Chapter Six

"sloppy work. Cap'n. You knocked the hell out of the docking tube." Tia Barse glared at the damage he had caused by his inattention to the side jets.

"Close the bay doors. Either jettison the picket or secure it. I don't care what you do. I'll be on the bridge."

"Hold up, Cap'n," called Barse. "What hap-pened down there? Didn't you find your friend?" He turned a bleak expression in her direction. She read the full answer before he said laconi-cally, "I found her." Norlin couldn't bring him-self to say any more. The idea of Neela vanishing in the exhaust tore at him as much as the memory of the widespread destruction on-planet. The population hadn't waited for the Death Fleet to kill them. They had started riot-ing and done much of the aliens' work. As he stalked through the Preceptor's corri-dors, he conducted a cursory inspection. Each compartment he glanced into seemed neat, clean, and everything he could want in readi-ness. He might not have acquired a good first impression of Gowan Liottey, but the XO had done a fine job of keeping the vessel shipshape in the absence of a captain. By the time he ar-rived in the control room, he had his emotions hidden, if not under complete control.

The ache remained deep inside. Norlin doubted it would ever go away. Neela had died in such a meaningless fashion.

"Report on the Death Fleet's position," he snapped.

Chikako Miza ran her fingers over the com-puter console and received the latest data. Tilt-ing her head to one side, she got a distant expression in her eyes, as if she listened to the ancients' music of the spheres. Only then did she reply.

"They're braking hard. I've picked up Cheren-kov radiation from the trailing elements of the fleet. Only a few of them were an AU inside the system. The remainder were in shift and are homing in on the leading elements."

"Numbers?" Norlin slid into the captain's swivel chair. His hands shook as he lifted the heads-up visor and settled it on his head so that it covered his eyes but left vision downward clear. By turning in different directions, he saw every instrument aboard the Preceptor. By shift-ing his eyes, he isolated the data he needed. A simple touch to the brim of the visor locked in a particular display. Norlin had no interest in most of the readouts. He settled for a summary display from each station.

"Locked on to three thousand warships," said Miza. "They're going to burn us out of here."

"How many following them?"

"Twice that," she said. "I'm counting in one, two, many mode. There are sagans of them on the way, and they know who's been naughty and nice. It's not going to be a good Christmas for us."

"There can't be that many," Norlin snapped angrily.

"Maybe not billions and billions but certainly thousands. How many does it take to blow us out of space?"

He ignored her jibe. "How do I get rid of some of the summary displays? I want ranging, I want nav, not what I've got."

"Punch it into the arm of your chair. I'll redo," Miza said.

Norlin tapped in the information he wanted regularly. For a split second he thought he'd gone blind. The bright flash of the display re-programming faded and left only the terse sum-mation of readouts he wanted.

"Thanks." He set to work making certain that the Preceptor was ready for combat. Pier Norlin worked as the ship's captain. After a few minutes he forgot his nervousness and began to feel the pressure of command, of mak-ing the right decision.

"Waiting for authorization to arm," came Mitri Sarov's calm baritone voice. Norlin swung around, and the summary dis-play changed to the tactical officer's setup. He nodded. Sarov knew his job. The Preceptor wouldn't vanish from space without one hell of a fight. Sarov had expertly arrayed their mis-siles; neither he nor Norlin saw any reason to power up the heavy lasartillery. The greater the distance at which they engaged the Death Fleet, the better off they were. If they came into laser-cannon range, they wouldn't last ten seconds.

"Begin launch at your discretion," Norlin commanded. He watched as the first flight of missiles blasted free of the Preceptor. The vibra-tions coursing through the ship came from new missiles being autoloaded. Flight after flight of the heavy projectiles left the cruiser's tubes.

"Monitoring flight path." Sarov lounged back and locked his fingers behind his head. His work was done for the moment. The missiles with their baffled-flare engines would continue out-ward, then lock on to targets and track them for random periods. The ships in the Death Fleet would find themselves under attack from all di-rections—and with no obvious attacker in sight.

"Computer analysis of chance of success," Norlin requested.

Sarov bent forward and tapped a single but-ton. "Their deceleration and the resulting radia-tion emission blocks their detectors. Our sneak circuits are good; the missiles are almost unde-tectable. Projection is 95 percent contact."

"Destruction rate?"

Even as he asked, Norlin knew it was impossi-ble to estimate. They had no idea of the alien ships' quality of armor, survivability, or control systems. Even if the enemy couldn't detect the missiles, they might be able to take incredible damage and still fight. The missiles carried warheads varying in type from solid projectiles with kinetic activation to small power drills that bored into hull metal and then exploded.

"Launch a dozen atomics, also," Norlin said.

"They might detect the transuranics. Those are denser than the other missiles."

"Put them on independent mode and launch."

"But—"

Norlin gave the bulky tac officer no chance to argue. Of Miza he asked, "Is everything clear?"

"Your course is laid in."

"Liottey?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Report, dammit! Life support? Incidentals secured? Give me everything."

"All aye, Captain. Sorry."

Norlin snorted. He glanced in Liottey's direc-tion and scanned the summary displays. Life support appeared nominal. He didn't have time to double-check the rest of the officer's responsi-bilities.

"Engineering, give me full control."

"The engines are begging to be abused," came Tia Barse's voice. She remained in the second-ary control compartment to the aft of the main bridge.

"Liottey, join Barse. If anything happens, you're in command. Understand?"

"But Captain Norlin!"

Norlin wasn't sure if he refused to obey be-cause the bridge lay in the center of heavy armor, vibration dampeners, and reactive shock

defenses. The secondary bridge was just forward of the engines and vulnerable to an ass-end mis-sile shot. Although he had never heard of a situ-ation where the bridge had been blown off and the remainder of the ship survived, all Nova Class cruisers had been designed with this in mind.

"Do it. Now!" Norlin turned back, not caring if Liottey obeyed or not. His proximity display flared red with danger. The Death Fleet was al-most on top of them.

"Blast, now!" He sagged into the chair's pneu-matic cushions as the mighty engines flared and sent them hurling along their orbit around Lyman IV. He kept a full navigational display parading in front of him. Using the planet's gravity well to slingshot the Preceptor away, he gained another advantage. For a brief time, he used the bulk of the planet to shield the ship from the Death Fleet.

"There goes the station," came Sarov's deep voice. "They hit it with atomics. Six, eight, twelve bombs of fifty megatons each. Good shell temperature on detonation. Nice design on their devices." Norlin chanced a look at the vidscreen. In vivid three-dimensional display he saw the ex-panding cloud of superheated gas that had been the system's most heavily fortified base. With full defensive armament in action, the station might have held off the alien attack for hours. He checked and found no residual ionization cloud to indicate anyone had attempted to in-terdict the deadly alien missiles.

"Goodbye, Captain Emuna," he said softly. "It wasn't a choice post for a first command."

"First missile's finding targets in their forma-tion," advised Sarov.

"Effectiveness?"

"Good. I'm reading 67 percent destruction rate. We can kill them." Norlin jerked around, more from instinct than instrumentation warning. He worked frantically on his computer console, wishing he could speed up input by using voice control. Even though the computer differentiated voices, no captain allowed voice during combat. If the hull was breached, they might lose atmosphere. Such a pressure change altered the frequency of a voice and often resulted in computer rejection.

Norlin also suspected that too many combat officers developed a dry mouth and found it dif-ficult to enunciate clearly enough for the com-puter's acceptance. His own mouth tasted like desert sand.

"Cap'n," came Barse's voice over an isolated command circuit. "How're we doing?"

"A scout ship spotted us leaving orbit. It's after us. Miza will pick it up in a few seconds."

"You got it before her? That's rich. She owes me a liter of whiskey. She claimed you'd—"

"Engineer, what do you want? I'm busy."

"Sorry, Cap'n. If your mouth's going dry, Dukker always kept a small tube of thirst-kill in the left arm of the chair." Barse clicked off, and Miza's cold tones informing him of the scout's detection replaced the engineer's more pleasant voice in his ear.

"Already working on it," he informed Miza. She mumbled to herself when she saw the com-puter had already begun feeding Sarov fire-con-trol coordinates.

"Want the lasartillery brought up to full ca-pacity? We can take a ship of that mass. We out-power it." Norlin toggled his acknowledgment of the re-quest;—and denied Sarov's desire to engage. Full power remained on the drive engines. Nor-lin launched a small missile and watched the scout easily deflect it.

"We're in for a battle," he said over the gen-eral circuit.

"Let me—"

"Quiet, Lieutenant Commander. Run expert-system battle-plan projections, mark seven, mark nine, mark ten."

"Very well... Captain."

Norlin let Sarov work on the preprogrammed combat control programs to see if any of the three offered a good chance for survival. Norlin studied the alien scout with growing uneasiness. It massed a tenth of the Preceptor's bulk, but it moved well and its aggressive pursuit showed that its crew had no fear of them.

He had seen the way they reprogrammed the sensitive cometary detectors. The aliens' knowl-edge of human technology had to be good. That meant those aboard the scout knew they faced a fully armored cruiser.

"They've turned their radiation cannon on us," came Miza and Sarov's simultaneous warning. The displays went crazy in front of Norlin. He ripped off the command visor and turned to the slower computer readout on his chair.

"Damage?"

"Engines are still running. I've got them on manual, though. That bastard took out all my autocontrol circuitry," reported Barse.

"Sir," came Liottey's wavering voice. "Life support is damaged."

"Then fix it, dammit." Norlin punched off Liottey's individual circuit. The only way Liot-tey could reach him was through the general circuit they all shared. He doubted this would keep the XO from whining, but ridicule by the others might hold him in check for a while. By then, the Preceptor would either be safe or an expanding superheated plasma ball.

"Combat control, what are the best weapons for on-the-run fighting?"

"Missiles. We can lay them behind us like a mine field and make it more difficult to follow."

"Lay them along our course and set them for random detonation. Have a few lay doggo and then lock on after the scout passes them. Get him from behind. Keep the intruder vessel busy!"

"No indication any other alien craft is onto us," came Miza's cool appraisal. "It wouldn't surprise me if they thought the scout ship could take us."

"It might be able to," said Norlin. He turned his attention to the main body of the fleet. Even though he had a hundred different command

decisions to make, he couldn't take his eyes off the vidscreen.

The Death Fleet moved into orbit with eerie precision. Each ship fit perfectly into a matrix of destruction. Rainbow-colored beams licked at Lyman IV. Norlin increased magnification and saw the resulting devastation on the planet's surface. Buildings remained; people, plants, and animals died instantly from the ionizing radia-tion. In a few spots, the Death Fleet dropped a deadly curtain of neutron bombs that blanketed the landscape. The explosions flared in silence and forced the computer to adjust for violent in-tensity changes. The blast damage on-planet re-mained small; only life was lost.

"Getting some damage report on their craft, Captain." Sarov's voice cut through his growing despair.

"Our missiles destroyed nine of their craft. Fourteen more were damaged. They re-main functional, however. Six missiles have struck the scout craft—all inflicted less than detectable damage. That's one tough mother."

"Keep tracking." Norlin studied the damage within the Preceptor and decided they had weathered their first battle in good condition. Barse and Liottey had robot repair units— RRUs—hard at work to fix the worst of the damage. No structural or major-systems dam-age had been inflicted. The brief brush with the scout ship's radiation weapon had played havoc with their controls, however. Entire banks of su-perconducting ceramic-block circuits had to be replaced. Replacing or reprogramming took precious time.

Norlin saw how the scout avoided their mis-siles; the aliens had learned from the destruc-tion meted out to their main fleet.

"Request permission to recharge lasartillery, Captain. We diverted power during the fracas."

"Denied. We need the juice to keep moving. The scout's overtaking us."

"We can't get any more delta vee out of the engines, Cap'n," came Barse's voice. "Control is still spotty. That radiation cannon of theirs is one hell of a nasty weapon."

"Sarov, can we fight? What are our chances?"

"The computer's given us less than 10 percent chance. I don't believe this. It's only a scout ship!" Norlin chewed his lower lip. They had little chance of fighting the smaller vessel and living to brag about it. Outrunning it held little prom-ise, either. Without consciously wanting to, he shifted so that he stared into the vidscreen dis-play focused on Lyman IV.

The alien Death Fleet had finished scouring the surface of all life. The gravid mother ships disgorged ferries and the automated factories that stripped the surface. Within days every-thing of material worth would be removed from the planet.

Norlin swallowed hard. He had already lost what mattered most. Neela's body floated as vapor in the atmosphere.

"We run. Give it all she'll take, Barse."

The Preceptor shuddered as the scout ship began serious firing. Red warnings flashed on his summary heads-up display and carried over

to the general control panels. Even fleeing as fast as they could, the cruiser sustained increas-ing damage.

They couldn't fight; they couldn't run.

All that remained was for them to die.