She turned and headed for the bridge. Hugin and Munin paced solemnly behind her.
"Closing contact," the Jannisar XO reported.
The captain ignored him for a moment. He was running tactical moves through his brain—the enemy ship will (a) engage in combat... and be destroyed; (b) surrender... impossible: (c) launch a diversion and enter atmosphere.
Only possibility...
"ECM room," he called up. "Report readiness."
The delay was long. "Most units in readiness, Sigfehr. Interdiction system standing by, target/differ system plus/minus forty percent, blocking at full standby."
His screen broke:
32 MINUTES UNTIL INTERCEPT... 33 MINUTES UNTIL TARGET BREAKS ATMOSPHERE.
The crab Cienfuegos continued its so-far-successful scuttle.
Inside the control room, Mantis troopers were tightly strapped down—including the tigers who, isolated in their capsules, were somewhat less than happy about the state of the world. The battle was, from then on, in the hands of whatever gods still existed in the fortieth century.
Except for the tigers, all were clad in the phototrope camouflage gear of operational Mantis soldiers. They wore no badges, no indication of rank, just the black on their left collar tabs and the flat-black Mantis emblem on their right.
Three screens glowed dully—the proximity detector locked on the Jann cruiser, the main monitor on the upcoming world, whose atmosphere had already begun to show as a hazy glare, and Ida's central nav-screen.
Doc provided the needless and somewhat sadistic commentary: "Sixteen minutes until atmosphere... 15 minutes until the Turnmaa is in firing range... 15 minutes/fourteen minutes... 14.90 minutes... 14.30 minutes, congratulations, Ida, you've picked up a lead."
Alex broke in. The tubby three-gee-world Scotsman was lying on his accel couch. He'd insisted that if he were going to die, he was going to die in uniform. And the others agreed.
"It wae back ae Airt...ane, b'tore the Emp'ror, even. In those days, m'ancestors wae called Highlanders, aye."
"Twelve minutes, even, and closing," Ida announced flatly.
"Now, in th' elder days, tha' Brits wae enemies. E'en tha, we Scots ran th' Empire tha had, wi'out tha' known it."
In spite of the tension, Sten got interested.
"Howinhell, Alex, can anybody run an empire without the boss knowing about it?"
"Ten minutes to atmosphere," Doc said.
"Ah 'splain thae some other time, lad. So, one braw day, there's this reg'mint ae Brit guards, aw braw an' proud in their red uniforms an' muskits. An' th' walkin' along thro' this wee glen, wi' they band playin' an' drumits crashin' an singin' and carryin' on, an' all ae sudden, they hears this shout frae th'crags abouve 'em. 'Ah'm Red Rory a' th' Glen!'
"An' th' Brit general 'e looks up th' crag, an' here's this braw enormous Highlander, wi' his kilt blowin' an' his bearskin o'er one shoulder an' aye this braw great claymore in his hand. 'E has this great flowit beard on him.
"An' yon giant, 'e shouts just again, 'Ah'm Red Rory a' th' Glen! Send oop y'best pickit man.'
"An' so the Brit gen'rl turns to his adj'tant an' says, ' Adj'tant! Send up our best man. Ah wan' tha' mon's head!'"
"Hold on the story," Ida cut in coldly. "We're on launch."
Dead silence in the control room... except for the increased panting of the lashed-down tigers.
Consider three objects, the target/goal, the pursurer, and the pursued. Seconds... now milliseconds in the light-year chase... as the Cienfuegos tries to hide in-atmosphere. Three factors in the equation. And then an unexpected fourth as the decoy-missile launched.
"Captain! I have a double target!"
"Hold course. Repeat, hold course. ECM room, do you have a selection?"
"Negative, captain. We have a negative...Talamein help us... all systems lost in ground-clutter."
The captain closed the com circuit. Forced down the sailor oaths that rose unasked in his regimented memory. Substituted a prayer. "May the spirit of Talamein—as seen in his only true prophet Ingild—be with us. All stations! Stand by for combat!"
The Jann cruiser suddenly looked more like a dolphin school as the Vydal close-range ship-to-ship missile stations fired. Fired, cut power, and looked around for a target.
VYDAL-OPERATOR INPUT: TARGET NO TARGET... CLUTTER ECHO HAVE TARGET TARGET TARGET DOUBLE TARGET... DOUBLE LAUNCH FIRST TARGET NONACTIVE FIRST TARGET POSSIBLE POWER.. TARGET. I HAVE A TARGET. HOMING ALL SYSTEMS HOMING ALL OTHER UNITS SLAVE TO HOMING HOMING...
New, the Vydal-series missiles were not the brightest missiles the Empire ever built. After twenty years' hard service, several in the less-than-adequate maintenance the warriors of the Jann used, they were no longer even what they had once been.
Most of the Vydals obediently followed the tarted-up decoy launch as it blasted into deep space. But one more determined, more bright, or more iconoclastic than its brothers, speared flame from its drive tubes and homed on the Cienfuegos.
In the Jann cruiser, its operator cursed as he tried, without success, to divert the Vydal to its "proper" target. But the lone missile detonated barely 1000 meters from the Cienfuegos as the ship began the first white-hot skip into the atmosphere of the unknown world.
Ida had been trying to bring the Cienfuegos—a vehicle with the glide characteristics of an oval brick—successfully in-atmosphere for a landing, but the one kt detonation of the Vydal put paid to the plan. The Cienfuegos flipped, turned, spun. No problem in deep space—down was only where the McLean generators defined it—but entering a world?
The explosion crushed the Cienfuegos' cargo holds and flipped the crablike ship a full 180 degrees. Top-to-bottom, of course, since disaster never comes as a solitary guest, just as the Cienfuegos finally hit solid atmosphere.
Doc was the only being who might have found the situation humorous as the craft spun wildly out of control, beyond the skew-path Ida had plotted, beyond even a conventional dive, beyond any kind of sanity.
But Doc was not chuckling. He was, after all, seconds from death.
As were Sten and the other members of Mantis.
The ship crackled out of the skies and plunged into the upper atmosphere. Sensors sniffed wildly for surface... any kind of molecular surface at all.
Figures danced and swirled across the ship's computer screen and Sten shouted strings of changing numbers at Ida. Her fingers flowed across the controls, tucking in the impedimenta of the mining ship, sliding out two stubby wings. She tensed, as she felt the beginnings of atmosphere. Brought the nose down gently... gently... The ship hit the first layer of air and spun wildly.
Ida slammed on the right thruster, a short violent flare, then off again. Hit the left. And slowly brought the ship back under control. Nose in again. Just right. Slicing deeper into the air a degree at a time. Then the ship settled out, behaving like a ship again.
Sten glanced around. Bet was pale in her seat, but steady. Alex was flexing excess gees out of his muscles. And Doc had the fixed stare in his teddy-bear face that he got when he was plotting revenge on someone. Ida shot a grin over her shoulder.
"Now let's find a place to hide," Sten said.
She just nodded and turned back to the controls.
Suddenly the jet stream hit them at twice the speed of sound. On the Cienfuegos girders bent and groaned. Cables snapped and whipped, sparking and hissing like electric snakes.
The massive air current tossed the Cienfuegos again, further out of control and driving it helplessly down toward the surface of the unknown planet.