"Still on track," he reported. "I'm getting small sparks from the starfighters'ion beams, but so far they're confined to the peripheral equipment. What inhell's name is keeping the destroyer off the cutter array?"
"I'll tell you later," I said, one eye on the dark stardrive section of mycontrol board and the other on my displays. I was still pulling evasivemaneuvers, if that was the right term for the graceless wallowing that was allthe Icarus was capable of; but if the destroyer was showing a new cautiontoward us, the same could not be said of the fighters. They had increased their speedand split up their formation, still playing their ion beams across the enginesection but clearly intent on bypassing that area, driving up along the hullfrom the rear, and converging on the cutter array from three differentdirections.
And while they might give their ion beams one last chance once they got there, they wouldn't waste much more time with them before switching over to theirlasers and what at that range would be an almost-trivial surgical-qualityoperation. "Revs?" I barked.
"Thirty seconds," he called.
"We don't have thirty seconds," I snapped back. The fighters were sweepingpastthe engine section now, keeping close to the hull in case we had some recessedweaponry nodes hidden among the maneuvering vents. "We've got maybe ten."
"Can't do it," he insisted. "Try to stall them off."
I clenched my teeth. "Then hang on."
And jamming my hands across the whole line of control keys, I sent thethruster exhaust blasting out the entire group of maneuvering vents at once.
The Icarus jerked like a horse trying to dash madly off in all directions. Buteven with that, our reaction wasn't anywhere near as dramatic as that of thethree fighters. Caught directly in the multiple blasts of superheated gas, theywobbled outward, their nice neat pacing vectors thrown completely off target.
Then they were out of the gusts, their own maneuvering vents blowing steam asthey fought to correct from the outward boosts they'd just been given. Islappedall the vents back off except for the main starboard ones, sending the Icarusinto another of its slow-motion turns. One of the fighters' tail fins scrapedagainst our hull as he wasn't quite able to get out of the way in time, andall of them were forced to again correct their vectors. I caught the mutedreflection from one of the fighters as the armorplate irised away from itsforward laser cluster.
And then, with a similarly muted but far more welcome flicker of light, thestardrive section of my control board lit up. "Up and green," Nicabar shouted.
I didn't answer; my fingers were already jabbing at the activation switchesand the preprogrammed course code I'd laid in. There was a noise from the comm—theNajiki commander, no doubt, saying something extremely rude—and then thecutter array did its electronic magic, and the stars vanished from around us. "Welldone," Ixil murmured.
He'd spoken too soon. I was just starting to breathe again when the deck underme lurched violently. "Revs?" I snapped.
"Spark damage," he called back. "Half the calibrations have been scrambled. Wehave to shut down."
"Do it," I said, keying off the controls from my end. The stars reemerged, only this time with no planet or nearby sun anywhere in sight. I gave the area aquick scan, but it was pure reflex: Our brief flight had put us in the centerof nowhere, light-years from anywhere. For the moment, at least, we werecompletelysafe from any outside trouble.
"Okay, we're closed down," Nicabar reported a minute later.
"Damage?"
"Doesn't look like anything major," he said. "A few popped circuit breakers, probably a tube or two that'll need replacing, but I know we've got spares.
And of course, a lot of recalibrating will have to be done. Time-consuming butrelatively straightforward."
"Ixil can help with that," I told him, closing the rest of my board down tostandby. No point leaving it active; we weren't going anywhere for a while.
"That can wait," Nicabar said. "You said you'd tell me later how we wereshrugging off those ion beams. Well, it's later."
I grimaced. But he was right. It was time I clued the rest of them in on justwhat it was we were sitting on here. "It is indeed," I acknowledged, keyingthe intercom for all-ship. "Everyone, get your stuff shut down and then assemblein the dayroom. I've got a little story to tell you."
THEY SAT IN silence, looking slightly sandbagged for the most part, while Igavethem the whole thing.
Most of it, anyway. I left out Tera's true identity and inside-person status, and the fact that Cameron—Alexander Borodin, rather—had been a secret passengerfor the first part of our trip. I also glossed over the part Tera had playedin the various incidents that had had me tied up in mental knots for most of thattime. The latter part didn't take much glossing, actually, given that Ixil andI were the only ones who'd known about most of them anyway.
I also left Jones's death out of the picture, leaving it as an impliedaccident.
Confronting a group of suspects with the knowledge that one of them is akiller might be an effective way to spark a guilty reaction, but at the moment myforemost interest was getting the Icarus to Earth, and for that I needed fullcooperation from all of them. Time enough to sort out Jones's murder if andwhen we made it that far.
While the rest were busy looking flabbergasted, Tera was equally busy glaringat me in menacing silence, from which I gathered she thought I should havecleared this grand revelation with her before I let everyone else in on the bigsecret.
I could sympathize with that attitude; but if I had consulted her she wouldprobably have forbidden me to do so. Then I would have had to go directlyagainst her wishes, which would have left her madder at me than she wasalready.
To say they were stunned would have been an understatement. To say they were suspicious and unbelieving, however, would have been right on the money. "Youmust think we're idiots, McKell," Shawn snorted when I'd finished. "Mysteriousalien technology? Oh, come on."
"And with the whole of the Patth race panting down our necks to get at it,"
Everett added, shaking his head. "Really, McKell, you should have had time tocome up with something better than this one."
"I expected this reaction," I said, looking over at Ixil. "You have thenecessary?"
Silently, he produced the connector tool he'd brought from the mechanics room.
Just as silently, he crossed to the back of the dayroom and removed one of theinner hull plates.
One by one, they went down into the 'tweenhull area to experience the aliengravitational field for themselves. Some took longer than others; but by thetime they came up they were all convinced.
They were also, to a man, scared right down to their socks.
"This is crazy," Everett said, hunched over a tall whiskey sour. Alcoholicdrinks of one sort or another had somehow been the beverage of choice for eachof them as he came out of the 'tweenhull area. "Crazy. This is a job forprofessionals, not a bunch of loose spacers picked off the Meima streets."
"Believe me, I'd like nothing better than to have a squad of EarthGuardMarines on this instead of us," I agreed wholeheartedly. "But they're not here. Weare."
"I presume you realize that if the Patth get their hands on us we're dead,"
Nicabar pointed out darkly, peering into his own drink. "Not a chance in theworld they'd let us go. Not with what we know about this ship."
"And what do we know about it?" Shawn countered, his fingertips tappingnervously on the table. "Seriously, what do we know? McKell says he thinksit's an alien stardrive. So what makes him the big expert?"
"No, he may be right," Chort said before I could reply. "Early Craeanstardrives used a very similar dual-sphere design, with an open resonance chamber as oneof them. Though much smaller, of course."