It had taken her several more minutes of coaxing before he had finally succumbed to her siren's song. And it had taken another few hours for Paladin to fully forget recent events that seemed to pull on his limbs as though he were strapped to some medieval instrument of torture. He had slipped even deeper into the fantasy than he had the day before, embracing Aristee with a love that had gone unanswered for too many years. He had felt the urgent desire to merge with her, become one, to live that way for the rest of his life.
Twilight had come on like a pallbearer, carrying the lost day on its back and leaving Paladin deeply troubled. Not long afterward the palmlink had beeped. The XO had nervously made his report to Aristee. "Captain. A Kilrathi battle group has just jumped into the system. Confirm a Snakeir-class superdreadnought and five escorts. No evidence that they've tagged us yet."
"Very well. Cease cargo loading. Recall all ships. Put the planet between us and that battle group."
"Aye, ma'am."
Paladin had given her a look.
"All right," she had said, rolling her eyes, "you told me so."
They had snatched up their clothes, had left behind their tent, and raced to the captain's launch. Within five minutes they had taken off, with Paladin at the helm.
Now, as they cleared Aloysius's atmosphere and spotted the shining speck of the Olympus dead ahead, Paladin pulled up a tactical report and noted the battle group's position. Although the Olympus had pulled around to the dark side of the planet, the battle group had shifted into a wide arc and had probably made visual confirmation before the Olympus could get into hiding. Yes, the Olympus presently operated in stealth mode, but that had failed to elude the Kilrathi and had proven that they knew the ship would be here and that Aristee had been double-crossed. The cats' first volley of torpedoes had already reconfirmed that assessment.
"Second salvo inbound," Paladin said as he tightened his grip on the launch's control stick. The sleek little shuttle with forward-swept wings responded well to even the slightest tap. He lit its twin afterburners and focused on the supercruiser.
Aristee faced the starboard Visual Display Unit, trading intent stares with the deck boss. "How many more troopships left, Mr. Towers?"
"Thirteen, Captain. I think we can get at least eight of them aboard before we're out of the system."
"Try to get them all." She tapped a touchpad below the VDU, bringing up the engineering station. "Brotur Hawthorne? Talk to me about my hopper drive."
The bedraggled man jerked toward the screen and tried to flatten his matted hair. "Still offline for modifications, ma'am."
"What?"
"You asked me to step up our schedule. I can't do that without taking the drive offline." He backhanded sweat from his brow and sighed.
"Well, I want it back online now. We have a Kilrathi battle group bearing down on us."
"I'm aware of that, ma'am, but the well field integrator has already been disassembled. I assumed you wanted me to make full modifications to the drive as we've discussed. I could have us ready to jump to Earth in fifteen, twenty days at the most, cutting our estimates in half. But the drive will have to remain offline."
"Forget about that," she said, on the cusp of swearing. "Just get it back online and get us out of here."
"We can reassemble within a day or two, but it'll take another eight to ten days to establish and moderate the reaction containment field. We'll have to add that time on to our estimates-and I know you want to get to Earth ASAP. If you want the drive to remain online during modifications and you want me to reassemble now, then we won't make it to Earth before one-five-eight. You told me we had to get there before then. I'm sorry, but this is the best I can do."
Aristee closed her eyes, her breath coming in ragged bursts. "Keep the drive offline. Carry on with modifications. I assume the helm will answer to full impulse?"
"It will."
She tapped in another code, and the XO turned to face her. "Captain, shields holding. I've launched countermeasures and shifted us into an evasion course."
"We can't jump, Mr. Vyson. Take the ship out of orbit. As soon as I'm aboard, we'll make way under full impulse."
"Aye, ma'am. But we'll be leaving behind some of the troopships."
"I know. Order those pilots back to Aloysius."
"Yes, ma'am. And I have one more report. Bad news."
"Of course it gets worse," she muttered.
"Three pilots from Eighth Squadron deserted their patrol sectors at the first sighting of the Kilrathi. They broke atmosphere and ejected in their pods."
"Eighth Squadron? Was Mr. Santyana with them?"
"He was out there, ma'am, but he remained in position. We lost Doug Henrick, Jadyk Charm, and Joe Pazansky. And ma'am, I'm sorry to report that four pilots from the One-Nine and six from the Two-Two also deserted their patrols and have gone planetside."
"Instruct cannon operators to fire upon any of our ships who make unauthorized breaks from their squadrons. Aristee out." She switched off the link and leaned toward him. "You believe that? Only a few of our people came unwillingly. I thought Santyana would be the first one to desert."
"Worry about your bruised ego later," Paladin said, consumed by the laser-lit chaos blooming ahead. "We're going to take a few hits. Hang on."
He jammed the stick forward and dove toward the fleeing supercruiser as it unfurled a long tail of fire back toward the Kil-rathi battle group, roughly twenty-two hundred kilometers behind. Aloysius's lime-colored glow faded from the ship's hull as she continued her escape and Paladin raced to reach her. He wove his way through avenues of antimatter fire and lined up with the flight deck behind a pair of troopships that lumbered at a frustratingly slow velocity. The incoming fire tightened its grasp, with bolts now glancing off the launch's shields and tossing himself and Aristee against their harnesses.
Keeping an iron grip on the stick and screaming for the troopships to move their asses, Paladin concluded that if he waited for even a minute longer, the shields would bottom out and the launch's light armor would succumb to the torrential thrashing. The ship had been designed for diplomatic missions, for speed. Time to exploit that advantage. He lit the pipes and soared recklessly over the two troopships, then dove once more toward the aft flight deck's rectangular launch tunnel, sealed off by its glimmering environmental maintenance field.
"Captain's Launch Alpha One. You have not been cleared to land," said the flight boss, a cranky, thick-faced Pilgrim in her fifties with an unforgettable mug and a name so long it was barely pronounceable, let alone memorable. "What is the-"
"I have the captain aboard," Paladin barked. "We're landing."
But he had spoken too soon. A lone antimatter round tore into the launch's exhaust cones and divided into millions of creepers that burned into fuel and hydraulic lines. The ship's safety systems kicked in, saving them from the heat and radiation as it ejected the thrusters a mere second before they thundered apart and sent debris careening into the hull.
Now propelled by its own momentum, the launch plummeted through the energy curtain. "No response to course corrections," Paladin said, strangely intrigued by the moment of impending death. If he didn't get the nose up, they would strike the deck and be crushed into a neat, recyclable package fully appreciated by the deckdozer driver who would have little trouble clearing them from the runway. He ignored the tingle in his neck and the flashing indicator to lower the landing skids and just two-handed the stick, drawing it toward him in a last-ditch effort to belly flop. The launch remained on its collision course.