Mutineer's Moon

She watched a tiny red dot move above the small, perfectly detailed hills and trees of the holo display. The computers classed it as a cutter, but no cutter would be so brazen if it was unescorted. Their own sca

Jiltanith had taken over Rohantha’s weapon systems as well as the flight controls for the moment, and her brain was poised on a hair—trigger of anticipation. The base in upstate New York was no Cuernavaca, and, though it had been on Hector’s list from the begi

Rohantha was tense beside her as she concentrated on her specially—programmed computers. At the moment, she was “flying” both cutters and their fighter escorts via directional radio links. It was risky, because it meant placing the pi

There were no words in the pi

“Got ’em, Hansu!” Caman said exultantly. “See?”

Shirhansu nodded. A second cutter had just blipped onto the display. Its coordinates were less definite, for it was using no sca

She raised a small mike, smiling. They’d used radio against her in La Paz and she hadn’t been ready for it, but this time she had a radio link, as well. They might be watching for it, but even if they spotted it, they couldn’t be certain it was being used by Imperials.

“First Team,” she said quietly in English. “Go.”

There was no reply, but far above the surface of the Earth, a pair of Imperial fighters swooped downward at mach three while they took targeting data from Caman’s sca

“Missiles!”

The u

Both cutters went to pre-programmed evasive action as the missiles came in. It was useless, of course. It was intended to be, but it would have been useless whether they’d pla

She paled as she pictured the radiation boiling out from those fireballs. They were barely a kilometer up, and Maker only knew what they were doing to any Terra-born in the vicinity, but she knew what their EMP would do to Rohantha’s directional ante

Both cutters had vanished in the holocaust, and Jiltanith banked away from the blast as Rohantha reclaimed her onboard systems. She’d done all she could by remote control.

“Hard kills on both cutters!” Caman shouted, and Shirhansu crouched over his shoulder, staring triumphantly at the display.

That was one fucking commando team that would never hit a target! But her triumph was not unmixed with worry as her fighters clawed back upward, putting as much distance between themselves and their firing positions as they could without breaking stealth…

“Missile sources! Multiple launches!” Caman snapped, and Shirhansu smothered a curse.

Ganhar had been right again, Breaker take it! But there was still a good chance for her fighter crews. She watched the missiles climbing the holographic display, spreading as they rose. They couldn’t have a definite lock, but they’d obviously gotten something from the tracks of the missiles that had killed the cutters.

“Team Two!” She used a fold-space com, but the heavy EMP from Team One’s warheads would make it hard for even Imperial systems to spot it just now, and the need for secrecy was past, anyway. There was not even any need to tell her second fighter force what to do—they knew, and they were already doing it.

Shit! Erdana’s fighter was clear of the missiles seeking it, but those were self-guided homing weapons, and at least three had locked onto Sima and Yanu! She watched Sima go to full power, abandoning stealth now that he knew he’d been targeted. Decoys blossomed on the display and jamming systems fought to protect the fighter, and two of the missiles lost lock and veered away. One killed a decoy in a three-kiloton burst of fury; the other simply disappeared into the night. But the third drilled through every defense Yanu could throw out against it, and its target vanished from the display.

Shirhansu swallowed a sour gulp of fury, but there was no time for dismay. Caman’s sca

Jiltanith watched exultantly as one of the southern fighters disappeared in a ball of flame. That was more than they’d hoped for, and she was impressed by how well their unma

Now they were doing the rest of their job, and she angled the pi

Shirhansu watched the northerners react to her own incoming fighters. They went to full power, one streaking away to the west towards Lake Erie, the other breaking east and diving for the cover of the mountains. Decoys blazed in the night, dying in salvos of nuclear flame, and the west-bound fighter evaded the first wave of missiles racing after it. Not so the one headed east; three different missiles took it from three different directions.

She concentrated on the surviving fighter, praying that its crew would be frightened—and foolish—enough to flee straight back to Nergal, but those Imperials were made of sterner stuff. They turned back from the western shore of the lake, hurling their own missiles in reply, and she smothered an unwilling admiration for their guts as they took on all four pursuers in a hopeless battle rather than reveal their base’s location.

What followed was swift and savage. The single enemy fighter was boxed, and its crew were obviously more determined than skilled. Its weapons sought out all its attackers, splitting its fire instead of seeking to blast a single foe out of the way to flee, and its violent evasive maneuvers had a fatalistic, almost mechanical air. Her own flight crews’ defensive systems handled the incoming fire, and Changa’s fighter flashed in so close he actually took the target out with his energy guns instead of another missle.