The cruiser’s escort detached herself and ran toward Umbriel to harry and hinder. Flandry clenched his teeth till his jaws ached. “The greenskins can see we have problems here,” he said. “They figure a cruiser can take us. And they may be right.”
Red crept up on green. “Stand by for straight-phase engagement,” said the intercom.
“What did that mean?” Dragoika asked.
“We can’t dodge till a certain machine has been fixed.” It was as near as Flandry could come to saying in Kursovikian that phase change was impossible. “We shall have to sit and shoot.”
Sabik wasn’t quite a wingless duck. She could revert to sub-light, though that was a desperation maneuver. At superlight, the enemy must be in phase with her to inflict damage, and therefore equally vulnerable. But the cruiser did, now, possess an extra capability of eluding her opponent’s fire. Sabik had no shield except her antimissiles. To be sure, she was better supplied with those.
It looked as if a toe-to-toe match was coming.
“Hyperfield contact made,” said the intercom. “All units fire at will.”
Flandry switched to exterior view. The Merseian zigzagged among the stars. Sometimes she vanished, always she reappeared. She was a strictly spacegoing vessel, bulged at the waist like a double-ended pear. Starlight and shadow picked out her armament. Dragoika hissed in a breath. Again fire erupted.
A titan’s fist smote. A noise so enormous that it transcended noise bellowed through the hull. Bulkheads split asunder. The deck crashed against Flandry. He whirled into night.
Moments later he regained consciousness. He was falling, falling forever, and blind … no, he thought through the ringing in his head, the lights were out, the gravs were out, he floated free admidst the moan of escaping air. Blood from his nose formed globules which, weightless, threatened to strangle him. He sucked to draw them down his throat. “Dragoika!” he rasped. “Dragoika!”
Her helmet beam sprang forth. She was a shadow behind it, but the voice came clear and taut: “Domma-neek, are you hale? What happened? Here, here is my hand.”
“We took a direct hit.” He shook himself, limb by limb, felt pain boil in his body but marveled that nothing appeared seriously injured. Well, space armor was designed to take shocks. “Nothing in here is working, so I don’t know what the ship’s condition is. Let’s try to find out. Yes, hang onto me. Push against things, not too hard. It’s like swimming. Do you feel sick?”
“No. I feel as in a dream, nothing else.” She got the basic technique of null-gee motion fast.
They entered the corridor. Undiffused, their lamplight made dull puddles amidst a crowding murk. Ribs thrust out past twisted, buckled plates. Half of a spacesuited man drifted in a blood-cloud which Flandry must wipe off his helmet. No radio spoke. The silence was of a tomb.
The nuclear warhead that got through could not have been very large. But where it struck, ruin was total. Elsewhere, though, forcefields, bulkheads, baffles, breakaway lines had given what protection they could. Thus Flandry and Dragoika survived. Did anyone else? He called and called, but got no answer.
A hole filled with stars yawned before him. He told her to stay put and flitted forth on impellers. Saxo, merely the brightest of the diamond points around him, transitted the specter arch of the Milky Way. It cast enough light for him to see. The fragment of ship from which he had emerged spun slowly—luck, that, or Coriolis force would have sickened him and perhaps her. An energy cannon turret looked intact. Further off tumbled larger pieces, ugly against cold serene heaven.
He tried his radio again, now when he was outside screening metal. With her secondary engines gone, the remnants of Sabik had reverted to normal state. “Ensign Flandry from Section Four. Come in, anyone. Come in!”
A voice trickled through. Cosmic interference seethed behind it. “Commander Ranjit Singh in Section Two. I am assuming command unless a superior officer turns out to be alive. Report your condition.”
Flandry did. “Shall we join you, sir?” he finished.
“No. Check that gun. Report whether it’s in working order. If so, man it.”
“But sir, we’re disabled. The cruiser’s gone on to fight elsewhere. Nobody’ll bother with us.”