Surf

passed. A quick check showed another moving along the underside of the herd where it had cover from the decoy, but in her own clear sights.

Do it, she told herself, and powered up the weapons systems. She fell in behind the first fighter, and then, carefully sighting on it — she wouldn't get any extra chances here — fired. The ship flared and died.

She sighted on the fighter below, which was just beginning an evasive maneuver away from her, and took it down too.

“Tonker! What the fuck?!” This from the remaining ship.

“Omi, jam him!”

[Doing what I can.]

She banked up and around, resisting the urge to use the Rooan as shielding. The fighter broke off and fled. They raced away from the herd, Bari on his tail as he wove a pattern through space, staying always one tic and jump just out of her sights. “Oh, Hell,” she swore. Her hands flew over the console, overriding the safeties and dumping energy from life support, gravity?gen, and radiation shielding into the engines. She was suddenly light in her seat, held in place only by inertia, seat straps, and her safety tether. The burst of extra speed was less than she'd expected, but she began to close.

[Bari…]

“I know,” she said. She could already feel it, the cabin growing colder. She closed her eyes for a second, let long practice at mind?body control kick in, and slowed her heart rate and her breathing. Then she opened calm eyes on the enemy, closer now, and brought him down with a fast double?hit. She hadn't even reached the debris halo before she was already diverting the ship's systems back to normal.

[That was dangerous.]

“So would be letting him get away.”

Outpost One lay dead ahead. It sat in space like some giant's toy, the sunlight of Beserai's distant star gleaming off it only adding to the impression of a scaled?up, metal wasp's nest. Around it floated smaller objects: waste processors, chemical weapons storage, trash. As she watched, four more ships appeared, heading her way at full burn.

She got out of her seat, careful to keep the safety tether clipped, and pulled another small device out of her pack. It took her a long minute to wire it into the console, while the ship closed the distance to the outpost's remaining defenders. “Omi, did you get a good look at that last fighter's evasion patterns?”

[I did.]

“Then I'm putting you in charge of the helm,” she said, clicking the device on. “You should have remote now.”

A pause. [Got it. Any change in plans?]

“No, we're going in the hard way. Get as close as you can. If you can, blow the escape pod just before they take us out.”

Bari pulled her face shield back down, checked her suit seals by reflexive gesture, then disengaged the safety tether and cycled herself back out the airlock. Pulling herself along the ship's hull, she reached one of the purely aesthetic wings and clambered out until she was perched comfortably about halfway down its length. Here, she was well out of the way of the furiously burning engines slung on the underside. She traced her fingers along the thin ribbon of silver laid into the black wing, the very familiar starburst pattern, and let an old anticipation, and a newfound guilt, wash over her.

<The herd front is nearing closest proximity to the outpost.>

“You should be safe. I think Aurora is going to be too busy dealing with me to think about anything else for a while.” At the moment, the stolen fighter beneath her feet was heading straight for the outpost. “Omi, course change in five,” she said. “Four, three, two, one…”

She let go of the ship even as it banked away underneath her, now on a collision course for the chemical weapons bunker. In her suit she was invisible to the intercepting ships; by eye they might spot her, but now they all changed course as well, pursuing the visible threat. She put her arms out from her sides in a parody of a swan dive as she fell/flew toward the outpost. Sailing through space in nothing but the Dzenni suit gave her a sense of being both infinitely powerful and infinitely insignificant at the same time. Which is exactly as it should be, her teachers would have told her.

Far away from her now, the Auroran fighters drew close enough to her stolen ship to obliterate it; she caught the small flash of the escape pod ejecting, but the fighters closed in on that, too, and turned it into just so much more space debris. “Sorry, Tonker,” she murmured.

From there the fighters spread out, cautiously edging forward away from the base and each other, looking for the next threat. She was already well inside their slowly expanding perimeter, the outpost looming large dead ahead. She smiled; she was on target, no need to risk a burst from her pack to change course.

She curled herself up and around until she was foot?first, trying not to think about how long she'd had to practice the maneuver to keep from sending herself into a hopeless spin, and hit the side of the station near the pinnacle well above the central mass. It was a hard landing, but she'd prepared for that as well, and turned it into a short tumble up the sloped surface before she managed to catch a grip and stop. Then she activated the light mag fields in her boots, stood up in what felt, even absent any meaningful input from her inner ear, like a cartoonishly horizontal direction, and ran down and across the surface of the station.

The maintenance hatch was exactly where she expected it to be.

Bari spun the outer wheel, pulled the hatch open, and tucked herself into the small crawlspace backward so she could close it again. Once the hatch was sealed, she tried to turn around and discovered that, with the pack on her back, she couldn't. “Oh, great,” she muttered.

[Everything okay?]

“It's just smaller than I expected.”

[Or you're bigger than it expected.]

“Thanks,” she said, then under her breath, “you bit?fried hunk of space flotsam.”

[I heard that.]

She scooted backward through the tight space until she came up hard against the inner lock. Now what? she thought. As best as she could, she laid down flat, her pack an uncomfortable wedge under her back, and studied the upside?down lock controls. Then she pried open the security panel, pulled out two leads, and shorted them. The hatch slid open with a whoosh as air filled the small crawlspace, and she scrambled out and into the maintenance space on the far side.

This area was only marginally bigger, but it was enough that she could turn around and, squatting, pull herself upright. Also, it had atmosphere. Her suit's supply was down to fifty?two percent so she set it to recharge automatically from the surrounding air.

It took her a minute to get her bearings, and then she moved through the tunnels as quickly as a need for quiet could afford. Several turns and intersections later, she found herself at another small hatch, with what appeared to be a small butter knife wedged into the control panel. She touched it gingerly, as if it could shock, but it was inert, a dead relic of another's past.

At least I know I'm in the right place, she thought. “I'm going in.”

She emerged into a cramped and dusty storeroom filled with boxes, crates, and stacks of miscellaneous junk, the lighting dim. She took several deep, calming breaths as she unloaded from her vest pockets the next set of items she'd anticipated needing. As soon as she felt back under control she reached out an arm and slipped it past the chip reader. The doorlight turned green and admitted her into the main corridors of Aurora's Outpost One.

The senior staff would be in the situation room, monitoring the fighters as they looked for signs of their enemy, while security spread out throughout the decks, watching the airlocks and the docking rings, watching their own population for any sign of internal insurrection. The Auroran warlord would be doing much the same from his seat back in the central enclave, watching everyone, trusting no one. Out of Bari's grasp, but not beyond her touch.

A stunner took out the door guard. She shorted out the lock into the situation room the same way she had the hatch's internal airlock, and stepped inside. The room was dark, wood?paneled at ridiculous expense, displays overheard showing the still?expanding search party in vivid red tracery. Heads turned, hands reached for weapons,