The Skypirate Part 29

"That's unusual. Very unusual."

Drawing first blood was traditional Coalition procedure; they did not believe in talking first, before the point of their superiority was made. And if the enemy vessel happened to be accidentally annihilated in the process, well, they had just speeded up the inevitable. Especially in a one-sided confrontation such as this.

The voice boomed out again. "This is your last chance. Surrender or be destroyed."

Califa shook her head. "A third demand for capitulation without a shot yet being fired? Unheard of," she muttered. She glanced at Dax, then back to Roxton. "The Coalition does not consider patience a virtue. There's something wrong here."

Roxton glanced at Dax again. When he caught his attention at last, he gestured at Califa questioningly. After a second of silence, Dax shrugged.

"Do as you will," he said. "If anyone knows what we're up against, she does."

So for the second time, Roxton asked her, "Any suggestions?"

"I don't know," she said, turning to stare out at the hulking, dark ship as if she could divine her captain's intent. "By rights, she should have blasted us to bits by now. If she'd been refitted within the last two years, as most destroyers have, she'll have a new coil gun. If she does, we're certainly within range."

"The way they're closing," Larcos said, "they'll be able to use a hand-thrown grenade soon." He turned to look at Dax anxiously. "We're barely at quarter speed. Aren't we going to turn her loose yet?"

"No."

Dax's voice was flat, inflectionless. Califa had no idea what he was thinking. Or was he too bogged down in guilt to think at all? Somehow she couldn't believe that; he wouldn't let his crew be killed without a fight.

"Much closer and they'll be within tractor range," she warned. "A Diaxin cla.s.s destroyer's beam will pluck us up like a sloeplum."

Something glinted in his eyes then. "I know."

So he was thinking, Califa thought. He had some plan. She only wished she knew what the destroyer captain was planning; his actions so far made no sense.

"Why?" she murmured, almost to herself. "Why would he think a ship as heavy as a destroyer could corral a ship so much lighter and speedier in the first place? Why would he even try?"

"Why indeed?" Roxton agreed.

"The logical thing to do is just blast theEvening Star out of existence before she can use her greater speed and escape. Whatever the destroyer captain is doing, it goes against all Coalition practices for engagements with a known enemy."

A known enemy.

Even as she said it, it hit her, with the stunning clarity of Larcos's mirage. They knew. They knew they had Dax, and they wanted the glory of a personal capture.

That officer, he was talking about how he was going to be the one to capture you, take your head and present it to General Corling on a pikestaff.

Rina's words rose to haunt Califa with their cruel accuracy. Despite his grandfatherly looks, Corling was a bloodthirsty man, and nothing less than Dax's head on that pikestaff would satisfy him. Califa's stomach lurched as the vision formed in her mind, Dax's beautiful body decapitated, his head paraded for all to see and exult over, his thick, long hair matted with his own blood, his vivid green eyes dead and staring.

"Better Corling's head on a pike," she muttered. She spent no time mulling over the fact that she had just uttered treasonous words. Nor did she ponder the fact that the thought of treason against the Coalition had no power to disturb her anymore.

"You think that's it?" Roxton whispered, and it took her a moment to realize he'd heard her muttered imprecation. And understood it quickly. "You think they want Dax?"

"Why else haven't they blown us to debris?" She turned on Dax then, thinking this silent act of his had gone on about long enough. "Whatever this plan of yours is, you'd better not put it off much longer."

An odd expression, a combination she could only describe as wistfulness and pain, flickered across his face.

"It's not my plan."

She stared at him for a moment, but his eyes had gone cool, calculating, all emotion vanished, and she could read nothing more. "In a minute," she said, "it won't matter whose plan it is, because it will be too late."

For a long moment he didn't answer. Then, when Larcos called out a position report on the destroyer that put them barely over a minute from tractor range, he moved at last. Swiftly.

He flicked a b.u.t.ton on the comlink beside him. "Qantar, are you set?"

"Yes, sir." The taciturn man's voice was as flat as his chronically emotionless expression.

"From my mark, then, count down from ten. You move on three," Dax said. "We'll move on zero."

"From your mark," Qantar confirmed.

Dax got up then, and walked to the helm position. With a gentle hand on Rina's shoulder, he gestured for her to leave with a movement of his head. She hesitated, then got up. Dax sat down, settling into the chair with all the ease and contentment of a man for whom this was the true reason for flight; steering a ship with your own hands.

"About time," Larcos exclaimed, and when Califa glanced at him she saw a grin cross his face as he watched Dax's hands gracefully fly over the helm controls. Califa heard a building hum, even thought she felt a barely perceptible vibration in the ship itself, and she suddenly pictured a proud, swift, Arellian steed, held back, its every muscle trembling as it waited for the signal to run.

"Qantar?" Dax called, loud enough to reach the comlink he'd left on.

"Ready when you are."

Dax looked at Larcos. "Forty seconds to tractor range," the engineer read out.

"Mark!" Dax ordered sharply.

Ten. Nine. Califa held her breath as the beats counted down in her head. Seven. Six.

Dax's right hand shifted, hovering over the throttle control. Four. She felt nothing as they pa.s.sed three, but in the next split second heard Qantar shout "Away and clear." Two.

On the next beat Dax hit the throttle control. TheEvening Star leapt forward like that golden steed let loose. Califa waited, sure that when faced with the possible escape of his prey, theh.e.l.lring's captain would cut his losses and blow them out of existence. The antic.i.p.ated shot never came.

"They bit!" Larcos exulted. "They're locked on to theY -cla.s.s. Qantar got it off perfectly."

"AY - cla.s.s fighter?" Califa asked.

Larcos nodded. "An old one. We were going to junk it anyway, once we were sure the new fighter worked. And Dax sure as Hades proved that!"

Califa turned to stare at Dax, but he was intent on the helm, sending theEvening Star on an wild, evasive course that would, with the ship's agility, make it very difficult to hit with anything smaller than a torpedo Her eyes widened. Theh.e.l.lring's torpedoes hadn't been armed. True, it took only seconds to have them ready to fire, but those were seconds the destroyer didn't have, not against a ship as fast as the Evening Star. And not when they'd been distracted by the launch of a fighter.

"They've released the fighter," Larcos said.

The captain knew now he'd been had. He'd go to full throttle now, as Dax had, and hope to get back within torpedo range.

"How close is theY -cla.s.s to the destroyer?" Dax asked, never looking up from the controls he was manipulating with such dexterity.

"Still a ways, but they're going to have to fly right over it to get to us."

"Calculate the time they'll be in closest proximity," Dax said, making another adjustment.

"Approximately two minutes."

Dax nodded. "We'll give them something to chase, then." He looked up for an instant, and the reckless, brilliant grin he wore took Califa's breath away. "Don't let me let them get too close, Rox."

"Aye- aye, Cap'n!" Roxton answered, a grin that nearly matched Dax's creasing his bearded face. Then, incredibly, he slowed the ship. And straightened her course. To the Coalition ship it must look like they had suddenly lost power, and were barely limping onward. No doubt the Coalition captain wouldn't be surprised; they'd probably never seen anything move as fast as theEvening Star, and would figure she must have burnt out her engines.

"She's picking up speed. She'll be over the fighter in...thirty seconds."

"You copy that, Qantar?"

"Got it, sir. Thirty seconds."

Dax looked up at the others, still wearing that joyous grin. "Want to watch?" he asked, with all the enthusiasm of a boy showing off his first air-scooter.

"If it works," Larcos said, a little grimly.

"You did it," Dax said. "It'll work."

Color tinged the lanky engineer's cheeks. Califa watched in mystification as Dax fired the port thrusters to bring theEvening Star around, facing back the way she had come. In the dark distance, they could see the hulk of the destroyer; Califa had no idea where the tiny fighter was, it was long since too far distant to see.

Larcos began counting down under his breath. "Right...about...now!"

And in that instant Califa knew exactly where the fighter was. She knew because it exploded, sending what had to be a furious rain of huge chunks of debris at the destroyer. Even from here they could see the huge ship rock. Califa stared; it had taken more than just the fighter itself to do that. Dax fired the thrusters again, turning them back around, then hit the throttle. TheEvening Star leapt forward again, and in moments the damaged destroyer was falling far behind.

"It worked!" Larcos chortled happily.

Roxton grinned, clapping the engineer on the back. "You never stop amazing me, son," he said. "Who would ever have thought all that old liquid fuel we found on Boreas would ever come in so handy?"

"It was Dax's idea," Larcos insisted. "I just built it."

Califa had had enough of being in the dark. "Built what?"

"The time delay switch on the thermal grenade that was on theY -cla.s.s."

She stared at him, remembering the ferocious explosion. "A grenade," she said carefully, "did not do that."

"No," Roxton agreed mildly. "The liquid fuel did."

"Liquid fuel?"

Roxton nodded. "It's what they used ages ago to power the crystal transport rigs in the mines. Guess they didn't know what to do with it after all this time."

"But Dax did," Larcos said, grinning again. "He had Qantar set the thermal grenade in a sealed box. Then he pumped the fighter c.o.c.kpit almost full of fuel, and gave it time to build up a lot of vapor inside."

"He figured the destroyer would lock on to it, then either take it aboard, or release it and fly past to take up the chase again when they realized we were getting farther and farther away."

It would work, Califa thought, almost numbly. The c.o.c.kpit would be, or course, tightly sealed against the vacuum of s.p.a.ce. The grenade would destroy the box that held it, provide the spark to ignite the vapor, and the gas would expand explosively. And it had, stopping a Coalition ship five times their size.

She turned to look at Dax. Eos, but he was brilliant, she thought. And she didn't even stop to wonder at the fact that the emotion that flooded her then was pride.

Chapter 20.

"I hear they doubled the price on your head."

Dax stopped in his tracks. He shrugged, without looking back. He didn't have to look, he'd seen her this morning, and knew too well how she looked. The black hair that had been so shortly cropped before had grown out a little, falling in wisps around her face, and somehow emphasizing the size and pale blue color of her eyes and the silkcloth texture of her skin.

"So I heard," he muttered. Roxton had come back with that piece of information after a trip down to Clarion in the shuttle. And apparently he'd wasted no time in pa.s.sing it along.

"I also heard it's only double if they take you alive."

Roxton, Dax thought grimly, talked too much. At last he turned around to face her. He leaned back against the door to his quarters, trying to appear as if her presence didn't disturb him. As if they had never made love just the other side of this door. And trying not to think of himself, naked and sweating and desperate in her arms.

"That's the rumor. I doubt it, though. They've never cared before if I was dead or alive."

"Theh.e.l.lring did. Why?"

The uneasiness that had been plaguing him since that encounter came back full force now. It was a very good question.

"I don't know."

"It doesn't fit, Dax. Theyshouldn't care. Oh, they'd take you alive if they could, for the glory of dragging you before Legion Command, but it's not like the Coalition not to blast their prey to Antares if they refuse to surrender. They knew it was you, Dax, they had to, after spotting you in the colony. It's completely against procedure to give the most wantedand slipperiestskypirate two chances to give up, let alone three. This time they wanted you alive. Why?"

It dug at him again, that one piece of knowledge he'd kept from them all, the one thing that could put this all in a different light. It would explain why they sent a destroyer after him. But it still didn't explain why they hadn't just atomized theEvening Star outright.

"You know, don't you? What is it, Dax?" she whispered.

G.o.d, she read him so well. No one had ever been so attuned to him, so aware of his thoughts. It reminded him of his parents, and their almost eerie accord, and that scared him more than he cared to admit.

As did the need to talk, to someone, about what had happened. But there was no one he could talk to, no one who he dared share the truth with. Except the woman who already knew. The woman who haunted him day and night. The woman he'd tried so hard to stay away from, knowing he didn't have the strength to endure the fierce rage of wanting she kindled in him. The woman he'd tried to send away by returning the infernal device that held her in thrall, knowing that if she stayed, he would weaken yet again.

The woman who stood here now, simply watching him with those eyes, the pale blue no longer icy as solicitude warmed her expression. And he found he could no more resist that warmth than he could resist his desire for her. With a sharp, jerky motion he opened the door to his quarters and waved her inside. She hesitated. He didn't blame her. Every time they were alone, this thing between them threatened to blast out of control, and the last time he'd surrendered to the need, he hadn't exactly been the most caring of lovers afterward.

"Just to talk," he said, his voice gruff as he fought down the memories.

After a moment she warily stepped inside. He shut the door. Silence spun out, so charged that Dax thought if he tossed crystal dust in the air it would glitter along a line stretched wire-taut between them.

"They weren't after a skypirate," he said suddenly.

Califa blinked. "What?"

"They may have been, partly, they might have put it together, probably did later, but..."

She ignored the fact that he was rambling, dancing around the point. "Put what together?"