retina were peeling off the back of your eyeball. Prakit didn't mind.
'She's fastened down,' he'd say.
'If you guys need to stretch your legs just stick them up here!' Nora joked, shouted into the hold at the 'special forces.' Argamentine was a good-natured woman who liked to take care of her men even if that wasn't the style of military women. Her father had been fried in the Battle of Ceres during the Fourth Kzin Invasion when she was a teenager, and somehow she could never give enough love or hate enough.
'We've got lots of room. There's room for you down here,' said the first killer because there wasn't.
'Are we there yet! Are we there yet!' cried the other holler.
Nora fixed her two commandoes ration crackers with a little smuggled Camembert, and passed her gift down the 'hole. 'Don't get crackers in your belly'
Charlie and Nora spent more than a day between naps taking photos and scanning the volume of space they wanted to move to, about 50 AU farther in. Nora spent a few moments off duty just gazing at the Serpent's Swarm through the electronic image amplifier. 'God, Charlie, you've got to take a look at their Belt!' There was no hurry about tasks and no frantic priorities. They were making a very cautious approach. It took only about five minutes to move across 50 AU in hyperspace, but they didn't want to jump into a nest of kzin, not when they needed a minimum of 30 minutes to set up another jump.
Sometimes she had nightmares sleeping in the cockpit. As a teenager on the Iowa farm-city she had imagined such a cockpit around herself at dusk while the stars rose above the trees, imagining herself killing kzin before they got to Daddy, wondering where he was, what he was doing out there and if he was safe. It had been a nightly ritual, murdering imaginary kzin.
Charlie woke her up with a gentle nudge. 'Bandits, at eight o'clock, twenty degrees high. Hey, Prakit, get us the tanj out of here!'
Lieutenant Argamentine was instantly awake and reading the flowing graphics on her screen. She asked her machine questions and the graphs changed in response. 'Bandits coming in fast. The doppler reading shows a deceleration of sixty-four g's. Three fighters. They carry the Scream-of-Vengeance signature. That's the fighter that got my Dad.'
'How much time have we got?' Charlie's voice was rapid-fire, impatient with chatter.
'Easy, Charlie. This is a different war. We aren't fighting the last war. They are hours away and we'll never have to engage them.' Daddy had had no choice in a fighter with only a fraction of their maneuverability. 'We have time for coffee and crullers.' But she was nervously straightening a strand of curly hair. 'I used to play this game with my little sister when she was three. I'd let her almost catch me then I'd disappear.' She turned around to smile at Prakit. 'How are you doing?'
'I'm doing! I'm doing,' snapped Prakit.
The phase-change built up while Prakit counted off the minutes. They fell into a silence of suspense. War was waiting for those few seconds of action. 'We love you, Betsy,' said Nora when she couldn't stand the suspense any more.
'Shut up. Let Prakit work.'
The hyperdrive suddenly went into a vibration that built up over three seconds and then died. Prakit cursed. 'She just reset.'
'Plenty of time,' said Lieutenant Argamentine.
'I'm going to take five to make an adjustment. We don't want Betsy to burp again.'
Charlie was thinking of defensive action now. He rolled the Shark so that the jet of its piggy-back torchship was pointed toward the Screamers.
'It won't do any good,' said Nora. 'Those devils are maneuverable enough to get out of the way of anything.'
Charlie called down to his special forces. 'We're under attack. Get ready to fire the torch. When I call for fire, fire!'
'We're going to be out of here!' said Prakit.
This time, as the phase-change built up, nobody broke the silence. Nora stared at the engine even while the sight of it started to 'peel' the rods off the back of her eyeballs. Go! she prayed. But the Shark stayed suspended, agonizingly. Too long.
Betsy shuddered and reset.
'I should rebuild her,' said Prakit frantically.
'You had all day!' snarled Charlie. 'Time?' He was asking Nora how much time they had to live.
'They're still decelerating. Looks like a boarding. If they decide to take us alive, Betsy will have time. If they decide to make a fast pass, we are dead meat.'
'Suits sealed,' said Charlie. He meant helmets and gloves. They were already wearing airtights under their uniforms.
'Can't!' Prakit's voice was frantic. 'I can't afford to be encumbered. I'm taking her up manually. I can shave off minutes that way. I can keep her in the canyon. I've done it before. The autoguide has been hitting the walls. Shouldn't happen.'
They began a third countdown. 'Can we do a short tunneling? Charlie was looking for straws.
'Doesn't work that way. Don't talk to me.'
They waited. Again. Finally Charlie could wait no more. 'Attention. All crew. I'm arming the self-destruct.' If they got into hyperspace, each officer knew how to deactivate it before it blew. If they didn't…
They waited. The kzin continued to close.
'Down below. Get your torch primed.' Charlie turned to Nora. 'You and I are going to practice keeping our ass aimed at the kzin.'
'There are two bandits coming in. One is doing a boarding maneuver, the other seems to be setting up a fast flyby.' Nora twisted that ringlet of hair with her free hand, then found she needed both hands for her combat duties.
'And the third?'
'Hanging back. He'll be able to board or kill.'
'We'll practice wiggling our ass between the two lead Screamers.' The Shark began to oscillate between two points the aiming precision-controlled by the ship's computer.
They waited.
'We're going to make it,' Prakit said, calm certainty in his voice.
'Fire!' screamed Charlie to his torchmen.
Fire blazed out at the dancing kzin, seeking while the Screamers avoided. The countdown continued.
A lurch as the torchship was blown away. Nora saw it cartwheeling across the heavens before it detonated. A moment later the cabin took a hit. She didn't see Prakit sucked into space, helmetless. Her faceplate was triggering to opaque on cue from the explosive glare while actinic light burned the unshadowed half of her uniform. In the instant of death's visitation she saw, not the father's battle doom which had until now, never left her mind, but a baby sister running toward her with ruffles around the bottoms of her tiny pant…
The Hssin barbarian had already flashed past. The second Screamer dropped from 60 g's down to a fraction o…and was only nudging the alien object as the old warrior jumped out with a backpack into the hole that had been opened for him. He knew what he was looking for, but it took him precious seconds to find it. He slapped the backpack down. Its electrogravitic vibrators cut a clean hole through the floor and the backpack disappeared at 230 g's carrying an amputated hunk of the Shark with it. The battlearmored Gunner leapt into the cockpit with two airbags, and in a choreographed economy of gesture the old Hero and his Gunner each stuffed a body into a bag, and then hunkered down, waiting for the explosion.
Chuut-Riits warrior was grinning through his faceplate. 'Maybe the acceleration killed it.' But no the destruct bomb lit up the underside of the Screamer and the wreckage of the Shark.
The engine was intact. Give that wild Hssin barbarian credit he could shoot straight! While the old warrior was examining the salvage, Hromfi's son drifted to within hailing distance. The veteran Hero made hand signals to Hromfi's Son: Where was that laggard, Trainer-of-Slaves?
Double arm motions signaled back: On his way.
The Ztirgor rolled and locked onto the bottom of the old warrior's Screamer. Its insides had been stripped out to accommodate the autodoc. The body airbags were delivered efficiently and opened. Messy. Trainer-of-Slaves
