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“Well,” she said “Fuck”
Profilearc Another passive contact If the corvette was the Pau Kant, it wasn’t out here alone And then two more And then six The Razorback picked the nearest one and cheerfully startedits profile By reflex, Alex went to activate his point defense cannons Only, of course, he didn’t have any
“Maybe they’ll talk,” Bobbie said He could hear it in her voice that she didn’t expect them to He didn’t either Half a second later, the Razorback announced two fast- from the corvette
He spun the pinnace away from the missiles and punched the drive The couch slarunted With a , and the pinnace leaped forward eagerly
It wasn’t going to be enough
As light as the Razorback was, the nitude less ile as a huap to target in a matter of hours He didn’t have counter to hide behind He didn’t even have a load of cargo to drop out the back in hopes the ht blunder into it
His vision started to narrow, darkening at the edges and dancing gold and fractured in the center He felt the couch’s needles slide into his thighs and neck, the juice like pouring ice water into his veins His heart labored and he was fighting to breathe, but his vision was clear And his mind He had to think His ship was fast, as ships went, but nothing compared to a missile There was no cover he could reach in tiood as the ship that fired theht up his drive cone, no matter what he tried to huddle behind
He could run away, draw the attackers into a line behind him, and then drop core The vented fusion reaction would probably take out at least the first one Maybe more But then they’d be on the float, and at the mercy of a second volley
Well A bad plan was better than no plan at all His finger twitched on the controls The layout was unfa information just because he wasn’t on his own damned boat was like a stake in his heart
Bobbie grunted He wasn’t strong enough to look back at her He hoped it wasn’t pain High g wasn’t a good thing for soh her recently He told hi her the juice
An alert popped onto his screen from Bobbie’s console PRIME MINISTER GUARD SHIPS
Between the drugs and the panic and the compromised blood flow in his brain, it took Alex a few seconds to understand what she meant The Razorback didn’t have point defense cannons or interceptorfor Luna did Alex pulled the data into the plotting system There was no way they could reach the Martian ships before the ht up with thee of their antiured out as going on and launched al to be at the outer limit of what he or Bobbie could handle
Al thrusters and the crash couches clicked to match the new vector Thefor the new course and anticipating where the pinnace would be He sent an enal, broadcast on all standard frequencies, and hoped whoever saw it on the flotilla was a quick thinker The two spheres – tie – didn’t overlap, but there were only a few hundred klicks between them Barely an eyeblink at their relative speeds He shifted to medical control and switched Bobbie from juice to life support protocol
Sorry, Bobbie, he thought I’d warn you if I had tionna need to take a little nap if we don’t want you bleeding out He watched her vital signs spike and then drop, her blood pressure and core te like a stone in the ocean He pushed the ship to fifteen g
His head hurt He hoped he wasn’t having a stroke, but it’d be fair if he did Sustained fifteen g was a stupid, suicidal thing to do He felt the air pressed out of his chest under the weight of his ribs, his skin The sound of his gasping was like gagging But the spheres touched now Minutes stretched Then fast- enough, but the defenses were on the way He tried to type in athe Martians that there were more ships out there, a dark fleet He couldn’t keep hold of the thought long enough to send it His consciousness kept blinking, like the universe stuttering