comments nailed the truth so accurately.
There was a brush of air beside her. 'It becomes a waiting game now,' Karrde said, kneeling down beside her seat. 'What do you think?'
'We haven't got a chance,' Shada told him bluntly. 'Not unless Rei'Kas doesn't bother to send anything bigger than the Corsairs he hit us with at Dayark.'
She thought she'd spoken quietly enough for only Karrde to hear. David apparently had good ears. 'No, he'll bring everything he has,' the admiral assured her. 'His full armada, with himself at the head of it. He's wanted to get his hands on Exocron's wealth for a long time.' He smiled tightly. 'Besides which, I understand from Entoo Nee that you gave him something of a bruised eye at Dayark. For the revenge part alone he'd be sure to be here.' Shada felt Karrde's silent sigh as a breath of warm air on her cheek. 'Which may ultimately give us our only real chance,' he said. 'If we can pretend to start running, we may be able to draw enough of them away for your forces to deal with the rest.'
'Possibly,' David agreed. 'Not that that would do us personally much good, of course.'
'It's my fault he's here,' Karrde reminded him. 'It's not too late for you to transfer to one of the other ships—'
At the sensor station, H'sishi suddenly snarled. [They come,] she announced. [Three Sienar
'Confirmed,' Shada said, running her eyes over her spotting displays, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The
'Stand by turbolasers,' Karrde said, rising to his feet beside her.
'Turbolasers standing by,' Shada confirmed, keying targeting information over to the three weapons stations. Just because it was hopeless didn't mean they shouldn't do their best. 'Looks like the Corsairs are forming up a screen around the bigger ships.'
'Cap't?' Chin called from the comm. 'We getting call from one of the Marauders. You want make him an answer?'
Shada could feel Karrde tense. 'Yes, go ahead,' he said.
Chin keyed the comm—'Hey, there, Karrde,' a familiar gloating voice boomed from the bridge speaker. 'I told you you'd see me again before you died, didn't I?'
'Yes, Xern, you did,' Karrde agreed, his voice betraying none of the tension Shada knew he was feeling. 'I'm surprised you're still alive after that fiasco at Dayark. Rei'Kas must be going soft in his old age.'
From the background came a distant flurry of Rodian invective. 'Rei'Kas says he'll maybe save you for last for that one,' Xern said. 'You like that, huh?' Across the bridge, David cleared his throat. 'Rei'Kas, this is Admiral Trey David of the Exocron Combined Air-Space Fleet,' he said.
'Oh, an admiral, huh?' Xern said sarcastically. 'You mean this collection of scrap rates a whole admiral?'
'You're in violation of Exocron space,' David said calmly, ignoring the insult. 'This is your last chance to withdraw peaceably.'
Xern laughed. 'Oh, that's rich. That's really rich. We
There was another burst of Rodian. 'Hey, we got to go, Karrde—time to make the big scrap into lots of little scrap. See you later, Admiral.'
The comm keyed off. 'They're sure well stocked in the confidence department, aren't they?' Shada murmured.
'Yes,' Karrde said. His hand brushed past her shoulder, hesitated, then came back almost reluctantly to rest there. 'I'm sorry, Shada,' he said, his voice just loud enough for her to hear. 'I should never have brought you into this.'
'It's all right,' Shada said. So this was it: the end of the long journey. Back at the Orowood Tower, facing the Noghri and their blasters, she had been ready to die. Had almost hoped they would overreact and kill her, in fact. The easy way out, she had thought then. Now, facing the incoming pirates, she realized that there were no easy ways out. No way of dying that didn't involve abandoning a responsibility, or leaving necessary work undone—
She glanced up at Karrde, gazing out the viewport, his face set in hard lines. Or, indeed, of leaving friends behind.
Distantly, she wondered when in all of this she had started to think of Karrde as a friend. She didn't know. But it
