"They might if they think we’re going to get away with it."
"Then we’ll have to take our chances. You have a better idea?"
"No," she said, sitting down in the pilot’s seat. "You’ll be happy to hear the magnetics test out. We’ll have full-thrust linear anyhow. If necessary, we can ride them home. Only take about fifty centuries."
"Let’s see the mute," I said.
There was a large, wraparound display set over the viewports. It darkened to the color of the night sky, and the alien appeared. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I wasn’t at first certain that it was a vessel at alclass="underline" at least, whether it was capable of carrying a crew. It appeared to be a cluster or approximately twenty hyperboloids of varying sizes and design, slowly orbiting each other in a manner that suggested they were not physically connected. There was only a stylized resemblance to the alien vessels of the Resistance era. For purposes of comparison, a silhouette of the Corsarius appeared in the lower right corner. We were scarcely larger than the smallest of the alien’s components.
"Are we sure it’s a mute?"
Chase shook her head. "Damned if I know. Only thing I’m certain of is that it’s not ours. The destroyer was certainly a mute." She pushed back from the pilot’s console, and swung to face me. "You really want to try running past that thing?"
"Yes," I said. "I don’t think we have any other option."
"Okay," Chase said, loading instructions into the computers. "We’ll start to leave orbit in about fifty minutes. How close do you want to go?"
I thought about it. "I’d like to stay out of firing range. Any idea what that might be?"
"None."
"Okay, let’s try for a minimum of ten thousand kilometers. That should make for a tough shot, at least. And still give them a long turn."
"Okay," she said. "Locked in. By the way, this thing’s really building up an operational power reserve. We’ve got enough juice to run a big interstellar. And it’s still climbing. I suspect, if it comes to a fight, we’ve got a substantial kick ourselves."
"It’s not going to blow up, is it?" I was thinking of the Regal.
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Minutes later, the engines of the Corsarius took hold. Chase looked up at me from the navigator’s console. "Historic moment, Alex. You want to execute?"
"No," I said. "Go ahead."
She smiled, and pressed the keys. I felt the ship move.
"Once we leave orbit," I said, "give us everything we’ve got. Full throttle."
"Alex," she said, "the Corsarius can accelerate a lot faster than you and I can. We’ll move pretty quickly, but it’ll be well below what this ship can do."
The alien was getting bigger. It had begun to pulse with a soft blue-green glow, reminiscent of Christmas lights.
"Operational power levels are still building," Chase said. "I’ve never seen anything like it. This son of a bitch might actually have enough of a punch to knock that monster over. If we have to."
"I’d rather outrun it," I said.
We lifted out of orbit within the hour, and, with our prow turned toward the enemy—for that was certainly how we both thought about the other ship—we accelerated. Almost immediately, Chase reported that the other vessel had begun to change course. "To get closer," she said.
"Veer off. Try to keep that ten-thousand-kilometer range at closest approach."
"I’ll do what I can." She looked grim. "But I wish to hell one or the other of us knew what we’re doing."
Chase was right: the pressure of constant acceleration wore us down. She looked exhausted after an hour, and I became acutely conscious of my heartbeat. We increased oxygen content, and that helped for a while.
Meantime the distance between the two ships narrowed. "Coming fast," Chase said.
"They won’t shoot. The only reason they’re here is to salvage the Corsarius."
But I wasn’t really all that confident, and Chase knew it. So we waited, while the computers counted down the time.
The alien’s components seemed to be moving within themselves: whirling lights and orbiting topological shapes. It looked ghostly, insubstantial. "Closest point of approach," said Chase. "Mark."
The computer announced in a burgundy female voice: "They are tracking us for laser fire."
"Hang on, Chase."
"Goddam it, Alex, we forgot something—"
She was interrupted by a blast. The ship lurched violently: metal tore, and something exploded. Klaxons howled and warning lights blinked on. Chase unleashed a series of expletives. "The magnets," she said. "They just wiped us out, first punch." She looked gloomily at me, and at the image of the alien as it reached maximum size, and began to diminish. Red lights across the status boards were switching to purple. "The ship’s sealing itself, but we’ve got problems." She shut the alarms down.
"What happened?" I asked. The pressure of acceleration had eased. Considerably.
"That’s not my doing," she explained. "They cut a hole in our propulsion system. And unless you’re an expert at repairing magnetic drive units, we’re going to be down to a slow walk."
"Well, we’ll keep moving at our current velocity, right?"
"Actually, we’ll do a little better than that. But that isn’t very good, when the other guy keeps accelerating. What will happen now is that they’ll continue on, loop around the planet and come get us. Pretty much at their leisure. And what really irritates me is that it needn’t have happened!"
"Why? What do you mean?"
"The problem is neither of us knows anything about combat. We’ve got a shield. But we never activated it!"
"Son of a bitch."
"Now you know why Gabe was bringing John Khyber along. The old naval systems expert. He damned well wouldn’t have overlooked anything so obvious!" Her eyes filled with tears. All we’d been through, and it was the first time I’d seen her so discouraged.
"What about the stardrive? Any damage to that?"
She took a deep breath and flicked switches. "Stardrive ignition is still no less than twenty-three hours away. But I’m damned if I can imagine what’s going to ignite. Son of a bitch, we had plenty of time. You know what we had up? Standard navigational meteor screens! We’re lucky we didn’t get nuked. Dumb!"
"No point worrying about that now. How much time do we have before they catch us?"
Chase tapped the computer. "About fourteen hours." She slumped in her seat. "I think," she said, "it’s time to run up a white flag."
She was right. The giant vessel swung round the world that had been Sim’s prison, and hurtled after us.
We went into the after section and looked at the magnetics. Three of the series were fused. "It’s a wonder we’ve got any acceleration at all," Chase said. "But it’s not going to be enough to make a difference."
We used our remaining time as prudently as we could. First thing we did was get an explanation from the computer on the ship’s system of shields. I would have liked to run a test, but I decided it might be a better idea not to let the mutes see it. Maybe they assumed it was no longer operational. After all, what other explanation could there be for not using it in a situation which so clearly called for defenses? Then, having assured ourselves, perhaps too late, that we would not stand completely naked to the bastards, we started to look to our firepower.
While we watched them come, we studied schematics, and talked to computers. We learned details about a bewildering tangle of weapons systems, which were operated from four different consoles. And I began to understand why the frigates required an eight-man crew. "We couldn’t hope to fire more than one or two of these damned things," complained Chase. "If we had more people, people who knew what they were doing, and everything worked, I think even now we could put up a decent fight."