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18

It took the better part of two days to prepare the tow. Although Cy's investigations indicated that the drifter might be able to proceed under its own power, there was too much they didn't know about the ship's operation, so a tow7 seemed like the best way to go.

No simple matter in open space and considerably more difficult in the crowded confines of the asteroid belt.

In order to assure maneuverability it was necessary to mount heavy-duty auxiliary thrusters on the outer surface of the drifter's hull. The thrusters, and the fuel tanks that supplied them, were cumbersome and hard to work with. Even in zero G they had to be guided into place, secured to the hull, and test fired.

Added to that was the fact that they were shorthanded due to Cap's encounter with the lifeboat. Seeing the boat and the name across the bow had pushed Sorenson into a state of hysteria.

Hearing Sorenson's screams via suit radio Cy had responded as quickly as he could. A sedative, followed by enforced rest aboard the tender, had helped a lot. Though shaky Cap was starting to recover.

In the meantime Lando and Dee had been forced to perform almost all of the work associated with placing the thrusters and preparing both ships for the tow.

Back aboard Junk, and still sweaty from the hours spent in his suit, Lando ran a final check on the auxiliary thrusters. Dee assisted while Melissa kept watch in the tug's top turret.

By mutual agreement, Lando, Cy, and Dee had kept her in the dark regarding Cap's condition. After all, there was nothing she could do other than worry, so why put her through it?

Lando tapped some keys on a jury-rigged auxiliary control board. Miles away a thruster fired in response. It shut down a fraction of a second later.

"Bow thruster, port side."

Dee looked at the portacomp sitting on her lap. "Check."

"Bow thruster, starboard side."

"Check."

"Midship thruster, port side."

"Check."

"Midship thruster, starboard side."

"Hold . . . I show a control anomaly."

Keys clicked under Lando's fingers. The computer ran a diagnostic routine on the starboard side, midship thruster and sent the results to Dee.

"Anomaly resolved. Control green."

Lando nodded. "Good. Stern thruster, port side."

"Check."

Melissa interrupted. Her voice was a high-pitched squeak. "Pik . . . Della . . . I've got something on the sensors! Something besides the drifter I mean. It's big and headed this way!"

Lando swore softly. Of all times why now? He turned toward Dee. She was gone. The bounty hunter would relieve Melissa and assign her to a less critical weapon.

Lando spoke into the comset and activated Junk's weapons at the same time.

"Cy? Listen, we've got company. No ID . . . but pirates seem like a good possibility. Have you found any weapons on that tub?"

In between nursing Cap, and doing what he could to assist the others, Cy had been deciphering the ship's systems. He had lots left to learn but had a fairly good idea of what the ship could and couldn't do. None of the ten black globes corresponded to weapons systems so he assumed there were none.

"No weapons, Pik . . . at least none so far. It seems our friends are, or were, peace-loving citizens."

"No wonder they aren't around," Lando said cynically.

"Well, seal her up as best you can. It's too late to retrieve the tender. Besides, from what we saw earlier, that baby can take lots of punishment. You're safer where you are."

Cy was just about to point out that personal safety was not his number one goal when another voice cut him off.

"Well, well. Look what we have here. It isn't the Star of Empire, but it looks like Captain Sorenson found himself a ship, an alien ship at that."

The audio was being piped over the intercom so Dee and Melissa heard it too.

Dee said, "Uh-oh, we're in trouble now."

And Melissa said, "Don't let him bully you, Pik! Show him who's boss!"

Lando sighed. He should've known. Jord Willer. Hercules was still a long ways off but quite recognizable under high mag. He fired all the weapons delegated to automatic and hoped for a lucky hit. Who knows, maybe Willer had left his force field down.

No such luck. All of Junk's energy beams and missiles exploded harmlessly as they hit the other ship's protective field.

Willer returned fire. Because the other vessel was still a ways off Junk was able to shrug it off but Lando was worried. Hercules was larger and, in spite of Junk's considerable weaponry, even more heavily armed. It might take a while, but in an all-out battle the other ship would win. The bombardment stopped as suddenly as it began.

Willer's perfect face appeared on the com screen. The cyborg's placid features were at odds with his words.

"You're going to pay for that, Lando. You, and Sorenson, and his daughter, and the bounty hunter. All of you will die. As for the borg, well, he can live. Professional courtesy you know. Never kill a fellow freak."

Lando decided to stall. Maybe something would break his way.

"I love you too. But don't count your corpses till you kill them. The drifter's loaded with weapons. Come any closer and we'll turn your ship into scrap metal."

Willer grinned stiffly. "Give me a break, Lando. I heard the borg tell you it was harmless. Stalling is a waste of time. Save me the trouble. Shoot yourself now."

Lando forced a smile. "Hey, you can't blame a guy for trying. How did you find us anyhow?"

Willer shook his head sadly. "Still stalling. Still wasting my time. Well, why not? I'm proud of it actually. The bounty hunter led us here."

For one brief moment Lando wondered if Della had sold them out. But he knew the answer was no. Her words confirmed it.

"You followed me? Why you lying pile of chrome-plated crap! I didn't tell you a thing!"

Willer laughed. "Not directly, my dear, but tell me you did. The confrontation in the museum was staged for your benefit. It provided an excuse to put you out and hide a specially designed beacon inside your body. It was a quick little operation and after the neuro-stim you didn't even notice the pain. Next time you take a shower look for a tiny incision covered with plastiflesh.

"By the way, both of my assistants had some nice things to say about your breasts. Unfortunately my interest disappeared along with my balls."

Dee opened up with her energy cannon but it made little difference. The force field around Hercules seemed to expand and contract along with Willer's laughter.

Sorenson's breath came in ragged gasps and his hands shook as he powered up. First the lifeboat, now Willer. He'd heard the whole thing over the tender's comset. Why couldn't they just leave him alone?

Cap's hands shook as they moved over the controls. Power up, repellers on, support systems in the green. He touched a button.

"This is Captain Sorenson requesting permission to leave your launching bay."

This time Cap was ready when a green blob enfolded the tender and lifted it upward.

"Cap? Cap, this is Lando. What the hell are you doing? Stay where you are. I repeat, stay where you are."

There was no reply. Lando watched a green blob erupt from the port side of drifter's hull, drift upward, and pop like an overfilled balloon. The tender appeared as if by magic. It turned and headed away from Junk.

Lando stabbed a button on the comset. "Cap . . . where the hell are you going?"

Willer appeared on the com screen. He gave a throaty chuckle. "He's running away. That's what he does best. The only surprise is that he's sober enough to fly a ship."

The next voice was Melissa's. "Daddy! Tell them it isn't true! You're not running away, are you?"

Silence.

"Damn you, Daddy! Damn you to hell!" Bright blue energy reached out to touch the tender but missed.

Lando killed power to her weapon. "Stop it, Melissa! That won't solve a thing."

All he heard was a sob and a click as she dropped off the line. Willer attacked a fraction of a second later. Lando responded with everything Junk had.

Energy beams lashed out to link the ships together with a pattern of stuttering blue light. Missiles raced from launchers, torpedoes accelerated toward their targets, and force fields flashed incandescent as they struggled to protect their respective vessels.

Lando watched his instruments. Before long Junk's defenses would start to crumble. When they did he'd call the others to the bridge. At least they'd be together.

Cy was angry, damned angry, and determined to do something about it. How dare that chrome-plated space head call him a freak! And try to kill his friends! Well, he'd show Willer a thing or two.

Cy hovered in front of a black globe. His pincer slid through its shiny surface. Suddenly Cy was at the center of a complicated organism. He had hundreds of hands and arms each waiting to do his bidding. The cyborg found that he could see in a 360-degree circle, and hear along the entire range of radio frequencies.

Light flared and static rumbled as two ships hurled death at each other. One was larger and he could see its weapons taking a steady toll. The smaller vessel's force field shimmered under a tremendous blow, faded, and flared back up. A few more like that and it would fail.

Cy made a fist and launched it toward the larger ship. It hit with tremendous force and sent a shock wave up his arm. Cy laughed. He was a god! Able to reach out and smite evildoers with his mighty right arm! He prepared another fist.

"What the hell was that?" Willer was picking himself up off the deck.

His pilot looked back over her shoulder. Her dope stick waggled when she spoke. "I don't know, Captain. It looked like some kind of green blob. They launched it from the drifter."

Now Willer was on his feet towering over the pilot as he examined her screens. "From the drifter, eh? So it is armed. I should've known better than to trust Lando. Well, never mind. Feed 'em a torpedo."

The pilot raised an unplucked eyebrow. "Is that wise? What'll we have then? A half a million tons of scrap, that's what."

Willer pulled his blaster and pressed the barrel against her forehead. "Do what I say or I'll kill you and fly the ship myself!"

The pilot turned back to her board. Next time they hit port she was history. The borg was too weird for her.

Stubby fingers danced over the keys on her control panel. Hercules carried a full crew plus a few of Willer's toughs. They manned the secondaries but everything else belonged to her. The pilot selected a launch tube, armed a torpedo, and sent it on its way. "Torpedo fired and running hot."

A green blob slammed into the Hercules and pushed it toward a distant asteroid.

Cy used every swear word he'd ever heard. Willer had launched a torpedo! The borg was crazy. So what else was new? Could he stop it? In 6.2 seconds he'd know the answer. Cy held up two of his hands and waited for the missile to hit.

Lando's heart was in his throat as the torpedo made a bright red line across his plot screen and headed straight for the drifter. Cy was using the blobs to hit Willer's ship and the cyborg was trying to stop him!

Two of the green blobs leapt out to intercept the torpedo. There was a brilliant flash of light and the blobs disappeared. And so did all the rest.

Lando checked his vid screens for confirmation. Something was terribly wrong! The greenish light was gone! The drifter was a dark and drifting hulk.

Junk staggered under multiple missile hits. The force field went down. The starboard drive failed. Lights flashed and alarms sounded. Lando wondered if they should scramble into their suits. All things considered it didn't seem worth the trouble.

He touched a button. "All hands to the bridge." It was time to get ready.

Melissa's energy cannon missed the tender but her words went right through her father's heart. Sorenson gave a cry of pain and rage as he realized what he'd done. My God! He'd left his own daughter to die! Blood rushed to his face and Cap felt a terrible sense of shame.

Cap considered suicide, but remembered Willer's words: "He's running away . . . that's what he does best," and realized it was true. If he cared, really cared, he'd do something to save his daughter and crew.

But what? What could one man in a tiny spaceship do? All around Cap the asteroids whirled mocking him with their silence. Then he had it. An idea that just might work.

Sorenson's hands were suddenly steady where they touched the controls. He knew what to do, and by God he'd do it!

"Hold your fire." All the ship's weapons fell silent when Willer spoke. Junk was helpless and the cyborg wanted to savor the moment. Besides, now that the battle was won, there were mercenary considerations. He had an alien drifter, obviously worth millions, if not billions of credits. Why not add Junk to the total? If lots of money was good, more was even better.

Willer turned to his pilot. "Put us alongside. We'll board and neutralize the crew."

The pilot gave a barely perceptible nod and shifted the dope stick from one side of her mouth to the other. Neutralize the crew? Kill little girls? Not her. She'd find a way to avoid the boarding party. She needed time to think. The pilot chose the longest approach she could.

The bombardment had stopped, and without sufficient power for her weapons, Junk was forced to do likewise.

Dee looked at the main screen. "They're going to board."

Lando nodded. She was incredibly beautiful. He wanted to say so, to reach out and hold her, but the way Melissa clung to Della's side made that impossible. He pulled his handgun and checked the load instead. "We might as well take a few along with us."

Dee caught his eye. She looked down at Melissa, then back to him. Lando nodded his agreement. At the very last moment one of them would kill her.

Meanwhile Melissa was doing her best to look brave. But it's hard to look brave with tears rolling down your cheeks and a trembling lip. Dee was a comforting presence and Melissa stood as close as she could.

Pik and Della hadn't said anything but Melissa knew anyway. They were about to die. She was about to die. It seemed sad, but maybe she'd see Mommy, and that would be good. If only Daddy were here.

Melissa looked up at the view screen and shouted her surprise.

"Pik! Look! It's Daddy!"

Lando took one look, understood Cap's plan, and threw himself at the controls.

"Della! Put every tractor beam we have on Hercules! Do the best you can to hold her in place."

Cap grit his teeth. Just a little bit longer, just a little more time, and he'd crush Willer like a bug. He pushed the drive to max.

A proximity alarm went off. Willer couldn't believe his pickups. There was an asteroid headed straight at him!

At first he thought it was a rogue, a buster that had bounced off another roid and tumbled his way.

But a second look told the cyborg he was wrong. The roid was maneuvering to intercept him, and that meant someone was steering it.

Cap! The miserable bastard had poured himself enough manhood to actually do something. The tender! Of course. The crafty old sonovabitch had managed to grab a small asteroid and use it as a battering ram. Well, it wasn't going to work. He yelled at the pilot.

"Full speed ahead! Do it now!"

Not understanding, the pilot took a moment to scan the view screens. All of her attention had been focused on Junk. What was Willer screaming about now? Then the pilot saw the asteroid and understood. She shoved the drives to max.

Hercules shivered but that's all. A combination of tractor and pressor beams was holding her in place. Willer screamed and the pilot joined him.

By the time Cap released the asteroid it had lots of inertia. That, plus the fact that Dee was holding Hercules in place, equaled maximum effect. The tug was completely destroyed. Both it and the asteroid tumbled away.

There was a long moment of silence on Junk's bridge, followed by a quick radio check on the rest of the crew.

"Cy?Are you there?"

"I sure am, Pik. Is everyone okay?"

"Thanks in part to you," Lando answered. "What you did with those green blobs was absolutely incredible.

"Cap? How 'bout you?"

There was silence for a moment followed by a hoarse croak. "I'm fine, Lando, better than I've been in a long, long time. Melissa? You okay?"

There were tears streaming down Melissa's cheeks, but tears of joy. "I'm fine, Daddy. I'm sorry about what I said. You were wonderful!"

"No," Cap replied, "I wasn't 'wonderful,' but I was better. And maybe that's a first step."

It took three days to check Willer's tug for survivors, there weren't any, and make temporary repairs to all the damage. The good news was that the drifter had somehow started to repair itself. The luminescent green light was back and bit by bit the blobs were reappearing on the surface of its hull.

Cy said, "It's my guess that she'll be as good as new, or old, as the case may be."

The bad news was that Junk had sustained even more damage than was immediately apparent. It would be a toss-up to decide whether she was worth the cost of repairs. Still, barring further battles, she'd make it to Pylax. And given the drifter's obvious value, that was far enough. In the meantime however there was a long journey through the asteroids to face.

With the temporary repairs complete, and many days of work ahead, the crew held a party. It centered around the best dinner that Melissa could muster, some nonalcoholic drinks, and the rest of Captain Neubeck's ice cream.

Cap raised his glass. "I wish to propose a toast."

"Hear! Hear!" Lando said, rapping the side of his glass with a spoon.

Cap smiled. "To the chef, my beautiful daughter Melissa, the most important person in my life!"

Melissa beamed happily, and raised her glass. "To Daddy, and a ship named Junk!" Everyone laughed.

Cy waited until the laughter died down to raise his glass, a symbolic gesture since he couldn't drink from it, but appropriate nonetheless.

"And my toast is to 'them,' the ones who built the drifter, and disappeared. Sol bless them wherever they are . . . and thanks for the ship!"

That brought more laughter. Now it was Dee's turn. Her eyes sparkled as they swept the table and stopped on Lando. "My toast is to all of you, for accepting me into your family, and for giving me something a bounty can't buy!"

Lando smiled and raised his glass high. "And I give you my father's favorite toast. 'To the end of this run, and the start of another!'"

Outside, beyond Junk's durasteel hull, the asteroids and stars continued to dance. They knew what lay ahead but wouldn't tell.

THE END

 

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