The Rhamphorhynchus and the Quetzalcoatlus headed off to meet the incoming flotilla. Meanwhile, I had the Pteranodon fly directly toward the two remaining Nidichars, much bigger than the singleships the others were going up against. The nearer of the Nidichars grew bigger and bigger in our holographic display. I smiled as the details resolved themselves. Nidichar-class vessels were a common Altairian type, consisting of three tubular bodies, parallel to each other, linked by connecting struts. Two of the tubes were engine pods; the third was the habitat module. On the Nidichars I’d seen before, it was easy to distinguish the living quarters from the other two. But this one had the habitat disguised to look just like another propulsion unit. Earlier in the war, the Star Guard had made a habit of shooting out the engine pods, humanely leaving the crew compartment intact. I guess with this latest subterfuge, the Alties thought we’d be reluctant to disable their ships at all.
They were wrong.
I didn’t want to use our tachyon-pulse cannon; it depleted the hyperdrive and I wanted to keep that in full reserve for later. “Shove some photons down their throats,” I said.
Nguyen nodded, and our lasers—thoughtfully animated in the holo display so we could see them—lanced out toward first one and then the other Altairian cruiser.
They responded in kind. Our force screens shimmered with auroral colors as they deflected the onslaught.
We jousted back and forth for several seconds, then my ship rocked again. Another stealth torpedo had made its way past our sensors.
“That one did some damage,” said Champlain. “Emergency bulkheads are in place on decks seven and eight. Casualty reports are coming in.”
The Altairians weren’t the only ones with a few tricks at their disposal. “Vent our reserve air tanks,” I said. “It’ll form a fog around us, and—”
“And we’ll see the disturbance created by an incoming torpedo,” said Nguyen. “Brilliant.”
“That’s why they pay me the colossal credits,” I said. “Meanwhile, aim for the struts joining the parts of their ships together; let’s see if we can perform some amputations.”
More animated laserfire crisscrossed the holobubble. Ours was colored blue; the aliens’, an appropriately sickly green.
“We’ve got the casualty reports from that last torpedo hit,” said Champlain. “Eleven dead; twenty-two injured.”
I couldn’t take the time to ask who had died—but I’d be damned if any more of my crew were going to be lost during this battle.
The computer had numbered the two remaining Nidichars with big sans-serif digits. “Concentrate all our fire on number two,” I said. The crisscrossing lasers, shooting from the eleven beam emitters deployed around the rim of our hull, all converged on the same spot on the same ship, severing one of the three connecting struts. As soon as it was cut, the beams converged on another strut, slicing through it, as well. One of the cylindrical modules fell away from the rest of the ship. Given the plasma streamers trailing from the stumps of the connecting struts, it must have been an engine pod. “Continue the surgery,” I said to Nguyen. The beams settled on a third strut.
I took a moment to glance back at the Rhamphorhynchus and Quetzalcoatlus. The Altairian singleships were swarming around the Rhamphorhynchus (colored blue in the display). Peter Chin’s lasers were sweeping through the swarm, and every few seconds I saw a singleship explode. But he was still overwhelmed.
Heidi, aboard the Quetzalcoatlus, was trying to draw the swarm’s fire, but with little success. And if she fired into the cloud of ships, either her beams or debris from her kills might strike the Rhamphorhynchus.
I swung to look at the hologram of Peter’s head. “Do you need help?” I asked.
“No, I’m okay. We’ll just—”
The fireball must have roared through his bridge from stern to bow; the holocamera stayed online long enough to show me the wall of flame behind Pete, then the flesh burning off his skull, and then—
And then nothing; just an ovoid of static where Peter Chin’s head had been. After a few seconds, even that disappeared.
I turned to the holo of Heidi, and I recognized her expression: it was the same one I myself was now forcing onto my face. She knew, as I did, that the eyes of her bridge crew were on her. She couldn’t show revulsion. She especially couldn’t show fear—not while we were still in battle. Instead, she was displaying steel-eyed determination. “Let’s get them,” she said quietly.
I nodded, and—
And then my ship reeled again. We’d all been too distracted by what had happened to the Rhamphorhynchus to notice the wake moving through the cloud of expelled gas around our ship. Another stealth torpedo had exploded against our hull.
“Casualty reports coming in—” began Champlain.
“Belay that,” I said. The young man looked startled, but there was nothing I could do about the dead and injured now. “What’s the status of our cargo?”
Champlain recovered his wits; he understood the priorities, too. “Green lights across the board,” he said.
I nodded, and the computer issued an affirming ding so that those crew members who were no longer looking at me would know I’d acknowledged the report. “Leave the Nidichars; let’s get rid of those singleships before they take out the Quetzalcoatlus.”
The starfield wheeled around us as the Pteranodon changed direction.
“Fire at will,” I said.
Our lasers lanced forward, taking out dozens of the singleships. The Quetzalcoatlus was eliminating its share of them, too. The two remaining Nidichars were now barreling towards us. Kalsi used the ACS thrusters to spin us like a top, lasers shooting off in all directions.
Suddenly, a black circle appeared in front of my eyes again: there had been an explosion on the Quetzalcoatlus. A stealth torpedo had connected directly with one of the Q’s three engine spheres, and, as I saw once the censor disengaged, the explosion had utterly destroyed the sphere and taken a big, ragged chunk out of the lens-shaped main hull.
We’d cut the singleship swarm in half by now, according to the status displays. Heidi powered up her tachyon-pulse cannon again; it was risky, with her down to just two engines, but we needed to level the playing field. The discharge from her TCP destroyed one of the two remaining Nidichars: there was now only one big Altairian ship to deal with, and forty-seven single-occupant craft.
I left Heidi to finish mopping up the singleships; we were going to take out the final Nidichar. I really didn’t want to use our TCP—the energy drain was too great. But we couldn’t risk being hit by another stealth torpedo; we’d left our cloud of expelled atmosphere far behind when we’d gone after the swarm, and—
And the Pteranodon rocked again. A structural member dropped from the ceiling, appearing as if by magic as it passed through the holobubble; it crashed to the deck next to my chair.
“Evasive maneuvers!” I shouted.
“Not possible, Captain,” said Kalsi. “That came from the planet’s surface; its rotation must have finally given a ground-based disruptor bank a line-of-sight at us.”
“Cargo status?”