Chapter Nine

"cap'n, you've killed power to the engines. I need it to run!" shrieked Tia Barse. Norlin had never heard the woman so agitated.

"Prepare the alien radiation cannon for use," he ordered. "Full power to it, Engineer. Is it properly patched into the weapons computer, Tactical Officer?"

"Aye, Captain," came Sarov's bull-throated reply. "I put an interpreter circuit on-line to translate voltage levels. I think I have them matched." Sarov waited for a moment, then asked, "You're not trusting the damned alien popgun, are you?"

"I am." Pier Norlin had looked at the readouts from the weapons computer and the main sys-tems. The Preceptor had power enough to shift but lacked the peak energy requirements for battle. The sensors reported the rebel craft to be bristling with laser turrets. Some might be for show, but Norlin thought otherwise. The ap-proaching flight of genius missiles told him that the rebel craft was armed to the teeth and meant to cripple rather than destroy.

They wanted salvage—and the cruiser's crew would only be a hindrance to efficient looting.

"They think we blew the main power bus," re-ported Miza. "I've tapped into their intercom— it wasn't properly shielded. They're saying something about sabotage in dock."

"I'll have Vasily's balls for more than..." Barse's voice trailed off as she fumed. Norlin heard the engineer ripping into the recently re-paired circuits. She would find the sabotage de-vice quickly enough now that she looked. He left her to the chore. He had a ship to defend.

"Miza, are they suspicious?"

"They think their gizmo did us in."

"Prepare the alien cannon. Dead on, no warn-ing, no quarter." The command burned his tongue, but this wasn't a civil engagement. This was war.

His shaking finger touched the firing button. Norlin wanted to scream in the silence that de-scended in the control room. No one moved, no one breathed. The silence made him start to mutter to himself to break it.

Then all hell broke loose.

Norlin blanked his summary displays except for the weapons computer. Readings went off-scale and burned out circuits. Automatic equip-ment kicked in to keep the short circuits from affecting other important circuitry. Then the high-pitched screech started.

"Air leak. We've got a punctured hull. Liottey, tend to it. Now, dammit, do it now!" Norlin monitored the air loss and saw that it was minor. He isolated it in the forward mounts where the lasartillery had been. Firing the radi-ation cannon had opened portions of the com-posite material hull: nothing serious. It could be patched with glue and patches.

"Report. All stations," he barked.

Before the first status report came in, the lights went off inside the Preceptor.

"What happened?" he demanded. From be-hind him in the control room he heard Miza and Sarov cursing as they worked.

He whipped off his command visor and peered through the gloom. Only emergency lights cast wan beams. They were designed to fill the bridge with harsh white light. Their bat-teries had run down.

"Getting a trickle of power back. Barse is manually switching."

"Was it the rebel's sabotage device that did it?"

"It was an aftereffect of the radiation cannon," came Sarov's surprising answer. "It set up a field, sent the beam, then a secondary field sucked up power to recharge. We hadn't ex-pected it to cycle like that."

"Get us back to power. Liottey, how bad is the rupture in the hull?"

"Almost fixed, Captain Norlin," came the XO's thin voice. "A robot repair unit is working now. It's lucky the RRUs don't need light to work. I can hardly see where I am."

"I'll send you a flashlight and a pair of hands," grumbled Norlin. "Maybe you can find your—"

"Cap'n, power's coming back at half-level."

"Thanks, Engineer."

Norlin slid the command visor back on and checked the heads-up summary displays. The Preceptor had been dead in space for several minutes, but it hadn't mattered. The aliens' ra-diation cannon had found the rebel ship. It now drifted, a lifeless hulk across the Murgatroyd system.

"It's dead," came Miza's appraisal. "All inter-nals are gone. The radiation cooked 'em alive. The sons of bitches."

"Enough," he snapped. Barse had grown up on Murgatroyd. Friends might have been aboard the attacking ship. He didn't need dis-sension among his crew when they were faced with monumental problems.

He watched as his crew worked to restore order to the cruiser. Less than fifteen minutes after the power level had come back to three-quarters, Miza exclaimed, "I'll be sucked into a black hole. They're on top of us!"

"The rebel ship? You said it was dead."

"Not the rebel. It's history. The aliens. A scout ship just shifted into the system. I think it's locked on to us. It's vectoring in on us, using a least-time orbit. They want us bad." Norlin popped up Miza's full display and saw the readouts. Her personality might be closer to a viper than a human, but Chikako Miza knew her job. She had spotted the alien scout seconds after it shifted out of ftl drive.

"Can we hide behind the rebel ship?" he asked. "Grapple and drift, as if we were part of it?"

"No good," came Miza's evaluation. "The scout had us dead in its sights. We can't do any-thing clever now without it jumping down our throats."

"We're still in the Murgatroyd gravitational well," said Sarov. "Any chance we can get back to the station? This is as much their problem as ours."

Norlin nodded. An alien scout meant others followed.. The Death Fleet cared little which world it struck; to it, the humans' politics were irrelevant. A rebel planet meant as much in the way of plunder as a world firmly supporting Emperor Arian.

He tried a lasercom back to Murgatroyd and got only static. A quick check showed he lacked the comlink power required to drive a beam through the alien's interference.

"It's being mistaken for natural static," said Miza. "We can send back a message packet."

"Forget it. Murgatroyd has to solve its own problems. It won't do us any good dying for them. We've got to get the warning to Sutton II and the Empire Service."

"The alien is on an intercept course. They ei-ther have extremely sensitive detectors or they're homing on a beacon."

"The radiation cannon?" Norlin had never considered the possibility that the aliens keyed each weapons module to their ship and could track any wayward pieces. "Liottey, check out the cannon for transmitters. The alien is follow-ing us too easily." Norlin didn't wait for his exec officer's whin-ing voice to complain about the chore. He switched to Miza's display and studied the sur-rounding portion of the Murgatroyd system. They hadn't blasted long enough to get far from the main planet.

"Tia, how many moons around Murgatroyd?"

"Two, Cap'n. Both are small but big enough to put down on if you're careful."

"I'm more desperate than careful. Prepare for maneuvering. We're going to put some rock be-tween us and the alien and see if they are hom-ing on their cannon."

The Preceptor swung about as Norlin gingerly applied power to the jets. The ship responded poorly. He fought it all the way down to a hard landing on the surface of the outermost moon. Norlin cringed when he saw the number of new danger indicator lights flaring in front of him. He toggled the problems over to Liottey. Nor-lin's full attention turned to a small sensor left along their flight path. Using it, he monitored the progress of the alien scout ship.

"It might have been bad luck on our part being between shift-out and Murgatroyd," ven-tured Miza. "The scout isn't paying us much at-tention."

Norlin checked the progress of the repair work. The RRUs toiled to fix the hull, to repair the short-circuited equipment, to do a dozen things necessary for a successful and reasonably safe shift. In its present condition, the Preceptor was neither fight-nor flightworthy.

"Sarov, prepare a few missiles. We'll have to use them instead of the radiation cannon. We can't get back to power fast enough, no matter how effective the device is."

"Permission to launch a nuke at Murgatroyd, Captain," requested Sarov.

"What?" came Barse's aggrieved voice over his headphones. "What's that bald son of a bitch think he's doing? He can't fire on them. That was a pirate ship. The people on Murgatroyd or the station had nothing to do with it."

"Quiet down," Norlin ordered. The engineer continued her tirade against Sarov, his ances-tors, and their scurrilous, disgusting personal habits.

"Explain," he ordered his tactical officer.

"They're alert for such an attack. They'll pick up the incoming and remove it. They'll also be looking for the source. This is the only way I can think to get their attention focused on the alien scout ship."

"And the Death Fleet. Murgatroyd's cometary detectors might be circumvented by now," said Norlin. His mind raced. Launching an attack on the planet had other advantages. It might get the alien scout's attention and force it to turn tail and run.

"Launch," he ordered. Norlin cut out Barse's circuit and worked to calm her, explaining his line of reasoning. She quieted but he knew her anger had not abated.

"It's not right. People could die."

"If a few die now, it might save the entire world. You saw what the Death Fleet did to Lyman IV." Norlin's throat tightened as he thought of Neela.

"You might be right," Barse conceded with ill grace.

"It's Sarov's idea. I only approved it. Tia," he said in a lower voice, "the Preceptor is a crew. We're all working for the same thing. None of us wants to see the aliens wash over all humanity like a tidal wave." The Preceptor shuddered as the missile launched. Norlin shifted to Miza's readouts and watched as the nuke raced away. He was more interested in the scout ship's response than in Murgatroyd's reaction.

"That spooked them," he said. "The scout is spinning around and getting out of here. Put a tracer on it, Miza. I don't want it to slip off where we can't find it."

"Captain, I found a transmission device in the cannon. What should I do with it?"

"Any booby trap on it?" he asked Liottey.

"I don't think so."

"Be sure, then remove the device and destroy it."

"Wait, Captain. Let me have it. We might learn more about their com capability."

"Give it to Miza after you're sure it's not dan-gerous. Are the air leaks fixed?"

"Yes, sir. All done. I used—"

Norlin cut off Liottey's long-winded descrip-tion of how he had repaired the breached hull. The details mattered less than knowing the job

had been completed. Norlin had too many other things on his mind to care a pinch of space dust about glues and patches.

He twisted his head and saw their missile enter the Murgatroyd detection net. Indicators flashed at the clumsy attack and interception came quickly.

"Can we get a comlink with Murgatroyd now?" he asked Miza.

"Negative, Captain. The scout is still blanket-ing us. I wish I knew how they did it. All chan-nels are garbled. We might as well be in the middle of a major proton storm."

"Send a warning packet to Murgatroyd," he ordered Sarov. "Give them the details on our sensor readings on the scout."

"Major shift-out," interrupted Chikako Miza. "Hundreds—thousands! The Death Fleet is in the system." Norlin slumped. He picked up more details of the Murgatroyd defensive system. They had been alerted by the single missile. Other than this, they would have been caught as unaware as had the Penum system and even Lyman IV, for all the advance knowledge of the Death Fleet they had. He didn't need Miza to tell him the aliens' at-tack came immediately.

"It's all elbows and assholes down there," said Barse. "I've got us up to ninety-percent power."

"What about the radiation cannon?"

"Can't use it, Cap'n. Not unless you want to cripple us permanently. I've got to run a second power line to it for its recharge cycle. Otherwise it'll suck us drier than—"

"Thank you, Engineer."

Norlin prayed that enough systems worked well enough to allow them to shift. If they re-mained on the moon that had briefly given them shelter, they would become easy prey for the Death Fleet's heavy radiation cannon. Their only chance for survival now was to sneak off.

"Murgatroyd is responding. They've launched deep-space interceptors. Monitoring their com, Captain. It's interesting. Want to snoop in?"

Norlin keyed in to the rebel world's internal communication. A brief smile crossed his lips. They thought the Empire Service attacked. The first missile had been identified as ES make. They had mobilized quickly. Only time would tell if they fought with enough fervor and strength to hold back the black tide of alien death.

"Got one on us. A destroyer from its size."

"Shift. Can we shift?" he asked.

"Deploying doggo missiles in addition to ac-tives. We can hold it at bay for a few minutes." Norlin put the Preceptor on a vector that made it difficult for the destroyer to center its radia-tion cannon on the fleeing ship. He had learned enough of the weapon's configurations to know where their best chance lay.

"We can't shift, Captain. Too many backup systems are down."

"Hit the primary systems and give me a prayer. We're leaving Murgatroyd now." Pier Norlin saw the predischarge corona

building in the destroyer just as his finger tog-gled the shift button. They might have been too close to the moon. The destroyer might have closed at the last moment and come within their shift field. Norlin neither knew nor cared. They had no time to waste.

The Preceptor entered shift space just as a powerful wavefront buffeted them.