The Devil's Nebula (Weird Space, Book 1)
Eric Brown
Language: English
Pages: 181
ISBN: 2:00187523
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Ed Carew and his small ragtag crew are smugglers and ne'erdo- wells, thumbing their noses at the Expansion, the vast human hegemony extending across thousands of worlds... until the day they are caught, and offered a choice between working for the Expansion and an ignominious death. They must trespass across the domain of humanity's neighbours, the Vetch – the inscrutable alien race with whom humanity has warred, at terrible cost oflife, and only recently arrived at an uneasy peace – and into uncharted space beyond, among the strange worlds of the Devil's Nebula, looking for long-lost settlers.
A new evil threatens not only the Expansion itself, but the Vetch as well. In the long run, the survival of both races may depend on their ability to lay aside their differences and co-operate.
Gehirn in Fesseln (Perry Rhodan Silberbände, Band 70; Das Kosmische Schachspiel, Band 3)
Straße nach Andromeda (Perry Rhodan Silberbände, Band 21; Die Meister der Insel, Band 1)
Castle Vroman (A Galaxy Unknown, Book 6)
Seas of Ernathe (Star Rigger, Book 1)
Das heimliche Imperium (Perry Rhodan Silberbände, Band 57; Der Schwarm, Band 3)
long gone, but he was taking no chances. He led the way through a steaming tunnel of his own making, breathing shallowly so as not to inhale the smoke from the burning vegetation. Jed followed, trotting at his heels, and Lania brought up the rear, ever ready to repel the next attack. The haunting calls of unseen wildlife bassooned through the sultry air, counterpointed by the piccolo notes of tiny birds darting through the slanting sunlight in riotous profusion. Hesperides was a world returned
to ignore the presence of the Expansion officials. The voyage through the void, transecting the outer edge of Vetch space, was scheduled to take a little over four days, if everything went smoothly and according to plan. The Hawk carried the latest weaponry, controlled of course by the complement of militia, and the Expansion officials were confident that they would outgun the aliens in any dog-fight. From the far edge of Vetch space to the fringe of the Devil’s Nebula was a journey of less than
the Hawk at eighty per cent of its maximum speed and monitored the running of the engines, feeling their power as if they were a part of herself. She summoned a schematic of the space through which they were travelling, and in her mind’s eye the yin-yang shape appeared: the flashing red light that was the Hawk was now almost three quarters of the way through Vetch territory. She eased the engines back to something like fifty per cent of their capacity and withdrew from the meld. Her senses
of a starship, golden in the light of the sun, swept along the narrow gap of the chasm high above. Maatja gasped in wonder as it banked and disappeared from sight. The humans, she thought, come to do the bidding of the Weird. She lowered the seed-boat into the water, stepped wobblingly into it and pushed herself from the bank. CHAPTER THIRTEEN THEY MADE A dozen orbits of the blue planet, each pass varying by a few degrees, so that by the end of the twenty-four hour period they had
Outcast. “Will twenty-four hours standard give us enough time?” Langley recalculated the duration into World time. He nodded. “More than enough.” Lania closed her eyes and instructed the Hawk to phase into the void twenty-four hours after they’d left the ship. She withdrew from the meld and jumped from the sling. “Okay. All set.” They left the ship and Villic, riding a Sleer, led the way through the jungle to the fissure. CHAPTER SIXTEEN MAATJA REMEMBERED THE fall, but she had no
