Webdancers Read online

  Webdancers

  Book 3 of the Timeweb Chronicles

  Brian Herbert

  Digital Edition 2011

  WordFire Press

  www.wordfire.com

  eBook ISBN 978-1-61475-102-1

  First publication 2008 in conjunction with Tekno Books and Ed Gorman

  Copyright © 2008 by DreamStar, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire Inc

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  Electronic Version by Baen Ebooks

  http://www.baen.com

  Dedication

  This book is for Jan. When I met you on that summer day in California, all of the stars in the heavens were in alignment for us—and my darling, they have been ever since. Thank you for being my loyal, loving companion and for teaching me everything that is meaningful about life.

  Chapter One

  Eddies and currents of time flow through the galaxy … and immense whirlpools beckon everything into chaos.

  —Eshaz, timeseeing report to the Council of Elders

  A tiny figure, the Parvii woman clung to a wall of the glowing green sectoid chamber. Using her touch and a telepathic linkage to the Aopoddae podship, she guided the creature past uncounted star systems, which she saw through multiple eyes on the craft’s hull. At the vanguard of the Liberator fleet, she led the other Aopoddae vessels toward the galactic fold of the Parviis, and now their destination drew near.

  Tesh Kori’s dominion over the sentient spacecraft was an evolving relationship, a symbiosis between two ancient and very different galactic races in which she merged into the psyche of the creature in the ancient way. Now she felt an increasing closeness to this flagship that she had named Webdancer. The connection gave her a glimmer of hope for the future, that perhaps her people would finally see the error of their ways and agree to cooperate with other races.

  But she didn’t hold out much hope for that outcome. More likely, there would be a terrible battle in the sacred fold. And she would be responsible for leading a powerful military force to that secret location, for an attack on her own people.

  She tried to set aside the feelings of guilt, if only for a few moments. Her thoughts drifted to something infinitely more pleasant, her feelings for an alien Human named Noah Watanabe.…

  * * * * *

  In the passenger compartment behind Tesh’s sectoid chamber, Noah stood beside a blond young man, both of them staring out a wide aft porthole at the formation of nine hundred podships behind them. Unlike the flagship, the trailing vessels were all piloted by Tulyans that had merged into the flesh of the spacefaring vessels, causing reptilian Tulyan faces to protrude from the prows. He recognized several of them, including that of his close friend, Eshaz.

  The journey had taken longer than anticipated—more than two days so far—due to the extreme distance involved and poor conditions of the podways that had required the fleet to take alternate routes. They’d been forced to go around entire galactic sectors that had collapsed from the entropic decay of the Timeweb infrastructure.

  The young man nudged him. It was Noah’s nephew, Doge Anton del Velli. “While we’ve been looking outside, our ship morphed again. I think it’s bigger now.”

  Noah looked around the grayness of the large cabin, which was illuminated by hidden sources that flickered faintly green at times. Many of the uniformed officers and other personnel stood at forward viewing windows that jutted out on the port and starboard sides. He heard the murmur of their voices.

  Everyone had noticed the changes. Since embarking on this critical mission, the passenger areas and the cargo holds on the lower levels had become at least half again as large as they had originally been. None of the Human, Tulyan, or robotic passengers had left the vessel, and all of the fighter craft were parked in the holds, yet everyone agreed there was considerably more space for everything now.

  “You’re right,” Noah said. “There’s another row of benches, and the ceiling seems a little higher.”

  Anton rubbed his thick blond mustache. “Webdancer, she calls this one, and from the reports I’m getting, it’s bigger than all the rest of them.”

  With a grin on his freckled face, Noah said, “Well, it is the flagship, and seems to sense its relative importance.” He paused. “Perhaps our ship is just puffing up its chest in pride.”

  “Odd, the way podships can configure themselves at will,” Anton said, expanding, changing layouts, and even adding gun ports on the sides of the hulls that are perfect for our space artillery pieces. I find it most peculiar.”

  “Indeed.”

  “With your connections, Noah, you should know why.”

  “But I don’t.” Noah’s incredible psychic powers came and went, enabling him to take paranormal journeys far across the heavens, and sometimes to pilot podships, these mysterious creatures that had their own communication methods and secret motivations. It had all started after he’d been mortally wounded in an attack by Doge Lorenzo del Velli’s forces, and Eshaz healed him by connecting him to a strand of Timeweb. It had been much more than a physical healing process

  Timeweb.

  He shuddered slightly as he thought of the name that Parviis and Tulyans had given to the cosmic green filigree connecting everything in the galaxy, a vast network on which these Aopoddae craft were traveling now. Most of the races could not see it, but after Noah’s miraculous survival he’d been granted unprecedented private access to the web, although without explanation or guidance. Still, through it all, Noah had come to suspect that a higher power was guiding him, and had been doing so for some time. He sensed this force with him now, and with the entire fleet.

  We’re doing the right thing, he assured himself, the only thing we can do.

  As he looked at the young merchant prince leader beside him, Noah thought his nephew carried his responsibilities well, and comported himself as if he had been groomed for this important position. That was hardly the case, though Anton did have royal blood on his father Lorenzo’s side, albeit from an extramarital relationship he’d had with Noah’s sister. Only serving as the Doge for a short time after his father was deposed, Anton had managed to coordinate much of the galaxy-spanning military effort, working with the various allied races and factions so that none felt slighted, and all believed they were indispensable to the success of the mission. It helped that this actually was true. Each of the groups in the assault force—the Red Berets, the MPA troopers, the Guardians, the Tulyans, and even the sentient robots—had important roles to play.

  Just then, a clamor of excited voices rose at the front of the compartment. Noah and Anton hurried over, making their way around the extruded benches, tables and other furnishings the podship had provided. Noticing the approach of the two leaders, the other passengers moved aside, allowing them to reach one of the forward viewing windows.

  Looking through it, Noah sucked in a deep breath, and suppressed a gasp. Ahead he saw what looked like a large, luminous hole in the black fabric of the galaxy, casti
ng subdued illumination like a dull cosmic searchlight.

  “The Asteroid Funnel,” Anton murmured. “The Parvii Fold is on the other side, but Tesh will need all of her piloting skills to get us there.”

  “She can do it,” Noah said. Both of them had heard of the terrible dangers of the galactic funnel, the hurtling asteroids, the extremely perilous flying conditions.

  For several moments time seemed to stand still around Noah Watanabe, and all went silent. So much rested on this military venture, the fate of all the galactic races and their worlds, the fate of all they had ever known and all they had ever imagined. Countless dreams hung in the balance, made precarious by the dark clouds that had seeped into the galaxy.

  Closing his eyes, Noah attempted to mind-range and peer into the cosmic web, trying to see into the Parvii Fold beyond the funnel. But the paranormal network had only been accessible to him intermittently, and almost never of his own volition. Now he beheld a pocket of blackness in his mind, and felt cold fear washing through him.

  Just as Noah opened his eyes again, Webdancer plunged into the hole, with the fleet right behind.

  Chapter Two

  The most ancient patterns of the heavens are falling victim to new laws of science. From time immemorial, comets, asteroids, and planetary systems have traveled through space at regular, predictable orbits, speeds, and inclinations. Previously it was possible to calculate exactly when a particular comet would transit Venus, to the hour and minute. It was like clockwork, but no more. Cosmic bodies, even entire galactic sectors, have vanished into timeholes.

  —Professor Daviz Joél, report to the Merchant Prince Alliance

  Two mottled gray-and-black podships sped along the galactic web, one right after the other. Though they traveled so rapidly that a Human eye would not be able to see them, their speeds were nonetheless diminished from the norm, in large part due to the decline of the infrastructure.

  Bred in a laboratory, these large, sentient vessels were not piloted like their natural cousins. Instead of Parviis inside the sectoid chambers, or Tulyans merged into the flesh of the creatures, each was under the control of a Mutati operating a Hibbil navigation unit. Behind the pilot in the lead craft stood the Emir Hari’Adab, leader of the shapeshifter race … a position he had attained after assassinating his own father, the Zultan Abal Meshdi.

  Hari had Hibbil and Adurian prisoners in the cargo hold, all of them soldiers. For a reason they refused to divulge, they had landed a small military force on his own planet of Dij. The Emir’s fighters had overcome them, killing most and taking the rest into custody, along with their two unusual ships. His own demented father had authorized the breeding of what were known as “lab-pods,” but these two spacecraft were of a higher order. They actually had Hibbil nav-systems that worked quite well, in sharp contrast with those of the Zultan.

  The prisoners were members of the “HibAdu Coalition.” One of them had carried a document fragment bearing the name of that military force, inscribed on a remnant of papers the soldiers had tried to destroy, along with all electronic records. But the salvaged document and other articles found with the soldiers had only succeeded in generating more questions, which none of the captives would answer.

  Historically, Hibbils were allies of Humans, while Adurians had a similar relationship with Mutatis. And, since Humans and Mutatis had been the archenemies of one another since time immemorial, everyone had assumed that Hibbils and Adurians should be the same. Perhaps it was only a splinter group that had landed on Hari’s planet, but he sensed it might be something much more significant, and dangerous. The well-armed soldiers had carried the sophisticated weaponry and communications equipment of a much larger, well-financed force. They appeared to have been on a reconnaissance mission.

  They call themselves HibAdus, Hari thought as he watched the Mutati pilot seated ahead of him, operating the touch-panel controls of the ship. Very strange.

  Perhaps the Tulyans—with their ability to determine truth or falsehood through physical contact—could determine who his prisoners really were. And Hari had an additional motive for approaching the reptilians in their legendary starcloud. They were rumored to be close to Noah Watanabe and other Human leaders of the Merchant Prince Alliance. Perhaps the Tulyan Council of Elders could broker a peace agreement between the warring MPA and the Mutati Kingdom, ending the insane, ages-old hostilities between the two races. No one could even recall why they had been battling for so long, and Hari had always believed that there should be some way of bringing it all to a peaceful end. This had put him in direct conflict with his stubborn father, but now—after the unthinkable act Hari had committed—perhaps the Humans would believe him. If necessary, he would even submit himself to the truthing touch of the Tulyans.

  At the sound of the cockpit door sliding open behind him, Hari turned to exchange smiles with his girlfriend, Parais d’Olor. While Hari and the pilot (like most other shapeshifters) were terramutatis who walked, she was an aeromutati, able to spread her wings and soar into the air, should she ever desire to do so. Just before departing on the trip with him, she had metamorphosed into the guise of a colorful Alty peacock, a very large bird with a red-and-gold body and black, silver-tipped wings that were now tucked tightly against her body. In the confinement of the lab-pod, she got around by walking, and from her own morphology she had developed a way of walking smoothly on her two bird legs, instead of hopping around in the customary avian fashion.

  Behind her stood Yerto Bhaleen, a career military officer who held the rank of Kajor in the Mutati High Command. A small, muscular terramutati with the standard complement of three slender arms and six stout legs, he was a four-star Kajor, just beneath the highest of ranks. Like Hari, he had refused any higher designation, since his own commanders had died in the tragic loss of Paradij, the horrific collateral damage involved in the assassination of the Zultan.

  “We should be there soon, My Emir,” Bhaleen said. “All is in readiness.”

  “Very good,” Hari said.

  The officer moved back a couple of paces and stood rigidly, awaiting any further commands.

  Glancing at Parais, the Mutati leader said, “You can’t wait to fly on your own, can you? Perhaps after we arrive the Tulyans will permit you to fly around their starcloud.”

  “Only if we gain their trust,” she suggested.

  Rubbing up against his side, she smiled gently at him. Her lovely facial features were fleshy, with a small beak and oversized brown eyes that were totally without guile. “But I don’t need to fly,” she said. “Wherever you are is where I want to be.”

  Hari adored her. Without Parais’ guidance and inspiration, he would not be able to go on with his life, and with the new, very ambitious purpose he had undertaken. If anyone deserved to lead the Mutati people, it was her, and not him. But the shapeshifter race was very traditional, and Hari had the right of ascendancy by birthright, no matter the terrible thing he had done to accelerate the process.

  It had been an act of violence that went terribly wrong in the trajectory calculation of a planet-busting Demolio torpedo. Aimed at a moon his father was visiting, the missile went off course and destroyed the Mutati homeworld of Paradij instead, wiping out billions of Hari’s own people. The orbiting moon and the mad Zultan Abal Meshdi had been annihilated in the cataclysms as well, but that had been little solace. Hari could hardly bear to think of the scale of the tragedy.

  Not yet having admitted to the Mutati people what he did, or the reason, Hari carried a terrible burden of guilt on his shoulders. At Parais’s encouragement, he continued to lead the shapeshifter race, but he insisted on doing it as Emir, a princely governor’s designation, rather than the customary Zultan title his father and most predecessors had held. It was Hari’s way of saying privately that he did not yet deserve the higher title, that he had not earned it, and perhaps he never would.

  Chapter Three

  After we defeated the Parviis, the Eye of the Swarm withdrew his survivors
, taking more than 100,000 podships they control to the remote Parvii Fold. Earlier, he had already cut off regularly scheduled podship travel to Human and Mutati worlds, and now he’s done the same for the rest of the galaxy. A few Parvii pilots who are out of contact with their leader are continuing routes in non-Human or Mutati sectors, but that won’t last long. In addition, there are disturbing reports of laboratory-bred pods out in the galaxy.

  —Excerpts from confidential report to the Tulyan Council of Elders

  From the window of a small office suspended inside the immense building, Jacopo Nehr looked down on his manufacturing and assembly lines as they produced new machine components and robots for export. He heard the steady drone of machinery, and felt the vibrations of manufacturing beneath his feet. This plant, located on one of the Hibbil Cluster Worlds, was one of many industrial facilities that Nehr owned around the galaxy.

  But to his dismay, he was not there voluntarily. He cursed and smashed the side of his fist against the plax window. It flexed, but did not break.

  Down on the factory floor he saw a scruffy, silver little robot engaged in oddly animated conversations with subordinate workbots of varying sizes and designs. The little one’s name was Ipsy, an odd mechanical runt who had an officious, irritating personality. He certainly grated on Jacopo, and other sentient robots took offense to him at times as well, as they seemed to be doing at the moment. Jacopo had tried to teach him personal interaction and management skills, but Ipsy had been resistant to learning them.

  Now, Ipsy pushed another robot in the chest, knocking him backward against others. Three more of them tumbled over like dominoes. Jacopo had seen this mechanical emotionalism and physicality before, and always Ipsy won out. Someone had programmed him to be quite aggressive.