"Best news I've had all day." Dan closed the link and flicked on his external speakers. "Lieutenant Brand, take your lance-mates and see if you can march three of the burned Panthersinto the Nuada."He glanced at the clock ticking down on the right side of his viewplate. "Hurry it up, though. We've only got two hours before we have to blast off this rock."
* * *
Choking back his nausea, Dan pulled himself through the Jump-Ship right behind Salome. He pushed off hard from the bulkhead and floated up through the corridor running along the K-F drive. Red signs warning of the liquid helium tanks surrounding the jump drives flashed as he floated past with Cat and Salome toward the Cucamulus'sbridge. God, I hate zero-gravity,he thought testily.
Deep in the heart of the Cucamulus,the three MechWarriors floated into the ship's Command Center. Instruments and tactical readouts filled the dark, spherical walls with flickering monitor screens and flashing data displays. Work stations occupied every centimeter of the circular walls, with crew members laboring at almost every one of them. The MechWarriors drifted in through a hatch in the spherical roof and grabbed onto the hatch's edge just long enough to cancel their freefall.
Dan smiled. Every time I come into this place, I feel as though I've been shrunk and dropped into the middle of a computer.
Floating exactly in the center of the room, Captain Janos Van-dermeer sat in his command chair. Supported by nothing but the invisible lines of magnetic fields, the chair spun and swirled as he pressed buttons on the two arms. At their entry, a light flashed at the Captain's right hand, and the chair turned him around.
Dan carefully joined Salome and Cat in saluting. "Permission to come aboard."
"Granted." Vandermeer smiled warmly, then frowned and pointed to a tactical display of the Chara system. A dotted yellow line showed the trajectory of the Kurita DropShips coming in toward Pacifica. The line split off and slowly curved toward where the Cucamulusglowed on the chart like a green arrow.
"We have company, my friends. You must have made someone very angry."
Dan nodded. "That we did."
Behind him, Lieutenant Brand entered the command center and drifted over to a scanner station beside the one where Cat had settled in. Brand adjusted the controls and punched information into the computer. He pulled back and whispered something to Cat. The big, black man nodded silently, then Brand turned.
He frowned. "I make it eight Slayerscoming in hot."
Vandermeer turned his chair. "Branson, does that match your estimate?"
The petite, raven-haired scantech turned and nodded. "On the mark, sir. ETA, two hours."
Vandermeer steepled his fingers. "Shall we scramble your fighters, or . . ."
Salome shook her head vehemently. "Negative on the fighters. O'Cieran recovered information from the Pantherbase camp that indicated the operation was meant to destroy the Kell Hounds. That's the only purpose for it. It would have worked, too, if the Panther Sho-sahadn't been early off the mark."
Vandermeer nodded at Dan. "The day you spared for Jones is what surprised them?"
Dan nodded. "Better them than us." He watched the line depicting the fighters grow closer. "You're planning to jump out before they get here, aren't you?"
The Captain nodded, then turned his glance up at Salome. "If they intend to destroy you, wouldn't it be safe to assume that they've made plans against our escape? They could easily have covered all the Steiner worlds within range."
Salome nodded slowly. "That's a fair assumption. What do you have in mind, you old fox?"
Vandermeer ran a hand over his head, patting the white hair back into place. "Just a little trick, my dear, to make them think we misjumped." His chair spun quickly, then locked in, facing away and down from Salome and Dan.
"Mr. Harker, load Jump Plan Four into the computer. Jump countdown of 10 on my mark." He spun the chair again and shouted at a large blond man hunched over a console. "Mr. Garrison, jettison the spare helium, the oxygen in Tank 3, and the debris from the agro-domes."
"Aye, sir."
Dan found Vandermeer smiling at him again. "Mark, Mr. Harker." The Captain opened his hands like a conjurer innocently suggesting he had nothing up his sleeves. "In ten seconds, they will believe the Kell Hounds are no more."
Dan smiled. "The helium, oxygen, and debris will make them think that the ship destroyed itself?"
Vandermeer nodded enthusiastically.
Salome frowned. "But won't the Kurita ships waiting at other stars—"
The jump rippled and melted all reality. The muted lights within the command center flared to life with the intensity of strobes. The colors melted together into a kaleidoscopic vortex of hue and abnormal shapes. Dan's stomach roiled in sympathy with the visual display, but something in Salome's half-asked question worried him more than the physical discomfort.
"—see us arriving and know we're still alive?" she said, a moment later.
Vandermeer laughed aloud. "They would, but we've not jumped into a Steiner system." He opened his hands broadly. "Welcome, my friends, to Kurita space!"
49
Styx
Dieron Military District, Draconis Combine
25 May 3027
With an encouraging nod from Yorinaga Kurita, Sho-saTarukito Niiro strode to the forefront of the amphitheatre-style briefing room aboard the Shod,an OverlordClass DropShip. Clad only in a cooling vest, shorts, and headband, he felt slightly self-conscious, but all the others gathered in the room were similarly attired. The Sho-sacleared his throat as the lights dimmed and the holographic representation of the Styx base rose in intensity.
"This, as you all know, is the planetoid toward which we are currently en route." He flicked a laser pointer to life and touched its white dome to the uppermost deck. "As usual, we have designated the decks according to the military alphabet: Ishi, Roji, Hata, Torii, Chi,and Wa.The ISF warriors have entered the base through the galley on Rojilevel and the small docking bay on Chilevel. They have met stiff resistance on these levels, but they are pushing the defenders back."
Tarukito flicked the pointer at a light-sensitive panel on the wall. In an instant, the computer-generated projection of the Styx base expanded. The decks above and beiow Toriiand Chilevels evaporated. Those levels expanded to take up the space used by the previous model and more. When the structure ceased its growth, the computer added a vector-graphic image of the Bifrostand the Silver Eaglein their locations within the ship bay.
Tarukito's pointer caressed the Silver Eagle."It is believed that the person we seek will be aboard the Silver Eagle.The vessel has no weaponry and should surrender without a fight. The company that owns it, Monopole, is being informed by ComStar that the ship will be impounded until its illegal jump into the Combine can be explained."
He shifted the pointer's spotlight to the base command center on Toriideck. "This is the central office on the base. As you can see from the diagram, it overlooks the hangar area. The ISF troops at the base believe that defense of the planetoid is being coordinated from that point."