Venera shuddered. "We won't survive it," she said.
Aubri shook her head. "Not as you are now," she said. "Whatever your hopes and dreams were, they're obsolete now. You'll need new ones. New reasons to live." Her mouth twisted in grief. "And that's the one thing the system can't make for you."
"No! "Venera launched herself across the room. Before Hayden could reach them the two women were twisting in the air, Venera slashing madly at Aubri who tried to parry. Hayden cried out as he saw Venera's sword slide into the muscle under Aubri's left shoulder.
Hayden's lover, the Rook's armorer, tumbled backward streaming blood.
He screamed and jumped, too late, as Venera cursed and kicked off from Aubri's limp body. Venera reached a corner and ducked around the offset panels with one wide-eyed look back at Hayden.
He wrapped his arms around Aubri and turned so his own back took their impact on the far wall. She was jerking in his grasp, twists of blood reaching out of her with each breath.
"I'm—sorry," she gasped. "I was too afraid."
"Hush," he said, smoothing back her hair. "It's not your fault. It's theirs for making you and then condemning you for being who you are."
She closed her eyes and whimpered. "Hush," he said again, holding her close.
"No." She pushed against him. "No! Let me go. Get me to the, the command mirror." She pointed at a glassy rectangle on the ceiling.
"Stay still."
"No. Let—" She writhed in his arms, turning to glare at him.
"Let me beat them."
THE BRIDGE WAS full of drifting grit and the stench of smoke. Deafening explosions rattled the beams; all the portholes had shattered. Chaison clung to the arms of his chair and glared out into gleaming sunlight as the Rook came apart around him.
"Ready, sir!"Travis was holding onto a pipe with his toes, one-armed as he was with his hand in a sling; his free hand was poised over the scuttling console.
Chaison felt infinitely weary. It wasn't as though it mattered whether Falcon Formation got its hands on the radar sets. There wasn't anything they could do with them. Assuming, of course, that Aubri Mahallan did her job. The idea that she might not seemed distantly worrying, but he couldn't bring himself to focus on abstractions. Instead, he frowned past the jagged glass rimming the porthole, at the obstinately solid silhouette of the dreadnought that was even now turning to aim its biggest guns at the Rook.
MI wanted, he thought with an ironic smile, was to get rid of that thing.
As the dreadnought turned it exposed the dented portion of hull where something had collided with it. Sunlight angled around the dark hull and Chaison saw that the ship's armor had split at the bottom of that dent; there was a three-sided hole there.
"Wait a second, Travis," he said. Chaison frowned, then reached for the speaking tube.
"Rocket batteries one and two, are you there?" he shouted.
"Y-yes, sir. What do you want us to do, sir?"
"Don't bail out," he said. "You'll be shot to pieces in open air. I have a plan. Load the racks and get ready."
"Sir!"
He turned to Travis, who was watching him with a raised eyebrow. The radar man and the semaphore team were also staring. "Get to the helm," he told Travis. "We've still got power. We're going to ram her."
"Ah. I see." Travis looked faintly disappointed. Chaison had to laugh.
"No, you don't see," he said. "We're going to ram her there." He pointed. Travis began to smile.
The Rook ducked out of the path of the big guns, angling up and shooting straight at the line of Falcon Formation battleships that was bearing down on her. They were momentarily safe since the ships would not want to miss Rook and hit the dreadnought.
The Rook groaned as Travis spun them around and lined up on the dreadnought. "They're going to get at least one good shot at us sir," he said.
Chaison shrugged. "Have you got a better idea?"
Travis didn't answer, but merely pushed the control levers for ward. Chaison heard the distant engines whine toward full power.
"If you do want to bail out," he said to the semaphore team and the radar man, "now would be the time to do it."
Nobody moved.
"All right men."
Holed, dripping splinters and chunks of armor, the Rook accelerated for the last time. The air it crossed was layered with smoke and debris, the bodies of men and unexploded ordnance. Chaison watched it all pass in disgust. How pointless. He wasn't sure whether i was Falcon's invasion that he meant, or his own attempt to stop it.
"Brace for impact!" He strapped himself in and spun the chair around. It was designed to handle collisions like this; the Rook, like her sister ships, had a substantial ram on her prow. She was never in tended to ram something as big as a town, though. This whole gambit might just provide a good laugh to the Falconers, if Rook simply splatted against the dreadnought's skin like a bug on a porthole.
He closed his eyes, and thought of the home he would never see again.
The impact, when it came, was surprisingly gentle. A vast grinding sound filled Chaison's ears and the ship shuddered and bucked.
Then it eased to a stop. In the swaying light of the gas lamp, he met Travis's eyes and grinned.
"Let's see where we are." The portholes were blocked by wreckage. Both men jumped over to the bridge doors and Travis flung them open. Chaison gasped at what he saw.
The Rook was holed in dozens of places. Its interior was in shambles, with dead,men and parts of men, tangled coils of rope, broken bulkheads, and spars thrusting every which way. Way down past where the hangar had been, streams of sunlight made bluish shafts across the space. Nearer, the holes in the hull revealed only darkness.
"We're jammed inside it," Travis said wonderingly. "More than halfway."
Chaison nodded. "That's what I had in mind." He clambered through the wreckage, heading for the rocketeers who huddled next to their bent racks. "Ready to fire, men?" They stared at him.
Chaison laughed recklessly. "Come on!" he shouted. "This is the stuff of legends! We're going to rake this bastard of a ship with a barrage that'll tear it to pieces—-and we're going to do it from the inside!"
Still they hesitated—and then a loud voice burst out, "What are you waiting for?"
It was Slew, smoke-stained and trailing a broken chain from his wrist as he flew up from the aft. Beside him, helping him maneuver past the wreckage, was Ambassador Reiss. Both men had swords in their hands; both looked grimly determined.
"You heard the admiral!" yelled Slew. The men looked at each other, then leaped to their posts. Already Chaison could hear gunshots, and just behind Slew soldiers in Falcon Formation uniforms began pushing their way through gaps in the hull. The irate crew. Well, they were too late.
"Reiss, Slew, behind you. You men^fire!"
The port and starboard racks unleashed their rockets and the Rook's hull tried to collapse as everything outside blew up. Some of the rockets must have found their way down long passageways, exploding hundreds of yards away. Some didn't get ten feet. But the dreadnought had never been designed to withstand this kind of attack. As the rocketeers cleared their tubes and made to load another round, the Rook was hammered by new explosions, much bigger man those they had caused. Now the hull really was collapsing, Travis grabbing at a stanchion, Reiss and Slew's faces lit with surprise and all of them disappearing into bright sunlight as the ship sheared in two and the sky filled with gouts of smoke and flying darkness.