"You have a magnificent lady, Theodore Bear," he told the solemn-faced little toy. "And I'm going to do my best to make her happy."
He turned back to her column and cleared his throat, carefully. Time, and more than time, to change the subject. "Right," he said. "Now that we've both established why we've been touchy, let's see if we can figure out what our options are."
"Options?" she replied, confused.
"Certainly." He raised his chin defiantly. "I intend to spend the rest of my life with you, and I don't intend that to be restricted to how long it takes before the pirates find us or we freeze to death! So let's figure out some options, hang it all!"
To his great joy and relief, she actually laughed. And if there was an edge of hysteria in it, he chose to ignore that little nuance.
"Right," she said. "Options. Well, we can start with the servos, I guess..."
Tia snuggled down into his arms, and turned into a big blue toy bear. The bear looked at him reproachfully. He started to get up, but the bedcoverings had turned to snowdrifts, and he was frozen in place. The bear tried to chip him out, but its blunt arms were too soft to make an impression on the ice-covered drifts. Then he heard rumbling, and looked up, to see an avalanche poised to crash down on him like some kind of slow-motion wave. The avalanche rumbled, and Tia-the-bear growled back, interposing herself between him and the tumbling snow.
"Alex, wake up!"
He floundered awake, flailing at the bedclothes, hitting the light button more by accident than anything else. He blinked as the light came up full, blinding him, his legs trapped in a tangle of sheets and blankets. "What?" he said, his tongue too thick for his mouth. "Who? Where?"
"Alex," Tia said, her voice strained, but excited. "Alex, I have been trying to get you to wake up for fifteen minutes! There's a CenSec ship Upstairs, and it's beating the tail off those two pirates!"
CenSec? Spirits of space-
"What happened?" he asked, grabbing for clothing and pulling it on. "From the beginning,"
"The first I knew of it was when one of the pirates sent a warning down to the ship here to stay under cover and quiet. I got the impression that they thought it was just an ordinary Survey ship, until it locked onto one of them and started blasting." Tia had brought up all of her systems again; fresher air was moving briskly through the ventilator, all the lights and boards were up and active in the main cabin. "That was when all the scans stopped, and I started breaking loose. I ran that freeze-thaw cycle you suggested, and a couple of minutes ago, I fired the engines. I can definitely move, and I'm pretty sure I can pull out of here without too much trouble. I might lose some paint and some bits of things on my surface, but nothing that can't be repaired."
"What about Upstairs?" he asked, running for his chair without stopping for shoes or even socks, and strapping himself down.
"Good news and bad news. The CenSec ship looks like its going to take both the pirates," she replied. "The bad news is that while I can receive, I can't seem to broadcast. The ice might have jammed something, I can't tell."
"All right; we can move, and the ambush Upstairs is being taken care of." Alex clipped the last of his restraint belts in place; when Tia moved, it could be abruptly, and with little warning. "But if we can't broadcast, we can't warn CenSec that there's another ship down here. We can't even identify ourselves as a friend. And we'll be a sitting duck for the pirates if we try to rise. They can just hide in their blinds and ambush the CenSec ship, then wait to see if we come out of hiding, as soon as we clear their horizon they can pot us."
Alex considered the problem as dispassionately as he could. "Can we stay below their horizon until we're out of range?"
Tia threw up a map as an answer. If the pirate chose to pursue them, there was no way that she could stay out of range of medium guns, and they had to assume that was what the pirate had.
"There has to be a way to keep them on the ground, somehow," Alex muttered, chewing a hangnail, aware that with every second that passed their window of opportunity was closing. "What's going on Upstairs?"
"The first ship is heavily damaged. If I'm reading the tactics right, the CenSec ship is going to move in for the kill, provided the other pirate gives him a chance."
Alex turned his attention back to their own problem. "If we could just cripple them, throw enough rocks down on them or, wait a minute. Bring up the views of the building they're hiding in, the ones you got from my camera."
Tia obeyed, and Alex studied the situation carefully, matching pictures with memory. "Interesting thing about those hills. See how some of them look broken off, as if those tips get too heavy to support after a while? I bet that's because the winds come in from different directions and scour out under the crests once in a while. Can you give me a better shot of the hills overhanging those buildings?"
"No problem." The viewpoint pulled back, displaying one of those wave-crest hills overshadowing the building with the partial roof. "Alex!" she exclaimed.
"You see it too," he said with satisfaction. "All right girl, think we can pull this off?"
For answer, she revved her engines. "Be a nice change to hit back, for once!"
"Then let's lift!"
The engines built from a quiet purr to a bone-deep, bass rumble, more felt than heard. Tia pulled in her landing gear, then began rocking herself by engaging null-grav, first on the starboard, then on the port side, each time rolling a little more. Alex did what he could, playing with the attitude jets, trying to undercut some of the ice.
Her nose rose, until Alex tilted back in his chair at about a forty-five degree angle. That was when Tia cut loose with the full power of her rear thrusters.
"We're moving!" she shouted over the roar of her own engines, engines normally reserved only for in-atmosphere flight. There was no sensation of movement, but Alex clearly heard the scrape of ice along her hull, and winced, knowing that without a long stint in dry dock, Tia would look worse than Hank's old trampfreighter.
Suddenly, they were free.
Tia killed the engines and engaged full null-gee drive, hovering just above the surface of the snow in eerie silence.
"CenSec got the first ship; the other one jumped them. It looks pretty even," Tia said shortly, as Alex heard the whine of the landing gear being dropped again. "So far, no one has noticed us. Are you braced?"
"Go for it," he replied. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Hold on," she said shortly.
She shot skyward, going for altitude. She knew the capabilities of her hull better than Alex did; he was going to leave this in her hands. The hill they wanted was less than a kilometer away, when they'd gotten high enough, Tia nosed over and dove for it. She aimed straight for the crest, as if it were a target and she a projectile.
Sudden fear clutched at his throat, his heart going a million beats per second. She can't mean to ram. Alex froze, his hands clutching the armrests.
At the last minute, Tia rolled her nose up, hitting the crest of the hill with her landing gear instead of her nose.
The shriek and crunch of agonized metal told Alex that they were not going to make port anywhere but a space station now. The impact rammed him back into his chair, the lights flickered and went out, and crash systems deployed, cushioning him from worse shock. Even so, he blacked out for a moment.