“If he had been any more worthy, we would have been dead,” Throb returned, miffed. For his part, he was glad Globin wasn’t aboard on this trip—the crew might have blamed it on him, for no other reason than that he was human.
“There is mass behind us,” the sensor op reported.
Throb and Goodheart were both still.
Then the captain snapped, “How much mass?”
“Enough for a ship, Captain—a cruiser.”
“It is Sales!” Goodheart snapped. “He has pursued me, he will hound me to my doom—or his!”
“But how?” Throb cried. “How can he track us through hyperspace?”
“It is enough to know that he does it! Senses, does he gain?”
“No, Captain. He holds his distance, at a million kilometers. He must not know our detectors have expanded range.”
“Holds his distance?” Throb frowned. “Why would he follow, instead of seeking to overhaul?”
“Because he wishes to trail us to Barataria!” Goodheart’s teeth showed in a grin. “Then he would flee and return with a fleet! No, we will lead him away, far away! Helm, set course away from Target, away from Khalia—away from any settled territory that we know!”
“But where shall we go, Captain?”
“Galactic Northeast, above the plain of the ecliptic by thirty degrees! There is nothing there, nothing! Let him follow us to nowhere! Then we shall lead him too near a star and let him be sucked in to fry! Northeast by thirty, Helm!”
“Even so, Captain.” The helm set his course, trying to smother his own doubts.
They cruised on through the void of a space measured in alien dimensions, lit by streaks of light that were segments of the lives of stars, to an almost-uniform grayness. It was as though they flew through fog, with here and there the lights of a passing city.
Then, suddenly, the sensor op called out, “Ship approaching on a nearly parallel vector, sir!”
“Sales?” Goodheart spun about. “Is he no longer behind? Has he realized our gambit?”
“It is not his signature, sir.” The sensor op pointed at the screen. “The wave form is typical of the reflected shape of a Syndicate merchantman.”
“Ah-h-h-h.” Goodheart turned to the screen, feeling the pain of his humiliation diminish. “If we have lost one prey, we have found another! Lay our course parallel to his, Helm! We will surprise him when he breaks out!”
Onward they fled, with Sales only an impulse behind, a minor irritation. All eyes fastened now on the merchantman; warriors checked their pistols, and the gunner checked his magazines.
“As ever, Captain?” Throb asked. “Wait till they break out into normal space, then overhaul and grapple them?”
“Even so,” Goodheart answered. “Senses, what of Sales?”
“He is lost, sir,” Senses reported. “I think he has fallen behind, beyond my range.”
”Then he shall not disturb us while we feed. Throb, sound battle stations!”
They fled on in near silence for an hour, a day, thirty hours. The tension stretched thin, among crew who slept in their battle stations, staving off hunger with hard rations and sips of water.
Then, suddenly, the wave form that showed the merchantman began to shimmer.
“He shifts!” Senses called.
“Shift with him!” Goodheart snapped. “Helm, now!”
The ship bucked and seemed to twist—a transition come too suddenly, with no time to prepare. Goodheart thrust away dizziness and focused on the screen. The merchantman lay square in the screen, and the scale showed he was only fifty kilometers distant.
Goodheart keyed the intercom. “Apologies for so rude a breakout—but yonder lies our prey! Action, imminently!” He released the patch. “Senses, expand scale! Let us see our field of battle!”
The merchantman shrank in the screen as the view increased. . . .
And the limb of a disk crept in at the edge.
“Expand by ten!” Goodheart snapped, and the disk was suddenly complete, a planet glowing across the full spectrum of visible radiation.
“What globe is that?” Throb breathed into the sudden hush.
“His destination!” Goodheart crowed. “We have found a Syndicate world! Come, pluck this fowl that lies before us, and let a few escape to bear the tale! Let the merchant traitors tremble to know that we flay their hides so close to home! Seize me that ship!” Then caution nudged his mind. “Com op, send a message torp. Let them know what we have found!”
Irritated, the communications operator slapped switches and trilled a brief message into the transmitter.
Even as he did, the helm op laid course and accelerated, and the pirate ship darted toward the merchantman.
Then, suddenly, the screen was filled with a dozen streaks of light, swarming in at the edges, two swelling into the forms of Syndicate destroyers.
“They keep close watch!” Goodheart shrieked. “Torpedoes away! Rake them with cannon!”
The pirate ship spat fire; its progeny swarmed away toward the destroyers.
But a blister opened in the side of the merchantman, and flame gouted from a huge cannon. The screen filled with fire, and Goodheart had just time enough to realize the irony of his prey turning on him, before the luminescence caught him up, and he passed into the excruciating light of death with the knowledge that the clan leaders had been right, after all, and the humans of the Fleet had not been his enemies.
“He’s gone, sir!”
“Break out!” Sales snapped. He settled back into his acceleration couch, savoring the revenge of knowing that it was Goodheart’s own invention that had doomed him—that Sales’s own spies had brought back word of Goblin’s hyperspace mass detector. Just knowing that the thing existed, and who had invented it, had been enough—his own engineers had checked the records of Desrick’s work, had found the concepts he’d been working with, and had duplicated his invention. Then they had gone on to transform the detector into a tracer.
They broke out within the range of that same tracer; Goodheart’s ship had been just on the fringe. They had followed, hopefully out of his range.
Could Barataria really be so far from all habitation?
Perhaps. What better protection, than being beyond consideration?
The moment of dizziness passed, and Sales scanned the big screen eagerly, looking for the pirate’s silhouette. He saw the rippling red circle of the detector’s signal first . . .
Then saw the great disk looming over all.
And the darts of light that emerged into the forms of Syndicate destroyers.
“They’re trying to fry my pirate!” Sales roared. “Blast ‘em, Fire Control! Punch them out of space!”
“Torpedoes away,” the chief gunner returned.
“Captain, get in there and fry those lice!”
“Aye,” the captain answered, lips stretched thin in a grin. “Full acceleration!”
Two G’s kicked them in the pants and stayed there.
Just then, fire erupted out of the merchantman, a huge spreading blossom that wrapped about the Khalian pirate, enveloping it, converting it into a ball of spreading luminescence.
“Those scum!” Sales shouted. “Those thieves, assassins! They can’t kill my pirate and get away with it! Captain, burn ‘em! A merchant ship that shoots is no longer immune!”
“Aye, sir,” the captain grunted over the weight of acceleration. The light ball filled the screen, then swam up to the upper left corner as the converted liner dove around it. The merchantman swelled in the screen, but the helm op swung around the expanding flower, too.