if she had ever been asleep.

  
At times like these, the engineer wondered if he ever really had known the captain. He knew that she drove herself, that she spent hours in high-gee exercise, that she knew and practiced not only unarmed martial combat, but even the antique twin sword exercises of Heaven's Sybran horse nomads-and that the blades on her stateroom wall were razor sharp and had sharpened points as well. Then, she had been raised in the nomad heritage where women fought and commanded-and she did command.

  
Nylan stifled a yawn and eased fully into the net, catching the last of the on-line feed.

  
"... line two to be led and coordinated by UFFS Winterlance ... line three to be led by UFFS Stormsweep. Action will commence at 1343 standard . .."

  
"Shit.. "The contemptuous word that floated unattached through the net came from Saryn, who had just released the conn to Ryba, although Saryn had stayed linked to catch the incoming message.

  
"Right enough," affirmed the captain, her tone not quite sardonic. "Twelve towers, and only fifty of us, and half are destroyers with barely adequate D-draws."

  
Saryn stood, wiggling her fingers. Then she tried to massage her neck with her left hand before settling back into her couch and trying to rest while Ryba reoriented the Winterlance prior to setup for the underspace jump prior to the attack.

  
With a deep breath, Nylan stretched. The engineer could check the files for the whole message, but the captain had it, and he knew enough-more than enough. The demons had a picket line of towers across the transit corridor, with webs into the underspace that would effectively cut the United Faith Alliance in two.

  
The damned towers that drew power from who knew where and how were almost invulnerable-almost. Except when enough de-energization was concentrated on the nexus points in their energy links, and then the entire line went up into pure energy. Most of the time, though, it was the angel ships that went up in energy.

  
The towers had to be hard to build, because there were only about fifty known to exist. That still meant enough to quarter the UFA and to disrupt trade and communications totally.

  
"Engines ... interrogative fusactor status." The captain's inquiry burned into Nylan's thoughts.

  
The engineer suppressed his annoyance. Ryba could have dropped into the power subnet easily enough; it wasn't as though the Winterlance were anywhere close to jump or combat yet. He slipped deeper into the system and ran through the checks, then pulsed the summary to her.

  
"Thank you, engines. Power net looks good."

  
Nylan straightened in the couch and watched as the captain studied the displays-the ones spread across the front of the cockpit, and those in her mind. Her thoughts flicked through the Winterlance's neuronet, making course adjustments, tweaking the power flow from the twin fusactors, and studying, again and again, the icy images of the demon ships of the Rationalists.

  
"Lots of power there, Ryba," observed the wiry white-blond engineer from his third seat. His unvocalized words flowed through the neuronet to her.

  
"I wish you two would speak aloud. All those empathetic overtones mess up the net." Ayrlyn, the comm officer, took a deep breath, although her words were also unspoken, flowing through the net with ice-burning overedges.

  
Empathetic overtones? Just because they occasionally slept together? Nylan glanced sideways to the fourth seat where the brunette sat, her thoughts restricted to the commnet, as she monitored everything from standing wave to demon frequencies.

  
"Net's faster." Ryba's no-nonsense words snapped across the net with their own burning edges.

  
Nylan winced and decided to check the power subnet again.

  
"Ten till jump. Time adjustment will be negative five for sync."

  
The engineer moistened his lips. Backtime twists out of jumps seemed to give the angel ships an advantage, but the power requirements on the fusactors meant they had to be rebuilt almost every third sortie, and eight units was the max backtime possible for an angel cruiser. The destroyers could go ten, but their underspace mass drag was less. So were their shields.

  
A negative five meant the force would contain at least one heavy cruiser, with three to five de-energizer draws. That also meant trouble.

  
"Trouble .. ." As if to confirm Nylan's concerns, Ayrlyn added the single word verbally.

  
"Weapons ... interrogative D-status."

  
"De-energizers are ready, Captain." Both Gerlich's voice and "net voice" came across as a smooth deep baritone, smooth as the man himself, unusually so for a full Sybran. Of the ship's officers, half were full-blood Sybran-Ryba, Gerlich, and Mertin-big, broad-shouldered, and, despite their size, most at home in the chill of the high latitudes of cold Sybra. Ayrlyn was mostly Svennish, and Saryn and Nylan were about half and half.

  
"Interrogative mass distribution."

  
"Within parameters, Captain." Mertin squeaked, despite his size, both in person and on the net, perhaps because he was barely out of the Institute.

  
The time clicked by silently as the Winterlance hurled toward her underspace jump point, as the dozens of other angel ships converged on that same jump point.

  
"Stand by for jump."

  
"Engines, standing by."

  
"Comm, standing by ..."

  
The acknowledgments flicked across the net, sequentially yet instantaneously.

  
"Jump .. . NOW!"

  
The Winterlance dropped underspace, with a rush of golden glory, as though on spread wings, that instant of pain/ecstasy enduring forever, yet gone before it had begun ...

  
... then realspace slammed tight around the cruiser.

  
The rep screen flared bright with the images of nearly fifty angel ships, arrow-wedged toward the glittering line of light held together by the mirror tower ships of the demons.

  
Nylan could sense the dark image of a trapped angel transport, an insect struggling futilely in the web of energy, struggling with full drives, with shields, yet unraveling into dust and energy in the instants after the angel force dropped toward the demon mirror line-that impossible energy web that stretched across seemingly empty space to snare any angel ship within light-years, in real or in underspace.

  
"Full shields. Everything you can get me, Nylan."

  
"Yes, ser." - "Begin overlap ... now!"

  
"Full shields in place, Captain." Nylan dropped himself down through the net practically to the individual flux level, to smooth the energy flows, and to develop maximum power for both screens and propulsion fields.

  
At the same time, he had to fight the feedback created by the overlapped shields of the cruisers flanking the Winter-lance. On the right was the Polarflow, on the left the Deepchill.

  
The Polar/low's engineer was either rough or new, or both, and the power fluctuations from the ship created unnecessary energy eddies across the entire shared shield, eddies that fed back into the Winterlance's powernet.

  
"Smooth your fields, three!" snapped Ryba over the command net. Three was the Polarflow, and Nylan nodded.

  
The worst of the energy fluctuations smoothed, but Nylan shook his head. The other engineer just didn't have the touch, and nothing except experience would give it to him or her. The problem was that the demons wouldn't give that much time, either, before the mirror towers lashed the fluctuations into energy storms whose feedback would rip the Polarflow apart.

  
The representational screen showed the first line of angel ships, the destroyers, sweeping "down" toward the picket line of light.

  
"One, close up."

  
Ryba's commands seemed distant as Nylan, his senses deep in the power subnet, merged the fusactor flows into an eddy-free flow.

  
"Line two... begin D-sweep at my mark. Five, four, three, two ... MARK!"

  
The darkness of the ordered shields of the second line deepened as the cruisers accelerated toward the tower ship pickets, a darkness all the more profound for its depth, a depth that radiated the smoothed harmony of merged energies.