His face had beaded with sweat. Alex watched the shadow of the Cobra…
Well-equipped… a fuel-scoop, missile silos, extra cargo holds, the squat dome of an energy bomb housing…a rich ship indeed and a deadly one.
'They can't be intending to attack us.'
'The hell they can't!'
Three minutes…
And they came out of Witch-Space!
Immediately, Jason's hands began to fly over the key console. The Avalonia surged forward, rotating on its long axis. The planet Leesti was a small, greenish disc in the far distance. Alex saw his father arm the two missiles that the Avalonia carried, then reached to rest his hand on the multiple laser-trigger.
It was a pirate, then. And as Alex came to accept the inevitability of combat, his mouth went dry and his mind sharpened. He had never been in combat before, not for real, only in the SimTrainer. He had heard his father talk about it, of course. And combat did not sound glorious…
A pirate ship, disguised as a trader, pursuing its victim into Witch-Space itself…for their cargo of…
Thrumpberry flavouring?
An uneasy voice whispered in Alex's mind. This was untypical behaviour for a freebooter. They normally waited at the edge of planetary systems, watching for their prey with long-distance scanners, picking and choosing carefully. Pirates could be found everywhere, of course, though rarely in space around Corporate State worlds, or Democracies (the police were too efficient). Planets run by anarchistic or feudal governments were a pirate's favourite haunt.
This behaviour was wrong…
Not a pirate.
Alex looked from the slowly rotating planet to the grim, grey features of his father. They were a long way from safety. 'What the hell are we up against?'
'Put on a RemLok and get to the escape pod, 'Jason Ryder murmured.'Do it!'
'I'll stay and fight '
'The hell you will. Do as I say.' As he spoke, Jason thrust a small, black face-mask — the remote-space locator — at his son.
The first missiles struck the Avalonia's shields, and Jason punched the launch buttons on his own defences. The small ship veered and strained as he looped it in an escape run, activating its ECM as the Cobra launched a second wave of missiles.The rear screen exploded with light…
But through the brightness the sombre grey shape of the killer came on…
It happened so fast, then, that afterwards Alex was uncertain as to what exactly had happened. The duelling ships span and circled in towards the planet. Space around them blazed silently as their weapons struck and were deflected.
Then the whole Universe rocked. Air screeched into the void. The lights in the Avalonia blinked and dimmed. Warning lights shot on across the console: lazer temperature in the red, screens down, energy low, cargo jettisoned, cabin temperature dropping…
In the same moment of the Avalonia's death, Alex Ryder found himself being struck by his father, the remlok mask forced into place about his eyes, nose and mouth. Then his whole body was physically manhandled into the escape pod.
The ship shuddered and screamed. Fuel spilled into the void.
Father and son faced each other for a last moment, each watching the other through a mist of tears and confusion.
'I don't understand…' Alex screamed above the noise of the dying ship, meaning: Who's trying to kill us?
'Raxxla!' Jason said. 'Remember: Raxxla!' Then, as he pushed Alex back into the cramped escape pod, he shouted, 'Remember me, Alex! I wouldn't have wished this on you. Raxxla!'
The escape pod was jettisoned. Alex tumbled. The sleek shape of the Avalonia was above him, and then just white light-White heat.
Cold space!
In a second it had gone, the ship, his father, a part of his life — obliterated by a single burst of fire from the hovering shape of the pirate.
And as Alex watched, so a yellow tongue of fire licked towards the tumbling escape pod. He felt heat, then pain, then cold…
The tiny survival vehicle was blasted apart, sparkling fragments falling towards the green world of Leesti.
Alex hit space, arms flailing, mouth opened, consciousness and life draining from him with every second…
Chapter two
In space, everyone can hear you scream…
As long, that is, as you're equipped with a RemLok survival mask.
An instant after Alex Ryder hit the hard vacuum, a skin of plasFibre had been shot across his body from nozzles on the face piece, keeping him warm against the cold, tightening and protecting him, securing him against the void. The oxygen flow in his body was cut off to all but his heart and brain. Needle-doses of adrenalin and somnokie were held ready, just within the skin area of his mouth, ready to alert or depress his body functions according to circumstances.
And the RemLok screamed through space for help.
It was a standard survival device, an instantly recognisable distress call indicating that it was being sent out from a small, remotely located, dying body. The alarm screeched out on forty channels, shifting wavelength within each channel four times a second. One hundred and twenty chances to catch attention…
A cumbersome Boa class cruiser, loaded down with industrial machinery, slowed its departure run from Leesti and turned to scan space for the source of the signal…
Two police vipers came streaking from their patrol sector, near the sun, scanning for the body in trouble…
An adapted Moray Starboat, a vast glowing yellow star on its hull, the sign of a hospital ship came chugging out of the darkness…
Messages from ships to both the planet and its ring of Coriolis stations were abruptly broken as the split second message came screaming through.
TV programmes were interrupted, the screen dissolving into a permanently recorded display of the space-grid location of the RemLok. Every advertising space module changed its garish display to flash, in brilliant green, the same information.
In the orbit-space around Leesti, a million heads turned starwards. That split second of panic, that moment's cry of distress, was a sound they knew too well to ignore, and were too frightened of to take for granted.
Within twenty seconds, two autoremotes, tiny vessels just big enough to carry an hour's oxygen, one dose each of forty drugs, and a variety of other stimulants, were hovering around Alex Ryder's spinning body. one of them shot out a stabilising cable and dragged itself to his corpse.
Blinking through its solitary monitor, it hovered over his face like a squat, legless dachsund hound and pumped adrenalin, oxygen and glucose into his bloodstream. Alex opened his eyes and panicked slightly. The autoremote calmed him down with a quick pumpsurge of tetval.
The robot's voice whispered in his ears, 'Brandy? Scotch? Vodka? I am equipped with a full range of miniature stimulants to make the waiting easier.'
'What…happened…ship?…Avalonia…'he gasped through the tight face mask.
The autoremote blinked at him sympathetically, 'Brandy, then,' and hit Alex with two shots of Qutirian SynCognac.
An hour later he was aboard the Moray hospital vessel, in parked orbit above the green-grey face of the world of Leesti. Burns to his hands and face had been taken care of. Minor blood vessels that had ruptured in his skin had been knitted back together. He was bruised, stunned, but essentially fit physically.
The image of the ship exploding had begun to haunt him, however. He stood by the wide, sloping window of his hospital room, staring out across the bright of space to the slowly rotating world below, watching the flash and tumble of shuttles and small freighters as they either glided up from the world, or struck the atmosphere on their descent, leaving brief, brilliant flares of red in the thin planetary atmosphere.
Wherever he looked he could see the shadow of the Cobra, rising up in the Witchlight, a great, killer beast, closing on its prey.