Wilson: "Bogey at ten thousand, sector six. Overtaking velocity point eight. Engagement radius in thirty. Optical scan in tight oscillation."

Buccari: "Roger that. Holding fire, all switches green." Wilson: "Bogey at six thousand, sector six. Trajectory is veering high and starboard. Now sector five. Scanning." Buccari: "Stand by to deploy decoys."

Wilson: "Three thousand, sector five. Bogey is maneuvering. Intermittent optical lock."

Buccari: "Roger optical. Firing decoys."

Quinn manhandled the maneuvering jets causing the corvette to buffet and accelerate laterally. Despite the jerking excursions Buccari' s movements were measured and precise.

Wilson: "Bogey at sixteen hundred, sector five. Bearing constant. Optical lock is firm. He's firing at the decoys."

Buccari: "Roger lock." She pressed a switch on her weapons board. A salvo of kinetic energy missiles, sounding like popcorn popping, streaked their unholy fires across the flight deck's viewing screen. Quinn rolled the corvette ninety to port and fired a new set of maneuvering thrusters, unmasking additional weapons ports. Buccari pickled another set of kinetic energy missiles.

Wilson: "Bogey at a twelve hundred. He blew our decoys away, and he's got us locked in!" Screaming radar lock-on warnings reverberated through the corvette. The enemy was preparing to fire, the high-pitched whooping sickenly familiar. There was no way to evade the impending explosions—not without exhausting their only means of fighting back. Their single option was to stand and fight, the laser cannon their final punch.

"Here go a pattern of dinks and the last of the heavies," Buccari announced, her fingers playing the weapons panel. Distinct thumps vibrated through the ship, followed by a chorus of softer popping sounds. Quinn rotated the vessel, slewing it around and uncovering the arcing streaks of destruction as they vanished into interstellar distance. Buccari scanned tactical. The approaching target converged with datum. The range selector activated, automatically resetting the scale and moving the enemy ship back to the rim of the display.

Wilson: "Thousand clicks. Maneuvering away from our missiles. No deception, but heavy jamming. Jump-shifting through it with full systems lock-on. Hard lock."

Buccari verified weapons configuration and optics alignment. She scanned tactical. Targeting reticules were perfectly aligned. The next salvo from the alien would blast them to eternity. She clenched the firing grip, moving the trigger guard aside.

"Okay, Gunner. Roger lock," Buccari replied, surprised at her own calmness. "Program firing the load. Stand by cannon. Confirm power status." She punched another button and salvos of missiles sprayed outward at the oncoming destruction.

Wilson responded immediately: "Power up. Board's steady. All systems check. Ready to fire!"

Buccari reverified lock-on and then glanced into the blackness of space. The corvette's missiles were painfully visible—blasts of hot-white fire streaking to starboard, punching into the vacuum in regular intervals, each meteor a shining sliver of steel and depleted uranium. Why hadn't the bug fired? Suddenly her eyes caught an impossibly faint and distant glimmering. She concentrated her focus on a point at infinity and detected the unmistakable bloom of a colossal explosion, reduced to a pinpoint of light by the immense intervening distances.

Wilson: "Six hundred, and—sir! Bogey's fading out! Enemy tracking and fire-control radars have gone down, too. He's…gone. Completely off the screen! Something—the kinetics must have taken him out!"

Buccari turned to tactical. Warning detects flashed, but the cursors had all returned home, and nowhere was there a threat blip. Warning detects extinguished as she watched.

"Something's wrong," she said, releasing her grip from the cannon trigger. "The bogey decoyed our ordnance. I show no weapons tracks as confirmed hits."

She reset the laser scanners. Nothing! She lifted her head and looked out the viewscreens, and then she turned toward Quinn, gloved hand resting atop her helmet.

"It's gone. destroyed," she announced incredulously.

The manic tones of the threat warning klaxon stuttered to silence, the only sound the susurrant rush of oxygen through the respirators of their battle armor.

"Let's get the lifeboat," Quinn said, his voice hoarse. He hit the maneuvering alarm.

Chapter 2. Lifeboat

The lifeboat oscillated, gently wobbling as pinhead jets fired for stabilization. Once jettisoned from the overwhelming mass of the corvette it was powerless to do anything but float through space on the impulse vector provided at ejection.

Leslie Lee quelled her incipient panic and took note of the injured Marine's elevated temperature and rapid pulse rate. The other lifeboat occupants were strapped in racks protruding from the sides of the cylindrical vessel. Six of the eight stations were occupied. Lee unstrapped from her control station and floated through the restricted tubular core. Rennault was unconscious, his arm broken. Lee suspected the spacer Marine had suffered internal injuries. She enriched his oxygen and fed a plasma solution through the IV port on his pressure suit. Fenstermacher, the other injured man, was coming around. In addition to broken bones, the boatswain's mate had thrown up in his space suit.

Both men had been injured early in the engagement. Rennault had failed to strap in and was hurled around the cabin by the first frantic course changes. He would have been pounded to death and could have inflicted damage on equipment and other personnel had not the wiry Fenstermacher risked a similar fate by partially unstrapping and tackling Rennault in midflight. Fenstermacher had tethered them both down, secure enough to keep from flying about, but not enough to escape the thrashing inflicted by the pounding g-loads.

Fenstermacher struggled to lift his head; his inertia reels were locked. Lee released the locks, and the injured man turned to face her, peering unsteadily from behind a smeared visor.

"Smells sweet in there, eh?" Lee chided as she leaned over and used a penlight to check pupil dilation. It was difficult to see through the contaminated visor. She leaned over further to check his left arm, which was immobilized by an inflatable cast. Lee dimly sensed pressure on the front of her suit. Fenstermacher moaned with a peculiar, melancholy tone. Startled by his exclamations, and mistaking them for a signal of pain, Lee backed off sufficiently to see Fenstermacher' s right hand wandering suggestively across her chest. The suit provided no hint of anatomical topography, and its coarse stiffness barely transmitted the sensation of contact, but Fenstermacher persistently continued his exertions, groaning lasciviously. She looked down at his hand and tiredly brushed it away, smiling wistfully at the presumptions of the living.

"Fool," she said quietly, thickly, near tears.

"Ah, don't worry, Les," said Fenstermacher, breaking lifeboat regulations by speaking, his voice feeble. "We'll make it. Someone will pick us up."

"Yeah, Leslie," said another voice—Dawson' s. Lee looked over to station three to see the communication technician's helmet lift from the harness. "For once in his life, Fensterprick is right."

"Why, thank you, gruesome," said Fenstermacher hoarsely. "I take back what I said about you being stupid and ugly. You're just ugly."

"He ain't worth getting angry over," Dawson retorted, "but I sure hope he's in pain. Leslie, either knock him out or make him scream."

"Fleet's gone," another voice grumbled—Tookmanian, one of the weapons technicians. "We are forsaken. Only He will save us now."

"Not now, Tooks," admonished Schmidt, the other weapons rating.