There were screams behind him. Then the exhaust vanished, and a huge spherical starship was a hundred metres away, small sensor clusters sticking out of its dark silicon hull like metallized insect antenna. Its equatorial ion thrusters exhaled fountains of sparkling blue ions, halting its minute drift.
Bloody hell!it was a collective sentiment from the adults.
The starship rolled towards the lifeboat as though there was a solid surface below it. And its extended airlock tube was suddenly coming round to clang against the hatch.
Gaura took a moment to recover his poise. A voidhawk would be very hard put to match that display of precision manoeuvring.
The lifeboats bitek processors reported the short-range inter-ship channel was picking up a transmission.
You people in the lifeboat, as soon as the hatch opens we want you through the tube and into the lounge, commanded the female voice theyd heard earlier. Make it fast! Were running out of combat wasps and weve got to pick your friends up as well.
The hatch seal popped and it swung back. Little Gatje squealed in alarm as one of the biggest cosmoniks Gaura had ever seen floated in the airlock tube.
Its all right,he told his dismayed daughter. Hes a ... friend. Really.
Gatje clutched at the fabric of her mothers suit. Promise, Daddy?
Shift your bastard arses through here now! Warlow bellowed.
The children gulped into fearful silence.
Gaura couldnt help it, after all the horror theyd been through to be greeted by such utter normality, he started to laugh. I promise.
Oh, Jesus, theyve cracked it, Joshua told the three crew-members left on the bridge when Lady Mac rendezvoused with the second lifeboat. Another combat wasp was curving round over Aethras bulk, accelerating sharply. I knew theyd work out the numbers game eventually. He fired a salvo of three drones in defence. It was a terrible ratio. One which the Lady Mac could only ever lose. Three defenders was an absolute minimum to guarantee an attacker didnt get through. If he could just have flown evasive manoeuvres, or attacked, or been able to run, the numbers would have shifted back towards something near favourable.
Jesus! The fourth solo combat wasp appeared from behind Aethra. He had to launch another three from Lady Mac s diminishing reserves.
Fifteen left, Sarha said with morbid cheerfulness. The starships maser cannons fired at a kinetic missile that was sixty kilometres away. Five nuclear-tipped submunitions exploded perilously close to Aethra, reducing the latest attacking combat wasp to its subatomic constituents.
Did you have to tell us that? Melvyn said laboriously.
You mean you didnt know?
Yes. But I could always hope I was wrong.
Joshua accessed a camera on the airlock deck. Warlow had anchored himself to a stikpad beside the airlock tube. He was grabbing people as they came out and slinging them into the chamber. Ashly and one of the Edenist men were on a stikpad below the ceiling hatch, catching then shoving the human projectiles up into the lounge above.
How many more to come, Warlow? Joshua datavised.
Six. That makes forty-one in total.
Wonderful. Stand by for combat acceleration the second the airlock seals. He sounded the audio warning so the Edenists would know. The flight computer showed his plot of an open-ended vector heading away from Murora. At eight gees they could outrun the other starships easily, and jump outsystem. That kind of prolonged acceleration would be tough on the Edenists (no sinecure for the crew, either), but it was one hell of a lot better than staying here.
Joshua, Gaura has asked me to say some of the children are very young, they cant possibly survive high gees, Warlow datavised. Their bones arent strong enough.
Jesus shit! Kids? How old? How many gees?
One girl was about three. There were a couple of five-year-olds as well.
Fuck it!
What is it? Sarha asked, real concern darkening her sea-green eyes for the first time since theyd entered the Lalonde system.
Were not going to make it.
The fifth solo combat wasp appeared from behind Aethra. Seven of the Lady Mac s submunition drones detonated their nuclear explosives in immediate response. Joshua launched two more.
Even if we jump without an alignment trajectory, from here, itll take us fifteen seconds to retract the sensors and prime the nodes, he said. Well be blind for ten seconds. Its not long enough.
So run, Sarha said. Fire every last combat wasp at them and go. Lady Mac can make eight gees even with tube one down. Maranta cant make more than four gees. We can get clear.
That vectors already loaded. But weve got kids on board. Shit! Shit! Shit! He saw the last Edenist being yanked out of the airlock tube by Warlow. The flight computer was shutting the hatch before his feet were fully clear.
Do something, and do it now, Joshua Calvert, he told himself. Because youre going to be dead in twenty seconds if you dont.
His mind ordered the flight computer to start the fusion tube ignition sequence.
Another whole two seconds to think in.
There was nothing in the tactics programs, even Dad had never dug himself a hole this deep in the shit.
Cant run, cant fight, cant jump out, cant hide ...
Oh yes I can! he whooped.
The fusion drives came on, and the Lady Mac accelerated down the vector plot that sprang from Joshuas mind even as the idea unrolled. Three gees, heading straight in towards the gas giant.
Joshua! Dahybi complained. We cant jump if you take us inward.
Shut up.
Dahybi settled back and started into a recital of a scripture he remembered from his youth. Yes, Captain.
Warlow, activate the three zero-tau pods weve got in capsule C, and cram the children in. Youve got four minutes maximum before we start accelerating properly.
Right, Joshua.
The sensors reported that four combat wasps were pursuing them. Joshua fired an answering salvo of five. He could hear Dahybi muttering something that sounded like a prayer, it had the right dirge-like resonance.
Theyre coming after us, Melvyn said a minute later.
Maranta and its cohort were accelerating away from Aethra.
Thats the Gramine , Sarha said after studying the image. Look at the angle its drive is deflected through. There isnt another starship that can do that. Wissler was always boasting about their combat agility.
Just wonderful, Sarha, thanks, Joshua proclaimed. You got any other morale boosters for us?
Warlow climbed the ladder into the lounge deck, boosted muscles lifting him easily against the heavy gravity. Carbon composite rungs creaked in dismay under his tripled weight. There were Edenists packed solid across the lounge floor, none of the acceleration couches had been activatednot that there were enough anyway. They didnt have neural nanonics, the cosmonik realized. And because of it their children whimpered and snivelled in wretched distress without any cushioning below them.
He walked over to the smallest girl, who was lying wide-eyed and terribly pale beside her mother. Im putting her into zero-tau, he announced shortly, and bent down. He had plugged a pair of cargo-handling arms into his elbow sockets before coming up the ladder, they had wide metal manipulator forks which would act as a good cradle. The girl started crying again. There will be none of this acceleration in the pod. Explain to her. She must not squirm when I pick her up. Her spine will break.