"Ditching stations! " the pilot screamed, but he went on fighting his dying controls. Every second he kept his plunging craft aloft put a tiny bit more distance between him and the Medusans trying to kill him.
"Repeat, Sierra-One-One is going down, NPA Control," Malcolm said in that same flat, unnaturally calm voice. "Require assistance. Repeat, require assistance!"
She jerked off the com headset and lunged across the shrieking, writhing Truman for the dorsal turret. She dragged herself up into it, fighting the dying skimmer's shuddering heaves as she slammed her shoulders into the shock frame harness Truman should have donned. The straps dropped and locked, her hands found the firing grips, and she poured a tornado of fire into the howling mob of Medusans charging towards the only smooth place the pilot could hope to set them down.
They hit with a bone-breaking shock, and Malcolm clung to her weapons, grunting in anguish as the harness straps bit into her. She heard someone else scream, but the pilot had known what he was doing. The skimmer porpoised across the ground in a bow wave of shredded moss, shedding bits and pieces through a billowing cloud of dust, yet they were down and intact.
And thousands of screaming Medusan nomads were charging straight after them.
Malcolm heard sobs and moans and bubbling screams from her wounded and dying crew, but she also heard firing ports slamming open and the high, shrill whine of the first pulse rifle. She'd struck her head on something during that wild, careening slide, despite the shock frame, and flowing blood blinded her left eye, but her right was clear. The power light still blazed on the turret's twin weapons, and the training gear hummed smoothly when she hit the pedal.
She traversed her fire, sweeping it back and forth across that incredible tidal wave of bodies. She killed them in scores, in hundreds, and still they came. The turret starred as more bullets slammed into the skimmer. Some of them came from behind her, and flying plastic chips cut her face, spalled from the thick canopy's inner surface, but Malcolm clung to the grips, pouring her fire into the shrieking mob.
She was still firing when clubs and rifle butts smashed the turret and dozens of Medusan hands dragged her out of it.
The knives were waiting.
The com terminal buzzed quietly on Honor's desk.
She stepped out of the shower, toweling her short fuzz of hair vigorously, then dragged her kimono over her wet skin and punched acceptance.
"Captain?" It was Webster, and her nerves tightened as she heard the anxiety in his voice. "Priority signal from Lieutenant Stromboli, Ma'am."
"Put him through."
"Aye, Ma'am." Webster vanished from the screen, replaced by Max Stromboli's worried face.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" Honor deliberately pitched her voice lower than usual and spoke slowly, and the lieutenant swallowed.
"Ma'am, I thought you should know—we copied some message traffic from an NPA skimmer about fifteen minutes ago. They said they were under fire from Stilties and going down. Then they went off the air. Air Control is still trying to raise them, but we're not getting anything back."
"Was it Major Isvarian's patrol?" Honor's voice was suddenly sharper, despite her self-control.
"Yes, Ma'am, I believe it was. And—" Stromboli broke off and looked away for a few seconds as someone said something from off-screen, then he turned back to Honor. "Ma'am, I don't know if it's connected—I don't see how it could be—but that Havenite freighter, the Sirius, just started to move out of orbit, and she sure didn't clear it with us."
Stromboli looked more puzzled than concerned by his latest datum as he gazed into his own com screen at his captain, but Honor felt her skin twitch. The same humming certainty that filled her as she grappled with a complex tactical maneuver filled her now as all the pieces snapped instantly and intuitively into place. It couldn't be. The whole idea was preposterous! Yet it was also the only answer that even began to fit the known data.
Stromboli flinched back from his com as her eyes hardened in sudden understanding. She noted his reaction and made herself smile at him.
"Thank you, Lieutenant. You did well. I'll take it from here."
She cut the circuit and flipped up a clear plastic shield on the side of her terminal. Only the captain's cabin terminal had that shield, and she jammed her thumb down on the big, red button it had covered.
The ululating scream of Fearless's battle stations alarm wailed through the light cruiser's hull. Crewmen rolled out of their bunks, dropped cups of coffee, jumped up from mess tables, threw down playing cards and book readers, and bolted for their stations. That shrill, electric sound was brutal, designed to get inside a person's bones and snarl there, and only a dead man could have ignored it.
Honor let the alarm shriek and punched the intercom for the bridge. Panowski was officer of the watch, and his eyes were wide and stunned as he recognized her.
"Bring the drive up—now, Lieutenant!" she snapped.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am!" Panowski actually saluted his pickup, then licked his lips. "What are we doing, Captain?" he blurted, and she chopped her hand at him.
"I'll explain later. Have communications raise Dame Estelle. I'll speak to her when I reach the bridge. Now move on that drive, Lieutenant!"
She cut the circuit and whirled to her own locker. She jerked it open and yanked out her vac suit and shed her kimono in one flowing movement, then sat on the edge of the bed and shoved her feet into the suit. The Navy's skin suits were little more cumbersome than pre-space scuba suits, unlike the hard suits of meteor miners and construction workers, and Honor was glad of it as she made the plumbing connections with painful haste and hauled the suit up over skin still wet from the shower. She thrust her arms into the sleeves, then sealed it and grabbed her helmet and gauntlets from the locker even as her eyes checked the suit telltales and found them all green.
Nimitz had hurtled from his perch at the first shrill of the alarm. He'd been through this same drill as often as she, and he scurried across the cabin to the boxlike affair she'd had clamped to the bulkhead below her sailplane plaque immediately after coming aboard. That box wasn't Fleet issue, and it had cost Honor a small fortune, for it was a custom-built life support module, sized to Nimitz's stature and fitted with the same search and rescue beacon as a Fleet vac suit. It was good for a hundred hours on its internal life support, and the door slammed automatically behind him as he fled into it. He couldn't open it from the inside, but unless something scored a direct hit on it, he could survive even if battle damage opened the cabin to space.
She paused to give the module door lock a single double-checking slap, and then she vanished through the cabin hatch and headed for the lift at a run.
The alarm stopped screaming while she was in the lift, and she made herself move briskly but confidently when the door opened onto the bridge. All stations were manned, and she heard the background mutter of voices reporting readiness states while the battle board moved from amber to the steady, scarlet glow of readiness with gratifying speed.
McKeon had beaten her there. He stood beside her command chair, hands clasped behind him, his face calm, but there were beads of sweat along his hairline. She nodded acknowledgment of his presence and slipped past him into her chair. Its displays and monitors began deploying about her as she sat, surrounding her with a flow of information that awaited her slightest glance, but she kept her eyes on McKeon.
"Status?"
"All stations manned, Captain," the exec said crisply. "Impeller wedge coming up—we should have movement capability in another ten minutes. Sirius has been underway for six-point-eight minutes . . . at four hundred and ten gees."