"The singleship?"
"Dead in space in norm, Commander."
"Good. Maybe he's collecting Haesler. He'll be out of it awhile. Junghaus. Anything else in detection?"
"Negative, Commander."
"All right, Mr. Westhause. Take her up. Twenty-five Bev.
Weapons, Ship's Services, I want all heat shunted to the accumulators. Chief Canzoneri, see if you have enough data to predict that destroyer."
"Course and speed, Commander. Want to guess which way and how tight she'll turn?"
The Old Man stares into the distance for a moment. 'Take it as standard. Looks like he's following standard procedure, doesn't it? Mr. Westhause, when you have the data, put us down on her tail. As soon as Mr. Piniaz has a charge on the accumulators."
"Sir?"
"Baiting her. She's gotten off twelve missiles already." The Climber shakes. Fearless states a yowling opinion from somewhere round the far side of the compartment. "She only carries twenty."
Is the man abetting Tannian's mad strategies? If he keeps kicking up dust he's going to draw a crowd. We've got to get hiking.
Piniaz murmurs, into an open comm, "Or twenty-four, or twenty-eight, depending on her weapons system. What the hell is he doing? She'll still outgun us when her missiles are gone."
"Mr. Piniaz." Icicles dangle from the Commander's words.
Let's not count missiles before they're hatched. Whatever they have, they'll use them intelligently. I don't like this. My stomach is surging up round my Adam's apple. We should be running, not dancing.
But the Commander is in command. His job—and curse, perhaps—is to make decisions.
"Ready, Commander," Westhause says.
'Take her down."
We drop almost too close for the destroyer to see, in a perfect trailing position, which presents her with an impossible fire configuration.
"No imagination," the Commander mutters. "Fire!"
The Energy Gunners drain the accumulators.
The opposing Commander skips into hyper before we more than tickle his tail. He sends return greetings by way of another missile spread.
Through the chatter of Fisherman, Rose, Berberian, Westhause, and others, conies the Commander's,
"That'll give him something to think about."
Ah. I see his strategy. Little dog turning on big dog. Maybe we'll startle them into a mistake that'll give us a chance to break completely free.
An hour dancing with the hunter-killer. They're disconcerted over there. We've spent no more than five minutes in Climb. Our ability to vanish gives us a slight advantage in maneuverability. The singleship has lost track of our Hawking point. We can duck their missiles, appear unexpectedly.
The hunter-killer has quit wasting missiles. It's now a beamer duel.
"Hit!" Piniaz cries, in a mix of glee and amazement. "We hurt her that time." This is his second victory cry. Our horsefly game has paid off, viewed strictly as a one-on-one.
"She's gone hyper," Junghaus says. "Not putting weigh on. Looks like drive anomalies."
"Coward," the Commander jeers. He's won the round. They're staying in hyper, where we can't reach them without using a missile. A missile they can, no doubt, dodge or intercept. Climbers make their easy kills because they appear out of nowhere, making their missile launches before the other team can react.
The petty triumph feels good. We made monkeys out of them. But behind the good feeling there's the worry about the destroyer's sisters. They'll be forming their shell around our sphere of range.
"Commander, singleship is putting on headway."
"Ach! Getting too busy around here."
"She's launched, Commander."
"Climb, Westhause! Emergency Climb!"
The Climber shakes as if she's in the jaws of an angry giant hound. What a shot! Dead on our Hawking point. Only my safety harness keeps me in my seat. The ship feels like she's spinning. One missile. That's all a singleship carries. She won't be hitting us again. Let's hope we break away before she gets a good lock on our point. Don't want her dogging us forever.
I catch a glimpse of my face in the dead visual screen. I'm grinning like a halfwit.
'Take her down, Mr. Westhause. To hyper. Junghaus, check that destroyer."
Seconds pass. Fisherman says, "Still no weigh on, Commander. Drive anomalies are worse."
"Very well. What do you think, First Watch Officer? Did we damage her generators?"
"Possibly, Commander."
"Easy meat, eh? Make a launch pass, Mr. Westhause."
We make the run, coming in from behind, but the Old Man doesn't give the order to launch. The destroyer wriggles, but not well enough to get away. She doesn't shoot back. Out of missiles.
Damaged. Easy meat indeed.
"Take us out of here, Mr. Westhause."
Victory enough, Commander? Just let them know you could've taken them?
He pauses behind me. "That's for Haesler. They'll understand."
Piniaz's comm line is still open. The gunners all grumble about the lost chance to avenge their Chief. The Old Man scowls but says nothing. Must be a malfunction in the switch down there.
"Make for that star now, Mr. Westhause." Throughout the action, between maneuvers, the Commander and astrogator have been eyeing a sun with what seems an unhealthy lust. Why get hi there where the mass of a solar system will complicate our escape plan?
Another case of my not knowing what the hell is going on.
The star is an eleven-hour fly. In Climb. Blind. With internal temperature rising every minute. It passes in silence, with crew taking turns sleeping on station. Piniaz and Varese get little sleep.
They wrestle with the agonizing chore of redistributing the work of the men we lost.
I'll take in some of Piniaz's slack, though I'd rather stay in Ops. That's where the action is. I assume a post at the missile board while an energy-rated Missileman moves over to cover for Holtsnider. Covering Missiles shouldn't be difficult with only the one launch bay armed. The control position for Launches One and Four can be abandoned.
Varese ameliorates his shortage by using Diekereide and commandeering Vossbrink from Ship's Services. Bradley can cope without Voss.
Westhause again demonstrates what a fine astrogator he is. He brings us down so near the star that it appears as a vast, fiery plane with no perceptible horizon curvature. And he manages to arrive with an inherent velocity requiring only minimal angular adjustment to put us into stable orbit.
How does he manage so well with a computation system scarcely more sophisticated than an abacus?
The roar of the star should mask the Climber's neutrino emissions and confuse all but the closest and most powerful radars. I'm told orbiting or slingshotting off a singularity is even more effective. "Vent heat."
It'll be slow going this close to so mighty a nuclear furnace. Typhoons of energy pound our black hull.
"Fire into the star," Piniaz tells his gunners. "We don't want Aem seeing beams flashing around."
Slow work indeed. After a time, I ask Piniaz, "Will continuous firing strain the converters?"
"Some. More likely to cause trouble hi the weapons themselves, though."
Another hi an apparently endless string of situations I don't like. "How long before the other firm figures what we've done?"
"They'll be checking stars soon," Piniaz admits. "The trick isn't new. One of the Old Man's favorites, hi fact. We once star-skipped all the way home. He'll bounce us to another one as soon as Westhause has his numbers."
"Where'd you serve before you came into Climbers?" I ask, hoping to profit from a talkative mood.
Piniaz gives me a queer look and dummies up. So much for that. The man is as self-contained as the Commander, and less interested in coming out.