Face grim fact, woman. Your next prizes will cost you--in lives, and perhaps in ships. You've got to fight a restrained war comprised of lightflash strikes, until our fleet equals theirs in number, or Arlen nullifies our one advantage. And he will. Brilliant mind, Eric says he's got. He should know. He lived for eight Earthyears in their capital before he came back a swordsman, and taught me the skill that turned out to be the most precious gift he ever gave me. I could lose … Eric. Oh, don't think of what you'll lose! We'll all die sooner or later--fall fighting for all we hold dear!
Think how you'll snatch another ship, and a load of fuel. Raid the Ice World? That's just what Arlen will figure we'll do. Hit Rochester? No. We just struck a small base. Chemen? No. Raid Dunn, Signe. Strike their shipworks. Fuel … that installation will be awash in fuel! It's essential that you devise new strategy. Think, Signe. Think!
Chapter Eight
At 0500 on a Friday destined to see drastic changes impact numerous lives, business as usual occupied the personnel of the Columbian base at Dunn. Arlen lifted from the Ice World, en route to Columbia. Ford, on patrol, orbited his world. Jason docked Amin's vessel on the first of six military locks, to emerge into a corridor swarming with Fourth and Fifth Corpsmen. Amin stalked at the head of his team of engineers through the huge domed workplace on the far end of the base.
Simon's Earth-armed ship lay moored on one of four locks normally used for building new ships, while a crew of technicians repaired damage to the elevator in his docking module. Two of Simon's spacers sat his board. Four others slept. After the repairmen finished the job, the Captain, surrounded by five of his crewmen, listened to the engineer's report. "Wear on the assembly constituted the main problem, sir," he explained. "Metal dust, and even shavings, accumulated in…"
Abruptly, he broke off in mid-sentence, as a tense voice thundered from the intercommunication system. "Disembodied exhaust docking--we think! We can't tell exactly! If it's an exhaust, it's being obscured somehow! But it isn't--hell and damnation, it's docking on the construction and repair locks! Fall out, you men on sleep-shift! All hands to the construction locks!"
Fear penetrated to the marrow of Simon's bones.
Corpsmen patrolled every section of the base. Dodging across the wide, cluttered expanse of the workshop towards the corridor leading to the construction locks, Amin collected a sizeable force, and raced at its head to the doors of a short passageway connecting the huge domed section he occupied with the one being attacked. A muffled roar assaulted his ears. Seals shot into place across the corridor he sought to enter. "Breach in the habitat!" he barked. "Follow me!" Mentally gauging the point of the rupture, the battle-wise warrior pivoted, and took a flight of stairs three at a time.
A strained voice issuing from the intercommunication system conveyed a new, far more chilling warning. "Three enemy vessels are docking, not one! We can't blast them. The Captain of an undetectable ship aloft threatens that if we do, he'll annihilate the dome and wipe the first-class ships converging! All hands to the construction locks!" Even as that rasping adjuration issued from a myriad wall-panels, a series of dull booms signifying explosions of blasting gel sent vibrations rippling through the deckplates beneath racing feet.
Amin reached the foot of the stairwell leading to the cavernous corridor fronting the construction locks, to behold a smoking tangle of wreckage lying within a gaping hole where stairs and elevator had stood only minutes earlier. Even as the warrior seething with wrath whirled with intent to mount a second, more distant flight of stairs, a new detonation informed him that he now possessed no route whatsoever to the battleground.
Assuming command in the corridor most heavily packed with guards, Jason barked orders after hearing the initial alarm. His battle-wise spacer-fighters promptly relieved eleven inexperienced Fifth Corpsmen of handweapons warmed and ready, even as their superior officer himself donned the goggles and slipped into the sling of a massive weapon. Snapping a command to the Fifth Corpsman in charge of twenty guards, Amin's lieutenant incorporated that body of men into his. Thus reinforced, he advanced at a swift pace towards the site of the attack.
As he reached the entry to the storage area separating him from the corridor fronting the construction locks, he came to a halt. Standing in front of the jamb, he touched the switch. Just as the door slid aside far enough to allow him to enter, a muffled roar coincided with the eruption outwards through the portal of a blinding ball of flame.
Fire enveloped Jason even as he staggered back. Two of the spacers ranged behind the Lieutenant caught the man still on his feet, as seals shot across in front of the aperture, containing the raging inferno. "I'm all right," their leader gasped. "Let go!"
The eyes staring into his reflected sheer horror. "Don't touch those goggles," one of his crewmen cautioned with determined force as another extinguished the Lieutenant's burning hair. "Or his face. Rovere, run like hell for a medic! Hear?"
Three pairs of practiced hands lifted Jason's now shuddering body, and held it horizontally. That trio of spacer-fighters carried the severely burned officer swiftly towards the nearest medical station, as his leaderless crewmen and the squad of corridor guards stood contemplating the sealed entry in manifest frustration.
After hearing the first alarm, the Lieutenant in charge of the guards stationed in the wide span of deck fronting the construction locks--space that normally held huge assemblies awaiting installation in a ship being constructed, but which at this juncture yawned empty--employed impeccable logic. While unsure from which of three vacant locks the raiders would emerge, the cool-headed officer assumed that his world's archfoe would choose one of the two next to Simon's ship. Precipitately, he raced to position himself with the men stationed before the lock on which the first-class vessel obviously targeted by the foe lay moored.
On hearing the alarm, Simon hurled himself up the ladder, yelling to the workers to detach the top of the scaffolding still in place around his docking module. "Just unbolt it, so we can lift! You four go aboard, after you finish! Hurry!"
The second warning blared from the panel, causing the guards ranged before the construction locks to go tense in anticipation of imminent action. To the consternation of the officer in charge of the defenders, every lock previously vacant spewed forth raiders: hordes of them, to his fevered vision. Thirty fighters burst from the far pressure-proof door, hacked their way through a line of guards, and headed for the passageway leading to the domed workplace. The Gaeans issuing from the other locks concentrated on cutting down the Fourth and Fifth Corpsmen fighting tenaciously to defend Simon's Earth-armed ship.
The spearhead of premier warriors charging across the open space sustained heavy casualties before certain of their number succeeded in hurling numerous missiles into the stairwells and elevator shafts. The ensuing explosion breached the hull, effectively stopping Amin's advance. Other raiders bombed the corridor leading through the storage area, inadvertently igniting a flash fire. Seals crashing into place informed the unwounded defenders fighting for their lives that retreat just ceased to form an option.
Surrounded by a sea of flashing blades, the Columbian Lieutenant rallied his remaining men, and fought valiantly. A tall, dark-haired, handsome lad appeared in the place of a foeman who fell. That agile enemy took a slashing cut on the forte of his blade, instantly proving himself a formidable opponent. In a series of brilliant strokes, the youthful master swordsman breached the Lieutenant's guard, and drove home a wicked thrust. Impaled by thirty centimeters of steel, the officer crumpled to the deck running blood, clutching his abdomen with both hands as his sword clattered on the plates. Cracks of weaponry, and shrieks--none his--assaulted the severely wounded Fifth Corpsman's faltering senses.
The din grew worse: ringing chimes of steel on steel, thuds of falling bodies, sharp cracks of handweapons, trampling boots, screams, shouts, orders thundered by stentorian voices, a melee that surged around the still-conscious casualty before retreating to a greater distance. Bleared
eyes beheld red-streaked, slate-blue-clad raiders pass out of view as a few staggering figures in black dropped nearby. Pain flared into agony, before merciful unconsciousness overtook the fallen leader sprawled face down on the deck running blood.
Simon beheld the red dot centered on his chest. The last bolt holding the scaffolding to his ship slipped from his hand to drop through the long intervening distance before striking with an echoing clang on the deck below. Knowing his body to be targeted by the tracer of a military handweapon capable of launching a lethal, lightspeed pulse, he froze. Four cowed technicians and five scowling spacers standing on a level section of the scaffolding, on seeing themselves trapped, raised their hands.
Blood welling from a stab-wound in her thigh, Signe mounted the ladder. The insignia of the high-ranking officer targeted by the tracer caught her eye. "Your name?" she demanded imperiously.
"Simon." The word emerged in a hoarse rasp.
One of Arlen's captains . "Send a man to inform your crew aboard that if they don't file down unarmed, you'll die with all their comrades, right here. If they try to pump the air out of this lock, we'll blow the ship even as we suffocate!"
The recipient of that command riveted horrified eyes to the fuzed device thrust into his view by a stocky, plain-visaged female raider who ascended the ladder behind Signe. Simon snarled an order. A spacer delivered the threat. Turning about, the Captain preceded the six crewmen descending to stand sullenly on the elevator platform.
Gesturing to Sean, the Gaean leader commanded him to escort Simon and his lieutenant aboard, and secure them. Eric obeyed her order to clear the inner lock.
Having borne away their dead and wounded, Signe's surviving spacer-fighters lifted four ships. Theo's threat to slag both the base and any hostile vessel that employed its weaponry, from the point where he hung unseen in synchronous orbit, reached the captains of the ships converging above Dunn. Amin's order, issued with vehement force in Arlen's name, not at any cost to risk the shipworks, registered on the men of the Special Force. Brant, Yukio, Ford and Danner watched in impotent wrath as one murkily blotted disembodied exhaust escorted three vessels, one obviously a cargo ship, and none undetectable. The plasma beneath all heat shields but that of the prize, the stymied watchers saw to be barely visible through obscuring clouds of black vapor as Columbia's enemies vanished in the void.
Arlen docked fifteen minutes later. One glance at his old friend's face sufficed to inform the glacially calm observer that some personal tragedy just befell his senior captain.
On being ordered to report, Amin described concisely what just transpired, his accents more than ordinarily clipped. The Commander-in-Chief maintained his icy calm as he listened to the first half of the account.
His voice steady, unemotional, the officer reporting continued his recital. "Jason arrived at the head of his crew just as the storage area erupted in flames. A ball of fire billowed through the door to envelop him. Luckily, he packed a handweapon. The goggles prevented his being blinded. His uniform's heat-regulating capacity wasn't overtaxed. That circumstance saved him from being seriously burned over his whole body. The gloves integral to the sling protected his hands, so all that got horribly burned was his face, but he could well be gruesomely scarred for life."
Even as Arlen's mobile countenance remained frozen into rigidity, his eyes smoldered.
"Pearson rallied the guard after the initial onslaught, the survivors said, and fought valiantly. He took a wicked thrust in the guts, and fell in action. He's alive--just barely--but he'll make it, according to the physician. Twenty-three guards died outside the locks. Simon and Cantrell Signe took prisoner. She carried them to Gaea."
Glowering, Arlen silently digested that news. Mastering an upsurge of incandescent fury, Amin finished reporting.
"Who's caring for Jason?"
"Forsgren treated him before sending him by medivan to the capital, to Fifth Corps' Infirmary. Ahearne enlisted the aid of a burn specialist in the capital: Hughes."
"Neither the passenger vessels nor the modules sustained even minor damage?"
"None, sir. I've kept the three passenger vessels docked on the municipal locks, outside the military complex. The raid caused no damage to any mobile assemblers, or other crucial equipment. In fact, we're ready to assemble your forts. Say the word, and we'll place them in orbit."
"We can't, until the devices are perfected. Levi's finishing the calculations, but it'll be several weeks before I get the first device built¾if that soon. Even if I work twenty hours a day, which I will."
"Well…Signe sustained a wound, and her assault force suffered heavy casualties. She has captured six first-class military ships, in addition to one other she must have resurrected from the scrap heap, and when she snatched that cargo ship, its holds held a full complement of water ice. Her raiders slaughtered twenty-three good men today, and wounded fourteen others. She took a high-ranking hostage, and hauled away a wealth of liquid water in the stolen cargo vessel. Maybe she'll rest content to stay home and recuperate for a time." Acerbity freighted the measured voice summarizing the enemy leader's accomplishments.
"We'd better not count on Signe's doing that, Amin." Sensing the exhaustion exacerbating the frustration, sorrow and anger generated by the raid, Arlen laid a comforting hand on the shoulder of his closest friend. "I know Hughes to be a highly competent specialist. He'll do all he can for Jason. We're lucky no workers died in the fire."
"I'll give credit where it's due," Amin replied levelly. "Two engineers got trapped in there when the enemy attacked. The raider carrying the fuzed devices shouted a warning. He let them run out into the open before he hurled the bombs, and none of the Gaeans killed any unarmed technicians."
"I can't say the same for Norman, Amin."
A heavy sigh escaped Arlen's senior captain. "No--nor for Yancey. But the men taking it on the chin now played no part in the war crimes those bastards committed!"
"No one ever proved that life's fair, but Signe's no mass murderer determined on wreaking a fearful vengeance. She could have slagged the base."
"She could have blown our ships aloft. She seems bent on acquiring a fleet, not on destroying ours."
"Well, if all goes as I hope, we'll be invulnerable to attacks such as these in a few more fourweeks. Meanwhile, we'll need to stay vigilantly on guard. Especially here, Amin. She varies her tactics. She might just strike twice in the same place: do the unexpected. I'll direct Fulke and Orloff to send you reinforcements."
"I appreciate that. I'll disperse the three passenger vessels among several municipal units, elsewhere, and mount heavy guards there as well."
"I'll order Norman to deploy contingents of his veterans to back them." As he spoke, Arlen laid an arm in a comradely gesture across Amin's shoulders: the act of a friend, rather than a superior.
The five vessels that docked on Main World of Gaea disgorged a sorely battered force. Still on her feet, Signe climbed stiffly down the ladder, her mouth set in a tight line. Rhea packed Inigo down in a stretcher. Wong, unhurt, followed.
A second medic, Thurston by name, hauled Morgan in a stretcher, much against that warrior's will. "Damn it, I can walk," the wounded man protested as Midori helped Thurston maneuver the conveyance through the hatch.
"And tear out those staples holding that gash across your abdomen closed." The technician rendered unwontedly testy by seeing two lives slip out of his grasp despite his heroic efforts to save them, suddenly lost the remnant of his patience with this man he knew would live. "One more word out of you, and I'll shoot you with another dose of sleep inducer," he barked. "Just one more word!"
Morgan subsided into aggrieved silence.
His shoulder bandaged, his right arm carried in a blood-stained sling, Conor watched as Ryan and Jess, bearing a stretcher, halted before the scarred warrior standing as erect as ever. "Talley's still hanging on," Jess informed her captain, the lines of fatigue clawing out from her eyes and mouth seemingly set in stone. "She took a sl
ashing cut and a thrust under the ribs. Rhea says she'll recover."
The limp figure on the stretcher stirred. The angular, olive-skinned face below crisp, short, tightly curling black hair glistened with cold sweat. Eyelids fringed with black lashes opened. Gray eyes that seemed startlingly out of place in the dark, plain countenance, met Conor's squarely. "Damned right I'll live," the wounded fighter grated. "I've taken worse. Is Teeny going to make it?"
"Teeny took a slash down her arm, and another across her thigh. She lost a lot of blood, but she's in better shape than you, thanks to your quick action. You worry about getting back on your own feet, girl."
Thus reassured, Talley lapsed into unconsciousness.
A transfusion of blood substitute administered during the transit bolstered the resilience of Teeny's iron physique. Aware that the stretchers had all been used for those severely wounded, the muscular redhead peremptorily demanded a lift up from her bunk, from a slim, tawny-eyed, unhurt comrade.
Although she regarded her closest friend dubiously, Dana obliged. "Easy, now," she cautioned. "You're dizzy, aren't you?"
"I'm all right! Just a bit woozy. Help me to the hatch." Gritting her teeth, Teeny by sheer force of will managed to avoid a plunge to the deck as she resolutely descended the ladder.
Standing erect, her face hard as flint, Signe listened to the tally of losses as medics, physicians, and a swarm of veterans aided the wounded and carried out the dead. Eric, one leg wrapped in a gory self-adhering bandage, laid an arm across the warrior-woman's shoulders. "Lupe lost Seth," he informed her, his voice charged with sorrow. "Fighting right alongside his mortally wounded body, she fended off three Columbian swordsmen before we engaged the two we dropped as she cut down the third. Seth died on the deck, in her arms."
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