Into the Maelstrom Read online

  INTO THE VORTEX

  The glowing mist coalesced, thickening into a long scar of brilliant white energy. To the villagers it seemed that the phenomenon was somehow rushing forward across a great distance. As if through the fissure they could see into a sky beyond their own, a window into what was coming. The torrent of wind heralded its imminent arrival. Something titanic. Something never before known to Earth.

  The ground trembled and shook. The crackle of live electricity, the roar of an immense fire, the clamor of exploding bombs, these and more mixed into a reverberating echo, and with one final, violent flash of light the arrival was upon them.

  No one ran—there was nowhere to go . . .

  VOR: THE MAELSTROM

  Vor: Island of Power

  by Dean Wesley Smith

  Vor: The Rescue

  by Don Ellis

  Vor: The Playback War

  by Lisa Smedman

  Vor: Hell Heart

  by Robert E.Vardeman

  Vor: Operation Sierra-75

  by Thomas S. Gressman

  Available from Warner Aspect®

  VOR : INTO THE MAELSTROM . Copyright © 1999 by FASA Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For information address Warner Books, Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

  VOR: The Maelstrom and all related characters, slogans, and indicia are trademarks of FASA Corporation.

  Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  A Time Warner Company

  The “Warner Books” name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2213-8

  A mass market edition of this book was published in 1999 by Warner Books.

  First eBook Edition: January 2001

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  For Mike Nielsen, who started a fun adventure and was never too busy for one more question.

  The author would like to thank the following people for their support and assistance over the course of this novel:

  Mike Nielsen, for reasons already stated. Jim Nelson, who also fielded phone calls.

  Donna Ippolito and Annalise Raziq, at FASA, for their efforts in helping meet a tight deadline. Jaime Levine, who handled everything on Warner Books’ end.

  Always, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for continued support in this business.

  Lisa Smedman, Dean Smith—again—and Jerry Oltion, who are helping flesh out the universe and provided a few neat story tie-ins.

  Russell Loveday, science and technology consultant. Allen and Amy Mattila, Irina Busenbark, and Alex Okhapkin for the assistance with Russian languages, history, and customs.

  My wife, Heather, and my three wonderful children, Talon, Conner, and Alexia, for unswerving and loving support. Thank you.

  C ONTENTS

  EARTHFALL

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  UNDER AN ALIEN SKY

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  E ARTHFALL

  1

  * * *

  T he waning moon hung low over the horizon, a sliver of white, dimmed now and again by wisps of trailing clouds. The waters of the Atlantic shimmered in its silvery light, the gentle swells gleaming like burnished steel, sweeping in against Angola’s coastline. The rolling surf crested and washed up onto a steep, shallow beach, then fell back whispering the promise of its next surge. Even here, near the water’s edge, the land knew little relief from Africa’s long days. Late into the night the sun’s heat continued to seep from the blistered ground, barely stirred by a sluggish and intermittent breeze.

  Here the Maelstrom would first taste of the Earth.

  A dozen fishing skiffs had been dragged well above the high-tide mark and lashed to supports sunk deeply to prevent a rogue wave from claiming one of the small boats. No harbor, no docks. Local people thought of Novo Cocarada as a fishing village because half the families relied on the Atlantic’s fickle waters to survive. The rest depended on what little they could grow in the sun-baked dirt, the few scrawny cattle and goats grazing on sparse grasses and shrub, and the generosity of village fishermen.

  In a century of supposed progress, Novo Cocarada had changed little. A small collection of ramshackle buildings formed its entirety, the whole village built from warped planks, corrugated tin, and what little fiberboard had been scrounged from nearby Covelo and Lobito. A single window left open to the outside cast flickering lamplight onto a garbage-strewn road.

  Novo Cocarada was no more than a small dot on some map, a narrow stretch of flatland, caught between the Atlantic and the sharp-edged foothills rising sharply into the Serra Cambonda range to the south and east. It fell beneath the military attentions of both the Union and the Neo-Soviet empire, and contributed perhaps one soldier every decade to the defense of United Africa. The global buildup of arms and increased conflict had done nothing to relieve the Earth’s poverty. The constant skirmishes had, in fact, only created more such places. That Novo Cocarada would soon be a site of infamous renown was not a distinction the villagers would live to know.

  The winds struck first, without warning, smashing down from higher atmosphere to chop the ocean swells and whip up an instant storm of dust and debris over the village. Window coverings of light plastic and loose wooden slats ripped free. Hard gusts smashed lean-tos and rickety sheds into kindling. Cattle lowed their distress, and the goats bleated shrilly. The burning lamp that lit one window toppled, spilling an instant oil fire across the floor. Another dilapidated shack collapsed under the sudden onslaught. Screams of fright were lost to the winds as lightning split the sky and thunder shook the ground. A suddenly angry surf pounded the coast, the waves now rushing farther up the shore.

  More lightning, twin forks that slashed across the sky and then broke into whiplike tendrils. Only this time the darkness did not return completely. A glowing fissure split the heavens, a narrow chasm filled with luminescent mist cutting across the sky, running from out over the ocean inland to the Serra Cambondas. Lightning played along its edges, to the accompaniment of thunderous noise. Over the Atlantic the mist brightened, a pulse that quickly traveled the fissure’s length. The fingernail moon paled and was lost to an artificial daylight as the strange glow bathed the land.

  A few villagers had stumbled from their homes, worried over their boats or livestock. They now stood transfixed by the wounded night, their dark skins washed gray in the unearthly illumination, their eyes tearing from the dust storm. The winds poured down from the fissure above, smashing into an unsuspecting Earth before rushing outward in a furious howl. A large sheet of tin tore from the roof of one shanty, then sailed away on the gale. Whipped by the gusts, the lamp fire leapt up the walls of one house and now thr
eatened another, the flames reaching out as they crackled and snapped their anger. Novo Cocarada was dying, and no one moved to save it. No one knew where to begin.

  The driving surf continued to punish the beach. Waves lapped up against the grounded skiffs. One comber curled up to immense height, walking up the steep beach to smash two small launches and tear another from its mooring before spending itself. Thousands of liters of seawater swept into the village in a shallow flood—knocking two villagers off their feet, carrying them along several hundred meters before finally letting go. Where water hit the burning house it extinguished the lower flames, but failed to staunch the full inferno.

  The wash of seawater broke the paralysis that had seized the villagers. Shaking off the shock, they began to move with something akin to purpose. One rushed to check the boats, and others to help rescue people trapped beneath the collapsed building. Their eyes were diverted from the alien sky for only a few seconds.

  In that brief instant, they missed the end of Novo Cocarada.

  The glowing mist coalesced, thickening into a long scar of brilliant white energy. There was no indication of actual movement, though to the villagers still distracted by the sky it seemed that the phenomenon was somehow rushing forward across a great distance. As if through the fissure they could see into a sky beyond their own, a window into what was coming. The torrent of wind heralded its imminent arrival. Something titanic in size. Something never before known to Earth. And, in the eyes of the villagers, something evil.

  The ground trembled and shook, knocking them all from their feet as a new noise assailed their senses. Not a true thunderclap, like those heard so far. The crackle of live electricity and the roar of an immense fire. The clamor of a series of exploding bombs. These and more mixed into a reverberating echo, and then, with one final, violent flash of light, the arrival was upon them.

  The fissure cracked, and a long tendril of blazing energy tens of kilometers long and easily a full kilometer across fell from the sky over Angola’s coast. It struck into the Atlantic first, far to sea, pushing the water back in great columns and building twin tidal waves that rushed off north and south. The line continued to descend, plowing the ocean and raining lightning over the land.

  No one ran—there was nowhere to go, to hide, no safe haven. Some prayed. A few were mercifully shocked past any ability to think clearly. Most expected a wash of heat or burning energy to incinerate them, having for decades understood the very real threat of a nuclear end. Neo-Soviet forces had demonstrated time and again their penchant for such weapons, though never on African soil.

  But as the tendril fell over the village, the touch of energy did not burn, and was not comprised of true light. The villagers’ final sensations before death claimed them were of cold, and darkness.

  The wall of energy stood several kilometers out to sea, running southeast to Angola’s coast and over the site where Novo Cocarada had once been. It stretched up into the Serra Cambonda range, filling valleys and stretching over peaks until overlapping with the Catumbella River.

  Nearly half a kilometer high, it remained for several long seconds—exactly as much time as it had taken to fall from the sky. Then, as though with casual indifference, the tendril rose slowly back into that sky, tearing up the Earth as it left. The land came away with a terrible cracking and grinding, as if an immense hand had gouged into the ground and torn it away. Several hundred meters deep at the coast—over a full kilometer where the crackling energy had pooled into Cambonda valleys and now uprooted entire mountains—and several kilometers wide. And with a final shattering of the sky with violent lightning and deep, roaring explosions, the tendril was washed over in a blurry field of energies that widened the fissure. The arm of blazing energies slipped back through, pulling the stolen land with it.

  Surrounding territory continued to shake with violent quakes, the Earth stressed from the sudden loss of mass and the pounding as the Atlantic waters rushed in to fill the deep void. The roar and boom of a thousand waterfalls thundered in the night, a terrifying discord heard as far away as Covelo. A new rush of wind scoured the arid lands as air was displaced by ocean. Quickly undercut by the raging torrent rushing inland, large swaths of coastal land slid into the chasm, widening the newly made bay. Millions of liters of seawater rushed by the headland every second, pushing a great wave farther into the interior of Angola. That wave finally burst and washed up over sea level some twenty-two minutes and seventeen kilometers later. The deep bowl continued to wash and flood, fighting to establish itself with the Atlantic.

  The canyon ripped through the Serra Cambonda range would never be filled, the majority of it being above sea level. Cliffsides collapsed and slid into the canyon, barely denting such an immense evacuation. The Catumbella River diverted its course to fall into the deep gorge, leaving dry the Angola towns of Benguela and Lobito along its original bed. Eventually the river would trace a path through the gigantic canyon, reaching Cocarada Bay to begin its fight to establish a freshwater basin. By then news of the incident would have reached the Union and Neo-Soviet intelligence communities. United Africa would have its first inspectors on-site, who could do little but make inconclusive reports. The fissure had already closed, leaving behind no evidence of what had caused such devastation. Gentle swells again moved easily toward Angola’s coast.

  And a thumbnail moon continued to rise in the African night sky.

  2

  * * *

  N ight cloaked the waters of Karskoye More, the darkness guarding the Union Army’s infiltration of Neo-Soviet territory. Colonel Raymond Sainz, commander of the Seventy-first Assault Group, stood on the observation deck of the lead Leviathan antigravity vessel, holding tight to the safety rail. Ahead lay more darkness occasionally lit by the flicker of distant lightning. At his back the immense vessel’s open bay held a dozen Hydra ag transports and several support vehicles awaiting off-load to the northern shore of Siberia. All but a few soldiers—scouts mostly, unused to tight confines—remained canned.

  Through the light squall of freezing rain Sainz could barely make out the other two vessels carrying the rest of his command, though all three Leviathans were running at close quarters. Water beaded and ran off his camouflaged foul-weather gear, a few drops finding a seam at his neck and dripping icy fingers along one shoulder. Sainz was a big man, standing 1.9 meters tall, and with a touch of natural bronze to his skin hinting at his Mexican-Union birth. His broad face pinched into a frown as he studied sea and sky.

  “What do you think, Colonel?” The vessel’s captain, Jorgen Fredriksson, stepped from the protective alcove that led to his enclosed bridge. Tall even for a Scand, he was the only man aboard who forced the colonel to look upward. Despite the weather, he wore only a thick sweater under his standard uniform, as if the cold and rain dared not bother him.

  “These aren’t my home waters, Jorgie.” Sainz pronounced the captain’s name Yorgie, his polyglot skills giving him familiarity with the Scandinavian tongue. “But born and raised in Matamoros, I never saw water behave like this except once in the eye of a hurricane.”

  He gestured out to where nearby swells ran at odds with one another, as if tide and current and wind no longer affected them. A set joined together for a moment, pitching upward high enough to slam the side of the antigrav vessel and shoving a hard jog into its glide path. Sainz gripped the rail even tighter. In the open bay soldiers cursed as they tumbled to the deck or were thrown up against one of the Hydras. Too late the Leviathan’s terrain-compensation circuitry kicked in, raising the huge craft another few meters only to settle back to an efficient glide when no further large waves were detected.

  Captain Fredriksson held his footing with a wide-legged stance, needing no extra support. “Ya, well, there’s no hurricane about. I’ve run missions over northern waters for fifteen years, and never seen anything like this. And it looks like we’re heading into much worse.” He nodded forward, past the bow and toward the distant light show. The flickering gl
ow of heavy lightning jumped over a fair arc, and for a brief second lit up several degrees of the southern horizon. “That looks to be centered just east of the city of Dikson. We’ll skirt it by fifty kilometers or better, but I’m still betting we catch hell trying to make Taymyr Bay.”

  Sainz wouldn’t presume to debate the captain. It was Fredriksson’s knowledge that had convinced Union brass to risk three Leviathans on this insertion rather than the more easily detected Navy amphibian transports. The Scand officer had known just how close they could skirt the northern defense post Novaya Zemlya without detection, and could identify any stretch of Neo-Sov northern coastline at a glance. He also guaranteed full withdrawal of the Leviathans before the four hours of northern night ended.

  Sainz’s brown eyes locked onto the captain’s frosty blues. Both men blinked water from their vision. “Are you saying the insertion is in danger?”

  Fredriksson laughed, his deep voice a hint of thunder itself. “No Scand would worry about a little storm while in command of this monster.” He slapped a metal bulkhead. “The sea’s no match for a Leviathan. Not even as strange a sea as this one.”

  He paused and studied the horizon. “A tidal wave might flip us,” he said, his tone a touch more cautious. “Heard one wiped out Lagos in Nigeria last week, after some disturbance near Angola. You think we have a similar problem?”

  Sainz considered the several ways he might answer that question. Fredriksson was obviously fishing for information, and in a way that didn’t exactly violate secrecy orders. Sainz appreciated the captain’s desire for more information. It came with accepting command and responsibility for the lives of others. But the final truth of the matter was that Sainz didn’t really know. And any discussion, no matter how vague, still impinged on the oath he’d taken as a Union officer. In twenty-three years of service, Raymond Sainz had managed to avoid any compromise of his personal honor. One of the major ways, he believed, the Union differed from the Neo-Soviet empire. One of the differences he fought to protect.