Startide Rising (The Uplift Saga, #2) - David Brin Page 0,159
below. Toshio looked right and left and saw no place that looked any better.
At that moment, a scream of engines pealed forth. He looked back to see a tornado of broken vegetation fly up from a spot only a hundred meters away. The gun-metal gray longboat rose above the rapidly tilting forest. It was surrounded by a glowing nimbus of ionization. Toshio’s hackles rose as the island was swept by a throbbing antigravity field. The boat turned slowly and seemed to hesitate. Then, with a thunderclap, it speared into the eastern sky.
Toshio crouched as the boom whipped at him, tugging at his clothes.
There was no time to delay. Either Charles Dart had got away or he hadn’t. Toshio pulled his mask up over his face, held it with one hand, and leapt.
“Ifni’s boss …” he prayed. And he fell into the stormy waters.
101
Galactics
Above the planet small flotillas of battered warships paused suddenly in their multi-sided butchery.
They had left hiding places on Kithrup’s tiny moons, gambling all on the chance that the strange radio broadcasts from the planet’s northern hemisphere were, indeed, of human origin. On their way down to Kithrup, the tiny alliances sniped at each other with their waning strength, until a sudden wave of psychic noise hit the entire motley ensemble. It rose from the planet with a power none could have expected, overwhelming psi-shields and striking crews temporarily motionless.
The ships continued to plunge toward the planet, their living crews blinked limply, unable to fire their weapons or guide their vessels.
If it had been a weapon, the psychic shout would have cleansed half of the ships of their crews. As it was, the mental scream of anger and rejection reverberated within their brains, driving a few of the least flexible completely mad.
For long moments the cruisers drifted out of formation, uncontrolled, downward into the upper fringes of the atmosphere.
Finally, the psi-scream began to fade. The grating anger growled and diminished, leaving burning after-images as the numb crews slowly came to their senses.
The Xatinni and their clients, having drifted away from the others, looked about and discovered that they had lost their appetite for further fighting. They decided to accept the pointed invitation to depart. Their four ragged ships left Kthsemenee’s system as quickly as laboring engines could manage.
The J’8lek were slow coming around. After succumbing to the numbing mind-scream, they drifted in amongst the ships of the Brothers of the Night. The Brothers awakened sooner, and used the J’8lek for target practice.
Sophisticated autopilots brought two Jophur warships to land on the slope of a steaming mountain, far to the south of their original destination. Automatic weapons kept watch for enemies while the Jophur struggled with their confusion. Finally, as the stunning psychic noise subsided, the crews began to revive and retake control of their grounded ships.
The Jophur were almost ready to lift off again, and head north to rejoin the fray, when the entire top of their mountain blew away in a column of superheated steam.
102
Streaker
Gillian stared, slack-jawed, until the grating “sounds” finally began to fade. She swallowed. Her ears popped, and she shook her head to clear away the numb feeling. Then she saw that the dolphins were staring at her.
“That was awful!” she stated. “Is everybody all right?”
Tsh’t looked relieved. “We’re all fine, Gillian. We detected an extremely powerful psi-explosion a few moments ago. It easily pierced our shields, and seems to have dazed you for a few minutes. But except for some momentary discomfort, we hardly felt it!”
Gillian rubbed her temples. “It must be my esper sensitivity that made me susceptible. Let’s just hope the Eatees don’t follow that attack up with another even closer.…” She stopped. Tsh’t was shaking her head.
“Gillian, I don’t think it was the Eatees. Or if it was, they weren’t aiming for us. Instruments indicate that that burst came from very close nearby, and was almost perfectly tuned not to be received by cetaceans! Your brain is similar to ours, so you only felt it a little. Suessi reports hardly feeling a thing.
“But I imagine some of the Galactics had a rough t-time weathering that psi-storm!”
Gillian shook her head a second time. “I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of usss. But I don’t suppose we have to understand. All I can tell you is thisss—at almost the same time that psi-burst went off, there was an intense ground tremor not two hundred klicks from here. The crustal waves are only now starting to arrive.”