“Oh, well,” I sighed, and faced front again.
“Kei,” said Yuri as if on cue. “We’ve got re-entry clearance. I’m going to land.”
“Do what you like!” I said coldly. No one as unforgiving as I am was going to forgive Yuri for the way she had treated me just a few minutes before.
Lovely Angel steadily lost altitude as the ship traced a spiral orbit around Dangle.
Dangle, like almost every planet inhabited by mankind, is a beautiful blue sphere mottled with floating white clouds. The ratio of sea to land is just about fifty-fifty and there are two continents separated by ocean. Almost all the land surface is concentrated on these continents—Eruka and Tanst.
Eruka is located near the equator in the northern hemisphere, while Tanst is near the equator in the southern hemisphere on the opposite side of the globe. Eruka is larger than Tanst, but both are equally blessed with absolutely the most marvelous climate. Count on the Gravas Foundation—with the most capital in all the galaxy—to pick a winner.
Lovely Angel was bound for Tanst’s southern hemisphere. That’s where our client, Gravas Heavy Industries, one of the industrial divisions of the Gravas Foundation, has its headquarters. That’s right. Those guys. The kings of heavy industry, they who proudly boast that there isn’t a job they can’t tackle; from starship building to erecting entire cities. Gravas Heavy Industries has both a business headquarters and a production headquarters. The one on Dangle is the production headquarters, responsible for operations and research.
Our designated landing site was Kurutomi Space Port, smack dab in the middle of the Tanst continent. To be perfectly honest, we both of us prefer the ocean; we didn’t want to have to land in a crummy old landlocked spaceport. But Kurutomi is as close as you can get to Gravas H.I.‘s headquarters, so what’s a girl to do? In the first place, we weren’t here for the fun of it.
Our altitude was down to twenty thousand meters.
I don’t know what magic they’d used, but Tanst was swathed completely in brilliant green. The cities glittering silver here and there against that backdrop made it look like a billiard table scattered with cue balls. It must have taken a lot of terraforming to bury an entire continent in grasslands and forest. But I wouldn’t put it past them, not the boys from Gravas. Quite apart from the methods they might have used and whatever incidents there’d been in pulling it off, I had to give them credit. All anyone could feel about that endless green garden was its incredible beauty.
I was completely entranced by the landscape sliding past on our main screen, and for a moment forgot everything else.
That was when they attacked.
“Kei!” snapped Yuri in a sharp, crisp voice.
Emergency! In an instant I’d stopped moping, and was my old self again.
“Several ships aren’t obeying traffic control,” Yuri continued.
“Who are they? How many?”
Even as I asked, I was activating the console’s laser and missile triggers. It might turn out to be nothing at all. But a WWWA Crime Trouble Consultant is always prepared. Of course, one reason we’d been nicknamed the Dirty Pair was that we were always an itty-bitty bit too prepared…
“There’re five bogies,” came Yuri’s answer. “Twenty-meter-class mincers! They’re heading straight for us!”
“Do we have a visual?”
“I’ll feed it onto the main screen.”
Except for the emergency port, there are no windows in Lovely Angel’s conical control cabin. Instead, we can check out each and every kind of situation on the dozens of large and small screens of all descriptions lining the wall panels. The largest one, located directly in front of the pilot and co-pilot seats, is the main screen. We can call up any kind of image on it, from X-ray scans to enhanced imagery.
The main screen showed five flying saucers barreling toward Lovely Angel. The distant silver specks glittered against a background of dazzling blue sky.
“Enlarge one for me!”
The image shifted before I could finish speaking. Yuri had had the same idea. A single saucer filled the screen.
It was a kind I’d never seen before. It certainly wasn’t on the commercial market. And of course, it wasn’t one in military service, either, at least not officially. The two barrels protruding from the leading edge clearly went with some kind of energy weapon. Whoever the ships belonged to, this much was clear. They were fighters, and they were full of malice for Lovely Angel.
“Range twenty-eight thousand meters. Speed Mach twelve,” said Yuri. “They’ll be in range in a moment.”
“Uh-huh!”
The palms of my hands were slick with sweat as I tensely gripped the triggers. If we were in space, our lasers would have had an effective range of nearly two hundred kilometers. But now we were fifteen thousand meters above Dangle. We were deep in the atmosphere. Lasers degrade tremendously in the atmosphere. Even at ten thousand meters it would be tough to hit the enemy hard enough to make them hurt. But if I used missiles it was as clear as day they’d just shoot them down.
“Range nineteen thousand!”
I flicked on the targeting screen. The saucers showed up as white blips. When they came into effective range, as adjusted by the computer for atmospheric density and all other estimated data, they’d turn red. That was when the fighting would start. But before that there was one last thing I had to be very sure of.
“There’s no response.”
Yuri had already done it for me. She’d sent the common interplanetary code message, “Identify your ship and affiliation.” So long as their communication gear is working, any ship that ignores this call from a WWWA starship is automatically considered hostile. We could fire when ready.
“Range ten thousand. Oh!” Yuri’s voice changed in the middle of the countdown. “The saucers are fanning out!”
Just as I’d expected. The total energy load of a twenty-meter-class flying saucer couldn’t begin to match the Lovely Angel’s. Their weapons probably weren’t much good, either. If they flew in leisurely from dead ahead, and in formation at that, they wouldn’t stand a chance. According to standard theory, now was the moment to re-deploy, and to attack us from all sides.
“Range eight thousand!”
The moment Yuri spoke, the flicks of light on the targeting screen suddenly went red. The saucers still gave no sign of attacking. We could strike first. I shouted a course change to Yuri.
“2F403!”
It was a bearing that betrayed my perfect confidence in victory. We were going to take them out, starting with the closest one and working our way out.
Like a raptor challenging its prey, Lovely Angel wriggled her elegant scarlet body.
I squeezed the laser trigger.
A streak of light flashed out, and sliced the saucer apart.
An enormous ball of orange flame dyed the blue heavens.
“4B112—”
We flipped back the other way without a pause. Of course, the enemy also reversed course, trying to keep us encircled. But we were faster on our feet.
Lasers fire!
Another enemy saucer exploded. Simultaneous missile launch—this just to tie their hands. I fired off three each at two of the enemy ships. One dodged them without a second thought, but its buddy was trapped. It popped up out of the way of the missiles, right into our path. I finished it off with the lasers.
That left two. But the distance was closing. They began to shoot back. A weak energy beam licked Lovely Angel’s outer plates. Even at two to one it wasn’t a dogfight, not with this big a difference in performance. I blazed away, and another ship turned into burning fragments. One to go.
At that moment we made our decisive error. We’d gotten careless. We’d been so absorbed in the enemy that we’d forgotten to keep an eye on what was going on around us.
The first to notice was, as might be expected, Yuri at the radar screen.
“Uuuuhmfff!”
It was an indescribable sound, not quite a scream.
“What is it?”
“In the saucer’s way,” Yuri gasped. “There’s a big civilian ship in its way!”
“Eeeek!”
The saucer, convinced it didn’t stand a chance, was already running away. To suddenly have a big transport plod into its path spelled disaster. Transports aren’t only sluggish, they don’t have anything to protect themselves with.
“Accelerate out in front of the saucer!” I shouted impatiently.
“Impossible!” Yuri snapped back. “We’re in the atmosphere. There’s a limit to how fast we can go.”
“Then raise the ship on the com-link and tell them to get out of the way!”
“You do it!” she wailed. Her voice was as edgy as mine. “I’ve got my hands full just flying this thing!”
“Got you!”
I switched on the transmitter, and hailed the ship on civilian frequencies. They responded immediately. She was the three-hundred-meter passenger liner Galapagos, as big as they come for planetary liftoff passenger ships. She was just making her approach to Kurutomi Space Port. Already she was well below four thousand meters.
Captain Guernicca of the Galapagos didn’t even try to understand the situation, no matter how desperately I explained what was happening. Even as we talked, the flying saucer plunged ever closer to his ship.
In the end it was the Kurutomi Space Port control tower, not Galapagos herself, that grasped the gravity of the situation. Instantly a warning went out. And receiving it, the liner finally began to plod onto a new heading.
“Oh! Ah! What the—!” Yuri shrieked, her eyes going round. “He’s not just attacking! He thinks he’s a kamikaze!”
“EEEH!”
I squeezed the laser trigger for all I was worth. The only way to stop him was to shoot him down. But the saucer was no sluggard when it came to running. Already he was too far away. The laser beams looked like they were scoring direct hits, but they weren’t powerful enough to take him out.
The saucer swerved after the Galapagos as it wobbled into a turn.
It plunged smack into the main engine room at the liner’s stern.
And there was a very big bang.
“O-o-o-ohhhhhh.”
Yuri and I couldn’t bear to watch. We covered our faces.
Galapagos broke in two, and tumbled toward the planet below.
Of course, there was no way to save her.
“The bastard!” cried Yuri furiously. Her fists were clenched and trembling. “He knew he couldn’t beat us in a fair fight, so he found this way to put us on the spot.”
You said it, Yuri. We really were on the spot.