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Bastards! If he went down there, one of the survivors might shoot him. He would have to wait here until they were dead.
    But he didn’t know how badly they were hurt. If they were hurt at all. They might be able to outlast him. Without adequate air or water or food, he might collapse long before they did.
    Caught between need and cowardice, he was paralyzed. Sucking sweat off his upper lip, he stared at Starmasters image on his screen and wrestled with his fear.
    Then he thought about what had been done to him.
    His heart began to swell with old rage, familiar and malign. The strength which had kept him alive so long, against such odds, came back to him. Snarling curses as fiercely as he could with the little oxygen the rank atmosphere provided, he shifted Bright Beauty into landing attitude and started her moving.
    While he was still negotiating a touchdown, scan informed him that one set of life-signs had stopped.
    Good. Only three left.
    Gently he set Bright Beauty on her struts beside the UMCP ship. Leaving his g-seat, he bobbed like a balloon against the asteroid’s gravity toward her lockers.
    Once he’d donned his EVA suit and clamped the faceplate shut, he spent a minute simply breathing the sweet air from the tanks. But he couldn’t afford to delay. The remaining survivors might be aware of him. They might be trying to train Starmaster’s guns on him right now.
    He took an impact rifle with him, a miner’s weapon because it could clear rockfalls and powder stone; in a pinch it could be used to buckle steel plate. He was no longer swearing: he was too scared to swear. The UMCP ship terrified him. The survivors terrified him. And EVA always terrified him. But he thought about air and revenge, and went to get them.
    Cycling through the airlocks, he eased himself onto the surface of the asteroid.
    Out here, the only light was the distant glitter of the starfield. Without the enhanced sensitivity of his cameras to help him, he could only see Starmaster as a silhouette, blacker than space. She looked huge and treacherous, riddled with secrets. Playing a beam along her sides helped put her in perspective; but that small light couldn’t muffle the way his air tanks hissed in his ears, sounding so loud against the impenetrable silence of the belt that it seemed to mark him like a beacon for all his enemies. He loathed EVA because the sound of his own breathing made him feel puny and vulnerable. Now air and food and water didn’t matter to him anymore. He thought he could live without them somehow. It was only rage that kept him going.
    Bright Beauty had been hurt. She would never be the same again.
    Starmaster’s survivors were going to pay for that. The people who had sent her out against him were going to pay.
    Sweating hate, he crossed to the UMCP ship.
    Without much trouble, he found an airlock in the intact part of the ship. As soon as he’d entered the lock and closed it behind him, he began to recover. The ship’s air pumping into the lock muted the hiss of his tanks. Her survivors might be waiting to ambush him as soon as he came out of the lock—but now at least he was no longer outside, exposed. And inside his rifle would be a devastating weapon.
    As the lock cycled open, he ducked to the side, pressed himself against the wall: an instinctive precaution.
    His instincts were good. A man stood waiting for him.
    At first glance, the man looked all right. His silver hair was rumpled, but that only increased his appearance of eagle authority. Captain’s bars marked the shoulders of his tunic. In one fist he held a beam gun.
    Angus nearly cried out, “Don’t shoot!” even though his suit’s transmitter was switched off and his voice would have been inaudible.
    “I’m Captain Davies Hyland,” the man said. “Angus Thermopyle, you’re under arrest.” Through the suit’s receiver, his confidence sounded insane, detached from reality. “We’re going to commandeer your ship.”
    His eyes hadn’t