Robot Blues (51 page)

Laser light
streaked past them, exploded on the panel above their heads. Tess flung her
arms around Xris, shielding him. Quong stood up, heedless of his own safety,
poured murderous fire in the general direction of the shot. He continued firing
until his gun went dead. He threw it away, crouched back down.

Jamil and Harry
were concentrating their fire in the same place. A pop and a clatter and a
small flash of light came from the end of the corridor.

“I think we got
one,” Harry reported.

A laser blast
nearly took off his head.

“Or maybe not.”
Harry ducked back into the doorway.

Xris looked at
Tess, who was lying on top of him. “You just can’t keep your hands off me, can
you?” he asked.

Tess sat up,
shoved her hair out of her face, tried to look as if she’d done nothing
special.

“It’s your fatal
charm.” She glanced down the corridor. “Speaking of fatal, their aim is rotten
today. We should all be dead about now.”

“The shields that
keep us from seeing them are probably also keeping them from seeing us,” Quong
maintained. “Disrupting their sensors. You see, my prayers may have been
answered, after all.”

He was back down
beside Xris, inspecting the damage. “Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do
about the arm. The connections between the arm and your brain have been fried.”

“But the weapons
hand itself is okay?” Tess asked.

“It appears to be,
yes.”

“Can the missile
be fired manually?”

“If Doc takes my
hand off,” said Xris.

“Detach the hand,”
she said crisply, “and show me how it works.”

Quong looked
questioningly at Xris, who nodded.

“Go ahead, Doc.”
He managed a smile. “I’d give my left arm to get rid of these bastards.”

“I count two of
them, Xris!” Jamil yelled. “One to the left of the door and one to the right.
My gun’s run out of juice.” He threw the useless dampener to the deck.

“Mine, too,” Harry
reported. “I’m switching to the beam rifle.”

Quong took hold of
Xris’s arm, gave it a twist. The limb came off. Tess took hold of it.

“I can’t see!” she
complained. “Where’s the firing mechanism?”

“You can feel it
here, inside the wrist, a small bump.”

“I think so.” She
sounded dubious.

“Don’t push on it!”
Quong cautioned. “Until you are ready.”

Tess nodded. She
aimed the arm like a rifle and fired, hit the Corasian on the right. Its opaque
shield cracked open. The red glow lit up its companion.

Harry concentrated
fire from the beam rifle on their new target. One hit split open the Corasian’s
side, a second burst blew the hole wide open. The fiery ooze began to crawl
out.

Tess shouted at
him, “Don’t shoot laser energy at the blob! They feed off it! I don’t have any
more missiles!”

Raoul and the
Little One lay on the deck in the middle of the corridor. Raoul kept lifting
his head; the Little One kept shoving it back down. Xris, looking back at them,
recalled the dampener on Raoul’s back.

“Harry!” Xris
shouted, and aimed the nuke lamp that direction.

Harry saw the
dampener. He made a flying leap, did a belly flop practically on top of Raoul,
who shrieked in alarm and hid his face in his hands.

Harry yanked the
weapon from Raoul’s arm, nearly dislocating the Adonian’s shoulder. Flipping
over on his back, Harry fired. The weapon’s projectile embedded in the center
of the glowing mass, exploded. The glow began to fade.

Xris aimed the
nuke lamp down the corridor, could find no sign of Corasians.

Raoul’s voice
broke the stillness. “You beast! Give me back my handbag!”

“What handbag?”
Harry was baffled.

“This!” Raoul
tried to wrest the dampener from Harry’s hand.

Harry stopped him.
“Let me keep it awhile. Okay? I’ll give it back. I promise. And why don’t you
let me go first.”

Raoul sniffed. “Keep
it, then. I never could find anything in it anyway.”

Harry walked
ahead, dampener at the ready. The rest followed; Quong helped Jamil. Tess and
Xris brought up the rear.

“What about your
arm?” she said.

It lay on the
deck. There was something pathetic about it. Xris was reminded of the robot
with the sad eyes. We give this metal life. Are we the ones who endow it with
spirit, as well? Or do we truly understand the definition of “life”?

“Leave it!” he
ordered her, as she bent to pick it up. “The Doc’ll make me a new one.”

They followed the
others. The corridor opened up onto a large hangar deck. And there, inside—a
long-range Scimitar.

“Harry, give me
the dampener,” Xris instructed. “You go get this thing fired up. Tess, you
guard the door.”

The long-range
Scimitar—shaped like the blade for which it was named—was a fighter spaceplane,
smaller than the PRRS and much faster.

Harry climbed the
ladder leading to the top, opened the hatch. He disappeared inside.

Xris scanned the
area for the telltale glow of Corasians. Above him, at the far end of the
hanger, he could see faint light.

Xris turned. “Hurry
up! They’re coming!”

Jamil, hopping on
one foot, leaning on Quong, entered the hanger. He looked up at the ladder
leading to the Scimitar’s hatch and grunted.

“Sorry,” said
Xris, “but it’s the only way.”

“Yeah, I know.”
Jamil paused a moment, drew in a breath, then began to climb.

Quong was right
behind him, helping and offering encouragement. “That is correct. Balance the
weight on the uninjured leg. I am here behind you. Don’t worry about slipping.
Don’t think of the pain. Tuck it away in a small recess in your mind.”

“Doc,” Jamil said,
pausing, gasping in agony. He pressed against the side of the Scimitar. “Shut
up.”

“That is very
good!” said Quong, approving. “Take your feelings of hostility out on me.”

“What’s up there?”
Raoul asked suspiciously, halting at the bottom of the ladder.

“A cafe,” said
Xris. “Meant to look like a spaceplane.”

“How quaint,”
Raoul commented, and climbed the ladder after Quong.

The Little One
glanced up, shook his head, heaved a sigh, and ascended the ladder,
considerably hampered in this endeavor by the raincoat.

Tess stood at the
door, lasgun in hand.

“More coming down
the corridor, Xris,” she reported.

“Fall back!” he
ordered her. “Come on!”

She didn’t need a
second command. Running to the ladder, she halted beside him, her lasgun in one
hand, Xris’s arm in the other.

“Up,” he said.

Corasians trundled
overhead on the catwalks above the Scimitar. Xris could hear the creak of
wheels, the whir of the motors in the swiveling heads, lining up the lasguns.

He tired off a
round with the dampener, more to force them to keep their distance than because
he hoped to hit anything.

“Get a move on!”
he called.

Jamil collapsed,
almost fell down the ladder. Quong hung on to him, bellowed for help. Harry
popped out of the hatch. Between Harry and Quong, they pulled and dropped Jamil
inside the Scimitar.

“Live
entertainment,” Raoul remarked, and dropped down inside the hatch.

Hands reached up
to catch hold of the Little One.

“You’re next,”
Xris said to Tess. “I’ll cover you.”

“Wrong,” Tess
returned. She plucked the dampener from his hand. “You’re a civilian, and
wounded at that.” She jerked her head. “Get your ass up that ladder, mister.”

Turning, she fired
the dampener. Her aim was much better than Xris’s could have ever been, even if
he’d had six good arms. She hit one Corasian; it spun out of control and
tumbled off the catwalk.

Xris climbed the
ladder awkwardly; it was a difficult task with only one hand, but he made it.

“Tess!” he yelled,
afraid for a moment that she was going to try to square things by getting
herself killed.

She slung the
dampener over her shoulder, scrambled up the ladder. Xris waited.

“Go!” She motioned
him.

Laser fire struck
the Scimitar. Xris jumped down into the hatch. Tess tumbled after him amid a
shower of sparks. He caught her, held her a brief moment, long enough for a
smile between them.

Xris started to
move forward, heading for the cockpit.

Tess stopped him,
gently pushing him down into a seat in the passenger area. “There’s nothing you
can do. You need attention, and the Doc can’t give it to you unless you sit
still. Face it, dear. You’re useless without your arm and with half your
systems shorting out.”

“I’m a control freak,”
he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t get in the way.”

“You’re hopeless.”
Tess gave him a swift kiss on the cheek, then hurried to the cockpit. By the
sounds of it, Harry already had the computer convinced that he was today’s
pilot, and had taken over the controls manually. The engines wound up. Tess sat
down in the copilot seat. Xris propped himself up behind her.

Jamil lay
unconscious in a hammock. Quong rummaged through the spaceplane’s medical
supplies.

Raoul glared at
him. “Waiter!” he finally called.

Xris, Harry, and
Tess stared out the spaceplane’s viewscreen into a solid steel wall. The hanger
bay doors were shut and the Corasians probably meant for them to stay that way.

“So, any ideas?”
Tess asked.

Harry stared at
the controls. “It appears friend Harsch had some modifications made to this
Scimitar. Watch this!”

Harry depressed a
button on the console. Four plasma cannons on each wing blazed. The light was
blinding. All of them were forced to shield their eyes.

“Hang on!” Harry shouted.
“This is gonna be wild!”

Xris grabbed hold
of the ladder.

“Doors gone?”

“Dunno!” Harry
returned. “I can’t see!”

The spaceplane
lurched, bucked, and suddenly shot forward. Xris, his eyes shut against the
glaring, painful light, could only hope that this ride wasn’t going to be
really short.

The light
vanished. The plane did not smack into a solid steel wall. Xris opened his
eyes, pulled himself back to a standing position.

“My God!” Tess
whispered. “That was ... amazing.”

The spaceplane,
surrounded by millions of tiny pieces of metal, hurtled away from the Corasian
ship. The cannons had breached the hull doors, and the pressure of the
atmosphere did the rest, blasting the plane and all of the contents of the
hangar out into space.

“We ain’t out of
this yet,” Harry muttered.

He swung the plane
around and began to program the Jump computer.

And then
everything came to a halt.

“What the hell?”
Xris clutched the seat for support.

“Tractor beam.
Damn it! I thought the blast would throw us clear. I can’t break loose!” Harry
looked over his shoulder at Xris. “I think they got us this time.”

“Then they can
have us,” Xris said. “I’m too tired. I don’t care....”

“Maybe not,” said
Tess softly. “Look.”

Shafts of
white-yellow light streaked out of nowhere, coining from nothing that any of
them could see.

“Lascannon lire,”
said Harry.

He looked at his
instruments, looked up, somewhat sheepishly, at Tess.

“That’s the
King James II
out there.”

“Yes,” said Tess. “I
know. Took them a bit longer to arrive than I had anticipated, but—”

The Scimitar
suddenly lurched forward. Harry was on the controls immediately, took the
spaceplane into a sleep dive underneath the lascannon fire.

“Tractor beam shut
off,” he reported unnecessarily.

The hulk of the
King James II
loomed into view, the enormous vessel surrounded by other
large warships, all pouring fire into the Corasian mothership.

Nothing Xris had
ever seen looked quite so beautiful.

La verite
existe; on n’invente que le mesonge.

(“Truth exists,
only lies are invented.”)

George Braque,
Le jour et la nuit

Fighters,
short-range Scimitars, and Claymore bombers streaked past, wave after wave,
heading for the Corasian mothership. The Corasians hesitated, launched a few of
their own fighters, almost immediately pulled them back. The enemy decided to
head for home.

The
King James
II
battle group, with its six warships, two carriers, and hundreds of
fighters, was there to see that the Corasians didn’t make it.

“We’re free and
clear,” reported Harry. “Where to?” He was looking wistfully at the fighters,
now moving into attack formation.

“Don’t even think
about it!” Xris said tiredly. “Take us to the
King James.”

Tess looked back
at Xris. “All right if I use the comm? I have to report to the Admiralty. I’ll
tell them about you and your team, Xris. How you got us off that ship. I’ll put
in for commendations.”

At the look on his
face, her voice trailed off. She bit her lip, lowered her eyes.

“Commendations.”
Xris was bitter. “Just have them send that to Tycho’s mother, will you?”

Tess said nothing.
She turned away, reached for the comm.

Okay, it was a
cheap shot. Xris knew he’d hurt her, knew she didn’t deserve it, but he didn’t
much care. He was feeling rotten inside and out, didn’t see why everyone else
shouldn’t feel the same way.

“Good news, guys,”
he announced, climbing the ladder, emerging into the small living quarters
aboard the Scimitar, “we’re all going to get commendations.”

“Make mine black,
with lace,” said Raoul drowsily. He was swaying gently back and forth in one of
the hammocks that served as beds aboard the Scimitar. The Little One sat on a
bench below, keeping a worried watch on his friend.

“I’ve given him a
sedative,” Quong said. “I believe he has suffered a mild concussion. His memory
is starting to return, but he is dizzy and disoriented.”