The admiral decided, and nodded. “All right, Sales. You can have him.”
Sales’s heart was still soaring as he stretched his shock webbing across himself and leaned back, waiting for takeoff. To be in command of a ship again was wonderful enough—but to be in command of a ship that was chasing Captain Goodheart was sublime.
The ship waited near the breakout point, its black hull virtually invisible in the eternal night of space. It waited for a week and, during that time, watched a ship a day break out into normal space and shoot onward toward Khalia. It waited for two weeks, and the crew began to grumble. They were getting tired of backgammon and calisthenics. They wanted action—or shore leave.
Finally, after three weeks, the alarm beeped, and the sensor op called, “Khalian on scope.”
“Commander Sales to the bridge,” the captain snapped into the intercom. “All crew, combat stations!”
The klaxon hooted, and the ship filled with the thunder of pounding feet.
Sales burst into the control room and stilled, staring at the image on the telescope screen. Infrared-sensed and computer-enhanced, the silhouette of a Khalian cruiser seemed to float in space.
“We’ve got him!” Sales hissed. “Full acceleration, Captain!”
“Full acceleration,” the captain told his engineer. The alarm wailed, and reflex sent Sales into his acceleration couch. He was stretching the webbing as the boost hit and two gravities’ worth of acceleration slammed him back into the cushions.
A point of light shimmered on the screen, a new star.
“Widen coverage!” the captain snapped, but the sensor op was already increasing the field.
A new ship appeared on the screen, hurtling toward the Khalian—but it was ten times the size, and the silhouette was Terran.
“There’s what he’s after!” Sales snapped. “A freighter!”
“Torpedo,” the captain directed. There was no feeling of recoil, but after a second, a gunner called, “Away.”
“He’ll move before it gets there,” Sales warned, but the captain was already nodding. “We’ll launch as soon as we can tell vector and velocity.”
Then, suddenly, the Khalian jumped—but away from the freighter. It flipped over, bow facing toward Sales. Fire burst, and the torpedo exploded well away from the ship.
“He knows we’re here,” Sales grated. “Any more legs on this ship?”
“Range!” The gunner didn’t even finish the word before the captain was bawling, “Fire!”
It was fast, then—the head gunner keyed the computer for full fire, and the helms op keyed his for evasive action. The ship slammed them from side to side and back and forth, jumping about in its progress toward the Khalian—but the fire computer read each change in vector as soon as the helm computer generated it, and compensated in its aim. The ship’s full armament blazed, picking off the Khalian’s torpedoes and evading its lasers, while it probed and stabbed with its own cannon and missiles.
The Khalian, of course, had done the same, and its image jittered about the screen, its cannon blazing at the Terran, evading and returning fire.
Computer against computer, the pirate strove against the Fleet vessel—while, beyond them and all but unknowing, the freighter sped silently past and on toward Khalia.
But Sales had an advantage that the Khalian didn’t—a dozen PT ships, spawned at the sound of the klaxon and arcing high above the plane of the ecliptic. Now they fell, stabbing fire, guided by computers independent of the fire-control brain.
The Khalian rolled and jumped, trying to evade this new menace. Then an explosion lit it amidships. The screens darkened to compensate for the extra light, so Sales could only see a dim picture of the Khalian turning tail.
“Got him!” the captain shouted, clenching his fist. “Go get him, Helm!”
“Chasing, sir,” the helm op gloated, and the warning hooted just before the ship jumped into two g’s acceleration again.
On the screen, the pirate shrank as it sped away.
“He might be sucking us in,” Sales reminded.
“We’re watching,” the captain answered.
The pirate began to grow in the screen again.
“We’ll catch him,” the captain gloated. “We’ll blast him out of the night!”
Suddenly the pirate began to glitter.
“He’s jumping!” the sensor op yelled.
“He can’t!” Sales shouted. “He’s wounded! He could blow himself into oblivion!”
“If he stays, we’ll do it to him for sure,” the captain grated.
The glitter covered the ship completely, faded to a twinkle, and was gone. The screen was empty.
“Got away!” Sales slammed his fist against the arm of his couch. “He got away from us!”
“Maybe not!” The captain’s voice was leaden. “He was too close to another mass—us—and too close to a standard breakout point, where the curvature of space is kinked. Could be he’s blown himself to hell.”
“Not this weasel.” Sales glared at the screen. “Could be, but it’s not. He may be hurt, but he’s alive.”
He lay back in his couch, forcing himself to relax. “You fought damn well, Captain, and you gave him one hell of a chase. I couldn’t have asked for better.”
“Thank you, sir—but I could.” The captain’s face was grim. “We lost him—so it wasn’t good enough. The crew did a fine job—but there must be something we could have done better.”
“I can’t think what.” Sales suddenly felt very tired.
“You will, though, sir. You will.”
“We must know who commanded that ship, Throb! It was no chance encounter; he was waiting for us!” Goodheart paced the chamber, vibrant with anger.
“We must, indeed,” Throb agreed.
“We must have knowledge! Information! We must set spies to tell us of the slightest sign that some Terran seeks us out!”
Throb frowned. “But how can we know what the humans think, Captain? We cannot have agents among them.”
“Can we not?” Goodheart wheeled about, eyes glowing. “Have we no Khalians who dwell among humankind? Are there none on Target, none on Khalia, who would favor us?”
Throb stared, struck by the notion. “There must be many!”
“Make planetfall secretly!” Goodheart commanded. “Set each of our men to talk to old friends! Let them sound out those who are loyal to Khalia, not to the clan chiefs! Those few who are, give them transmitters and codes! Let them pass each word they hear that might have meaning back to us!”
“At once, my captain!” Throb sped away, leaving Goodheart to plan alone.
He paced the chamber, reviewing possibilities. Language—he must teach all his crew the human languages, those of the Fleet and the Syndicate, and set them to scanning the humans’ broadcasts. He must begin to collect news printouts from every vessel he boarded—he had chanced upon a copy of a shipping schedule on the last Syndicate ship he had taken. He needed knowledge.
Old friends talked to old friends, and they talked to new friends. No one could say who had asked whom, but half the Khalians on the home planet soon knew to which old friend they should mention anything interesting. Petty, perhaps irrelevant . . .
Or perhaps not.
“Commander Lohengrin Sales?” Goodheart stared at the picture on the screen, recorded from a newsfeed and transmitted to his ship, secretly. He frowned at the human face. “Why does that name itch at the comer of my brain?”
All the crew were silent, watching their captain out of the comers of their eyes.
But Goodheart scarcely saw them; he was concentrating on memory, reviewing all that had happened since he had decided to tum pirate. . . .