Musashi’s sandals slid on black sand, the whole slope under his feet breaking free and cascading down towards the beach. Behind him, the jagged crown of Suribachiyama loomed up against a darkening sky, filled with the outriders of the taifun blowing up out of the Western Ocean. This time the trusty bokuto had shattered on whale-bone armor, leaving him with nothing. He tossed the splintered rattan away, keeping his balance with a shift of his hips. The beach itself was hard and flat, the sand gleaming wet as the tide ran out. Heke and his retinue were waiting, weapons drawn, some of the younger men leveling muskets at the ronin.
“ Nowhere to run, Pakeha,” the chieftain shouted, his tattooed face twisting with anger. “Put down your sticks and take up a man’s blade!”
One of the other Maori overhanded a bolo at Musashi, which he caught from the air with a twisting motion. The long, flat steel blade felt tremendously heavy in his hands-far heavier than any katana. Then Heke and his men came on at a run, their war-cries booming against the counterpoint of the surf.
“One minute, thirty seconds, Chu-sa.” Tocoztic announced, his voice barely a whisper. “Maneuvering burn- now!”
The ship quivered, the motion magnified by the cargo-rails, and Hadeishi felt the engines tick up to barely a g of acceleration. The momentary burst, he hoped, would be obscured by the Khaid ship’s own engine flare. The immediate roar of static faded slightly as the little freighter slipped out of the drive plume.
“Cycling bay doors,” the Thai-i announced. Warning lights along the sides of the fifteen-meter-wide cargo doors flared to life as the motors kicked in. An audible alarm blared in their ears. “Vector match in-wait one, wait one.”
Hadeishi stiffened, suddenly wild to see the navigation plot and the holocast. The bay doors rolled aside, revealing the glare of the Khaid ship’s drive plume falling away above them.
She’s lit off her own maneuvering burn, De Molay snapped, her voice tight. She’s preparing to roll aspect and change direction. But we don’t know which way “He’s turning a dog-leg, doubling back on his trail.” Mitsuharu’s blood was singing. “This one alternates in thirds-he’s going to swing to port, Sencho, to port. Match course and give me thirty percent power for seventeen seconds, then snap the gantries and we’ll take it from there.”
You are mad.
“Do it!” Hadeishi reached down and unsnapped his tether from the cargo tray. “All teams! Release your tethers. The Khaid ship is rolling aspect and we need to match v on her. No step-through, repeat no step-through. We’re going to make contact in free flight.”
There was a flurry of activity, but the Nisei officer had already turned to watch the bay doors thud back into the hull. A vast expanse of boiling dust and hidden, gleaming stars opened before him, swallowing all sight and vision. The beauty of the kuub -the intricate traceries of debris plumes and the shining coronas of distant stars- poured in, filling the cargo bay with a hot jeweled light.
The appearance of the black shape of the Khaid ship was an abrupt jolt as the Wilful went into a hard burn herself. It loomed up suddenly, still in the middle of its own maneuver, the drive-plume blazing like a rising sun off to starboard as the massive ship turned inside their own course.
“Velocities match!” Tocoztic and De Molay’s voices overlapped. “Gantries away!”
Rail one slammed forward, safety interlocks disengaged, and Mitsuharu and his two crewmen were suddenly blown out of the side of the freighter as the tray slammed into the end of the rail and flipped down and out of the way. The successive trays on the gantry banged away, one every three seconds. Clouds of men hurtled across the void between the two ships, suddenly enveloped in a coruscating radiance.
The Khaid light cruiser continued her burn, the hull swelling before them like a basalt cliff, a jagged landscape of thermocouple fins, airlocks, gun emplacements… Hadeishi’s eye grasped her outline in a flash and exulted. His intuition had been right, the drive signature confirmed.
“She’s an old Spear -class cruiser,” he barked on both channels, hands light on his suit propellant controls. “Cargo locks are dorsal mount, to our right and high. All hands, maneuver on my mark. Mark!”
Mitsuharu angled to the right, jets hissing, and the black wall came rushing on. Even without a suit-comp to feed him intercept times and distances, his eye was keen enough to gauge the right moment.
“Team one, braking!” He blew the last of his propellant, but even this was not enough to avoid slamming hard into the shipskin of the old Spear. The junior comm officer hit next, then the marine. Off to their left, Cajeme and his team had done a better job, touching down at almost zero delta. “Team One is down, repeat Team One is down.”
Hadeishi staggered up, letting his boots adhere to the shipskin. The marine was cursing, his right arm injured, and the comm officer was just clinging in panic to the hull with both hands and feet.
“Up you get, Sho-i,” Mitsuharu growled, seizing her by the shoulder. The ensign yelped but got her feet beneath her. “ Joto-hei, are you mobile? We’ve thirty seconds to get inside.”
The marine nodded, his face parchment-pale behind his helmet visor. “Good to go, kyo! ”
The hull shivered under Hadeishi’s feet and he moved left, a lanyard snapped to the Sho-i ’s belt, another cast to the marine. Cajeme had already scuttled towards them, sparing only seconds for himself before the demo plastic he’d slapped down around the periphery of a maintenance hatch offset from the set of massive cargo doors blew-a hard white flash stabbing at their eyes, sending everyone’s visor polarized-and the shipskin peeled away from the edges of the portal. A pair of remote-controlled antipersonnel guns had also taken the brunt of the explosion, and their short, stubby barrels were now pointed off at the distant stars.
“Team One, go!” Mitsuharu was at the side of the two crewmen with the magnetic rams as they slammed them into place at the edge of the hatchway, where the locking bolts were now exposed. Each ram consisted of a half-circle of molybdenum-steel wrapped around the magnet array and a fusion-pumped capacitor. The crewmen snapped the adhesion arm into place, stamped down on the locking mechanism to fix the rams to the shipskin and then-bracing themselves-triggered the two devices on a count of “And one!”
Hadeishi’s radio squealed, flooded with radiation, and the bolts tore free. Chunks of metal spalled away, spiraling off into the void. The crewmen cranked back the rams, peeling away the hatch.
“Team Two, go!” The engineers’ mates with the blasting plastic swarmed into the hole, their tethers taut in the hands of the men behind them. Mitsuharu spared a glance for the comm officer, seeing she still had hold of her comp and the data-crystals. The marine was right at her side, shipgun at the ready, his face a blur of sweat. The two engineers popped back out of the hatch, shouting “Clear!”
A jet of plasma erupted from the hatchway, boiling the shattered edges and licking out thirty or forty meters into the jewel-hot sky.
You’ve got company coming, De Molay suddenly announced in his earbug. We’re getting a storm of chatter on that circuit you pirated.
“Team Three, go!” Mitsuharu rotated in a quick circle, picking out the rest of his men, spread out across the hull. “Cargo doors first, then punch through to the shipcore.” He clapped a hand on the Sho-i ’s shoulder. “We need to get Ensign Lovelace as far into the hull as we can!”
Then he toggled the throatmike channel. “Get out of here, Sencho; they can’t miss seeing you now.”
We’ll hold on just a little longer. I have an idea, but you’ve got to get clear of the outer hull.
Hadeishi’s heart skipped, catching a wild tone in the freighter captain’s voice. “You have to leave my ship in one piece, too, Sencho .”
De Molay laughed and at this short distance, he could see the black outline of the Wilful rotate on her maneuvering jets, swinging the main drives ’round to face him. Marines were dropping through the hatch as fast as they could, but Mitsuharu was suddenly certain they wouldn’t all get through before De Molay lit off her drives.
“One hundred eighty-six seconds to get them all inside,” squeaked a tiny voice at close range. Hadeishi looked down, seeing Lovelace crouched on the hull, her satchel clutched to her chest and one hand gripping a twisted piece of metal. Her eyes were huge and he suddenly realized she was susceptible to vertigo. “Three seconds for a marine, five seconds for a crewman.”
“You’re next,” he barked, seizing her by the lanyard loop on her belt and handing her off to the last of the Team Three marines ducking into the hole. “Get her core-ward, Gunso! There’s an engineering console at the junction of the fourth spaceframe and compartment ninety-six on this class-she needs to be there, and working, in
