Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (21 page)

“Operation is nominal,” the robot pilot reported, and now Weens turned his attention toward this robot. “Course it is, you mistaken pile o’ aluminum foil! Just tell me when something goes wrong!”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot nodded slightly, then turned its gleaming head back to the Screen before it.

Shatz Abel studied the view through the fore shield: a makeshift flotilla rising as one through the blackening atmosphere, the wavering bubble of the cloak making the stars shimmer as if seen through a film of water.

“I hope this bucket of yours is ready for this fight, Weens,” Shatz Abel remarked.

Weens flared anger, which quickly subsided into pride. “Course she is, Shatz! Best freighter in the fleet! And mark me—this squares us for good!”

“This squares us for you leaving Dalin and I on Europa—”

“Unavoidable, it was!”

“As unavoidable as you not wanting to join the Earth fleet after I found you marooned off Charon and had this useless wreck fixed?”

“And right nice o’ you it was, Shatz!”

The pirate took the old captain by the front of his tunic and brought him dose. “Good. Then don’t even think of running out on me again. And if we get out of this, we’ll talk about being square on the other hundred things you owe me for. Agreed?”

“Sure, Shatz! Anything ye say!”

The pirate let Weens down.

“Captain,” the robot pilot reported, shaking its head as it studied its Screen, “we seem to be losing power.”

Alarmed, Shatz Abel looked through the front shield: indeed, they were falling behind the other ships.

“If we break the cloak, Cornelian will know we’re here!” the pirate warned.

“Can’t have that!” Weens hopped like a grasshopper out of the pilot’s cabin and into the back “Must be them plasma caps I replaced!”

Shatz Abel, following him, bellowed, “What do you mean? You were given brand-new plasma caps!”

Weens looked up sheepishly from the floor panel he had opened. “And mighty good they were, too, Shatz! Much too good for this crate, so I traded ’em for a slight downgrade and a bit ’o Titanian brandy—oh, ye wouldn’t believe how smooth that brandy was—”

Roaring his displeasure, the pirate lifted the skinny captain out of the bay and reached down himself.

“These are complete junk!”

“Well,” Weens said, “perhaps they ain’t quite up to snuff—”

From up front, the pilot reported, “We’ll be leaving the cloak in thirty seconds …”

Giving another roar, Shatz Abel thrust his upper body down into the tight space of the work bay and desperately pulled at the plasma caps, removing, examining, and replacing them in a different order.

“Any change?” he yelled up front.

“Removal from the cloak in fifteen seconds. Yar Pent reports an unsuccessful tow attempt.”

“This heap is too heavy for a tow!” the pirate shouted. His thick hands moved plasma caps as if they were checkers on a checkerboard. “How ’bout that?”

“No change,” the report came.

“Damnation!” The pirate’s thick fingers flew; he drew two caps out completely, tossing them aside, and bridged the gap with feeder cable. “That’s it! This works or nothing!”

“A … slight improvement,” the robot pilot reported. After a moment the navigator reported, “Regaining course, though at reduced speed.”

“So much for maneuverability,” the pirate spat, pushing himself out of the crawl space and slamming the hatch behind him. He stood up and faced Weens, who seemed to be searching for a way out of the ship. Ignoring the captain, Shatz Abel returned to the pilot’s cabin and asked the robot, “Tell me if I’m wrong, but we’ll be middling fast, and slow on the turns—am I right?”

The pilot nodded. “Yes, sir. And weapons should all be operational, within those constraints.”

“Fine. I’ve been in tighter spots—though,” he continued, turning a withering look on Weens, who was back in the hold, now intent on studying the port window, “not when I didn’t have to be.”

“Aye, if Venus don’t look pretty from here!” Weens said, in a desperately cheerful voice.

“And if there’s one more surprise on this ship,” Shatz Abel said, “you’ll be on your way back down there, without a space suit.”

“R
eady for cloak drop,” Yar Pent said.

At the amidships Screen, Shatz Abel nodded to Yar Pent and the other eleven squad commanders. “On my mark. And good luck to everybody. Remember what to be ready for. All righ t… mark!”

The Screen blanked, and the pirate lumbered up front to watch through the front shield.

Arranged around Shatz’s ship like dandelion seeds, the fleet ships all lurched at once as the wavering cloak disintegrated. Twinkling stars became in an instant sharp as knife points, and now the fleet broke apart. The dandelion seeds scattered as if a sharp blow of wind had burst them away from their flower.

The horizon of Venus, bright yellow with hints of blue and green, hove up into view. The black marks of Prime Cornelian’s plasma soldier generators floated like bobbers on the ocean of the planet’s hazy atmosphere.

“Our own target ahead,” the robot pilot reported, and Shatz Abel studied the black object which resolved into a box, the round gleam of its belly lens just becoming visible.

The pirate turned to the navigator. “What word from Dalin Shar?”

The navigator paused, listening to the frequency scanner wired into its body, then reported, “They have successfully jammed the plasma generators in their sector. But there seems to be—”

The robot stopped; and Shatz Abel cried, “Ah!” as the generator that was growing quickly in size before them, showing the individual facets of its lens now, as well as the bolted bay of its plasma generator, their target, abruptly winked out.

“Cloaked, by gum!” Captain Weens, his head poked reticently into the pilot’s cabin, declared.

“We’re ready for this—try that cloak scanner that little girl Visid developed!”

The pilot assented, and in a moment reported, “I’m getting no reading.”

“Cloaked and kangarooed!” Weens stated. “Just like you said they would!”

“I now have a reading behind us,” the pilot reported without passion.

“This is what they did on Titan. Turn us around!” Shatz Abel ordered.

“That will take some time,” the pilot reported. “As you remember, our plasma cap reconfiguration—”

“That’s enough!” the pirate fumed. “Do your best!” Giving Weens a murderous look, Shatz Abel stalked back to the amidships Screen.

“Report!” he ordered.

The Screen went alive with twelve shouting, alarmed faces. Shatz Abel cut out the others and faced Yar Pent.

“It cloaked and jumped behind us!” Yar Pent shouted. “We were ready and got off a shot, but it was neutralized with defensive weapons and now we’re being fired on!”

“Fired on? By the generators?”

As if in confirmation, Shatz’s own ship was rocked, nearly throwing him off balance.

“We’re under attack, sir,” the robot pilot reported.

Weens, who had entered the cabin, began to strike the chrome head. “O’ course he knows that, ye empty tin can!”

Shatz Abel listened to two other reports before ordering, “Break off the attack!”

Again, Shatz’s ship was rocked.

“Get us out of here!” he shouted.

“As you wish,” the pilot replied; the freighter lurched as it was brought out of its wide turn and all power was fed to the engines.

Yar Pent’s face appeared on the Screen. “Shatz! We’re hit!” In the background, a blot of smoke rose and spread; there was a thin red line of fire that cut through the air. “Shatz—”

There was a single scream as the Screen went blank.

The pirate checked in with two other commanders; one was under fire and the second shouted frantically, “We’ve been boarded! They turned the lens on us and plasma soldiers—”

There came a brief view of three plasma soldiers flashing through the picture before it, too, went out.

“Everyone, get out now! Meet at our rendezvous point!”

Shatz Abel shut down the Screen and made his way back up front, using bulkhead straps and cargo racks as handholds as yet another blast rocked the ship.

“Damage to the port thrusters,” the pilot reported, studying his Screen.

“Keep going, damnit! Keep going!” Shatz Abel said.

Reaching over the machine, the pirate activated the rear scanner and was amazed to see the plasma generator that had been their target blinking out and then on again, literally hopping after them, its surface ablaze with weapon ports. All at once it swiveled, showing its lens—

“Take evasive action! They’re going to board us!”

“Evasive action will have little effect,” the pilot informed him. “As you know—”

“I know, damnit! I know about the caps! Just be ready!” As he hauled himself out of the cabin, he grabbed at the navigator and pointed to the Screen. “You keep an eye on that and tell me what happens!”

The robot nodded. “As you wish, sir.”

Shatz Abel dragged Captain Weens back with him and began to tear open cargo cabinets. “Help me find that plasma soldier degenerator!”

Weens made a faint show of looking; suddenly Shatz Abel stood up and glared at him. “You sold it, didn’t you?”

Weens’s face tried looking sheepish but settled for terrified. “Aye, Shatz! There was a fellow on another ship who fancied a second for himself. Insurance, he called it! I had no idea we’d be needing the thing—”

Shatz Abel loomed over him, raising his fist. “I should kill you!”

“Aye!” Weens croaked. “That you should!”

“There is activity in the plasma generator lens,” the navigator reported from the cabin. “It is glowing.”

Shatz-Abel lowered his fist, turned to the space suit locker nearby, and yanked its door open. “I’ll kill you later, Weens,” he said, pulling a suit out and throwing it at the captain, “but to do that I’ll have to save you now. Don’t talk, just put it on, and do what I say.”

And pulling out a second, larger suit, the pirate climbed quickly into it.

C
linging to the hull of the freighter like a fat beetle, Shatz Abel looked over at Weens, who, on the opposite side of the airlock hatch they had exited, was afixed likewise. Even in his clear-helmeted red suit the captain looked frightened, his black gloves grasping the curve of the hull as if they were glued.

Shatz Abel raised his head slightly and beheld the black box of the plasma generator behind the ship, its lens glowing brightly; there was a momentary brightening as a shaft of energy penciled toward the freighter. Already it had happened twice, which led the pirate to believe there were now three plasma soldiers within the ship.

The port of the airlock flared light. Shatz Abel put his head back down. The captain, he saw, was trembling.

The ship’s engines cut out; there was a loud screech like metal scraping metal, followed by silence.

Shatz Abel counted to fifty, then tentatively raised his head again.

The lens of the plasma generator had dulled; and the object now swiveled away, showing its black backside, before abruptly winking out.

It reappeared a moment later far away, and then blinked out again before becoming once more visible as a bright dot approaching Venus.

Shatz Abel took a deep breath and leaned away from the hull, letting the suit’s adhesive boots prevent him from floating away.

He lumbered to the airlock, swung open the hatch, and pulled himself in.

Turning back toward space, he met the startled face of captain Weens, seeking to reenter behind him.

“I should let you float out there, Weens,” the pirate said; but after glowering for a few seconds, he smiled. “But I’m happy enough just to be alive, so come back in.”

“Thankee, Shatz—thankee!”

Once the airlock had been closed and the ship pressurized, Shatz Abel removed his suit, while the captain went up to the cabin.

“Weens,” the pirate yelled, “tell those two robots of yours to pull us out of here—slowly. We don’t want to attract any atten—”

There came a sound from Weens like a strangled sob. Frowning, Shatz Abel joined the captain in the pilot’s cabin.

“I’ll be damned…”

“My mates, Shatz! My mates!” Weens sobbed, tears streaming from his one good eye.

The two robots, pilot and navigator, lay bisected neatly, their lower halves, sprouting cables and seared parts, still sitting primly in their couches. Their upper torsos lay sideways, the pilot’s hands clutching his Screen.

Weens brought the pilot’s head to his chest and hugged it. “They was junk, they was; they was no-good tin cans full o’ junk; they was useless machines—but they was my mates!”

His face set, Shatz Abel said, “If it makes you feel any better, Weens, they saved our hides. And now it’s best we get out of here, before one of Cornelian’s ships comes to claim this piece of salvage.”

Captain Weens, his grizzled ancient face filled with pain, looked up at the pirate and wept, “They was my mates!”

T
he rendezvous point was not a happy place. As Shatz Abel eased the freighter into position, he estimated that nearly half the fleet was gone, and half of what was left was damaged. His face was grim as he surveyed the ships with blast holes, burned thrusters, blackened fronts, and missing gear. With a sinking feeling he took role call from his squadron commanders, noting that seven of the twelve faces, Yar Pent’s among them, were missing from his Screen.

Another commander, the bulldog Killaney from Pluto, said in his brusque, deep voice, “I saw Yar’s ship take two in the side, Shatz, after she was boarded. They didn’t get their plasma soldier degenerator out in time. We barely escaped ourselves.”

Shatz Abel nodded, taking in the other bad news before giving some himself.

“As of now, were on hold. I’ve had no word from Dalin Shar since after the Martian counterattack began. The tally is this: we managed to knock out one plasma soldier generator and damage three others. In other words, we failed. We’ll move every three hours. Our cloak is gone, so we’re in the open and sooner or later the Martians’ll come after us. They can pick us off whenever they want. If we keep moving, we might be able to keep them away until we’re needed again.”