One of the panels on his console was monitoring the process and positioning of the little black boxes.
There were eleven little lists of data, all quiescent at the moment.
Mostly what Joss wanted was to see Evan get them quietly placed. He would then activate them all at once, and every ship would find its comms jammed, its engines no longer under its control; but most specifically, those horrible braided lasers wouldn't be working.
That would be if everything worked.
"We have our course," Joss said to Evan. "This is where you get off, buddy."
"Right," Evan said, and he was gone.
"Tee, anything more from the bomb squad?"
"Nothing new," Talya said. "I'll call you. By the way, how were the restaurants out there?"
Joss started to laugh. "I'll tell you later. Michelin has some surprises in store."
Very suddenly, the data readout from one of the black boxes came alive. Oh good, Joss thought. And, What kind of gee is he taking out there?
He waited, silent. Out the plex, if he cared to look at it, HighLands glittered in the sunlight. It was an extremely beautiful station, one of the new designs with extended
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pods; it looked like an elegant, silvery glass water-strider, balancing (at the moment) on the blue water of the curvature of the Earth. And if things went well, it would not shortly be a mass of fragments of glass and metal and frozen air.
Another of the little blocks of data on his console woke up. Two out of eleven. Better than nothing.
Evan, what are you doing to yourself that you can move so fast? For Evan had refused to take a remote pusher, saying that it would attract too much attention, whereas a suit was usually too small to show well on radar, or to be noticed visually. The only precaution he had taken was to spray himself with the dead-black lampblack spray that suited people used for stealth work in space. Joss looked at the smudges on the walls, and smiled slightly.
A third block of data came up, wobbled a little, settled. Good solid contact, Joss thought. Nice clear data. But the next ones won't be so easy. They 're further away—
"There's some scrambled communication going on out there." Tee said, "on the marked frequency."
"Hope they're not getting suspicious," Joss said softly.
One more block of data came up on the board. Wavered a little, steadied down.
"Four," Joss said. "Tee, I don't know how he does that. He really must not have been kidding about the twenty mips."
And another block came up, settled. And then, suddenly, there was concerted movement in the holograph.
"Oh no," Joss said. "Evan? This is it."
"Do it," Evan said.
Joss slapped his hand down on the comms console and woke up the five black boxes that were settled in place. Under each set of readouts, a wild little storm of hexadec-imals began to stream by as the boxes both jammed external communications and started subverting the internal ones in the raiders' ships. Five of the ships in the display coasted on, began to lose speed.
The others began to pick it up.
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"Trouble, Evan," Joss said. "They know. Number eleven, the kingpin ship, is dropping back. The others are swinging in. Two kilometers now."
"So I see," Evan said.
He hung there is space with his little bag of goodies only half distributed. It was most annoying. Not far away from HighLands, he could see the glint of metal from the little mining ships, swinging in; more to the point, he could see their course predictions on the inside of his helm. All orbits were designed to swoop low around High-Lands—or to crash into it if necessary.
One of them was barely a kilometer from him, and would pass him by at about three hundred meters if he held still. He didn't hold still. It was passing him left to right and above; he turned his leg jets on, and left them on, not minding the feel of blood piling away from his head. He was in a hurry, and besides, the neural foam in the suit had squeeze pads in the legs for such an eventuality.
He drew close to the ship from the underside. It was one of the VW Boxes again, mostly box and only a little pilot compartment; its iondriver dish was the perfect target, and a mile wide from this angle. Evan scooted up behind it, at a slight angle, to miss the ion spillover, and from one of the suit's leg fairings, pulled out a grenade.
It was a charming combination of high and low tech: it had an ionchaser chip in it, and a little attitude jet of its very own, and it was filled with concentrated plastique. It flew into the iondriver like a baby bird to its nest, and blew up in a way that baby birds usually don't.
Half the back of the ship simply fell off; the rest explosively decompressed. One of the pieces of one of the corpses missed Evan by about twenty meters, its arm waving a rather forlorn hello, or in this case, goodbye. Evan ignored it, being more concerned with the way the ship had fallen apart. No wonder they needed Mell, he thought. / wonder...
Some distance away, another of the ships changed
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course, toward him. It seemed unlikely that he had been seen, but he made himself small for the moment, curling up into a fetal position and watching. It coasted quickly closer.
Evan held quite still. His previous course was carrying him along at about fifteen mips, and it occurred to him that if he restrained himself from looking manlike for as long as possible, he might be able to fool these people into thinking he was a piece of debris. He stayed tucked up, and thought beautiful thoughts, as much as possible.
Mell was one of them.
"This was kind of dumb, on both our parts, wasn't it? she said. Still is, on yours."
"Yes," he had said.
"What do we do now?"
"I'm none too sure. Neither of us wants to marry. Neither of us wants to live the way the other does, particularly. But neither of us wants to lose the other, either."
"That would seem to about.sum it up."
"So what do we do?"
"For the moment, our work. Later ..."
"Later."
THE SECOND SHIP WAS GETTING QUITE CLOSE.
Five are paralyzed, Evan thought, one is gone, that's six not to worry about. Five more to go. Like this one.
The second ship was no more than two hundred meters away now, slowing, nosing through the debris of the first one.
Evan could see the gunport in the front as it passed over him, and was determined not to have that pointed at him on any account. He straightened, gave himself a hard push with the jets, and reached out to see what he could catch.
It took almost ten seconds, but he finally managed to grab hold of a strut and haul himself onto the chassis of 326 SPACE COPS
the ship. This was a Lada, a box in front and a sphere in back, with a sort of wasp waist in between. He clambered carefully forward, not particularly caring how it sounded to anyone inside, and braced himself against the front cabin, grabbing hold of the cargo pod so hard his gauntlet's fingers sank into the steel.
He began to push.
And pushed harder.
And one more time.
The ship came apart at the center seam. Not even Evan's suit could hang on in the face of an explosive decompression a foot and a half away. He was blown off the surface of the ship like a cork out of a bottle of champagne, and he tumbled for a good thirty seconds before he could get enough control over his motion to start slowing himself down. But when he managed to see where he was again, the pieces of the enemy ship were going happily in two different directions, and he was pleased. Saves ammo, he thought.
And a bolt of blue fire went by him so close that it almost caught his outflung arm. Impossibly, in vacuum, he could actually feel the heat.
The bolt came from over his shoulder. He curled himself up and used the leg jets to kick himself sideways. The ship passed a hundred meters away, still firing, but it was useless; as Joss had said, the weapon was fixed. It might actually have to be mounted down the center of the craft, Evan thought, whi
ch would account for it. He went after the ship, praying he could get at it before it turned.
Then again, it was certainly convenient that they were hunting him down, rather than the other way around. It would save leg juice.
Lucretia is getting to me, he thought. He pushed his jets, pushed until he felt faint. The ship was turning, but he was more flexible; he could turn more quickly, and did. He came down on its underside, where the struts were. It was another VW, not a Box this time, but one of the slightly more upmarket Passat ore haulers. It was a little
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more solidly built. Evan sighed and got out another of the grenades, slipped it down into the iondriver, and pushed off hurriedly.
The ship blew behind him. He curled up small to take as little of the force, or the debris, as possible; then straightened up and looked around him.
Off past HighLands there was a silent bloom of fire.
"That you?" Joss's voice said hurriedly in his ear.
"Not me. I was doing something else."
"One of my frozen ones blew. They must be pretty well stocked with bombs, too," Joss said, slightly admiring. "There's junk all over. How many did you get?"
"Three. But I'm kind of over on the far side of things at the moment."
"I wish I were," Joss said.
Come on, Nosey, honey. We can do it.
And if we don't, we're dead ducks!
There were two of them after him. The kingpin ship was not one of them. The problem with these ships was, they were engined to cope with the weaponry they were carrying; and they were shooting at Joss, and they were plainly not interested in merely crippling him and then going back about their business. He had them mad.
It might be wise to make them madder yet—but, for the moment, it seemed smart to just concentrate on staying alive. For one thing, if his ship were destroyed, control over the five frozen ships would lapse, and Evan would suddenly have them to worry about as well. He had sounded a little tired; it seemed like a good idea, Joss thought, to keep his own baddies to himself.
Also, staying alive had its points.
The two ships were quite close behind him, but though they might have engines twice the size of Nosey's, they weren't as maneuverable. He had been ducking and dodging all around them, which was one of the reasons they were so pissed off at him. He had also been letting them have the occasional shot at him, which was perhaps fool-228 SPACE COPS
ish, but every time they missed, they were convinced that they would hit him the next time.
That would be all he'd need, sooner or later.
One of them was shooting at him again, right now, but he had seen it lining up on him and was already fifty meters sideways from that spot. The ship behind him started turning; the other started to try to pull ahead, to catch him in crossfire.
That was something he desperately did not want. He hammered at the console, diving down out of their plane and toward the Earth. This was officially a no-no, but he wanted them as far from HighLands as possible, and perhaps their own logic might suggest that it was safer to be away from the L5, at the moment, than near it. Though, on the other hand, some of their ships were suddenly mysteriously nonfunctional, and several others were scrap and frozen air. Surely this should suggest to them that someone knew what they were up to at this point. If I were a suicidal fanatic, Joss wondered, what would I do?
Phrased that way he dismissed the question. Joss kept diving toward Earth, but slowed a little bit. Behind him the others slowed too, but still followed. If he could manage to suggest that he were running out of steam, or was otherwise in trouble—
They were closing on him. For a few more seconds, he let them. "Tee," he said, "this might be it."
"Luck," she said.
"Come on now, honey," he said to Nosey, and swung her over hard on her side, harder than he had ever tried to before. She groaned with gees, the first time he had ever heard the ship make a noise like that.
The ships behind him tried to turn, but couldn't do it sharply enough. Joss threw Nosey back again, a sharp curve in the other direction, up and over, and kicked a missile loose.
It hit the ship that had been closest to him. The other one flew through its wreckage, scattering debris in all directions, and started to curve away.
Oh, no, you don't, Joss thought, and headed after him.
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He would much rather have a suicidal fanatic chasing him than one heading back toward HighLands. And the problem was, there was still that eleventh ship out there, the group leader, just hanging there. Am I being allowed to do my worst, Joss thought, while that bozo waits for both me and Evan to be out of the way, and then gets ready to nail the L5? Dammit, Lucretia, are you just going to sit there and assume we're going to save your little five-billion-credit propaganda piece for you ?
That question, too, was answered by the lack of any other SP vessels in the area. Joss swore, and said
"Sorry, Nosey, I didn't mean you," and kept heading after the second bandit.
It ran. It ran fast, and didn't try to turn toward Joss. It did try to head toward Earth again, though. Maybe not so suicidal as I thought, Joss said to himself. Doubtless they have a bolt-hole down there. And they know I can't follow.
Joss smiled.
In front of him, curving around and down toward the Earth, the bandit mining ship fled. He tore after it.
Joss did what he had always wanted to do, kicked the iondriv-ers up to maximum output. They were responding better than he would have thought—Mell's doing—he thought, and smiled harder.
Slowly he crept up behind the fleeing ship. The plex in front of him began to haze Up with heat from the outside. Atmosphere, Joss thought, and pressed harder, running right up the bandit's tail. He couldn't shoot: on sensing atmosphere, his weaponry locked down. He was barely fifty meters away, barely thirty—
This was too much for the bandit. He turned tail, skimmed up and out of atmosphere, and headed out toward space again, faster yet.
Nice engines, Joss thought, but not as nice as mine. "Go, Nosey! Go, honey!" he shouted, pushing at the console as if that would help somehow. He was only a few meters away from having his missiles back. The ship in
23O SPACE COPS
front of him put on another desperate burst and pulled ahead, just enough to break the lock again.
Joss could not possibly go any faster, and maneuverability was no use to him here. "Come on, Nosey,"
he begged the ship, "come on!!"
Its speed suddenly jumped by about five meters per second. It wasn't much but it was enough. The missile lock came on. Joss slammed the firing button, and threw Nosey sideways as sharply as he dared.
The ship in front of him blew up in three large explosions, its own and, Joss thought, those of the two bombs it was carrying.
He was panting as if he had been running a race.
"Got him," he said to Evan. "That's all but the head honcho."
But there was no answer.
"Evan?" said Joss.
Nothing.
"Evan??"
"Don't shout at him," Tee said in his ear. "He's busy. I'll patch you in."
EVAN'S HELM WAS TELLING HIM DISTURBING
things about the condition of his suit. He didn't have tune for them at the moment.
He was staring down the nose cannon of the last ship, the only one that had not been a mining vessel, but was new and shiny, a fine, sleek, small custom job. It was a ship that had money behind it—and money in it, Evan thought. He had headed for it, to see what could be done about it. It had seen him coming, which surprised him slightly, for he had been as careful as he knew how, and it had come for him, straight and slow, without firing. It had been hanging here, now, looking at him, for a couple of minutes.
He was tired of waiting. The conduit of the braided
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laser was looking straight at him, glowing slightly, in standby mode. He looked up past it, at the plex of the p
ilot's cabin, and kicked his helm radio on, wide-frequency.
"This is the Solar Police," he said. "Surrender immediately, and it will affect your treatment when you come to trial."
There was a pause, and then laughter came back.
"Officer," said the voice, "at this late date you cannot expect us to take you seriously."
"You might do me the courtesy," Evan said, "since I have so far done you that courtesy."
Another pause. "Officer—I did not catch your name."
"Glyndower," Evan said. "Owen Glyndower."
"Officer Glyndower. You will have to understand that we are going to carry out our operation whether you continue attempting to affect it or not."
' 'You would equally have to understand that I can hardly just let you sail away from here." Evan said.
"But you in particular, the leader of this group—Mr. Takawabara, is it not? That would have been the name that appears most often in your records back at your base; the name of the present head of the family. Of you, I would have expected better things."
There was a pause. Evan felt the sweat trickling down his forehead, past the telltale that was saying how little maneuvering fuel he had left to work with.
There was another silence. "You are surprisingly well informed, Officer Glyndower."
Evan smiled, and kept his voice hard. "Yes," he said. "What I don't understand is why you don't believe enough in what you're fighting for to come out and fight for yourself."
"The wise general," said the cool voice, "is not ruled by his passions, but by logic and the rules of battle."
"So Lao Tzu said. He also said, 'There is no joy in a victory won by the counsel of underlings and moneylenders.' "
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"Officer Glyndower, you cannot possibly know—"
' 'I know that the economic aspects of terrorism are not why you're interested in starting this massacre,"
Evan said. "You may fool your subordinates and your business partners with such talk, but not me. Even without having read through some of the more interesting manifestos in your computers, I know an old-fashioned rabid nationalist when I see one."
"Glyndower," said the voice, musing. "Yes, perhaps you might."
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