“That’s right,” Maddox said. “I couldn’t have come up with a better idea myself.”

  Whether Dravek sneered, laughed or grimaced, Maddox had no idea. Neither did his intuitive sense tell him. Instead, he readied his suit weaponry, activating his micro-missile launcher. He didn’t set it on active hunt and seek yet. Instead, he waited. Maybe…

  The skimmers launched a flock of missiles.

  “This is worse than bad,” Dravek said.

  A micro-missile left his launcher, heading directly for the enemy missile flock. The enemy’s bigger missiles spread apart, leaving contrails behind them.

  With a zoom function, Maddox zeroed in on the skimmers.

  Dravek’s missile exploded, it was a fragmentation device, an anti-missile missile. It took out all but one of the enemy missiles. That one—no, it blew up as well. That was a lucky break.

  “Now,” Dravek said.

  Maddox fired one micro missile after another until six hunters sped for the skimmers.

  “No,” Dravek said, “that was too many.”

  “Don’t give me any back talk. You’re the junior partner in this. Launch six more hunters.”

  Muttering under his breath, Dravek launched six micro-hunter-seekers.

  One of the skimmers burned away from the other two. It was no doubt heading back home, maybe to make a report.

  Maddox put a sensor fix on it and launched six homing micro-missiles on it.

  “Down,” Maddox said. “We have to go to ground. We have to land on the ice.”

  “That’s madness,” Dravek said. “We’ll never last. The cold will overcome our suits. Besides, how do we regain speed and velocity later to reach the moon base? Study your odometer as to far how we still must go to reach the target.”

  Maddox did just that. Dravek was right.

  The twelve Leviathan-tech micro-missiles reached the two nearest skimmers. There were many orange blossoms in the darkness. That was two scratched skimmers. The third one continued to flee while the six homing missiles flew after it.

  “The Gnostics are going to know they have enemy activity,” Maddox said.

  “I know, I know,” Dravek said.

  “Perhaps we should go to ground no matter what and hope to get lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Dravek asked. “You want to rely on luck?”

  “No, but sometimes when you’re given no choice, you have to grab for luck and hope for the best.”

  “This is bad,” Dravek said. “If a spaceship appears—”

  “We must act before that. I’m going down. Are you coming?”

  Dravek swore. Then he followed Maddox’s example and began to descend toward the surface.

  Meanwhile, the first homing micro-missile lost energy and dropped out of the race. The others continued to chase the last skimmer.

  It must have launched chaff.

  Two micro-missile warheads exploded.

  The skimmer wavered. Was that in response to the detonations?

  Another two micro-missiles simply dropped to the surface, their energy depleted. The last one detonated with a bang.

  The skimmer kept going. It had survived the missile assault.

  “Damnit,” Maddox said.

  Then the skimmer flew out of sight.

  The two men in Leviathan commando battlesuits were almost touching down on the icy surface.

  Now it was time to make the big decision.

  -14-

  Maddox landed first, his boots smashing against ice so he toppled and fell onto his side. If he’d touched down just a little harder, he might have broken an ankle. Fortunately, the battlesuit absorbed much of the shock even though a plume of icy particles shot into the air and floated down slower than they would have on Earth.

  Dravek landed with more precision and grace, looking upon the fallen Maddox. “That was beautifully done, sir.”

  “Never mind that,” Maddox said, as he climbed upright.

  “We’re on the surface,” Dravek said. “Oh. My boots are already colder. My suit is attempting to compensate.”

  Maddox checked his and saw that Dravek was correct. “All right, all right, let’s think this through. We’re down. We need to consider how much fuel we need to—”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Dravek said. “But we need to consider that.” Dravek pointed.

  Maddox looked and used a zoom function. Far away on the horizon was the surviving skimmer sweeping back and forth.

  “It must be watching us or seeing if his fellow pilots survived the crashes.”

  “We’re easy prey on the ice.” They’d landed on the other side of the giant crevice as the skimmer.

  Maddox shuffled around a complete 360 degrees. “Are those caves? They look like caves to me.” He used his zoom function again, focusing on the darkness under rocky, icy cliffs. The darkness could be indentations or actual caves.

  “Well?” Dravek asked. “What is it?”

  “I’m headed there. Come if you wish.”

  “What’s this?” Dravek said. “You’re no longer going to spout commands as if you’re a corporation grandee of Earth.”

  Maddox didn’t want to admit it but his ankle hurt. He began to walk, carrying his great load of propellant tanks and thruster pack with him. On Earth, even with the exoskeleton suit power, he would have been unable to carry such mass. Here, he weighed a fraction of what he would have on Earth.

  The surface was another thing. Each crunching step caused icy granules to float upward, which slowly drifted back down. The substance alternated between frozen methane, water ice and rock.

  The strain of walking soon heated Maddox’s skin and caused sweat. That shocked and surprised him. He carried a greater load than he’d realized.

  Dravek followed.

  Farther away, the skimmer had disappeared again. Where had it gone? That was the dilemma.

  “We have to get to those caves now,” Maddox said.

  “Maybe I should leave the flamer here. I don’t see what use it is going to be.”

  “No,” Maddox said. “Bring it along. We’re going to need it.”

  “Is that another order, sir?”

  “Do we have to argue about everything?” Maddox asked. “I’ve lived longer and have more experience if for no other reason than I have all my memories.”

  “As you wish,” Dravek said, “but it’s still a fifty-fifty split.”

  “I never doubted that for a moment.” Soon, Maddox added, “You obviously have more information concerning the star system. But in this situation—”

  “Yes, yes,” Dravek said. “There’s no need to belabor it. We’re doing it your way.”

  For the next half hour, they trudged across the plain heading for the cliffs. They were farther away than Maddox had realized, taking longer to reach.

  “I’ve been doing some calculating, running figures and numbers,” Dravek said. “Do you know what I’ve discovered?”

  “I imagine you’re going to tell me we only have a slender margin of air left if we hope to reach the moon base. If we do any more hiking, we’re never going to make it. In other words, we’re going to die. So, the question becomes, do we wait and have a possible degradation of our air fuel, or we try to fly to the base now?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “I still suggest we wait,” Maddox said. “Look what we’ve done. Do you think the Gnostics have had any kind of pushback until this? They obviously have the skimmers in case of somebody like us. I bet until now, they’ve never used them. Now they have. We knocked two out and chased away the third. I think they’re going to react big against that. Therefore, we need to be hidden.”

  “Won’t the caves be the obvious hiding spot?”

  “I don’t think anything is obvious out here unless we’re caught standing in the open like a neon sign that says, ‘Kill me, kill me.’”

  “Let’s continue then,” Dravek said, sounding resigned.

  They reached ice caves that went deeper than Maddox had anticipated. There was nothing unique about the caves, although there were some odd ice formations in back when they swept their lights over them.

  As they explored a larger cave, a sensor went off.

  Dravek had set the passive detection device outside the cave. Maddox had linked to it. Now both men watched as the pirate girder-strut-pod ship drifted fifty-four kilometers above the surface.

  Maddox turned and visibly looked at Dravek’s suit.

  “Yes, yes,” Dravek said, “I understand your blatant gesture. You were right. This is a big reaction maneuver on their part. I’m so glad we’re hidden in your cave. Does that stroke your ego enough?”

  “It will do,” Maddox said. “I wonder if they’re going to camp up here.”

  “Must you do that?” Dravek asked. “Are you trying to jinx us with such a gross pronouncement?”

  “It’s called thinking, contingency planning. We must figure out what we’re going to do if they do B, C or D. What if the ship sits there for three days? Look, there are already skimmers approaching.”

  Through the passive sensor, Maddox watched three skimmers fly across the plain where they had been and where the fight had taken place.

  “Perhaps they’ll find your boot mark where you landed,” Dravek said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “You don’t think they’ll use infrared and trace our footprints across the ice?”

  “The boots were insulated against just that. Our suits have high-grade chameleon features. They’re looking for us. I agree with that. But—” Maddox stared at his HUD, staring at the pirate ship up there.

  A plan, one might even call it an insane plan, began to form. First, he’d need the skimmers out of the way. If the skimmers remained on station—no. The skimmers needed to be out of the way. He kept the plan to himself as he calculated further.

  At the same time, the pirate ship took up a static station, no doubt using a vast sensor sweep as the Gnostics searched for them.

  “I suppose we’re going to spend another twenty-four hours in our suits,” Dravek said. “Mine is already getting dank, if you know what I mean.”

  Maddox did, but he didn’t want to complain. He wanted to think. If the Gnostics remained where they were, it was either surrender and possibly work in the deep mines, as Dravek had supposed, or charge with suicidal fury. The suicidal part—Maddox shook his head. That was out. He didn’t have a suicidal bone in him. Not even after his time with the octagonal robots. He was going to make it home and let his wife and daughter see him again.

  Maddox suppressed the groan even as he thought that. Better to focus on the moment. He had to get home again. He had to tell Star Watch what was going on and he had to discover who had kidnapped him. He was also gaining interesting and valuable data on what went on in the Scutum-Centaurus Spiral Arm, particularly here in the Heydell Cloud.

  Thus, Maddox and Dravek waited four and a half hours. Finally, the skimmers went high up and reached the pirate ship as it lowered. Each skimmer docked at a strut. Perhaps the skimmers did so to take on more fuel, to allow the pilots to rest and stretch their limbs.

  “Now,” Maddox said, “now we have to attempt it.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything until this moment. You brought the flamer, right?”

  “Yeah,” Dravek said.

  “The flamer is going to be the ticket to getting out of here.”

  “Uh-huh.” Dravek said, “and how is that?”

  Maddox told him.

  “Do you know, Captain, I think you’re reliably insane. That’s a preposterous idea.”

  Maddox held his temper in check. “No. Its very boldness gives us the opportunity. The Gnostics will never expect it.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Dravek said, “because it will never work.”

  “Listen, I’ve fought many a battle using whiteout from antimatter blasts. The tactic provided me with an advantage of subterfuge. That’s exactly what we’re going to do now, but in a different way.”

  “We have auto polarization in our visors,” Dravek said. “They’ll have likewise on their sensor.”

  “Exactly, exactly, the auto polarization will hide us.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  Maddox ground his teeth together, working to keep his temper in check. He hated having to convince another. He was too used to giving orders and having others obey. He scrounged around for a convincing argument.

  “Look,” Maddox said. “Our suits probably barely have enough propellant to get us to the moon base. That means they’ll likely run out of propellant before we get there.”

  “Because we’re diving down to caves instead of proceeding straight to target,” Dravek said.

  “We’d be dead already if we hadn’t hidden in the cave.”

  “Maybe not,” Dravek said.

  “This is reality, not hopes and dreams. We probably don’t have enough propellant to get to the moon base, but we have more than enough to do what I’m suggesting.”

  “It’s madness,” Dravek muttered. Then his suit shrugged. “But what else do we have to lose? I’m tired of standing here like a retard. I’m tired of being in this suit. I want to stretch. I want to scratch in unnamable places. Very well. What do I need to do?”

  Maddox told him. And all the while he kept watch on his visor linked to the sensor device Dravek had set outside the cave. Would the pirate ship move before he was ready? Would the skimmers launch before he could set the plan into action? They were about to find out.

  -15-

  Maddox decided that he would carry the flamer.

  It was a huge portable unit with a tripod-mount. Even as a crew-serviced weapon, it was possible for an exo-armored soldier to carry one for a few feet under normal conditions. After that, both a soldier and his suit would likely malfunction. In low gravity, one could carry it much farther.

  The flamer was more a heavy block of metal and components than anything else, with strong containment fields to hold the superheated plasma within.

  While drifting through space, carrying it had been no big deal. It had created extra mass, and Dravek had used up more hydrogen propellant while carting it. Maddox had calculated earlier. He still had enough fuel to reach the moon base. For the stated reason, Dravek’s margin was much less.

  Maddox didn’t want to do this alone. He wanted Dravek with him. Was the reason partly being in the depths of space in a different spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy? Maybe that was it. Maybe it was simply good having such a competent fellow, so like himself, along. Maybe Dravek was the brother he’d never had. Yes, Maddox felt kinship with the amoral clone.

  Maddox exited the cave with the flamer. The low gravity made a big difference in this. He moved along the base of the cliffs, trying to keep under eaves of ice or rock, out of direct line of sight with the ship up there. The skimmers had not yet launched again from it.

  Several minutes later, a laser beam flashed from the pirate ship and speared—

  Maddox’s muscles tightened and he clenched his teeth.

  The laser speared into the middle of the icy plain. Metal erupted and slagged on it.

  Of course, Maddox realized. The ship destroyed what remained of the two skimmers. They aimed to ensure no one could use anything on or in the skimmers against them.

  The laser stopped beaming.

  Maddox started walking again even though he wondered if this was the right move. Perhaps he should wait. Perhaps the beaming was a sign the Gnostic ship was about to leave.

  This was a wild plan as it was. He didn’t know if it would work. It had to work.

  “No,” he said. “Don’t go there. Don’t hope for things just because you need them. Think rationally.”

  That was what Maddox did. He rationally considered and reconsidered the plan. In the end, he proceeded with it.

  Soon, he reached what he thought would be a large enough margin for error. He set the flamer on its tripod mount and worked the controls. Then, he lifted it and walked onto the ice, leaving the cliff eaves behind.

  His shoulder muscles tensed and his neck began to throb. He could feel a laser sight on him every moment. He was counting on the chameleon aspect of the commando suit to hide him.

  He reached the needed location on the ice. He set the flamer on its mount, turned and walked away. As he walked, he watched the spaceship.

  It was up there forty-eight kilometers from the surface.

  “Dravek,” Maddox said over the short-range comm, “are you ready for this?”

  “I am,” Dravek said. “You have big balls, Maddox. This is balls to the firewall.”

  Maddox grinned. “Get ready.”

  “You can’t do it yet. You’ll be too close to the blast.”

  “I’m aware of that. I’m coming. I’m hurrying.”

  Maddox began to trudge faster. Would motion sensors detect him up there? Would they be watching the cliff edges? He was back under the eaves. Now, Maddox began to run with low sweeping strides. High leaps would have taken him faster, but this was a stealth mission.

  “Thirty seconds to ignition,” Maddox said. He felt his guts coil. This was insane. Yet, he had a feeling only insanity and daring could cover 8,000 light years. How else was he going to get home again?

  “No way else,” Maddox said. He reached the first of the caves, darting into it. Moving behind a wall, he crouched and waited.

  The chronometer said ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four—

  The flamer had sat on its tripod mount, a weapon of deadly coiled energy. By design, a mechanism malfunctioned. The containment fields, responsible for controlling the flow of superheated plasma, faltered and then failed.

  A seething roar of plasma, a bloom of scorching heat and blinding light, a fiery flower, blossomed on the ice. Some of the plasma punched straight through the nitrogen atmosphere, creating a pillar of energy. It released an electromagnetic pulse.

  Forty-eight kilometers above the surface, the unsuspecting spaceship aimed an array of sensors at the surface. The EMP shockwave struck, wreaking havoc on the sensors and blinding them. Who knew how long that would last?