Winds of darkness - Part Nine

		(c) 2001, Wirewolf
		(Rewritten 2/1/99)

  Redics was staring at T'yonnosh, surprised by his outburst.  "How do you know why 
they're here?"

  "The background Garvin gave us.  I can't explain it all now, but if they dock with us, 
they'll swarm through here and we won't be able to stop them."

  Redics thought about this, then turned his attention back to their other problem.  "Zella," 
he called, "What have you got?"

  "For a moment, I had five readings.  Now I only have three," she reported crisply.  
"They're closing very fast."

  "How soon?"

  "Twenty seconds."

  Redics turned to T'yonnosh.  "We've got to take control of this ship.  Can you help him 
anymore?" he asked, nodding at Kitress.

  "Not really."

  "Then let Sesh carry him.  Zella!"  Redics shouted over his shoulder.  "We need you to 
help mobilize these people."  He noticed one of the Yrboti dressed in baggy coveralls was 
next to ensign Taggard.  "Hey!  Get away from that hatch!"

  As if reacting to a command, Taggard grabbed the Yrboti's arm and started pulling him 
with her.  She looked at Redics, holding up the tacscanner.  "They're on us," she said 
hastily.  "Only a few-"

  At that moment, her voice was drowned in an ear-stabbing rip of explosions that echoed 
through the pod, pummeling them from all sides.

  Those few that were standing quickly dropped to the deck as sparks flew around the 
hatch.  For an instant, Redics feared the pod had been jettisoned with its hatch open.  
Then the explosions stopped.  He watched, not understanding, as the Yrboti Taggard was 
leading fell across one of the rails with a low-gravity bounce.  "He's hit!" the ensign was 
yelling.  T'yonnosh and the other Yrboti scrambled over to the injured man's side.  Sesh 
looked over from where he crouched protectively over his son.

  From his position, Redics could see blood actually spraying from the Yrboti's chest 
wound.  The sight helped Redics see that he and T'yonnosh had made at least one 
misjudgment concerning this rescue.  Immediate action was needed to keep things under 
control.

  Leaping up, Redics jumped over the fallen Yrboti to where T'yonnosh was kneeling, 
concentrating on his tacscanner.  "He's been hit near his lower heart," he heard the other 
Yrboti grate.  Leaning over his genemorph partner, Redics pulled the pulser from 
T'yonnosh's belt.  He straightened up and hollered, "Zella!"  The ICCN woman turned 
toward him in time to identify and catch the weapon he had flung to her.  "Stay down, 
follow me," Redics instructed.  He glanced around quickly for more help.

  "Sesh !"

  The ambassador looked at him, fear and confusion evident.

  "Get these people together.  We have to get off this ship."

  Sesh didn't move.  He gazed down at Kitress.

  Redics didn't have time.  "Sesh, they need your strength!  Get up!"

  When Sesh glanced up, Redics wasn't sure what the man's state was.  He heard his 
voice, soft and pained.  "Dalthia.  Where-"

  "She's back at the station," Redics yelled, feeling uncharacteristic anger at his friend.  
"She's fine, and she'd be the first to swat you for sitting on your tail when you're needed!"

  That seemed to draw Sesh out.  He looked around.  He noticed the Pashii crawling 
closer, his reptilian face passive.

  "I will care for your son, Ambassador," the Pashii offered.  Sesh nodded, then carefully 
moved out among the other hostages.

  Satisfied, Redics motioned for Taggard to stay close to him as they approached the open 
hatch.  "Where are they?"

  The ensign consulted the tacscanner.  "They're right next to the opening, on either side.  
I think they're trying to tamper with the controls."

  Redics didn't bother telling her that the controls had already been tampered with and 
that now their enemies were probably trying to make repairs.  They moved up to their 
side of the hatch.  Someone must have been watching, for another round of explosions 
poured out of the hatch.

  It dawned on Redics then.

  "Damn it all!  They're using solid projectiles!"

  "We noticed," T'yonnosh replied sourly from where he was working feverishly to keep 
the injured Yrboti alive.

  Redics looked at the hatchway and tried to think of a way to get through it in one piece.  
The problem was that it was essentially a short tunnel.  Tunnels were the worst place to 
be caught when there was shooting going on.  Unable to think of a better alternative, 
Redics moved up to the edge of the opening.  "Cover me," he said tersely.

  "Wait a minute," she hissed.  "What do you think you're doing?"

  Taken aback by her sudden change of attitude, Redics hesitated.  "Going out."

  Taggard shook her head sharply.  "If you want to give them a target, give them an 
expendable one."  She hefted the tacscanner.  As she began programming it, Redics 
asked, "What'd you have in mind?"

  "High frequency sonic generator.  It should get their attention."

  Redics grimaced, seeing the wisdom of her idea.  He was unhappy with himself for not 
finding the answer on his own.  His objectivity was slipping.

  Once she had the tacscanner set, she set her borrowed pulser to disrupt.  Punching holes 
in the walls would help convince their enemies how serious they were.  She met Redics' 
eyes, holding up three fingers.  She dropped to a crouch and curled her fingers in 
countdown.

  At zero, ensign Taggard engaged the tacscanner.  A painful, piercing shriek came from 
the unit.  She flung it through the hatch as though it had burned her hands.  She followed 
the tacscanner with three pulser bursts.  Two of her shots hit solid wall and left 
considerable holes, while the third landed on a power conduit.  A brief flash of sparks 
and molten casing sprayed the corridor.

  The answer was immediate: another cloud of bullets came through the hatch.  Redics 
wondered if anyone had been hit by ricochets but didn't have time to check.  When the 
firing stopped, he threw himself into the hatchway.  He fired his pulser, heavy stun, wide 
beam.  He briefly smelled the faint odor of hot metal from the corridor.  Heat from the 
same source brushed his exposed skin.

  As he emerged from the hatchway, Redics felt his surroundings spin around him.  
Surprised and confused, he flung out his arms as he slammed against the wall opposite 
the hatch, not far from where two new holes still bled steam in the cold air.  He felt his 
gun fly out of his hand and heard it clatter to the deck.  There was, a flash of movement 
to his right, down the corridor.

  Redics felt a stab of terror as he lay in the corridor, unarmed and directly in the line of 
fire.  He pushed himself up; again too quickly.

  More surprise as a pulser reset for stun fired directly over his right shoulder.  His ear 
tingled and he ducked too late.

  When he'd collected his wits, Redics found himself sitting in an empty corridor.  He 
looked behind him at Taggard.  She was glowering at him, silenced tacscanner in hand.  
"You blocked my shot," she accused.  "I almost hit you."

  "I forgot about the low gravity," Redics explained gruffly.  "I tripped on my way out."  
He reached over and picked up his stray weapon.  "Where are they now?"

  Ensign Taggard consulted the tacscanner.  "Moving back to the cockpit."  She watched 
her readings, waiting for something.  She made an adjustment.  After a minute, she 
lowered the unit and said, "There are five of them.  They're bottled up in the cockpit.  
They have some serious shielding around them, but if we can get it down we can take 
them all at once with our two pulsers."

  Brushing himself off, Redics asked, "We can?"

  She held up the tacscanner.  "I got a scan of the cockpit when they lowered the shield.  
We can use its layout to cover the whole crew."  She sounded smug.

  Redics studied the readout a moment.   "Very nice."  He looked the ensign square in the 
eye.  "Ensign Zella Taggard, security graduate assigned to the USS Alvarado.  You were 
working in coordination with Jim Garvin's Intelligence Office, keeping an eye on the 
security situation on the station."

  He got no satisfaction from her look of surprise.  "Who told-"

  "I may have an off moment now and again, but I've played this game a bit longer than 
you have."  He watched her expression harden.  "We got lucky.  My attitude caused me to 
screw up, but it didn't cost us anything.  I'll be on track from here on out."  He softened 
his voice.  "Please don't get cocky and make the same kind of mistake I just made.  
You're obviously too good an officer for that."

  She didn't say anything, only nodded.  Redics sensed she had listened and would 
consider what he had said.

  Redics moved back into the pod.  He was gratified to see the weary, hurting people 
lined up not far from the hatch.  The Pashii was cradling Kitress in his long arms.  Others 
were leaning against each other.  Sesh took a step forward.  He pointed behind him.  "The 
Leneonesian..."

  "We worry about the living first," Redics answered.  He raised his voice to address the 
group.  "We're moving forward to the crew lounge.  Be ready to drop at any moment.  I 
know you're all tired and weak from the radiation, but it won't be much longer.  You'll be 
going home."

  A few silent nods were all the response he got.  He looked at Sesh again.  "Keep them 
well behind T'yonnosh, Taggard, and myself.  We'll provide cover."

  Redics made his way back to the corridor.  Taggard anticipated his question.  "No 
movement."

  They filed into the corridor.  Redics and T'yonnosh moved to the front with Taggard 
between them.  T'yonnosh fished in his pack for one of their two spare pulsers.  Taggard 
saw and approved their foresight.

  To their combined relief, they made it to the lounge without incident, except for some 
disconcerted mumbles when they passed the dead Dheway by the airlock.  T'yonnosh 
happened to cast a glance at the airlock doors, noticing that the inner doors were open 
and a yellow indicator light was glowing on the crab.  Someone had tried to open the 
airlock to space.  The partners exchanged a look but said nothing.

  In the lounge, Taggard directed the ex-hostages to sit on the couches that were out of 
the direct line of sight from the cockpit.  If there was any firing, she wanted them out of 
harm's way.  Redics noticed her previous smugness was gone.

  "Now we have to deal with the shielding," T'yonnosh said, scanning the area.  He and 
ensign Taggard tried to locate any possible areas on which to focus their attention while 
Redics covered the door of the cockpit.

  When he heard the ensign swear to herself, he asked, "Problems?"

  "There are no localized circuits to provide power to that shield.  It's hooked into a dozen 
different systems."  She looked up at the door to the cockpit with new respect.   "We'd 
have to disable the entire ship to bring that shield down."

  "T'yonnosh?"

  "The controls must be inside.  I can't find any way to override them from outside."

  Redics looked at the two of them.  "You've got to be kidding.  We've come this far to be 
stopped by somebody's clever shield design?"

  Neither of them answered.  They were staring at something in the lounge that he 
couldn't see.  He heard the indrawn rattle of Yrboti speech.  "I can cut the power to that 
shield."

  "How?"  Taggard, suspiciously.  "This isn't your ship."

  "I am training.  Hyperdrive technician.  Those Dheway were my sponsors."

  Redics assumed she meant the dead Dheway crew.

  "Your injured friend?"  T'yonnosh.

  "My mate.  Also training."

  No one spoke for a few heartbeats.  Then Taggard again.  "What will you do?"

  "Separate main supply coupling from engines.  Ship goes dead, like you said.  Shield 
drops."

  "How long?"

  "Only time to get there.  I know the system.  A minute to work the controls."

  "Redics?"  T'yonnosh, sounding hopeful.

  "Let her.  Give her your comm so we can tell her when to reconnect us."

  It was quickly agreed and done.  The Yrboti woman made her way back down the 
corridor.

  They waited in nervous silence.  T'yonnosh and ensign Taggard moved up beside 
Redics to deal with the cockpit's door and occupants when the ship's power shut down.

  When several minutes had gone by with no change, Redics couldn't help asking aloud, 
"What's taking her so long?"

  "It's a long ship," Taggard offered.

  Then T'yonnosh voiced the question that was really plaguing Redics.

  "I wonder how Zanth is doing."

  **************************

  "How much time?"

  "One minute twenty seconds."

  Not much time to make a decision.  Not that Zanth really had much of a decision to 
make.  T'yonnosh had made it clear that the cruiser was not to be allowed to dock.  Zanth 
had to treat those fat, waddling creatures as the enemy, unless they changed their minds 
and backed away from the freighter.

  Three of the bipeds most important to Zanth were on that freighter, a ship with no 
protection, no teeth.  He was the only one who could keep them safe.

  It was not one of his strengths, fighting with his mind rather than his body.  With his 
enemy in front of him, within his claw's reach, he was confident, certain of what was 
needed to win.  But to sit in front of the delicate controls for the weapons of a ship, that 
was fighting with which he could never be comfortable.

  He felt his claws springing and retracting as he considered what might happen to his 
friends if he failed in this fight.

  "Time?"

  "Thirty one seconds."

  No more time.  With all his claws firmly sunk into the carpeting, Zanth ordered the 
computer to aim the cannons between the cruiser and the freighter.  When the computer 
gave him confirmation, he gave the order to fire.

  Ti Phorus fired.  It was a clean shot, two bright red lines marking Zanth ' s intentions.

  Zanth found he was panting.  He licked his nose and waited.  The cruiser slowed.  He 
watched as it gradually came to a stop.

  Perhaps he had made the point clear enough.  Maybe the rest of this hunt would be 
successful after all.  He was considering giving the command to re-dock with the 
freighter when he noticed that the cruiser was shifting its position.

  It was turning.  It swung its broad nose toward the Ti Phorus.  It started moving again.

  Right for him.

  **************************

  Redics' wandering thoughts were quickly abandoned when the power went out.  The 
wrist beacons he and T'yonnosh were wearing kept the darkness from swallowing them 
whole.  They could feel themselves becoming lighter as the ship's gravity generators spun 
down.

  "Shield is down," Taggard reported.  Her young face took on eerie tones from the light 
of the tacscanner's displays.

  They had already decided on how to handle the door and those behind it.  Redics fired 
his pulser at its highest setting.  The sliding metal door of the ship's command module 
simply ceased to exist.  He dropped to the deck as a shuddering burst of gunfire 
responded to their attack.  As the deadly metal projectiles screamed over his head, 
T'yonnosh and Taggard fired heavy stun beam into the room.  They stood to each side of 
Redics to give them the best coverage of the cockpit.

  There came the sound of several bodies hitting the deck.   "Got 'em all," Taggard 
announced.

  Redics activated his comm.  "We're done.  You can reconnect the power couplings."

  Shortly after, the lights came back.  They could now see the five stunned Yrboti lying 
motionless.  "Looks like Zanth was right," T'yonnosh remarked.  "It's starting to make 
sense."

  "I'm glad somebody thinks so," Redics muttered.

  By the time the three of them had dragged the stunned crew to their quarters, the Yrboti 
tech returned.  She eyed Taggard standing guard at the open doorway as she walked to 
the command module.

  Redics and T'yonnosh both looked up when she came in.  "We need your help with 
these controls," T'yonnosh told her.  "We want to see what's going on out there."

  "Visual displays," she said, pointing to the blank screens in the walls of the semicircular 
cockpit.  She stepped over to one of the control stations and touched a series of switches.  
The screens all lit with a display of empty space.  "Locate navigational hazards," she 
mumbled keying more instruments.

  The display shifted, showing two ships.  One was the blue and white wedge called Ti 
Phorus, positioned 90 degrees vertical to the camera's 'horizon'.  The other was the squat 
form of the Dheway heavy cruiser.  It was perhaps 50 kilometers from either Ti Phorus or 
the freighter, but it was moving straight for the former.

  Redics groaned.  The cruiser was assuming a classic attack position.  He realized he and 
T'yonnosh had made a second misjudgment, a much more serious one.

  'If we live through this,' he thought miserably,  'Zanth is going to eat me alive.'

  **************************

  The tundra cat stared at the approaching cruiser with a feeling he didn't experience very 
often: dread.  He didn't know if he should fire on the new ship.  He couldn't ask for help 
or guidance.  He had no idea if the Ti Phorus could withstand a battle with this new 
enemy.

  He was on his own.  His only aid was the Ti Phorus' computer.  A machine that his 
friends had always relied on too heavily, in his opinion.

  'Trust in what you know you can do yourself,' his sire had told him on many occasions.  
'Machines break, machines fail.' That hadn't been the lesson Redics had taught him.  His 
upright, flat faced, hairless monkey friend (Redics own self-description) had shown him 
how powerful machines could make one.  His inherited doubts had been largely replaced 
by a low-key respect for that force called 'technology' It may have had its limits at times, 
but Redics seemed to have an undeniable grasp on how to make it work for them.  Time 
and again, he and T'yonnosh had used that force to win their fights.  They believed in it.  
They trusted it.

  But not this time.

  For all the time they had spent together, Redics still forgot sometimes that Zanth could 
read his emotions by the subtle scents that came from him.  When the human had 
reassured Zanth that he would have adequate control of the Ti Phorus, he had projected a 
faint trace of fear smell.  It hadn't been strong enough to indicate panic or deception.  
That told Zanth that Redics had doubts, either about the computer, or about Zanth's 
ability to handle it.

  It was also possible Redics' doubts were for himself.  He couldn't be certain when it 
came to bipeds.  They were not as easy to read as other tundra cats.

  Whatever the cause, Redics' doubts were now Zanth's doubts.  Regardless of those 
doubts, however, he had to act, and soon.

  "Distance?"

  "Forty four kilometers."

  Zanth licked his nose again.  "Aim at the ship but don't fire until I say so."

  "Weapons locked," replied the computer.

  'Never jump blind.'  That was another lesson his sire had taught him.  And he had the 
scars to prove it.

  **************************

  "We have to help Zanth.  Think you can pilot this monster?"

  T'yonnosh nodded.  "Should be fairly simple."  He turned to their new Yrboti friend.  
The hyperdrive tech-in-training was standing in the doorway looking at her wounded 
husband.  The other Yrboti tech was being watched over by the Pashii diplomatic aide.

  "Excuse me," he said to her.  "Could you show me how the helm controls work?"

  The woman turned her gaze to T'yonnosh.  There was a new expression on her thick-
skinned face, one he couldn't interpret.  She waved a hand toward Taggard and her 
captives.

  "Traitors," she announced.  "Must be punished greatly."  She looked back to her 
husband.  "Greatly."

  "Uhn, yes, well I assume that will be up to your government.  Or the Dheway 
government.  Somebody's government."  His ears twitched at his own distraction.  "But 
for now, could you show me how to work the helm?"

  Once more she directed her unreadable gaze at him.  "Yes.  Helm."  She moved to one 
of the control stations and began describing switches and their functions to him.  After a 
brief and helpful demonstration, T'yonnosh sat down and experimented gently with the 
controls.  Redics addressed her next.

  "What weapons does this ship have?"

  "None."

  Redics wasn't surprised, but he was concerned.  He wanted to make certain there was no 
misunderstanding.  "You're saying that this ship has no offensive capabilities at all?"

  She stared blankly at him before asking, "This ship carries cargo.  Why should it fight?"

  "Right," Redics said with a touch of frustrated sarcasm.  "Only an idiot would go into 
battle in a freighter."  He glared at the cruiser closing in on the Ti Phorus.  "There must 
be something we can throw at them," he muttered darkly.

  "That's it!" T'yonnosh exclaimed from his oddly shaped seat at the helm.  "We do have 
something to throw at them."

  "What?"

  T'yonnosh looked over his shoulder.  "The cargo pods."

  For several seconds, Redics had trouble gearing his mind down to such simple tactics as 
ballistic ramming.  Once he understood what T'yonnosh was proposing, he saw the 
offensive potential of twenty-six cargo pods strapped to a mobile frame.  Especially the 
two loaded with fissionables.

  He stepped up behind T'yonnosh and clapped him on the shoulder.  "Good thinking.  
See if you can project an intercept course."  He turned to the Yrboti woman.  "Can you 
show me how to jettison a cargo pod?"

  **************************

  "Why don't they strike?  What are they waiting for?"

  "Please restate-"

  "Quiet!"  Zanth's tail lashed nervously.  His paws were starting to ache from the grip he 
had on the carpet.  "Distance."

  "Thirty two kilometers."

  "I don' t under-"

  The picture from the camera was slashed with a line of intense green light.  It was 
joined by three others.  The laser fire flickered on and off in rapid streams across the Ti 
Phorus' shields.  From inside the ship, there was no sign the attack had occurred.

  "What happened?"

  "Multiple strikes from a curium trilithinide laser have been recorded.  No damage to 
shields."

  'The enemy has no claws'  The thought was a comforting one, but Zanth knew it might 
not be true.  Regardless, they had struck at him.  It was time to strike back.  First, he 
altered his target instructions.  He told the computer to aim at the rear of the ship, where 
the engines were.  It took a second for the lock to re-establish.  With the cruiser facing 
him, its engines were only visible as slight flares at its sides.  Once the lock was regained, 
Zanth gave the command to fire.

  Twin pulses of energy from the particle cannons briefly bridged the gap between the 
two ships, converging on the cruiser's port engine.  The warship's shielding flared, then 
failed.  The advanced technology of Ti Phorus' weapons also allowed them to pass 
through the heavy ablative armor that protected the engines.  A shower of molten slag 
flew from the cruiser's wound as the outer and inner hulls were pierced.  The engine 
assembly itself was severely damaged.  The cruiser started drifting to starboard.

  Moments later, the blunt, rounded muzzle of a plasma cannon thrust out of its protective 
housing on the cruiser's belly.  It briefly tracked the Ti Phorus before spitting a fiery 
white bolt of photonuclear energy directly at it.  A second bolt, then a third, in quick 
succession.

  The air inside the Ti Phorus seemed to turn red as Zanth was thrown across the cockpit, 
painfully ripping his claws free of the carpeting.  He was only dimly aware of the bone 
shaking thunder that coursed through the ship's duranium composite frame.  Neither 
could he hear the alarms going off all across the Board.  He could see, however, a spray 
of bright dots fly across his vision.  Sparks from shorting circuits or shock-induced 
hallucinations, or both, he couldn't tell.

  When the second blast hit, Zanth was convinced for an instant that the ship would split 
apart and he would find himself floating dead in the cold black nothingness.  A tortured 
groan of strained metal pushed into his head through his flattened ears.  The third impact 
convinced him he was still alive by slamming into the Ti Phorus' starboard side, which 
hurled him bodily into one of the seats mounted to the floor.  He struck some padded 
surface hard enough to snap his head around.  He heard an indistinct 'pop' and felt a 
burning in his neck and shoulder.  He yowled in pain, anger and fear.  He screamed his 
fury at his attacker.

  It was some time before he realized that it was quiet in the cockpit.

  He looked around, noticing the splashes of red blinking urgently on the Board.

  Zanth was lying on his left side between the two forward seats.  He shifted his hind legs 
underneath him and pushed himself up.  As he moved his right foreleg the fire returned to 
his shoulder and neck.  He snarled in shock and sunk to the deck, trying to take the 
weight off his right side.  Even as he moved he could feel the joint of his shoulder pulse 
with pain.  Familiar pain.

  He knew he had dislocated the shoulder joint.  It had happened once before, in a frantic 
battle on some planet he couldn't remember.  Medical care had been long in coming then, 
and it didn't look to be available soon, now.  He knew what he faced: continual pain, 
swelling, as well as other distractions he didn't need.  But there were other, more pressing 
concerns.

  "Computer, what's the damage?"

  Zanth felt his heart speed up as the seconds stretched out in ominous silence.

  "Computer, what's wrong?  Talk to me."

  Nothing.

  **************************

  The freighter was a simple vessel, T'yonnosh found.  Terribly simple.  It had no shields 
aside from the navigational deflectors designed to sweep interstellar debris from its path.  
It had no weapons unless one was willing to misuse the cargo pods as they were about to.  
It also handled poorly.  It had taken a full minute for it to maneuver to the course 
T'yonnosh had set.  The computers handling nav were pitifully slow as well.  Working 
out the intercept course had taken far longer than T'yonnosh thought necessary.

  Now he had to accept that the feeble acceleration they were under was all the ship's 
sublight engines could provide.  He recalculated the release time for Redics to use in 
jettisoning the pods, pushing it back to accommodate the time it would take for the 
freighter to pull away after separation.  That raised the interval between release and 
impact to nearly three minutes, which increased the chance that the whole thing wouldn't 
work.  Too much time for the enemy (Enemy?  Did he really think of those Dheway as 
the enemy?) to react, to escape.

  T'yonnosh's thoughts were interrupted by a wide human hand gripping his shoulder, 
hard.  Redics' other hand was pointing to the viewscreen.  He could smell another 
increase of adrenaline from his friend.  When he looked up, he understood why.

  Four of the cruiser's six laser turrets had opened fire and were peppering the Ti Phorus' 
forward section with hits.

  Enemies.  Definitely.

  "They can't hurt him with those," Redics said, easing his grip on T'yonnosh.  "But if 
they use that cannon..."  He fell silent.

  Ti Phorus answered.  It was a crippling shot, ignoring the cruiser's protective measures 
and burning right into the small engineering section to port.  A contest of technologies, 
the Ti Phorus having more than a century' s advantage.

  A swift counterattack followed.  Burning plasma, magnetically ejected, found its target.  
Redics' grip hardened again.  T'yonnosh heard him use the ugliest word the human knew.

  A second shot, a third, rapid fire.  The effect on the Ti Phorus' shields was as 
spectacular as it was frightening.  The focused plasma burst tunneled into the ship's 
multi-layered shielding, then dissipated, making the shield's entire architecture blaze with 
visible light for a second.  The ship seemed to try three separate times to become a 
beacon.

  Nothing more happened.

  T'yonnosh flashed back to a class during his Navy Academy days.  Weapons theory.  
Plasma ejection systems.  They require accumulators which have to be recharged after 
each volley.  Typical recharge time for early designs was one to two minutes.

  "We've got about a minute before they can use it again," he told his partner.

  "How long until we release?"

  T'yonnosh checked, then frowned.  "Four minutes."

  Redics turned to the Yrboti woman.  "Is there any way to make this ship go faster?"

  She brought her hands to her chest, then lowered them.  Yrboti shrug, Redics guessed.  
"Hyperdrive."

  Redics shook his head.  "No, I mean-"

  Something thumped from the back of the freighter, like a large steel balloon bursting.  
"They're firing at us!" T'yonnosh shouted.  A high, keening sound filled the small room 
while blue and orange lights pulsed across several control stations.  A rippling shudder 
swept through the inner surfaces of the ship, as though it had been struck by a giant 
hammer.

  A second thump from the aft section.  Redics happened to be looking at the screen 
showing the cruiser.  He saw the shot that coincided with the second hit on the rear of the 
ship, a bright green line of laser fire.

  The Yrboti woman moved hurriedly among the unoccupied stations to reset alarms and 
bring the few backups on line.  She seemed undaunted by their opponent's attack.  She 
eventually looked at Redics and said calmly, "They have destroyed the sublight drive."

  T'yonnosh refigured his attack calculations.  They showed him what he expected to 
find.  Without turning, he reported, "We don't have enough speed or maneuvering power 
to complete the run."

  Redics stared at the cruiser's image on the screen.  A straightforward rescue had turned 
into a small scale war of attrition between three ships.

  With their attack run effectively halted, Redics expected the cruiser to turn its attention 
back to the Ti Phorus.  It was his third misjudgment, and the most crucial one.

  The Dheway ship lashed out twice more, making its intentions clear.

  The main life support node, located adjacent to the command module, was vaporized.  
Excess energies migrated to other systems, causing even more damage.  In the control 
room, panels exploded and the lights dimmed.  People were shouting and cursing.  New 
alarms sounded, more strident than before.

  Redics rushed to where T'yonnosh lay on the deck.  The genemorph was slapping at 
some smoldering spots on his refraction suit.  A quick once- over found his partner 
largely unharmed, though a bit singed.  He turned to the Yrboti and found she hadn't been 
as lucky.

  She lay on the deck, face down.  Her hands and arms were burned from a power 
discharge that had erupted from the station where she had been.  Redics rolled her over 
and pulled her into the crew lounge.  He paused only long enough to tell the Pashii who 
was caring for the other Yrboti what her condition was, then headed back to the cockpit.

  T'yonnosh was leaning over the helm controls,  When Redics came in and asked what 
the damage was, he felt his ears try to fold even tighter, bringing a new stab of pain.  He 
unfastened his helmet's strap and yanked it off, letting it fall to the deck.  He rubbed his 
ears as he told Redics what he had learned.

  "From what she showed me, I think we've lost the hyperdrive.  The nav computer is 
gone, but we still have helm control.  The only thing it controls, though, is the reaction 
thrusters.  Everything else is down."

  Redics bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger.  
He felt a headache coming.  "What else?"

  "Secondary life support's been critically damaged.  I think it will fail soon."

  Redics groaned.

  **************************

  Zephanthus was distracted from his problems when he noticed a flash of green on the 
monitor.  It didn't make sense that they would try to use their lasers after they had already 
failed once.

  Then he saw that he wasn't the target.  They were firing on the helpless freighter.

  The ravenous energies of the cruiser's lasers burned easily through the outer and inner 
hulls.  The sublight engines did not last long once the hole had been drilled through three 
engineering decks to get to it.  As its major components boiled away, parts of engineering 
became white hot, expanding while other, cooler parts did not.  The holes left by the 
lasers were not clean, but rippled and torn by the rapid expansion and contraction of hull 
materials as well as the explosive decompression that followed the hull breach.

  The freighter had no shields.  The warship could destroy it anytime.  They had to be 
stopped.  Not warned, stopped.

  Zanth had to fight his own instincts.  His body was tensing, his vision narrowing until it 
became a tightly focused tunnel.  His mind was screaming at him to Hunt, to lock teeth in 
the throat of his prey.

  He stood, deliberately putting his weight onto his right foreleg.

  Knife-edged pain tore at him, pulling him back.  He moved over to his keypad and sat.  
He concentrated on the controls before him.  His vision opened, and he felt his heart 
slowing.  Gingerly, he used his right paw to engage the weapon targeting system.  The 
screen above him showed his potential targets.

  As he used his controls to direct his shot to the cruiser's remaining engine, it fired again.  
This time it struck at the forward end of the freighter.

  Zanth pushed the recessed fire control pad, and Ti Phorus took another bite out of the 
cruiser.  It wasn't as good a hit as the first one, but he got through to the inner hull.

  Before he could fire again, the cruiser lashed out a third time.  All six of the laser turrets 
worked in unison.  The effect was devastating.  The entire engine module was severed 
from the freighter's rail frame.  It drifted away, slowly tumbling.  The freighter also 
started drifting, powerless.

  That was enough.  Zanth was going to punch holes in the cruiser until it was silenced.  
He shifted the pulsing double crosshairs of his targeters to the center of the cruiser's bulk.  
He held off firing, however, when movement on the ship's underside caught his attention.  
The plasma cannon's thick snout moved, tracking him again.  Zanth broke his weapon 
lock and shifted its alignment.  As the confirm tone sounded, light began to coalesce at 
the snout's tip.  Zanth fired simultaneously with the cruiser.

  A red line and a white ball met midway.  Again, greater technology prevailed.  The 
disruptive power of the Ti Phorus' cannons tore apart the plasma burst's cohesion, 
spreading its destructive force out into an enormous cloud of loose photons and radiation.

  The cannon shot continued on, unaffected.  It reached the base of the cannon and 
ignited the accumulators, still straining to contain and focus their build-up of power.  The 
resulting explosion slammed the cruiser's nose around 180 degrees before its thrusters 
stopped its motion.  The armor and hullskin around the cannon ruptured, splitting a 
section of the ship's infrastructure open to space.  Unrestrained energy crawled over the 
breach and leaped around the hull.

  With the cruiser turned around, Zanth now had a perfect shot at its remaining engine.  
He targeted it but refrained from firing.  He could see now that the starboard engine was 
off line.  The telltale glow from the dorsal baffles was gone, indicating that its hyperdrive 
was shut down.

  He kept his weapon lock and watched carefully.  If they did anything he didn't like, he 
would hole them, through and through.

  **************************

  Redics had just come to terms with the failure of their attack run and the damage they 
had taken when they were hit again.  This time the damage was severe.

  The combined fire of six lasers carved through the aft section of the freighter.  The ship 
rang and shook and heaved like a wounded animal.  The power died off, leaving them in 
darkness.

  Then all was quiet.  And black.  Not even instrument lights were available to fight the 
dark.  Redics turned his wrist beacon on.

  "T'yonnosh?"

  "Just a minute.  She said something about a switch, a manual control to the battery 
systems."  The caniform was carefully moving among the stations.  "She told me that 
each module has its own emergency power supply."

  The profound absence of light ended a few moments later.  Pale orange light filtered in 
from everywhere, giving the small control room an unsettling feel.

  "What happened?"

  T'yonnosh was looking over the controls he was now familiar with.  He brought the 
video monitors back to life.  Patching in the ship's external cameras, he examined the 
damage that had been done.  When he saw the extent of it, he grunted in mild shock.  
"They docked our tail."

  Redics swallowed.  "Life support?"

  T'yonnosh glanced down.  "Gone."

  "What do we have left?"

  "Uhhn, we still have control of the thrusters, partial sensors, partial communications, 
mmm, that's about it."  He looked at Redics.  "What do you suggest ?"

  "What are they up to now?"

  T'yonnosh redirected the cameras to the other two ships.  They were surprised at what 
they found.

  Something serious had happened between Ti Phorus and the warship, and it seemed the 
cruiser had gotten the worst of it.  It was presenting its engines, which were powered 
down, to the Ti Phorus for targets.  There was also a violent hole where the cannon had 
been.

  "How do you suppose he managed that?"

  T'yonnosh squinted at the screen.  "Well, the hull's been pushed out, so it was an 
internal explosion that did most of it.  I'd guess he hit the cannon while the accumulators 
were discharging.  Unregulated cascade ignition."

  Redics thought a moment.  "What do you think their condition is?"

  T'yonnosh cocked his head and gazed at the sensor readings.  "I don't see much activity.  
Power is minimal.  It's possible they just went through what happened to us when Del 
Tomusth matched our shield frequency.  Enormous power surge from inside."

  "Good.  Maybe they've lost their ability to jam our comm signals."

  Redics tried to raise the Ti Phorus, but he got the same grating squeal as before.  
"Quholtz!  They don't give in easy."

  "We still have thrusters, and I still have helm control.  We have what we came for.  I 
think we should head for the Ti Phorus.  At this distance, it should only take twenty 
minutes to get to it."

  At first, Redics didn't respond.  He was staring at the Dheway cruiser as though he 
expected another attack.  Finally he said, "All right.  Take us back, but keep an eye on 
this beast."  He tapped the screen.  "I don't trust-"

  When Redics broke off, T'yonnosh looked up from the helm controls.  The human was 
still staring at the screen.

  Redics pointed to it and muttered, "Is that what I think it is?"

  **************************

  It looked like the battered Dheway ship had sprouted an arm.  As it swung out slowly, 
Zanth could see it was jointed in two places; at the base and halfway down its length.  It 
was perhaps one-quarter the ship's length and was tipped with a clumsy black canister.

  Zanth didn't shift his weapon lock, but he didn't fire either.  It occurred to him that this 
might be an escape pod, and its appearance could possibly signal an end to the fighting.

  When one end of the canister swiveled around to face the Ti Phorus, it looked less like 
an escape pod and more like a weapon.  Zanth was still considering moving his weapon 
lock when a slim white shape exploded out of the cylinder, fire at its tail.  His eyes 
bulged as the missile headed for him.  He tried frantically to shift his weapon lock onto 
the missile.  Its curving course made it a difficult target.

  The missile was growing larger in the cameras sights.  Zanth heard a confirm from the 
weapon lock.  He fired.

  **************************

  They looked on in horror as the missile arced toward the Ti Phorus.

  Redics' breath caught in his throat, then burst out in a terrified shout.  "NOOO!"  Unable 
to tear his eyes away, he watched what he believed to be the imminent death of 
Zephanthus.

  In his mind, he could see the sequence of events only seconds away.  The missile would 
explode against the Ti Phorus' damaged shields.  The intense storm of radiation would 
flood the ship, killing Zanth within minutes.  If the missile contained a large enough 
payload, it could overwhelm the shields.  The EM pulse from such an explosion would 
play havoc with the ship's circuitry.  If the antimatter containment system was effected, 
the second explosion would destroy all three ships and even push some of the orbiting 
moonlets into the gravity well of the nearby planet.

  Redics almost yelled,  'Target and fire,' before he remembered there were no weapons 
available.  He heard T'yonnosh moan as the missile closed on its target.

  He clenched his fists and his teeth and tried, against hope and reason, to will the Ti 
Phorus to protect herself.  He prayed to whatever gods would listen.  "Please..."

  Ti Phorus fired, her cannons just brushing against the tail end of the projectile.  
Something flared briefly.

  The missile didn't explode.

  One of its directional thrusters did, though.  The missile seemed to twitch, then it veered 
off course, cutting a tighter arc than before.  It surged past the Ti Phorus, missing her 
shieldfront by perhaps a dozen meters.

  Redics' momentary relief was quickly replaced as fury boiled up in his chest.  His fists 
curled harder as he fought the urge to hit something, anything.  "We have got to help 
him!"  He closed his eyes and did his best to clear his mind, to think clearly.  "How can 
we move those pods fast enough to do some damage?"

  "The engines are gone," T'yonnosh reminded him quietly.  "We have no propulsion left.  
Except thrusters."

  Thrusters, Redics thought.  Small chemical engines for moving the ship, for docking, 
for maneuvering.

  Maneuvering.

  Redics' eyes opened.  "Thrusters."

  "They aren't powerful enough," said T'yonnosh, shaking his head.

  "Not for a linear attack, no."  Redics looked at his friend.  "But they can spin the ship."

  "What?"

  "We'll spin the ship on its long axis and release the two loaded pods when they line up."

  "We can't.  It would put too much strain on the ship's frame."

  "There are no other choices at this point."

  "Redics, we can't do it.  It would jeopardize all those people we just rescued, not to 
mention us."

  Redics blinked.  "We're in greater jeopardy from that cruiser."

  "Not if we tear this ship apart ourselves," T'yonnosh said urgently.

  "T'yonnosh, if they fire a missile at us, we're dead unless Zanth can hit it.  If they fire at 
both of us, he'll have to protect us or himself.  Either way, the cruiser wins.  We have to 
stay in the fight, which means we have to risk this."

  T'yonnosh sighed, suddenly feeling very tired.  "I can't argue with your logic, but I still 
think this is a bad idea."

  Redics nodded.  "I know.  I don't like it either, really."  He stared at T'yonnosh a 
moment, then impulsively held out his right hand, fingers splayed.  T'yonnosh hesitated 
only a second before he reached out and took his hand, palms together, fingers 
intertwined.

  It was a gesture of solidarity, of mutual support, from their childhood.

  They had been threatened by, and beaten by, a group of human bullies their age.  
Afterward, they had joined hands this way to prove to themselves they were still a team, 
unbroken.  There were times they found themselves still using it, because sometimes it 
was still them against the bullies.

  A faint smile stole over Redics' face.  "You get it started.  I'll warn our passengers."

  "All right."  T'yonnosh gave his hand a slight squeeze.  "But if we get killed by your 
stunt, I'm going to be very upset."

  **************************

  The missile disappeared.  Zanth was sure it hadn't blown up, but it was gone from the 
camera's view.  He used his keyboard to change the camera's direction, searching for it.  
The problem was he didn't know which direction to look.  It had been moving in an arc to 
start with, but now it might be going in a line, or a different arc.

  Despite the unnatural way Zanth was forced to fight this battle, his hunter's skills were 
still sharp.  He had ignored his prey too long.  He turned the cameras back to the cruiser.  
It was still too dangerous to leave unwatched.

  He found his target in time to witness it spitting another fire-tailed needle at him.  
Without enough time to react, Zanth scrambled to move his weapon lock onto the 
randomly twitching missile.  This one's evasive maneuvers made it impossible to bracket 
cleanly.  It was far too close by the time he heard a tone from his targeters.  He fired.

  He missed.

  Zanth didn't even have time to worry about his failed shot.  The missile was close 
enough to see some kind of pattern on its lean flanks, writing perhaps.  Then there was a 
streak of light that blazed a path between the new missile and the Ti Phorus.  The second 
missile lost its acquisition and veered away, pursuing what he realized was the first, 
errant missile.

  It took only an instant for Zanth to understand his advantages.  One: he wasn't dead.  
Two: he could easily target the missile canister, thus killing all the remaining missiles in 
one shot.

  What Zanth didn't know was that the first missile had slowed down because of its 
destroyed directional thruster.  This allowed its brother to catch up to it, detonate, and 
trigger both warheads.

  The twin thermonuclear explosions occurred just four kilometers away from the Ti 
Phorus.  The resulting subspace shock wave smashed into the ship, crushing her shields 
almost to the point of collapse.  She suffered internal structural damage, and a critical 
loss of computer functions.

  The electromagnetic pulse overloaded circuits shipwide.  A firestorm of radiation 
sleeted against her barely functioning shields, much of it getting through.  Inside, alarms 
shrieked and isolated warning systems declared the loss of propulsion systems and lethal 
amounts of radiation.

  Zanth was lucky in one important respect: he had managed to escape further injury 
when the impact came.  He was tossed into the small space between one of the 
permanently fixed seats, and the lower portion of the control Board.  Pressed between 
these two fixtures, he was spared being thrown about the cockpit again.

  He was also unlucky in another, equally important respect.  When he crawled out after 
all the shaking and the noise had stopped, he went back to his keyboard.  It had landed 
upside down.  As he turned it over, he saw scorch marks where the access cable linked to 
it.

  After turning it over, Zanth tried to use his keyboard to shift the cannon targeters.  
Nothing happened.

  He tried to get a damage report from the computer.  Nothing happened.

  No matter what he did, his keyboard wouldn't respond.

  He looked up at the viewscreen.  The cruiser was still there, its missile launcher aimed 
right at him. 
  
**************************
This text is (c) 2001, Wirewolf
It may be downloaded and printed only with copyright information intact.
It may not be distributed without author's permission.
Comments or other responses should be addressed to:

wirewolf@usit.net
wirewolf@usa.net
wirewolf_66@yahoo.com