“I am trying to get auxiliary power,” the younger pilot replied. “The main generator is cycling back into itself, and building slowly to an overload.”
“Forget it, then,” Velmeran said, and paused as he and Steena concentrated their fire on a larger rock. The boulder shattered at the last moment, and the fighter rolled through the opening as its pieces flew apart. “Treg, can you eject?”
“Sorry, Captain. The canopy locks are jammed by hydraulic back pressure, and I cannot get the leverage to force it. All I can hope for is auxiliary power.”
“Be quick about it, then,” Velmeran said. “You are about to come up on a group of very large rocks.”
That was something of an understatement. The larger pieces of debris, moonlets of several hundred meters to several kilometers across, tended to gather in small groups, drawn together by their own feeble gravity but never touching because of their tremendous static charge. If Tregloran’s ship was on a collision course with one of these massive rocks, nothing short of the Methryn would get it out of the way. And there were no capture ships free.
Two massive rocks, hundreds of meters across, emerged out of the background haze and grew quickly in size as the stricken fighter hurtled toward a deadly meeting. Tregloran remained blissfully unaware of the situation. He was busy at the keyboard of his on-board computer trying to force a reluctant auxiliary generator to start while trying to keep a damaged generator from exploding.
Velmeran had been watching the matter closely, however. It soon became apparent that the damaged fighter would catch the outer edge of the second, smaller rock, less than a kilometer behind the first. A small moonlet, six kilometers across, stood unavoidably ten kilometers behind that. Velmeran cautiously moved backward and to one side, using the inner shield of his ship to deflect Tregloran’s slightly.
Tregloran suddenly found enough power to halt the tumble of his fighter, and for the first time he became aware of the trouble he was in. He passed within a hundred meters of the larger rock, and barely two seconds later skimmed over the surface of the second with only five meters to spare. Velmeran, who continued to push from that side of his ship, barely cleared the surface. Tregloran put all the steering control of his own ship into turning away from the moonlet directly in his path.
The damaged fighter was sluggish and unresponsive. Velmeran never gave up, all but carrying the wrecked ship on the back of his own, even in the final seconds when it was obvious they had failed. But at the last instant Tregloran gained much more control and cleared the surface of the small moon through a pass between two ragged projections.
“Captain, can you lead me back to the corridor?” he asked immediately. “My main generator is going to explode at any moment.”
“You do that and I will back up along my corridor to intercept you,” Valthyrra insisted. “Can you hold out for another three minutes?”
“I am sure of it,” Tregloran said. “I am holding it by sheer will right now, and it is going to explode seconds after I let go of it.”
“Long enough for us to pry you loose and throw it overboard,” Valthyrra asserted. “Just pop your wings and slip in on the deck, gears up so that we can get to you.”
Tregloran’s ship had no drive power, just steering. The power lines of his main generator were burning now, as much as they could in the absence of air, leaving a trail of hot gasses and glowing particles behind the fighter. The Methryn, moving quickly up her own corridor, intercepted them as they reached it and began to accelerate forward to match the speed to that of the fighters approaching from behind.
Tregloran tripped the explosive bolts in the wings of his fighter as he moved behind the Methryn’s tail, and small, gas-filled pistons inside the downswept wings lifted them into a level position. Valthyrra matched his speed carefully so that he entered the bay at hardly more than a very fast run. Velmeran and Steena accelerated now, passing through the bay and out the forward door. Tregloran allowed his own fighter to travel half the length of the bay before lowering it gently to the deck, leaving a trail of sparks and thick smoke as it slid to a stop only five meters from the forward door.
Benthoran and an assistant were there immediately, and at the same time a pair of handling arms moved in from overhead to seize the damaged fighter. Flames and sparks shot out of every opening in the shattered hull as burning power lines exploded under the stress of a generator building quickly to an overload. The two crewmembers ripped loose the locked canopy and threw it aside, while Valthyrra gently lifted the fighter barely a centimeter from the floor and began to move it slowly toward the open door. While Benthoran helped the nervous pilot free himself from his ship, other crewmembers aimed a frigid blast of carbon dioxide into the fighter’s engine compartment to cool the faulty generator and delay its explosion.
At the last moment Benthoran bodily lifted Tregloran out of the cockpit and threw him to safety, then leaped over the fighter’s wing just before it swept him through the containment fields into open space. Valthyrra carried the ship free of the deck, as far out as her handling arms would reach, and gave it a firm push downward. Then she thrust herself forward, barely clearing the fighter before it exploded.
Benthoran walked over to where Tregloran’s motionless form lay on the deck, under the attentions of three crewmembers who had removed his helmet. “Are you all right?”
Tregloran glanced up at him. “Just glad to be here.”
“I can imagine.” Benthoran laughed softly, then gestured impatiently to one side of the bay. “Clear this wreckage from the deck. We have to land the damaged fighters before the packs can come in.”
“Damnation!” Maeken Kea muttered as she fell back into her seat, then immediately pushed herself back up again. “Marenna, give me a report. Are they really gone?”
“They appear to be,” the ship responded noncommittally. “All fighters have disappeared from scan.”
That did not mean much; inside this orbital rock quarry, everything disappeared from scan within a few kilometers. But Maeken Kea did not have long to decide. After a moment she launched herself from her seat and began to pace the edge of the central bridge. “Return to the Methryn’s corridor and follow her. Damage report.”
“I have lost two complete engine clusters, fourteen engines in all, although the loss will not seriously affect my speed even in starflight. I have also lost seventeen cannons.”
“Keep the units that still have functional generators so that we can have their power on the grid, and pitch the rest overboard,” Donalt Trace said as he joined her. “It occurred to me during the design of this machine that they would shoot up through the damaged units to get at the interior of the ship, so the module sockets have the same quartzite shielding.”
“Eject the malfunctioning units,” Maeken told the ship.
“Yes, Captain.”
Maeken Kea resumed her nervous pacing for a moment, then hurried back to her seat to consult the monitors on her console. Trace smiled privately. Except when penned to her seat by accelerations, Maeken fought her battles with a display of physical rage and strength equal to her amazing mental agility.
“Well done, Captain,” he said, moving to one side of her chair.
Maeken glanced up at him. “Whatever for? Velmeran called the shots. Brilliant moves, but he left an answer for every problem. This was just to see how well his fighters work against this ship. Now he knows better.”
“Will he be back?”
Maeken frowned. “I really suspect that he is just trying to slow us down until the Methryn can be repaired… which indicates that we must be gaining on her. This attack bought him a little time, but not all that much. He has to come back. I just wonder what he plans to do next.”