The ship jerked and jinked wildly, caught like a bird in a man’s hand by the storm winds. They were thrown side to side violently against the restraints of their crash-seats. The storm screamed and howled, clawing at the ship. Bili thought he was screaming too, but it was hard to tell.
When the invasion of the colony began the spaceport commissioner had left early for the day. It was Wednesday after all, and the rayball games would begin down at the Zimmerman Colonial Stadium by 4:00 PM. It was an important match; KXUT would be netting the video live. The Jinzhou Dragons were facing off against Bauru, the surprise champions from the jungles of Amazonia. The spaceport commissioner always managed to leave by 3:30 on Wednesdays.
That left a bored Major Drick Lee in charge of the spaceport. From Drick’s point of view, he was left with most of the responsibility for the spaceport, but with little of the authority and only a niggardly share of the graft profits. If there indeed existed a clearer example of the sort of injustices that were heaped upon him daily by his superior than his Wednesday afternoon trips to the rayball stadium, he was at a loss to come up with it. While the commissioner and several of his shuttle captain cronies rode an airbus to the stadium, doubtless already half sloshed on brimming pitchers of hork-leaf wine, Drick had to content himself with the small portable holo-set which he kept stashed in the bottom drawer of his desk.
To further darken his mood, before the players had finished warming up and set their treads to the highwires, the intercom commenced beeping. He glanced at it with immense dissatisfaction. It was on the emergency channel, so he couldn’t ignore it forever. If, on the other hand, he let it beep for a time, the caller might well give up if it were not a real emergency. Content to wait, Drick poured himself a shot of swamp-reed distillate, illegally imported from Gopus. He kept the moonshine hidden in a very flat flask under his drawer along with the holo-set. Sighing as he took a mouth-numbing sip, he watched the fat-tired motorcycles of the Bauru team thunder through the entry gate and circle the arena. The cheers became deafening at their appearance, proof of their popularity with the crowds. Drick himself was a Dragons fan, but couldn’t help but admire the style of the Amazonians.
Unfortunately, the beeping continued. With heavy disappointment, he answered the call. “Who is this?”
“Harrington, sir. I-”
“This had better be good, Harrington. What is it?”
“Smugglers sir, they came down from Gopus with the Yeti.”
“For this you used the emergency channel?”
“Something went wrong, sir. Two ships dropped out, and at much too high an altitude. The diagnostics picked it up sir, there’s nothing we can do, it’s been recorded.”
“Oh fine! On my watch, too. Who’s responsible? Who arranged for two tickets on that freighter?”
“No sir, you don’t understand. There was only one ah, legitimate guest on that trip. Should we send the interceptors after them, sir?”
“Eh? What? Are you insane man?”
“It’s regulations, sir.”
“Fine, fine. Make an entry into the log that we scrambled the interceptors and shot them down or something. You know my password, take care of it,” said Drick, bored with the entire affair already. The game was about to start.
“Well, sir. Things have gone a bit beyond that now.”
“What are you prattling about?”
“Captain Dorman has taken up two interceptors and is chasing them now, sir.”
That got the Major into action. He stabbed the cut-off and paused only long enough to sweep his holo-set and flask out of sight, then headed for the door. Vaporous distillate dribbled from the seams of his top drawer after he left, as he had forgotten to stopper it. Smoking blue drops splattered his chair and the carpet beneath his desk.
The interceptors were Stormbringers, shipped out from the Nexus just two years ago, they were the latest in colonial-class atmospheric gunships. Built like a missile with short stubby wings and high-thrust lifters, the ship had an excellent feel in the air and was instantly responsive to the controls. Captain Dorman had loved the ships since the first time he saw them and they had always been a real pleasure to fly. Two hundred yards to his right was his wingman, a trusted flyer that he felt he could take with him on this mission without fear of treachery.
“Dorman to central, we are overhauling the slower of the two unauthorized craft now.”
“Dorman, this is Major Lee,” said a hurried voice, cutting in.
“Please get off the channel, Major, this is a combat mission and the situation is under Nexus Cluster jurisdiction now. Come in, Harrington.”
“You are ordered to return to base immediately. You do not, repeat do not have authorization to pursue.”
“We don’t need your authorization now, Major,” replied Dorman, grinning inside his helmet. “The situation has been recorded and relayed to Nexus Cluster Command. The NCC will handle this. Dorman out.”
Still grinning, he closed in and easily sat on the first of the smugglers. Although the pilot maneuvered with considerable skill, the bulky spacecraft wasn’t really designed with atmospheric flight in mind. The two Stormbringers paced the ship with absurd ease. Dorman was in fact more worried for their safety than about keeping up with them.
“Captain, the other target is escaping to the north at a very high speed. We won’t be able to catch him if we don’t go to full acceleration in about two minutes,” said his wingman.
That decided it for Dorman. There was no time for a lengthy effort on his part to talk the pilot down. He dropped down quickly and slid beneath the smuggler’s jetwash. “I’m engaging the target. It’s probably a decoy to keep us busy while the other slips away.”
“Dorman!” screamed Major Lee. He had been listening in on their intercom circuit, and now interrupted. “Under no circumstances are you to engage that ship! Answer me!”
Dorman flicked a switch, arming his forward cannons. “There seems to be some interference, sir. Could you repeat that last?”
“Listen to me, Captain-” said Major Lee, his voice shaking with rage.
“Unidentified craft is attempting to evade,” said Dorman breaking in on Major Lee. He knew he was covered on this one. With the diagnostics records black-boxed and relayed to the NCC, they couldn’t court-martial him for disobeying orders. If they tried, he could bring counter-charges that they didn’t dare to face in the Nexus courts. Without hesitation he set the mission selector to disable then depressed the attack studs, letting the microprocessors take over. Instantly, a quick burst of explosive pellets neatly removed the lifters from underneath the target. It stuttered, then dropped like a rock. Two parachutes opened as the crew ejected before impact.
“Target has been disabled. Hope they all made it,” said Dorman, calling in a rescue-lifter. After one spiraling pass over the wreck, he lifted the nose back up and the two Stormbringers poured on the thrust. In ninety seconds they achieved low orbit, where they could use max thrust in order to catch up with the second ship, which was half-way to New Chad by now.
Seven
The front doors of the arrivals section blew in with roar. Partly by luck, partly by design, no one was injured. Giants carrying heavy weapons and one normal man jogged into Grunstein Interplanetary. The giants all wore silver and black. Their huge jaws were grimly set, their boots crunched on broken glass fragments, grinding them to dust. Although he was quite tall, the single normal human was dwarfed by his massive companions. They took no notice of the screaming, scrambling people and moved smartly to a stainless steel door located underneath the escalators that led up to departures.
Jarmo leveled his long-barreled weapon, taking aim at the steel doors. Lucas pushed the weapon aside, shaking his head while he pulled out his ID card. The card slid through the lock smoothly and Lucas passed the optical and thumbprint tests as cleanly as when he had first arrived on Garm. With his giants behind him, he strode