Sergeant Tetlow was there when she lowered her hand. It was impossible to tell from his demeanor that he knew he was almost certainly about to die, and the colonel squeezed his shoulder gently.
"Ready to flit, Sarge?"
"Green and go, Ma'am." He nodded. "Give 'em hell."
"With pitchforks," she agreed, and climbed the ladder without another backward glance. She had to find her grip by feel, for her eyes burned strangely, and it was hard to focus.
She settled into her padded seat before the steady green and amber glow of her instruments. Light from the hangar deck flooded through the centimeter-thick armorplast overhead, and despite the grim situation, her lips quirked with familiar amusement. The human eye was useless in deep space combat, but something about human design philosophies demanded a clear all-around view anyway.
The familiarity of the thought put her back on balance, and she pulled her helmet down against the tension of the connector cables. She drew it over her head, sealing it to her flight suit, and the flat electrodes pressed her temples.
"Activate," she said clearly, and shuddered as the familiar sensory shock hit her. Sputnik had a complete set of manual controls, but using them in combat gave a Troll too much advantage, so human ingenuity had provided another solution. Her nerves seemed to reach out, expanding, weaving their neurons into the circuits of the gleaming weapon which surrounded her. Direct computer feeds spilled information into her brain-weapon loads, targeting systems, flight status... .
Even after all these years, the rush of power was like a foretaste of godhood, she thought, dimly aware of her crewmates strapping in. Unlike the other ships in the squadron, Sputnik and Major Turabian's Excalibur carried three-man crews, not two. Each of her pilots had an electronic systems officer to run the electronic warfare systems and monitor all functions not directly linked to combat and maneuvering, but she and her exec had a com operator, as well, who also served a plotting function for engagements which could range over cubic light-minutes of space.
She grinned as Lieutenant O'Donnel, her ESO, plugged in and she felt an echo of her own sense of invincibility in his cross-feed.
"Ready, Anwar?"
"All systems green and go, Skipper."
"Prissy?"
"Green board, Skip," Sergeant Priscilla Goering announced from her isolated compartment behind them.
"Good." Leonovna pressed a button that lit Sputnik's light on the hangar deck officer's console, then settled down in her seat. "And now, boys and girls," she announced over the squadron net, "we wait."
"Ma'am," Captain Onslow said formally to the commodore who no longer had a battle division, "we are closed up at action stations."
"Thank you, Captain." Commodore Santander glanced at her plot. Defender had climbed slightly "higher" in the eta band than her quarry and dropped astern. According to Miyagi's models, their best chance for success was to strike their enemies' translation field down-gradient at a slightly accelerating velocity. It was grimly ironic, she reflected, how synonymous "success" and "self-immolation" had become.
She touched a com button.
"Stand by, Colonel Leonovna," she said.
"Standing by, Commodore." The strike group commander sounded as unflappable as ever, and Santander's lips twitched in a ghost of a smile.
"Very well, Captain. Execute your orders."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Captain Onslow said, and Defender's bones came alive one last time with the high-pitched scream of a multi-dee in over-boost as she stooped upon her foes.
The glaring corona of Defender's translation field filled the visual display-a chill, beautiful forest fire that dazzled the eye and hid the featureless gray of alien dimensions. It beckoned and whispered to Commodore Santander, but she wrenched her eyes from it with an effort and watched the plot as the diamond dot of her last vessel plunged towards the tight-linked rubies of her foes. The range fell with terrifying speed, and she had time only for one last surge of adrenaline and excitement and fear and determination.
Then they struck, and Josephine Santander screamed. She wasn't alone. No human frame could endure that crawling, twisting agony in silence. It was like every translation she'd ever endured, combined into one terrible whole and cubed. She writhed in her chair, eyes blind and staring, nerves whiplashing within her flesh as overloaded synapses shrieked in protest. It went on and on and on-an eternity wrapped in a heartbeat-and ended so abruptly it nearly broke her mind.
She moaned softly, pushing herself weakly up in her chair, feeling the warm trickle of blood over her chin and down her upper lip. She shook herself groggily, fighting for control, and looked around her flag bridge.
Commander Miyagi hung in his combat harness, his blood-frothed lips blue. He was not breathing, and beyond him a scanner tech was curled as close as her own harness allowed to a fetal knot while a high, endless mewl oozed from her. Santander had no idea how long that terrible moment had lasted, but she felt her own heart still shivering madly within her chest as she reached shakily for her com controls.
Her screen lit a moment before she touched them. Captain Onslow looked out at her, and she'd never seen him look so ... dreadful. His face was cold, hammered iron, but there was a terrible, hungry fire in his eyes. He was no longer simply a warrior; he had become a killer.
"Commodore." His voice was hoarse as he wiped blood off his chin and glanced at his reddened fingers almost incuriously.
"Captain," she managed in return. "We've ... got some casualties up here," she said. "One of the scan crew ... and Nick... ."
"Here, too, Ma'am," Onslow said, and an echo of the horror they'd endured touched his voice. But he shook himself, and a bleak smile mingled with the cold fire of his hunger. "Scanning's still here, Ma'am, and Nick's-" he faltered for a moment, then made his voice go firm once more. "Nick's models seem to be holding; we've got a gradient I never saw before: straight down. Of course, we've got a long way to fall. We should hit bottom in about twenty minutes ... and both of those bastards are coming with us."
"Damage?" she asked, feeling something almost like life spreading back through her abused flesh.
"Multi-dee's fused, Ma'am, and Power Two and Four went with it. N-drive is functional. We've lost about twenty percent of our computers and a quarter of our energy weapons. Defensive systems are generally intact. Personnel losses are still coming in." Pride in his ship strengthened his voice. "She's hurt, Ma'am, but the old bitch is still game!"
"Good, Captain," Commodore Santander said. "Stand by to engage."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
Three ships fell through the depths of dimensions not their own, plunging like storm-driven mariners towards the reefs of normal-space, and throughout Defender's hull dead or incapacitated men and women were hauled away from their consoles. Casualties were worst closest to the fused multi-dee at her core, and the interceptor squadron, isolated by the hangar deck's location just inside her armored skin, had come through dazed but intact. Now Colonel Leonovna scanned the data feeding into her brain as the moment for launch approached. Drive and translation fields came to standby aboard thirty-two sleek and deadly vessels, and she felt the electronic caress of the launch field on her fighter's flanks like silken fingers.