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"Only if they catch you," Tisiphone pointed out with maddening cheer. Alicia felt her teeth grate but swallowed her savage reply, for the computers had accepted her and placed themselves at her disposal. It was a disturbing sensation, almost frightening, as their inhuman vastness clicked into place about her. She hadn't felt it in a long time, and for just an instant she quailed, but then everything snapped into focus and she was home. The shuttle and she were one, its sensors her eyes and ears and nerves, its power plant her heart, its counter-gravity and thrusters her arms and legs. Joy filled her like cold fire, burning away the confusion and dismay, and she smiled.
"Yes, Little One," Tisiphone whispered. "Now is your moment. We are training flight Foxtrot-Two-Niner."
Alicia punched up Flight Control and a
"Cleared to go, Foxtrot-Two-Niner," FlyCon said, and she swallowed another tremulous laugh as her atmospheric turbines screamed.
-=0=-***-=0=
The shuttle sliced up through Soissons' atmosphere, and there was no pursuit. None at all, and that was truly amazing. Of course, there was really no pressing need to pursue a purely intra- systemic craft. Where could it go, after all? For that matter, who in her right mind would steal an assault shuttle of all damned things?
"So now what?" Alicia asked aloud.
"Set course to rendezvous with beacon Sierra-Lima-Seven-Four-Four."
Alicia started to ask what they were rendezvousing with but bit her tongue and checked her computers for the proper coordinates. No doubt she would know soon enough. Too soon, judging by what had already happened. The shuttle swept higher, air-breathing turbines shutting down and thrusters firing to align its nose on one of the Fleet shipyards, and she frowned. If they wanted out of the system, they had to get aboard a starship, and that should have meant guile and stealth. Could Tisiphone be so confident—so crazy, she amended dourly—as to think they could hijack a ship?
If so, she was finally up against something even she couldn't manage. At absolute minimum, they needed a dispatch boat, and that meant a crew of at least eight. Not even a drop commando could force eight highly trained specialists to perform their tasks when all they had to do to maroon her was refuse to obey. And no way were Fleet officers going to help a crazed Cadrewoman steal their ship out from under them!
They continued unchallenged on their flight path, and Alicia's brows furrowed as she realized they weren't headed directly for the shipyard after all. Their destination lay in a parking orbit of its own, and she brought her sensors to bear on it. It didn't look like anyth—
"No!" she gasped. "Tisiphone, we can't steal that!"
"We certainly can, and we must."
"No!" Alicia repeated, and unaccustomed panic sharpened her voice. "I can't fly that thing— I'm no starship pilot! And ... and ..."
"It is too late for such thoughts, Little One," the Fury said sternly. "I have studied this matter with great care and obtained all the information we will require. Nor will it be necessary for you to pilot the ship. It will, so to speak," the Fury actually chuckled in her brain, "pilot itself, will it not?"
Alicia tried to reply, but all that came out was a faint, inarticulate whimper as the shuttle continued toward the waiting alpha synth ship.