Hans looked up to see Igor roaring with delight, tobacco juice dribbling down his chin to splash Hans with a fine, pungent spray. Hans saw a flash off the port side and, leaning over, he witnessed an erupting cloud of debris.
"Hang on!" Kevin roared and a split second later he once more flipped the ship over on its x-axis so that it was again lined up on the jump point. He dodged the ship straight down and away from their original trajectory. The two frigates swept past to either side, both ships spraying the area with lasers, mass driver rounds, and plasma energy bolts, almost all the shots intersecting where Phantom would have been if they had continued on their previous course.
Several of the shots still found their mark, however, and Hans felt the ship heave under the hammer blows. In an instant shielding dropped down almost to zero from the heavy impacts. Several mass driver bolts slammed clean through the starboard wing in a shower of sparks. Hans realized that if they had been a couple of more meters inboard, the rounds would have driven right through the top of the ship, puncturing the cabin and thus triggering a rapid decompression. It most likely would not have mattered to him though, he thought, since the rounds would have nailed right through his seat, thus providing him with the same death as the last copilot. He looked to his right, to where his helmet and gloves were resting. Reaching over, he grabbed the helmet and put it on, ignoring Kevins disdainful snort.
"Damn, kid, we get punctured, better to go quick, rather than float around and wait for the Cats to play games with you," Kevin snarled.
Hans had heard enough tales about what the Cats did to smugglers who dared to cross the line that he was tempted to take the helmet back off.
"One coming up front!" Marilyn shouted, her warning followed by a staccato burst from her guns. "Winged him, get the bastard!" A Kilrathi Vak fighter shot past them, tumbling end over end. Hans leaned forward to line up on the heads up display, his helmet banging against the forward viewport so that he lost acquisition for a second. He saw the lock on and hit the forward lasers. Intersecting blasts of light arced out, slashing into the crippled fighter, which detonated.
Hans let out a triumphal whoop-it was so damned easy!
Another shudder snapped through the ship, a shower of sparks erupting from the control panel to his right. A fighter swept past them, Igor cursing wildly as he tried to track the target.
"Those frigates are coming about!" Marilyn shouted.
Hans looked back at the plot board. Damn, how did they do that? Turning a ship that big using your scoop field usually took a couple of minutes, but they were already halfway through the turn and boring in. He looked over at Kevin, and for the first time saw that the boss was decidedly nervous, if not outright scared.
"They must have pulled some new upgrade," Kevin mumbled. "Don't worry, we'll hit jump before they close, then we'll lose the bastards."
Hans looked back at the board.
"At current rate of closing they'll be alongside us in forty seconds."
"Just shut up," Kevin snarled and then looked back over his shoulder.
"All right, Marilyn, dump the surprise!"
"They're away!" came the almost simultaneous reply.
Hans looked back over at Kevin, wondering what the hell they were doing.
"We just dropped a nuke mine," Kevin said quietly. "Damn, that thing cost almost as much as our entire haul."
"A mine! Damn it, a civilian ship carrying one is a capital offense. Why the hell didn't you tell me?" Hans cried.
"Why, you wanna quit? If so, then just get the hell off now!"
Hans, wide-eyed, shook his head.
"It'll save your ass, boy. Now shut up and get a lock on that light frigate."
The jump point was closing in, its telltale distortion waves rippling across the plot board, but smack in the middle was the Kilrathi light frigate which must have just come through. The two fighters swept in again from either side, a stitch of mass driver rounds slashing across the top of their ship, another one puncturing the starboard wing. A flash suddenly erupted on the plot screen, and at the same instant a hellish white-blue light bathed the cockpit.
"Got one!" Marilyn screamed. "He's shearing off. The other one's turning aside, the idiot fell for the dummy mine!"
Hans watched the plot screen and punched in a visual magnification. The eruption of the mine was dissipating, and the Kilrathi frigate which had been their target was tumbling out of control, its entire forward section a twisted, molten wreck. Unless the Cats had good internal bulkhead design and shielding, the bastards in the stern half were most likely cooked as well. The second ship had veered wildly off course, falling for the trick of the second mine, which was nothing more than an empty casing with a trace of radioactive material inside.
Three flashing red blips emerged from the second frigate and started to bore in.
"They've launched seekers," Hans announced, trying to contain the terror in his voice as a low-pitched tone started to squeal in his headset, the combat information board flashing with a profile of the weapon.
"Must've really pissed them off if they're blowing two hundred and fifty thousand credits a pop to kill us," Milady replied, almost as if pleased that the Cats were expending one of the most expensive launch weapons in a ship's arsenal.
"Marilyn, three seekers, can you nail them?"
"On it!"
"Damn, they really want us," Kevin said, his voice suddenly filled with weariness. "Those damn things cost a bundle. Kruger, blow chaff, two-second intervals!"
Hans looked at the weapons board, fumbling till he found the chaff launch button, and punched it five times. All the time Kevin kept weaving the ship toward the jump point. Hans watched as Kevin activated the jump engine, which drained their power still further. Once inside the nexus, the engine would interlock with the displacement of the jump point and they'd be catapulted across a dozen light-years, hopefully to emerge on the other side of the frontier, though if the angle of acquisition wasn't quite right, or the engine wasn't fully engaged, there was no telling where they might wind up.
"It's either shields or engines," Hans announced. "We won't make it running both."
Without comment, Kevin reached over and slapped the toggle shutting the shields down. Now there was only bare metal between them and whatever the Kilrathi could throw in their direction.
"First two seekers plowing straight through the chaff!" Marilyn announced, her voice drowned out by the reverberation of the tail guns as they kicked in, sending out a spray of mass driver rounds in the desperate hope that one of the bolts might impact on a seeker and detonate it.
Topside, Igor was still at work, trading shots with the fighters as they swept back in, while up ahead the light frigate, still holding position by the jump point, began to fire as well. Space seemed to be an insane intersection of flashing lights, all of them crisscrossing around Phantom.
I'm a dead man, Hans realized, and to his utter amazement, rather than renew the fear, he suddenly felt a strange, distant detachment from all that was happening. The sensation was remarkable, as if time was distorting, each second dragging out to an eternity. For an instant he wondered if he was already dead, so calming was the sensation.
He looked over at Kevin and saw the pilot, staring wide-eyed as they approached the light frigate, which was barely visible beyond the explosion of light emanating from its forward batteries. The man's scared to death, Hans realized, and the recognition of the fact was fascinating. He had been in tight binds before, while working for the Sarn consortium, and funny, again when he killed Sara's eldest son, and that same feeling had been there. Draw your weapon, step to one side to dodge the first blast, then calmly nail him between the eyes, turning everything from the neck up into a spray of pulp.