A white star flickered and went out, and Tis winced. She wished StarRacer would show her the battle rather than this dry video-game display; then she realized why the ship didn’t – the focus of the crew might be pulled to the pictures. It was probably better that only Zabb could “see.” Still, it didn’t make her happy. She wanted to know that Mark was still safe.
As she watched, the Network destroyer StarRacer was pursuing fragmented, seeding tiny black bloblets. A hit from an Ilkazam ship? She looked eagerly to Zabb and registered his grim expression.
“They’ve just dropped seven Ly’bahr legionnaires,” Zabb sang out, and the entire crew jumped for their helmets.
It was the worst news imaginable. The metallic warriors were capable of reconstructing their bodies into small shuttlecraft with a contingent of Kondikki workers aboard for damage control and repair. It was as if seven inorganic Starshines had just waded into the combat on the side of the Network.
Tisianne felt the lances firing in quick succession, the pressure translated through the soles of her boots, the palm of her hand as it rested on a console. Suddenly StarRacer shuddered, and Tis’s imperfect shields buckled under an onslaught of pain. She doubled over and fought for control over her heaving stomach. It was bad policy to retch in combat armor.
The holograph gave a picture of their situation: the white star that was StarRacer, and in close proximity, closing by the second, a pair of black discs representing Ly’bahr warriors. The yellow star that was Starshine suddenly reversed direction, heading back on an intercept with StarRacer and the Ly’bahr.
The ghost lances fired again. One Ly’bahr flickered, then recovered and continued its advance. Double hits, and StarRacer bucked so violently that Tis and most of the remaining eighteen members of the crew were thrown to the floor.
StarRacer was in her death throes, and Tis screamed because it hurt so much. The floor and walls of the living ship had gone viscous and sticky. As she watched, a crewman was trapped between benches that were suddenly extruded by the ship. His blood was smeared into the secretions of the ship.
A white-hot, molten rain began dripping from the ceiling. Tis looked up and watched a beam cutting through the hull of the ship. Suddenly the artificial gravity maintained by the ship cut off, and Tis went floating. Zabb yanked her out of the way just as a section of roof peeled back. He flung her hard at a distant wait, and she managed to get twisted around so her boots struck first, caught, and held. Tis glanced back and up at the looming shadow of a Ly’bahr warrior blotting out the stars.
Takisians maintained lockers filled with archaic bladed weapons just to repel boarders. It didn’t do to fire a coherent light beam or high-energy projectile weapon within the skin of your own living ship. But StarRacer was dying, so a veritable light show erupted from the bridge as the Takisian crew hosed down the Ly’bahr.
The creature’s gleaming skin reflected back the laser fire, adding to the deadly beauty of the moment. Another crewman went down screaming. Lasers were obviously a bad idea against Ly’bahr, and Tis didn’t feel very optimistic about hitting that bulbous multilimbed body with a sword. She chambered a self-propelled grenade into the adjunct barrel of her laser rifle and fired.
It hit the creature dead amidships, and exploded in a very eye-satisfying display. Tis’s helmet darkened to prevent momentary blindness from the flash. The grenade didn’t penetrate the Ly’bahr’s armor, but it did rip five of its appendages loose from their grip on StarRacer’s hull. Tis didn’t stay around to admire her handiwork. The barrel of several weapons were coming to bear on her, and in their current position the Takisians were just so many fish in a barrel.
The remaining crew were firing the maneuvering jets on their combat armor. The Ly’bahr was picking them off in a grotesque display that reminded Tis fleetingly of bug zappers in action.
Then Starshine popped up next to the Ly’bahr. Using his augmented strength, he drove his finger deep into one of the creature’s optical sensors and projected the power of a star through his tissues.
The effect was stunning. Sparks came spitting through the joints and seams of the Ly’bahr’s protective case. The weapons turret, set like a head atop the body, collapsed and then detonated, and Starshine wisely put several hundred meters between himself and the Ly’bahr as the entire bulbous body exploded in an eye-searing display. Armor casing flowered outward like petals unfurling, and in among the hard bits were softer body pieces of tiny Kondikki workers.
Cheers echoed in Tisianne’s mind and radio as the surviving crew abandoned the trap of the shattered bridge.
Save it! came Zabb’s curt order. There’s still another one to fight.
As if it had been summoned by Zabb’s telepathy, the second Ly’bahr rose slowly over the edge of StarRacer’s back. A beam of light resolved itself back into Starshine. This time the Ly’bahr was prepared, and its speed was comparable to Starshine’s when the ace wasn’t traveling at light-speed. Starshine released a beam of directed energy at the Ly’bahr, but the warrior was already moving, and it glanced harmlessly off the gleaming red surface. Maneuvering jets firing wildly, it spun like a dervish and fired several times at Starshine. His biological forcefield sucked the energy; but on the fourth and final round it flickered a degree less brightly.
The Takisians tried to help, but both Starshine and the Ly’bahr were moving so fast, it was difficult to aim. Zabb hung about the outskirts of the fight firing quickly and methodically at any protrusion, indentation, or antenna that might conceivably be a sensor or a weapon. Tis was a good shot, but she had never been trained for free-fall combat. She didn’t know how to use the recoil of her own weapon to set her up for her next shot.
One of the crew was very sensibly screaming both telepathically and audibly over the radio for help! Starshine and the Ly’bahr were continuing to exchange laser and energy fire. Then suddenly the Ly’bahr spun and snagged Zabb with a long, trailing arm that ended in a claw. It was seeking to grapple, but the gadfly Takisian was too fast. Not fast enough, however, to avoid the blow. One claw tip caught Zabb’s armor, and there was a quick white puff of escaping air. It lasted only seconds until the suit had made repairs.
Tis made a mental inventory of the weapons aboard StarRacer. She dived back into the now-dark interior of the dead ship. Switching on her lights, she groped through the corridors, down to the armory. A great wave of frozen ship material had been thrown up in front of the lockers. Tis cut it away with her laser. Opening the locker, she pulled out a contact mine and made her way back out of the ship.
Starshine and the Ly’bahr were locked in a bizarre embrace, the Ly’bahr seeking to crush and break this strange flesh-and-blood creature. Starshine had both hands on one of the creature’s encircling limbs. His teeth were set in a grimace, and his face had gone beet red as he exerted every bit of wild-card-enhanced strength he possessed. The Ly’bahr’s arm ripped loose from the body, and Starshine spun free. His forcefield was flickering fitfully. It was a brief escape. Another metal arm lashed out like an uncoiling whip and caught the ace by the ankle. He allowed the creature to reel him back in; then he laid a hand against the Ly’bahr’s “head,” and gave it a jolt of his power.
“The stomach!” Zabb screamed. “Their brains are buried deep in the internal cavities of the body!”
Tis wasn’t sure if Starshine could hear. Maybe he had caught that telepathic bellow. High, and to her left, Tisianne caught a glimpse of a Takisian ship.
The cavalry, she thought. But probably too late.
Clutching the flat disc of the mine to her chest, she approached from “behind” and “below” the Ly’bahr and prayed to the ancestors that Zabb had managed to damage some of its sensors. The monster clearly wasn’t in very good shape, and as much as one could tell with a cyborg, its focus appeared to be totally on the tiny figure of the ace that had dealt it such damage.