The D’neeran Factor
Read The D’neeran Factor Online
Authors: Terry A. Adams
“THIS IS AN EMERGENCYâ¦
This is not a testâ¦repeatâ¦this is disasterâ¦This is no dream!”
Hanna looked at the displays but she could not see the enemy. She cried out and tried to run. All the others aboard were dead, yet still they screamed in her mind. They took too long to die and dragged her down, down, and death ate at her. Smoke of burning flesh, ship metal screeching, and beyond the enemy she knew, beyond the true-human foe, something evil and unseen hunted through the darkness. Closer, closer it came, deadly, unknowable, unstoppableâand reaching out to claim only her!
THE
D'N
EERA
N
F
ACTO
R
Novels of Science Fiction
by Terry A. Adams:
THE D'NEERAN FACTOR
(
Sentience | The Master of Chaos
)
BATTLEGROUND
*
*
Coming soon from DAW Books
THE
D'N
EERA
N
F
ACTO
R
SENTIENCE
THE MASTER OF CHAOS
TERRY A.
ADAMS
SENTIENCE copyright © 1986 by Terry A. Adams.
THE MASTER OF CHAOS copyright © 1989 by Terry A. Adams.
Author's Note copyright © 2013 by Terry A. Adams.
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-101-63559-9
Cover art by Stephan Martiniere.
Cover design by G-Force Design.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1627.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
First Printing, July 2013
 Â | DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES âMARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A. |
The two novels that make up
The D'neeran Factor
had their origin in one question: What would life be like if people really, really knew what others were thinking? Science fiction seemed the most appropriate venue for exploring the question. Of course, the joy of writing science fictionâwhich is all I've ever wanted to write, reallyâlies in that
What if�
I try to keep the science reasonably on track, allowing for conventions of the genre (speedy interstellar travel and the ability to manipulate gravity, for instance). I'm not trained in any science. I read a lot of science for the non-scientist, but not in any disciplined way, and recognize that our perceptions and descriptions of the universe keep changing. (Even in our own little neighborhood. Pluto got demoted. Maybe it wasn't an asteroid that caused the CretaceousâPaleogene extinction after all.) Scientists, come to think of it, are always asking, “What if?” too. And I bet they have as much fun with it as I do. Only, I'm allowed to be fuzzy about it, and they aren't.
Out of all this reading and writing, three personal axioms have emerged.
The first is that the universe absolutely can produce anything I can imagine, and more besides.
The second is that human nature hasn't changed since the indefinable day when “hominid” became “human,” so it's not likely to change in the next thousand years. (I read about history and prehistory, too. Also without discipline.)
The third blossomed at the moment I became a writer. That wasn't when I completed the first few pages of
Sentience
.
It was when I looked at those pages and said: This could be a lot better.
The axiom is: It can
ALWAYS
be better.
Peace.
Terry Adams
SENTIENCE
Affectionately dedicated to
Lynn Brunner Carlson, Robin Brunner, and Leveda Smith
With special thanks to
Barry Fierst.
T
he millefleurs sang a melody of ending. Clouds of twilight dimmed their thousand colors; rainbows faded into grayness, peace and longing mingled and black was there. Singing into silence:
Hallucination,
she thought. Desperate battle to think.
Oxygen loss.
She struggled for breath and lost the thought in Tirane's screams.
But he was deadâthe strength of that ego, to survive in memory still!
Dorista leaned close and said aloud, “Not lack of air.”
Shock made Hanna stupid. “Butâ?”
“The flowers. They're Gabriel dying.”
Dorista wept. Hanna felt hot wetness, tasted salt. Tears of the living: Dorista, Martin, Antonia, Roly, Hanna herself. She knew these few were alive because she saw them here in Auxiliary Control.
There were also the tears of the dead.
She thought of getting up and decided against it, remembering dimly how a few minutes ago she had struggled to pick herself up off the floor and regain her seat. With clearing eyes she saw that Auxiliary Control was untouched, even though something like the heart of a star had smashed into the corvette
Clara Mendoza
and rammed it through space without effort. Pretty
Clara
with her rainbow passages, garlanded for battle: she had never had a chance against the Nestorian cruisers, nor had any of her mates.
(I want to go home oh please I'm lost lost alone and it's darkâ)
Dark-eyed Pamir. Dying too, his final thoughts echoing in her mind.
Hanna lifted her right hand and brought it down hard on the edge of the console before her. The surface was curved but she hit it with all her strength and the sharp personal pain filled her and blotted out the ghosts. In the reprieve she began calling Main Control. No voice answered. Gabriel of the millefleurs faded. Had anyone survived?
“Smashed. It was smashed.” Dorista still wept. “There can't even be any bodies.”
“Gabriel's, anyway.” The personal essence disappearing from the cooling fleshâ¦the strongest took hours to go.
Voices rose round Hanna. Instinctively they were reverting to speech, the old way, the true-human way. To enter each other's thoughts was to lose their way in the mental chaos of the injured, the dead, and the dying. Not many left injured, not now. The second assault had finished the patients from the first, along with sickbay and the medics and the drugs for pain and the drugs for dying. The third had finished everything.
“Report,” Hanna said over her shoulder, but nobody did. She turned and screamed at them, “Report!”
(Agony staggered them and stopped. They put a name to it. Don trying to keep pain to himself so it would not defeat them. Half the ship was crushed between them and he said:
Don't even try
â)
“I amâ”
(Ash, dead or dying, mourned the son he would not haveâ)
Hanna said through the wave of darkness, “I'm the senior officer. If Main Control is gone, I must be. Report!
Concentrate!
”
Ghosts moved among them, nearly visible: scraps of childhood, loving faces, the detritus of ebbing consciousness. She gave them something to concentrate on: white hatred of Nestor.
Nestor, Nestor!
she cried to them, and shaped the images, fanning hate. The crazed old general, the bleak warrens of an ill-managed colony world. The Polity worlds had closed ranks and done nothing for Nestor, and it was the ancient story: find an outside enemy to hate. D'neerans were easy to hate, telepaths; true-humans considered them only quasi-human. And D'neera was
a peaceful world. With more love for flowers than for defenses.
Hanna kept her mindâ
(Oh God, I'm so afraid, his blood, oh God, oh God
â)
“Who'sâ?” someone said.
