Spear of Light
Authors: Brenda Cooper
Also by Brenda Cooper
Edge of Dark
The Creative Fire
The Diamond Deep
Published 2016 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Spear of Light
. Copyright © 2016 by Brenda Cooper. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopyÂing, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, exÂcept in the case of brief quotations emÂbodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht
Cover illustration © Stephan Martiniere
Cover design © Prometheus Books
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Inquiries should be addressed to
Pyr
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cooper, Brenda, 1960- author.
Title: Spear of light / by Brenda Cooper.
Description: Amhest, NY : Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books, 2016. |
Series: The glittering edge ; book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007380 (print) | LCCN 2016016738 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781633881341 (paperback) | ISBN 9781633881358 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Interplanetary voyagesâFiction. | Life on other planetsâFiction. |
BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3603.O5825 S67 2016 (print) | LCC PS3603.O5825 (ebook) |
DDC 813/.6âdc23
LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007380
Printed in the United States of America
To all of the other women writing science fiction,
many of whom are guiding lights for me.
Specifically to Nancy Kress,
whom I met through her writing long before I met her in person.
She and her writing are both brilliant.
Contents
PART TWO THE FOLLY OF BEING HUMAN
PART FOUR THE BATTLE OF THE HUMANS
PART ONE
NEXITY RISES
CHAPTER ONE
CHARLIE
Charlie watched the grassy plains below the skimmer thin into sand and then gather and rise into steep-faced dunes. Lym's unrelenting sunlight washed the surfaces out, but from time to time he spotted shadows of hopping tharps and, once, the sinuous form of a sandcat as it slithered away from the skimmer's shadow. “Did you see that?” he asked Jean Paul.
His friend grinned at him, a flash of bright smile under unruly brown hair. “Did you see the first one?”
“Huh?”
Jean Paul adjusted the controls with a few swipes of his fingers, bringing the skimmer lower. “A bit distracted, maybe?”
“Probably. But only a little of it's about Nona.”
“You're lying through your teeth.”
“I'm not.” A low, conversational growl from the skimmer's back seat suggested that Cricket agreed with Jean Paul. Not that the big predator could possibly comprehend, regardless of how many individual words she clearly understood. She might have recognized Nona's name. After Nona left to go back home to the space station the Diamond Deep, Cricket had performed an elaborate three-legged hop through the station, muscles rippling under her dark coat, clearly scenting for something she couldn't find. She took up most of the back seat, her broad nose resting on her one front paw, and her white-tipped tail curled around her muscular haunches.
A ragged line of sea ate away at the dunes below, then they were over water. Charlie fretted. They'd be at the spaceport soon. At this rate, he'd be a wreck by the time Nona arrived. “I want to see the Wall,” he said.
Jean Paul gave him a careful glance. “It's not like you knew the Next would do this.”
Charlie's shoulders tensed even more. “Who knows what they'll do next?”
“No pun intended?”
Charlie didn't bother to answer, preferring to brood silently. He forgot everything else as they flew over a pod of Dali's whales. He counted slender backs and tall gray-green fins rising and falling almost in unison. Sun diamonds on the water made him blink, forcing him to count twice. Twenty-two whales, including three babies. The skimmer's computer confirmed that this was Arceson's Pod and that they had only lost one adult. A success.
He felt slightly better until they got close enough to Gyr Island to notice that the silhouette looked too sharp and too flat. The Wall. “I didn't think it would be that tall yet,” he muttered.
He'd heard about it, but the news stories hadn't prepared him for the way it changed the contours of the land. A scar, an intrusion of nanotechnology on a place that only allowed for the simple and the ecologically balanced. A blight, he thought. A blight that he had relinquished all control over. Anger, always simmering inside him these days, coiled even tighter around a guilt he couldn't banish.
Damn it.
He reached over the back seat, running his fingers through the coarse fur on Cricket's shoulder and murmuring words of endearment, as if his animal could absorb his pain.
As they flew in to the spaceport, the Wall bulked over them in spite of the fact that it was at least three klicks away. He knew that much. He'd negotiated the place, chosen which fields to sacrifice and which to hold onto, forced the invaders away from the spaceport.
He hadn't thought to manage the vertical space the Next could take. The nearby crops would die with no direct sun. He'd be lamenting things he hadn't thought of for years.
He banked over the spaceport, looking for evidence of another impossible thing he'd heard. “They're doing it.”
Jean Paul leaned forward, squinting toward the Wall. “What?”
“Melting their ships to build the Wall.”
“It's not melting. It's disassembly.”
“No shit. But they're really doing it. Damned Next. Destroying ships for a wall.” The first few ships that Charlie had seen land were nowhere to be seen. None had taken off, but they weren't on the spaceport pad where they'd landed weeks ago. Another of the big boxy ships was no better than a silver puddle on the ground, its base material sliding in a line toward the Wall as if it were water. A second ship seemed to be just beginning the same process, the sharp edges of its top softening as thin lines of silver fell onto the ground in a bad caricature of a waterfall. The uncanniness of it chilled him.
Jean Paul glanced at him. “Don't let it get to you.”
“Nag.”
“I'm right.”
“Always.” Charlie banked for the skimmer parking area, landing them fast and forcing the skimmer to brake hard enough that Cricket almost slid from the seat. She let out a disgruntled little yip.
A sturdy man with dark hair and eyes and a deep outdoorsman's tan started toward them. Kyle Glass. His square jaw was tight and his walk slow and controlled, as if he were holding back.
Charlie climbed out, followed by Jean Paul. Cricket hopped out and stood beside him, her head at his waist, her balance perfect in spite of the missing leg. She nosed the air, her wide, dark eyes watchful. He stared at the tongat long enough to give her a forceful stay command before he headed toward Kyle. While Charlie didn't prime his own weapon, he heard Jean Paul slide his stunner open. His best friend, his defender.
If it came to a fight, Charlie and Jean Paul would protect each other. Far better not to fight.
They'd all three been rangers together just a few years before, defenders of the wild plants and animals on the planet Lym, protectors and watchers who planted, purged, and recorded the great re-wilding, who kept poachers away from this one natural place in the whole solar system. Charlie had risen into a command position at Wilding Station, Jean Paul had stayed with him like glue, and Kyle had moved to a station near the farms.
