"Time to jump?" he demanded.
"Twenty-three seconds optimum." Then the computer added, "Hit, beam, remote station twelve. Field anomalies indicate a temporary reduction of efficiency in Bogey One drives. Probability of Enemy success, three one steady."
Storm smiled. "Good shooting, Cassius."
Cassius was too busy to acknowledge the applause. He bent over his master console with the intensity of a virtuoso pianist, totally immersed in his art, webbing Abhoussi with beams of destruction.
Storm turned to his own master, secured it. He had not rattled Abhoussi at all.
He leaned back and watched Cassius while fighting off visions of Pollyanna being crisped by Abhoussi's weaponry. Hawksblood's man was firing only in self-defense, but might have orders to kill if he could not capture.
The odds against Abhoussi lengthened. Storm fidgeted. He placed little faith in computer analyses. He had beaten their odds when they had been five-to-one against him. The best games machines, with brains cyborged in, could not take into account all the human factors of a battle situation.
"Hit, beam," the computer announced. "Drive anomalies. Bogey One no longer accelerating. Probability of generator damage seven zero plus."
"Catch time," Storm asked. It had been telescoping, but Abhoussi had been hand-over-handing it up the scope.
"Eleven seconds."
Storm smiled. Abhoussi was climbing an ever-steepening slope. One more perfect shot from Cassius would do it.
Again he paid his chief of staff his due. The man was not just trying for hits, he was sharpshooting Abhoussi's facility for dragging Michael off to neutral space. And that at a time when he could have eased up and allowed his most hated enemy to perish.
Storm grabbed a mike, called the ingress locks. "Get a boat ready for rescue work. Have it crewed and standing by for astrogational instruction. Is Lucifer there yet?" He cut off before he received a reply. The computer was chattering again.
"Hit, beam. Major drive anomalies. Probability of generator damage nine zero plus. Probability of Enemy success, one three minus."
Storm moved to Traffic. "Contact the cruiser," he told the watchstander.
"Bogey One commencing evasive maneuvering," the computer continued. "Probability that Enemy is attempting to disengage, nine five plus." Abhoussi had accepted defeat.
Establishing the comm link took longer than the action had. Abhoussi was more interested in survival than in chitchat.
When the pale-faced Ship's Commander finally responded, Storm asked, "Can you manage your generators yourselves, Commander? Any casualties you can't handle? I have a rescue boat standing by."
Abhoussi gulped air, replied, "We'll manage, Colonel. We took no casualties."
"All right." Storm blanked off. "Cease firing," he ordered.
The order was unnecessary. Cassius had secured his gun board.
Was Abhoussi telling the truth? He had the feel of a man who would let his people die the death-without-resurrection before putting them into the hands of an enemy capable of using them against his employer later.
Storm called the ingress locks again. "Cancel the boat alert. We won't need it." Then, "Cassius, let's go meet Michael. He'll have an interesting story. Might even tell the truth."
"Good show, gentlemen," Cassius told the watch-standers. "Run a full systems check before you go off duty. See that Supply and Weapons know which mines and missiles to replace." His hard gaze darted from face to face. No one met it.
Storm peered into the shadows. The ravenshrike had concealed itself. It was alert.
"I think we did all right," he told Cassius as they followed the dogs into an elevator. "It was my kind of battle. Nobody got hurt."
"They should all be so chesslike."
A shadow moved in the shadows of a corner of Combat. The eyes of Storm's ravenshrike burned as they watched Homer and Benjamin. Homer slipped into the still warm seat before the mines and missiles board. The blind man caressed trigger switches and status boards with his sensitive fingers. He listened for his sporadic psi. He depressed an activation key, paused, tripped a fire switch.
Daggers of flame scarred the deep space night two light seconds from the Fortress. A swarm of hyper-capable seeker missiles went looking for Commander Abhoussi's cruiser.
The vessel had not traveled far.
Alarms screamed aboard the warship. Automatic weapons responded.
Constellations vanished behind a veil of fire. Abhoussi's engineers seized their only chance. They kicked in the damaged generators. The cruiser twisted away into hyperspace, leaving fragments of itself behind. The seekers, unaware of the cruiser's destination, began cutting lazy search patterns over half-light-year quadrants.
Homer's faint and seldom reliable psi touched upon a remote, short-lived scream. He leaned back and smiled at an aghast Benjamin. "It's done."
"Ah, Homer... " Benjamin could not think of anything to say. He could not meet the eyes of the watch-standers.
Their faces were long and grey. Storm was going to cut their hearts out for not stopping this.
The ravenshrike shuddered as it sensed the psionic scream and the pure disgust of the Center watch. It wrapped itself in wings and shadow, closed its eyes, and awaited its master's return.
Fifteen: 3020 AD
Frog's rescue became high drama. Blake's crews reached him only after he had idled down and gone on intravenous and drugs in an extended, deep sleep free of the distress and pain of radiation sickness. He had emptied his oxygen tanks.
His rescuers had to tunnel under his crawler to reach his belly hatch. They found it fouled with splash scale. They strung a heated hose through his tractor skin into his oxy main. A couple of Blake hogs chipped the scale off his hatch. Others sprayed the tunnel walls with a quick-setting epoxy. They scabbed a pumper trunk over the tunnel mouth and flooded it with breathables.
They had to do it the hard way. Near the end, too pained to think straight, Frog had shed his hotsuit again. His stupidity came near costing him his life.
The expenses of the rescue came out of Blake's PR budget. The holonetnews snoops were on the scene, their cameras purring. The head office saw itself picking up a lot of cheap advertising. The name Blake Mining and Metals would get exposure all over Confederation.
Old Frog had gotten more than he had bargained for. He had not impressed just a little girl and the people of his home town. He was a seven-day news wonder Confederation-wide. His adventure was being broadcast live from Edgeward. Taping crews braved the Shadowline to get his rescue recorded for later broadcast.
He would have been amused and disgusted had he known about it. It was not quite the notoriety he had been seeking.
Sixteen: 3031 AD
Mouse hovered on the fringes of Pollyanna's welcome-home party, attracted by the gaiety, repelled by Benjamin and Homer and what they had tried to do. Academy was all grey discipline and the absence of humor. He needed a little singing and dancing. The younger people were doing both, and building some mighty hangovers while they were at it.
Their elders frowned around the party's edges like thunderheads grumbling on grey horizons. Their faces were marked by an uneasiness bordering on dread. They're standing there like brooding guardian idols in some Bronze Age temple, Mouse thought. Like the tongueless crows of doom.
He tried to laugh at his own gloomy perception. His father's moods must be catching.
Storm, Cassius, and the other old ones had just come from a staff meeting. Mouse had not been permitted to attend. He guessed they had discussed the twins first.
There had been one hell of a traffic load through Instel Communications. Hawksblood had, apparently, been consulted. He could not guess what had been decided. Cassius had had only enough time to whisper the news that the cruiser had survived. Barely.