of his native Newforest, that a single deed was worth more than a thousand promises.
He would have to act to save himself.
There was nothing immediately around him; the explosion had scattered debris all over.
The only thing that could possibly help him was the battle station, still floating leisurely in
space fifty kilometers away. He wondered how successful Jules and Yvette had been in
their assault. For all he knew, they might have taken over and were now in charge of the
entire structure. But he couldn’t afford to risk that assumption.
He didn’t know how sensitive the detectors were aboard the station, so he had to
proceed cautiously. If the screens could see him at all, he would register as just another
piece of debris from the exploded ship-but if he started accelerating too quickly, he
would look decidedly suspicious. Slowly, then, he gave short bursts on the correctional
jets built into his armor, pushing himself into an orbit that would slowly bring him near the
battle station.
After nearly three hours of drifting, he approached within easy range of the station. He
could see the maintenance hatch where Jules and Yvette had forced their way in, so he
knew they’d at least gotten that far. But there had to be another way in as well. having
been invaded from that direction once, the battle station’s defenses would be looking for
another assault there. Pias always preferred to do the unexpected.
His mind had not been idle while his body drifted, and he’d thought of another possible
entryway. Floating around to the aft portion of the station, he came to the giant engines
that propelled it through space. If Boros decided to move the station during the next half
hour, Pias would be killed instantly-but if not, he should be able to worm his way through
the exhaust tubes and past the nuclear propellants, into the body of the station itself.
There was a chance of radiation poisoning from the ship’s drive, but his armor should
protect him from most of it-and the possibility of overexposure was a better risk than the
certainty of asphyxiation if he did nothing.
The exhaust nozzle curved around him like an enormous metal bowl, blocking out the
stars. He used the light on his helmet to scan the walls around him for the vents he knew
must be there. At last he spotted them directly ahead. A vessel this size required a lot of
reaction mass to start it moving, and the vents, while tiny in comparison to the size of the
nozzle itself, were large enough to accommodate a man in space battle armor.
Pias wriggled his way into the vent and climbed slowly forward down the dark, narrow
tube, lit only by his helmet lamp. He felt like a worm inching his way into the Galaxy’s
largest apple. He continued along until he came abruptly to the end of the line, the sealed
entrance to the fuel storage tank.
He had his blaster with him but didn’t want to use it; not knowing the nature of the fuel
used aboard the station, he didn’t want to set off the tank and suddenly be blown to
pieces. Instead he studied the nature of the closed seal and decided to try brute force
against it. The seal was designed to prevent the contents inside the tank from leaking out
into the ducts; it had not been constructed to resist pressure coming from the other
direction.
Bracing himself as best he could against the slippery inner surface of the exhaust tube,
Pias pushed with all his strength against the flap. He could feel it starting to give, so he
redoubled his efforts and was rewarded with a crack of an opening. He stuck his arm
inside to wedge it open, just as a rush of fluid came escaping from the tank.
If the drive had been activated, pumps within the fuel tank would have sent the liquid out
under tremendous pressure and Pias would have been knocked back out through the
nozzle. As it was, the leak was a gentle stream in freefall, barely noticeable except that it
covered his armor in a gooey mess and partially obscured his faceplate, making vision
difficult.
With great difficulty he pulled himself through the small opening and into the tank. He was
now completely surrounded by the liquid fuel and vision was impossible. Feeling his way
slowly and carefully around the walls, he came to an external hatch. From what he’d
recently learned about spaceships and how they worked, he knew a large vessel like this
often had an engineer’s entrance into the fuel tanks, to enable someone to check for
leaks and malfunctions in the fuel pumps. He opened the hatch manually and slithered
into a small airlock. When he closed the hatch behind him and activated the pump, the
liquid fuel that had escaped into the lock with him was pumped back into the tank. In just
a few minutes he stood in his armor, dripping wet but otherwise ready to enter the battle
station itself.
Pias pulled his heavy-duty blaster from the side compartment of his armor and held it at
the ready. The inner door of the airlock slid open and he emerged into the body of the
battle station. Everything about him was quiet and still. He hoped his entrance had been
undetected, but he could count on nothing. He’d spent several years traveling through the
Galaxy as a gambler before he’d met the d’Alemberts, and he knew he was now playing
one of the largest gambles of his life. Every defense of this station was geared to ward
off violent attacks; he was betting it had little or no defense against a quiet infiltration like
his. As long as he kept things peaceful, he would probably be safe. If fighting started, all
bets were off.
As he left the engineering section, he found himself in a large, spherical cavern with
crisscrossing girders. In the center of the spherical area was another sphere. If there
were any people in the station at all, that’s where they’d have to be.
Moving slowly and quietly, Pias made his way along the steel beams toward the central
sphere. His head was constantly turning as he looked for any possible threats through his
badly smudged faceplate. By moving his head slowly back and forth, he hoped his
peripheral vision might spot any hostile motion that escaped his direct notice.
The stillness was ominous. He could never have guessed, just from his surroundings, that
he was in the midst of a mighty engine of destruction. Nothing stirred, nothing moved but
him. He could almost convince himself the station was deserted.
He reached the central sphere and found all the doors locked tightly and, as part of the
defensive nature of this station, there were no exterior palm plates to open the doors.
Judging from how quiet things were, Pias didn’t think the doors had been deliberately
closed to exclude him; nevertheless, he now faced a decision. He could either wait here
an indeterminate length of time until one of the sphere’s occupants opened the doors in
the normal course of events, or he could force the issue and blast his way in, upsetting
the peace he’d striven for all this time.
Pias checked the tiny gauge in his helmet indicating how much good air he had left in his
armor. The gauge read right on the empty line, meaning he had perhaps half an hour to
breathe. So much for waiting.
The door appeared to be a thick sheet of magnisteel. His blaster could burn through it
given a couple of minutes but the instant his beam touched the metal of the door the
alarm would be sounded, and he doubted he’d have any uninterrupted minutes after that.
This would have to be a quick and dirty job.
Backing off a respectful distance, he braced himself against one of the naked girders and
threw a contact grenade at the door. He waited until just before the grenade reached its
target and launched himself after it, blaster drawn and ready.
The explosion rocked the battle station with a shattering roar, blowing a hole in the door
big enough for Pias to sail through easily, riding the concussion wave along the air
currents. The automated defenses clicked on instantly at the explosion, but even the
computer-guided weaponry had trouble at first deciding where to shoot. The blasters first
trained on the doorway, sending their energy beams to a spot Pias had already passed
beyond.
By the time the computer had adjusted its thinking to the situation, Pias was well into
action. He threw a second grenade down the hallway ahead of him; the throwing motion
slowed his forward progress and started him spinning, so he had to reach up against a
nearby wall to steady himself. The grenade caused another teeth-jarring explosion and
knocked out some of the automated blasters mounted on the walls-the blasters that