Click ~*~ to follow a thread.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Clark felt the ship swerve. "It saw us," Huey said. "Courtesy impels a communication, I suppose." He picked up a receiver. "Distressed vessel? Do you require aid?...Who wants to know?...Certainly not...That is correct. This is not an Eyimalian vessel--this is--may I finish, please? This vessel is not subject to Eyimalian shipping codes...nevertheless, we are not subject...Listen, I don't want to land you folks in trouble with your superiors, but detouring around the entire Paffir system is out of the question. I have a valid transit authorization..." He rattled off the codes.

This evidently had some effect. Clark tapped in to the conversation on a spare line in case someone might say something in Paffir. He heard a clicking noise as people scurried to look up the code Huey had given and then a voice muttered in high Paffir, "So what? That's just the number they got from Nicky V."

Clark translated the remark in a note to Huey. Another memo writer, he thought as he handed it to the captain.

Huey put the com on hold long enough to hiss at Greyesar, "Ketry."

The two men stared at one another. Huey, facing away from Clark, must have worn the same slack-eyed expression as Greyesar. Collecting himself, the Eyimalian smiled at Clark and said, "Watch our tail. You'll probably have an opportunity for target practice."

Clark returned to the screens, still listening to the receiver. When he had identified the big marks for the neighbor planets and their moons, the sun's mass cluster and one for Paffir's own smaller moon, he found that he could watch for fast-moving things by seeing what jumped farthest on Impulse. He waited. An asteroid cluster was approaching from beyond the planets. When someone on the other ship made a comment in Paffir, he jumped and fired, but hit nothing.

"Look," Greyesar said.

The other ship had risen from behind the moon. It was as big as Huey's and well armed.

"Stand by. We will examine your vessel persuant to section four of the Eyimalian subject-planet code..." So the law hasn't been updated yet, out here, Clark thought.

The asteroids made a slow turn around the neighbor planet, decellerating steadily. They were not floating free. Clark targeted them and waited.

"Cease all firing. Cease all fire or we will blast you," the Ketry ship warned.

Huey clicked off the com to tell Clark, "Notify us before you shoot, please."

The cluster of spots on Clark's screen dispersed and reformed in a ring, one coming at the ship from each direction.

"Huey, we're being surrounded," Clark called. He targeted one of the ships below him. "I'm ready to fire."

The ship lurched as Huey accelerated past the moon and the vessel that had challenged them. A shot sent them spinning until Greyesar abandoned his station to set the ship straight. Now they were in the clear, but Clark saw ships following. He targeted the nearest while Huey tried to reach its captain.

"Keep back," Huey warned. "We will demolish you."

There was no reply. Clark fired and the other ship veered off its course. A second took its place. Clark fired and missed, then fired and hit. Huey steered them in a wild zig-zag altered now and then by Greyesar, who sat at the override and moved them out of the way as shots came.

Since any sharp turn blurred the screen in tracking mode, Clark stopped using it. He fired on anything that came in range, whether it moved or not. The targeting system compensated for sudden accelerations and turns, so he assumed he hit most of the things he aimed at, but did not bother studying the screen to find out. He had no idea how much damage he might be doing the persuers. When Huey's ship was hit, it swerved from its course and slowed until the captain or Greyesar recovered it. Then the status screens would begin to fill with location numbers, the critical damage points flashing until Huey rerouted the power flow away from the ship's wounds.

The targets seemed to multiply even as Clark fired on them. From eight attacking ships over twenty had blossomed, some small and some enormous, moving or drifting without any clear pattern except that most were coming at him. Clark no longer tried to align the targeting circle with anything, but shunted it back and forth across the screen like a shuttle and hit the trigger whenever the circle eclipsed anything. It became mechanical. A machine could do this, he thought. Yet he must concentrate. He must hit every spot on the screen, weaving his deadly fabric close, because each spot might be a ship coming toward him to kill. And each time he hit a target, was he killing them? He fired and paused to look in the impact-data eye. The target was an irregular little mass the size of a moon-to-planet craft. He saw the fine disrupting wave knife toward it and pass by. Missed. Pay attention, he thought. He went back to the screen. The attacking ships had drawn closer. He aligned the circle with the largest body on screen and fired twice.

Huey sucked in his breath. "Done," he said. "We have sustained an injury we cannot afford. Let's run for Paffir and bail out, Grey."

Clark's screen cleared. The ship had turned to face its enemies.

Greyesar steered them jerkily around the obstacles. "What's all this junk, Hugh?"

"Debris. They were dumping scrap to confuse our rear artillery."

Clark giggled involuntarily.

"Don't fire any more," Greyesar told him.

Clark stopped himself on the verge of asking why Huey had not told him the enemy ships were dumping scrap. It would have done him no good to know. He watched Huey jump them about as shock beams roared and crashed around the ship, timing his return shots so well that they met the advancing wave at its peak and the two blasts cancelled, the fingers of one hand smoothing his little mustache while those of the other danced on the toggles. The com headset lay beside him. Clark picked it up.

"They trace fond farewells," Huey warned.

"Let them." Clark punched in Maxwell's embassy number. No image appeared. He considered leaving a message, on the slim chance of rescue. Despair was fogging his vision. Why had Maxwell betrayed them all to the Ketries? They couldn't possibly pay as well as the Viyato, but the Viyato had murdered his daughter...Perhaps he had swung an alliance between the Ketry and those of the Uchide who didn't want Sevit found, but Malenyk Uchide stood most to gain by that and his jealousy was strongly tainted by love. Besides, it didn't matter. He would post a message, and Maxwell would laugh or save them as he pleased.

"Ketry bagged us," he commed, and then the message beam shattered as the ship collided with the atmosphere of Paffir Haretz in a burst of flames. Huey pulled them out sideways.

The small fighter craft were waiting. They fell on the ship like carrion birds and attached themselves. The ship's frame shuddered. The near-mass readings went off scale as people crossed in front of the detectors. Feet hurried along floors above and below them. Fists pounded at the control-room door. The pounding subsided, the door opened and a voice from the tube commanded, "Come out one by one."

Huey said, "Greyesar, I'm afraid you saved me to no good purpose, but thank you."

"It was a good purpose," Greyesar answered.

"Come out," the voice repeated.

Clark went first, having no one to say goodbye to. If Teresa were still alive, she would give the information about Maxwell and the Viyato to the Daybreakers, and if not...if not, then not, as Berthe had said. The Viyato-Ketry-Var combination were probably done for anyway. Those families would be replaced, perhaps by another trio of priest, merchant and crook, but there would be a lull when order on Paffir Haretz would be suspended and progress might creep in. He could die now.

As he crossed the room toward the door, Clark felt as though the whole ship tilted with his weight. Behind him Huey and Greyesar embraced. So that's what the notes were for, he thought. A note hung by the doorway and he grasped it on impulse, crumpling it into his sleeve. On the back was a tiny drawing of a tree. He stepped through the door. Something struck him in the neck and he knew nothing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CONTINUE.....................

Go to Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 21
INDEX