“That’s the captain,” she heard on the exterior speaker other helmet. “Get him, and we’ve got the ship.”
You’ve got the wrong sex, Sassinak thought to herself, and you’re not about to get me or my ship. She braced her wrist and fired carefully. A smoking hole appeared in one gray-armored chest.
“He’s armed,” said a surprised voice. “Captains don’t carry - “ This time she checked her computer link first, and her needler burned a hole in the speaker’s helmet. Three down - and where was that Weft?
He was flattened to the overhead, trying to position a Security riot net over the two remaining, but they edged away aft, firing almost random shots at Sassinak and the Weft.
“Forget capture,” Sassinak said into her helmet intercom. “Just get ‘em.”
The Weft made a sound no human could, and shifted, impossibly fast, onto one of the enemy. Sassinak heard the terrified shriek over her speakers, but concentrated on shooting the last one. She lay there a moment, breathless, then hauled herself up and locked the cargo lift’s controls to a voice-only, bridge-crew only command. The forward guard peeked cautiously around the curve of the corridor, weapon ready. Sassinak waved, and spoke on the intercom.
“Got this bunch - you take over; I’m going back to the bridge.” The Weft clinging to the dead enemy let go - reluctantly, Sassinak thought - and shifted back to human form. Inside his armor - a neat trick.
“I’ll call Med,” he said. On the way back through the galley and wardroom, Sassinak queried the situation below. No other group had broken out; in fact, none had reached the outer cordon, and the marines had lost only five to the twenty-nine enemy dead. Two of the enemy had thrown plasma grenades, damaging the inner hull slightly, but Engineering was on it. The marine assault team was about to enter the escort, and someone on it had signalled a desire to surrender. “And I trust that like I’d trust a gambler’s dice,” the marine commander said grimly.
Sassinak came back onto the bridge to find everyone helmeted and armed and as much in cover as the bridge allowed. She nodded, popped her helmet, and grinned at them, suddenly elated and ready to take on anything. Other helmets came off, the faces behind them smiling, too, but some still uncertain. Most of the consoles had red lights somewhere, blinking or steady… too many steady.
“Report,” she said, and the reports began. With portable visual scanners, Engineering had finally gotten a view of the portside pod cluster.
“Not much left to work with,” was the gruff comment. “We’ll have to use the replacement stores, and we may still be one or two short.”
“But we can shift again?”
“Oh, aye, if that’s all you want. I wouldn’t go on another chase in FTL, though, not if you want to live to see your star. It’ll get us home, that’s about it. And that’s assuming you find us a quiet place to work. From what I hear, they’re in short supply. We’ll need three to five days, and that’s for the pods alone. What you did to the portside docking bay is something else.”
Sassinak shook her head. Engineering always thought the ship counted for more than anything else. “I didn’t blow that hole,” she said, well aware that a court martial might think she’d been responsible anyway.
Fire Control was next, reporting that their external shields were still operative: to normal levels except in the damaged quadrant, where they would hold off minor weapons, and offer partial protection from larger ones. Their own distance weapons were in good shape, although the detection and ranging systems on the port side were not. “Soon as we can get someone outside, we can rig something on the midship vanes, and link it to the portside battle computers - except the one that got holed, of course.”
Nav reported that they were almost out of LOS of the oncoming ships from the planet. “They only had a two minute window, and apparently were afraid of hitting their own ship: they didn’t fire, and they won’t be in position for the next five hours.” Sassinak grimaced. Five hours wasn’t enough for any of the repairs, except - maybe - rigging the detector lines. And she still didn’t know how the fight for the escort was coming.
Just then the marine commander came on line, overriding another report. “Got it,” he said. “And they didn’t get word off, either: we had to blow a hole in the bow, and they’re all dead - nobody to question - “ Sassinak didn’t really care about that, not now. She didn’t want to worry about prisoners on board. “You wouldn’t believe this ship,” he went on. “Damn thing’s stuffed with weaponry and assault gear: like a miniature battle platform. Most of the crew travels in coldsleep: that’s how they did it.”
“Anything we need?” she asked, interrupting his recital. “Never mind - I’ll patch you to Engineering and Damage Controclass="underline" if they’ve got components we can use, take ‘em… then clear the ship. Twenty minutes.”
“Aye, captain.” Med was next: eighteen wounded, including the man who’d been with Sass, and the Weft she’d thought was dead. Its central ring and one limb were still together, and Med announced smugly that Wefts could regenerate from that. Minor ring damage, but they’d sewn it up and put the whole thing in the freezer. Sassinak shivered, and glanced around to see if the other Weft had come back in yet. No. She looked at the bridge chronometer, and stared in disbelief. All that in less than fifteen minutes?
Chapter Eleven
By the grace of whatever gods ruled this section of space, they had a brief respite, and Sassinak intended to make the most of it. She had the grain of an idea that might work to buy them still more time. Now, however, her crew labored to dismantle the escort’s docking bay hatch - although not as large as their own, it could form part of the repair far more quickly than Engineering could fabricate a complete replacement. Another working party picked its way along theZaid-Dayan’s outer hull, rigging detector wires and dishes to replace the damaged portside detectors. Inside the cruiser, the marines hauled away the battered remains of the enemy assault pods, and stacked the corpses near the docking bay. That entire quadrant remained in vacuum.
Red lights began to wink off on consoles in the bridge. A spare targeting computer came online to replace the one destroyed by a chance shot, a minor leak in Environmental Systems was repaired without incident, and Engineering even found that a single portside pod could deliver power - it had merely lost its electrical connection when the others blew. One pod wasn’t enough to do much with, but everyone felt better nonetheless.
One hour into the safe period, Sassinak confirmed that the escort vessel had been stripped of everything Engineering thought they might need, and was empty, held to the cruiser by their tractor field.
“This is what I want to do,” she explained to her senior officers.
“It’ll stretch our maneuvering capability,” said Hollister, frowning. “Especially with that hole in the hull - “
“The moon’s airless - there’s not going to be any pressure problem,” said Sass. “What I want to know is, have we got the power to decelerate, and has anyone seen a good place to go in?”
Bures, the senior Navigation Officer, shrugged. “If you wanted a rugged little moon to hide on, this one’s ideal. Getting away again without being spotted is going to be a chore - it’s open to surveillance from the ground and that other moon - but as long as we don’t move, and our stealth gear works?” Sassinak glanced at Hollister.