Alliance Unbound, page 1
Also by
C.J. CHERRYH
THE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE
FOREIGNER
INVADER
INHERITOR
PRECURSOR
DEFENDER
EXPLORER
DESTROYER
PRETENDER
DELIVERER
CONSPIRATOR
DECEIVER
BETRAYER
INTRUDER
PROTECTOR
PEACEMAKER
TRACKER
VISITOR
CONVERGENCE
EMERGENCE
RESURGENCE
DIVERGENCE
DEFIANCE
THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE
REGENESIS
DOWNBELOW STATION
THE DEEP BEYOND Omnibus:
Serpent’s Reach | Cuckoo’s Egg
ALLIANCE SPACE Omnibus:
Merchanter’s Luck | 40,000 in Gehenna
AT THE EDGE OF SPACE Omnibus:
Brothers of Earth | Hunter of Worlds
THE FADED SUN Omnibus:
Kesrith | Shon’jir | Kutath
THE HINDER STARS (with Jane S. Fancher)
ALLIANCE RISING
ALLIANCE UNBOUND
THE CHANUR NOVELS
THE CHANUR SAGA Omnibus:
The Pride Of Chanur | Chanur’s Venture | The Kif Strike Back
CHANUR’S ENDGAME Omnibus:
Chanur’s Homecoming | Chanur’s Legacy
THE MORGAINE CYCLE
THE COMPLETE MORGAINE Omnibus:
Gate of Ivrel | Well of Shiuan | Fires of Azeroth | Exile’s Gate
OTHER WORKS:
THE DREAMING TREE Omnibus:
The Tree of Swords and Jewels | The Dreamstone
ALTERNATE REALITIES Omnibus:
Port Eternity | Wave Without a Shore | Voyager in Night
THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF C.J. CHERRYH
Also by
JANE S. FANCHER
DANCE OF THE RINGS
RING OF LIGHTNING | RING OF INTRIGUE | RING OF DESTINY
Copyright © 2024 by C. J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher
All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact permissions@astrapublishinghouse.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Jacket art by Micah Epstein
Jacket design by Katie Anderson
Map by C. J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher
Edited by Betsy Wollheim
DAW Book Collectors No. 1967
DAW Books
An imprint of Astra Publishing House
dawbooks.com
DAW Books and its logo are registered trademarks of Astra Publishing House
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cherryh, C. J., author. | Fancher, Jane, 1952- author.
Title: Alliance unbound / C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher.
Description: First edition. | New York : DAW Books, 2024. |
Series: The hinder stars ; 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2024017410 (print) | LCCN 2024017411 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780756415969 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780756415983 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Science fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3553.H358 A795 2024 (print) |
LCC PS3553.H358 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23/eng/20240419
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024017410
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024017411
First edition: October 2024
Contents
Also by C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Map
Book I: Incoming!
Section i
Section ii
Section iii
Section iv
Section v
Section vi
Section vii
Book II: Pell
Section i
Section ii
Section iii
Section iv
Section v
Section vi
Section vii
Section viii
Section ix
Section x
Section xi
Section xii
Section xiii
Section xiv
Section xv
Section xvi
Section xvii
Book III: Venture
Section i
Section ii
Section iii
Section iv
Section v
Section vi
Section vii
Section viii
Section ix
Section x
Book IV: Thule
Section i
Section ii
Section iii
Section iv
Book V: Foucault
Section i
Section ii
Section iii
Section iv
Section v
Section vi
Section vii
Section viii
Section ix
Section x
Section xi
Section xii
Section xiii
Section xiv
Section xv
Section xvi
Section xvii
Section xviii
Section xix
Section xx
Section xxi
Section xxii
Book VI: Olympus
Section i
Section ii
Section iii
Section iv
Section v
Section vi
Section vii
Section viii
Section ix
Section x
Section xi
Section xii
Section xiii
Section xiv
Section xv
Section xvi
Section xvii
Section xviii
Section xix
Section xx
Section xxi
Section xxii
Section xxiii
Section xxiv
Section xxv
Section xxvi
Section xxvii
Section xxviii
Section xxix
To Our Patient Readers . . . you know why.
Book I: INCOMING! Section i
Danger!
Echo in the raging cacophony.
Adjust!
Fingers fly without conscious thought.
Shrink the field. Change the parameters of the bubble.
3-2-
[Fifth decimal adjustment.]
-1: Now!
Implemented. Phase-shift spits
them free.
And the universe heals.
God. What had he done?
Ross Monahan, senses reeling, stared at the screen in front of him. Graphs. Numbers.
Gibberish—
—that should make sense. That would make sense, dammit . . . once the auto-drip drove the last of the trank from his system.
It had damn well better make sense. His fingers had just input those numbers, as crazed, as insane as those numbers might be in retrospect.
He focused—hard—on one graph in particular, convinced his drug-laced brain to remember . . .
. . . color . . . Yes. Color.
Ought to be five lines on that graph. Red, green, magenta, gold—
Where was blue? Blue line was his input.
Where the hell was blue?
Adrenaline, natural and real, surged. The numbers and graphs swirled, swam in and out of focus. He blinked repeatedly, desperate to see those lines . . . but when it cleared, his first impression held. There was no blue line.
So what had he done? What the hell had he just done?
Comp didn’t lie. His input wasn’t there. But he remembered the drop to realspace, the bubble, the crazed buffeting that defied all logic. He remembered pounding those numbers in, dammit!
God. Had he frozen? Bad enough to read the system entry as crazed as memory held it, but not to put the numbers in at all? Even wrong numbers?
He didn’t know which was worse.
Dropping the ship was Nav 1’s job. Green line. Kate’s line. And red, Nav 1.2. Bucklin. Perfect echos. Not so much as a pixel of separation. The magenta and gold lines, Nav 1.3 and 1.4, were right alongside green, separated on entry, but within the margin of error, and slowly dropping closer to green.
It all looked right, and the graphs now described a ship in normal space, as they ought to be.
But there was no fifth line. Not even a blue border, top or bottom, that would indicate his reading of the drop and subsequent input would have put the ship literally off the charts.
Only one answer: he’d hallucinated his input. And that was, for a Navigator, for his ship, lethal, if his had been the Nav 1 line. The only way the computer would disregard Nav 1 was if 2, 3, and 4 were together and 1 was the anomaly.
He’d frozen.
Even worse: his gut instinct, his read of the situation, had been right. Right, dammit! His hallucinated input woul d match what he saw evidenced in that graph. Up to and including that last instant change in the fifth decimal. He’d read the entry dead right . . . but he’d frozen, had failed to trust that chaotic input . . . and not keyed anything. Not one damned—
The universe turned inside out as the ship made her first V-dump, a quick dip into a partially formed bubble. He wasn’t ready, and his mind was reeling as they exited at a markedly slower pace . . . and with all four lines in perfect synchrony.
All but his. Second failure. Dammit!
His hands shook. His fingers tingled. When he rubbed them together, skin sloughed, but that was just what it did. In realspace, weeks had passed since the ship had jumped . . . at Helm’s command and on Nav’s numbers, her crew tranked down against the insanity that ruled inside an FTL bubble. Now the physical debt came due. Throughout the ship, crew would be coming out of that drugged state gently, sanely, slowly; but on the bridge, Nav, Helm, and Scan had to hype up on a second drug that chased the trank. Hype left them all buzzed, nerves jangled.
Ross took one final glance at that betrayal on the screen. Reality and inexperience had played tricks on his memory. That was all. Never mind it had never, ever happened before. Not even his first time sitting at a shadow board . . . almost a decade ago, ship-time. Face it, he told himself. It happened. Move on.
But he had to confess it.
As if Kate wouldn’t notice.
And if it happened again—if it ever happened again—he’d be out of Nav. Permanently. That was the reality of his chosen profession. Nav errors meant death, not just of the ship, but of the entire Family that crewed her. At the moment, on this ship, he was a guest, still a trainee, still only shadowing the real boards, which were in expert hands. Fortunately. Thanks to that fact, the ship, the legendary Finity’s End, and her equally legendary crew of Neiharts, was safe.
No thanks to him—a Monahan and Nav 1.3 on the Monahan’s Galway—they were where they needed to be . . . and there were still two V-dumps to calc.
So get your damn brain online, boy! Fallan’s voice rang in his head. Fallan, Galway’s own legend, Nav 1.1 and Ross Monahan’s mentor, might not be here, but damned if Galway’s Nav 1.3 would do anything more to embarrass the old man.
The shakes he was experiencing . . . that was normal, as bodies began communicating properly with brains—as was sight tending to monochromatic.
Red this time.
Gut-churning flash of deja vu. A nightmarish drift through space.
. . . streaks of black-red. Blood. His blood. Beyond the streaks: a metal monster glowing red with reflected sunlight.
Finity . . .
Dammit. He thrust the memory away. Food. He needed food, that was all. He fumbled a nutrient packet from the chair arm storage, tore a careful hole in the top, squeezed the supposedly fruit-flavored contents into his mouth, swallowed: and tasted velocity and distance . . . as the numbers on the screen spooled along. A mark from Helm indicated a requested course correction as the ship approached its second V-dump.
He shoved self-doubt out the airlock, and his hindbrain began calculating that dump as he finished the packet and shoved the empty back into the armrest. Hands free, he input without hesitation . . . and the fifth line was back, reassuringly near the others. As routine as such things ever were.
Dump came. He concentrated on those red lines, at the other graphs and numbers that would tell him if anything went wrong—
And suddenly, as the ship phased in and out of hyperspace—it was back. He recognized it now for what it was: a mass . . . huge. More, it was a color. A nature. A presence that defied common sense. Wave after buffeting wave of gravitational force warping everything in reach.
His mind insisted: Finity’s entry shockwave reverberating off the Ardaman limit, the outflowing event waves of Pell’s gravity well.
His gut said: Pell was pissed. The star was furious as hell at the massive intrusion into—
The bubble dissipated, unformed. The numbers reasserted realspace around them and the monster receded.
He blinked, dazed, at the readout. Was that . . . his mind searched for a memory, a word . . . what a G-class star . . . felt like?
Fallan had told him, promised him that one day soon he’d feel it, and if it were Fallan’s grey head at that Nav 1 seat, he could ask him about it. But Fallan, his lifelong mentor, was far, far away, on Galway, where Ross himself damnwell should be . . . and wasn’t. Fallan, along with Galway’s whole First-shift, was on his way to Ireland, trailblazing the once-fabled, now-God-willing real, FTL route to Sol and Earth. The holy grail of trade for every Alpha spacer ever born. The hope for the future of the entire First Stars loop.
And a damned scary ride to get there. Two very chancy gravity wells into a final one that would make the monster outside seem tame. He’d seen the numbers, run the sims. And if he’d frozen on those boards . . . God.
Maybe it was a good thing fate . . . with a little help from Fallan himself . . . had thrown him out Galway’s airlock.
Advisement came. Another marker on the chart. Third V-dump. Coming fast.
Another calculation; he keyed in; they went up . . .
And the monster, the center of that violence, was waiting.
Quieter. Saner, this time. But undeniably there.
He deliberately sent his mind spiraling back to those first moments of flux, trying to understand what he had felt, sorting the tamer Now from untamed Then, still not resolving what he saw/felt/tasted, but accepting it as legitimate input. Reference for his reality.
And wondered . . . as the half-formed bubble dispersed like a remembered dream . . . was it truly a first, or simply the first time he’d noticed . . . whatever it was he sensed. It was his first time into a G-class. The numbers of its violence were off the chart of anything he’d ever calc’ed, real time. He’d only known M-class stars like Alpha, little, red, and moody, flaring off from time to time.
This star, this monster, was Tau Ceti, a yellow G-class, locally known as Pell’s Star, and it had one prevailing mood, white-hot and angry.
The monster faded away. They were down again. Safe. His blue line ran near the others: conservative, but well within parameters.
And blue. Solid, true blue . . . as all other color had returned to him.
Job done. They’d be releasing to Second-shift soon. Which left him too much time to try and figure . . . not what had happened, but why. Why had he frozen? Worse, why had he hallucinated putting in those numbers?
Before making this final jump into Pell, he’d run the numbers according to the data he’d been given, calc’ed the bubble and the phase-flux and input the code . . . fundamentally no different than he had dozens of times before. He’d matched Kate then. He was relatively sure he’d matched Kate and Bucklin at the outset. So had Ty and Jim, all four live Nav posts in agreement on the easy part. Those numbers might have been unlike any he’d run for real before, but over the years, Fallan had tossed him thousands of different scenarios, including Pell’s, and he’d run sims of every conceivable situation . . . on Galway. Always on Galway. A beauty of a ship, in her way. His ship. His home. But a fraction of the mass and power of Finity.
Galway was smooth on entry—polite compared to the behemoth that was Finity’s End.
Still . . . he did know what he was doing. He was Nav 1.3 on Galway. Still shadowing, but not, so Fallan threatened, for long. He’d long since lost count of the number of times he’d sat jump on Galway. It was First-shift’s job to bring Finity into a populated system . . . as it was Fourth’s to bring her in to dock. He’d felt Finity’s power before, coming in to Bryant’s and Venture, systems he knew well. He knew there was range beyond anything he’d ever imagined under his hands.
But this . . .
This . . . feel . . . on system-drop had not been what he’d expected from the numbers, and memory still insisted he’d changed his instructions to the ship on the fly, on that barely sane downside of trank.
Had he? Had his screen somehow failed to show just that blue line? God, a mechanical glitch would be far and away better than the alternative.
Is this what you meant, Fallan? He longed to ask.
Is this what it means to feel a star?
Since he could remember, Fallan had claimed he could feel them. His fellow Monahans laughed and called it Fallan’s Fancy, and with Fallan’s sense of humor it was hard to tell . . .
But Fallan’s discipline never kidded around when it came to sitting ops, and Fallan’s voice in his head right now sternly told him to quit nardyfardling and get to work. He’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime, to sit Finity’s boards. So quit whining. Absorb every moment, every right choice . . . and learn from every screwup.
I’m trying, Fallan. Trying to learn all I can, but grand as it all is, I should be there. With you. Should have felt that squirrelly jump-point. Should have—
