Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

"You allowed to leave," Thrr-gilag said. "They agree."

Pheylan smiled grimly. Sure they did. He'd seen far too much of the Zhirrzh to believe that one for a minute. They had something up their sleeves, all right, something that would probably involve a brief fire fight in the upper atmosphere. But that was all right. Short odds or not, once in the air he would at least have a fighting chance.

The group by the Mrach ship had moved a respectful distance back by the time Pheylan and his two unwilling shields reached the landing ramp. "You leave us here?" Thrr-gilag asked as Pheylan awkwardly backed the three of them up the ramp and into the ship.

"That depends on whether I can find something to tie you up with," Pheylan said, glancing quickly both ways down the corridor. There was no one in sight. Sidling over to the hatchway control, he jabbed it with an elbow. The panel slid down; and as it did, he let go of the Zhirrzh tech and gave him a hard shove toward it. The other stumbled, off balance, and hit the ramp. Pheylan got a glimpse of him beginning to roll down it as the hatchway sealed.

"Lie down," Pheylan ordered Thrr-gilag, pushing him toward the floor. "On your face. Stay there or I'll break your neck."

Silently, Thrr-gilag obeyed. Keeping an eye on him, Pheylan stripped off the obedience suit and used the sleeves to tie Thrr-gilag's arms behind him. "All right," he said, hauling the Zhirrzh back to his feet. "Let's go."

The cockpit was at the end of the corridor. "Sit here," Pheylan ordered, pushing Thrr-gilag down into one of the seats and using the legs of the obedience suit to tie his legs together. The rising sun was shining brightly nearly straight ahead through the canopy, its light glittering off the edges of the strangely curved Mrach control panel.

A canopy, like his glass-walled cell, that the Zhirrzh lasers would be able to shoot through. But there was nothing Pheylan could do about that except try to get out of here before they got their sharpshooters into position. Mentally crossing his fingers, keeping his head down, he climbed into the control seat and keyed the engines.

They came on with a muffled roar. Pheylan studied the instruments, trying to dredge up that unit on Mrach ships from his memory. The injection feed control... there? Tentatively, he eased it forward, and as he did so the roar beneath him changed pitch and tone into the familiar twittering drone.

So far so good. Shift to preflight: check. Activate stardrive and run internal-operations monitor: check. Confirm Icefire ducts in lift position....

There was a faint sound behind him. Pheylan looked up, started to turn around—

And jerked back against the contoured cushions. Floating over the control-board displays, less than a meter in front of his face, was a full-size image of a Zhirrzh.

Pheylan gasped, the shock of it freezing his muscles as effectively as a jolt of electric current. Pale white, insubstantial yet sculpted in exquisite detail, the image hovered half in and half out of the cockpit like something from one of the ghost stories Aric had loved to tell as a child. The mouth moved, and as if from a great distance he could hear what sounded like Zhirrzh speech—

And then, abruptly, something jabbed like a hot needle into his right shoulder.

He spun around, the paralysis broken. Thrr-gilag stood at his side, his tongue just retracting again into his mouth, the part of the obedience suit that had restrained his legs hanging in tatters around his waist.

And on Pheylan's shoulder a drop of blood had appeared. "Damn!" he snarled, spinning out of the seat and grabbing for Thrr-gilag with both hands.

Or rather, trying to grab him. To his bewilderment his right arm had suddenly become inexplicably heavy. He tried again to force it upward; but even as it dropped limply to his side, he stumbled and dropped to his knees on the hard deck.

He barely felt the impact. His whole body was going numb... and in front of him Thrr-gilag's image was beginning to waver. "Damn," he murmured.

The image faded away... and with his last thought Pheylan wondered what death would be like.

And whether the men and women of the Kinshasa whom he'd failed would be there. And would be able to forgive him.

"There's no doubt at all, Commander," Max's voice said in Aric's ear. "I've run three different samples of neutrino and gamma emissions. There's definitely a Mrach ship down there. One moment: I'm now getting tachyon emissions. Most likely a stardrive self-monitor."

"A Mrach ship," Quinn murmured. "Interesting. Does he have lift yet?"

"No," Max said. "Engine emissions are still at preflight levels."

"Let me know the minute he goes up," Quinn said. "Clipper? What do you think?"

"Oh, we're going in, all right," Clipper said. "The only question is whether we go cold or risk letting Max fire up the active sensors first."

"They must know we're coming," Dazzler put in. "That last static bomb is still burning out there."

"Knowing we might be coming is a far cry from our setting off a flare in their faces," Clipper countered. "Max, have you spotted anything down there besides that cleared area?"

"Not so far," Max said. "I'm still searching. I do have a good scrub of the cleared area now."

"Pipe it down," Quinn said.

"How does it look?" Aric asked, staring at the half-darkened planetscape stretched out above them.

"There's not much there," Quinn told him. "Two linked-hexagon buildings that look a lot like the way the Conquerors build their ships. Three or four smaller structures in between them... make that a definite four structures. Looks like one of them might be another of your screaming pyramids. A good-sized landing strip, with one small ship on it. Mrach design, all right. The whole area's surrounded about a kilometer away by a fence. Could be some people around the ship, too—the compound's near the terminator line, and it looks like we've got some narrow shadows, but the fueler's telescope isn't good enough to resolve anything that small."

Aric clenched a hand into a fist. "So are we going down?"

"Commander, the Mrach ship has shut down its engines," Max said before Quinn could answer.

"Malfunction?" Clipper asked.

"Nothing I could detect from the emissions," Max said.

"Someone must have changed his mind," Bookmaker suggested.

"Or else they've spotted us," Clipper said.

"Our cue, either way," Quinn decided. "Combat code red; let's do it."

The clamps released with a jolt, and the fueler fell away above him; and suddenly Aric was jammed hard into his seat as Quinn threw full power to the drive. "How soon?" he called over the roar from behind him.

"Five minutes," Quinn called back. "Maybe less. Hold tough—it's going to get a little hot back there."

"I can handle it," Aric gritted. Already he could feel the air heating up around him as the Counterpunch sliced through the upper atmosphere at near-meteor speed. The drive was a violent roar in his ears, drowning out the pounding pulse he could feel but not hear. Directly ahead, past Quinn's helmet, the dark of space met the dark section of the planet, giving him nothing to look at but blackness; only later did it occur to him that Quinn would have deliberately chosen that vector so as to hit the Conqueror compound with the rising sun at their backs.

"Maestro, we've got visual," Dazzler's voice came suddenly. "A definite on aliens down there. A whole group of—"

"We're drawing fire," Paladin cut him off. "Medium-intensity lasers—probably light arms."

"Target and destroy," Quinn ordered. "All fighters, go to—"

"There he is!" Dazzler cut him off. "Maestro, we've got him!"

"Go to laser link, damn it," Quinn snapped. "All ships."

The voices went silent. "Quinn?" Aric murmured.