Mercenary's Star

Ramage got there just as a third Kurita officer was coming up the steps. Painfully young, he wore the collar pips of a junior lieutenant and carried three brimming cups of coffee in two hands.

Ramage stopped his finger before it could complete the trigger squeeze, swinging the butt of the rifle up instead. Planting the stock against the boy's sternum, he gave a firm shove that sent officer, cups, and coffee clattering backward down the stairs. Ramage followed feet-first, not bothering to use the steps. He landed with a knee-jarring crash close beside the shrieking heap of the Kurita Lieutenant.

Three other Kurita officers were in the room, just turning from the communications consoles that ringed the ferrocrete- walled room. His TK bucked three times with carefully placed four-round bursts that picked up the black-uniformed figures and flung them against the consoles in one-two-three order. The Lieutenant's wailing ceased abruptly as the smoking muzzle of the TK swung down level with his nose.

"You!" Ramage barked. "Any more?”

“D-down... downstairs..."

Five of his men descended the steps, rifles ready. Ramage gestured them toward the door leading to the first floor, but that door flew open before they could reach it. The narrow confines of the building's upper story rang with the chatter of automatic weapon bursts and small arms fire. Two Kurita soldiers pitched back from a wooden door suddenly pocked and splintered by bullets, and Chapley went down, arms clasped across his belly. Three other commandos slammed the door shut and dragged a table across to brace it while the fifth guarded the prisoner. Ramage slung his rifle and hurried to the com station.

The console was similar to those he'd used aboard the Invidiousand the Phobos.For that matter, it was like those he'd used on his homeworld of Trellwan. The main panel was already warmed up and tracking, the ante

He'd thought it would be. If Captain Tor had kept to his timetable and his promise to return in 900 hours, he should have jumped in-system sometime earlier that afternoon, certainly within the past three hours. The arrival of the Invidiouswould have sent an electromagnetic pulse racing out from the jump point at the speed of light. A little over eleven minutes later, that signal would have raced through near-Verthandi space, triggering computer-guarded alarms on planetary bases and ships. It had been Grayson's guess that every deep-space tracking ante

He was right. A computer screen at Ramage's right hand showed what little was known about the newcomer. It was a freighter, its IFF transponder code that of an independent trader. Mass was estimated at 80,000 tons. Its solar collector sail was already unfurled, but thus far, no communications had been received.

Ramage smiled. It could only be the Invidious,right on schedule.

He found another com cha

The voice that came back almost immediately was Lori Kalmar's. "Climber here, Skytalker. I read."

"Jackpot! I say again...Jackpot! Ready to feed on kilo hotel seven seven niner thuh-ree."

"Got it, Climber. Cha

Grayson had appointed Lori to the task of carrying the precious, recording tape once it had been cut in the Phobos'scommunications center. Grayson's Shadow Hawkwas needed for the battle with the Loyalist defenders, for a stray hit could put a key ante

Though Grayson was certainly listening in, it was Lori in her Locustwho had carried the tape and listened for Ramage's signal. She had followed the battle line but remained hull-down below the crest of Basin Rim, with only her transmitter ante

He looked up from the console. There was a thudding at the door, which shivered, raining flecks of splintered wood. Four pale faces looked across at Ramage.

He shrugged. "I don't think we're going back the way we came, boys." As if to back him up, there came a blast of light and sound from overhead, then a cascade of dust and smoke down the steps into the room. Three of the five commandos that Ramage had left above dropped into the room, their faces ashen, their knuckles white on the grips of their weapons.

The Pantheroutside had been alerted to their presence.

Ramage had cycled the recorded message as a zipsqueal loop going over and over, and he kept it playing now, sending burst after burst of computer-coded data into the sky. It would be eleven minutes before the first signal reached the Invidious,and eleven minutes more before any possible reply could make the return trip. He doubted that they could last over twenty-two minutes to hear it.

The north wall thundered, a sledgehammer of sound that rang in his ears and jarred dust from the bare ferrocrete blocks. The hammering blasted again, and the commandos looked wildly at one another. Would the Pantheractually tear down the com station it was supposed to protect in order to get at the raiders inside? The thunderclap of sound exploded a third time, and the meter-thick walls visibly trembled. Apparently it would.

"Climber, this is Skytalker Leader." Grayson's voice was barely audible over the ringing in Ramage's ears, but he was very glad to hear it.

"Climber here! Message away!"

"I copy, Climber. What's your situation?"

The room thundered again. "Not good. The neighbors want to come in and play. We're trapped on the third floor...no way out."

"Try to hold on. Climber. We're in the thick of it out here and can't win through."

"Acknowledged, Skytalker. We'll...hold." There was nothing else to say. The raiders had known that once they were discovered, their chances of rescue were not good. In endless pla

To transmit their coded message to the Invidious,they needed a deep-space transmitter. The Phoboshad one, but they didn't dare use it. That could have given the enemy positive proof that the ship still existed, as well as a means to triangulate her position. The only alternative had been to—"borrow" was Grayson's word—a Kurita transmitter.

For a long minute, the Ranger commandos looked at one another silently, wondering what was next. Splinters spat and flew as submachine gun fire chewed at the door, then bullets shrieked through the room. Gundberg kicked backward, blood pumping, dead before he hit the floor.

Ramage cursed and levelled his TK at the closed door. The assault rifle bucked and thuttered on full auto, breaching the door in a dozen places and filling the air with more spi