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More guards came at him. These had found time to scramble into unpowered armor, and the loads in his machine-pistol were too light to get through it at anything above point-blank range. He dropped it and shifted to his disrupter, praying the charge held out. Five more men went down, and then the survivors withdrew to regroup. Something thundered behind him, and he swore feelingly. DeVries was by the windows, firing someone else's weapon out into the grounds. They were pi
"I'll cover you!" he shouted, starting towards the window
"Watch your front," she said calmly, never even turning her head. "These bastards have a surprise coming."
There was no time to ask what she was talking about. A fresh rush was coming down the corridor, and a buzz from his disrupter warned of an exhausted charge as he beat it back. Her "surprise" had better come soon, or—
Something howled in the dark. Something huge and black, borne on a cyclone of turbines, wing edges and nose incandescent from reentry. Chateau Defiant heaved as rockets and plasma ca
A steely hand grabbed his collar, dragged him out the windows, and hurled him at the grounded assault shuttle. He charged its ramp like his last hope of salvation, DeVries on his heels, and heard incoming fire spanging off the armored hull and the whine of powered turrets and the end-of-the-world bellow as the shuttle's autoca
DeVries shouldered past him to the pilot's couch, and he slid down to sit on the deck in fresh shock that owed little to blood loss as he realized that seat had been empty when the shuttle swept down to save them.
He sat there, searching for a rational explanation, but none occurred to his muzzy brain. Disrupter fire had charred her jacket in half a dozen places, yet she was alive. That was insane enough, but where was her crew? And what in God's name had she been doing with Alexsov back there?
"What—" He stopped and coughed, surprised by the croak of his own voice, and she spared him a glance.
"Hang on," she said in that same calm voice, and he clutched for a handhold as something fast and lethal sizzled past and she whipped the shuttle into wild evasive action—without, he noted numbly, even bothering to don the flight control synth headset.
And then she started talking to herself.
"Okay. Dial 'em in and take them out," she told the empty air.
He clawed his way forward and tumbled into the copilot's seat just as something carved a screaming column of light through the night. He gaped out the cockpit canopy, then jerked back as terrible white fire erupted far below. Another followed, and a third, and DeVries spared him a wolf's smile. She flipped on the com—he hadn't even realized it was turned off—and an angry male voice filled the flight deck.
"... say again! Cease fire on our shuttle, or we will destroy your spaceport! This is First Officer Jeff Okahara of the starship Star Ru
"Way to go, Megarea," his pilot murmured, and Ben Belkassem closed his eyes. It had been such an orderly universe this morning, he thought almost calmly.
"Star Ru
"Bugger off!" Okahara snarled back. "Your precious lieutenant commander just got what he fucking well had coming!"
"What?! What do you mean—"
"I mean you'd better notify his heirs! And anybody else who tries to murder our captain is going to get the same!" "Listen, you—"
The furious voice chopped off. Ben Belkassem heard another voice, quick and urgent, muttering words that included "HVW" and "battle screen," and looked across at Alicia again.
"Quite a freighter you have there, Captain Mainwaring," he murmured.
"Isn't it?" The turbines died as the shuttle streaked beyond air-breathing altitude and the thrusters took over. "Strap in. We don't have time to decelerate, so Megarea's going to snag us with a tractor as we go by."
"Megarea? Who's Megarea?"
"A friend of mine," she replied with a strange little smile.
-=0=-***-=0=
Commander Barr couldn't believe any of it. One minute everything was calm, the next a shuttle from an unarmed freighter screamed planetward at insane velocity and reduced Chateau Defiant (and, presumably, Captain Alexsov) to flaming rubble. And when Groundside tried to down the shuttle, that same unarmed freighter blew the engaging weapon stations into next week with HVW!
Barr had no better idea of what was happening than anyone else, but his drive was working hard, because he knew Harpy didn't even want to think about engaging that "freighter." God only knew what it might produce next, and he intended to be several light-seconds away before it got around to it.
Now he stared into his aft display, wondering who was aboard that shuttle. He could still nail it short of the freighter—which was putting out battle screen now, for God's sake!—which might be a good idea. Except that Captain Alexsov might be aboard it. And, Barr admitted, except that firing on it seemed to be a good way to convince the freighter to respond in kind.
Then he no longer had the option. The shuttle slashed towards the freighter at far too high an approach speed, only to stop with bone-breaking sudde
-=0=-***-=0=
A groggy Ben Belkassem swam back to awareness draped across Alicia DeVries' back in a fireman's carry. It was an undignified position, but he was in no condition to argue, and a part of him apologized for every doubt he'd ever entertained over Sir Arthur Keita's descriptions of drop commandos.
She dumped him gently on the floor of the ship's elevator and crouched beside him, ripping his blood-soaked sleeve apart.
"Nice and clean," she told him. "Got some nasty tissue damage, but it missed the bone." He hissed as she strapped a pressure bandage tight. "Well take care of that in a minute. Right now we've got other worries."
"Like what?" he gasped.
"Like eight Wyvern Navy cruisers and a Fleet tin can we have to kill."
"Kill a Fleet destroyer?!"
"The one Alexsov came from, HMS Harpy. Her transponder's buggered to ID her as Medusa, but—" The lift door opened, and she seemed to teleport through it. Ben Belkassem followed more slowly onto what he realized must be the bridge and peered about him.
"Where is everybody?
"You're looking at everybody. Megarea, give him a display."
He jumped as a holo display sprang to life, hanging in midair and livid with the red-ringed Blue dots of hostile Fasset drives. Eight came from the direction of Wyvern, already shrinking astern; a ninth glowed dead ahead. -=0=-***-=0=Commander Barr swallowed bile. Harpy was putting everything she had into her drive ... and the cursed freighter was gaining. It was ru