This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by David Drake. Surface Action copyright © 1990 by David Drake, The Jungle copyright © 1991 by David Drake.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original Omnibus
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-7434-3564-8
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
First printing, October 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Drake, David.Seas of Venus / by David Drake.
p. cm.
"A Baen Books original omnibus"—T.p. verso.
First unified publication of two previously published novels: Surface action and
The jungle.
ISBN 0-7434-3564-8
1. Venus (Planet)—Fiction. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction. 3. Space colonies— Fiction. I. Drake, David. Surface action. II. Drake, David. Jungle. III. Title.PS3554.R196 S43 2002
813'.54—dc21 2002026278
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of AmericaThe Venus Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore described in Clash by Night and Fury was among the most vivid creations to appear in Astounding Science Fiction during the greatest years of that magazine. Here David Drake revisits their world with two novels as colorful and imaginative as the originals.
SURFACE ACTION
Johnnie Gordon was born to wealth and privilege in the Keeps, but his whole life has been dedicated to becoming a warrior of the Free Companies like his uncle. Now his chance has come—but with it, a deadly struggle through hellish jungle to steal the most powerful battleship in the enemy fleet. If Johnnie succeeds, then one more duty awaits him: a duty that will haunt his nightmares forever. But if he fails, Venus will die as surely as the atom-blasted Earth died; and Mankind will die also.
THE JUNGLE
Brainard's torpedoboat was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a salvo of eight-inch shells landed. A few yards to the side and the blasts would've killed him and his crew outright instead of flinging them ashore in their wrecked vessel. Without a radio and on a planet where the winds make aircraft swift suicide, they're dead anyway—unless they can cross the spine of an island through jungle where every animal is a danger and the plants are even worse.
Brainard and his fellow Free Companions are hard men who've faced death in battle, but now their enemy is a green Hell that wants not only to defeat but to devour them . . . as it will some day devour all of Mankind—unless Brainard and his crew survive, and unless they can turn the lessons they've learned in the jungle against the even greater enemy that lurks in the Keeps themselves!
Hard-edged politics and combat written by a man who's seen both personally, displayed in a lush setting created by two of the finest SF writers of all time!
AND A BONUS!
The author's travelogue of ten days among the real jungles, reefs and ancient temples of Belize, told with the sharpness of observation and anecdote which have made his fiction so vividly memorable.
RCN series
With the Lightnings
Lt. Leary, Commanding
Hammer's Slammers series
The Tank Lords
Caught in the Crossfire
The Butcher's Bill
The Sharp End
Paying the Piper
Independent Novels &
Collections
Seas of Venus
Foreign Legions
(created by David Drake)
Ranks of Bronze
Cross the Stars
The Dragon Lord
Birds of Prey
Northworld Trilogy
Redliners
Starliner
All the Way to the Gallows
The Belisarius series:
(with Eric Flint)
An Oblique Approach
In the Heart of Darkness
Destiny's Shield
Fortune's Stroke
The Tide of Victory
The General series:
The Forge,
with S.M. Stirling
The Chosen,
with S.M. Stirling
The Reformer,
with S.M. Stirling
The Tyrant, with Eric Flint
The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny
(with L. Sprague de Camp)
Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light
(with L. Sprague de Camp)
Armageddon
(edited with
Billie Sue Mosiman)