Hunt the Heavens: Book Two of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy (21 page)

“What direction are you moving us in?”

“Toward the Federation. We’re well into it now. I hoped that they’d break off if company was around, but I’m not very lucky today.” Wolfe took a deep breath. “There’s another option.”

“Which is?”

“I can call for help to the Federation. To Cisco.”

“That would be not sane,”

“Of course not. But the Chitet are going to kill us for sure. Maybe with FI we can have time to lie to them for a while.”

Taen thought.
“Or, maybe, if they materialize in time, we can use the confusion to slip between the two forces.”

“Even better.”

Wolfe jumped twice in rapid succession.

Now they hung in space near an occupied system — their com scanner blipped through transmission groups on several channels.

Joshua scribbled code groups from memory, then set controls on the com to the special frequency Cisco had given him and opened his mike.

“X20FM … DL3WW … DO098 … PLM2X …”

He finished the groups and punched in another jump.

“Let’s get close to their sun and tart around there. Give us some time to stall.”

When they came out of hyperspace, a planet was just “above” them, about the size of Wolfe’s thumbnail.

“I didn’t know I could shave it this near a planet,” he muttered. “Taen, can you drive this thing?”

“I have been watching you,”
the Al’ar said.
“And I was cross-trained on older Federation vessels. I can try, as long as the Chitet do not make an attack.”

“I don’t have them on any screen,” Wolfe said. “Maybe we lost them. But I won’t bet on it. Keep about this distance offworld, so we can jump.”

He went to the chart table, opened it, and pulled out a catalog. “If I knew what I was looking for …”

Ten minutes later the com beeped at them.

“I could do with a little luck right now,” Wolfe said, and touched the
receive
sensor.

The screen lit, and it was Cisco’s face, disheveled, sleepy.

“Broadcasting en clair, Wolfe. We have a monitor on your frequency and he got me up. All code groups came through except one. Understood your problem.

“Suggest immediate rendezvous. Will be there on same item I was aboard last meeting to provide security. Standing by.”

“Just that goddamned frigate you were pooting around in before? Come
on
, Cisco.” Wolfe keyed the
send
sensor.

“Cisco, this is Wolfe. We’re being chased by a battlecruiser. I say again, a frigging battlecruiser, with three smaller friends. Same wonderful people as before if that part of the message got garbled. You better get ahold of the nearest Federation base and get some serious backup. Stand by for rendezvous point.”

He returned to the catalog, thumbed pages. “Oh-ho. Maybe this.”

He took a microfiche from a cabinet. Its label read:
Offworld weapons stations — taurus sector — coordinates, descriptions. classification: most secret.

“I think I have the Chitet ships onscreen now,” Taen said.

Wolfe paid no attention as he slipped the microfiche into a viewer and scanned.

“Now this might do us up fine,” he murmured, and went to a screen. “Just reachable. All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ve got us a place to duck into until Cisco and his friends show up.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

Wolfe went to the com and sent hastily coded coordinates through it, then replaced Taen at the controls.

“Now we go to ground. Or if they’ve scrapped our den out, we get killed.”

Once more the scoutship shimmered into hyperspace.

The abandoned orbital fortress was a double-sided tetrahedron, Command-and-Control capsules set above and below the five weapons/living positions. The circular stations were connected by tubeways. It sat just beyond the three Federation worlds it had been built to defend, in the same orbital plane.

Wolfe and Taen stood in the scoutship’s lock, waiting as the ship closed on the station. Both of them had booster packs for their suit drives.

The
Udayana
had not yet come out of hyperspace when the scout’s autopilot spun the ship, and the secondary drive hissed, killing the ship’s velocity.

“Four … three … two … let’s go.”

The Al’ar and human pushed away from their ship as it spun on its gyros once again and, at full drive, shot away toward the closest Federation planet.

Wolfe killed his remaining relative velocity, then aimed himself at the station. Taen was a dozen yards behind.

They were a few hundred yards from the station when the ranging radar on Wolfe’s suit
bonged
and a pointer appeared on his faceplate.

The Chitet ship had just come out of hyperdrive and was closing on them. Seconds later, space distorted in three other places and the
Udayana
’s smaller escorts flashed into being.

Taen and Joshua braked, landed on the fort’s outer skin, and crouched toward the nearest lock.

It was sealed.

Wolfe muttered, unclipped a blaster. He touched his helmet to Taen’s. “I’ll cut our way in when — if — they go right on by like they’re supposed to.”

The
Udayana
closed on the fortress. Wolfe found himself holding his breath.

He saw the white glare of braking jets.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “They
always
chase the wrong thing in the romances.”

He pointed the blaster at the seal, fired briefly, wedged the lock door open, and the two slid inside.

“Did they set any wards when they closed this station down?”
Taen asked.

“Damfino,” Wolfe said. “If they did, we’ll surely run into them, the way our luck’s been running. I just hope they didn’t see the gun go off.”

He shone a light briefly on the lock’s interior, aimed carefully and blew the inner dog away, then flattened against the lock wall.

Air howled past, subsided, and Wolfe felt the clang as still-functioning damage portals closed inside the fortress. He forced the inner lock door open, and the two went into the station.

There was an emergency repair box on the bulkhead near the lock door, and Wolfe closed the inner lock door and slid a patch over the hand-size hole he’d blown in it.

He went to the damage portal, found the entryway, and opened it.

Taen followed him, touched his helmet to Wolfe’s.
“What now?”

“Now we get out of the tin cans. I’d rather take a chance on breathing space than not be able to fight.”

Silently the two unsuited.

“I assume they will be boarding us,”
Taen said.
“All we have to do is make their lives as miserable and short as possible until the Federation appears.”

“
If
the Federation appears,” Wolfe corrected. “And if they bring something bigger than Cisco’s spit-kit.”

“I am looking forward to this,”
Taen said.
“It goes against my nature to always be running, as I have since my people left this space.”

Wolfe didn’t answer, but knelt and put his hands flat on the deck.

He
felt
pain, fear, death.

He stood, looked at the Al’ar, and half smiled.

“There are worse walls to have your back against. Now let’s see how badly they defanged this beauty.”

• • •

The
Udayana
’s cargo bay was filled with men and women. They stood quietly in ranks, waiting for the commands to begin their well-planned attack.

A speaker crackled: “Seal suits.”

Faceplates clicked.

“We will use the station’s docking bay to debark. Make your last checks on your weaponry.”

There was no need to respond.

“I have been informed,” the voice said through a hundred suit speakers, “that Authority Coordinator Kur has decided to personally take charge of the prisoners when they are taken.

“This is a chance to win high status and recognition. Our enemy will use any strategy, any deception to take us, to make us allow our emotions to rule and then destroy us.

“Think well, think carefully. Fight hard, fight with the intelligence you have been trained to use.”

None of the Chitet cheered as the speaker clicked off. They would have been shocked at the suggestion.

• • •

“Do you suppose the Federation will arrive before they kill us?”

“I don’t even know if they’re on the way,” Wolfe said honestly.

“If so, and we are not able to slip away in the chaos their arrival will bring, have you considered what we will tell them?”

“Have you decided to allow them to capture you?” Wolfe asked, a bit surprised.

“I am not sure. But for the sake of our discussion, let us suppose I shall.”

“Sure as hell we can’t tell them about the Guardians, nor their planet.”

“No. I specifically referred to what lies beyond, in our old space-time. What you are calling a
virus.”

“Do you think any of them would find truth in those words?”
Wolfe said, switching to Al’ar.

“It
is
a remarkable concept,”
the Al’ar said.
“Does the one you call Cisco have the mental reach for that?”

“Again, I do not know.”

“But we must try.”

“Why? Why do you give a diddly damn if the virus comes through into our space? Wouldn’t that be an ultimate victory for the Al’ar?” Wolfe said.

Taen looked down, ran a grasping organ through the dust that covered the sensors of the control panel in front of him, then spoke in Terran.

“No. Life is life, whether Al’ar or human. That other — that virus — is something else. And we have all agreed I am corrupted.”

The deck jolted beneath them, and the slam of explosions came.

“As you said before, now it begins,”
Wolfe said.

“And, most likely, ends.”

• • •

The Chitet moved into the station slowly, methodically. A squad would secure an area, take up firing positions, and a second squad would move through them to the next location.

They moved almost like professionals.

Almost.

• • •

Joshua’s fingers rippled across the controls.

“You perform as if you are familiar with these weapons systems,”
Taen commented.

“Not really. I was aboard a couple of these stations during the war for a few days.”

“Your movements are deceptive, then.”

Three screens lit simultaneously. Joshua studied them, frowning. “Damn. They made sure this lion’s toothless. No missiles, no guns, no nothin'. I guess we’ll just have to take four cards and pretend there’s a kicker.”

He turned to another, very dim screen.

“Come closer … closer …” he said softly, hand poised over a contact.

• • •

A hatch slid back on the skin of the fortress, and a triple-barreled missile launcher appeared.

An alarm squawked at a weapons station aboard the
Udayana.

“Sir,” a rating said.

“I have it,” the officer in charge of the position said. “Chaingun … target … fire!”

As the sailor pressed the controls, the officer snapped, “Cancel that! There’s nothing in those tubes!”

It was too late.

Four hundred collapsed-uranium shells roared out the multiple muzzles of the close-range weapon and tore into the station, smashing the deactivated launcher …

… and the platoon of Chitet who were just entering that weapons compartment.

• • •

Sirens bellowed, echoed through the deserted tubeways of the fortress.

“Now let us measure our foes,”
Joshua said in Al’ar.

Taen extended a grasping organ. Wolfe touched it, then slipped out the hatch.

• • •

The reserve platoons waiting in the bay shifted, murmured as the alarms threatened chaos around them.

“Silence in the ranks,” an officer snapped, and the women and men were motionless.

A slender man wearing a black shipsuit appeared on a catwalk above them, lifting a heavy blaster.

He opened fire as the officer began to shout an order, and the bolts cut through the ranked Chitet.

The screams drowned out the sirens.

Return file shattered the catwalk’s railing, but Wolfe was gone.

• • •

The squad moved slowly down the corridor. Two men flattened on each side of the door, while a third booted it open, peered inside. Their officer stood to one side.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Next,” the woman said calmly.

They moved to the next doorway. One man kicked at the door, and it swung inside.

He peered in, and the officer saw him convulse, drop.

He rolled as he fell, and the woman had a moment to gape at his slashed-open throat as blood fountained.

Taen came out of the compartment, slender weapon spitting flame.

• • •

“Sir,” the officer said into his mike, “we have twenty-seven casualties … eleven dead. More suspected — there are units no longer in touch.”

“Continue the mission,” came from the
Udayana.

“Yes, sir.”

The voices were still calm, controlled.

• • •

There were three of them. They prided themselves, as much as a Chitet permitted himself pride, on being better soldiers than the others. After all, they had been Federation Marines before realizing the truth, deserting, and joining the ranks of those who lived logically.

They worked together smoothly, clearing passageways, reporting back to their officer on their progress.

Secretly they held him in contempt for not having the courage to stay with them, but none of them said anything.

They came to a place where several tubeways joined. They saw nothing.