“Toto,” said Cal Shemzak, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
Chapter Sixteen
“I can’t do it!” Laura wailed. “I can’t make frakking contact!”
It was one of her worst nightmares. She sat there, in the snug cockpit of her XT 9, her blip-ship, and she felt useless, impotent, and exhausted.
She was no good. She had failed. She had failed the Starbow, failed Tars Northern, failed these beings in within her, failed Cal, and ultimately failed herself.
Tears sprang helplessly to her eyes. She could hear the proton beams from the soldiers outside, raking against the force-field around the hull, and she knew it wouldn’t be long.
“O ye of little faith,” said Andrew inside her.
“I can’t do it!” said Laura. “I just don’t have the power, the ability without that damned drug.”
“Relax,” said the voice. “I shall stay within you while my brethren take up residence in the circuitry of the vessel. Watch!”
Even as the voice spoke, Laura could see that her whole body was beginning to glow with a soft nimbus. Her jacks and interface couplings glittered for a moment; there was the sound of moving air, a vibrant Whoosh! a tinkling kind of sound ….
The whole interior sparkled like diamonds lit from within.
And Laura could feel power beginning to flow through her and from her; she could feel her mind opening up like a flower, its petals reaching into every nook and cranny of the blip-ship. It was like usual, with the drug zinging through her synapses, effervescent and alive, only cleaner. She was amazed.
“I suggest you take off now, Pilot Shemzak,” said Andrew.
“Oh, yeah. Good idea.” Laura reached, flexed the engines, the suspensors, and she was off, springing up from the landing pad effortlessly, feeling shiny and new in the late afternoon sun.
She automatically stepped up the force-fields to allow for any random shots from below. She opened her sensor pods wide for indications of pursuit, adjusted her internal-grav. She took a roll and a bank for evasive action, then blasted off through the atmosphere.
“Hot damn!” she screeched, feeling alive again. “Awesome!”
She lost herself in the thrill, the racing ecstasy of rising up through the atmosphere, through the friction, like rising from a pool of water to finally break out in a burst of spray at the surface. But up in the ionosphere her alarms rang, sensors indicating that she was being pursued from the surface.
“Got a healthy start on them!” she whooped, racing out toward where the shadowed moon hung, then veering out of ecliptic. The thing was, it would be stupid to shoot out through where all the Federation forces were—much simpler to rise up above that plane, gain some distance from the gravity wells, and hit the jump-stasis motors. And they didn’t know where the hell the Starbow was.
But her joy was stillborn. Coming out of nowhere, two sleek Federation cruisers—heavy-duty cruisers, new ones, bristling with weapons and coursing with energy—erupted into position just a couple hundred kilometers behind her tail.
What the hell!
She pushed up her acceleration another half-G, starting to feel it despite her grav-control, but still her sensors showed the Fed cruisers gaining on her.
Damn! She had at least fifteen minutes to go at top acceleration before she could even think about skipping out into Underspace!
Each second that ticked off, the ships were closer to her.
“Hey, Andrew, can you get me out of this one?” There was no response.
Presumably the being was concentrating on the problem as much as she, milking every last bit of power from the XT 9.
The star field glittered ahead, cold and dead and barren again, reflecting the fear and doubt that was growing malignantly inside her.
Then she began picking up communication over a Federation channel. She Opened up her audio and listened: “Shemzak, pilot of XT 9, you will commence deceleration immediately. Prepare for surrender. Any escape is impossible. We outpower you.”
“Kiss my asteroids, Fed-head,” Laura blasted back. “I’ll surrender to death before I surrender to you.”
“That, Pilot Shemzak, is your only alternative.”
Desperately, Laura checked her readings again to ascertain the possibility of a premature jump. No way. No frakking way! If I jump now, she thought, the only stuff that will come out on the other side of Underspace will be puree.
She willed the blip-ship to go faster, but with no luck. The cruisers were gaining on her kilometer by kilometer. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be within sufficient range to blast her with their heavy artillery.
“Andrew … you guys have any more magic tricks?” she asked.
Andrew, however, did not answer; still she felt his presence.
“I’ll just assume that you’re working on the problem,” she said.
The com channel crackled again.
“Laura. This is Zarpfrin.” Smooth, almost friendly tones. “Why are you doing this?”
He must be talking on a channel from Earth, she realized.
“Pretty surprised, huh. Zarpy?” she shot back. “Thought you had me. You’re just too damned self-confident for your own good! Now what is the Council going to say … especially about all that awful chicanery you’ve been up to!”
“I am in full cooperation with the Council, Laura Shemzak, “responded the voice immediately. “But this is not the matter we must discuss. Captains Karn and Dano of the cruisers rapidly gaining on you tell me that it is merely a matter of three minutes before their heavy artillery can easily pick you out of space. So it’s a matter of your life, Laura Shemzak. At this point, should you continue to flee, no attempt will be made to apprehend you. We’ll simply destroy you. It’s that simple. So I implore you to surrender immediately.”
“So you can shoot me full of drugs again? So you can twist my head out of shape, control me, manipulate me? Zarpfrin, no go. I’d rather die. But I’ll die with a smile on my face, knowing how much it’s gonna spite you!”
Silence.
“Very well, Laura, if that is your choice,” said Zarpfrin, his voice detectably shaky. “Goodbye.”
The transmission was cut off.
The seconds ticked away, slowing down to a numbing crawl as the XT 9 strained desperately toward the stars.
“C’mon, boat,” Laura said through clenched teeth. “Just a little more. Please!”
She checked out her sensors. The weapons blisters on the cruisers were hot and ready. Doubtless even now they were being aimed at her—her tiny ship in Feddy crosshairs, itchy fingers on the triggers, waiting for the order to fire.
She perceived the glow of building energy at the tip of the blisters, signaling the imminence of fire.
And at the last moment she banked, and swerved downward.
The energy beams converged in the space where she had been.
She began further evasive action, again avoiding a hit, but losing distance in the process, making her more of a target.
She was just buying time, she knew, waiting for something to happen. A miracle, perhaps. Yeah, that would be what she needed right now—an outright miracle.
What she got instead was the swipe of an energy beam.
It hit her near the tail; if not for her protective force field, it would have blown her away. As it was, it merely did a great deal of damage and sent her off on a wild tangent, spinning crazily.
She was out of control.
Still, the hit gave her more time, as the cruisers had to plot her erratic course. Bet they couldn’t guess this one, she thought with morbid glee.
But it killed half her propulsive force. Within seconds, she’d be a goner.
Wait a minute, she thought, her mind suddenly clear again. I’m using the wrong mentality here.
Although she couldn’t escap
e, her mobility rockets and beams were still effective. She fought for the helm of her ship. She got it back. Without further thought she went crazy, veering her course abruptly so that she was headed straight at the ships.
She picked the closest, and stitched a series of damaging shots across its bow, blowing away the weapons placements there.
She laughed crazily, feeling in control. If she was going to go out, she would go out in bright lights and style!
The other cruiser tried to track her.
She had an idea. A vicious idea. She let herself slow down, become a target, keeping herself on the weaponless side of the cruiser she had attacked. She sensed the energy nodes approaching fire, and immediately shot away. Instead of hitting her, the beams strafed the side of the sister cruiser, blowing open a wide hole.
Laura giggled, and headed straight for the other one, able to avoid the beams at this close range, dealing the cruiser a couple of blows before zipping away in the opposite direction.
Let’s see them veer around! she thought.
Of course, she was now headed back in the direction in which she had come, which was not a good idea, but it gave her time to think.
Or she thought it would.
Instead, as her sensors automatically felt out the space beyond her, they detected certain unwelcome company. A whole fleet’s worth of Federation ships, coming from several directions, heading straight for her!
Uh-oh! No way she was going to slip through that crew!
“Andrew,” she said sadly. “I’ll do my best, but I think that we’ve bought the farm.”
Again, no response.
Still, she was yet one with her ship, so the Aspach were still there.
But what the hell were they doing?
She spun about and tried for a run, but it was thoroughly ridiculous: her engines sounded like they had a terminal case of whooping cough. Inside the ship, even in her contact/trance state, she could hear them rattling spastically.
She felt oddly detached—the panorama of space, the stars, the Earth, the Moon, surrounding her coldly, like a tomb this time, an eternal sepulcher. No longer did it mean freedom for her. No, as she always expected it would be, she was going to die in the forever quiet of space.
And she was curiously calm about that fact; amazingly at peace.
She was her own person. She hadn’t sold out the ones she loved, had not betrayed them. This was a good time to die.
Her sensors read that it was only a minute or two before this fleet of Federation ships surrounded her. She stopped expending her energy on the useless attempt at escape. She would need all her power to let them have it with her particle beam weapons, so that they couldn’t lock a tractor beam on her; they’d have to blow her out of the sky in mere self-defense.
They came closer, closer, visible dots growing into tremendous islands of metal moving in space.
She turned on her communicator, open frequency, and said something very rude, just so these guys would never forget her. With parley over, she got ready to blast.
But then something strange happened.
Just a few hundred meters off her starboard side, something began to materialize.
Just a shimmer at first, a wavering of the stars the- and then suddenly it was there, in an explosion of dazzling light.
It was a spaceship.
It had a long, sleek body, with spokes radiating from this hub. At the end of each of these spokes were jewel-like appendages. They sparkled and pulsed with energy. They’d never done that before, was Laura Shemzak’s first thought. And then it sank in.
The starship was the Starbow.
They’d come for her.
“What are you idiots doing here?” she demanded over the comband. “You’re gonna get yourselves decimated.”
Captain Northern’s voice erupted over the radio line.
“Would you shut your mouth and get your ass inside! Docking bay is open … now!”
She didn’t waste any time. Rocketing forward, she steadied herself with the necessary beams, and then, the moment she had enough room to pass through the unfolding doors, she zoomed up and into the belly of the ship, docking.
“Good show, Laura. You got your cargo?”
“That’s right.”
“Engage full system diagnostics. The Aspach will be able to use the connection to flow into our onboard system space.”
“Gotcha.”
Even as the docking doors were closing and the bay repressurized, interface ports in her berth reached out and latched onto her ship. Once the interface engaged, an array of neon-green conduit lights lit up across her view tank. She opened contact. “Bye, guys. Hope you liked the ride.” She felt a draining effect as they departed. And she heard Andrew say, “You have done well, Laura. We leave you adjusted, so that you will be free. But you will not be able to fly this vessel.”
“Thanks. That’s okay. It’s busted, anyway.” Laura felt Andrew depart. She could detect the familiar folding-in of her consciousness as it withdrew from the cyberspace of the XT 9. But otherwise she felt no depression, no physical letdown of reduced Zernin and adrenaline. Andrew’s praise warmed her, and she felt the satisfaction of a job well done. When atmosphere was returned to the docking bay, Laura opened the hatch and stepped out.
She took a look at her ship and saw that it was just as bad as she thought.
She sighed and gave the vessel a mock salute. “It’s been fun, my love. But so long!”
Then she spun on her heel and raced up toward the bridge to see how the hell Northern and Mish were gonna get their butts out of this crack!
Chapter Seventeen
When Laura raced through the door and onto the bridge, she immediately noticed two things: the tension was so thick you could cut it with a proverbial knife. There was good reason for this. The view screens were filled with Federation battleships, getting larger and larger as they got nearer and nearer.
It stopped Laura dead.
“Uhm … guys?” she asked. “I’m hoping this is all part of the plan … right?”
The crew were all in battle stations. Red emergency lights strobed, drowning the entire bridge and its crew with heightened tension and foreboding. Voices were terse; even the computer voices, it seemed. A few eyes flashed Laura’s way, noted her presence, then turned back to work. Dr. Mish slouched limply in his chair, in some kind of trance.
Captain Tars Northern stood up from his command chair, his face clearly aglow at seeing Laura. He stepped over to her, and she grabbed him and held him hard. Softly she said, “Thank you. Thank you so much, Tars.”
He held her away from him, making sure all of her was there. “Did you bring the supercargo?”
“Yes. Apparently they made the transfer just fine. They saved me, Tars. They saved me from myself.”
“Good. Mish is busy figuring out the next step. And it’s got to be pretty damned fast too. Our shields aren’t going to be able to hold out against that kind of firepower for very long.”
“Mish … yes. Tars, those spokes … the ends … it was almost magical. And you’re not supposed to be able to jump into a system like this!”
“One of the Starbow’s little secrets, but we only do it in emergencies. Takes up an incredible amount of energy, and damned chancy to boot! I guess right now he’s greeting his pals. Hopefully he’s working on getting us out of this mess.”
“If you came here using that method, why can’t you leave that way as well?”
“Power supply is too low,” Tars said.
“How did you know to come for me?”
“Little message transmission from the Aspach. Apparently they were close enough for some kind of contact, and Mish pretty much knew what was going on.”
“Then you know … ” Tars nodded solemnly, and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. “Yes, Laura, we know all ab
out it. But look, you’ve done your bit. What I want you to do now is to just go over to the empty chair and tie yourself in. This place is going to be jumping pretty hard … and soon, I’ll wager.”
“Captain,” said Tether Mayz, looking up from the blinking communications board. “We’ve got a message coming in from those Federation ships.”
“Wonderful. We’ll have a chance to buy some time. Open up the channel on the intercom, Tether.”
A kind of hiss filled the room; a crackling became a voice.
“ … I repeat, this is Overfriend Arnal Zarpfrin of the Federation, speaking from Federation Headquarters on Earth. Starbow, do you read me?”
“We read you loud and clear, Zarpfrin.”
He looked around at the assembled crew at their stations, and winked. Laura, hooking herself into place in a seat to the rear, knew that the captain was pleased: this was a chance to parley, and stretch out the time they needed.
“Excellent,” came Zarpfrin’s voice finally. “I don’t know where you came from, Northern, or how you did it, all I know is that my captains out there have got you completely surrounded. Now, I could simply order them to let loose with their weapons and transform you, your crew, and the Starbow into random bits of energy. On the other hand, if you surrender and allow a boarding party to come and take you away, I promise you a fair trial. And the possibility of new lives for you all. Doesn’t seem to be much of a choice, does it, Captain?”
“What you seem to be trying to say, Zarpfrin, is! Surrender or die!”
Seconds passed.
Laura glanced over at Mish—no sign of animation at all.
She could see on the view screen that dozens of Federation ships surrounded them, their energy weapons sparkling with held-back energy, just waiting for the order to send it hurtling at the Starbow.
“That’s right, Captain. So what is your answer going to be? I’ll give you exactly one minute to answer.”
Northern glanced at his watch, and smiled grimly. He motioned Tether Mayz to close the channel. Then he looked at the crew.
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