what she regarded as preferential treatment because of her condition, but even she had
to admit her job would be vital. Not only did she have to keep their captives
incommunicado long enough for the others to do their jobs, but there had to be someone
left behind to notify the Navy if their plan failed. It was decided she would give the others
two days; if she hadn’t heard from them by the end of that time, she would call in
reinforcements.
That left Pias in need of something to do. He agreed to pilot the ship towards the battle
station. This would not be as simple as task as it sounded, because he was almost
certain to come under fire the moment he approached the object. His newly-acquired
skills as a pilot would be put to the most severe test as he tried to accomplish his goals
while dodging enemy blaster beams at the same time. It was a necessary task, but not
one he was looking forward to.
The three SOTE agents were in full space battle armor as their ship dropped out of
subspace near the coordinates of the battle station. The armor was uncomfortable, but
the alternatives to wearing it were even more so. If their vessel were destroyed, the
armor gave them a chance to survive and carry on their mission.
They made sure to materialize well out of weapons range, so they could have a look at
the enemy before moving in. At this distance, several hundred kilometers away, there
were few details visible even through a powerful scope. The station was a large black
ball of metal several hundred meters in diameter. Its surface bristled with projections that
threatened anyone approaching its sights. It was difficult to tell, but it seemed to have its
own engines mounted on the rear, making it somewhat mobile although the agents
doubted it was capable of any great speed.
“Can’t tell much about it from here,” Jules said regretfully. “We’ll have to move in closer
to see anything specific. ”
“If we get much closer you’ll have to look pretty fast,” Pias said, “because I’ll be busy
dodging blaster beams.” “There’s no other way, I’m afraid,” Yvette said. “We’ll have to
get close to it sometime, and the sooner the better; Boros can see us on her screens
right now just as clearly as we can see her. The less time we give her to prepare for our
arrival, the more chance we’ll have to succeed.”
With no further prompting, Pias began the ship on its course toward the unknown
opponent. He started moving slowly, building up speed at a gradual pace until he was
zipping along a confusing path at cruising rate. This ship was not La Comete Cuivre, the
fast little craft that belonged exclusively to Jules and Yvette; because the four agents had
needed more than a two-seater to get from DesPlaines to Floreata, they’d taken Le
Lapin from the d’Alembert hangar. Nevertheless, it handled with superb precision,
obeying Pias’s split second commands.
The battle station grew larger in the scope, but it remained ominously silent. It issued no
radio or subcom challenge, made no attempt to communicate with the tinier vessel. The
blaster turrets swivelled to cover the ship as it moved, but there was no other indication
of life within the somber fortress.
Except for the projecting turrets, the outer hull of the battle station appeared completely
smooth. There were no docking facilities, no viewpoints, nothing but barren metal. Jules,
who had his eye on the scope, mentioned this to his companions and added, “it looks like
they’re not eager for visitors. I’m not sure there’s any way to get inside. . . . Wait, there’s
a small ship docked there. It fits in so snugly it looks like part of the hull. It can’t be more
than a one- or two-seater. Unless it’s used as a ferry, there can’t be much of a crew
inside. That’s a break for us. And there, on that side-it looks like a small maintenance
hatch. Again, not very big, but. . . . ”
At that point he was jolted away from his calm reflections. The battle station, deciding
this intruding vessel had come close enough, began firing its lesser guns, and Pias
needed all the speed of his high-grav reflexes to maneuver Le Lapin out of the line of
fire. From this point on, they would be caught in a deadly dance; one slight miscalculation
and the ship would be gutted by the burning beam of the battle station’s blasters.
It was Pias’s show for the moment; Jules and Yvette could only hang on tightly to their
seats as their comrade guided the ship through the treacherous combat zone. “Better
think of something fast,” Pias said without taking his eyes off his screens for a second.
“The longer I stick around here, the more chance I have of dodging too slowly one time,
and that’s all it takes.”
“We have to get in there,” Jules said. “If there is only a small crew, we stand a good
chance of being able to take them ourselves.”
“That maintenance hatch you mentioned sounds like the best bet,” Yvette added. “if we
can get to it.”
“There are no docking facilities, and the station wouldn’t give us time to dock even if
there were,” Jules said. “We’ll have to be dropped off in passing. Do you think you can
make a close swing to let us off?”
Pias gave him a tight grin.. “I’ll peel the paint off that station’s hull. Just give me a couple
of minutes to maneuver into the right position.”
Jules and Yvette took that as their cue to leave the control room. It was difficult to move
through a ship undergoing a constant series of abrupt accelerations; they had to take one
cautious step at a time, keeping a firm grip on the walls, acceleration couches, and
anything else in reach. Adding to the dilemma was the awkwardness of their heavy battle
armor; even though they’d trained in its use for years until wearing it was a second
nature, it made each movement a special challenge.
Slowly, the two DesPlainians traveled through the central axis of the ship to the airlock.
Once inside and with the inner hatch closed behind them, they opened the outer hatch
and faced the inky blackness of interstellar space. “What you’ll have to do,” Jules
explained over his radio link to Pias, “is shoot us out of here like a rock from a sling. Let
us know when you’re making the closest approach and then pull up; we’ll push ourselves
out, and the forward momentum we get from the ship should hurl us right into the hull of
the station.”
“Khorosho,” Pias answered cheerily. “Did you learn this from one of your relatives who’s
a human cannonball?” “We don’t have any acts like that in the Circus,” Yvette said. “We’ll
just have to improvise this one as we go along.”
It took some time before Pias, dodging maniacally through the increasingly deadly field of
blaster beams, could maneuver Le Lapin into the proper position to make the needed
charge at the station. Finally the moment came when he was prepared to make the
move. “Get ready,” he told the others. Aiming the nose of his ship directly at the
maintenance hatch, he raced toward the station’s surface at top speed.
Blaster bolts streaked harmlessly through empty space around him as he held to a tight
collision course. Some of the beams missed the surface of Le Lapin by a matter of
meters, but Pias gritted his teeth and did not flinch. The range between his vessel and
the station diminished at an ever increasing rate. His eyes were watching four gauges at
once, and his hands remained rock steady on the controls. If he moved too soon, Jules
and Yvette would be shot off into empty space instead of onto the skin of the battle
station; if he moved too late, he wouldn’t be able to pull out and would crash into the side
of the metal planetoid.
As the numbers on his readout screen dovetailed into the course he had mentally
calculated, his hands moved quickly over the controls. “Now!” he shouted over the radio,
simultaneously activating the auxiliary jets for a quick sidewards motion.
Just as he’d promised, he came close to scraping the paint from the battle station’s hull.
If the station had been a smooth ball, his maneuver would have been precision perfect
and he’d have veered off into space again with only the slightest of space between the
enemy fortress and his own craft.
Unfortunately, the battle station was not a perfectly smooth ball. The constantly rotating
blaster turrets were an uncalculable factor in the topography of the surface. Just as the
ship veered off, one of the nearby turrets swung directly into its path. The tip of the
barrel just grazed the ship, but at the high speed Pias was traveling, that was a disaster.