Chapter Eight
"This is the end of the ship's ion trail," Keff said, reading the telemetry monitors. The CK-963 zigzagged the empty space between the orbits of the last planet and the asteroid belt that marked the border of the Cridi system. They were within half a million klicks of the planet, a dusty, battered rock rimed with iron oxide red and nickel oxide blue. The sun was a faint flicker of yellow over Keff's right shoulder.
"And this corresponds to the last coordinates from which they transmitted to us," Carialle said. "But where's the ship?" She scanned space around her. There was a little debris, and a very small amount of residual radiation from the right kind of material, but not enough to tell what had happened. The DSC-902 appeared to have crossed the radiopause and disappeared into thin vacuum.
"If the ship was disabled, it couldn't have drifted far," Keff said, staring at the astrogation tank, searching it for artifacts. "If it was towed, where's the engine trail for the other ship?"
"What if Gavon was remotely pulled away?" Tall Eyebrow asked, showing the circuitry on his long fingers.
"The Cores," Carialle said. Keff let out a low whistle. "The pirates who killed them have Cores!"
"That's why somebody has bottled up the Cridi space program," he said. "The Cores have a limited range, but incredible power inside that radius. That technology alone is worth keeping a secret from the rest of the universe."
"I think you're right about the why," Carialle said. "We still don't know who. And at this moment, I am more concerned with where."
She was silent for so long Keff wondered if she had suffered another memory flashback. He waited for a long time, then cleared his throat.
"Cari? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Carialle said, a little too emphatically. "Apart from being burning mad, I'm just on green. I may not like having another ship come in and usurp my mission, but damn it, I will fight my battles myself. Somebody captured or destroyed one of our vessels, and I am damned well going to know who. Nobody messes with a Central Worlds ship on my turf."
"That's the spirit! Evil highway brigands who prey upon the helpless shall not prevail. We will sally forth and beard the miscreants in their den," Keff said, thumping his chest. He kept his voice light, hoping that her train of thought would not lead Carialle back to her memories of isolation. "We shall slay all who do not beg for mercy and swear allegiance to the CenCom."
Carialle was amused in spite of her worries. "Thank you, brave Sir Keff. But seriously, who are they? Not Cridi. They wouldn't be shooting at one another, at least not without giving a reason. And it certainly can't be other humans. There's never been any contact with humanity in this system before."
"That is what Narrow Leg and the others assure me," Tall Eyebrow said.
"And word would have gotten back to Central Worlds about the frogs if someone was ambushing their flights and stealing from them. We'd have begun to see artifacts that no one could explain-little spaceships," Carialle said. "Who could resist the Core technology? All three of the last Cridi missions had Cores on board."
"So what does that leave?" Keff asked, feeling the tingle of excitement. "Another race? Another spacegoing alien race?"
"It might be," Carialle said, cautiously. "It's a big universe. But first we must prove that the disappearance of this ship wasn't mere accident, and that it wasn't bad engineering that slew three Cridi vessels."
They explored the outer reaches of the heliopause. Space was pointedly, echoingly empty. Carialle picked up faint traces of engine trails, some ages old by the pattern of their decay. It seemed that most of the Cridi missions, at least as far back as they'd used an ion drive, had exited the system in this direction. It led, not incidentally, directly toward Ozran and away from the bulk of the Central Worlds. Her entry into the solar system was a quarter of the way anticlockwise around the sun, so the new wake she was forming behind her was clear and undisturbed. She used it to check the strength of the trail she was following.
"Aha," she said, as they arced out toward a group of jagged moonlets dancing along in the asteroid belt. "Now I am picking up fresh indications from another kind of space drive. Not Cridi."
Keff stared at the astrogation tank. Tall Eyebrow wriggled up next to him to see. Carialle put the view on full light spectrum analysis. The brawn darted a finger toward the lines that sprang into relief, criss-crossing the holographic display like spider web.
"I see it. There are hundreds of them!" he exclaimed. "Someone else is in this system."
"Very strange," Tall Eyebrow signed. "They've been traveling through here for years, but no one has ever made contact with the second planet. They must have been able to tell someone was living there. The noisy airwaves alone would have told them that, even if they couldn't understand the transmissions."
"They wouldn't exactly come visiting if their only motive was robbery," Keff said. "Wait, these are all cold. They're years old."
"Not these," Carialle said, illuminating three traces that converged on an asteroid cluster. "Those are new."
Keff peered closely at the faint image in the tank, then pounded a hand flat on the console. He had spotted movement.
"Cari, reverse course! Quick!"
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Carialle had looped the ship around. She was heading for cover behind a pocked moonlet before they could sense her. Three strange ships flew out of crevices and holes in one of the asteroids, and were making straight for them. She kept video cameras aimed aft as she looked for a hiding place. Keff studied their pursuers.
The ships' design looked familiar: long, tapered cones bracketed with emplacements for landing gear, communications, and weaponry, but all were old and in poor repair. Flying junkheaps, he thought, with a sniff. His monitors still didn't show a sensor lock from their pursuers. Their sensors showed radiation leak from two of their engines. One was nearing critical point as it poured on power to catch up with them. They were almost ridiculously undermaintained, but Keff felt no urge to laugh.
"Hurry, Cari!"
By comparison, the CK-963 was an angel on the wing. Carialle cornered wide around two halves of a broken rock ten times her size, then hugged in close behind a flattened sphere, searching for a ravine or a cave she could duck into. The sphere's sides were solid. She tried slipping past it unseen, to another huge rock shaped like a flatiron. One of the intruders was waiting just beyond the great wedge's lip. Carialle grimly turned as sharp an angle as she could in the opposite direction.
A red light, infinitesimally small, bloomed on the pursuer's hull.
"Brace!" Carialle cried out as the energy bolt struck her amidships.
The blast tore straight through her shields as though through cellophane. Painful heat ran along her sensors, which then mercifully shut down. Damage control monitors showed her an elongated oval tear in her dorsal hull. Whoops sounded as the alarm went off in the cabin. Emergency systems kicked into operation at once.
Keff kept himself from being thrown across the control console by gripping the crash couch's armrests and hanging on with all his great strength. Tall Eyebrow, hovering, had nothing to grab onto, but pivoted deliberately in the air and somersaulted into the padding of the other couch. The straps rose up and surrounded him like an octopus seizing prey.
"Wish I could do that," Keff said, between gritted teeth. Tall Eyebrow whistled an apology. The pilot's couch engulfed Keff in safety harness. He expelled his breath in a long sigh and let go his grasp on the armrests.