A troubled Cale dropped into one of the lounge’s comfortable seats as Tess activated the laser fire control system and the familiar targeting grid appeared on the main viewscreen.
“Time, Tess?”
“E minus four minutes and counting, Captain,” came the crisp reply.
Four minutes! That exciting hug and that incredible kiss had lasted less than a minute? Surely, that was impossible! “Are you sure, Tess?” he blurted before chiding himself. Of course, Tess was sure!
“Now three minutes, fifty-one seconds, Captain,” Tess replied in a neutral tone.
Cursing himself silently, Cale forced himself to concentrate on Tess’s countdown. “As soon as we emerge, change your attitude ninety degrees in any direction. Once you have inertial drives, boost max in that direction. If she’s already there, they may not be able to change course and attitude quickly enough to finish us off. If we get there first, you can cut your drives and swap ends as soon as you detect an emergence. They should be expecting us to continue our emergence course while we recal. Maybe we can just run away. But if not, with any luck we’ll get a few shots at her fat belly before she can adjust her attitude. Of course, we’ll need a full sensor scan as soon as possible after we emerge.”
Tess’s tone was patient. “Yes, Captain. Your previous instructions were quite clear.”
Cale cursed himself again, but failed to reply as the time hack on the viewscreen showed less than a minute to emergence.
As the time flicked from “00:01” to “00:00,” the familiar twisting sensation of illness passing too quickly to be felt told Cale they had emerged. Space beyond the laser-targeting grid assumed the star flecks of normal space. Cale started to ask Tess about her sensor scans, but her voice forestalled him.
“Initial scan complete, Captain,” Tess reported in her crisp no-nonsense tone. “No traffic or hazards in range.”
“All right, Tess. Change attitude and let’s boost max and put as much distance as possible between us and that jump point.” The starfield slewed around dizzyingly.
“Boost is at max, Captain,” Tess reported. “ Stellar index shows jump point for Angeles to be approximately 30 degrees around the plane of the ecliptic. We are driving ninety degrees to solar south of our emergence course at 1.52 G pending recalculation and reorientation.”
Then she continued more conversationally, “Long-range scan will be complete in 38.3 seconds, but so far, no sign of our pursuer.”
“Great,” Cale replied. “But keep your sensors hot and be ready to adjust attitude. Let’s build up as much delta vee as we can, but be ready to shut down the drive and swap ends.” He could almost see an affirmative nod accompanying her calm “Yes, Captain.”
Tense silence settled in as Cheetah drove away from the jump point.
It was some five minutes later, just as Cale was beginning to relax that Tess said, “Captain! I show an emergence at the jump point. I am cutting the inertial drive and beginning attitude reversal.”
Cale watched the star field slew around again as Tess reversed her attitude, then freeze. The jump point through which they had just emerged was undetectable by normal instruments, of course, so the star field now filling the viewscreen seemed identical to the previous one.
“Can you ID the ship?” Cale asked.
“The ship has no beacon running,” Tess replied. “However, she is Epsilon class.”
“That’s our pirate,” Cale replied. “Lack of a beacon is the final verification. What is our present velocity, and is there any chance he could catch us?”
“We are coasting at 0.012 percent of light speed. His capabilities are unknown, but if he has the standard sensor suite, he may have difficulty locating us, since we are no longer emitting drive traces.”
“Captain,” Tess continued, more urgently. “Our sensors now have a side view of the pursuer. His hull is greatly enlarged in the engine room section.”
Cale snapped to attention. “Then there’s no choice. We cannot run; he probably has engines from a delta or Din-class. Tell Dee to fire on the bridge area. I’ll concentrate on the engines.” He punctuated the sentence by mashing the ‘fire’ button on the laser control. At almost exactly the same time he felt, rather than heard, a thrumming vibration through Cheetah ’s hull as Dee opened fire with the quickfirer.
Tess displayed the track of the otherwise invisible laser beam as it impacted the bulging engine room of the pirate. She also displayed the tracks of the quickfirers’ rocket projectiles as Dee walked them across the sensor array marking the ship’s bridge.
The pirate still had no shields; he was apparently still spinning down his jump drives and powering up the inertial drives that would provide power to both shields and weapons. Antennas severed by the stream of collapsium-plated rockets began drifting away from the enemy’s hull.
Cheetah ’s inertial drives were idle, so Tess could route all their power production to the weapons. The laser recharged in less than three seconds, and Cale again slashed the beam across the pirate’s engine room. There was a few seconds’ pause in the thrumming vibration as Tess’s mechs reloaded the quickfirer.
The thrumming resumed, and suddenly the bridge area of the enemy belched instantly freezing atmosphere. Dee’s shots had penetrated both the outer and inner hulls and opened her bridge, and perhaps the whole ship, to vacuum. Cale fired one last slashing beam, and then called, “Cease fire.” The thrumming stopped, but his finger rested on the firing button as he assessed the damage to the pirate.
They had certainly had time to spin up their inertial drives, but they still showed no shields, and seemed to be drifting, not under control. If any of the pirates were still alive, Cale guessed their entire attention would be on survival, not on their former victim.
Cale watched for a few more moments for signs of life aboard the pirate, and then said, “Okay, Tess, adjust your attitude and let’s boost max for the jump point. You can recal on the way.”
Unfortunately, Dee entered the lounge in time to hear his instructions. Her face reddened. “NO!” she shouted. “What are you talking about? There may be injured or dying people aboard that ship! We have to try to help them!”
Cale shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. What we have to do is get away from here before the survivors get drives or weapons operational.”
Dee snorted. “Ridiculous! I insist that you let me go aboard and offer my help!”
Cale again shook his head. “If we stay here, or even worse, go aboard, any survivors will either kill us for our ship, or carry on with their plans for torture or enslavement. These are pirates we’re talking about, not traders. Consciences and gratitude are not part of the package.”
“How can you know that? You can’t know that!”
Cale sighed. “Actually, I can know that, and I do. I’ve dealt with pirates before.” He noted that the star field in the viewscreen was wheeling about as Tess adjusted her attitude, but he knew better than to mention it to Dee.
He was thinking hard, trying to figure out how to explain to Dee without revealing too much. “I know how they think,” he continued. “If their ship is badly damaged, they’ll simply take any other ship available. There are few places a pirate can get a badly damaged ship repaired without many hard questions. Chances are that captain has already slit the throats of any badly injured crewmen, and has all the survivors working on getting engines and especially weapons operational. Piracy is a capital crime on almost any inhabited planet in the universe. The evidence aboard that ship would hang everyone aboard. So, any good Samaritan that stops to help them will regret it.”