Orion Shall Rise Read Online Free

training in science and logic had never quite erased what Breizhad pysans muttered by their firesides in his childhood, of omens and fates.
    He shoved superstition aside. The set was ready. He transmitted his identification code. After a moment that hummed, a female voice came from the speaker: ‘Communications Center. Lieutenant Dykenskyt Gwenna Warden on duty.’ Her Angley bore a Rhinland accent; she must spend most of her groundside time there. ‘You are … are you Talence Yern Ferlay? I’ll switch you directly to Weather Command.’
    ‘Iern,’ the man corrected, pronouncing the unaccented first syllable as
ee.
A part of him snickered at himself. Why did he care how his name was spoken? Why, because the odds were that what lay ahead would bring him glory, if he survived, and in his youthfulness he wanted no confusions about who the hero was.
    ‘Apologies,’ Gwenna replied indifferently. Was she brusque because the business was urgent, or because she was young too and, like so many of today’s young, chafed at formality and restraint? He wondered fleetingly what she looked like. When the Thirty Clans numbered some sixty thousand individuals, the officers among them ten thousand, you couldn’t meet everybody in your lifetime. And how did she feel, off in her aerie thirty kilometers above earth and sea and oncoming storm? That must be a terrifying piece of weather on the march. Why else summon all the Stormriders in the Corps? It had to be the whole of their small elite, for otherwise Iern would have been left to finish his tour of obligation among his groundlings.
    Buzz, click-click, mutter, and another female voice, but now of a person he knew, his superior, Colonel Vosmaer Tess Rayman: ‘Lieutenant Iern!’
    ‘Madame,’ he said into his microphone. ‘I salute.’
    ‘You’ve doubtless guessed. A hurricane is in the Gulf, aimed at the Zhironn coast. Force Twelve. It’ll flatten the Etang area, drown a score of fishing villages, and probably wreck Port Bordeu, with everything that that implies for shipping. Local authorities say they can’t evacuate more than a third of the inhabitants. The loss of life will be enormous.’
    ‘But you think we can break it?’ Trumpets resounded in Iern’s head. The hair stood up on his arms. ‘Ready for service, madame!’
    Anxiety softened her tone. ‘Are you certain? You’ve had a day’s journey, you must be tired, and this mission is an order of magnitude beyond any previous entries you’ve made. The least error –We need every data point we can get, but we
don’t
need a wrecked plane and a dead pilot.’
    ‘You won’t get either one from me, madame.’
    Tess sighed; he could almost see her head shake. ‘No boy realizes he can die, does he?’ Crisply: ‘Very well, Lieutenant. Proceed to Port Bordeu. They’ll have a briefing ready for you, though I’m afraid it will be brief indeed. Too little information as yet. You’re the closest Stormrider; you’ll reach the objective first, in spite of this late call-in. What you discover will be critical.’ She paused. ‘On your way, then. Blessings fly with you.’
    ‘Thank you, madame.’ Iern snapped up the main switch, left his chair, and ran.
    2
    From his aircraft as he neared, the hurricane made a black mountain range under which the sun had already set. Clouds flying before it hid the Gulf below their rags, though now and again he glimpsed water lashed into white violence – once a ship,
sails
furled, sea anchor out, crew waiting to learn if they would live or die. Elsewhere the sky was clear, violet in the east where stars blinked forth, blue overhead, greenish in the west. As yet, Skyholm caught sunlight and cast it from the north, sheen and shadow chased each other across the clouds beneath, but soon it would darken.
    Well, Iern thought, he’d be blind anyway, after he invaded the tumult ahead.
    Ever more strong through the murmur of the jet engine he heard the air, and he felt how his craft shivered