The two ships were still some heartbeats short of collision.
Had they started the countdown too soon?
– Battle is no place for finetuning.
Thus thought Hatch.
Thus the Nexus doctrine. Thus the voice of experience.
In any case, San Kaladan was still speaking:
'And. Six. And.'
Hatch knew that if his timing was off, he must still stay with it. His every trooper would be hot by now, hot and sweating, geared up with fear and fury. To change the timing now would throw them all into confusion.
'Five,' said San Kaladan, strengthening as the ritual of the countdown secured him in his identity as a warrior. 'And. Four.
Hatch remembered his father on the sands. The sands of the Season. After his father had killed himself, he had wanted to die.
But he could not die. He would not.
'And. Three.'
There was a rising excitement in San Kaladan's voice. He was working himself up. He was entering battle- mode.
'Two. And. One. And. Fire.'
All through Hatch's battleforce, rockets flared. Hatch felt the gentle tugstrings of his own retro-rockets slowing him. Out in the night, the wink-lights which mapped out the spread-pattern of his battle-armored troops began to slow, performing the slowmotion ballet of deepspace manoeuvering. Hatch and his thousand Startroopers were slowing, like a thousand fireflies caught in an invisible net. Their dead ship, cruising forward through space at a constant velocity, seemed to accelerate away from them. Hatch knew: yes. Yes! He was in error! He had let San Kaladan give the order to fire rockets too soon!
Hatch's abandoned MegaCommand Cruiser drove onward. Ahead lay Lon Oliver's ship. They were closing. Closing, fast. Three. And.
Two. And. One. And – The ships collided. The ships impacted in the silence of vacuum. The ships crumpled as they smashed against each other. Gas ruptured outward from Lon Oliver's ship, venting in vast sheets, in pluming spasms.
The fist caught the big sheet of paper. The confetti was carried past in the wind. The confetti was still braking, was still slowing, was still shedding velocity – but too slowly! Hatch and his men were being carried past the wreckage. Hatch realized he had been badly wrong in his guestimates. Retro-rockets had been fired too late rather than too early. Hatch had been betrayed by his lack of deepspace experience.
'Ha!' said a voice, in pleased surprise. 'It works! It works!'
It was San Kaladan. Hatch was surprised at San Kaladan's surprise. But of course Hatch's inexperience merely reflected the inexperience of the Nexus Stormforce as a whole.
He watched.
The collision had left the two MegaCommand Cruisers locked together in a deathgrip. Air was still boiling out of the wreckage of the enemy MegaCommand, spewing out into deep space. Inside that ship, men would be dying in the sudden vacuum.
Rockets flared in the dark as Hatch's men began to move toward the ships.
'Come in slowly,' said Hatch, manoeuvering himself toward the hull of the enemy ship. 'Brake in good time.'
And he braked, and let the hugeness of the whalebulk hull drift up toward him. He landed on the skin of leviathan. His knees anticipated the shock, soaked it up. Already strobe lights were blinking on the hull. They marked places where Hatch's men had found access to the interior through rents and ruptures.
Hatch used the rockets of his battle-armor to manoeuver himself to the nearest rent. He entered the ship, moving warily lest he tear his anger on the sharp-fang edges of the hole in the hull. His armor was tough, but, unlike his skin, it had no pain receptors to warn him of damage. If he tore a hole in his armor, he would not know about it until he was dead.
Once inside the ship, Hatch let himself float. The interior was airless, but still lit by emergency electricals. He realized that Lon Oliver's ship was still maintaining a faint degree of artificial gravity, enough for Hatch to be featherweighted down toward the ship's deck. Abruptly that gravity strengthened to full force. Hatch gasped in surprise. Was he all right? So far, so good. He gave a command, and the built-in headlamp of his battlearmor came to life. He wanted to be sure that he would still have lighting if the emergency electricals suddenly failed.
Now where was he?
Every fire alarm inside a MegaCommand was location-coded, so if he could just find a fire alarm, then he would know where he was. Hatch sought such an alarm, found one, checked it, and orientated himself. As he did so, the open broadband channel began to fill with warnings and alarms. His men were running into armed resistance. Some of Lon Oliver's men had managed to get into their battle-armor and were putting up a strong fight.
Where now?
Hatch's mission was very simple. He had no need to kill out the ship. All he needed was Lupus's head. Hatch made his way to the nearest maintenance panel. The panel would be linked to the simple-minded electronic computers which would be running the ship's emergency systems.
Hatch used a chin-switch to put his electromagnetic communicator into the receive-only mode.
'Jack to this panel,' said Hatch, talking to his battlearmor, and simultaneously jamming his battle-armor's right fist against the maintenance panel. 'Then get access to the emergency computer.'
His battle-armor extruded a jack, thrust it deep into a data-access socket, and began to ream the maintenance panel, raping it thoroughly, stripping its defenses and winning the deepest secrets of its privacy.
'We have access to the emergency computer,' said the automated voice of Hatch's battle-armor.
'What is the status of the bridge?' said Hatch.
There was a minuscule pause as his battle-armor interrogated the MegaCommand Cruiser's emergency computer. Then:
'The bridge is undamaged,' said his battle-armor. 'There is full atmosphere and full gravity on the bridge.'
'Good,' said Hatch. 'Is the captain on the bridge?'
Again the pause. Then:
'The captain is on the bridge.'
'Good,' said Hatch. Then: 'Is there pressure in the Central Robotic Maintenance Tube?'
'There is full atmospheric pressure in the Central Robotic Maintenance Tube.'
'Are its interior airlocks functional and undamaged?'
'They are functional and undamaged.'
'Good,' said Hatch. 'Disengage.'
His battle-armor freed itself from the maintenance panel, and Hatch, ignoring the strident battle-commands, made his way to the Central Robotic Maintenance Tube and entered the outer chamber by way of an airlock.
Hatch looked around the outer chamber. It was empty, as he had expected. This facility was never used except when maintenance robots entered the ship when it was in drydock.
'Right,' said Hatch.
Then he began to strip off his armor.
Hatch stripped down to his Standard Gray. He grabbed his sheathed sword, his short and brutal battle-sword, which he had earlier fixed to the back of his deepspace battlearmor, using for that purpose some heavy-duty glue. Hatch wrenched with all his strength and tore the sword free from the armor.
Then Hatch began to make his way along the Central Robotic Maintenance Tube. If this lost pressure, he would die. But he had no option. This was the fastest way to the bridge, and the tube was so small that there was barely room for him to crawl along it.
It would be impossible for a man in vacuum armor to enter that tube.
Hatch crawled the length of the tube, and exited by way of an airlock in chamber devoted to the storage and maintenance of the ship's robotic cleaning machines. This gave him access to the kitchens, and from the kitchens he gained access to the officers' mess. Hatch entered the mess, which was bare and functional, devoid of
