Genellan: Planetfall

Wilson: "Bogey at ten thousand, sector six. Overtaking velocity point eight. Engagement radius in thirty. Optical scan in tight oscillation."

Buccari: "Roger that. Holding fire, all switches green." Wilson: "Bogey at six thousand, sector six. Trajectory is veering high and starboard. Now sector five. Sca

Wilson: "Three thousand, sector five. Bogey is maneuvering. Intermittent optical lock."

Buccari: "Roger optical. Firing decoys."

Qui

Wilson: "Bogey at sixteen hundred, sector five. Bearing constant. Optical lock is firm. He's firing at the decoys."

Buccari: "Roger lock." She pressed a switch on her weapons board. A salvo of kinetic energy missiles, sounding like popcorn popping, streaked their unholy fires across the flight deck's viewing screen. Qui

Wilson: "Bogey at a twelve hundred. He blew our decoys away, and he's got us locked in!" Screaming radar lock-on warnings reverberated through the corvette. The enemy was preparing to fire, the high-pitched whooping sickenly familiar. There was no way to evade the impending explosions—not without exhausting their only means of fighting back. Their single option was to stand and fight, the laser ca

"Here go a pattern of dinks and the last of the heavies," Buccari a

Wilson: "Thousand clicks. Maneuvering away from our missiles. No deception, but heavy jamming. Jump-shifting through it with full systems lock-on. Hard lock."

Buccari verified weapons configuration and optics alignment. She sca

"Okay, Gu

Wilson responded immediately: "Power up. Board's steady. All systems check. Ready to fire!"

Buccari reverified lock-on and then glanced into the blackness of space. The corvette's missiles were painfully visible—blasts of hot-white fire streaking to starboard, punching into the vacuum in regular intervals, each meteor a shining sliver of steel and depleted uranium. Why hadn't the bug fired? Suddenly her eyes caught an impossibly faint and distant glimmering. She concentrated her focus on a point at infinity and detected the unmistakable bloom of a colossal explosion, reduced to a pinpoint of light by the immense intervening distances.

Wilson: "Six hundred, and—sir! Bogey's fading out! Enemy tracking and fire-control radars have gone down, too. He's…gone. Completely off the screen! Something—the kinetics must have taken him out!"

Buccari turned to tactical. Warning detects flashed, but the cursors had all returned home, and nowhere was there a threat blip. Warning detects extinguished as she watched.

"Something's wrong," she said, releasing her grip from the ca

She reset the laser sca

"It's gone. destroyed," she a

The manic tones of the threat warning klaxon stuttered to silence, the only sound the susurrant rush of oxygen through the respirators of their battle armor.

"Let's get the lifeboat," Qui

Chapter 2. Lifeboat

The lifeboat oscillated, gently wobbling as pinhead jets fired for stabilization. Once jettisoned from the overwhelming mass of the corvette it was powerless to do anything but float through space on the impulse vector provided at ejection.

Leslie Lee quelled her incipient panic and took note of the injured Marine's elevated temperature and rapid pulse rate. The other lifeboat occupants were strapped in racks protruding from the sides of the cylindrical vessel. Six of the eight stations were occupied. Lee unstrapped from her control station and floated through the restricted tubular core. Re

Both men had been injured early in the engagement. Re

Fenstermacher struggled to lift his head; his inertia reels were locked. Lee released the locks, and the injured man turned to face her, peering unsteadily from behind a smeared visor.

"Smells sweet in there, eh?" Lee chided as she leaned over and used a penlight to check pupil dilation. It was difficult to see through the contaminated visor. She leaned over further to check his left arm, which was immobilized by an inflatable cast. Lee dimly sensed pressure on the front of her suit. Fenstermacher moaned with a peculiar, melancholy tone. Startled by his exclamations, and mistaking them for a signal of pain, Lee backed off sufficiently to see Fenstermacher' s right hand wandering suggestively across her chest. The suit provided no hint of anatomical topography, and its coarse stiffness barely transmitted the sensation of contact, but Fenstermacher persistently continued his exertions, groaning lasciviously. She looked down at his hand and tiredly brushed it away, smiling wistfully at the presumptions of the living.

"Fool," she said quietly, thickly, near tears.

"Ah, don't worry, Les," said Fenstermacher, breaking lifeboat regulations by speaking, his voice feeble. "We'll make it. Someone will pick us up."

"Yeah, Leslie," said another voice—Dawson' s. Lee looked over to station three to see the communication technician's helmet lift from the harness. "For once in his life, Fensterprick is right."

"Why, thank you, gruesome," said Fenstermacher hoarsely. "I take back what I said about you being stupid and ugly. You're just ugly."

"He ain't worth getting angry over," Dawson retorted, "but I sure hope he's in pain. Leslie, either knock him out or make him scream."

"Fleet's gone," another voice grumbled—Tookmanian, one of the weapons technicians. "We are forsaken. Only He will save us now."

"Not now, Tooks," admonished Schmidt, the other weapons rating.