Part 26 (2/2)

”Freighter Icarus, you will shut down your thrusters,” the voice came back. A being with a one-track mind, obviously, and not one to be drawn into a discussion of political matters outside his control.

On the other hand, he hadn't opened up with his lasers yet, either. If he held off another forty seconds, I decided as I keyed off the comm, I could call this one a victory. ”Revs?”

”Still on track,” he reported. ”I'm getting small sparks from thestarfighters'

ion beams, but so far they're confined to the peripheral equipment. What in h.e.l.l's name is keeping the destroyer off the cutter array?”

”I'll tell you later,” I said, one eye on the dark stardrive section of my control board and the other on my displays. I was still pulling evasive maneuvers, if that was the right term for the graceless wallowing that was all the Icarus was capable of; but if the destroyer was showing a new caution toward us, the same could not be said of the fighters. They had increased their speed and split up their formation, still playing their ion beams across the engine section but clearly intent on bypa.s.sing that area, driving up along the hull from the rear, and converging on the cutter array from three different directions.

And while they might give their ion beams one last chance once they got there, they wouldn't waste much more time with them before switching over to their lasers and what at that range would be an almost-trivial surgical-quality operation. ”Revs?” I barked.

”Thirty seconds,” he called.

”We don't have thirty seconds,” I snapped back. The fighters were sweeping past the engine section now, keeping close to the hull in case we had some recessed weaponry nodes hidden among the maneuvering vents. ”We've got maybe ten.”

”Can't do it,” he insisted. ”Try to stall them off.”

I clenched my teeth. ”Then hang on.”

And jamming my hands across the whole line of control keys, I sent the thruster exhaust blasting out the entire group of maneuvering vents at once.

The Icarus jerked like a horse trying to dash madly off in all directions. But even with that, our reaction wasn't anywhere near as dramatic as that of the three fighters. Caught directly in the multiple blasts of superheated gas, they wobbled outward, their nice neat pacing vectors thrown completely off target.

Then they were out of the gusts, their own maneuvering vents blowing steam as they fought to correct from the outward boosts they'd just been given. I slapped all the vents back off except for the main starboard ones, sending the Icarus into another of its slow-motion turns. One of the fighters' tail fins sc.r.a.ped against our hull as he wasn't quite able to get out of the way in time, and all of them were forced to again correct their vectors. I caught the muted reflection from one of the fighters as the armorplate irised away from its forward laser cl.u.s.ter.

And then, with a similarly muted but far more welcome flicker of light, the stardrive section of my control board lit up. ”Up and green,” Nicabar shouted.

I didn't answer; my fingers were already jabbing at the activation switches and the preprogrammed course code I'd laid in. There was a noise from the comm-the Najiki commander, no doubt, saying something extremely rude-and then the cutter array did its electronic magic, and the stars vanished from around us. ”Well done,” Ixil murmured.

He'd spoken too soon. I was just starting to breathe again when the deck under me lurched violently. ”Revs?” I snapped.

”Spark damage,” he called back. ”Half the calibrations have been scrambled. We have to shut down.”

”Do it,” I said, keying off the controls from my end. The stars reemerged, onlythis time with no planet or nearby sun anywhere in sight. I gave the area a quick scan, but it was pure reflex: Our brief flight had put us in the center of nowhere, light-years from anywhere. For the moment, at least, we were completely safe from any outside trouble.

”Okay, we're closed down,” Nicabar reported a minute later.

”Damage?”

”Doesn't look like anything major,” he said. ”A few popped circuit breakers, probably a tube or two that'll need replacing, but I know we've got spares.

And of course, a lot of recalibrating will have to be done. Time-consuming but relatively straightforward.”

”Ixil can help with that,” I told him, closing the rest of my board down to standby. No point leaving it active; we weren't going anywhere for a while.

”That can wait,” Nicabar said. ”You said you'd tell me later how we were shrugging off those ion beams. Well, it's later.”

I grimaced. But he was right. It was time I clued the rest of them in on just what it was we were sitting on here. ”It is indeed,” I acknowledged, keying the intercom for all-s.h.i.+p. ”Everyone, get your stuff shut down and then a.s.semble in the dayroom. I've got a little story to tell you.”

THEY SAT IN silence, looking slightly sandbagged for the most part, while I gave them the whole thing.

Most of it, anyway. I left out Tera's true ident.i.ty and inside-person status, and the fact that Cameron-Alexander Borodin, rather-had been a secret pa.s.senger for the first part of our trip. I also glossed over the part Tera had played in the various incidents that had had me tied up in mental knots for most of that time. The latter part didn't take much glossing, actually, given that Ixil and I.

were the only ones who'd known about most of them anyway.

I also left Jones's death out of the picture, leaving it as an implied accident.

Confronting a group of suspects with the knowledge that one of them is a killer might be an effective way to spark a guilty reaction, but at the moment my foremost interest was getting the Icarus to Earth, and for that I needed full cooperation from all of them. Time enough to sort out Jones's murder if and when we made it that far.

While the rest were busy looking flabbergasted, Tera was equally busy glaring at me in menacing silence, from which I gathered she thought I should have cleared this grand revelation with her before I let everyone else in on the big secret.

I could sympathize with that att.i.tude; but if I had consulted her she would probably have forbidden me to do so. Then I would have had to go directly against her wishes, which would have left her madder at me than she was already.

To say they were stunned would have been an understatement. To say they weresuspicious and unbelieving, however, would have been right on the money. ”You must think we're idiots, McKell,” Shawn snorted when I'd finished. ”Mysterious alien technology? Oh, come on.”

”And with the whole of the Patth race panting down our necks to get at it,”

Everett added, shaking his head. ”Really, McKell, you should have had time to come up with something better than this one.”

”I expected this reaction,” I said, looking over at Ixil. ”You have the necessary?”

Silently, he produced the connector tool he'd brought from the mechanics room.

Just as silently, he crossed to the back of the dayroom and removed one of the inner hull plates.

One by one, they went down into the 'tweenhull area to experience the alien gravitational field for themselves. Some took longer than others; but by the time they came up they were all convinced.

They were also, to a man, scared right down to their socks.

”This is crazy,” Everett said, hunched over a tall whiskey sour. Alcoholic drinks of one sort or another had somehow been the beverage of choice for each of them as he came out of the 'tweenhull area. ”Crazy. This is a job for professionals, not a bunch of loose s.p.a.cers picked off the Meima streets.”

”Believe me, I'd like nothing better than to have a squad of EarthGuard Marines on this instead of us,” I agreed wholeheartedly. ”But they're not here. We are.”

”I presume you realize that if the Patth get their hands on us we're dead,”

Nicabar pointed out darkly, peering into his own drink. ”Not a chance in the world they'd let us go. Not with what we know about this s.h.i.+p.”

”And what do we know about it?” Shawn countered, his fingertips tapping nervously on the table. ”Seriously, what do we know? McKell says he thinks it's an alien stardrive. So what makes him the big expert?”

”No, he may be right,” Chort said before I could reply. ”Early Craean stardrives used a very similar dual-sphere design, with an open resonance chamber as one of them. Though much smaller, of course.”

”Yeah, but did they work?” Shawn asked. ”I never heard of any design like that.”

”Which means it can't possibly have been of any use,” Tera murmured. ”Not if you never heard of it.”

Shawn turned a glare toward her. ”Double-sphere designs work just fine,”

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