Chapter Seven

"HE'S on us like epoxy," Chikako Miza reported. "No matter what maneuver you try, he's there and countering us. He knows what you try be-fore you do it."

"His weapons are coming up," said Mitri Sarov. "He'll be at full power in a few more sec-onds. We don't dare take another full hit from his radiation cannon."

"Add another layer of shielding to the bridge," ordered Norlin. His neck developed knots in muscles he hadn't been aware of possessing. Turning this way and that to get the best picture of their trouble kept him constantly on the move. He wanted to take a few minutes off, to catch his breath, to have a nice, long, cool drink of the former captain's thirst-kill, and then re-turn to the fray. The alien vessel wasn't likely to pull back enough to give him the respite.

"Permission to power up the lasartillery," asked Sarov.

"No, we need the energy going to the engines. We either stand and fight or run like hell." Nor-lin bit his lower lip hard when he said that. He was the Preceptor's captain. He had no need to explain his orders. The others only had to obey and know he had good reasons for the com-mand. Norlin realized how new he was at this— and how unlikely he would be to gain more experience.

"What are the computer projections on the expert-systems maneuvers?" he asked Sarov.

"None stand a chance. I tried several other likely candidates—based on the general schemes in each of the plans you suggested," he added, as if to assuage Norlin's hurt pride. Nor-lin was more interested in finding a way free of the alien scout ship with its impossibly potent arms and dense armor. He could lick his wounds later. First, he had to fight through to that "later." Norlin tapped the keyboard on his chair arm and saw that none of the usual evasion paths looked as if they would provide escape.

"More shielding added, Cap'n," came Barse's voice in his left ear. "I had Liottey do it. He needs something to keep him busy. He's so scared he's cratering."

"I'll see to it." Norlin reactivated Liottey's di-rect circuit. To his first officer, he said, "I need maximum shielding. Keep it up. The scout is going to hit us with the radiation cannon again. Keep me apprised of the danger levels." He clicked off before the obsequious XO could an-swer. This served a small purpose and kept the

man busy while the others tended to their duties. Norlin flipped up a more complete sum-mary display on the life-support systems since he doubted Liottey would be paying as close at-tention to them as he should.

"Predischarge corona observed," reported Sarov. "We're in for another shot." The tactical officer had barely warned them when Norlin cringed. Warning lights flared across his board and in his eyes from the heads-up display. He worked quickly to assign damage control to Liottey and Barse. The engineer didn't need to be told what to do. Liottey was increasingly harried and unable to make good decisions. Norlin cut him out of the command circuit. He could issue orders and push console buttons all he wanted; they would do nothing without first going through Norlin's display for approval.

"Was it necessary to put him in trainee mode?" asked Barse. The engineer had noticed instantly what Norlin had done.

"Yes. We've got problems. I can't have anyone making a mistake. Anyone."

"Right, Cap'n. Count on us. Some of us."

Without being in the room to watch, he still knew she turned and glanced over her shoulder at Gowan Liottey.

"Radiation damage to controls minimal this time" Miza said. "We're in for a bigger dose, though." Norlin precessed the Preceptor, then applied thrust at a vector that almost wrenched him from his chair. The ship responded well. It had

been made for abuse—and the heat of battle. The violent maneuver helped them avoid the sweeping beam of the radiation cannon.

"We've got to fight. We can't run," said Sarov. "That's a computer decision, as well as mine, Captain." He nodded, even though neither his tac officer nor the computer could see. Norlin sprayed out a thin shield of missiles, each with a different intercept and detonation characteristic. He hoped one might lie doggo long enough for the scout to pass it. A shot directly up the alien's tailpipe would finish it. The alien's detection system proved too good; they had been alerted to know what to look for by the survivors in the Death Fleet. Another way to destroy the scout had to be found.

"Are you on the nav, Captain?" demanded Miza. "We're sixty million kilometers from Lyman. The Nereid Cluster of asteroids is ahead."

"I know," Norlin lied. An idea already came to him. They couldn't outdrive or outfight the scout. They might dodge through the small cluster of asteroids that trailed Lyman IV at a libration point. He checked for size. Two aster-oids were a kilometer in length. The rest were too small for the use he intended. Norlin twisted the Preceptor around violently again. Liottey complained. No one else noticed; they were too intent on their computer read-outs. Sarov was the first to understand what Norlin intended.

"Power up on the lasartillery now. Captain?"

"Do it. Power down for maneuvering," he or-dered Barse. "Get ready to give it all we can on offensive weaponry."

His displays went black when the scout hit them squarely. The computer struggled to cut in backup displays. Norlin ended up with only minimal control over the ship and even less in the way of direct information about its condi-tion.

"Get me nav data on largest asteroid only," he ordered. Miza furnished him the data he needed. Norlin sent the Preceptor twisting in crazy spirals and then turned the ship end for end and applied full thrust. The cruiser did not come to a complete stop relative to the asteroid; it didn't have to.

"Fire at will," he ordered Sarov. As the tactical officer laid out his program for destruction, Norlin added a few touches of his own using two spare missile tubes.

The lights dimmed inside the Preceptor when their full battery of lasartillery fired. Norlin felt the autoloader shaking the vessel as it slipped more missiles into launch tubes. He blinked when his summary display returned unexpect-edly. The first thing he did was check the scout's progress.

"Good shooting, Mitri," he said. A continuous-wave laser had sliced off a portion of the scout's aft. Two missiles had penetrated the alien's ef-fective defensive system and blown away an-other chunk of hull. Spectrometer readings

showed a tremendous outflux of gas; they had breached the hull and spilled atmosphere.

"Keep after him. Blow away everything that might be a weapon. Try to save the bridge mod-ule, but don't try too hard," Norlin said.

For the first time since the scout locked on to them, he leaned back and took off his command visor. The control room seemed less alive, less vital, less real without the heads-up display su-perimposed on his field of vision. Norlin swiped at the sweat on his forehead, stood and stretched, then dropped back. He was captain. He still had work to do. Lots of work.

"Damage report," he requested of Liottey.

"Working on it, Captain. Are we going to be all right? I tried to follow the battle. Is the alien dead?"

"Working on it, Lieutenant. I want full sys-tems back in ten." He toggled to Barse's circuit before Liottey could reply. "Engineering. How are we doing?"

"High load sent a Dirac function spike that wrecked a few minor circuits. No problems, though. I had the backups jury-rigged out of the main circuits."

"Did you have Captain Dukker's permission to do that? We might lose everything if a major circuit fails without a cutout."

"Trust me, Cap'n."

Displays winked back on in increasing numbers. Norlin checked the repair computer and found they had sustained damage from the

attack but not enough to worry over. RRUs worked diligently on the worst, and clever com-puter work circumvented the damaged minor circuits.

"Detectors at max. I want to know if another alien is coming after us."

"No distress signal from their scout was de-tected. He died without a will, Captain." Miza scanned every possible frequency and combina-tion of frequencies the alien might have used. None matched observed use as the Death Fleet had swooped down on Lyman IV. Norlin breathed a sigh of relief. It would be a few min-utes before their efficient control system noticed the loss of a scout unit.

"Launch a retrieval unit. I want anything that's only slightly bolted down for study. Bring it into the cargo bay."

"That's dangerous," spoke up Barse. "We might be bringing in a mine or time-delay bomb."

"Do it. Have Liottey see to it." Norlin grew weary of finding work for the first officer to do. He understood fully why Barse and the other two hadn't wanted to promote their exec officer to captain.

"External retrieval unit on its way. This is the best ERU in the Empire Service fleet," bragged Barse. "I designed it myself."

"Have it work faster," cut in Miza. "We're get-ting company. This time it looks as if they sent the big boys. Two cruisers, if I read their trans-missions right."

Norlin swore. He settled down in his com-mand chair and slowly scanned the full 360 de-grees in the control room. Each instrument popped up in the heads-up display. Most he noted and ignored. Some he had no idea what they meant; he ignored them, too. The ones showing how much fight the Preceptor had left demanded his full attention.

He knew they had been lucky. The asteroid had given them the chance to lie in wait for the scout. They had taken it by surprise with the full force of their weapons. Two cruisers out-gunned and outpowered them. He had to hope they couldn't outrun him.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, a plan formed—a desperate one, but possibly the Pre-ceptor's only hope.

"Get the ERU back."

"It's just begun slicing away at their weapons module," protested Barse. "We can strip that baby naked!"

"Get the ERU back or leave it. We're shifting out of here."

"No!" Four voices chorused as one. Chikako Miza's cut through the protest. "Norlin, you'll murder us all. No one can shift this close to sig-nificant mass. Everything will blow up—us in-cluded."

"What is the shift-field radius?" he asked.

"Fifty klicks, maybe more. There's no good way to judge since the engines are out of sync," came Barse's appraisal.

"Get us a hundred away from the Nereid asteroid. Then we're shifting for Sutton II. We've got too much valuable information to lose."

"You'll kill us."

He couldn't tell who repeated that, but to his surprise Mitri Sarov came to his defense. "It is desperate, but it serves two purposes. The aster-oid will explode from the shift wave radiating away from the tubes. My computer analysis shows it will destroy both cruisers."

For the tac officer, that settled the matter. Anything to destroy more of the enemy was a good plan. Norlin checked and saw that Barse had docked the external retrieval unit. It had laser-cut off a complete weapons turret from the scout. He hoped it had left enough of the weapon intact for study. The scientists on Sut-ton II needed something tangible to work on. The cerampix of the battle might prove interest-ing, but an artifact always delighted the re-searchers more.

"Everybody button up. We're taking a flyer," he said. From all quarters he got warnings. Drive warnings that they were too close to a large, material body. Weapons computer warn-ings that the cruisers had sighted them and had radiation-cannon predischarge coronas build-ing. Life-support systems warnings of inpending oxygenation failure.

Norlin ignored them all. "Distance one hundred kilometers. We're gone!" He engaged the nav computer and hit the manual override for engaging the star-spanning shift engine. The explosion at his back ripped his command chair from the deck and sent him spin-ning through the control room. Pier Norlin s last impression was of the forward control console growing large at an incredible rate. He struck with bone-breaking force, and the universe went black.