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to
do some evasive here in a moment.”          
    “I’ll hold her together for
you. Hot jets, pilot.”
    “Approaching cannon range,”
reported Schwartzenberger.
    The pilot put a gentle curve
on their course. Something that would take a human a moment to notice. The
interceptor followed instantly. “Think that autopilot has a gunnery routine, sir?”     
    “They haven’t skimped on
anything else.”
    “Uh-huh.” The other ship
started to flicker with muzzle blasts. She pushed the throttle in and triggered
the plus-pitch jets. Don’t have a pattern . Minus-yaw, lower thrust, plus
yaw. Minus pitch. Max thrust. Pull thrust back to 20 gravs. Plus yaw and minus
pitch together. Don’t have a pattern . Minus yaw. More minus yaw. Max
thrust. Plus pitch around that iceberg. Lower thrust. WHANG. Plus yaw and
three-quarter thrust. Don’t have a pattern . Minus pitch. Minus yaw. Cut
thrust. WHANG. Half-thrust. Plus pitch and plus yaw together. Max thrust for
two seconds then cut thrust for three. Plus pitch.
    “Okay, he’s out of range. He’s
stopped firing,” Captain Schwartzenberger reported. “Guo, what’s the damage?”
    “No pressure lost anywhere,
sir,” said the mechanic. “Felt like they just glanced off. We’ll have some
holes in the reentry protection.”
    “Thank you.” He switched the
intercom off. “Nicely done, Mitchie. I think he only got that lucky because he
gave up on trying for direct hits and just shot area patterns.”
    She let out a sigh. “Yeah. But
he can keep doing that–firing patterns on high-speed passes–and he only needs
to get lucky once.”
    “He only has so much ammo and
so much time. If he runs out of either he’s done. For now we’re winning.”
    Navigating through the ring
was almost easy now. “Winning but scared as hell.”
    The captain burst out
laughing. “You’re scared? You ever think about what kind of people that guy
works for? And what they do to people who fail them? The bottom of his pressure
suit has to be full of bricks by now.”
    He actually got a chuckle out
of her. “Yeah, we’ve got him sweating. And probably a nosebleed from those
anti-collision maneuvers.”
    “Yep.” The captain had
spotted the interceptor again. “There he goes. Passing sunward of us, well
clear of the ice.”
    “Setting up for another pass,”
said Mitchie. The fatigue made her speech rougher, the backwoods accent
creeping out.
    “Eventually. He’ll want to
wait until he has a good spot.” He was being more honest than reassuring. For
once Mitchie wouldn’t have minded a boss going the other way. She stuck to the
north side of the ring. The interceptor had gone out of sight again so they
didn’t know which way to jump. Just stay close to cover and keep their speed up
so they wouldn’t be a sitting duck.
    Mitchie spotted him first
this time. She’d come out into a gap in the ring and saw the torch plume on the
other side. “Dead ahead. Matched our course.” Both sides of the gap were too
far away to help. She picked planetside and headed for it at full acceleration.
    Schwartzenberger studied the
radar returns. “Better sensors. He can track us from outside visual. Reciprocal
of our course gives his shells a better hit zone. He can fire a pattern at
extreme range and we can’t get outside it.” More data came in. “His course is
paralleling ours, only a few klicks off. Probably as close as he could program
it.”
    “Shit! Point blank shots.”
    “I see him firing. A few
patterns already on the way to us. He’s scared enough to risk killing Bobbie
now.” There was no way to safely aim at the fuel tanks coming in at that angle.
    “As close as he could–damn!”
Mitchie pivoted back toward their attacker. The throttle was already at max. Intercom
time. “Hey! More thrust! All you got!”
    Guo’s voice was already
strained by acceleration. “We’re redlined!”
    “Gimme the real redline! Two
minutes!”
    “We’ll melt!”
    The captain