Fighting this battle no more aggressively than a spider tending a web, we could not hit those U.A. battleships until they entered our trap. Franks would return in another thirty-two minutes. We either had to clear the enemy ships out of the area or they would catch our self-broadcasting fleet off guard. Time was running out.
Staring out the viewport and seeing nothing but darkness, I gave up on the Warshaw Plan. We were in a life-and-death battle, and he wanted to fight it like a specking engineer—relying on antiquated weapons and enemies blundering into his trap. Granted, booting up the weapons systems on a bunch of derelict ships was a brilliant piece of speckery; he had ginned up a fighting chance in a lost situation. But we would not win unless we took the reins.
Five minutes ticked by before any of the battleships appeared again. I waited alone in that blasted conference room, in the stark gloom. The light of one battleship appeared in the extreme corner of the viewport. The big ship was so far away that its light might have been the signature of a firefly.
What were they doing out there? If they had the ability to track us this far, they should have known that Franks had taken our self-broadcasters back to Terraneau. They had to know.
The spark of light that looked no bigger than a firefly cut a twisted path in the distance. No longer swimming in straight strokes, the battleship conducted a more methodical search, dodging this way and that as it came closer. It circled completely around one wreck.
A second battleship appeared, loosely shadowing the first. The third one would have to be nearby, guarding their flank. Another eight minutes passed as the battleships slowly meandered into range.
“What if only two of them come in range, are you going to take the shot?” I asked Warshaw.
“Take the shot? Is that Marine lingo?” he asked.
Engage, shoot the specker, give them a laser enema, a dozen responses ran through my mind, some positive, some not. I said nothing.
“There are three U.A. ships out there. We won’t accomplish our objective by only sinking two of them,” Warshaw said.
“Franks is going to broadcast into the area in less than thirty minutes. This may be the last time any of those ships stumbles into your shooting gallery,” I said.
“Stay out of this, Harris,” Warshaw repeated. “This is not a friendly game of bullets and grenades. Battlefield tactics don’t work here.”
“Taking out one of those birds may just even the odds for Franks,” I said.
“Bullshit, Harris. If Franks comes in unprepared, they’ll use him for target practice.” Warshaw signed off as one of the U.A. ships swished past my viewport. I checked the time—21:49, just eleven minutes and Franks would fly in to rendezvous.
Warshaw had driven one point home above all else, that we were as good as dead unless we destroyed all three enemy ships. Without announcing my intentions, I slipped out of the observation area and headed back to the docking bay.
I dropped down two decks, skirted a badly damaged corridor along the outer edge of the ship, and found an inner corridor leading toward the rear of the ship. Lights flickered inside one of the hatches as I passed. I peered in and saw some of Warshaw’s men removing a panel from a wall. They ran cables from a jeep-sized crate into the circuits they had uncovered.
I did not have time to worry about weapons systems, though I would die in the next few minutes if Warshaw’s men could not get the weapons systems working.
My plan hinged on my finding a pilot for the transport. I entered the docking bay, not sure whether the man piloting our transport had remained in his bird. Someone had pivoted the transport around so that its nose pointed out toward space. The rear doors sat wide open, revealing an empty kettle, the gravity off. I launched myself up the ramp, paused just long enough to seal the rear hatch, then kicked off the floor to the cockpit, not bothering with the ladder.
For one cold moment, I thought that the cockpit was empty, but then a man in pilot gear hovered over to meet me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Staring into the pilot’s face, I switched on the edge lighting around my visor, hoping to blind him. Then, bracing my knee under a bolted-down chair so that I had some purchase, I grabbed the man and slung him across the cockpit. He landed in his pilot’s chair and said, “Hey!”
“Hey”? I thought. What an asshole.
I whipped out my particle-beam pistol, a tiny, unimpressive-looking weapon with a great capacity for doing damage, and I tapped it against the pilot’s visor. “I want to go for a ride,” I said. When he did not respond right away, I added, “Call for help, and I’ll fry you on the spot.”
I was already too late.
“Harris, what are you doing?” It was Warshaw.
The asshole must have started calling for help while I was slinging him into his chair. “You miserable little prick,” I said to the pilot, tapping my pistol against his visor as I spoke each word.
“Please, just …”
“Harris, get your ass up here.” Warshaw barked the command at me as if he were speaking to a buck private.
“Do you want to die now, or take your chances?” I asked the pilot.
“Harris, I said get up here. Now!”
The pilot must have thought my question was rhetorical. He did not answer.
I needed to keep the guy scared. No matter what else happened, I needed him so scared of me that he did not consider consequences. Still leveraging myself with my legs, I leaned forward and slammed my fist into his gut.
If he’d been dressed in stiff combat armor, I would have broken my fingers and wrist long before he felt a thing, but he felt this blow. The poor son of a bitch doubled over right there in his seat, burying his visor in his knees. His soft-shelled armor might not have offered him much protection, but it let him double over better than combat armor would have.
Judging by the way Warshaw shouted, “Harris, what the speck do you think you are doing?” I decided the pilot must have been pleading for help when I hit him.
“This is a Marine operation, Admiral,” I said. Then I turned my attention to the pilot. “Next time I use this, asshole,” I said, pressing my pistol to his visor once more. “Now, get us out of here.”
“We’ll settle up, Harris. When this is over, you and I are going to settle up,” Warshaw yelled. He might have said more, but he had more important things on his mind than my mutiny.
Warshaw’s hands were tied. His engineers had opened the locks but never brought them online. He could not shut the doors on me, and I was the only man on the ship with a gun. He had no way to stop the transport from leaving, and the terrified pilot was not going to put up a fight.
“Where are we going?” the pilot asked. He sounded as if he was still fighting for breath.
I cuffed the man across the side of his head with my pistol. I did not enjoy terrorizing the boy, but I needed him scared and obedient. “Just take us out, fast.”
“There are battleships out there!”
“I know, I saw them,” I said.
“They’re going to see us,” the pilot said. “They’ll shoot us down.”
“If they want us, they’re going to have to come and get us,” I said, trying to remember the layout of Warshaw’s map. I tapped my pistol on the pilot’s visor, and he lifted us off the deck and started down the runway. Our transport lumbered through the tunnel at such a slow rate that I might have been able to outrun it on foot.
21:53:36
At 2200, Franks would arrive. That gave us six minutes until he broadcast with his shields down and his guns asleep. I pistol-whipped the pilot, and growled, “Faster, asshole.”
The pilot did not say anything, but the transport picked up speed.
21:54:00