“Deal with him-how?” she said skeptically.
“I don’t mean bargain. Ariel, you should use the Key.” His plans were clearly hardening as he spoke. “I think I can ram that clumsy ship when he closes with us.”
Ariel felt herself pale. “No, Derec!”
“It’s the only way! We can’t let him live. He’s too dangerous-”
“But-” Her face cleared. “We can use the Key at the last instant.”
Derec looked at her. The burst of adrenaline that had washed away his illness was fading. She determined that she would not use the Key unless he did, and he seemed to realize that.
“Okay, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll pretend to surrender-”
He reached for the comm, but she grabbed his wrist. “No, Derec, it won’t work! He’ll never leave this ship maneuverable while he closes!”
“It’s the only chance we’ve got,” he said. “Our only weapon is the jet-and the nose of the ship! I’d like to fire the rocket at him, but he’d never pass in front of it.”
Ariel sighed, but she was unable to think of anything better.
“Okay. Go get the Key. I’ll fly the ship.”
Derec nodded in relief, clearly not up to it.
When they tuned back into the comm channel, Aranimas was howling in his nonhuman voice, so shrilly as to make her teeth ache.
“You will not brrreak communications again, humans! You-”
“Very well! We have conferred and agreed to accede to your demands,” she said. “We ask only that you guarantee our lives, or we’ll destroy the Key in front of your eyes.”
“You will not destroy the Key! I kill slow-”
“Not if we’re dead first,” said Derec, sounding tired and exasperated-the sound of a father dealing with wrangling children. “We want your promise.”
The alien fell silent and studied them for a cold-blooded moment. “Verry well. You have my promise I will not kill you if you give me the Key, undamaged.”
Ariel had a moment in which she wondered if the alien might keep that promise. But it didn’t matter; Derec was right. He had to die. She felt a momentary pang for the harmless and spiritless Narwe slaves with whom Aranimas manned his ship.
Derec pulled the Key out of his shirt and showed it to him. While Aranimas stared greedily at it, Ariel, at the controls, asked casually, “Shall we maneuver to match you?”
“No, I maneuver.”
There was a tense few minutes while the alien turned from them to his controls, rolled his ship, waited, waited, waited, then burned toward them. At the end of the burn the ship was not far away and still passing slowly. Again it rolled, now plainly visible: a vast, ungainly mass of half a dozen or more hulls stuck together. How Aranimas balanced that thing along a center of mass so he could fire rockets without spinning out of control, all without computer aid, Ariel couldn’t imagine.
He’s too close,she thought, panicky. They hadn’t time to get much velocity for the impact-or to set the Key! Even as she thought, she glanced at Derec, who started squeezing the corners of the Key. She slammed the rocket on, spinning the ship on its secondaries-the gyro, more economical of fuel, was much too slow.
Aranimas might be flying a clumsy conglomerate, but he was a skilled pilot-and it was a battlewagon. It had adequate sensors even aft, where the rockets were. The pirate spotted their maneuver and blasted aside, not bothering to scream at them over the comm channel.
Ariel looked over at Derec, slammed into her seat by the acceleration; the Key was ready, but they weren’t. The alien ship was above them, then beside them, even as she struggled to turn nose on toward it. Too late-Aranimas had slid aside.
Ariel instantly cut the jet and started to spin ship, not to get too far away-Aranimas’s gunners would have them in their sights the instant they cleared the near zone. Aranimas shrewdly slapped on more side thrust when he saw which way she was turning, in order to widen the gap between them.
Then the collision alarm rang.
They heard Aranimas yelling for the first time since the battle began. Ariel fought them onto a line with the alien ship, too busy to look about.
“The rock is moving!” Derec cried.
The chunk of rock that had swung in behind them and had gradually been overtaking them was now accelerating toward them at about a Standard gravity-and the bolo registered the temperature of rocket exhaust.
Wolruf’s face appeared beside the diminished figure of Aranimas on their board.
“Hold him, Derec! I come!”
What Aranimas said was not intelligible, but energy lanced from the big ship at the rock. The rock vaporized, its outline flashing away in puffs of incandescent vapor as the guns bore. Those same mighty weapons had vaporized cubic meters of ices and snow at near absolute zero on the ice asteroid where Aranimas had first found Derec.
Underneath the flimsy camouflage was a little Star Seeker like their own.
Ariel’s vision dimmed as she cut in the rockets’ full power. In a moment, she cut them off. Her head bobbed against the headrest, and the ship was again diving toward Aranimas. He rolled and blasted to avoid them, and something monstrous slapped their flank, making the ship ring.
“Puncture!” Derec gasped, but she had no time. She had to hold him till Wolruf got there-
Aranimas rolled his big ship again, and again blasted to avoid her, throwing off his gunners’ aim. Good job, he doesn’t have computerized./ire control, Ariel thought.
She was confronted with a split-second tactical problem. In moments they’d be past the alien ship, too soon to roll nose-on toward it. Aranimas had seen their intent and was going the other way. So she rotated further in the direction the nose was pointed, to bring their tail toward the enemy.
At the critical moment she blasted, and fire splashed over Aranimas’s ship. It must have rung like a bell. There was a great outrush of air and assorted particles. Ariel was grateful she couldn’t see well enough to tell if the particles were kicking.
In a flashing moment they were past, and the reflected flame glare died, and Aranimas was moving again, fire spurting from points on the ungainly hulls. Another kind of fire flashed, their own ship gonged when hit, jolted again, as Ariel’s head rattled against the headrest and alarms yelled; Derec was saying something as she spun the ship as rapidly as shaking hands would let her. Mistake! she thought. Should never have blasted away from him; now they were far enough away for the gunners to sight them.
Clenching her teeth, Ariel rolled the ship again, trying to ignore the hits, hoping one wouldn’t disable them-or kill them. A single stray bolt would
“We’re still in their near zone,” said Derec, breathlessly. “Glancing hits only -”
True.she thought, smiling mirthlessly -they were still alive!
And then they had completed their roll, much farther from Aranimas than she liked, and she blasted back. No more hits; the uneven outline of the alien ship grew and grew in their vision screens, and she breathed more evenly.
Then she had a moment of wonder: she felt better because she was not going to be killed by Aranimas’s gunners in the next few moments. But she was trying to commit suicide by ramming his ship!
Aranimas began to slide aside and she automatically corrected, centering on the dark bulk. What should she do?
“Wolruf is closing fast, but I don’t know if she’s still maneuverable,” said Derec tensely. “She got hit hard.”
“Give her a call?”
Then Aranimas’s ship loomed monstrous and the alien had arranged a surprise: a gun on the hull swung to bear on them. What prodigies of effort had gotten it ready in the short time the battle had taken, they would never know. It was a full-sized gun, though its first bolt was weak, an aiming shot.
Aranimas’s gunners were not the timid Narwe. They were starfish-shaped creatures about whom Ariel knew little; they avoided the light and breathed a slightly different atmosphere than the rest of the crew. She felt no compunction about them, and spun the ship aside. Aranimas saw that and moved to prevent her from pointing her rockets at the new gun.