But the human ships were at a great tactical disadvantage. In the initial deployment formation that Laskowski had chosen, the conical groups of human ships could only bring their forward batteries to bear, while many of the Kreelan ships, disorganized as they were, could bring their entire broadsides into action against the invaders. On the oceans of ancient Earth, this had been known as “crossing the T.” It was a disastrous disadvantage that L’Houillier was desperately trying to redress.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Laskowski responded woodenly, for the first time sensing that all might not go as she had planned. Without another word from L’Houillier, she turned to the operations section and began barking out the Grand Admiral’s orders, feeling not so much resentment as a growing sense of fear as they fought to reorganize the fleet.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the three huge task forces began to change their shape, from the roughly conical formations in which they had arrived to a series of great staggered wedges, their courses altered to bring as many batteries to bear on the enemy as possible.
L’Houillier watched the tactical display with his fists knotted at his sides. He had agreed to Zhukovski’s plan, but he was determined to fight his fleet as long as there was some possibility of victory. Even the crippling of the Kreelan fleet would suffice, if it were not at the cost of his own.
On the great screen, the number of engagements doubled, then trebled. The Kreelans were fighting back, but weakly. L’Houillier allowed himself a faint ray of hope. There was every chance that his fleet would inflict far more damage on the enemy than they themselves would sustain.
Perhaps, he thought, we might even win.
Zhukovski was beginning to feel the chill of panic rising in his throat. The corridor that ran through the outer hull and separated two banks of massive storage rooms was empty. Where the devil was Braddock? he wondered. “You can think of nowhere he might be found?” he asked Enya again.
“No, admiral,” she said, equally worried. “He said he would meet us here, as agreed. He only wanted to speak with Nicole, to wish her luck on her mission, before he met with us.”
Zhukovski’s head whipped around. “Mission?” he snapped. “What mission? Carré was not to fly. Personal orders of Grand Admiral himself after she ferried a fighter aboard. Chyort voz’mi,” he cursed. “Come! We check her cabin.”
“But that’s all the way across the ship!”
“You have better idea?” he asked over his shoulder. “Come! We waste precious time.”
Unable to think of any alternative, Enya rushed after him. Her footsteps were lost in the cascade of godlike hammer blows that was Warspite’s batteries engaging the enemy.
“Sarge,” one of the guards whispered, “look.”
Sergeant Ricardo Estefan, ISS, looked up to see Nicole Carré step through the blast doors and into the brig. She brought with her a large flight bag, obviously full, and she was wearing a strange expression.
Standing up, he said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the president ordered that no one – especially you – be allowed to see the pris–”
His sentence was interrupted by the bark of the blaster that suddenly appeared in Nicole’s free hand. Set on stun, it was still powerful enough to send the one hundred-kilo sergeant reeling against the wall, unconscious.
The four others on the guard detail were already reaching for their weapons, but Nicole was faster, much faster. In the blink of an eye, all four had been blasted to the floor, unconscious.
Working quickly, Nicole shut down the monitoring devices and entered the security override code she had coaxed from an ISS officer who had wanted a physical reward for the information. She had not disappointed him, although it had not been what he had been expecting. He still lay unconscious and bleeding in his cabin.
With a hum, the mantrap began to cycle open. The force field within had been shut down completely.
Shera-Khan and Tesh-Dar emerged from the opening, Nicole wondering how the two had squeezed themselves into the tiny chamber.
“Sergeant Estefan,” a belligerent voice suddenly spat from the control panel. “I’m not getting a reading from your monitors, and I show that the mantrap’s been opened. What’s going on?”
“Where is Reza?” she asked Shera-Khan urgently, as she took an electronic key from one of the unconscious guards and removed their explosive collars. The door to the mantrap slowly began to cycle back into the cell. Too slow, too slow! she thought frantically. She could see in her mind the two Kreelan warriors and herself exposed and vulnerable out here, with Reza trapped in the revolving cylinder as a dozen ISS guards burst in, shooting.
“He remains within,” the boy replied.
Nicole saw that Tesh-Dar seemed to have regained something close to what must be her awesome natural strength, as she moved immediately toward the door to the corridor to watch for intruders, her muscles rippling beneath the leatherite armor. Without a word, she jammed a sliver of metal she had taken from somewhere in her armor into the door slot. It would not be closing on them unless they wanted it to.
“Estefan!” the voice shouted. “Respond!”
“Come on, come on!” Nicole urged the maddeningly slow cylinder. She could just see the edge of the opening when the mantrap suddenly stopped turning.
“Security alert, Brig Four!” the voice bleated over the ship’s intercom. “ISS detachments to the brig, on the double! Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”
“Merde!” Nicole hissed. She tried the code again, but the controls had been overridden, probably somewhere in engineering, and she did not know enough about the systems to try a manual override. Behind her, the motors driving the door to the brig whined in futility against the metal Tesh-Dar had wedged in the doorway, trying to prevent their escape. “He is trapped! We have to–”
Her jaw went slack as she watched Reza walk through the ten centimeter-thick chromalloy of the mantrap, his body passing through the metal as if it were not there at all. The explosive collar was already gone from around his neck. She had no idea how he could have removed the otherwise foolproof device.
Before she could say anything, Reza said something to Shera-Khan, who immediately rushed to Tesh-Dar’s side, a shrekka clutched in his claws.
“We must go,” Reza told Nicole, taking her by the arm.
“Reza… wait,” she managed, gesturing toward the flight bag. In a way, what she had seen did not surprise her; she knew from her dreams that – in his world, anyway – such miracles were possible. But here, now…
Without waiting for her to explain, Reza opened the flight bag. He knew instinctively that she would not have brought it without good reason, and sensed her confusion at what she had just witnessed. But explanations would have to wait. For all the infinite age of the Universe, they were running out of time.
Inside he saw the deep black of his Kreelan armor and, beneath that, the glittering of his weapons. His sword.
“In Her name,” he whispered. Looking up, he said, “Thank you, Nicole.”
“You are… welcome, mon ami,” she said as he hastily stripped out of his uniform and donned what long ago had been his second skin. He had made crude adjustments to it over the years, and while it did not fit as it should, as the clawless ones would have made it, it was still comfortable. It felt right.