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a
big chunk of ice to punch a hole in it at these speeds. She could get into an
emergency pod quickly enough but it would be a lonely way to wait for the out
of control ship to have a fatal crash. “Good thinking.” She put her purple suit
next to the control couch. The captain did the same with his red one.
    Schwartzenberger touched his
earpiece. “Ah, he’s awake.” He’d taken the ship-to-ship off speakers earlier. He
could monitor the stream of threats and profanities without letting it be a
distraction. “Moving. Staying above the ring, not coming toward us.” He studied
the screen. Was this stalling or had their enemy come up with an idea? “By the
way, Pilot Long. Your skill is far greater than I’d believed. I apologize for
doubting you.”
    She gave his stiff nod,
almost a bow, a smile in return. “Thank you, sir, but don’t apologize. Just
remember it when it’s time to write that recommendation letter.” She steered
the ship around a small iceberg as they approached the dense core of the ring.
    “I’m more likely to recommend
you to the Space Guard than a merchant ship. They can use that kind of flying.”
    “Guard doesn’t let pilots put
cushions under their butts, Skipper.”
    “I’ll tell them to make an
exception. When did you check out the Guard?”
    “When I was a shuttle pilot. They
threw me out of the recruiting office.”
    “Good thing for our
passengers that they did. The SOB is ahead of us now. Still over a thousand
klicks above the ring. I’m not getting a good look at him.”
    “Might just be waiting for us
to overshoot. We can’t keep this up until the Navy gets here,” said Mitchie.
    “Longer than you think. We’ve
got water and converter metal for days. If we push the redline too hard I can
always make Guo suit up and we dump reaction mass in the converter room for
active cooling.”
    “Whoa. Yeah, that solves
cooling. Won’t we have corrosion problems?”
    “Eventually. Fixing that will
be one item on an enormous bill I’m going to hand to somebody.” Clearly the
captain thought all this was about more than one teenaged astronomy fan. “Here
he comes. Maneuvering minus-zee. Going to reach the ring ahead of us. Shit.
Launched a missile.”
    “What’s the angle?”
    “It’s–no. Ignore it. He’s
bluffing. He needs her alive.”
    “Aye-aye.” Mitchie
concentrated on keeping the densest part of the ring between them and the
missile. She could see it now, flickering between the chunks of ice. The
missile itself was invisibly small but the rocket plume shone bright blue. It
moved across their path until it was directly ahead of them. The plume closed
on a medium-small snowball and vanished in a bright flash.
    “Conversion bomb!” shouted
the captain.
    Mitchie aimed the ship south
and cranked up the acceleration. The expanding cloud of snow and gas hid part
of the ring already. She had to get them clear enough to safely fly blind
before they got caught in the cloud. As it reached up to catch them she turned
the ship to put the thrust plate to the blast wave and cut thrust.
    The debris from the missile
explosion was too finely divided to penetrate the hull. It hissed against the
ship with a sound like snow on a tin roof. Mitchie felt a sudden chill of
nostalgia for Akiak. Visibility behind the wave wasn’t much better. She left
them ballistic.
    “Here he comes,” said the
captain. The interceptor approached from planetward, below the rings. “Looks
like he’s trying for a close pass. Rip up our tanks so we can’t run anymore.”   
    Mitchie turned the ship to
face the brittle window away from the enemy and started boosting back to the
ring. Her fingers sweated as she gripped the throttle control. The other hand
pressed the intercom button for the converter room. “How’s the weather down
there?”
    “Tropical,” laughed Guo. “Send
down some ice if you get a break. We’re halfway to red. Not straining things
yet.”
    “Good. I’m going to have