He was considering how to respond when the proximity alarm alerted him to the imminent approach of his shaauri hunters. The human vessel Pegasus made no attempt to run, but he could buy them a little more time.
He spun the darter to face his pursuers. The self-destruct chimed its final warning. He composed himself for death, repeating the simple, calming chant Sihvaaro had taught him in boyhood.
The discipline worked so well that he was hardly disturbed by the sensors’ impossible message: A ship was almost on top of him, its configuration identical to that of the human vessel. It was the Pegasus. The darter lay in its shadow like a small bird in the talons of a hovering a’amia.
“Abandon ship,” the comlink spat in the human female’s voice. “We will retrieve you. You have thirty seconds to comply.”
Was human honor such that they would risk many lives for that of a stranger? If he did not obey instantly, the human vessel would be severely damaged when the darter detonated. The shaauri would have whatever scraps remained—as well as any survivors.
With a soft curse, Ronan gave the darter its final command. At once his seat contracted around him, binding him into a chrysalis of safety like a ba’laik’i in its nurturer’s pouch. Clear shielding extruded from the deck to either side, forming an impervious bubble. Oxygen flowed in from the life support unit built into the seat.
Then the bottom dropped out from under him, and he was hurled free of the darter. The chrysalis tumbled several times and began to drift, giving him a clear view of the human ship.
Go, he willed it. But it swung away from the darter and maneuvered toward him with surprising grace. A moment later a cable shot out from a broad bay in its starboard flank. Ronan observed the cable’s rapid approach and braced himself. The clamps closed with hardly a bump. The cable pulled him into the gaping mouth like the tentacles of a hungry cephalopod.
Just as the ship swallowed him up, he caught sight of the striker, slowing to approach the darter. But its prize was denied it. The darter exploded in a glorious plasma burst of light and fire. The human ship’s bay doors closed on the hurtling debris of twisted metal.
The clamp released the chrysalis and the cable withdrew to its source. Gravity pressed Ronan into his seat. Through the shielding he could see at least two other vessels docked in the bay, both larger than his darter. He judged them to be shuttles designed to carry freight or passengers from ship to planet.
The presence of breathable atmosphere began to dissolve the chrysalis. A faint smell of lubricants filled the bay. Ronan stepped cautiously from the chrysalis and listened for movement.
Silence. He located a porthole in the bulkhead near the bay doors and ran to it, keeping his body low. The view of space it accorded gave no sign of the darter’s remains, but Ronan could clearly see the striker closing fast.
Almost instantly the scene altered. In a span of seconds the striker turned from ominous threat to a mere speck in the distance, and then vanished entirely. The human ship was obviously moving—moving extremely fast—just as the captain had boasted. But Ronan had not felt the crushing pressure of rapid acceleration.
Somehow this vessel had escaped the striker, left it far behind. The humans were safe. So, it appeared, was he.
Shaauri did not believe in miracles. Ronan had thought himself prepared, as a student of the Eightfold Way, to endure even the most sudden reversals of fortune. It was to his shame that he felt a vast and overwhelming relief simply because he was alive.
Alive, and free. Free of his long captivity and on a human ship. A ship that belied every one of his rash and overhasty judgments. Ugly it might be, but it was fast enough to outpace a shaauri warship with astonishing ease.
And that meant the humans had developed technology that might allow them to evade the patrols and robotic sentinels that prevented their access to shaauri wormholes.
Ronan’s eyes twitched in a shaauri smile. He should be glad. These were his people. It was from them he had been stolen as a child.