One of the crew was very sensibly screaming both telepathically and audibly over the radio for help! Starshine and the Ly’bahr were continuing to exchange laser and energy fire. Then suddenly the Ly’bahr spun and snagged Zabb with a long, trailing arm that ended in a claw. It was seeking to grapple, but the gadfly Takisian was too fast. Not fast enough, however, to avoid the blow. One claw tip caught Zabb’s armor, and there was a quick white puff of escaping air. It lasted only seconds until the suit had made repairs.

Tis made a mental inventory of the weapons aboard StarRacer. She dived back into the now-dark interior of the dead ship. Switching on her lights, she groped through the corridors, down to the armory. A great wave of frozen ship material had been thrown up in front of the lockers. Tis cut it away with her laser. Opening the locker, she pulled out a contact mine and made her way back out of the ship.

Starshine and the Ly’bahr were locked in a bizarre embrace, the Ly’bahr seeking to crush and break this strange flesh-and-blood creature. Starshine had both hands on one of the creature’s encircling limbs. His teeth were set in a grimace, and his face had gone beet red as he exerted every bit of wild-card-enhanced strength he possessed. The Ly’bahr’s arm ripped loose from the body, and Starshine spun free. His forcefield was flickering fitfully. It was a brief escape. Another metal arm lashed out like an uncoiling whip and caught the ace by the ankle. He allowed the creature to reel him back in; then he laid a hand against the Ly’bahr’s “head,” and gave it a jolt of his power.

“The stomach!” Zabb screamed. “Their brains are buried deep in the internal cavities of the body!”

Tis wasn’t sure if Starshine could hear. Maybe he had caught that telepathic bellow. High, and to her left, Tisianne caught a glimpse of a Takisian ship.

The cavalry, she thought. But probably too late.

Clutching the flat disc of the mine to her chest, she approached from “behind” and “below” the Ly’bahr and prayed to the ancestors that Zabb had managed to damage some of its sensors. The monster clearly wasn’t in very good shape, and as much as one could tell with a cyborg, its focus appeared to be totally on the tiny figure of the ace that had dealt it such damage.

Closer, closer. The body was only three meters away. Tis cut her maneuvering jets, allowing inertia to carry her the rest of the distance. There came a flash of terror as Zabb noted her position, then a mental hiccup as he forcibly kept his shout of alarm from reaching his lips. He didn’t want to alert the Ly’bahr, undoubtedly monitoring their communications.

Tis, I’ll kill you!

She frenziedly explored the disc with her fingertips, finding the incised writing on one side. Just like a claymore – “this side toward enemy.”

There was no warning. Just an overwhelming wash of pain and terror that doubled her into a ball. Starshine! The mental thread that had been the ace snapped and was gone. The body of the Ly’bahr was wavering as she blinked tears. Her gloved fingertips brushed that shining body. She set the shaped charge against the side. Felt it take firm hold. Tis planted a boot against the Ly’bahr and shoved. Kicked in with her jets, backpedaling desperately. She had set the fuse for the shortest possible time.

One of the Ly’bahr’s flexible limbs touched the mine. The other, which it needed to actually remove the device, had been torn away by Starshine. There was a spectacular explosion as the mine pierced the Ly’bahr’s armor and ignited the air inside the shell. The Ly’bahr went tumbling end over end, away from Tisianne, propelled by the detonation.

Zabb and the surviving crew had surrounded Starshine. He was floating limply in space. The forcefield was down, there was nothing between the ace and vacuum. Tis wanted to scream at Zabb to do something! but there was nothing he could do.

Then the whorled gray walls of a ship slid up beside them. A lock cycled open, and the crew of the flagship StarRacer, towing a dying ace, shot aboard.

As soon as the outer door had closed, Tis tore off her helmet and began administering CPR to Starshine. There was a large hole where his left hip ought to have been. The leg was hanging by skin and ligaments. There wasn’t much blood. The icy lick of the vacuum had acted as a cauterizing agent.

“Breathe, breathe,” she murmured as she applied pressure to the unmoving chest. She was losing him. She’d seen too many people die not to know.

Denial choked her. Again she pressed her mouth over his. Something strange was happening beneath her lips. Tis drew back and watched in horror as the Starshine flesh began melting away like a high-speed film of decomposition.

She spun away and found Zabb there to catch her. Welcome arms around her, a chest against which to bury her face. Tis felt him stiffen.

“Ideal.”

She looked back. The rot ended, leaving Mark Meadows sprawled on the floor of the air lock. The inner door opened, and two crewmen tumbled through carrying an emergency medical kit. The bells in their beards were ringing wildly.

Tandeh, thought Tisianne as she ripped open the kit. Thank you, Yimkin.

You are welcome. Now send your cousin up here. We’ve still got Network ships to massacre.

Zabb went. Tis crammed a pressure bandage into the wound. She saw the shine of intestine before it was veiled by material.

She began CPR again. Lift the neck, clear the throat, breathe, begin. Eventually a pulse beat in the throat as the wound began to weep sluggish blood.

An hour later it was over. Ilkazam and her newfound allies rendezvoused back on the Ilkazam Ship Home. Zabb came searching for Tisianne in the infirmary. There wasn’t an empty bed or biogerm bubble.

Tis was checking the readouts on Mark’s bubble. Naked and suspended in the nutrient gel, the human had the look of a grotesque Halloween skeleton.

“I thought he was dead,” Zabb said.

“Dead meat won’t grow,” was Tisianne’s laconic reply.

“We saw Starshine die.”

“Starshine’s not Mark.”

“Then what the hell was he?”

“How should I know?”

“You’re the virus expert.”

That raised too many contradictory emotions even to address. Tis changed the subject. “What did this little victory cost us?”

“Sixty ships, and one hundred twenty-three crew, but we gave them such a walloping that those bugs will be busy for weeks building new ships.”

“Then they’ll try again?”

“I’m rather afraid so.”

He held out his arms to her, and she accepted the comfort offered.

Chapter Forty

“Tis, you have a comment?”

Tisianne stirred from where she sat curled like a kitten in the corner of the sofa in the Raiyis’s office. Truth was, her mind had been wandering. Back home on Earth it was Christmas time. What would Illyana make of a Christmas tree? Or Santa Claus? Would she ever see them, or had her mother condemned her to death? They were two days past Blaise’s deadline. And Tisianne felt a flash of grief and guilt that she had placed her world above her child. But Blaise had promised pieces, and so far no pieces had arrived. Maybe the threat had been no more than a bluff.

She couldn’t bear this fruitless line of thought. Tis uncoiled and stood. The men sprawled about the office looked at her with bemused curiosity and respect.

“Well, I’m not a military person. It all sounds terribly splendid how you’re going to isolate Blaise, and cut the Vayawand supply lines, and assault their ground forces.”

“But? I hear a very large ‘but’ in all of this praise,” Taj said.

“We could very easily win the victory and lose the war. Those numbers – potential casualties – which you are so blithely throwing about translate into people.”