Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Legacy

Then, with a jolt that again crushed him against his restraints, the fueler fired a burst directly along their vector, slowing them down and interrupting the rhythm of the resonant turbulence.

And with its forward momentum cut abruptly in half, the fueler plunged down toward the ground six hundred klicks below.

Pheylan swallowed hard. I meant to do that, he reminded himself tautly, his full attention still on the Zhirrzh ship. So far it hadn't reacted, but any surprise at his maneuver wouldn't last long. The fueler had to be hidden behind a thick shield of atmosphere before they recovered and started firing.

The trick being to get to safety under that shield without building up so much downward speed that they couldn't stop at all.

They were starting to get into real atmosphere now, and he could hear the faint friction whine beginning to build up along the outer hull. The Zhirrzh ship still hadn't reacted, and for the first time Pheylan risked taking a look at the displays showing the view beneath them.

It wasn't encouraging. There was a solid floor of clouds below, completely masking the terrain. Worse, straight ahead along their flight path he could see the telltale swirl of a massive tropical hurricane. The weather would be churning down there. "Max, do you know where we are?"

"I have a rough idea," the computer said. "Based on the elapsed time since our last visit, coupled with Dorcas's listed rotational data, I believe us to be approximately nine thousand four hundred kilometers southwest of the mountains where we expect to find the Peacekeeper forces."

Pheylan glanced at the vector-data display, did a quick mental calculation. "We're going to need some more forward momentum," he said.

"Confirmed," Max said. "But the atmosphere above us is still too thin for proper laser protection. I'd prefer to wait until we were no higher than sixty kilometers before leveling into horizontal flight."

Pheylan pursed his lips. Flying this crate like an aircar would burn fuel at a prodigious rate, which would mean dipping into the supply he'd been hoping to deliver to Colonel Holloway. But less fuel was better than no fuel at all, which was what they'd get if he was shot down. "Fine," he said. "But no lower than sixty klicks."

"Yes, Commander."

The screeching from the outer hull was still increasing, and Pheylan could now feel a slight rise in temperature of the air around him. Still the Zhirrzh ship falling rapidly away above him hadn't reacted. Could they have missed seeing him entirely? "Max, can we get any readings on that Zhirrzh ship up there?" he asked.

"He's out of the range of the fueler's passive sensors," Max said. "Shall I try the active sensors?"

Pheylan felt his stomach tighten, remembering how the Zhirrzh ships after the Jutland battle had used the honeycomb escape pods' emergency radio beacons to lock in their lasers. The active sensors used similar electromagnetic wavelengths. "Better not," he said. "No other enemy ships or vehicles out there?"

"None that I can detect."

Pheylan began to breathe a little easier. Maybe—just maybe—they'd gotten away with this.

They reached the sixty-klick mark, and Pheylan began to feel pressure against his chest as Max used the edge-effect airfoils to ease the fueler into more or less horizontal flight. "We've leveled off at fifteen kilometers," Max reported a few minutes later. "What speed shall I maintain?"

Pheylan took a quick look at the displays. The combination of the curving descent plus their original insertion vector had cut the distance to the Peacekeeper mountains to a little over five thousand klicks. A long four and a half hours away if they kept it subsonic; but considering that the fueler hadn't been designed for extended atmospheric flight, going supersonic would probably be begging for trouble. "Keep it below Mach 1, but as close as you can without getting into turbulence problems," he told the computer. "And drop our altitude another five klicks—edge-effect airfoils work better in denser air."

"Acknowledged.

Pheylan spent the first hour watching the external displays, shifting his attention from one to the next, waiting tensely for signs of the pursuit or intercept. He had no idea whether the Zhirrzh presence here was confined to a relatively small beachhead or whether they'd spread out over half the hemisphere by now; but wherever they were, eventually they'd have to show up. The closer he was able to get to the Peacekeeper enclave, the better his chances of getting air or ground support from them.

Assuming, of course, that the Zhirrzh hadn't already destroyed them.

No enemy aircraft showed up during the second hour either, but much of Pheylan's attention during that time was distracted by the necessity of getting the fueler past an impressively long line of thunderstorm cells. Possibly part of the same system that included the hurricane he'd spotted on their way in, the storms lay scattered across his path like nature's own aerial land mines. The fueler could have lifted over them, but with their fuel level already dropping faster than Pheylan liked, he opted instead to let Max thread them between the thunderheads. Fortunately, the computer was up to the task, and they made it with little more than occasional buffeting to mark their passage.

After that the flight settled down into something almost routine. It was becoming clear that the Zhirrzh hadn't overextended themselves there—though, to be fair, Pheylan could remember nothing in the Dorcas catalog that would offer any military incentives for an invader. If they were still confined to the areas the Commonwealth colonists had carved out—and if that blockade ship up there really hadn't spotted him—there was a fair chance he could at least get into communication range of the Peacekeepers before he was spotted.

They were about an hour and a little under eleven hundred klicks out from their target mountains when the first signs of trouble appeared.

It started as a faint sizzling sound, like meat on an open-fire grill in the distance, accompanied by a slight drooping of the fueler's starboard side. "Max?" Pheylan asked, frowning at the status board. The whole line of lights under the AIRFOIL heading had begun to flicker uncertainly between green and red.

"The airfoils are losing charge capacity," Max said. "I'm attempting to degauss and restart them, one at a time."

The fueler dipped again, this time to port, this time noticeably deeper. "How long does the procedure take?"

"In a maintenance shop it would normally take three hours," Max said. "There are shortcuts, though, for emergencies. None of them recommended, I might add, but under the circumstances I don't think we have many other options."

"Not many, no," Pheylan agreed tightly, checking the location display. They were still well out of the line-of-sight range they'd need to signal Holloway with either the fueler's laser or radio. And considering how and where they'd meshed in, there was a good chance the Peacekeepers didn't even know they were there. "We need to find a way to signal Holloway before we go down. What's the best in-atmosphere range we can get out of our Shrike missiles?"

"That number isn't listed in the specifications," Max said. "From this altitude, launched at optimum angle, I estimate they have a range of approximately six hundred eighty kilometers."

Pheylan grimaced. Not nearly far enough to be seen from mountains a thousand klicks away. "How much farther can we get before the airfoils fail completely?"

"Unknown," Max said. "I estimate a probability of point five that we can go another two to three hundred kilometers before we have to put down. But we'll be losing altitude before then."

And a lower altitude would also limit the missiles' range. "Activate two of the missiles," he ordered. "Fire the first at optimum angle when you can't hold this altitude any more. Fire the second at your best guess for farthest range after that point. Fuse them both for above-ground detonation—we want something they'll be able to see."