Good.
Shredded particle shields hung around the vast beamship. Black holes showed where the lasers had pitted the rock.
He literally rode a rocket sled toward the Bangladesh. He tried his comlink, but only got crackling static. ECM jamming filled the ether, making communication impossible at this point.
He was the leader in the sense that he’d been shot first. He aimed at the nearest particle shield. Despite his speed, it seemed that he only inched toward it. This was the most dangerous time. Almost anything could destroy the torpedo. It had solely been built to withstand the shock of impact and burrow deep. A ship’s primary lasers would crisp it in a second. Maybe it could shrug off a few point-defense rounds, but military spacecraft usually spewed thousands of such rounds a second.
Something blossomed brightly to his left.
He hoped it wasn’t anyone he knew.
Then more blossoms flickered all around him.
He cursed the Highborn, for having put him in this position.
Pinprick flares dotted the Bangladesh. He was certain it was point defense cannons firing at them.
Chaff would have been fired from some of the SAs, he knew. Radar jammers were blaring. EMP blasts hopefully had made the beamship stupid. And HB lasers—even to his untrained eye the massive beamship looked badly scarred. So why did he feel so naked? He shivered in dread. He wanted to live. To really live! To run again, to eat steak while sitting at a table, to read a book and to kiss a girl. Maybe he should have slept with Nadia when he had the chance what seemed eons ago. Was it reactionary to want to marry a woman before you slept with her? That’s what Social Unity taught, that his ways were old fashioned and out of style. He flinched as a blossom closer than the others flared beside him. He swore he could feel the torpedo shudder—although he knew that was impossible, unless something actually hit his torp. Then he would be dead, not thinking anymore.
He shouted in an effort to release his stress. The sound was loud in his helmet. He felt naked and vulnerable. He wanted to smash his screen. Instead, he chinned his suit for neurostim. The hypo hissed. Ah! Beautiful.
Chemically induced anger washed over him. It covered his feeling of nakedness. Now he wanted to kill.
He veered more sharply for the pitted particle shield.
The rocket-ride was almost over. The pitted particle shield grew dramatically in front of him. He roared and raved, and at the last minute, he remembered to clench his teeth together. During practice runs, shock troopers had bitten off their tongues. The shock could click one’s teeth together like a guillotine.
The pitted particle shield grew mammoth-sized. Then it was all he could see. Blackness! Shock! And he knew nothing more as he passed out.
10.
“They aren’t exploding!” shouted the Shield Officer.
“I don’t understand,” Admiral Sioux said.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“Admiral,” said the Tracking Officer.
“What?”
“I…”
“Do you know what those torpedoes are?” asked Admiral Sioux. “What they do?”
“I’m picking up life readings.”
“Are you sure?” asked the Admiral. “Command told us that the HBs hate biocomps.”
“Not that kind of life readings, Admiral. Men.”
“Men? Do you mean like us?”
“Yes, Admiral. Men, humans—soldiers, I should think.”
“They fired soldiers at us?” Admiral Sioux asked in disbelief.
“How could regular men withstand twenty-five gravities acceleration?” asked the Shield Officer. “The say the Highborn can take sixteen. But twenty-five! That’s impossible for anybody.”
“They’re there,” the Tracking Officer said.
“Are you certain the ECM blasts didn’t distort your sensors?” asked Admiral Sioux.
“I’ve picked up life readings, Admiral, of Homo sapiens. And there’s not a thing wrong with the sensors. I already ran two diagnostic checks.”
“So what are soldiers doing on the particle shield?” asked the First Gunner.
Admiral Sioux’s old eyes suddenly widened. Her heart beat hard. “They’re trying to capture my ship.”
“Admiral?”
She scowled, and she thought furiously. They’re not going to capture my ship.
“The soldiers are storming us?” the First Gunner asked. “Like pirates?”
“But…”
“Does that mean we can surrender?” asked a suddenly hopeful officer.
“Who said that?” snapped Admiral Sioux.
No one volunteered to say.
“We’re not surrendering,” Admiral Sioux said. “We’re fighting to the last round, to the last bullet.”
“Bullet, Admiral?”
“I’ll blow the Bangladesh before I let the HBs get their hands on her.”
The sudden and profound silence around Admiral Sioux made her wonder if the beamship’s officers would let her carry out such a threat.
“Here comes another volley,” the Tracking Officer said.
“Damage control!” shouted Admiral Sioux. “Get me a working launch tube.”
“We’re trying, Admiral.”
“Then try harder, dammit!”
“Look at that,” said the Tracking Officer.
Admiral Sioux did. It made her snarl. They weren’t going to get her ship. No, sir. That wasn’t going to happen.
11.
Pain throbbed in his head. Marten tasted blood in his mouth. He smacked his lips as klaxons wailed for his attention. Kill, kill, kill, beat somewhere deep within him. He stirred. Then he blinked. His eyelids felt gluey, almost stuck together. He wondered if he had a concussion. Then the fog over his thought lifted and he knew that his torpedo had burrowed into the particle shield. Marten Kluge slapped the torp’s ejection button.
His seat moved backward, picking up speed as it slid out the rear of the torpedo. Buckles unsnapped and the battlesuit’s servomotors roared into life. Eight Gs of the Bangladesh’s acceleration pulled at him. But the battlesuit had exoskeleton power. He used his muscles and the suit amplified it many times over. With such suits on Earth, the Highborn could make 100-meter leaps. Here it allowed him to crawl out the hole made by the torpedo.
Over his gloves, he wore special pads. Every time he put his palm down nine-inch curved spikes thrust out and held on tight. Little barbs jutted out the nine-inch nails, helping the spikes hold onto the particle shield rock. He had the special curved spikes in his boot-toes as well. To withdraw them he had to chin a switch in his helmet. It was hard getting the hang of it. Slap your hand down, slam, the spikes thrust into the rock like explosive pitons, and then out shot the barbs. Chin for the left hand to pull in the barbs and then the claws, lift up the hand, move it, thrust in those spikes again, chin for the right hand, move it, thrust down, chin for the left foot. It was slow work climbing out this hole. He felt the Bangladesh’s high acceleration tugging at him the whole time. So he decided to take his time and do it right.
Soon, like some bizarre space gopher, he popped his head out of the hole. The pitted particle shield spread in all directions. Motion caught his eye. Out of a nearby hole, as if shot by cannon, a shock trooper flew away. The man’s arms flailed in a tragic-comic way, as if he could climb back to the particle shield with an invisible rope.
That man hadn’t been careful enough. The Gs had ripped him off the rock and hurled him into space.
Marten swallowed hard.
The shock trooper became a dot and disappeared because he was too far to see now. His oxygen would last several hours, several lonely hours with absolutely no hope of rescue.
What would he think about?
Marten shook his head, trying to drive away the thought, but it hung there, taunting him, frightening him, reminding him that failure to take the beamship meant death.