Targovi bounded alongside. The cargo carrier was straight ahead. He raised his arm, veered, and went for the Merseians. Diana’s vision swooped as Axor came around too. She glanced past his clifflike shoulder and saw the Zacharians in bewilderment. They numbered perhaps a dozen.
Targovi mounted the entry ramp of the dock. An airlock stood shut against him. He shielded his eyes with an arm and began to cut his way in with the blaster. Flame spurted blue-white, heat roiled, air seethed, sparks scorched his fur. A light ship like this relied on her forcefields and interceptors for protection in space. Nobody expected attack on the ground.
The Zacharians rallied and pelted toward him. They had courage aplenty, Diana thought in a breath. Axor went roaring and trampling to meet them. She threw a barrage. The men scattered and fled, except for one wounded and two shapeless.
Diana’s trigger clicked on an empty magazine. Above her, Targovi’s blaster sputtered out, its capacitors exhausted.
Axor thundered up the ramp. “Diana, get down!” he bawled. “Both of you, behind me!”
They scrambled to obey. He hammered his mass against the weakened lock. At the third impact it sagged aside.
Four Merseians waited. Their uniforms revealed them to be soldiers, unqualified to fly the craft they defended. Rather than shut the inner valve and risk it being wrecked too, they had prepared to give battle. Merseians would.
Axor charged. Beams and bullets converged on him. That could not check such momentum. Two died under his hoofs before he collapsed, shaking the hull. Targovi and Diana came right after. The Tigery threw his knife. A handgun rattled off a bulkhead. He and the Merseian went down together, embraced. His fangs found the green throat. Diana eluded a shot, got in close, and wielded her own blade.
Targovi picked himself up. “They’ll’ve sent for help,” he rasped out of dripping jaws. “Lubberly warriors though Zacharians be, I give us less than ten minutes. While I discover how to raise this thing, you close the portal.” He whisked from sight.
The lock gave her no difficulty; the layout resembled that of Moonjumper. With the ship sealed, she made her way across a slippery deck to Axor. He lay breathing hard. Scorch marks were black over his scales. Redness oozed from wounds, not quite the same hue as hers, which was not quite the same as the Merseians’, but it was all blood—water, iron, life—”Oh, you’re so hurt,” she keened. “What can I do for you?”
He lifted his head. “Are you well, child?”
“Yes, nothin’ hit me, but you, darlin’, you—”
Lips drew back in a smile that others might have found frightening. “Not to fear. A little discomfort, yes, I might go so far as to say pain, but no serious injury. This carcass has many a pilgrimage ahead of it yet. Praises be to God and thanks to the more militant saints.” The head sank. Wearily, soberly, he finished, “Now let me pray for the souls of the fallen.”
A shiver went through Diana’s feet. Targovi had awakened the engines.
Atmospheric warcraft zoomed over hills and mountains. He did not try keying in an order to shoot. Instead, he outclimbed them. Missiles whistled aloft. By then he had learned how to switch on the deflector field.
And after that he was in space. The planet rolled beneath him, enormous and lovely, burnished with oceans, emblazoned with continents, white-swirled with clouds. Once more he saw stars.
He could only take a moment to savor. Single-handing, he hadn’t a meteorite’s chance against attack by any Naval unit. “Diana,” he said over the intercom, “come to the bridge, will you?” and devoted himself to piloting. He couldn’t instruct the autosystem the unfamiliar manual controls responded clumsily to him, and the navigational instruments were incomprehensible; he must eyeball and stagger his way. At least he’d managed to set a steady interior field of about a gee. Otherwise his comrades would be getting thrown around like chips in a casino.
Well, if he and they could walk from the landing, that was amply good—if they walked free.
The girl entered and took the copilot’s seat. “I hope to bring us down at Aurea port,” he told her. “No doubt the Zacharians will call frantically in, demanding the Navy blow us menaces out of the sky, and no doubt there are officers who will be happy to oblige. I lack skill to take us away on hyperdrive. You are the human aboard. What do you counsel?”