Michael's interceptor brushed the upper atmosphere of Apophis, briefly becoming a meteor before bouncing back into space. They shot silently through a province of motionless tethers and after another day lined up right behind the final cloud of packets heading for the shack. The cloud would act like chaff to the Banshee's radar; they would be invisible until they were almost to the shack.
There was really no preparing for what they might find there. They could only contemplate the world they had come to and, when they slept, let its dark kami whisper in their dreams.
RUE WAS EXERCISING to counteract free-fall weakness when the call came. The message, encrypted and sent by laser, was from the remains of their fleet, which was now spiraling toward the construction shack as unobtrusively as possible.
"Captain, we've got new reconnaissance pictures of the Banshee," said the young woman in the inscape window. "We think you should look at them, stat."
Images popped up, familiar at first: the twin balloons of the Banshee were now in full bolo configuration, swinging at opposite ends of a long tether. They appeared as twin glowing beads standing out from the long dark cylindrical body of the construction shack. Other photos showed close-ups of the habitats, which had been rounded can-shapes when Rue had ridden in the ship. One was still shaped that way; the other was smaller, spherical now, with a number of gathered bunches of fabric knotted at one end.
They had a catastrophic hull breach, Rue realized as she flipped through the rest of the images. Finally she came to one that showed the ramjet section of the starship. It was lit by six arc-welding torches. The tiny stars shone on long black scars and hairlike bunches of fullerene jutting out of the hull.
The scars were in lines, such as lasers would make. But where between here and the Envy could Crisler have gotten into a battle? It didn't make sense— unless Rue's crew had done something?
For a moment her heart leapt at the thought— but she knew the resources they'd had to work with. Unless they attacked the gunnery stations and took over the Banshee's own lasers…
Anxiously, she forwarded the images to the other vanguard interceptor. This ship, which contained Mike and Laurent Herat, was now almost directly behind the construction shack relative to her. They were approaching from opposite sides, according to plan and so far the Banshee didn't seem to have noticed. Indeed, the Banshee wasn't really scanning, which implied that they felt there was no threat here.
It took several seconds for round-trip messages and she didn't want to risk an open laser link, lest the beam overlap one of the Banshee's sensors. So Rue waited for long minutes while, she presumed, the others pored over the images. Finally Dr. Herat's face popped up in a little window.
"It looks like laser fire. The ship's badly damaged— I don't know if she'd be able to start the ramjet with the condition it's in. If Crisler's not expecting reinforcements, I'd say he's in pretty dire straits at this point. We may not need to fire a shot to take the Banshee."
This news should have cheered her, but Rue didn't like not knowing who had crippled Crisler's ship.
Her answer came six hours later, as she was eating. They had just completed a braking maneuver and were lining up for the final deceleration to rendezvous with the construction shack. Rue had an inscape window open over her plate, the shack, now floodlit from the Banshee, visible in it.
Suddenly the window went gray and the words SIGNAL LOSS appeared in it. Rue blinked at it in puzzlement for a second. Then she heard a sound like snakes hissing and the interceptor seemed to shudder under her.
The pilot shot past her, cursing loudly. He yanked himself into his seat and now Sola was yelling orders like there'd been a hull breach.
Hull breach! She dove for her own g-bed, waiting for the confirming spike of pain in her ears as pressure dropped. It didn't come, but she felt the ship turning under her. She reached over and punched the tactician's arm. "What's happening?"
"We lost forward sensors. We're flipping over to use the aft set."
"Did we hit something?"
"Don't know… no, it wasn't like that." Sola looked a bit gray. "I think it was a laser. The Banshee must have spotted us."
"I'm setting up a dusty plasma shield," said the pilot. Rue's window came back on-line, showing a turning starfield. A glowing orange haze appeared and slowly thickened until the stars vanished.
"How am I supposed to see through this?" said Rue.
"Telescope's off-line," muttered the pilot. "Hull registered a two thousand degree temperature spike. Definitely a laser."
"What's the Banshee doing?"
Sola had a bunch of windows open. "…Nothing," he said, puzzled. "It hasn't varied its radar ping. No movement, no heat signature from weapons fire."
"Incoming transmission," said the pilot. "It's from IR 21." That was Mike's ship.
Doctor Herat appeared again, this time looking flustered. "Rue, we've been fired on! It's not coming from the Banshee. It might be an automated system, probably an asteroid defense. It's pretty persistent, we've taken three strong hits already."
She tapped the window to reply. "Find out why! Are we too big or something? I thought we were supposed to register as one of those cargo packets 'cause we're part of the cloud. Why didn't that work?"
The time-delay to Herat's nod was almost imperceptible; they must be close to the shack. "Maybe there's some characteristic of the packets that we—" The window went gray, as the shuddering hiss happened again.
"How much of this can we take?" she asked Sola. He shrugged.
"Probably a lot," he said. "These ships are designed for reentry into a brown dwarf's atmosphere, after all…" Another hiss and the lights flickered. "But that's different," he said less certainly.
Herat reappeared. "Captain! The cargo packets are all broadcasting a weak transponder signal. We didn't notice it before because of the interference from the Twins. Each packet seems to be broadcasting a unique signature, but of course we don't speak Lasa so—" Hiss.
Now Rue's ears did pop. "Depressure!" shouted the pilot, even as the clamshells folded up over their g-beds and Rue found herself alone in the dark, flickering gray inscape windows her only company. She sat paralyzed for a second, then swept her hands out to open a series of diagnostics, as well as an intercom line to the others.
"…the hull's intact," the pilot was saying. "But we lost a seal around the airlock. We can grow a new one, but it'll take a few hours. The hull's acting like a lens, concentrating the laser light in a few spots."
"What about the shields? Aren't they working?" she demanded.
"Yeah, they are, or we'd have been vaporized by now."
This is the same battle the Banshee fought, she thought. Another hiss came and more indicators turned red.
"— the call signal." Herat had reappeared, his image distorted and full of static. "Our autotroph AI deciphered it. It's a—" the signal cut out for a second. " — manifest. You have to send the following string…"
"Are you getting that?" she shouted to the pilot.
"I think so." Silence— she pictured him retransmitting the signal Herat had provided. At least, she hoped that was what was happening.
"We've missed our scheduled burn," he said abruptly. "I'm going to have to expose our engines to the laser in order to decelerate. If I don't we'll overshoot or hit the shack—"