The launcher was entirely open to vacuum, and was little more than a computer-controlled rocket platform with two pairs of seats mounted on its nose. At the rear, four primary nozzles angled outwards from the cargo bay that comprised most of the craft's volume. As Ty got into his seat, he glanced up and felt relief wash over him like a tide. The Mjollnir was still right where it should be.
A dense cloud of dust was rising from some point just around the curve of the asteroid's narrow horizon. A fog of ice and grit now covered its surface. Whatever had struck it must have been big.
'What about Cesar?' he asked.
Nancy was already strapped in and stabbing at the launcher's control console. 'Your guess is as good as mine.'
'He should have been here at the controls.'
'We abandoned some equipment at the camp, remember. All I can think is he must have left the launcher running on automatic, and tried to salvage some of that.' Nancy peered at the panel. 'Shit, one of the thrusters is out of action. I'm going to have to shut it off and hope I can compensate with the rest. But I'm getting close-to-fail readings on the others, so cross your fingers and hope they don't turn us into a fireball before we get back to the ship.'
'Thanks for that thought,' Ty replied.
'Just strap in and get ready. This is going to be a rough ride.'
Ty then caught sight of a suited figure drifting close to the asteroid's surface, partially obscured by the clouds of grit and ice. It took a few moments before he realized with a shock that the lower half of Cesar's body was missing. He pointed this out to Nancy and she cursed. 'He should have stayed with the damn launcher.'
'I guess he must have been hit by debris. We're lucky the launcher wasn't wiped out the same way.'
'Right now, I just want to get the hell out of here before we wind up like him.'
Something flashed out of the sky and the asteroid was struck a second time. A fresh plume of grey dust and ice shot up from its surface.
'I'm going to perform a fast burn,' announced Nancy, her voice taking on a hysterical edge. Ty twisted around to look at her, but all he could see was the side of her helmet. Suddenly it seemed important to be able to see her face. 'Then I'm going to decelerate for thirty seconds,' she added. 'Got it?'
'Got it.'
If I were the swarm, he thought, I'd collect chunks of rock from somewhere and accelerate them close to the speed of light. All it would take was a simple railgun technology; the rocks didn't even need to be very big to cause a lot of damage once they had reached relativistic speeds.
'Three, two, one,' Nancy counted aloud, and a second later Ty felt his heart and lungs press up against his spine while a seemingly enormous force flattened his head back against his seat. The asteroid's surface disappeared out of his peripheral view as the launcher blasted away from it.
Thirty seconds. Nancy hit a second button and cut off the burn. The intense pressure lifted from Ty's body and they were weightless once more. He twisted around and saw how the asteroid had already shrunk into the distance. Even as he watched, something slammed into it for a third time, cleaving it like a lump of dried clay smashed with a hammer.
'Jesus and Buddha,' Nancy swore, sounding like she was on the verge of crying with relief. 'They can hear us again! I've got a channel open to the Mjollnir, Nathan. I think we're going to make it.'
'Are they ready to jump out of the system?' asked Ty.
'I seriously fucking hope so. They're under attack, but no direct hits so far. Deceleration burn in ten, so get ready.'
Ty grabbed hold of his armrests as the launcher swivelled round in a slow, graceful arc until it was facing back the way they had come. No direct hits. He stared at the expanding cloud of debris that was now all that remained of the asteroid. If the Mjollnir had been hit by anything like that, there would be nothing left of it.
'Here we go,' said Nancy. 'In three… two… one.'
The launcher had not been built with comfort in mind. When the rockets cut out half a minute later, Ty twisted around to see the dirty-grey and black exterior of the Freehold starship fast expanding towards them. He could also make out a faint blue shimmer around the frigate's drive spines. More split-second bursts decelerated the launcher yet further, and soon the yawning mouth of a forward bay swallowed them up.
The bay doors slid shut over their heads and grappling arms reached out from the deck, locking on to the launcher and drawing it down into a cradle. Ty started to unstrap himself.
A deep thrumming sound rapidly resolved itself into a rush of air, but Ty waited until his suit gave him the signal before he pulled his helmet off, tasting welded metal and sweat as he sucked in a breath. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to get out of his suit. As he kicked away from the launcher and grabbed a handhold on the wall of the bay, he glanced across at Nancy, also with her helmet off, her face drenched in sweat.
'I'm sorry about Cesar,' was all he could say to her.
She shrugged, staring away across the bay. 'If it wasn't for him, we'd never have got that thing into the launcher.' She met his eyes. 'But if that thing's body isn't as valuable as you seem to think it is, he might have died for nothing. Can you live with that thought?'
He returned her gaze. 'Whatever it is the swarm's after, it's inside that Atn,' he replied. 'I promise you.'
Chapter Eleven
Several days after Dakota's encounter with Trader, the Magi ship that had resurrected her delivered her to the world known to humans as Derinkuyu, a major Skelite colony twenty-three light-years beyond the Consortium's borders.
The Skelites carved entire cities out of the deep bedrock of their worlds, creating warrens that extended far below the surface. Before the departure of the Shoal, the complex in which Dakota now found herself had been home to a small population of a few thousand human beings plus a smattering of Bandati and even, to her surprise, one or two Rafters drifting in their pressurized tanks. With the arrival of coreship refugees, the population had quadrupled overnight, spreading out to take up every last available inch of spare room in what Dakota suspected would be a claustrophobe's worst nightmare.
She wandered through a long, echoing concourse, its high arched ceiling supported by fluted stone pillars also carved directly out of the rock. Somewhere in the maze of shanty dwellings here was the Magi navigator who had agreed to act as her liaison.
Most of the dwellings she passed were constructed from scraps of plastic and metal, and even rough slabs of precariously balanced stone that looked like all they needed was a good hard push to send them tumbling onto their occupants with deadly results. Light came from a combination of glow-globes and what she suspected was a bioluminescent fungus spread in dense patches across the ceiling and upper parts of the towering pillars. Her nose was tickled by the varied smells from the dozens of cooking fires that splashed pale flickering light across the lower reaches of the pillars, carrying the scent of spices and blackened meat. She wondered if any of the people sleeping and talking and eating all around her really believed that the rescue they were almost certainly hoping for would ever come.
'Miss Merrick?'
She turned to see a figure looming out of the darkness, and knew immediately this was the man she was looking for. The figure resolved into an impossibly tall black man in his late twenties, with the ubiquitous shaved skull of a machine-head.
'Miss Merrick,' he repeated, now taking her hand with a smile. 'Leroy Rivers. It's wonderful to meet you at last.'