Transformation Space - Marianne de Pierres [0]
SPACE
A strong, sweet, familiar smell pervaded the air. Scraping sounds rasped along the floor.
Jo-Jo fought a compulsion to raise his head and look. As if sensing his desire, Randall pressed harder on his head.
He concentrated on his breathing, keeping it light and quiet. On Dowl station he, Bethany and Petalu Mau had escaped the notice of the Saqr for a few minutes by keeping low, crawling until they’d reached a service lift.
Quiet. Still. Pray. Jo-Jo imagined Randall spitting the words out in that order.
Maybe not pray. She hadn’t shown belief in anything much, other than her own ability. Even when things were bad in the Extro ship, he’d never heard Randall call for any god’s help.
The sweet scent grew stronger; the scraping sounded right above them. A single Saqr? More? Don’t move. Don’t!
BY MARIANNE DE PIERRES
The Parrish Plessis Novels
Nylon Angel
Code Noir
Crash Deluxe
The Sentients of Orion
Dark Space
Chaos Space
Mirror Space
Transformation Space
Copyright
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-12777-1
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Marianne de Pierres
Excerpt from Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley
Copyright © 2009 by Michael Cobley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
CONTENTS
TRANSFORMATION SPACE
BY MARIANNE DE PIERRES
Copyright
Sole
BELLE-MONDE OBSERVATORY – OUTER MINTAKA SYSTEM
MIRA
TRIN
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
TEKTON
MIRA
BELLE-MONDE
Sole
THALES
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
MIRA
THALES
Sole
TEKTON
BELLE-MONDE
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
THALES
TEKTON
BALBAO
TRIN
MIRA
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
MIRA
BALBAO
TRIN
TEKTON
MIRA
JO-JO
THALES
BALBAO
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
MIRA
BALBAO
TRIN
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
THALES
MIRA
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
MIRA
JO-JO
MIRA
JO-JO
Sole
MIRA
THALES
BALBAO
TRIN
MIRA
BALBAO
THALES
BALBAO
THALES
TRIN
MIRA
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
TRIN
MIRA
THALES
MIRA
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
MIRA
Sole
extras
about the author
SEEDS OF EARTH
PROLOGUE
1 GREG
For Darren Nash
Sole
Close’m now
Pretty pretty
Know you-all
Eat you-up
BELLE-MONDE OBSERVATORY – OUTER MINTAKA SYSTEM
Belle-Monde chief of station Astronomein Balbao poured over his daily analysis data flow of the gas entity known to them all as Sole. Something was wrong. Wave readings showed a disturbance in Sole’s near space. In the months that the OLOSS scientific community had been studying the Entity, nothing like this had shown in their sweeps.
The Balol scientist pondered whether to discuss this with the tyros. For the most part he found the Godheads – as they liked to think of themselves – a most self-serving and conceited bunch. There’d been a marginal improvement in their attitude these recent weeks, with the absence of the Lostolian Tekton. Of all the tyros, the chief found Tekton the most unreasonable. The pompous archiTect had even tried to foist an unqualified noblewoman upon him as an intern. The very thought of it made the chief’s neck frill stiffen.
Tekton always acted as if he had influence, when the chief suspected that he had little. His cousin Ra, however, was a different matter. It had come to the chief’s attention that Ra had been seen in the company of Commander Lasper Farr, veteran of the Stain Wars and Defender of Peace. Though the chief wasn’t terribly interested in the specific nature of the tyros’ projects, like all station masters (and for all intents and purposes, that is what he was – signing damn recreation passes and maintenance schedules all day when he should be addressing more important things), he liked to know the state of play on his station. Belle-Monde may have once been a