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KOLNAR ARE YOU, PERSON AND NONPERSON
THING OUR POSSESSION. CEASE EXTERIOR
SCANATONCE!"
"What N" somebody began.
Then the lights faded for a second. Everyone gasped as pressure fluctuated,
and the temperature rose per-
ceptibly. On the heels of the pressure wave came a rising wave of vibration
through the hull. Banks of lights flashed from amber to red.
"Hit! We have been hit!" Patsy was shouting from her environmental systems
console. "Loss of pressure, N-7 through 11!"
Simeon's hands itched, metaphorically. He had to step back and let the
infuriatingly slow responses of softshells handle his station, his body. There
was one thing he could do. He cut all the active exterior sensors immediately.
Except, of course, for the one that had just been converted to vapor along
with a section of hull.
"Passive scanners only," Juke said. "Th... that was a high-energy particle
beam."
"Chaundra here." The doctor's voice had the slight-
ly flat tone of a vacuum suit pickup. "Rescue squads in place. The people here
were all suited up. No fatalities so for. There will be radiation problems."
From second-
ary gamma sleeting, where the beam had struck matter.
Channa acknowledged his report. Injuries could have been much higher. Would
have been if the war-
ship had come on them with no notice whatever. A
296
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THE dry WHO FOUGHT
297
screen activated, showing suited forms moving down an interior corridor, but
it had the depthless bright look of light in vacuum, no blur at the edges of
the shadow.
The huge voice struck again. "OBEY. GENTLE
WARNINGS NONE MORE WILL BE FOREVER.
STAND BYTO BE TAKEN INTO THE FIST OF HIGH-
CLANKOLNAR, SCUMVERMIN."
"Eat shit and die, you fardling maniacs," Channa muttered. Amos cast her a
quick look, then nodded and gave a thumbs-up gesture.
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"Still closing," Juke whispered. The infrared and other passive receptors were
still working. "Closing on the docking tubes, but inboard of the docking
rings."
"Quick," Simeon said to Channa, like thought in her inner ear. "Get anyone
there away from the tubes."
"All personnel in north and south polar docking tubes, into the core! Move!"
Channa barked. Then, to privately to Simeon: "Why?"
"They're going to force-dock. I've heard of it."
The Dreadful Bride floated dose to the docking tube.
So dose, that of a sudden she seemed small to Belazir, waiting impatiendy in
the off-corridor to the boarding tube, with his personal guard around him. He
had an exterior feed, one of the multiple tiny screens around the lower rim of
the helmet's interior. It took long train-
ing to assimilate the information without being distracted. His ship seemed
like a tiny fleck of bright-
ness next to the huge bulk of the target.
"Now," he said. But a knife is smaller than a man, too, he thought with
hammering glee.
Serig stepped forward and slapped an armored palm on the bulkhead beside the
combat lock. The assault party filled the antechamber. Decking shuddered
beneath their feet. From his helmet's exterior view, Belazir could see the
accordion-folds of the boarding tube extending their armored length. Grapnels
and cutting-beams protruded from the forward edge, like the teeth of a hungry
monster. A feint clung went through the ship as the tube struck. Then a savage
roar of white noise as the weapons punched an oval hole through hull, con-
duits and inner surface, into the enemy vessel, fonx-sealing it with agudden
crude weld.
Air whistled past them from the higher pressure of the Bride into the station.
"Go!" shouted Serig. The first team leapt forward, pushing a floating, armored
powergun platform before them. "Go, go, go!"
Serig followed them. Belazir bit down on his tongue, suppressing the impulse
to take immediate command.
Instead, he froze the joints of his armor and com-
manded the faceplate to show Serig's inputs, seeing what he would see.
"Oh, smooth, very smooth," Simeon said in some dismay. Channa made an
enquiring sound into the denched silence of the control room.
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