Shock surged through Danner. Twenty-four fighters! More--Signe never left Four unguarded!
As if to punctuate the man's thought, two sharp cracks sounded from the far end of the corridor. The lurid glow of expanded tracers illuminated the passage of pulses invisible to the human eye. Lethal emissions lanced from the door of the lock to the head of the stairs. Muffled shouts reached his ears. Damn her incredible gall--she's fielded at least thirty men! he expostulated inwardly.
The door of the outer lock swung open at Three. Danner stayed where he was, taking advantage of the brief shielding the huge door swinging through a hundred-eighty degree arc afforded him. As the ten corpsmen slowly obeying Signe's injunction to fall back to Lock Two arrived at the point where the Captain knelt, Danner whispered a curt order for them to stop and hold their ground. "Raise your hands," he hissed. "They won't drop unresisting men. But stay right here."
Gordon watched the outer door of the lock swing open. Expecting help from the guards, he experienced a spasmodic clutch of the gut as he saw Signe charge in at the head of a force larger than his. "Surrender or die!" she challenged, bearing down on him.
"Damned if I will!" Knowing himself doomed, but stubbornly refusing tamely to surrender his ship, Gordon took on his world's archfoe in a gallant, fruitless, heroic last stand. Two minutes after crossing swords with the silver-haired enemy wielding her blade with unbelievable skill, he fell, mortally wounded. Two of his men died with him. Three surrendered.
That assault took but five minutes. Crouching behind a burly guard burdened with a handweapon, who stood with hands raised, Danner watched as Signe and the seven raiders unencumbered with hostages disappeared into the lock. The ringing chime of steel on steel assaulted his ears. As he fumed inwardly, the six Gaeans holding human shields vanished inside as well. The ten others wielding electronic weapons stood immobile, warily watching the enemy force standing frozen farther down the corridor.
Minutes later, Danner saw Signe emerge, accompanied by two swordsmen. Still crouched on the deck, the irate Captain observed three of the Gaeans armed with military handweapons melt from the line, to hurry into the lock. As he watched, their seven comrades ran backwards towards Four, flanked by Signe and the two men holding bared blades. Glancing at the door to Lock Three, he rejoiced at seeing it swing slowly out from the wall.
Mistake, you just made, woman , he exulted.
Issuing a curt command to his three spacers to follow, Danner raced ahead, hugging the wall, shielded by the wide, heavy door from the view--and the aim--of those who would have to stop running in order to fire a pulse with maximum accuracy. As the four Columbians rapidly advanced, the door passed through ninety degrees of its arc, and continued to close.
Just as his cover began to shrink, Danner reached Lock Three. Speeding around the almost-closed door, he beheld one of his three subordinates plunge to the deck a mere fraction of a second before he and his crewmen heard the sharp crack of a handweapon. Ducking into the lock, the Captain stared at the hostages sprawled on the deck, but caught no glimpse of their captors. She killed them anyway! he raged.
As he stared irately at the limp forms, he saw the chest of the man nearest him rise and fall. No. Unconscious. Risking a glimpse outside, he waited until Signe's force reached Lock Four, waited until she touched the switch to close the door, waited until the heavy panel began its outward swing. At that juncture, he barked an order to his two surviving companions. Three men sprinted with adrenaline-enhanced fleetness towards the enclosure sheltering the enemy.
Arlen's eminently career-conscious officer reached the slowly closing door thirty seconds later, to find that he faced Signe, a scar-faced tall swordsman, and a younger man. "Faulkner, Chavez, Signe's mine!" he rasped, his blade ringing against that of the woman taller than himself. With savage but controlled elation, Danner engaged his world's archfoe over the fallen bodies of the corridor-guard, and fought to kill.
No squeamishness regarding gender affected the duelist's clear-headed exertion of formidable skill against a warrior of legendary prowess. Faulkner boldly took on the distinctively scarred Gaean warrior who he correctly assumed to be Conor. Chavez engaged Sean, who soon realized that he faced a master swordsman.
Admiration of a worthy foe in no way impeded Signe's efforts to impale her adversary.
Instantly aware that this antagonist exceeded in force any with whom he had ever crossed swords, Danner kept his head. Lifted to a height of performance surpassing the best he had hitherto achieved, mainly through his icily inflexible determination to prevail, he fenced with surpassing effectiveness. That circumstance enabled him to live through a closer brush with death than any yet faced in a career notable for narrow escapes.
Slowly, inexorably, the door swung through its arc, causing the aperture to lessen in width. "Back, men!" Signe commanded, just as Conor drove his steel home through Faulkner's upper arm. With a gasping cry, the wounded Columbian reeled backwards, to trip and fall across the dead. Sean, followed by Conor, withdrew into the lock. Signe parried Danner's last thrust, intercepting it with the forte of her weapon. Just before the door clanged shut between them, the premier warrior smiled in triumph into the scowling face of her adversary.
No relief at having escaped impalement impinged on the mind conscious only of failure. Damnation! the master swordsman railed impotently. I had Signe within reach, and failed even to wound her!
Pounding feet surrounded the Captain cursing aloud. One of his spacers touched the switch, but by the time the door slowly reopened to a degree allowing passage of the wrathful officer through the expanse of the outer lock, the flashing red light on the pressure-seal door of the inner announced the imminent withdrawal of the air. "How in hell did she mount that fast?" the frustrated Columbian snarled. "Can the slime-rotted bitch fly ?" Florid, unprintable invectives rose like lava to his lips. Choking them back, Danner stalked out to view the carnage in the corridor and stairs.
Signe, Conor and Sean mimicked flight. Leaping upwards, they grasped paired metal rings fastened to a line, and clung with both hands while a high-speed winch lifted them in a well-practiced maneuver, past the ladder, through the circular hole in the elevator platform, through the docking module and the hatch, and onto the bridge. Having slammed the hatch-cover closed, Morgan dropped supine to the deck next to the rear guard unprotected by harnesses, as those manning the board lifted the undetectable vessel.
Finding his vessel to form the target of three converging military ships able to see his ship's plasma exhaust, Theo broadcasted a chilling warning. "I'm locked on the base," he grated. "You can't lock onto me! I'll level the habitat if you don't veer off, and my partner will exact a fearful penalty if you try to blast me manually! So beware!"
Jassy had passed a similar threat when Eric ascended in the stolen prize. Having calculated the odds, Dahl, Ford, and Demetrius reluctantly held their fire. Gordon's ship, paralleled for a short time by two eerily disembodied glowing exhausts, vanished in the void.
Ten minutes after the second black ship lifted, Arlen docked his personal vessel on Lock Two of Briedd. Striding into the corridor from which Danner had overseen the clearing of the dead and wounded, the Commander-in-Chief advanced to meet his captain.
"Signe got away with Gordon's ship, sir," the survivor of the raid announced levelly. "She crossed swords with Gordon herself when he valiantly refused to surrender, and ran him through. Dunbar and Carl fell. The others yielded. Those aboard did as well, when the enemy Captain aloft threatened to annihilate the ship on the lock if they didn't. Signe took six of the guards hostage. She shot them with sleep inducer when she left."
Braced to hear censure, the Captain unconsciously jutted his chin a trifle as he announced, "I lost Orrin when I advanced down the corridor. Signe's assault force wiped four guards and seven off-duty reinforcements. Her raid cost us fifteen lives. The guards cut down two of her spacers in Lock Four, but the Gaeans bore off the bodies of their dead. One of her raiders employed a well
conceived, novel strategy. He ran a hose from a pump in the inner lock, to the door, and directed a pressurized stream at the men wielding the handweapons. The frigid water cooled the generators. The Gaeans made off with the four devices. We figure that Signe fielded at least thirty veteran fighters--some of them women--in an extremely well-planned attack."
Eyes cold as the deeps of space narrowed. "Thirty fighters! From one ship?"
"No other explanation fits, sir. Myron and Cheng manned my board throughout the assault. Only one ship docked--on Lock Four. The other stayed aloft. That captain broadcasted a warning that if Myron or Gordon fired manually on the vessel descending, he'd blow both ships and slag the base. Dahl said he wasn't in synchronous orbit--that he hung poised on his exhaust, high up. Dahl maneuvered so as to be able to fire manually without endangering either the base or any commercial vessel in orbit, but the bastard accelerated, and then vanished before Dahl could aim a blast.
"How in hell that captain figures he's got fuel enough to dock when he arrives back in Gaea, I don't know, unless they pull a second hit to try to refuel. Those thirty raiders had to emerge from that one black ship. Just how they communicate with each other beats me, as well. No one--Dahl, Ford, or Demetrius--picked up the slightest trace of any cross-communication. Myron recorded on disc, and searched through it afterwards. Nothing unusual turned up, on any band used by the military. Myron assured me that the scanning beams of our weaponry couldn't lock onto the descending vessel. It's as if those ships absorb every damned beam that impinges."
"They do, on all wavelengths used by scanning devices, and likely others as well. They're totally undetectable, except for the visible glow of the exhaust. Well. Signe didn't snatch your ship, at any rate."
"No. But I crossed swords with her--got that close!--and failed to inflict so much as a scratch. She smiled straight at me as she parried my last thrust before the damned door closed. I had a hell of a time keeping my feet."
"You're lucky you lived. Gordon excelled as a swordsman."
"He did indeed, and it took Signe all of two minutes to skewer him. His men said the legend's justified--as I discovered myself. She outclasses me, much as I hate to make so galling an admission. Chavez met his equal, and that Gaean who laid open Faulkner's arm had a deep, highly visible, sword-cut scar slanting down the whole right side of his face from hairline to jaw."
"Conor." Noting the signs of fatigue in the officer reporting, Arlen sensed the career-conscious Captain's fear of being judged negligent. "You did all you could, Danner," he reassured this man he trusted to the hilt. "Quite a coup, Signe pulled off, but she could have annihilated your ship and slagged the base as she left--employed the armament of three first-class ships, two of which are undetectable. She might have succeeded in blowing Dahl's as well, had she tried. So our losses, devastating as they seem, could have been far greater. I've put out a full alert, and deployed ships throughout the space around both worlds, but I'll wager she heads for Gaea. She picks up all of our emissions, damn her to slow rot!"
Arlen's impassioned tone flayed the careerist's hypersensitive nerves, even as he savored relief that the Commander-in-Chief saw fit not to hold him accountable for the loss of Gordon's Earth-armed ship, and fifteen good men.
At that juncture, Myron emerged from Lock One, and strode up to his superiors. "Commander…Captain…I just searched through those bands I recorded, again. I still found nothing, but there's a cargo vessel descending on Lock Three. The Captain--Barclay--says he has information for the Commander-in-Chief."
"Ahh…Barclay captains Lacey's cargo vessel! Come with me, gentlemen." Fervently hoping to hear some bit of data that might constitute a lucky break, Arlen proceeded at a swift pace to the lock from which Signe so short a time ago lifted her prize.
The civilian who emerged from the lock, a lean individual of no imposing height, struck all three officers hastening to greet him, as a man of quiet force, self-confident and capable. "I'm Barclay, sir," he announced, offering his hand to Arlen. "Captain of the cargo ship Lacey owns. I'm aware that Signe's ships can't be detected, and that the Gaeans seem not to communicate with each other over any band the military can pick up. The thought occurred to me that she could be using a commercial band, so we've been listening, and standing prepared to record on macrodisc. Today we picked up a really strange emission that's possibly a coded message. Here's the disc. If it helps, fine. If it's a false alarm, I apologize for bothering you during the aftermath of a raid, sir."
"Barclay, if every commercial spacer displayed your diligence, shrewdness, and patriotic willingness to absorb the cost of a profitless descent and a delay, we might unravel some of the mystery shrouding these strikes. I thank you. Whether or not your information's helpful, you'll take on a full load of fuel while you're here on this lock." Arlen's eyes flashed as he pocketed the small case Barclay tendered.
"I appreciate that, sir." Damned if I don't! Magnanimous, this leader.
Ten minutes later, Arlen, Danner, Myron, and the officer who had been in charge of the detail manning the board during the raid, listened intently to a wholly unintelligible transmission: singsong, clipped sounds all seemingly produced by a single set of human vocal chords, even though the difference in volume hinted at an exchange between ships at a distance from each other.
"That's got to be some sort of code," Myron breathed.
"Strange…it's a two-way exchange, but it sounds like one voice," Danner growled, rubbing his chin with his hand.
"It is one voice, which suggests that they're using an electronically reproduced series of sounds prepared ahead of time," the dictator declared musingly. "But a code? I wonder. I'd hate like hell to have to convert my cross-messages to a fellow helmsman into code, doing the sort of maneuvering those two captains did today while avoiding collisions with ships unable to see either vessel on their screens! Code? Hardly. Nor is that an example of some sort of electronic scrambling of Earth-Standard phrases. Let me play that again." Frowning, Arlen listened. Shaking his head, he asserted, "That's no code. That's a language!"
"A language! Bloody…" Controlling himself, Danner bit back the sulfurous obscenity threatening to emerge.
"But sir, nobody in Gaea speaks any language but Earth-Standard! Nobody among Johann's settlers ever did! The differing accents only developed over the last Earthcentury and a half!" Having blurted out his immediate thought, Myron stared at the Commander-in-Chief in dismay. "I mean--excuse my contradicting you, sir." Dust of the dead, watch your mouth, spacer! Arlen could break you with a word--reduce your rank, and void the position on the seniority list you've spent twenty Earthyears sweating to reach--drop you to a status equaling that of raw recruit, the way he did those two aides he caught selling information to Galt! He's pissed as all hell!
Instantly divining the stricken spacer's thoughts, Arlen spoke in a calculatedly reasoned tone. "I'm not an infallible judge, Myron, and what you said is perfectly true, but I'll wager a bottle of old brandy, nonetheless, that what we just heard is an ancient tongue, revived out of necessity. I'll get this disc deciphered by an expert linguist."
"Even if we do, sir, we still won't be able to detect either ship when it's in free flight." Bone-chilling implications of that circumstance flitted across Danner's interior vision.
"True--and a solution to that problem will take time. We'll concentrate on keeping our guard up, but the more effectively we defend against such strikes as this, the more likely it'll grow that Signe will employ her weaponry against a base or a ship."
His ire somewhat cooled by his consciousness that his career seemed not to have suffered irreparable damage, Danner grudgingly but candidly voiced two facts now grown exquisitely clear to him. "Signe could have slaughtered every guard in that corridor today, sir. She fielded ten fighters armed with handweapons. Thirty pulses, they could have loosed, but they didn't. And if I hadn't raced to the lock to beat the door's closing, in what proved to be a wholly futile attempt to stop her, Orrin would still be alive."
>
"If you'd prevailed, you would have stopped her. Your bold maneuver would have worked, had you not faced the three best swordsmen in Gaea. Damned if I don't find myself admiring a commander who takes the risks that woman routinely does, even as I seethe."
"I've been seething myself, sir, ever since I heard the alarm."
Arlen's mental state grew no more tranquil as he reviewed the situation while in transit back to his headquarters.
On the day following the return of the raiders to Gaea, Signe declared a holiday: twenty-four hours of complete relaxation. Moodily, Morgan reflected upon hearing the order that the respite came too late for the two valued comrades who had died before his eyes so short a time ago, or for Madelyn. Well, he chided himself, moping about won't bring them back, nor will it serve to stiffen morale. You need to set an example. So smile--or at least, quit frowning. Ask Wong if he'd care to take you on in a bout with swords, and then give you a lesson in his art.
Conor and Sean arrived at the huge domed expanse of the fencing arena to behold the incongruous sight of Morgan's crossing foils with a man who lacked a full thirty centimeters of his height--an opponent whose reach fell far short of his own. Exchanging smiles, they watched for a time before donning protective gear.
Striding to the center of the adjoining long, narrow strip marked on the deck, the bereaved survivor still consumed by grief faced the colleague regarding him gravely from behind the clear, hard mask. Both fencers wore a plastron impervious to a thrust by a blunt-tipped practice-blade. Sean offered the formal sword-salute: the intricate, elaborate posture of sword and body signifying respect for a worthy adversary. Having returned the gesture with fluid ease, Conor engaged his comrade's blade with force only a shade inferior to that exhibited by the youthful master swordsman.
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