The Morcai Battalion. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ your emerillium boosters and give me the best widescan spray pattern you can manage. Fire on my signal. Higgins, bring us down to half-sublight and hold.”

      “Aye, sir.”

      Stern leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes glued to the short-range scanner screen on his console. As he watched the approach of the “meteor” he had to grudgingly admire the strategy of the Rojok captain piloting that lead ship.

      The Rojok vessels drew closer by the second. Tension grew on the bridge. The crew was accustomed to these confrontations, but the effect of battle was still the same. Fear, quiet terror, dry throats were all a part of space conflicts. Retreat was impossible once combat was engaged. Where was there to go, except into cold space? Uncertainty rippled through the crew. No commander, no matter how capable, could guarantee the outcome of a battle.

      The Rojoks, depending on their “meteor skin” disguise to camouflage them, were beginning to make their run. To an untrained eye, the only disturbance among the bright stars would have been a wayward little meteor feeling its way to oblivion. But Stern knew, and was ready.

      “Weaponry, stand by,” he called.

      “Ready, sir.”

      “Watch your screen. Give him five seconds into the run, then lock on to him.”

      “Counting, sir. One…two…three…four…”

      Before he could voice the final number, a violent shock wave hit the Bellatrix and threw it careening off course. Stern’s back slammed into the arm of his chair and he fell with a racking thud to the deck as the generators that maintained the pressurized interior hit a blip. He was on his feet before the full effect of the bruising ride hit his suddenly throbbing temples.

      “Grab the helm, Mister!” He hit the intercom switch. “Weaponry, post two,” he called into the intership lock, “can you lock on to him?”

      “Yes, sir. Got him!”

      “Fire all tubes!”

      The ship lurched as the condensed tubes emitting emerillium waves left the ship, pitching the crew against the bulkheads. Stern grabbed his chair and threw himself into it.

      “Helm, divert to secondary course!” he barked.

      “Leaving over, sir!”

      “Weaponry, success of strike?”

      “We hit one of them, sir, amidships,” the weaponry officer reported. “But the others…”

      “Line up your pattern and fire when ready!”

      “But, sir,” the officer argued over the screen, “we don’t have anything left to hit them with! The hit we took blew hell out of our boosters. We’re paralyzed aft!”

      “Helm, can we outrun him?” Stern shot at the astrogator.

      “We can try, sir, providing we have enough fuel to throw to the auxiliary units. Leaving over now.”

      Stern’s hands bit into the soft plastiglas of the chair arms as the big ship began to lurch forward with a humming surge of power. “Come on, baby,” he whispered, as if the ship were a female he could coax. “Come on.”

      “He’s tailing us, sir,” the astrogator called over his shoulder. “He’s barely a parsec behind and closing. When he makes half that distance, he’ll fire. And we can’t make any more speed.”

      Speed, Stern thought furiously. Dammit, speed!

      His hand went to his head, to the blinding pain that gripped him when he tried to think, to reason…He fought it. And a flash got through.

      “Helm, hard right flank and slow to sublight!” he barked. “Quick, dammit!”

      “Yes, sir!”

      The astrogator dived for the control, and seconds later the huge ship lurched like a fish out of water. Stern ground his teeth as the braking spools were engaged, bringing the force of thirty G’s down onto his chest. He could barely breathe, the pressure was so great.

      The stars came blurring back into focus. The pressure eased. He pulled his aching body upright and gasped for breath. “The Rojok?” he asked quickly.

      The astrogator turned with an apologetic shake of his head. “Sorry, sir. He’s on to us. He slowed as we did. He’s right behind us, and I can’t give you enough speed to ditch him. I’m…sorry, sir.”

      Death. He could taste it. He could see in the faces of his crew that they, too, knew. Again, he fought the pain inside his head for a strategy, any strategy, that might spare the ship. But that, too, was a losing battle.

      Wearily he looked around at the somber, set faces of the bridge crew. He sighed wearily. “If we die,” he said, “we do it like men. Any argument?”

      The officers and crewmen shook their heads wordlessly.

      He nodded. “Turn the ship, astrogator,” he said quietly.

      “Course, sir?”

      “Straight down the Rojok’s throat,” he replied, “with every ounce of speed you can manage.”

      “Yes, sir.” The astrogator’s fingers whipped the controls into position. “Ready, sir.”

      Stern fixed his eyes on the screen, at the oval Rojok ship hanging there in space like a fish waiting for a worm. His heart was climbing into his throat, and he felt a fear he hadn’t known existed. Familiar, this feeling. As if he’d been through that narrow door once before and dreaded repetition of it. The fear simulated panic, and he had to fight the urge to get up and run.

      The pain, the searing pain in his mind, grew steadily. Something alien in his brain was fighting this decision. Trying with pain to force him to countermand his own commands.

      His hands gripped the arms of his chair. He remembered Madeline and Hahnson down below and tried not to think about them. He straightened with a tremendous effort. Dignity first. It was the credo of the SSC. Even in death, he had to have the dignity of his command.

      Almost blind with pain, he drew in a heavy sigh. “Astrogator,” he said in a gruff whisper. “Ahead full!”

      The astrogator turned and met his eyes with a somber, resigned ghost of a smile. In it were admiration and honor. “Aye, sir.”

      

      The flagship Morcai sliced through the stars like a giant metallic blade, her massive engines making far less noise than her first officer. Komak’s usual high spirits did as much for the weary bridge crew as the promise of shore leave. Only the Morcai’s stoic commander seemed to be unaffected by it.

      Dtimun, sitting in his spoollike command chair, listened only halfheartedly. His mind was a galaxy away, on Enmehkmehk, home planet of the Rojok Dynasty. It was there that Chacon would surely take his captive—to Ahkmau, the infamous death camp on one of its moons where political prisoners were kept. The thought of Lyceria in such a place was torture, even to a career soldier’s trained mind.

      “ETA СКАЧАТЬ