Tis discovered something. She was tired of feeling guilty. She crossed to the ace, dug her long nails into a bulky forearm to hold him in place, and delivered a slap with her free hand. It left a satisfying red mark against the white, white skin. Starshine’s green eyes flew open, and he let out a strange stuttering sound. As if the blow had sent words tumbling back down his throat like children falling down stairs.
“Shut up! And go fight!”
Tis didn’t wait to see if she was obeyed. She moved back to her position. A few moments later a faint squeak from one of the control techs brought her head around. StarRacer was giving them a picture of Starshine as he turned to face Takis’s star and sucked in the energy. Pulling his arms close to his body, he became a yellow beam, a light spear on an intercept course with battle.
“And now, gentlemen and ladies, let us follow that audacious lead,” Zabb said, and half closing his eyes, he dropped into deep rapport with his ship.
If Tisianne opened her mind, she could occasionally catch fragments of thought from the various ships and their captains and crews. But it was like listening to a symphony, a bebop combo, and a brass band tuning simultaneously. Sound signifying nothing. She watched the hologram and tried to determine if they were winning. Starshine had been added as a bright yellow star, and he was fighting to very good effect.
Zujj, military commander of Alaa, had even demanded to know what, by his ancestor’s frozen balls, that critter might be. An Ilkazam crewwoman proudly reported it to be one of Ilkazam’s Enhancer-augmented servants. She fell into abashed silence at Tisianne’s furious look.
It was hard to blame her for chattering. For the crew it was a time to hold onto their hats and wait to be useful. So far StarRacer hadn’t taken a substantial hit, so there was no damage to repair. No weapons to manually fire. The only real evidence they were in a fight was the subtle recoil when the ghost lances fired.
A Takisian space battle was very much the province of the captain and his or her ship. Some of the largest cruisers required a TacNet – three or four telepaths and the ship in close link – to run a successful combat, but such a unity of purpose wasn’t very Takisian, so the tendency was to breed single-pilot ships.
A white star flickered and went out, and Tis winced. She wished StarRacer would show her the battle rather than this dry video-game display; then she realized why the ship didn’t – the focus of the crew might be pulled to the pictures. It was probably better that only Zabb could “see.” Still, it didn’t make her happy. She wanted to know that Mark was still safe.
As she watched, the Network destroyer StarRacer was pursuing fragmented, seeding tiny black bloblets. A hit from an Ilkazam ship? She looked eagerly to Zabb and registered his grim expression.
“They’ve just dropped seven Ly’bahr legionnaires,” Zabb sang out, and the entire crew jumped for their helmets.
It was the worst news imaginable. The metallic warriors were capable of reconstructing their bodies into small shuttlecraft with a contingent of Kondikki workers aboard for damage control and repair. It was as if seven inorganic Starshines had just waded into the combat on the side of the Network.
Tisianne felt the lances firing in quick succession, the pressure translated through the soles of her boots, the palm of her hand as it rested on a console. Suddenly StarRacer shuddered, and Tis’s imperfect shields buckled under an onslaught of pain. She doubled over and fought for control over her heaving stomach. It was bad policy to retch in combat armor.
The holograph gave a picture of their situation: the white star that was StarRacer, and in close proximity, closing by the second, a pair of black discs representing Ly’bahr warriors. The yellow star that was Starshine suddenly reversed direction, heading back on an intercept with StarRacer and the Ly’bahr.
The ghost lances fired again. One Ly’bahr flickered, then recovered and continued its advance. Double hits, and StarRacer bucked so violently that Tis and most of the remaining eighteen members of the crew were thrown to the floor.
StarRacer was in her death throes, and Tis screamed because it hurt so much. The floor and walls of the living ship had gone viscous and sticky. As she watched, a crewman was trapped between benches that were suddenly extruded by the ship. His blood was smeared into the secretions of the ship.
A white-hot, molten rain began dripping from the ceiling. Tis looked up and watched a beam cutting through the hull of the ship. Suddenly the artificial gravity maintained by the ship cut off, and Tis went floating. Zabb yanked her out of the way just as a section of roof peeled back. He flung her hard at a distant wait, and she managed to get twisted around so her boots struck first, caught, and held. Tis glanced back and up at the looming shadow of a Ly’bahr warrior blotting out the stars.
Takisians maintained lockers filled with archaic bladed weapons just to repel boarders. It didn’t do to fire a coherent light beam or high-energy projectile weapon within the skin of your own living ship. But StarRacer was dying, so a veritable light show erupted from the bridge as the Takisian crew hosed down the Ly’bahr.
The creature’s gleaming skin reflected back the laser fire, adding to the deadly beauty of the moment. Another crewman went down screaming. Lasers were obviously a bad idea against Ly’bahr, and Tis didn’t feel very optimistic about hitting that bulbous multilimbed body with a sword. She chambered a self-propelled grenade into the adjunct barrel of her laser rifle and fired.
It hit the creature dead amidships, and exploded in a very eye-satisfying display. Tis’s helmet darkened to prevent momentary blindness from the flash. The grenade didn’t penetrate the Ly’bahr’s armor, but it did rip five of its appendages loose from their grip on StarRacer’s hull. Tis didn’t stay around to admire her handiwork. The barrel of several weapons were coming to bear on her, and in their current position the Takisians were just so many fish in a barrel.
The remaining crew were firing the maneuvering jets on their combat armor. The Ly’bahr was picking them off in a grotesque display that reminded Tis fleetingly of bug zappers in action.
Then Starshine popped up next to the Ly’bahr. Using his augmented strength, he drove his finger deep into one of the creature’s optical sensors and projected the power of a star through his tissues.
The effect was stunning. Sparks came spitting through the joints and seams of the Ly’bahr’s protective case. The weapons turret, set like a head atop the body, collapsed and then detonated, and Starshine wisely put several hundred meters between himself and the Ly’bahr as the entire bulbous body exploded in an eye-searing display. Armor casing flowered outward like petals unfurling, and in among the hard bits were softer body pieces of tiny Kondikki workers.
Cheers echoed in Tisianne’s mind and radio as the surviving crew abandoned the trap of the shattered bridge.
Save it! came Zabb’s curt order. There’s still another one to fight.
As if it had been summoned by Zabb’s telepathy, the second Ly’bahr rose slowly over the edge of StarRacer’s back. A beam of light resolved itself back into Starshine. This time the Ly’bahr was prepared, and its speed was comparable to Starshine’s when the ace wasn’t traveling at light-speed. Starshine released a beam of directed energy at the Ly’bahr, but the warrior was already moving, and it glanced harmlessly off the gleaming red surface. Maneuvering jets firing wildly, it spun like a dervish and fired several times at Starshine. His biological forcefield sucked the energy; but on the fourth and final round it flickered a degree less brightly.
The Takisians tried to help, but both Starshine and the Ly’bahr were moving so fast, it was difficult to aim. Zabb hung about the outskirts of the fight firing quickly and methodically at any protrusion, indentation, or antenna that might conceivably be a sensor or a weapon. Tis was a good shot, but she had never been trained for free-fall combat. She didn’t know how to use the recoil of her own weapon to set her up for her next shot.