Part 12 (1/2)

”Faster,” Swayn said, staring at the telits and screen with what they all knew was a d.a.m.ned good eye. He'd been at this business a long, long time. ”They're coming up on us.”

”s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p Hornet,” the outs.h.i.+p comm said. ”This is Major T.J. Vreel, TransGalactic Watch. I'm very glad that I happened to be on Goshawk today, strictly as observer-instructor. I've just authorized Captain Khyrkh to pursue you outside Luhran s.p.a.ce and fire if you force us. You 'd best forget your cute plan of dodging around that station and laughing while this s.h.i.+p has 154.

to veer off. Give it up, or we fire the moment it's safe.”

”Oh,” Kimry said, with a barely perceptive tremor in her voice, and Swayn sounded as if he were completing a sentence: ”s.h.i.+t.”

”Actually we have decided to suicide in the relay station, Major,” Janja told her commsender, and keyed off again. d.a.m.n! Her mission and her ID were so secret that Ratran Yao, TGO, hadn't even let it out to the uniformed branch, TGW. And now. . . . She stared at her console while her crew stared at her.

”Cap-tainn.

”Of course not. Forget it. We're in it, now. I just said that to worry him. Maybe he will guideline' us to go our way, to save the station.”

”Oh.””Not likely,” Swayn murmured, his forehead furrowed as if in deep thought.

”True,” Janja said. And isn't Rat going to be just delighted that I got myself caught by TGW on a local po-licer s.h.i.+p! It's either that or fire on them now, though -and I just can't do that. Janja, Janja-you may have a mutiny the instant you mention surrendering, too!

But what else is there?

Oh T.J. Vreel, are you ever going to be in trouble!

The trouble was that wasn't going to help her now, or her crew. On the microscreen, sec by sec and min by min, the geodesic sphere that was the CongCorp comm-relayer grew ever larger. Now it filled the screen and Janja stared at its pincus.h.i.+on appearance. That was the station's DS: spike-like proximity firing units. Janja wondered about the triggering range of that gunnery. Hardly satisfying, the ironic implications: if Hornet, after all this mad race with the pursuing local spooks, 155.

ended up being blasted to atoms by the station's fully automated defense system!

Beside her, Chan was begging to be allowed to man Hornet's DS. Behind her, Kimry actually sounded as if she was praying. And behind them all, Goshawk continued coming up fast.

Suddenly Swayn squatted beside the master's chair and uncharacteristically put a hand on Janja's arm- lightly. ”Captain! Please! Let me have the con. The sta-tion'll start firing any moment, and I've got more experience at dodging than anyone onboard.”

One last chance before I have to surrender and accept boarders? Janja sighed.

Abruptly she unbuckled and thrust herself up out of the master's chair, and to the side. She had said nothing; neither did Swayn, as he slid into the swivel chair. The spidering of his long bony fingers over the control keys was a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, Janja wasn't in the mood for esthetic appreciation just now.

”Captain! Hang on!”

”Uh.” Janja pounced back to the little cabin's third chair, grasped a squeaking Kimry and forced her down onto her lap. Hurriedly she buckled them into the chair, an instant before Hornet went wild.

Next instant it was as if the s.h.i.+p had struck a double-layered cyprium wall. For some fraction of a second, the universe winked out; went utterly black. By the time Janja's brain considered clearing, her stomach hurt from the pressure of Kimry's body and the woman was moaning. So was Chan. Fleetingly Janja hoped that Kemah had got himself strapped down back there, wherever he was. Otherwise he was probably smeared all over a wall or two.

Swayn's face wore a warped, distorted look, as if too 156.

many Gs of pressure had stretched the skin and it hadn't yet had time to return to normal. Even the simulacrum had gone mad, and in color. Many colors writhed in a formless rus.h.i.+ng swirl.

Simultaneously, and before she had oriented herself fully, a sensation of plummeting down through s.p.a.ce struck Janja. It hit so fast that her stomach seemed to be exploding through the roof of her mouth. She couldn't decide whether to die or vomit. From the sounds Kimry made, she would choose the former. Neither she nor Janja did either, simply because their reflexes couldn't catch up with what was happening.

”Boodha's slicin' b-” Chan began, but shut up because he had to bite back vomit. Hornet was executing a hard ”rightward” swerve-and then dropping, jerking ”leftward” . . .

Aglii's light, Janja thought, and I thought Quindy was wild at the con!

By pure reflex, in spite of it all, her eyes sought the microscanner. The picture had changed, again. Now only the lower arc of the relay station was visible against the ever-twinkling starscape of deep s.p.a.ce.

Janja blinked. In other words, she realized, the dropping sensation had not been imagination. Somehow, Swayn had sent them plunging ”down,” to pa.s.s ”under” the relay station.

Clearly, too, it was a maneuver the LS patrol cruiser could not duplicate. The craft was pa.s.sing above them, lancing straight at the station. Then it was wrenching wildly, beginning a big sweeping arc to avoid it.

Again Swayn looked back at them, his face a picture of lunacy alive and breathing. ”Hang on!” he yelled.

And again Hornet seemed to ram an irresistible wall, and vectored onto a new course. This time it raced ”up” and forward, straight ”up” at the patrol s.h.i.+p. Crushed 157.

into third chair and barely able to breathe because the same force was crus.h.i.+ng Kimry down onto her, Janja clung to consciousness. With glazed eyes she stared at the scanner screen. Now she knew that she should never have agreed to let this manic Swayn take the con. He was going to slam them into the other s.h.i.+p in just seconds and she could only endure the nightmare.

Naturally Goshawk's captain saw the same onrus.h.i.+ng doom. He warped into an insane parabolic curve barely in time to avoid being rammed. At that, he made a mistake. He arced the wrong way.

The maneuver threw him back on a crash course with the relay station. Thus he learned the distance allowed by the station's purely cybernetic proximity-firing units; he entered the perimeter programmed into them. Auto-gunnery sent molecular beams lancing out from the area perceived as threatened. The Luhran s.h.i.+p rocked under their impact. Yet its ma.s.s was too great and its velocity too high for the blasts to stop the hurtling s.h.i.+p.

At just under the speed of light, Goshawk smashed through the beams and the firing units' spikes, straight into the sphere that was the communications relay station.

Briefly, it blazed dazzling bright as a cosmic fireball, then imploded upon itself in a crumpling and disintegrating ma.s.s of metal-along with flesh and bone.

Swayn let out a triumphant yell even while his hands leaped here and there, zig-zagging over Hornet's console like the fingers of a maniacal synchordist. He was cutting thrust and swinging the s.p.a.cer in a long arc about the area of devastation. Chan cheered. A moment later Kimry shouted her jubilation, in a shaky voice.

Janja was silent, stricken with a writhing belly and a great lump in her throat. It was horrible-and just as awful was her knowledge that she could only thank and 158.

congratulate her expert s.h.i.+p-handler of a crewmember. For the murder of a policer s.h.i.+p and its entire complement! Act otherwise and she was worse than suspect as a slaver and outlaw captain . . . and trapped on a s.h.i.+p with four outlaws become her enemies.

She thanked and congratulated the grinning Swayn.

”Let's. .h.i.t that wrecked station! Boodha knows what we can s.n.a.t.c.h up-that's fine equipment, and a lot of it must have survived!”

”You're not thinking,” Janja said (when what she wanted to say was ”You callous fobby idiot!”). ”It also has to have automatic alarms, and that s.h.i.+p must have been in contact with its base on Luhra, too. Or other s.h.i.+ps or both. Oh no-what we do is get the flainin' h.e.l.l out of here!”

”Oh s.h.i.+t, Cap'm-yer right. Sorry.”

A few minutes later they found the other casualty. Uncertain as to whether Kemah had internal injuries in addition to three broken limbs and the gash, they put him in s.h.i.+pdoc while Hornet found a safe entry point and converted to tachyons. And again. Janja wanted to be a long, long way from Luhra.

14.

While her crew enjoyed planetside pleasures with their new pay, ”Captain Jansanerima Dee” filed a report. Without naming her crew, she stated that she had been accosted by a s.h.i.+p called Kirin and was forced to destroy it. The Meccan representatives of officialdom laughed (all but the man over in the corner, who Janja a.s.sumed was a TGO agent or TGW officer out of uniform), when she told them of the weapon that had destroyed Kirin.

”You ought to get a medal,” a wide-eyed woman said, swinging from her puterscreen. ”That's-that was s.h.i.+eda's s.h.i.+p!”

”d.a.m.n,” someone said.

The Chief of Bureau affected not to be impressed. ”That's about the silliest thing I ever heard of,” he said, after his laughter had slid down to become a grin. ”That weapon was about as useful as a slingshot! What ever possessed you to find one of those relics-and mount it in your s.h.i.+p?”