The Beasts did not stop to count them. They prayed that alignment would be completed in time.
HARE AND HOUNDS REVERSED
Chaos’s ship aligned for Diadema, and he jerked the ship up to maximum velocity. The pale cloud of scintilla died away in the rearmost screen.
He relaxed, and checked the other screens. Three bright dots were visible on the sidescreens. The raiding party was safe. He took his hands away from the control panel and sat back.
There was a faint white dot in the dead center of the control screen. He frowned at it, and wondered idly what it could be. Then he guessed, and snapped back to full attention. He opened a high-omega challenge and began to shout for help. He ignored Keyrie, Deathdancer and Ray-shade. They would have seen the threat by now, and would know the danger. From now on they were on their own.
He began to slow down, hoping that they had not been seen. But he was too late. The Human ships that had been waiting to intercept them—a third full of the fleet—were coming to meet them.
“The Human ships,” gasped the gunner on the back screen. “They’re chasing us!”
Chaos pulled the ship out of alignment furiously. His trap had been sprung in the wrong direction. Now Eagle-heart would be faced with the decision of taking his inferior fleet into battle, or abandoning four of the Beast lords, including his right hand man.
Chaos headed straight away from the closing jaws of the trap, but there was little chance of getting away. The silver dots on his screens spread to cover all six. He tried desperately to get some small area of empty space in the center of the control screen, so that he could get clear; but while he was looking, the ships behind him closed in.
“They’re opening fire!” shouted the rear-screen gunner.
He threw the ship into a highly complex evasion pattern and did not bother with making alterations to prevent the Humans analyzing the pattern. It would be a waste of effort because he was bound to come under fire anyway. And provided that the Humans did not manage to lock too many ships at once on to his flight plan, he would at least get a chance to fire back.
There was no point in simply running, as Blackstar had.
He would have to fight until help came, trying to cut a way through the thin lines of Human ships spread all over hyperspace.
“Wait until they lock,” he said to the six gunners. “Then shout and try to blast them. Anything that gets close enough, fire at. But don’t miss anything that locks on to our trail.” One or two of the gunners—who were mostly young men— looked scared half to death.
Chaos scanned the control screen with intense concentration, watching the silver dots spin and swing as the ship turned and twisted. He slowed his speed to near minimum —hurling the ship about the sky at several thousand Cs could cause the omega-drive motors to give up, or even blow up.
“Locked,” sang one of the gunners as one of the dots waving drunkenly on his screen suddenly became fixed as it adjusted to Chaos’s pattern.
“Hit him!” screamed Chaos, counted to three and then ran his fingers in a long, dancing sweep over the computer keyboard.
“Too fast,” complained the gunner. “You moved us too fast.”
“You can’t have all day,” snapped Chaos. “I can’t let him take a shot at us. He’s already aimed, and he won’t miss. He was damned slow as it was. Were dead unless you can do better than that.” His hand was poised, waiting for another scream.
“Locked,” shouted another of the side-screen gunners. Chaos hesitated only for a moment, then stabbed his fingers down as two more shouts came from behind him.
“Any hit?” he demanded. There was no answer. White light flashed on the screen in front of him, and he felt the ship sway as the shock of the near miss interfered briefly with the shield of omega-energy round the hull. He felt his feet drift an inch or so as the gravity adjustment apparatus stuttered slightly.
“Glanced off the shield,” murmured the control gunner—an older man than most of the crewmen, and not a bit less frightened.
“I hit one!” howled a side-screen gunner, with surprised delight.
Almost instantly, there was another shout of “Locked!” and Chaos counted two before sliding his splayed fingers across the keyboard. The incoder groaned at the rough treatment, and Chaos picked his hand up from the board and held it poised to alter the settings in a more conventional manner.
There was a brief pause while he thought of the possibility of a Human ship locking while it was right in the comer of a screen and escaping notice for that fatal second too long, or of two Humans locking while they were on the same screen, with the gunner only able to fire at one.
“Locked!” There were two simultaneous cries, and Chaos did not bother to hesitate, but ran his fingers in a rapid diagonal across the keyboard without giving either gunner a chance to fire.
One of the side screens erupted in white light, and the gunner dived from his chair by pure reflex. Chaos stabbed the control panel as the ship rocked. There was a moment of nauseous fear as he was sure that they were hit, but they were quickly right again, and the gunner who had deserted his post was scrambling madly back again. One of the relief crewmen catapulted himself from the head of the spiral staircase into die control room and looked around with feverish eyes, searching every screen, astonished to find everyone still alive.
The control-screen gunner fired twice at a silver dot which loomed very large on the screen, but there was no sign of its returning the fire. Then a ship on the control screen locked. Chaos saw it in the same instant that the gunner did, and paused perhaps a moment or two longer than usual. A ship on the control screen was always more likely to be hit because there were more guns mounted on the nose of the ship than in the sides, nestled in amongst the girdle motors.
The stationary silver blob wavered and lost its distinctness. As Chaos snatched the ship from one pattern into another, he felt the first burst of true satisfaction.
Another cry from behind swept his satisfaction away, and he changed course again. A flash of white light in front of him startled him, but did not affect the ship in the least.
“Clear space,” sang the man by his side. Chaos had already seen it, and he cancelled his steering pattern as completely as he could with a single sweep of his fingers, and smashed the fist of his other hand down on the speed control to send the ship bounding out of the trap. Thirty seconds at full speed took him well clear of the melee, and left the Human ships a cluster of light on the rear screen.
“They re coming after us,” said the rear-screen gunner calmly.
Chaos had not expected to lose them completely. But at least now he could run and dodge as Blackstar had done, until help arrived.
A mere half dozen ships had followed him, and Chaos had no difficulty in staying well away from them for three or four minutes. He began to edge the ship back toward the position they had vacated in such a hurry, as he saw more sparks of light blossoming near the Human fleet.
Eagleheart had arrived.
INTERSTELLAR MELODRAMA
Eagleheart was rather unlucky. By the time the four Beast ships had danced all over the sky trying to escape from the trap, the Human fleet ought to have been spread over half the galaxy through trying to stop them. But the Humans had not made all the effort they might have done to stop Chaos and his companions from escaping the net. They had done their best to maintain a great curtain with which to attack Eagleheart. The ships which had followed up from the Home system actually did most of the pursuing, but most of them waited for Eagleheart as well.
And Eagleheart came, aligned on the spot from which Chaos’s distress call had come. From the direction of Diadema, Eagleheart saw only the thin curtain in the screens, and did not suspect the presence of the rest of the fleet some way behind it. His tightly bunched ships smashed straight through the thin curtain and swept round in a great diverging spray, widening from a sphere into a ring and reversing direction, increasing the diameter of the ring as he did so.
&nbs
p; The Humans did not scatter, nor did they try to pounce on Eagleheart’s ships. They waited for Eagleheart to reach a position between the two fractions of the fleet.
Eagleheart’s fleet kept tight formation as they wheeled, like a funnel turning back on itself, slowing all the while to a speed suited to combat. As they turned, a flying, point-forward pyramid of ships moved quickly into position behind them, and the thin curtain coalesced into a concave shape like a hemisphere with a hole in the middle—a cylindrical trough to intercept Eagleheart’s expanding ring. What had been a trap for Chaos was a much neater trap for Eagleheart.
Eagleheart was frightened. The actual numerical advantage which the Humans possessed was not so noticeable because of the scatter which had resulted from the pursuit of the Beast raiders, but the positional advantage which the Humans had was something else again.
He snapped open the high-omega channel used for fleet coordination.
“Eagleheart to fleet. Stay in formation. Stay in formation. Don’t try to evade the Human ships. Gunners prepare to fire.”
His fingers gripped the edge of the control panel tightly. Only half—less than half—of the Human fleet was in front of him. He had to fight his way straight through it before the ships behind him could begin locking on to his own ships. He had to scatter the Human ships or he would have little chance.
“Increase speed one seventh,” he commanded.
Then they were in the net and exchanging fire.
In the opening moments, the Beasts took the brunt of the fire, but their retaliation soon began to take effect.
“Two sevenths,” said Eagleheart, moving his own controls as he said it, and hoping the reflexes of the other ship commanders would be good enough to keep the ships together.
“One seventh slow,” he snapped, and wrenched the controls back again.
The burst of acceleration took them through, but their formation looked a little ragged in the screens, and they had suffered a good deal of loss. The Beasts had made a mess of the thin line through which they had passed, but it had taken its toll and now was joining the rest of the fleet in close mass pursuit. The stragglers were also joining the mass, and the numerical advantage which the Humans possessed became clearer.
Eagleheart’s mind hovered momentarily between flight and combat. Neither choice was attractive. If he fought, he would be at a disadvantage which could only become more acute. On the other hand, if he ran he was bound to lose ships when he stopped to. align as the Humans locked on and meted out severe punishment.
“Eagleheart to fleet,” he said as he made his decision. “Maintain loose formation. Swing seven degrees of arc vertical on screen two.”
His fingers picked out the relatively simple maneuver. The Beast ships swung away in graceful retreat. Eagleheart hoped for one desperate moment that the Humans might not follow, but the silver cloud grew no smaller in the screens.
“Increase arc four degrees per second,” he said mechanically.
Then, moments later: “Decrease arc three degrees per second.” He gained very little ground from the pursuing fleet by these simple changes of course, but dared not try anything more complicated in case this formation became any looser than it was at the moment.
He noticed a couple of pale dots that were nowhere near where they should have been, and was puzzled for a few moments until he realized that these would be two of the ships he had come to rescue.
The Humans were tracking him flawlessly as he changed course three or four times more, and, if anything, they were gaining.
His mind worked furiously. He guessed exactly where the location of Chaos’s trap was with respect to the nearby stars. He estimated how much their position had changed during the various changes of velocity and direction since then. It was a calculation that he could not spare the computer for. His logic was simple: the acceptable margin for error on alignments to close starsystems was much greater than for targets which were halfway across the galaxy. It would take very little time to align for the nearest star, if only he could guess what it was. He had to be able to identify it to the computer.
The problem in three dimensions was a difficult one, but his guess would not be all that wild. There were not many stars in the vicinity which had habitable worlds, and therefore he had only a few to choose between.
He interrupted his sequence of course changes and forgot all about them. “Align for Sapia!” he said. “Align for Sapia immediately.” Agonizing seconds dragged by while the Human fleet got closer and closer. “Open fire!” he commanded, and battle was joined once again.
RAYSHADE
Cain Rayshade is small, with intense eyes. He feels persecuted. He has chosen to live among the strong men, on the fringes of a way of life he cannot wholly adopt—but he pretends fairly well. He really belongs with the nondescripts.
He has a certain courage, which has arisen from his pretense, and a great deal of ambition. In order to break away from his minor station in life, he was forced to develop some strength of character. His ceaseless quest to demonstrate his equality to men whose equal he is not is a little pathetic. But it has resulted in a great improvement in the man, and he is to be admired rather than despised for the way he maintains his masquerade.
He eventually receives a portion of the fame and recognition he wants so badly when he causes the death of David Starbird during the fighting on Home immediately before the sack of the House of Stars.
BACKTRACKING
All of a sudden, Cain Rayshade found that there were hardly any Human ships on his screens, and only two on his rear screen seemed emphatically interested in pursuing him further. He had broken free with much less trouble than Chaos, but was no less pleased to see Eagleheart’s ships appear on his screens.
He guessed why there was so little interest in him, and turned to watch Eagleheart zoom into the trap which the Humans had set, but he was relieved when the pressure relaxed. Even so, he dared not relax himself, Odds of two to one were not overwhelming, but they still had a very good chance of causing his death. He contemplated slipping back into the battle, but reluctantly decided that his best chance lay in disposing of his pursuers.
Looked at with mathematical pessimism, Rayshade’s expectancy of victory was only one quarter even if the two Humans did not gain an unfair advantage by locking on to the same side screen simultaneously. But Cain Rayshade was no coward. He had the will, at least, to win. He put the ship into a simple evasion pattern and changed it continuously to prevent the Humans from locking. He allowed them to get closer and closer.
“Fire as soon as you can,” he said to his gunners. “They’ll be blasting any moment.
The Humans did not bother to come in together. Each was hunting on its own. A slash of white which seared three of the screens advertised the involvement of one ship while the other was still trying to maneuver itself into range. The gunner on the rear screen fired three times at the veering dot that was the closer enemy, but neither the Human or Rayshade’s ship was hit. The Human ship spun on to a side screen just as the second came into range. Ray-shade stopped changing his escape patterns for a few brief seconds to help his gunners find clear shots. It also helped the enemy, and Rayshade was sweating hard.
“One down,” came a joyous shout, but the other gunner was still firing, fast and often. With a sudden jolt that jarred the whole ship, the active gunner tried a little too hard and his gun gave out. The trigger mechanism blew out backwards, and sent the gunner rolling across the floor, howling with pain.
Rayshade spun the ship, and the Human swung from one screen to another. Whiteness splashed the screen with uncomfortable brightness as yet another shot glanced off the shield, and for a moment, Rayshade was half-convinced that they were dead.
Then the second Human ship was only silver dust on a screen, and Rayshade was free. He heard Eagleheart’s orders to the fleet over the high-omega channel, and worked his way slowly toward the fleet. But he was still further away from Eagleheart than the Humans were w
hen the call to align came.
KEYRIE
Jade Keyrie is rather unimportant.
He is a short, bespectacled man with muddy hair and watery eyes. He is fastidious and self-conscious. He is cunning and full of undirected animosity bom of his physical shortcomings. He, like so many others, is confused and not aware of what is happening. He never really cares what is happening. He is devoid of dreams and his memories are meaningless.
Like Deathdancer and Hornwing , he is a type specimen. He might have been any one of a multitude. He just happened to be the man on the wrong spot at the wrong time. Keyrie’s type is the type that gets killed, the type that never gets talked about, never has a chance with the hero-worshippers.
The Beasts are not all strong men. They are, after all, only men.
HARDLY WORTH MENTIONING
Jade Keyrie was unlucky enough to turn the wrong way. As he arced away from his three companions, there were Human ships all around him, firing almost immediately. His fingers were frozen still as they began to modify his escape pattern. The escape pattern had no chance to help him.
The explosion of the omega-drive unit as the beam of omega-energy drove home sent his body clean through the plastic control panel. A hail of blood drenched the control screen, and then the whole ship broke apart, its midsection dissipated as a shower of atomic particles.
Poor Keyrie never had a chance. Ever.
INTERSTELLAR MELODRAMA CONTINUED
Judson Deathdancer played a random tune on the silent control panel with amazing rapidity. He watched the control screen with a broad grin on his face as the dots whirled away and shook from side to side. He kept up a high speed for a long time, but gradually eased down to near minimum as the omega-drive began to show signals of distress on the neat rows of dials at the head of the control board.
The Days of Glory Page 12
