Norlin felt drained. He had wanted the battleship as intact as possible to study their power plant. Pragmatism had won out. He doubted the ship's destruction had gone unnoticed by the aliens. Reducing it to metallic vapor gave a better chance for evasion. Possibly—just possibly—the battleship's rescue party might hesitate and run spectroscopic readings to verify the ship's demise.
Every second he bought now gave him a better chance at survival.
“Are we really going to shuttle down to Sutton, Captain?” Gowan Liottey stood beside the command chair, one hand on the arm. Norlin resisted the urge to brush off the trembling hand with the chewed decorative nails. Before he replied, he ran a quick life support check and cursory examinations on the other systems under Liottey's control. The officer had been doing well—and the Preceptor had been lucky. Little repair work on those systems remained to be done.
“Would you disobey an order from an admiral?” Norlin asked.
“We'd have to abandon the cruiser.”
“Dangerous,” agreed Norlin. Liottey's problem lay in stark fear for his life. Norlin's reluctance to obey came from finally realizing he was a spaceman. He belonged on a ship, not stuck on a mudball buried under kilometers of rock and metal shielding. Mobility gave safety; the Preceptor's offensive weapons gave a different kind of safety. The idea of being on-planet and having to shoot at only those ships choosing to show themselves over the horizon bothered him.
“We can't disobey a lawful order,” said Liottey. “Unless we mutiny.”
“What are you getting at?” Norlin turned in the chair and pushed back the command visor so he looked squarely into the XO's blue eyes.
“The other ships. Rumors.” Liottey glanced at Miza, who ignored him. “Mutinies. Crews refusing to stay and be slaughtered like herd animals.”
“We can run or we can fight. We saw how unlikely the Death Fleet was to give quarter. Is running the answer to stopping them?” demanded Norlin.
“The galaxy is vast. We can drift in front of them. There are planets they'll never reach. Can you imagine them striking Earth? Impossible!” Liottey's eyes glowed with manic intensity.
“Each captain is entitled to deal with mutiny in his own way. It might be a black mark on the mutineer's record for minor disturbances—or it might be as extreme as tossing the miscreant out the airlock. Which do you choose, Mr. Liottey?”
“We'll die if we stay!”
“No one lives forever. Not even the emperor.” Norlin turned and made a quick inspection of the major systems. Barse was working well to bring them back to full power. She cursed constantly, and occasional yowls from Neutron could be heard punctuating her opinions on the heredity and personal habits of all captains. He was amazed. She never repeated herself.
“We're going into parking orbit around Sutton II,” he announced to the others. “I don't like abandoning the Preceptor, but disobeying Admiral Bendo's direct order is even more distasteful.”
“He's got the reputation of being a sharp strategist,” pointed out Sarov. “It's not as suicidal as it sounds.”
“The parking orbit is clear. The ground batteries are sweeping the sky in just the right pattern to protect our approach,” affirmed Miza.
Norlin heaved a sigh and punched in the proper sequence to power down his ship and launch the small shuttle for the planet's surface. They were needed below.
He had to obey.
But he hated giving up the safety of his ship. His ship.
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* * *
Chapter Fifteen
“Keep the robot repair units working,” Norlin or-dered. “We'll be back soon and will need the ship in perfect condition.”
The words burned his tongue. He knew he lied, not only to the crew but to himself. They would never return. Even if the others again assumed their stations on the Preceptor, he wouldn't be in the command chair.
Sublieutenants did not command cruisers. He had been lucky, and circumstances had smiled on him. The best he might hope for was a promotion to full lieutenant. The worst he didn't care to dwell on. Pavel Pensky had died. Emperor Arian did not like hearing his favorites had perished, even in the line of duty. If a scapegoat was needed to assuage the emperor, Norlin knew where he'd be found. Sublieutenants were expendable.
“They've swept the aliens away for us with ground-based lasartillery,” marvelled Sarov. “The Death Fleet has pulled back and is allowing near-planet orbits to go unchallenged.”
“Good,” said Norlin. The last thing he needed was a fight all the way to Sutton's surface. He hurried to the pilot's couch in the small shuttle craft and dropped into it. The automatic straps closed around him. He ran through the preflight checklist quickly and saw that his program from the Preceptor's master computer had already been loaded. They would follow the course given them by the admiral until they touched down at the main base outside the capital.
“Barse, close the lock. Liottey, check the air system. Miza, Sarov, hang on. Here we go.” He hesitated for a moment as Barse cycled shut the airlock door. Then he stabbed the launch button that sent them blasting from the cruiser's cargo bay.
The instant they hit space Norlin knew something was wrong. The readings were off.
“Too little mass aboard. What happened? Liottey?”
“Captain, she's still on the Preceptor.”
"What?"
“Barse. She closed the airlock from shipside. She's still onboard!”
“Damnation.” Norlin grabbed the throat microphone and pressed it into place. He swallowed once to clear the circuit, then barked, “Barse, what the hell do you think you're doing?”
“Cap'n, good to hear from you. Having a nice trip?”
“We're coming back. I'll flay you alive for this.”
“Captain, wait. Enemy ship moving in. Small. Scout class, I'd guess.”
Miza worked the small console on the bulkhead next to her couch with as much finesse as she did the larger one on the Preceptor.
“It might as well be a battleship,” Norlin complained. “The shuttle hasn't got anything on it.”
“It's got us on it,” said Sarov. “Can we land and let Barse do whatever she wants on the cruiser? Let her die if she wants.”
“We're a crew. We depend on each other.”
“Go on down, Cap'n. Let Baldy enjoy hiding his head in the sand. Me and the cat will have the ship ready to shift when you get back. There won't be a single system aboard that's not tuned to max or better. Two hundred percent, and that's a promise.”
“Tia—” He cut off his plea for her to rejoin them; his command sensors had finally picked up the incoming alien ship. Miza had been right. It was small, hardly larger than the picket ship he had commanded, but it leaked power all over space, unlike the other alien craft. This diminutive ship packed a wallop.
“Suicide ship,” said Sarov, peering over Miza's shoulder at the readout. “We don't want to tangle with it, and we'd better hope the ground batteries can take it out. We're not going to outrun or outfight it.”
“Outmaneuver it?” suggested Miza.
“Cold day in hell,” said Sarov. “We'd need a bundle of luck and a star to wish on.”
Norlin jerked forward and erased the landing program he had given the shuttle's computer. He put the nav computer on warning status and the controls on manual. The shuttle spun crazily and bounced off the uppermost layer of atmosphere.
“What are you doing? Trying to kill us?” Liottey's voice was a shrill scream and was drowned out by the struggling heat exchangers on the small ship. Norlin bounced them off the thicker reaches of atmosphere again, threatening the integrity of the ship and causing the temperature to rise perilously.
“That ship is accelerating on us like a particle falling into a black hole. We're not going to get away.” Sarov sounded fascinated by the prospect of dying in one-sided combat.
Everyone cried out when Norlin hit the atmosphere at a steeper angle. Heat exploded like a bomb inside t
he small cabin. The heat exchange units gave up and activated shutdown circuits to prevent further damage.
He put the shuttle into a tight spiral. Computer warnings flashed all over his board. Norlin ignored them. He had to. Only one readout mattered.
The alien ship's tracking equipment proved excellent—too damned good for his taste.
“We're leaving an infrared trail for it, Norlin!” shrieked Liottey.
“Let's see how good it really is,” Norlin said.
He tightened the spiral. He had bounced off the atmosphere like a skipping stone on water to kill orbital speed. Now he strained the shuttle to the limits of its design. Molten gobbets of glue holding together the composite material came free from the leading edges of the stubby wings. The structural integrity vaporized.
“Here goes nothing.”
Just as he thought the shuttle might break apart, he put the vessel into a shallow dive. The g-forces blacked out Sarov and Liottey. Miza moaned, and Norlin clung to consciousness with sheer stubbornness.
“Hot,” he muttered. He tossed his head from side to side to get rid of burning sweat dripping into his eyes. Everything blurred in front of him except the single readout showing position of the approaching vessel.
The alien sneak ship had lost them in the electronic fuzz of composite gas and the huge cloud of ionized air surrounding them from the reckless re-entry. As it sought them, it strayed.
Lasartillery on the ground spat out reddish-purple lances of energy measured in hundreds of terawatts. The planet's atmosphere was reduced to plasma, stripped of electrons in picoseconds by the mighty laser beams. The tip of this fiery tongue of coherent radiation brushed along the side of the alien ship at the speed of light. Pieces of invader tumbled from the sky.
“There,” gasped Norlin. “We can land now.” He fought the damaged shuttle down. Through a gathering veil of pain-racked blackness he guided the ship. It had lost its control surfaces; his shoulders ached from the tension of pounding the computer in an attempt to restore fly-by-wire. Only after he touched down and skidded four kilometers did he relax.
“Good work, pilot,” came the cheery congrat-ulations. “You're going to be paying for this wreck for the next five hundred years—and that's only if you get promoted. Otherwise, a sublieutenant's salary won't cover your equipment damages for a millennium or two.”
“Where am I? How close?” he amended. He struggled to match his landing with the area given him by Admiral Bendo.
“Good enough for government work. You're a few klicks from the entrance to base.”
Norlin turned to see how his passengers had fared. Miza stood on shaky legs and helped Liottey up. Sarov bemoaned his sorry fate at having fallen in with crazy pilots but seemed uninjured otherwise.
“Out. Everyone out,” ordered Norlin.
“That's dangerous,” said Sarov. “The hull is outgassing. One small whiff could kill a dinosaur. And none of us are dinosaurs.”
“We're not extinct, through no fault of our pilot trying,” Miza grumbled.
Norlin checked the exterior sensors and saw that Sarov was right. He applied enough thrust to move the shuttle along the runway slowly. He ignored the outraged cries from the controller and the rescue squad on its way to take them to the underground bunkers.
“Drop out as I taxi,” he told the other three. “They'll pick you up in a few minutes and get you to safety.” He watched the tiny vidscreen as it picked up the lasartillery's actinic bolt of pure energy racing into the heavens in pursuit of new elements of the Death Fleet.
“What are you going to do? You can't stay inside,” said Liottey.
“Barse is still in the Preceptor. With the suicide ship gone, I can get her off.”
“You sound like a genhanced,” accused Miza. “There's no way you can pilot this back to orbit, rescue her and return.”
“You can take bets on how well I'll do. Now get out. If you don't, you'll be going back to the Preceptor with me.”
The three jumped out the opened side emergency airlock, hit the glasphalt runway and rolled. Norlin saw the hovertrucks racing to them. He swung around, checked the fuel and decided he had enough—barely.
His main concern was the shuttle's structural integrity. The composite matrix had taken extreme heat, vibration and stress reaching the ground. A wing might buckle. A hull plate might give way at a critical moment. Anything might happen.
Norlin applied full power and stood the shuttle on its tail. He arrowed directly into the sky, an inertial guidance needle showing the way to the Preceptor. The shuttle computer almost failed to compensate when the ship hit maximum dynamic stress. The air couldn't get out of the way of the blunt nose and swept-back wings fast enough.
Then Norlin found himself in space once more. The atmosphere clung to the craft with thin, grasping tendrils, but the real gaseous blanket lay behind. He pulled the shuttle around and achieved low orbit. Eighty minutes later, he applied braking rockets, rose to a higher orbit and jockeyed for position to dock with the Preceptor.
“Cap'n, you've got vacuum for brains,” came Tia Barse's voice over his earphones. “Why'd you come back?”
“I thought you wanted me to feed the cat.”
“You're crazy,” the engineer said.
“We're a crew, dammit. We stay together.” He had no time to argue with her.
“You're drawing them to us. There's another of the suicide ships. Wow!” Barse whistled as a laser spitted the craft. “Good shooting. I'd love to check out the servo-mechanism on the ground lasartillery. They're tracking better than we ever did.”
“Get the refueling bay ready,” Norlin ordered, not caring how the ground-grippers fired. That they aimed accurately was good enough for him. “We don't have much time.”
“Cap'n, they really nailed that one. It had come into orbit just behind us when they gutted it.”
“Good, glad to hear it.” Norlin chewed his tongue as he fought the computer and the shuttle's balky controls. The chances for another safe landing on the planet in this craft were two: slim and none.
“This suicide ship's got a radiation cannon aboard.”
“We've already got one.”
“Right, and we can't use it because the power plant won't handle recharging. Let's take a quick look at their power system. It's not too far.”
“You're going to be the death of me—of both of us. And the cat,” grumbled Norlin.
But the idea appealed to him. He felt cocky. He had evaded an alien ship intent on destroying him, had out-piloted it, had delivered most of his crew to safety on the planet below. He was Pier Norlin, pilot without equal. He could do anything.
he shook his head, wondering if he had a concussion and didn't know it. Barse's suicidal tendencies had infected him.
“We get into the shuttle, we go planet-side. That's all we're going to do.”
“Cap'n, have a heart. There aren't any other ships from the Death Fleet around. The ground batteries are holding them off right now. And they've got some cute little satellites that lock onto the enemy and chase ‘em down. Let's explore while we've got the chance. It might not come again.”
Norlin cycled open the airlock. Barse stuck her head in. He heard her voice directly and over his comlink.
“Please?”
“Got an RRU? Get both robots and a camera probe. I want pix of everything we see on that ship, as well as every piece of equipment the robots can pry loose.”
“You're going to make one hell of a captain one day, Cap'n. You're not so bad right now.” Barse jumped into a couch, cat under her arm, and studied the readouts. “You're holding this piece of shit together with a prayer, aren't you?”
“Not much else left,” he admitted. Already the new mission began to pall. Good sense returned as the euphoria of his escape faded.
“Don't back out on me now, Cap'n,” she cautioned. “I don't want to walk over there. Not after all the good work I've done while you were gone. Amazing how easy it is to work when you're
not being disturbed all the time.”
“Just you and the cat?”
“You noticed he wasn't on the shuttle?”
“That was why I checked the mass. You wouldn't leave the damned cat behind, but he would stay with you.”
“I'm touched.”
“Only in the head—like me.” Norlin applied gentle pressure to the throttle controls and ordered the computer to get him out of the Preceptor's cargo bay. They slid easily from the cruiser, spun around their minor axis and jetted over to dock with the alien ship slowly overtaking them in orbit.
“Looks dead,” he said after several minutes of study.
“The laser beam sliced away the control room. Dammit. I'd love to see how they manage their cannon.”
“No sign of hostile activity,” he said, keeping a close watch on his sensor readouts. “The crew must have died instantly.”
“Damned fine shooting, if you ask me. Let's not stand around with our thumbs up our asses. I want to prowl.”
The long, slender needle of a ship had been treated with a dull, radar-absorbent, cadmium-based material; bits flaked off as Norlin gently bounced his shuttle against the hull. Using grapples, he attached the shuttle to the sneak ship just aft of the hole blown through it by the ground lasartillery.
“Let me get into my suit. You, too, Cap'n. We're starting to lose pressure.”
Norlin groaned as he saw the life support system readouts. Barse was right. The shuttle leaked atmosphere like a sieve. He scrambled to get into the thin, transparent pressure suit. By the time he succeeded in tumbling and rolling in the free-fall environment, Barse had begun cycling through the airlock. Her suit bulged at the shoulder where the cat clung. The animal's eyes were closed; it was sound asleep.
“Wait. Don't go in there alone!” he cried.
“I'll be back before you know it. Keep the jets burning. I saw signs of incoming. This one must have put out a distress call before they died. I've got the RRU and the probe. Get to monitoring them.”
Norlin fumed but obeyed—arguing now only wast-ed precious time.
He glanced at the long-range sensors and went cold inside. What Barse had tossed off so easily was true. A dozen Death Fleet ships blasted toward them.
Alien Death Fleet [Star Frontiers 1] Page 14