[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

go. Strap in and relax."
Shoulder and waist belts clicked into place and seats rattled back and forth
as people adjusted them.
Riyannah smiled. "No easy way out after this, is there?"
"No." Blade was glad she could smile about it. The boarding party was
committed now, whatever happened. No easy retreat into the mountains or the
forests for them, only a battle to the death.
Twenty-five men and women, bearing the future of at least three worlds and
perhaps more on their shoulders. Blade reached across to Riyannah and gripped
her hand for a moment.
"One minute," said the pilot. Blade pulled his hand back and rested it loosely
on the arm of his couch. He began breathing deeply to fill his system with
oxygen for the high-g takeoff.
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"Thirty seconds," said the pilot. Then it was twenty, after that ten, and
after that:
"Nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one-FIRING!"
The roar of the solid-fuel boosters hammered in through the soundproofed hull
of the shuttle. Smoke blotted out the sky beyond the pilot's canopy. The
shuttle vibrated, lurched, and lifted. A giant got both arms around Blade's
chest and squeezed hard. He forced himself to go on breathing and keep his
head still, remembering that the rockets only burned for thirty seconds.
Then the altimeter needle passed twenty thousand feet.
The rockets burned out and fell back toward the forest below. The roar was
replaced by a faint hum as the antigravity cut in. Normal weight returned, and
through the canopy Blade saw the sky turn from blue to purple. Then it turned
black and the stars came out as the shuttle soared up into space.
Dark Warrior loomed in the shuttle's canopy, a fat cylinder slightly pointed
at each end and covered with an eye-searing mirror finish to reflect laser
beams. Blade stood between the two pilots, watching the
starship grow steadily larger. No, "large" wasn't an adequate word to describe
Dark Warrior. Neither was any other adjective that came to Blade's mind. Loyun
Chard's starship was so huge it was hard to believe she'd even been built by
human beings.
Blade had spent days with the ship's plans. He knew she was a mile long and a
thousand feet in diameter amidships. He still found it hard to see a speck
perched on the hull near the stern like a fly on a cow's rump and realize the
speck was a hundred-foot shuttle like the one he rode.
Can twenty-five people really hope to do anything against that monster? Blade
couldn't keep the thought out of his mind for a moment. He suspected that
everyone else had exactly the same feeling. Then another thought replaced the
first one.
Can twenty-five people be found in that monster if they're determined to hide?
That was much more encouraging and made just as much sense. Part of that mile
of steel was engine rooms and weapons bays, but there would still be enough
space to swallow up ten boarding parties. Finding them would be rather like
finding nests of mice in a twenty-room mansion when you didn't know what a
mouse looked like.
Ten miles out, one of the escort ships challenged them. The pilots gave the
shuttle's base and identification number and did not stop or slow down. One of
the escorts flew formation with them for several minutes, then rejoined its
comrades. Not one word of protest came over the radio.
Dark Warrior now stretched halfway across the sky ahead, blotting out a
steadily growing number of stars. Another mile or two and they actually could
ram her before the enemy could react. Security up here wasn't just lax, it was
practically nonexistent. The secret of Station Four was being well kept.
Four miles out, and the escort ship came back on the radio:
"Shuttle M 675, this is Green Patrol Leader. You are authorized to land and
unload in Bay Two. Over."
"Acknowledged, Green Leader, and thank you. Over and out."
Three miles, two miles, one mile. There was no sky or stars left ahead, only
the huge ship. The radio crackled again.
"Shuttle M 675, this is Dark Warrior Cargo Chief. We are illuminating Bay Two
for you. Do you have your own cargohandlers? We're a bit short-handed right
now."
The pilot managed to keep a straight face as he replied, "M 675 to Cargo
Chief. Yes, we've got our own people. Over and out." He cut off the radio,
then he and Blade and Riyannah all laughed.
Now they were covering the last mile, and the starship became a vast wall of
metal, both ends out of sight. A constellation of red and green lights winked
to life around one of the hundred-foot square hatches amidships. The pilot
made slight adjustments to the shuttle's course, then cut off its drive.
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Operating it within range of the starship's internal gravity field could burn
out the generators.
The shuttle drifted in toward the hatch. The pilot pushed a button and a metal
ring popped out of the nose. A jointed arm with a hook on the end reached out
from one edge of the batch and caught the ring.
Blade gripped the back of the nearest couch as the cabin tilted around him.
Slowly the shuttle was drawn down to the deck of Bay Two.
Chunnnnggg! The shuttle struck the deck and the arm lifted away. Jointed
sections of deck folded themselves around the shuttle's belly, surrounding the
hatches and sealing them off from the vacuum in the rest of Bay Two. Blade
heard a rumble and a hissing as air was pumped into the newly-formed
passageway. Then the radio came on again.
"Cargo Chief to M 675, you can start unloading at your convenience. Deposit
cargo in Compartment
55GZ and leave the list on the door. One of my people will be around to pick
it up later. Do you have any perishable cargo aboard?"
"None." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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