"Get ready to operate manually," Dahl warned, his voice hoarse but steady.
Her heart hammering, Signe stared intently at the detailed, graphically depicted image. The station came into view. Panels on the board monitored various aspects of their motion. Their rate of descent gradually slowed, as the retrothrust decelerated the craft.
"This is it--where you take over!" Dahl gasped. "Throttle us starboard--more! Aft--slow us! Easy, now. You can see the lock. You're drifting to the port side again! Don't… That's better. Slow us almost to a stop. Slow the descent! More! Roll us just--good! Now, set us down!"
An unvoiced, anguished cry reverberated through the consciousness of the man galled past bearing by his helplessness. Mind at a white heat of concentration, the neophyte matched the stem-like docking module of the mushroom-shaped lifeboat exactly with the docking site. Her heart thudded as the clamps automatically locked the vessel upon contact.
Slumping into his couch, her coach let out a long, ragged sigh that caused Signe to regard him with eyes grown suddenly frigid. "Too soon to relax, Dahl. You're not finished giving your lesson," she informed him levelly.
The captive's body visibly jerked back into rigidity. "What in hell…" Biting back the lurid obscenity that threatened to tear out of a throat gone dry as dust, he rasped, "You can't intend…"
Interrupting his protest, his captor stated forcefully, "We're going to rendezvous with the ship, and I'm going to dock us on the lock."
"Signe, you're mad! Insane! That's far harder to do than this! If you crash against the ship, you'll blow it and us! And if you simply wipe the lock, killing only us, you'll make it impossible for a boat to dock and take my crewmen off! They'll starve--slowly and horribly! You and I alone know the call-code! And even if your men learn it--use it after our impact alters the orbit--the ship will crash!"
Softening her tone, Signe replied calmly, "I know all that, Dahl. Your crew won't starve. I'll give mine the call-code--at least insure your spacers a quick death. But your men, and you and I, will run the other risks. Believe me when I tell you that I don't relish the thought of dying. I'm taking a calculated chance--placing supreme faith in your cool-headed skill as a teacher."
Forcing the virulent wrath that again threatened to overwhelm him back into a locked compartment of his brain, Dahl managed to gain a renewed grip on his emotions. "I'll instruct you," he agreed icily. " After you give your men the code."
Taking no pains to conceal her admiration of her captive's intestinal fortitude, Signe raised the station. After relaying to Theo the crucial pattern of letters and numbers, she commanded him to fuel the lifeboat. She then issued both men a blunt order to call the ship down in the event that her attempt to rendezvous with the vessel resulted in the destruction of the lifeboat, but not of the mothership.
"Signe!" Morgan's voice, vibrant with dismay, grated on Dahl's flayed nerves.
"I intend to succeed!" Abruptly breaking the contact, the Commander turned obdurate eyes on the fuel gauges.
During the ensuing wait, Dahl endeavored to order chaotic thoughts. Having managed that feat, he coached his student as she programmed an ascent trajectory designed to place the boat into an orbit below that of the ship. Watching intently, he noted his pupil's increasing sureness. Outwardly calm, he offered what advice she needed. At length, his gut convulsed, his pulse pounding, he ordered the neophyte to activate that sequence.
Thrust down into her couch, Signe sought to calm jittering nerves. During the ten minutes of the ascent, she forced from her consciousness any thought of the consequences of failure, concentrating solely on reviewing the theoretical aspects of the maneuver she intended to perform without having received the proper training.
Dahl lay studying the resolute, oval face, unable to guess at his enemy's thoughts, aware only that he detected no fear, let alone panic. Damned if I can fault Signe's courage , the Columbian admitted blackly. Or her tenacity. She blasted Norman's ambitions--rot his savage soul. I have to hand it to her--she's a warrior. Well, this is it, spacer. Put your wits to the job. Ten lives you value, plus your own, ride on your ability to coach the slut.
The invisible hand pressing the Gaean downwards withdrew. A fullness in her head impinged on her awareness. Her arms displayed an uncanny tendency to float in front of her face. We're in free fall , she concluded accurately. Brace yourself, woman.
Dahl's voice resounded jarringly in ears that caught overtones of strain, but Signe calmly obeyed his commands, striving to make the actuality of what she now did mesh with theoretical knowledge stored in a brain operating at maximum efficiency. We'll catch up to the mothership while we're occupying this orbit I'm programming, she rejoiced, savoring her accomplishment. We'll be moving faster . From there, we'll operate manually so as to intersect with the ship's orbit. Lines of strain clawed outwards from a wide, full mouth. Steely blue eyes fastened themselves on the man offering crucial instruction for the manual phase of the rendezvous. A hand impatiently ran fingers through short-cropped, silvery hair, pushing annoying damp locks back off a high forehead glistening with sweat.
The vessel accelerated, giving the occupants the sensation that they again possessed weight. That automatic transfer complete, Signe listened as Dahl directed her to access certain new data, and helped her complete the program she initiated. Eyes riveted to the scanning screen, where the mothership had become visible, she noted the range--their distance from the ship--and the range rate, the rate at which that distance was closing.
"All right, carry on," Dahl barked. After issuing final, succinct instructions, he watched his world's archfoe take twelve lives directly, literally, in both of her strong, square-palmed, long-fingered, capable hands.
The ship loomed ever larger in the screen. Heart palpitating, Signe narrowed her focus to two crucial numbers, seeking to keep the ratio between those fast-changing figures constant even as she utilized lightflash reflexes to operate a machine alien to her experience until this day. Aware that if she let the closing rate diminish too greatly, and then thrust once more towards the mothership, she risked setting her craft swinging around the huge vessel in an arc, she shuddered as she imagined being forced to choose between committing swift, merciful suicide/murder, and dying of thirst in a boat lacking fuel, adrift in the void. Slow just a shade … no more. That's enough …
Obeying a stern injunction hissed into her ear to correct a slight drift to larboard, the silver-haired warrior swiveled her eyes to the video screen, where the mothership steadily grew in width, in height, in depth, in grandeur. The two rapidly changing figures scorching themselves into her awareness approached zero.
Her mentor's voice took on a shrill edge as he urged, "Keep your eyes on the screen--coast up and stop! Make sure you don't collide with any part of the ship!" Cursing inwardly, Dahl held his breath, but all he gasped when Signe flawlessly brought the lifeboat to a halt in the very shadow of the horizontal torus was, "You did it."
Glittering blue eyes that had alternated constantly between screen and panel, now feasted solely on the spectacular view. So far, so good , the woman whose pulse raced madly encouraged herself. I can dock on the lock without disaster. I've got to! I can't bear the thought of wasting this priceless experience!
Gathering all his courage, shutting his mounting dread out of his consciousness, Dahl issued new instructions. "Keep the thrust minimal. You'll advance over the heat shield, rising rather steeply to lift us over the bottom of the vertical torus and position us over the lock. You'll be maneuvering in a relatively tight space. Stay high enough that you avoid scraping our docking module on any part of the ship, but ascend nowhere close to the horizontal torus. All right, take us in."
The small vessel, marvelously responsive, handled like an extension of Signe's superbly athletic body. Easy to overcorrect , she warned herself, her heart fibrillating. Don't blow this one chance!
Dahl managed to keep his voice from cracking. "Watch it now. Rise--keep going. Your speed's about right. That's go
od. Lift steeply… That'll do. Slow just a trifle. Stay higher than the other two boats. Up--just right! Slow us. More! All right, set us down. Easy, now--easy! Just a bit farther--you're lined up--now!"
The instructor straining against his bonds stared wide-eyed as the docking module settled with no perceptible jarring force onto the lock, and the clamps moored the small craft rigidly to the docking site. His pulse roared in his ears as he assimilated the astounding fact that the lifeboat once again rode securely upon the bosom of the miraculously undamaged mothership.
With her sleeve, Signe wiped rivulets of sweat from her brow. Leaning back, she regarded the slumped, drained figure of her mentor, her whole person radiating triumphant joy.
Won to unwilling but profound admiration, Dahl acknowledged gruffly, "Woman, you've got guts."
"You're a cool hand in a crisis yourself." As she offered that accolade, the usurper's handsome face relaxed into a strained, tired, but wholly engaging warm smile.
Having floated her still-immobilized captive to the bridge, the Gaean harnessed him and herself. Cringing mentally at the thought of what physical trauma six unharnessed spacers would endure throughout the descent, Dahl watched his foe activate the descent sequence that would dock the ship. At least they're all still alive , he consoled himself, awash in conflicting emotions.
Signe watched on the screens as the prize she coveted settled onto the lock. For a few seconds, she savored the taste of victory before turning her full attention to the man acutely conscious of his expendability. Fixing him with a penetrating glance, she admitted forthrightly, "I owe you, Dahl. I offer you a choice. Do you prefer to spend whatever duration the hostilities last, interned in Gaea? Treated decently, but confined--a prisoner of war, possessing a slim chance of being exchanged at some point in time? Or do you wish me to leave you here when I go, with your spacers and the miners, to face your commander, and endure the consequences of losing this ship to me? Since Norman's recent defeat will undoubtedly render him even more brutal than he ordinarily is, I think I can assure you that you'd be far safer in my custody. But you decide."
Dahl's gut clenched. That unexpected offer dispelled a black suspicion that his captor might employ the Earth-built weaponry integral to the ship to annihilate the station and slaughter both himself and fifty of his compatriots. Faced with her options, Norman would do exactly that, he conceded as fear tempered relief. She's a gallant adversary, damned if she isn't!
Norman will order me spaced , he reflected despairingly. But spend a dreary span of Earthyears pacing the deck in a Gaean cell, knowing that my career lies in ruins, and my name's reviled in Columbia … No. I'll be damned if I'll choose life at that price! "I'll take my chances with my countrymen, Signe--even though I believe your assurance."
Admiration suffused the Gaean warrior's striking face. "Dahl, you're too good a man to waste yourself serving a thrice-accursed mass murderer. I'd like to offer you a third choice, but I won't insult a patriot I respect by suggesting that he change sides. I'll tell you frankly, though, that if chance had landed you on ours, I'd have valued you."
"We aren't all Normans, Signe."
"Columbia spawns too many like him, and too few like you."
"The Commander-in-Chief figures on changing that."
"Give Arlen my compliments, but tell him I think he's got his work cut out for him."
Smiling grimly as she voiced that final sardonic observation, Signe unfastened her harness, and rose to her feet. Glancing down at the man projecting no trace of the smoldering hatred she had detected earlier, she intuitively judged him incapable of sullying his personal honor. "If you'll give me your word not to try anything desperate, heroic and foolhardy, I'll cut that tape and let you walk down out of here," she promised. "Otherwise, I'll pack you."
"You have my word."
Striding out of the lock beside the captor to whom he had given his parole, Dahl came face to face with the tall, auburn-haired captor whose green eyes had conveyed so chilling a threat when he thrust his enemy into the couch on the ship. The intent observer read the depth of the relief shining out of those eyes, as the warrior-woman's safe return from her outrageous adventure registered.
Pain lacerated the Columbian's sorely tried soul. These men would die for Signe! he admitted to himself. Any one of them. Gladly! What would it be like to serve a commander you respected? She said she'd have valued me. Damn! I almost wish she'd run me through. Better to die like that, than endure what I'll face shortly. Should I force her to kill me now? No. I eliminated that option when I passed my word.
Buoyed by the success of her venture, the war-leader dispatched a squad commanded by Theo to toss the pressure suits into the drone, and send that ungainly vehicle soaring back to Main World of Gaea. Conor, Yuri and Jassy appropriated gear they coveted from the military base, while Morgan led a detail that stripped the premises of electronic weapons.
Signe left Dahl his sword. "You might need that," she observed evenly, pitying a courageous, defeated foe. Having locked the spacers and miners in the dining hall, the Commander tied her mentor fairly loosely to a chair in the communications cabin. "My captain has altered the board so you can see what's coming in, but can't broadcast," she informed him equably. "It should take you about half an hour to work free." For a few seconds, she studied the man's somber face. Of a sudden, he saw hers break into a vivid, unforgettable, transfiguring smile. "Thanks for the flying lesson, Dahl. I wish you luck with your countrymen."
Three days after Signe's raid, a Columbian military vessel docked at the mine. No sooner had the board been restored to service, than Norman called the base. His jaw jutting, the Commander of Third Corps conveyed with venomous clarity to the subordinate preserving an expressionless face, just how he viewed the loss of the Earth-armed ship. Signe's instructor passed into the custody of his fellow captain, who incarcerated his prisoner in a cabin. Pacing the deck, Dahl strove to fend off despair.
Twenty-four hours later, the arrival of two spacers interrupted his dour speculations. Fifth Corpsmen , the imprisoned Captain noted in surprise as those uncommunicative individuals marched him to his own former office. Shock suffused him when he discovered Arlen seated behind the desk.
Dahl knew the Columbian military dictator by sight, but had never rated a formal introduction. His gut constricted at the notion that he had undoubtedly aroused this man's anger as deeply as he had Norman's. That supposition generated cold fear, which the disgraced offender sought desperately to hide.
Tall, poised, his every fluid movement emphasizing the elegance conferred by the superb fit of his sleek black uniform, Arlen exhibited supreme self-possession. Singularly observant blue-green eyes trained to note and interpret nonverbal cues gleaned a wealth of information during a seemingly cursory glance at the prisoner flanked by the two guards. A mobile, aristocratic face, animated, expressive, but perfectly controlled, reflected the power of the astute mind residing behind the faintly ironic smile.
With supple grace, the Commander-in-Chief rose, walked around the desk, airily waved the guards out, and gestured Dahl into a chair. Drawing up another, he seated himself facing the culprit sitting stiffly erect, noting the tight set of the man's mouth and the lines of anxiety etched into the swarthy face.
Dahl met squarely the glance leveled at him by the autocratic holder of supreme power over his world.
Having crossed his right ankle over his left knee, Arlen laid both hands over the bent leg encased in a glossy black boot, leaned back with studied ease, and spoke. His melodious voice fell pleasantly on Dahl's ear, soothing flayed nerves. "I'd like you to tell me everything that passed between you and Signe," the military dictator invited rather than commanded. "Word for word, as well as you can remember the substance of your verbal exchanges."
"Yes, sir." A new onslaught of shock threw the Third Corpsman further off balance. This man could order me spaced! he expostulated silently, unable to comprehend his superior's motives. Whatever … Struggling to marshal scatter
ed wits, he sorted through his recollections, and related all he could remember of the encounter.
When the narrative ended, the autocrat studied Dahl thoughtfully. At length he inquired, "Did you regard Signe's question as to whether you stood prepared to die to keep her out of space, as a hollow threat?"
"No, sir. I knew , beyond any shadow of doubt, that my life was about to end. She had me completely fooled."
"Mmm." Dahl developed an uncanny certainty that his interlocutor read minds with unerring ease. "Do you know how she managed to take this military base so completely by surprise?"
"No, sir."
Succinctly, Arlen explained. The expressive voice conveyed absolute assurance as the dictator concluded his summary by observing, "Signe wasn't bluffing, Dahl. She changed her mind in the last nanosecond before killing you."
"Why would she…" Abruptly, the prisoner fell silent, berating himself for blurting out a question, rather than confining himself to giving answers.
The interrogator chose to ignore the slip. "She acted on impulse. I doubt if she could have told you why, herself, but she obviously admires courage¾respects a man capable of making the ultimate sacrifice. Being inflexibly determined to force someone to function as her instructor, she undoubtedly felt safer with a brave man making a reasoned choice between two appalling courses of action, than with a coward she'd scared into breaking. No…you'll never shave death any closer than you did at that moment." Scrutinizing Dahl's bleak expression, Arlen did indeed read his mind. "I understand that Norman has reduced your rank, and intends to discipline you with his wonted severity."
Eyes hard as flint asked no pity. "I lost a ship armed with Earth-built weaponry, sir."
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