“Strap down, crew,” Becker said.
Acorna grabbed RK and strapped him in with her. Aari and Mac did likewise in the seats Becker had scavenged so that the entire crew could be together on occasion-though none of them had thought that such an occasion as this would ever arise.
“Buck, give us a visual of the cargo in the tractor beam, Becker told the ship’s computer.” Once he could see the Khieevi ship, Becker accelerated and the Condor shot toward the blue planet, past where the enemy vessel had originally hovered while watching the crash of the Linyaari craft. The screen showed the mantis-like ship dangling beneath the Condor’s belly, while the klicking and klacking from the corn unit rose in volume and variation. Threats, no doubt.
Becker dove and the blue planet grew larger and larger, until its vaporous cover seemed ready to swallow the Condor. “Manual,” Becker said, and pulled back on an actual lever among the buttons of his control panel, with the effect that the Condor’s nose swooped up, slinging the Khieevi ship behind it.
Acorna felt a bump as they changed course, and on the screen the Khieevi ship jumped and shook as it dipped into the atmosphere and was pulled out again. Becker did this three times. Diving and swooping, and-at the end of each swoop-a bump. As they pulled up, the pressure of acceleration pressed all of them to their seats. RK’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a fierce grimace, as did Aari’s. Acorna -would have laughed but her teeth were bared, too. Only Mac’s face remained just the same, robotic flesh impervious to the force. Acorna’s stomach could not decide whether to go into her throat or her legs, and the variations in gravity made her lightheaded and giddy.
Just as the Khieevi ship bumped the third time, Becker commanded, “Disengage tractor beam, Bucko. We’re gonna play a little game of crack the ship.”
The Khieevi ship -was flung wide from the Condor and skipped three more times against the resistance of the outer atmosphere, almost as if the ship was a flat rock and the atmospheric rim was a pond. But the ship wasn’t solid, and the Mantis’s legs and antennae broke off with the first skip, while large cracks appeared with the next before it plunged spinning toward the surface. It disappeared into nothingness as the Condor flew deeper into space.
“Whoa, Buck,” Becker said.
When the Condor had slowed, Becker returned to the atmosphere and reversed thrusters. The Condor’s screens were picking up signals from the Lmyaan escape pod as well as several from the Khieevi ship.
The planet appeared even bluer than it had from the air as the ship approached the surface.
Acorna didn’t know she was humming until Aari asked, “You are singing-is it your death song?”
“Gill used to sing it sometimes,” Acorna said. “It is an old Terran folksong of military origin.”
Becker laughed and sang in a gravelly and tuneless voice, “Off we go, off into the wild blue yonder.”
Seven
Thariinye?” Maati said. “Tharnnye, we’ve landed. JVly arms are pinned. Can you open the canopy?”
His heart still beat in her ear slow and steady. He was alive, anyway. “Thariinye, are you okay?”
He blasted her other ear with a loud snore. She elbowed him in the ribs. “You fell asleep! We could have been killed and you fell asleep!”
He stirred and groaned. “Not asleep. More like unconscious, I think.”
“Unconscious people don’t snore. You were snoring.” Where are we, anyway?” he asked, changing the subject. “I don’t know. But it feels like we landed. That was too much of a thump for us to be still in space. Can you open the canopy?”
What if we have landed on some hostile planet where there is only nitrogen to breathe?” he asked. “If I open the canopy, we die.”
Look at the sensors, you dope. The air’s fine. Remember, “y parents lived here for long enough for the Niriians to find roem. They must have breathed the air and still survived. And if you don’t get us out of here, I wet my pants now and we both die of hunger or worse later anyway,” she said. “Do you just want to sit here and wait for the Khieevi to snatch us?”