Battle of the Ring (25 page)

“You can say yes,” he suggested hopefully.

“Are you going anytime soon?” Valthyrra demanded suddenly
over com, her voice echoing dimly from the helmet Mayelna held. She looked down
at it, then reached out and set the helmet on his head.

“You go take care of business, Commander Velmeran,” she said as
she fastened the collar clips. “I will watch your ship until you come
back.”

Maeken Kea was still fastening her jacket when she arrived at the bridge. As
a matter of fact, it was the only part of her uniform that she had on. In her
years as the Commander of a warship, she had learned through experience to
always wear something when she tried to catch a little sleep when battle was
likely. But the Starwolves had a certain perversity on that score; they had
been careful to attack while she was in the shower. She reasoned that, if she
got only one thing on by the time she reached the bridge, the jacket was long
enough to keep her decently covered – if just barely. She was correct,
for the most part; she was blissfully unaware that the tail of the jacket was
split in the same place her own tail was split.

Lieutenant Skerri saw her the moment she entered and pretended to
notice nothing strange, although she could well imagine the stimulation to
his postadolescent fantasies. She threw her pants in his direction and headed
straight for her console.

“So what is it?” she demanded briskly as she bent over her
monitor.

“Captain, the Methryn’s corridor has turned straight out from
the planet,” Skerri reported. “It seemed suspicious to me, so I
knew that you would jump on it.”

“You bet your – “

“Collision imminent!” Marenna Challenger warned suddenly.

Maeken glanced anxiously at the main viewscreen, where the danger was
immediately obvious. A rock of respectable size, a kilometer and more wide by
half a kilometer high, was hurtling down the Methryn’s corridor, moving
fast and accelerating rapidly along a path designed to make the best use
of the gravity of the large planet below. Numbers projected to one corner of
the screen estimated time to impact and counted down sixteen to fifteen even as
she watched. Maeken needed only an instant to decide.

“Arm missiles to launch!” she ordered briskly. “Detonation
on impact. Fire one... and two. Hull shields to maximum – brace for
impact.”

“Condition red – brace for impact.” Marenna relayed the
order to the entire ship as the first missile struck and exploded. The
viewscreen dimmed automatically against the brilliant nuclear flash barely
six kilometers ahead. The second explosion followed in the next instant. A
fourth of the boulder was either vaporized or crushed by the concussion into gravel.
The rest split into five sections that were still alarming in their proportions.

A second later the debris pelted the Challenger’s forward hull. The
quartzite shielding held, although the ship shuddered violently. Maeken
remained standing through the impact only by holding on to the back of her
seat.

“Shield your engines!” she yelled at Marenna even as the
reverberations echoed through the ship’s hull. She was only guessing what
the Starwolves would do next, but it was a good guess. Four packs of fighters
dived out of the ring in the next instant. Because Maeken had already given the
order to shield, they got only six of the fourteen exposed engines.

“That tears it,” Maeken muttered in disgust as she snatched her
pants from Lieutenant Skerri’s grasp. “Keep your eyes open.”

Skerri did as he was told. As the Captain turned and began to pull on her
pants, he did his best to watch closely while pretending to keep his eyes
discreetly on the monitor. At forty-five, Maeken Kea was twice his age, on the
far side of middle-aged by his own definition. He was all the more surprised
to see a trim and shapely fanny.

“Do you see anything?” she asked.

“Captain, I...,” Skerri stammered guiltily, then understood what
she meant. “All clear for the moment.”

Maeken paused to glance at him over her shoulder. It did not do for junior
officers to have any fascination for their seniors, but she could keep Skerri
under control. Besides, he served her best for as long as she was able to keep
him impressed, and she had the feeling that she had just impressed him in a way
that neither of them had expected. She looked around for her boots and found
that they must have been left in her cabin.

“Collision imminent!” Marenna warned again.

Maeken looked up at the viewscreen and saw absolutely nothing. At that
instant the Challenger shuddered so violently that she left the deck. She
struck the ceiling and was pinned there for a moment, hitting squarely in the
middle of her back so hard that her vision dimmed. Then gravity returned and she
was dropped sprawling to the deck. Skerri landed nearby and remained
motionless. She began to pick herself up, cursing herself for not
strapping in after that first attack but glad that she at least had her pants
on. A second impact from the opposite direction flattened her to the deck.
She was about to ask for a report when she saw Starwolf fighters on the main
viewscreen.

“Do not return fire!” she ordered sharply as she rose to stand
uncertainly. “Keep your power in the hull shields.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Maeken straightened her back experimentally, trusting that nothing hurt bad
enough to actually be broken. Skerri remained motionless. She considered moving
him but knew that she could not. He was a big, healthy boy, while she was
technically a tall midget. She appreciated the fact that she was moving while
he was not. Well, Mr. Skerri. Not so old after all, are we?

“Damage report!” She gasped in pain as she lowered herself into
her seat.

“No damage to the ship,” Marenna replied. “I believe that
the better part of the crew is slightly incapacitated for the moment, and I
will send automated sentries to investigate possible injuries to off-duty
personnel.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“There were two additional impacts,” the ship explained.
“Small corridors had been opened at right angles to our own. Boulders of
approximately two hundred meters were accelerated along these corridors
and struck the ship above and below the forward hull, the result of remarkably
accurate timing. The impacts rocked the ship violently.”

A slight understatement, Maeken reflected. She noticed that Lieutenant
Skerri was sitting up and rubbing his head. At the moment that seemed to be a
favorite activity of the Challenger’s crew.

“With us again, Mr. Skerri?” she asked.

“I was never completely gone,” he replied. “Just very
close to it.”

He rose and walked stiffly over to her console. Holding the supports of her
seat, he quickly checked the scanner images. Starwolf fighters were swarming
over the hull of the ship, skimming the gleaming black surface by as little as
two meters. All to absolutely no effect.

“As long as we keep the guns retracted, they have absolutely no
targets,” Maeken explained. “Besides, it might be a trick. I want
to keep that power to the hull shields in the event they throw something else
at us.”

“I see what you mean,” Skerri agreed. “Tricky devils.
These attacks are getting more sophisticated all the time.”

Maeken nodded slowly; it was as fast as she could nod. “Perhaps I
shouldn’t say this, but I’m beginning to get scared. There seems to
be no limit to how much Velmeran can think up and put together. We may reach a
point where I will finally make a mistake.”

Skerri frowned. “It is getting dirty.”

“I’m glad you recognized something suspicious and got me to the
bridge in time,” she said, grinning mischievously. “At least they
didn’t catch you with your pants down.”

Lieutenant Skerri laughed in spite of the pain.

The seventh and last fighter dropped quickly into the sheltered cove
formed by three towering projections in the Challenger’s hull.
Watching from his own cockpit, Velmeran identified it as Lenna’s. The
little ship extended its landing gear and dropped down until its landing pads
locked magnetically against the hull of the Fortress.

“All down and no problems,” he reported over com. “You can
break off the attack.”

“Right, Captain,” Baressa replied. “All packs break off...
“

Her voice was lost as he disconnected his suit from the fighter’s com
link and support system. He was surprised and delighted that the Challenger had
held her fire on the way in; that was something he had anticipated but not
expected. All he had hoped for was to create a state of complete confusion to
hide the landing of the assault team.

After fully depressurizing the cockpit, he opened the canopy and cautiously
climbed out. They had landed on the side of the Challenger and were in fact on
a vertical portion of the hull, like spiders walking up the wall. But that
hardly mattered, since there was no gravity on the outside of the ship.
Electromagnetic inserts in their boots kept them on the surface of the ship, although
the hold was feeble through the quartzite shielding.

The rest had gathered in front of the fighters, staring off across a flat
expanse of open hull. Lenna arrived behind him; he could identify her easily by
the fact that her armor had only one set of arms. Consherra was even more
clearly identified by her white armor, an almost shocking contrast against an
angular black landscape populated by black fighters and Starwolves in black armor.

“Out there?” Tregloran asked uncertainly. “We could waste
half an hour looking for that airlock.”

“You should have looked for it on the way in,” Velmeran told
him. “You might have landed on it.”

He walked out eleven carefully paced steps and stopped at the edge of what
now appeared to the others as a pit opening in the smooth surface of the hull.
As they drew nearer, they could see that the rectangular depression was no more
than ten centimeters deep, the lip designed to receive the hermetic seal
of a docking tube. Inside that was the door itself, its two halves firmly
sealed. They could also see now how he had found it so easily; the nose of his
fighter was pointed directly toward it.

“So, wizard, you have found the hidden door,” Baress remarked.
“Do you know the secret word?”

“You have access to Velmeran’s library,” Consherra said accusingly.
“How did you acquire that privilege? I was his mate for half a year
before he opened his shelves to me.”

“Needless to say, I found an easier method,” Baress said dryly.
“I asked. Perhaps you never thought of that.”

“I lock the doors to keep the books on the shelves,” Velmeran
explained, interrupting his silent examination of the airlock. “Not to
keep people out. A book serves no function unless it is read.”

“Well, do you have any magic words?” Consherra asked impatiently.

“Certainly.
Quad erat faciendun, quantum placet. Allegro non
troppo!”
he declared in a commanding voice, waving all four arms in
elaborate gestures. “Open sesame!”

The doors snapped back instantly, revealing the brightly lit interior of the
airlock. A second set of doors at the bottom were securely closed; the Union
did not have the containment fields that Starwolves used on their own locks and
bays.

“Quickly, now,” Velmeran warned. “There are sensors on
these doors that I am having to hold inactive.”

“Right,” Lenna agreed. Before anyone could stop her, she reached
down to take hold of the edge of the lock and flipped herself inside. Gravity
interfered halfway through her free-fall somersault and she fell heavily on her
back on a wall that suddenly became a floor.

“Great stars!” She wheezed, and struggled to pick herself up.
“Watch that first step.”

Velmeran was the first to recover from his surprise. He turned and lowered
himself cautiously into the airlock. Kneeling on the floor, he reached up
to assist Consherra and Baress. Last of all, Tregloran passed their guns down
to them.

“We have to get through this airlock before I let something
slip,” he said. “You remember what I told you. When the time comes,
the three of you are to get away from here. If we are not back by then, we will
not be coming back. Not to worry, though.”

“Do I look worried?” Tregloran asked. “You can take on the
lot of them, and bring this ship home for salvage. Especially now that you have
Lenna to help you.”

“I cannot tell you how reassuring that is,” Velmeran remarked
with droll sarcasm as he allowed the outer door to snap shut. He turned
immediately to the control panel by the inner door and ran his upper right hand
lightly over the surface, not quite touching, as if tracing hidden wiring. He
quickly found what he was looking for, or so it seemed. Air began cycling into
the lock, and a moment later the inner door snapped open.

Baress and Lenna were out the door immediately, rifles ready as they scouted
the corridor in either direction, while Consherra stood with her rifle trained
down the larger hall immediately ahead. Velmeran peered at them curiously.

“I could have told you nothing was there,” he remarked. He turned
to look at the door, and it obediently slid shut. “There. No indication
that we ever came through.”

“First things first,” Lenna remarked as she set down her rifle.
Taking her bundle of extra clothes, she headed for the suit room adjacent to
the airlock. She immediately began stripping off her armor, hanging it on an
empty suit rack in the wall beside the door, where it was less likely to be
seen.

“Remember to avoid the sentries,” Velmeran reminded them, having
pulled off his helmet. “What one sees, they all know. It does us no good
to destroy one before it has seen you, since its destruction will be noted and
investigated. We need to conduct our business undetected, and leave the same
way... if we can.”

“Are those beasties able to identify legitimate crewmembers on
sight?” Lenna asked.