“What do we do?” asked Abaron, obviously willing to defer to her authority. Chapra was about to tell him she did not know, but suddenly she did.
“This shuttle and the missiles are both at maximum acceleration,” she said. She looked at him. “Do you think you can handle the controls. Delicately?”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“On my signal I want you to reduce our acceleration and bring the missiles in as close as you can. Fifty metres. Less if you think you can do it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Those missiles are probably the same as are being fired at the Box — hull piercers. Detonating them that close to us shouldn’t do us any harm.”
“How do you know that?” he asked dully.
“I’m old. I did other jobs before I studied xenology,” she said.
“How are you going to detonate them?”
Chapra smiled at him, a little crazily, she thought, as she clamped down on that smile. “I’m going to shoot them with the singun.”
Chapra got out of the pilot’s chair and Abaron took over the controls. She went back into the main cabin where the girl watched her intently as she donned a spacesuit. The singun was heavy and she set its controls to the maximum. The singularity would last a full three seconds with each shot. She stepped into the airlock, attached a safety line, then over the suit com said, “I’m going out there now. Start reducing acceleration — gently — in about a minute.”
Out of the artificial gravity of the shuttle Chapra felt the tug of acceleration. It felt to her as if she was leaning out the window of a tower and looking down into fire and darkness. Holding tightly to the singun she rested her arms down the hull and aimed beyond the ionic glare of the shuttle’s engines. Acceleration dropped, then dropped again. Two silvery nubs rose up out of the darkness. She aimed at them and saw the range-finder on the gun going crazy as the ionic halo confused it. She fired and fired again, black bars cut through the glare. She swore, aimed carefully, fired a third time. Her visor polarised. One missile disappeared in a brief flash and the other missile tumbled away. Chapra quickly pulled herself back inside. Her arms and face were burning and she wondered just how many rads she had taken. Inside the shuttle and out of the suit, Chapra rubbed emollient cream on her face. Her arms had been heated inside the suit, but had not burned. She reckoned her face would peel, though funnily enough, the skin under her caste mark was unburned.
“You got them,” said the girl. “We’re safe now.”
“I wish I could agree with you,” said Chapra, stepping up into the control cockpit. She grinned at Abaron, but saw he did not look happy. “What is it?” she asked. He was studying the radar display.
“We’re ahead of it at the moment, but there’s a craft coming after us.”
“Not missiles?”
“No.”
Chapra sat down and began using the onboard computer. “We’ll be able to get into orbit and land before it catches us. We’ll be a couple of hours ahead of it.”
“Will that help?”
“Of course it will.”
Chapra’s smile was set. She thought about infrared tracking and scanning, about the weapons that craft might have. She checked the time piece under her fingernail. They had roughly fifty hours until the Cable Hogue arrived. They just had to survive that long.
In high definition hologram Schrödinger’s Box died. It drifted in space surrounded by a swarm of smart missiles and a spreading halo of dispersing air and water crystals. Occasionally a missile or two would detach from the swarm, dart in through the laser defence to pierce the hull and detonate far inside. The long tail of the ship had broken away as had many of the external sensors and probe ports. There were gaping holes in the hull rimmed with skeletal members black over red internal fires.
“There’s a com laser in the nose section,” said Speck, his hands moving in a caress across the weapons console. A smart missile moved in close, flashing red in coms laser fire. Another went in underneath it like a pack dog going for the underbelly. It flashed and, trailed vapour, detonated above the science vessel’s skin. That area of the hologram went black for a moment, then cleared to reveal a warped and glowing area of hull. “It’s down. Couple more like that to deal with and we can send one of the General’s gunships across.”
Kellor glanced at Conard then returned his attention to the hologram. It wasn’t enough that the ship was gutted: Conard wanted no less than total annihilation, which on a ship of that size was a demolition job rather than an attack.
“There won’t be anyone alive over there,” Kellor said, just for the hell of it. “They’re away in that shuttle.”
“That will soon be remedied. I have some of my best men on it,” said Conard tersely. Kellor smiled to himself. He had met the soldier Beredec and immediately recognised a career mercenary. Conard’s best men were not the usual Confederation grunts. Conard went on, “There is no-one alive over there, but there are AIs. I want them all.” He turned to one of his aides. “Take four men over with you. Let Davis carry the CTD.”
The aide grinned nastily and turned on his heel. Kellor looked at Jurens, who pressed a thumb against his chest then tapped the knife at his belt. Kellor gave a slight nod and Jurens grinned, exposing artificially white teeth in his bearded face. He had lost his original set to an officer just like that aide. Atmosphere thundered against the ceramic undersides of the shuttle’s stubby wings and wide body. Haden was an orange and white arc cutting the screen in two. Around the edges of the screen was a red glow from the heating hull. They had managed to dump velocity with ion engine braking but were still entering atmosphere at design limits. The shuttle gravity was sluggish to compensate for this kind of treatment and they were not completely cushioned from the violence of entry into atmosphere.
“It’s going to have to be the sea,” said Chapra. “We won’t be able to get the speed down enough for a vertical landing. Take too long. I suggest we all get into full environment suits.” She did not comment on their chances of surviving in a sea of boiling water if the shuttle broke up. Perhaps it would be better not to wear a suit at all then death would be quicker.
“Can’t you use the AG units to slow us?” asked Abaron.
“A little, if I tilt them. We don’t want to end up skating across the gravity field else we’ll take as long to slow as if we’d stayed airborne.”
Abaron nodded then went back into the passenger compartment. He was gone for a little while before he returned wearing an environment suit with the visor flipped up and carrying another suit for Chapra.
“I almost forget,” he said.
“What?”
He gestured with a thumb into the passenger compartment. “She doesn’t need one.” Chapra nodded, then handed the controls over to him while she pulled on her suit. In a short time the view through the screen was of the crinkles of mountains, red flat deserts and jungles of light green vegetation. The sun was bright orange, oblate, and its corona filled half the sky with concentric bands of its refracted spectrum. The rest of the sky was a red ochre that reminded of African earth.
“Are you well-strapped in back there?” Chapra asked.
“I am,” replied the girl.
“Okay, be ready to be thrown about a bit. We’re landing on the ocean and internal gravity is unlikely to be able to compensate quickly enough. Could be bumpy.”
“I am prepared,” said the girl, which was not really a little girl sort of thing to say. The edge of the land mass came into view. An orange sea foamed against slabs of rock and wide sandy beaches. Out beyond this they lost sight of the sea as Chapra turned the shuttle to its optimum braking attitude. The constant roar increased in pitch and hot sparks of something skated across the screens.