“Under the circumstances, yes. I loaded a full spread of missiles capable of both high sublight and short- range starflight speeds, directed through an achronic link by my own tracking systems, and armed with conversion warheads of variable intensity up to twenty megatons. One missile has been removed from its tube.”
“What, inside the ship?”
“No, it was pushed along the tube outside the ship. Both the inner and outer tube hatches have been blown manually, so I cannot close them.”
“I don’t have to ask who,” Tarrel commented to herself as she released the straps from her seat and began climbing out. “I need a lift standing by to take me to the point as close to that launch tube as possible, where I can leave the ship. You need to warn Commander Gelrayen, and suggest having the repair crews get themselves back inside. And launch a pack of fighters to stand by.”
“I have no pilots on board,” Valthyrra told her.
“Well, I suppose that you can fly at least one remotely,” Tarrel said as she collected her helmet and hurried down the steps. “Can you control that missile remotely?”
“Yes, but it can still be fired and detonated manually,” Valthyrra said, swinging her camera pod around to follow while she still could. “What are you going to do?”
“This is my problem,” Captain Tarrel insisted just before she moved out of range, then waited until she was inside the lift. “Val?”
“I can still hear you,” she said through the lift com.
“Wally Pesca is my responsibility,” Tarrel continued. “I brought him on board this ship. I knew that he was having problems, but I was too busy playing with the Starwolves to pay him enough attention. Don’t you try to talk to him through his suit. I’m the only one he might listen to now, and I doubt even that.”
“I will leave him to you, Captain,” Valthyrra promised. “I might remind you that you do not have a weapon.”
“Is he likely to have one?”
“Aside from a conversion missile? No. All of the ship’s small weapons are accounted for, and he did not come aboard with anything.”
Tarrel said nothing, but she wished very much that she did have a weapon of some type. She really did not anticipate that she would be able to save Lt. Commander Pesca unless he surrendered to her voluntarily, and she did not believe that he would. The fact that he was using a conversion device against the Starwolves indicated that he did not expect or intend to survive his own attack; he probably meant to move it into a position where it would do the most damage and detonate it manually. Although she did not know for certain, she suspected that anyone willing to make a suicide attack was probably too devoted to his cause to be talked out of it very easily, or could even be forced to surrender. If threatened, he would simply set off the device immediately.
The fate of entire worlds could well depend upon the survival of these two carriers, two of only sixteen fighting ships left in the Starwolf fleet. In that balance, Walter Pesca’s life was a small concern. If she had had a gun and could have taken him by surprise, Captain Tarrel would have shot him without the slightest hesitation to get him away from that missile. But aside from the rather obvious problem that she did not have a weapon in the first place, Pesca was wearing the best armor there was. Dispatching him quickly and easily was more a problem than it seemed. That was why she wanted heavy firepower in the form of a fighter to back her up, if she could direct the fighter into position before he saw it.
“Captain, this is Valthyrra,” the ship said after a long moment. “I have considered the matter carefully and I have decided not to warn the crews that are working outside, or make any attempt to secure the ship. That would warn your companion that we know what he is doing, and he might be frightened into detonating the device. I have discussed this with Commander Gelrayen and he agrees. We will leave this for you to handle.”
“I appreciate you confidence,” Tarrel said, uncertain whether she intended that sarcastically. “I need some firepower at hand immediately?’
“A fighter is too large and obvious,” Valthyrra explained. “I am sending you a probe, the smallest of my surveillance remote units. It operates entirely by field drive, and it has a mobile camera pod with an attached small cannon.”
“Enough to pierce Starwolf armor on the first shot?”
“It should.”
The lift, which had made four changes of direction already, pulled to a smooth stop and the doors snapped open. Captain Tarrel found herself facing a narrow, dimly-lit corridor in what looked to be a very remote portion of the ship.
“Listen to me quickly,” Valthyrra told her. “The corridor you see gives access to the minor airlocks along the ventral groove, and you are only about three hundred meters back from the nose of the ship. Walter Pesca is moving the missile along the ventral groove a short distance back from your present position, no doubt using the groove as the only effective cover. He probably expects to fire the missile before he begins moving outward along the wing, and I suspect that he intends to target the open bays along the Maeridan’s lower hull.”
“Can he fire that missile with any accuracy?” Tarrel asked, surprised.
“He can try pointing it in the general direction. Considering the range, he has a very good chance of hitting something. Go down the corridor to your left and take the first passage to your right. That will put you at a small airlock leading out into the ventral groove.”
Tarrel found the passage quickly enough, a narrow tube sealed at the inner end by a heavy hatch in the event that the passage between the inner and outer hull was damaged. The airlock itself was hardly more than a service port, small enough that she had to bend slightly to get her helmet under the top. The ventral groove was familiar territory from her visits while the Methryn had still been in her construction bay, larger than the slender line that it looked to be from a distance, with the massive heat-exchange bars of the solid-state cooling system at top and bottom. There was hardly any more detail to be seen, since they were in the smothering darkness and bitter cold of intersteller space. The brilliant floodlights illuminating the area of work about the main drives was still nearly a kilometer away.
“Where is he?” Tarrel asked.
“About fifty meters back from where you stand, moving away from you,” Valthyrra reported. “Since he is carrying the missile, he is moving much slower than you will.”
“Carrying? How large is that missile?”
“Perhaps I should have said that he is pulling it in freefall, since that missile is five meters long and weighs two tons under one standard G. If you stay well back in the darkness of the groove, he might not see you until you are fairly close. Unfortunately, your armor is Command white. His armor will be white with black trim, but the missile itself is dull black.”
“What about that firepower you promised?” Tarrel asked. “Right behind you.”.
Captain Tarrel turned and was startled to see the dark shape of the probe drifting immediately behind her. This machine was much smaller than she had anticipated, an armored, wedge-shaped remote with its folding wings fully extended so that it looked now like some curious flying or aquatic creature. Its camera pod, lifted to regard her, was in a protective flare at the end of a flexible snake-like neck. The focusing lens of a comparatively small gun was located beneath the camera; with power coming up from within the main hull of the machine, it could be a great deal more dangerous than it looked.
“How can I talk with him?” she asked.
“You are aware of the switch for the external speaker on your collar?” Valthyrra reminded her. “When you press that, I will shunt the signal to a second audio channel. It will only work while you are holding the switch, so you will control what you want him to hear. ”
She had to weigh her options very quickly, trying to decide whether to give Pesca a chance to surrender, or if she should take the safest course by simply allowing Valthyrra to ambush him with the remote. But if Valthyrra shot and missed, he would still have time to detonate the missile.
“Val, can you control his suit remotely?” she asked as she hurried along the deep ledge of the ventral groove.
“Yes, it was designed to allow me to care for an injured pilot as best I could, by adjusting temperature and oxygen content.” “Can you vent the suit and suffocate him?”
“No, there was no foreseen value in that function.”
“But you can cut his oxygen completely?”
