"Yes, sir," both of them chorused.
"Because if you screw up while on this mission, if there's one loose word from either of you-" he paused, almost embarrassed at the melodramatic words he was about to use but which he knew were absolutely necessary, " — you will be terminated."
The two were silent.
"Do we understand each other and what I've just said?"
"Yes, sir."
Turner smiled and, motioning for the two to follow, he tossed a tip on the table and headed for the door.
CHAPTER THREE
Hallin System inside the Kilrathi Empire. Confederation date 2634.121
"A second ship's just come through the jump point!"
Hans Kruger, copilot of the smuggler ship Phantom, felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Looking nervously over at the plot board, to where the pilot and owner of the ship, Kevin Milady, was pointing, he saw the second red blip wink to life. Seconds later a third blip appeared.
"Get me a readout on it!" Milady snapped.
Hans punched in a data inquiry and on a side screen the silhouette of a Kilrathi Targu class frigate appeared.
"All right, people, there's some big boys waiting up ahead," Milady cried.
"Got 'em on my board," came the reply from overhead.
Hans looked up at their topside gunner and navigator, Igor. Igor, grinning, took a small cup and spit a stream of tobacco juice into it; several of the drops splattered down to land in Hans' lap.
Again he felt the rage boiling over at the humiliations Igor had been heaping on him ever since he had signed on board ship back on Gainers World. He knew it was part of the hazing a new scrub had to endure until he had proven himself. The problem was that, on a ship like the Phantom, the hazing had a deadly edge to it. In a one on one against Igor, chances were he'd lose and the result would not just be a sound thrashing. Igor wouldn't be satisfied unless the thrashing included a clipped ear, a jagged scar across the face, a missing eye, or perhaps even a cut throat. Hans knew that playing around with a smuggler crew from the Landreich had its tougher side, but then again, there were no other alternatives.
Back in Confed territory he was wanted for murder. Granted, it was self-defense, but no court would ever bother to see that side of it, if he was even fortunate enough to make it to court. A lot had happened to him in his twenty-one years, none of it all that good. To escape a drunken father and life in a dreary icebound mining settlement on a godforsaken world, he had dreamed of the Academy as a way out. But at seventeen the acceptance had not come. Rather than endure another day he signed on to the next merchant ship leaving port, and for four years worked his way up through the ranks of the Sarn shipping firm, earning his copilot's license at twenty.
Things had been looking bright. Old man Haffa Sarn had even started to consider him to be one of his extended family, that is, until he killed one of Haffa's sons in a fight over a girl. Some might have said Hans had a streak of the chivalrous in him for protecting a bar girl from a lout like Venela Sarn, but old man Sarn would never see it that way. The finer distinction of Venela pulling a blaster first to blow the girl away for her impertinent refusal would most certainly be forgotten by Haffa, who, for form's sake, had promised that Hans would be "sleeping with the asteroids."
So, for reasons of health, he had hopped the first ship pulling out of Gainer's World and Phantom was in need of a copilot. They hadn't told him where they were going, and it took some time to get used to the smell. The cleanup job for the remains of the last copilot had failed to locate the random bits of tissue, brains and blood scattered around the interior of the ship, splattered there after the unfortunate soul took a direct hit from a mass driver round which penetrated the shields and forward viewport.
"Say, Marilyn, what's going on with those bastards behind us?" Kevin shouted, breaking Hans out of his contemplation of just how wretched he felt at the moment.
Hans looked back over his shoulder and down the access passage to where Marilyn Langer, the ship's chief engineer and tail gunner squatted, hunched over her twin mass drivers. He could not help but admire the view, though if Marilyn knew he was checking her out, his fate might very well be the same as that of the last copilot.
"Four of the bastards and still closing up. Damn, they must have upgraded the engines on those Cat fighters."
Hans continued to stare at the forward plot board.
"The two frigates are accelerating," Hans announced. "Time to closing one minute and thirty-seven seconds."
He looked over at Kevin, who turned to gaze at him with his one good eye. Kevin grinned sardonically.
"Think we're dead?"
"It doesn't look good," Hans choked out.
"When you run the frontier of the Cats, ya gotta pay," Milady announced with a smile. "Now hang on!"
Before Hans could even reply Milady slammed his stick forward while cutting off the hydrogen scoop fields which served the dual role of pulling in the stray hydrogen atoms to be found in deep space for fuel and at the same time providing the drag which enabled a ship to turn and maneuver as if it was inside a planet's atmosphere. With the scoops shut down the ship didn't go into a dive but simply tumbled over on its x-axis so that in an instant it was facing «backwards» to its trajectory towards the jump point. Milady slapped in full throttle, popped the scoops back open and Hans wanted to scream a protest, they were bleeding off their speed and rapidly slowing down so that they'd be a sitting duck for the fighters closing in from one direction and the frigates sealing off their escape in the other.
The inertia-dampening system was barely adequate on the battered ship and Hans grunted, gasping for breath as he was slammed into his seat, the ship creaking and groaning in protest from the ten g stress load. Igor opened up with the topside guns, his photon blasts lighting up space. Hans had no idea what Igor was firing at, no target was visible as stitches of fire slashed back and forth in the darkness, dazzling his vision. Four points of light now erupted in front of him, bolts of light snapping back.
Hans wanted to duck as one of the streaks of light appeared to slash past the cockpit and laced into the starboard wing, a shower of sparks erupting as Phantom's shielding dissipated the energy.
"Lock on with the lasers!" Kevin shouted, and Hans nervously leaned forward to peer at the heads up display. Four blips danced across the glass in front of him. Igor was pouring fire in on the one stitching their starboard wing, but Hans still couldn't see anything, just the flashing red lights and a target circle that weaved back and forth, waiting for his command to lock and fire.
Suddenly, as if materializing out of nothingness, the four fighters popped into view. One second they were nothing but a blinking light on the heads up, and an instant later they seemed to fill space in front of him and then peeled off, two turning to starboard, the other two screaming by so close that the shielding of one of them brushed against the ship, so that it bucked and rocked. He could hear Marilyn's high-pitched yell erupt from the tail gunner's position as she opened up, her cries drowned out by Kevin's wild curses.
"Kruger, you damn idiot! You could've dropped one, damn it! Now shoot!"
But nothing was in front of them. Looking down at the plot board he saw that the frigates were still closing and were now less than two thousand clicks astern. Kevin kept his hands on the throttles, pressing them up to the firewall, their momentum towards the jump point all but gone as Phantom shuddered to a stop relative to the point and then slowly started to crawl away.
"They'll be on us in ten seconds!" Hans shouted, wondering just what the hell the pilot was doing.
"Got one!"