Chapter Twelve
norlin took the command visor Pensky had discarded and donned it. He winced when he saw what the genhanced officer had done. Sarov's summary displays showed the full weapons systems on Preceptor and their status. Sixteen expensive genius missiles had struck the ill-fated destroyer—Sarov could be proud of an 80-percent hit rate. According to the playbacks, the destroyer had deployed every countermea-sure possible.
The Preceptor had proven too powerful and Pensky too clever.
Norlin sat on the dropseat and shook. He couldn't tell if the skillful attack had been so deadly because of superior power or surprise. What commander expected a friendly ship to open fire?
"A small sweep-fleet is closing on us, Cap-tain," came Miza's frightened voice. "Should I send the recognition response and surrender?"
"No! They're all aliens. This is a ruse. They'll blow us out of space if you try dealing with them."
"Captain Pensky," Norlin called. "They're friendly. They're ours. Let's parlay and see if we can't—"
"No!" the genhanced officer roared. He danced around in front of the command chair, arms waving wildly. "They're all against me. Since I left Earth, everyone's been against me. I suspect Droon of being an alien in disguise. A clever disguise, yes, but a disguise. Yes, that's it."
Norlin glanced at Miza and Sarov. Their ex-pressions were unreadable, but for the first time he thought he saw real fear in Sarov's eyes. The tactical officer enjoyed combat; he had no stom-ach for fighting his friends and allies.
"We'll never surrender," Pensky said in a nor-mal voice. His mood had shifted quickly. "Ac-cept this input, Tactical Officer." Pensky swung around, sat in the command chair, and confi-dently punched in an evasion routine. Norlin tried to follow the salient points of the plan and failed. Sarov began to chuckle. He worked at his own computer to implement the plan. The Preceptor leaped along, strangely changing vectors, acceleration throwing them from side to side and the very hull beginning to creak in complaint. Norlin watched the progress of the pursuing ships. Two heavy cruisers fired missiles; the Preceptor dodged them easily with-out using precious countermeasures missiles. When the battleship began firing its immense lasartillery, the true genius of Pensky's course became apparent. Each bolt missed by kilometers. At no time did Norlin have the feeling the Preceptor was in danger; yet he knew the ships on their tail had been ordered to destroy them without offering quarter. Pavel Pensky had the spark of genius. But was he right about the destroyer? Norlin didn't think so.
"Captain," came Miza's worried voice. "I'm picking up considerable disturbance ahead."
"Range?"
"Almost a light hour distant according to the Doppler reading." She gave the coordinates in relation to their rapidly changing position.
"The Death Fleet!" blurted Norlin. He studied the woman's readouts and matched them with spectral analyses of the radiation waves he had ordered in the Lyman system. The match was perfect. The alien Death Fleet shifted into the Sutton system. Thousands of ships.
"I was right!" cried Pensky. "The bastards are waiting for us. We'll lead our fleet to glorious victory. Our pennants will fly high as we march into combat. Forward and let any craven slacker be put to the sword!"
"Wait!" cried Norlin. "You can't attack the whole fleet. There are too many of them. Even one is more than the Preceptor can handle. We need repairs. We need—"
"We need courage from the crew," snapped Pensky. "I shall supply all the genius required for illustrious victory in the face of overwhelm-ing odds."
He leaned back in the command chair and acted as if wind blew in his face. Norlin had the fleeting impression of an ancient sea captain on his wooden bridge, the salt spray from a water ocean driving against his skin.
"Dammit," came Tia Barse's aggrieved voice from the hatch. "You're doing it again. You cut off my 'link. Ask for any more power and the whole rust bucket is going to pop." She hesitated when she saw the expression on Norlin's face. Her colorless eyes worked around the room, from the now-confident captain to the frightened Miza and the increasingly nervous Mitri Sarov.
"What's got everyone spooked?"
Gowan Liottey pushed past her and ran to the command chair. He leaned forward, his long, thin fingers gripping the arm so tightly that his knuckles turned white with strain.
"Please, sir, turn back. That's the Death Fleet ahead of us. I just saw it on the command vid-screen."
"An inspiring sight, isn't it? Thousands of them, just a small armada of us."
"You can't count the ships behind us," said Sarov. "They're trying to blow us out of space."
"What in hell's going on?" asked Barse, con-fused. "I heard the autoloaders working. Did this brain-dead son of a bitch fire on the Death Fleet?"
Norlin hastily explained all that had occurred in the past few minutes. Barse burst out laugh-ing. "You're no good as a practical joker, Nor-lin." She sobered when she saw the others' frightened faces. "It's not a joke? He really did blow one of our own destroyers to hell and gone?"
"He claimed it had been taken over by aliens —he called Droon a traitor."
"Captain Droon is no traitor," spoke up Pensky. "He is a victim, as were those aboard the destroyer. They've been taken over by the aliens. Clever bastards. But we're smarter. I'm smarter. Emperor Arian will reward me highly for this victory, and I don't mean those gaudy jeweled medals he's so fond of. He'll give me an entire world to rule. I'll do a good job of ruling, too. I want to rule. I was meant to rule!"
"Is he ranting?" asked Barse.
"He showed remarkable skill in getting away from the cruisers and battleship assigned to de-stroy us."
"Base ordered them after us?" Barse shud-dered when Norlin nodded.
"Get the forward lasartillery on-line. I can't get any response from the guns. You, Liottey, do something besides suck on your thumb. That's unbecoming to an officer of the emperor!"
"Captain, break off. Return to base. We need protection. There are thousands of them!"
"Then the victory will be all the sweeter. What good is it when you defeat a weakling opponent? Only when you triumph over a stronger one is there any honor in it."
"The radiation cannon is hooked into primary and secondary power circuits," Barse said in a low voice.
"Both circuits have to be activated for it to work. The recharging cycle will drain us for several minutes if we use it, though. It damned near blacked us out permanently the last time." The Preceptor bucked as missiles launched. Norlin shook his head, trying to clear the buzzing in his ears. Strain mounted too quickly for him to bear. Firing missiles at this range was ridicu-lous. The Death Fleet had shifted into the system almost a million kilometers ahead. The missiles could never effectively reach the enemy; their drive engines lacked the range by half.
"He might be mining this cubic of space," said Barse, seeing Norlin's confusion.
"We'll need all the firepower we can muster when we get closer to them," Norlin pointed out. "We're driving hard into the center of their fleet!"
"Let's get the Preceptor ready. I don't want to die without the fixtures being polished," said Barse. "And Neutron might want to eat again, too. I ought to feed the damned cat a tank of methane and see if it changes any before it comes out his rear."
"Tia," he said, his hand stopping her.
"Mutiny?" she mouthed. Her colorless eyes danced. She took a deep breath and then shook her head. Aloud she said, "What difference does
it make how we die? I'd rather do it with all tubes firing and the radiation cannon draining my power than to have our own ships finish us off. Makes me think I died for something worth-while." She left to do what she could to keep the cruiser under maximum power. Norlin ner-vously paced, not sure what he could do. The command visor still gave him a complete read-out of the ship's status. They had improved their battleworthiness in the past few hours, but they could never take on even a small alien craft. They had faced a mere scout ship and had been lucky to escape.
Against the main body of the Death Fleet they had no chance at all.
"We're doing well. They're coming for us. They're falling into my trap," Pensky said from the command chair. He worked on his console and cut off Sarov. The tactical officer com-plained and was ignored. Sarov glared at Nor-lin, as if he were responsible for the captain's suicidal behavior. Norlin watched the preparations made by the genhanced officer. He began to get a sense of the man's reasoning and marveled at it. Pensky had a true talent for tactical situations but had no common sense. Norlin worried that the gen-hanced captain might even have crossed the thin dividing line between sanity and the parti-colored wonderland of his own genius.
"They're locked on," came Miza's warning.
Norlin glanced at the summary of the com offleer's console to know she meant the aliens, not the pursuing Empire Service subfleet.
"Let us lead our forces into battle glorious and admirable," said Pensky with true satisfaction. He worked furiously at the control panel. Sarov moved toward the command chair to protest. Norlin waved him off. Their position was unten-able. The only hope they had for survival mea-sured longer than minutes lay in Pensky's hands.
"Chikako, contact the other ships. Warn them of the Death Fleet. They might have missed the indicators we picked up. Send a lasercom back to Sutton II informing them of the situation." Norlin's pulses pounded as he issued the orders. Miza didn't have to obey; she did. Someone on the bridge had finally shown a spark of judg-ment.
Norlin pointed to the jury-rigged panel where they had rewired the radiation cannon. Sarov went to it and waited, hand resting on the tog-gle that would send the prodigious beam of ra-diation into the center of the Death Fleet. It might be a suicidal one-shot weapon, but Norlin vowed to take a few of the mysterious aliens along with him if they had to die.
"Missiles away. Oh, yes, we strike at their vile black heart. War is the highest perfection of human knowledge." Pensky began cackling to himself and rubbing his hands together as if try-ing to wipe away dirt.
Norlin checked the displays and saw that the missile placement was precise and deadly. Forty-eight missiles launched. Six alien warships were destroyed or damaged. The tactic of accelerating through the middle of the alien fleet had taken their opponents by surprise. By the time they realized that the Preceptor was not vectoring away, it was too late to commit.
Even in the vastness of space, the aliens could not fire at the surging, crazily spinning cruiser without endangering the tight cluster of their own ships.
"They're parting ahead to give one side a shot at us," warned Norlin. The aliens were quick to adjust to the unexpected.
"All ES ships behind us have been destroyed," reported Miza. "I got the last microburst from the battleship. It didn't stand a chance against one of the aliens' heavy planet-beamers." The Preceptor lurched as the aliens began find-ing ways around damaging their own ships. Missiles popped up in front. Pensky's genius for defensive techniques stood them in good stead. He chuckled to himself as he worked Sarov's station. The tac officer stood to one side and watched, his face bright red with anger. His finger tapped repeatedly against the toggle that fired the radiation cannon. Norlin had to keep Sarov calm. Using the captured alien weapon required precise timing. If they fired too soon, they wasted their single most potent weapon. If they waited too long, the Preceptor would be space debris.
"This is tiresome. They keep firing. Why don't they stop? It's time for tea. Does anyone wish to join me?" Norlin stared in dismay as Captain Pensky
jumped from the command chair and walked away.
"Sarov, get back to your station. Now!" Norlin shoved Pensky away and dived into the com-mand chair. He tried to absorb all the informa-tion flooding in. Wearing the command visor had prepared him, but the suddenness of know-ing his orders would be carried out caused him to hesitate for a few seconds. The aliens concentrated their radiation-can-non fire on the Preceptor. Explosions deep within the cruiser echoed in Norlin's ears as he let Sarov fire at will. He checked with Miza, saw the opportunity open, and reached for the toggle on the radiation can-non. He crushed it with his hand.
The ship bucked hard and inky blackness de-scended. The radiation cannon had once more sucked every last joule of energy from the Pre-ceptor's engines.