“I’m on it,” Farnsworth replied. “My platoon will provide security until all of the POWs have boarded. Out.”
Conscious of how precious each passing second was, Santana threw himself into the process of getting the POWs onto the shuttles. For a while it seemed as if the offi?cer was everywhere, shouting encouragement and lending a hand whenever one was needed. Vanderveen could hear him even though she was strapped to a stretcher and took pleasure in the sound of his voice. Then Santana was there kneeling beside her and checking the straps that would hold the diplomat in place once the ship was airborne. The offi?cer smiled. “I went to your home, but you stood me up.”
Vanderveen looked up into his eyes. “I know I did—
and I’m very sorry. Did you get my note?”
Santana nodded soberly. “Your mother gave it to me.”
“Were you angry?”
“No,” the offi?cer replied honestly. “But I was disappointed. You owe me.”
“Yes,” Vanderveen agreed, as tears began to well up in her eyes. “I do. We all do.”
She would have said more, wanted to say more, but that was when Commander Schell came into view. If he thought the tete-a-tete was strange, he kept his opinions to himself. “We’re ready, Captain. . . . Or as ready as we’re likely to be.”
That was when Santana felt the vibration beneath his boots and realized the shuttle’s engines were running. “I’m glad to hear it, sir. Let’s load the rest of my team and get the hell out of here.”
Schell grinned. “My thoughts exactly.”
An additional fi?ve minutes were required to get Farnsworth and his people aboard the other shuttle and strap everyone in. Santana stood at the top of the ramp as the last T-2 lumbered aboard Ship 1. And, when he lowered his visor to get a look at the heads-up display, the offi?cer was shocked by what he saw. More than half of his thirty-person team had been killed on the surface of Jericho. The knowledge was suffi?cient to dampen any sense of jubilation the legionnaire might otherwise have felt as the ramp came up, and the shuttle wobbled into the air. It wasn’t easy for the navy pilot to manipulate the strange knob-style controls at fi?rst, but she soon caught on, and it wasn’t long before the ship began to gain altitude.
“Well done!” President Nankool said heartily as he appeared at Santana’s elbow.
“Thank you, sir,” the legionnaire replied as he reached up to grab a support. “I’m sorry it took so long—and I’ll be damned if I know where the pickup ships are.”
“Batkin fi?lled me in on the political aspect of this,”
Nankool said bleakly. “And it’s my guess that the mission was canceled. But that’s for later. We have a battleship to steal fi?rst!”
There was something infectious about the chief executive’s cheerful optimism, and it gave Santana an insight into how Nankool had been so successful in the past and why Vanderveen believed in him. Before the cavalry offi? cer could agree, however, both men were thrown to the deck as the pilot put the shuttle into a tight right-hand turn.
“Sorry about that!” a female voice said tightly. “But the bugs want to play. . . . So, hang on to your hats!”
Santana didn’t have a hat, but he had a helmet, which he clutched under one arm as he helped Nankool crawl over to a bulkhead where one of the more able-bodied POWs helped strap the chief executive down. And just in time, too, as the shuttle banked the opposite way and shook as it passed through the turbulence created by a Ramanthian fi?ghter. And so began an airborne game of cat and mouse as the Ramanthians attempted to shoot the hijacked shuttles down while the humans sought to clear the atmosphere, knowing that the conventional aircraft wouldn’t be able to follow. Of course space-going fi?ghters might very well attack the moment they entered space, but that couldn’t be helped, and the pilots could only cope with one problem at a time.
And it wasn’t easy, especially for Lieutenant Jerry Woda, who was fl?ying Ship 2. Partly because of the unfamiliar controls but mostly because of a bad engine, which explained why crude staging had been positioned next to the ship when the legionnaires took possession of it. And that pissed the pilot off because both he and the other POWs had been through a lot and didn’t deserve to die. But deserving or not it soon became clear that they were going to die as a fi?ghter locked on to the ship’s tail and began to fi?re its energy cannons. “Okay,” Woda said, as blips of blue energy tore past the control compartment. “You wanna dance? Let’s dance.”
There was only one way the uneven contest could end. That’s what all three of the Ramanthian fi?ghter pilots believed as they took turns shooting at the severely underpowered shuttle. And they were correct, or mostly correct, as Woda put Ship 2 into an extremely tight turn. Suddenly two of the enemy pilots found themselves rushing straight at the unarmed shuttle at a combined speed of eight hundred miles per hour. There was time, but not very much, as Woda steered Ship 2 straight at one of his pursuers. “I’m sorry,” the pilot said over the intercom. “But at least we’re going to take one of the ugly bastards with us!”
There was no opportunity for the POWs and the legionnaires to react as both aircraft merged into a communal ball of fi?re. But they would have approved, especially as a second fi?ghter ran into the fi?ery debris and sucked a chunk of metal into its engine. The resulting explosion was visible from many miles away but didn’t mean much to the nymphs who witnessed it from below. Because all they felt was an abiding hunger—and the momentary roll of thunder was soon forgotten.
Everyone aboard Ship 1 had experienced weightlessness before, and welcomed it, because they knew that conventional aircraft couldn’t follow them into the vacuum of space. Not that they were safe given the fact that any warship larger than a patrol boat was sure to carry fi?ghters designed for combat outside planetary atmospheres. But how would such units be deployed? Santana wondered. Would they be ordered to attack the stolen shuttles? Or kept close in order to protect whatever ship they belonged to? Because the bugs had every reason to expect a Confederacy task force to drop hyper. The legionnaire’s thoughts were interrupted by the pilot’s voice.
“This is Lieutenant Tanaka,” she said somberly. “I’m sorry to announce the loss of Ship 2 and all those aboard. They took two fi?ghters with them, however—and allowed us to clear the atmosphere. Our ETA aboard the Imperator is fi?fteen minutes. There are no fi?ghters on the way as yet. . . . More when I have it.”
Farnsworth and fully half of the company’s surviving team members had been aboard the other shuttle, so the announcement hit Santana like a blow to the gut. But it was important to try and neutralize the emotional impact associated with the loss and get ready for what lay ahead. The legionnaire freed himself from the tie-downs and made his way out to the center of the cargo compartment. The running dialogue was intended to distract the mixed
