“Let’s get the show on the road,” I said. “N7, I have no doubt you’ve been analyzing their attack run.”

  “I have,” he said.

  “Let’s spread out our mine field then.”

  I watched the main screen. The ejectors used hydrogen propellant. That meant they were cold, not hot, and harder to spot by enemy scanners.

  We had one battlejumper, with three assault boats ready as escape pods. Our laser could reach ten million kilometers. For good measure, we had a dozen missiles left, the big ones like we’d used on the scout. I hadn’t seen any reason to launch them at the beamships. The Starkiens would just laser them. No. I was saving the missiles for a better opportunity.

  On the big screen, I watched the enemy flotilla approach. Naga Gobo had seven beamships. They came in a cluster, four leading and three following. By the orange glows around them, each had an electromagnetic field. The beamships protected three Lokhar teleport missiles behind them. Well, they were liberated ones anyway, no longer Lokhar property.

  “Any surprises so far?” I asked N7.

  “The teleport missiles are unsettling,” he said.

  “Tell me why again?”

  “It is an unstable technology,” N7 said. “The Starkiens are a nomadic race. They are therefore cautious and conservative. It is unlike them to take a technological risk.”

  “Claath must have ordered it.”

  “I do not accept that,” N7 said. “The Starkiens are contractors. They do not accept orders they do not like.”

  “So the missiles are unstable,” I said. “So what?”

  “Perhaps the Starkiens will program one wrong, and the missile will reappear among them instead of materializing near us. That would cause grave devastation to the beamships.”

  “They need something to beat our laser,” I said. “The T-missiles are it.”

  “They already have something,” N7 said, “their shields.”

  “Something more than that, I mean.”

  “You appear to be correct,” N7 said. “I refer to fact of the T-missiles. But I am not convinced we have the entire answer as to why the Starkiens are using them.”

  “What are your suggestions?” I asked.

  “None other than what we are already doing,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said to myself. “Great.”

  Time slowed down. It always does when you want it to speed up. The freighters began their play, accelerating at full throttle for the Sun. I wondered if we’d ever see any of them again. A bad feeling came over me.

  I walked away from my station and stood before the main screen. Putting my hands behind my back, I stared at the stars. With the battlejumper, I stood between survival and the apocalypse. It made my gut clench, and I hoped I was making the right decisions.

  “Creator,” I whispered. “If you’re listening, I ask for a fighting chance. Don’t let the Starkiens wipe out the human race. Give us another play at life.”

  I stood there for several minutes, and finally returned to my station. There was nothing to do now but wait. The Starkiens didn’t launch any missiles and neither did we.

  “The enemy flotilla is thirteen million kilometers away,” N7 reported twenty minutes later. “I suggest we run the engines at three quarters capacity and begin to warm our laser coils.”

  “Do it,” I said.

  Soon, the interior ship thrum increased substantially. I felt the vibration under my feet and the noise grew until a loud and sustained whine made my spine uncomfortable. It took gobs of power to make the laser kill at ten million kilometers.

  “Targeting,” I said, “are you ready?”

  “Affirmative,” Ella said.

  “Do we know which one is Naga Gobo’s vessel?” I asked.

  “Negative,” Ella said.

  “Which ship sent the message?” I asked.

  “It may not be that simple,” Ella said. “He may have moved to a different beamship.”

  “N7?” I asked.

  The choirboy android tapped a finger against his console. “That seems like a reasonable precaution,” he said.

  “Yeah, and maybe Naga Gobo didn’t take it,” I said. “Aim at the ship that communicated with us. Let’s make him earn his survival.”

  Time passed.

  “Eleven million kilometers,” N7 said.

  The Starkien flotilla bored in toward Earth. It would appear they planned to do their heavy braking once in their own laser range of one million kilometers. At their present rate, they would flash past the planet and us.

  “Do you think they mean to chase down the freighters?” I asked.

  “We have not found any more scouts,” N7 said. “I do not believe they know of the freighter maneuver yet. The Earth still blocks the Starkien sight of them.”

  “The enemy could have guessed our intent,” I said.

  “It is possible,” N7 said.

  “Great,” I whispered.

  “They’re almost in range,” Ella said.

  “Get ready,” I said. “And make sure you destroy the first ship before you start on the next. Better that we utterly destroy them ship by ship than that we damage all of them but leave them intact.”

  The next few minutes dragged as if I were a child again sitting beside the Christmas tree, waiting for my parents to wake up so I could open the gifts. Would our laser hold long enough for us to burn through seven shields and seven armored hulls?

  “Ten point one million kilometers,” N7 said.

  “Fire,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  Ella touched the targeting screen and a new noise burst into existence. Power rushed through the coils, energizing the giant laser cannon. The whine was low-pitched at first. It rose rapidly throughout the ship. Then a huge ray of concentrated killing light stabbed into the void.

  The enemy wasn’t in range yet. It didn’t matter. He would be when the light reached its targeting point. Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. That was roughly a little over three seconds per one million kilometers. The tip of our laser would reach ten million kilometers in a little over thirty seconds, half a minute. Ella targeted where the enemy beamship would be in that time. It called for fantastic targeting capabilities. It would have been far beyond Twenty-first century human tech, but it was within the parameters of Jelk battle gear.

  The obvious question no doubt rears its brainy head. Why not jink, move in random patterns to throw off enemy targeting. The answer was equally pointy headed. Because at the velocity the Starkiens came, jinking caused too much G-force stresses to the vessel itself, never mind the crew within.

  I had to wait more than a minute for Ella to yell, “Hit! We’re burning through the electromagnetic field.” Thirty seconds to reach the target and thirty more seconds—roughly speaking—for our teleoptics to see what was happening. The first beamship’s shield turned from an orange glow to a deeper red color. Starkien generators likely pumped power to their electromagnetic field, attempting to hold. Our laser put energy—heat—on it. Some of the power bled away from the point of impact, discoloring the enemy shield in a wave pattern. Where the beam burned, the shield turned from red to black.

  Here was the question, a simple formula really. How much energy would it take to burn through a shield, the hull behind it and destroy the beamship? The answer would tell us if we had a chance or not. If we did have a chance, our engineers would have to make sure our laser could beam for the entire battle.

  Ever since Naga Gobo’s boast our techs had worked, putting in new battlejumper codes and rerouting many of the systems. If he could jam us with a computer virus, we had to know and then foil it beforehand.

  The minutes ticked by. The Starkiens kept coming, and the first enemy shield finally overloaded. Our sword of light stabbed the beamship’s hull, melting the outer alloys and digging deeper, deeper—

  A silent explosion heralded the first Starkien vessel’s destruction. Like a slow-motion grenade, it burst apart with glaring, flaring light behind it. Sections of hull parted. Water, globs of bubbling steel, plastics, fiery fabrics and pieces of flesh and shattered Starkien bone fragments blew outward from the central mass. Radioactive gamma and X-rays also smashed against the nearest Starkien vessels. Those beamships’ shields glowed red with overload.

  “That’s beautiful,” I whispered. “The beamships are like bombs in the middle of their formation. The baboons have kept them too close together in order to shield the T-missiles.”

  “The laser, sir,” Ella said.

  I went cold inside. “I hope you’re not going to tell me it’s overheating.”

  “No, sir,” she said. “I’m retargeting for the next beamship.”

  “Commander,” N7 said. “I have run the computations. If we can continue to destroy them at this rate, we will win the battle.”

  I shouted triumphantly as if I’d won a jackpot on a Las Vegas slot machine. Rollo and a few others also roared.

  “We can do this, people,” I said. “We can beat the aliens at their own game.”

  I should have known better than to jinx us.

  “Commander,” N7 said. “One of the Lokhar teleportation missiles is appearing.”

  I balled my right-hand fingers into a fist and struck my console. “Get ready to ignite the nearest warhead,” I said.

  On the main screen, I saw the Lokhar missile, a big bad thing of hostile intent. The missile sped toward us. Soon it got close, well within one hundred thousand kilometers of our battlejumper. That was sharp teleportation targeting.

  “What’s happening?” I asked N7.

  “Our nearest warhead doesn’t respond,” the android said. “I suspect the T-missile—”

  Before N7 could finish his sentence, the teleportation bomb activated. The thermonuclear reaction beat ours to the punch. It went nova, turning into incandescent light.

  I shielded my eyes. I needn’t have bothered. Our teleoptic equipment automatically filtered out harmful light.

  “It’s huge,” Rollo said.

  “Two hundred thousand megatons,” N7 reported.

  “Get ready for impact,” I said.

  Heat, radiation and a powerful electromagnetic pulse sped toward us. As they did, the combination swept over the other Earth warheads we’d painfully put into position as an atomic minefield.

  “The blast is neutralizing our warheads,” N7 reported.

  Then it reached us. Temperatures soared on the outer hull. The EMP hit our hardened electronics. The bridge lights flickered. Sparks flew from Rollo’s station.

  I kept striking my console. Damn, damn, damn, why couldn’t we have beaten the T-missile to the punch and blown it apart?

  “Well?” I asked. “Are we finished? Did they win?”

  Ella looked up, her features unreadable. “The laser is still operational, Commander. Our team retracted the main cannon behind an armored bulkhead. We put it away before the T-missile blew.”

  “How long until we’re ready to fire the laser again?” I asked.

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  “That’s not good enough,” I said. “Make it three.”

  The lights stopped flickering and came back on as strong as ever.

  “Damage report,” I said. “I have to know if we’re still in the battle.”

  “Commander,” N7 said. “I’ve run an analysis. The T-bomb materialized too far for full effectiveness against us.”

  “You mean they made a mistake?” I asked.

  “Yes, Commander,” N7 said.

  “They won’t next time,” I said. “Do we have any ejectors left with warheads?”

  “Two,” N7 said.

  “Get one of them out there.”

  N7 attempted to relay the message to the torpedo crew. He looked up at me. “Commander, the tubes are blocked, destroyed.”

  I couldn’t believe this. Everything had been working a few minutes ago. “How long until the tubes are operational?” I asked.

  “Not until the battle is over,” N7 said.

  “What? No. Tell the crew to haul an ejector to a shuttle bay. They can launch it manually.”

  Our N-series android stared at me. “That is an excellent suggestion.”

  “Tell them to hurry,” I said. “If the Starkiens are smart, they’ll launch another of those things now and finish us for good.”

  A minute later, that’s exactly what happened.

  “The laser is almost ready for firing, Commander,” Ella told me.

  “N7, do we still have a margin for error?” I asked.

  “It is one tenth as large as previously,” N7 said.

  After he spoke, I saw wavering space on the main screen. I knew what it meant. We’d just witnessed it a few minutes earlier. As before, a teleportation missile materialized in close range.

  “Ella,” I said, “can you retarget the laser at the T-missile?”

  “Not fast enough,” she said.

  With impotent rage, I watched the teleportation missile solidify. This one didn’t have the same velocity as the approaching beamships. That should have been impossible. How had the T-missile managed such a trick? I didn’t know.

  Seconds ticked by. The T-missile had not only materialized, but it sped toward us.

  “How come it hasn’t ignited yet?” I asked.

  “I’m picking up life readings,” N7 said.

  “Come again,” I said.

  “Commander?” N7 asked. He hadn’t been built on Earth. He still didn’t know all our idioms.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What life-readings? Where are they coming from?”

  The android frowned. He even had a line in his forehead, a thick one. “The life-readings are coming from the T-missile,” N7 said.

  “Say again,” I told him.

  Before N7 could manage, the T-missile burst apart. It didn’t do so as before with a thermonuclear explosion. The missile parts flew away as if ejected by magnetic force. Smaller pieces like interior pellets began to brake, causing long fusion tails to burn at us.

  “What are those pellets?” I asked.

  “I’m analyzing, Commander,” N7 said.

  “Ella, get the laser back online now. Quit hiding it behind the armored bulkhead.”

  “That’s what I’m doing, Commander,” she said. “It’s almost ready.”

  “N7,” I said, “I’m still waiting for an answer. What in the hell are those things.”

  The pellet-shapes burst apart as the T-missile had, through the power of magnetic force. In the pellets’ place were several thousand individual soldiers. At least, those sure looked like soldiers in heavy powered armor.

  “Is what I’m seeing real?” I asked.

  “I do not understand this,” N7 said. “The readings make no sense.”

  “Tell it to me anyway,” I said.

  N7 looked up from his board. He looked as confused as the android ever did. While his face was humanlike, the mobility of his features lacked our range of differences.

  “I’m tracking Lokhar life-readings,” N7 said.

  “As in: Lokhar legionaries?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “Yes,” N7 said.

  “Tigers?” I asked, as if that would clarify the situation.

  “Yes, Commander,” N7 said. “Those are Lokhar legionaries flying toward our battlejumper. It is my belief they are attempting a storm assault.”

  “Why are the tigers aiding the Starkiens?” I asked. “I thought Lokhars hated the pirates.”

  “They do,” N7 said. “I find this inexplicable.”

  I stared at the main screen. Is this what it had been like on D-Day for the Germans, staring into the sky and seeing thousands of Allied paratroopers coming down on their heads?

  This didn’t make any sense at all.

  -8-

  “Listen up,” I snarled. “I see Lokhars coming for our battlejumper. I don’t know why they’re so far out from us, but we’re going to use that against them and take the tigers down hard.”

  As I spoke, another T-missile materialized in close range. We’d spotted three of them coming through the jump point near Neptune. Therefore, this seemed like the last one we’d have to deal with. It reacted as the second missile, spilling more braking pellet-shaped craft, which in turn put more Lokhar power-armored legionaries into space.

  “How many of them are you counting, N7?” I asked.

  “Five thousand,” he said. “This is an entire legion.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “How are the ejectors coming? Have they launched one yet from a shuttle bay?”

  “You’re going to blow a nuclear warhead among the enemy?” Ella asked.

  “You’re reading my mind,” I said. “I want your laser back on target. We have more beamships to kill if we’re going to win the fight. N7, tell them to launch the second ejector. It’s possible the tigers have anti-missile tech.” I drummed my fingers on the console, debating whether to use some of the regular Jelk missiles I’d saved. If the legionaries reached us…

  We launched three more missiles, the big Jelk ones. If we lost the battlejumper, I’d never need those missiles anyway.

  The minutes flashed past. Soon, our ship-killing laser burned into the void. It seemed like the spotlight of Death Search: a grim, interplanetary game. Just as good, I watched our first ejector accelerate toward the cloud of approaching Lokhars.

  “This seems reckless and senseless on their part,” I said. “Do you think the Jelk captured the Lokhar soldiers at Sigma Draconis and have forced them into service?”

  “I do not deem that as likely,” N7 said. “Lokhars are notorious and well-known for fighting to the death. They would never surrender to Jelk.”

  “Just like they fought to the death in the Altair system?” I asked. “If I recall correctly, Lokhar legionaries fled from us like wet hens.”

  “The Altair episode still does not compute with me,” N7 said.

  “No,” I told him. “You should say, ‘it doesn’t make sense.’ To say it doesn’t compute makes you sound like a computer. You may not be human, but you’re no computer.”

  Finally, our laser began torching the second Starkien shield. At the same time, an ejector approached the Lokhar mass of soldiery. I was feeling hopeful again. But some of those legionaries must have been carrying semi-portables: infantry heavy beam weapons. Rays flashed in the darkness, hitting our warhead.