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besides, Challenger IV had a mission to perform.
"Potemkin appears to have been destroyed, sir," the announcement came in
the command center.
"What about Challenger IV ?" an operations officer asked.
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"Information limited due to enemy jamming, but the mother ships appear
to be closing on the remaining shuttle."
At a distance of four hundred miles, the flagship launched assault
boats. Bowie still had no contact with Space Station Liberty.
"Lieutenant, take over fire control," Marie ordered.
But Dana could only sit, trembling, eyes frozen on her instruments and
the pistol-grip fire control. Before her were overlapping images of the alien
ship, of the assault craft, and the Bioroid-every moment of her combats
against it came back in overwhelming detail, shutting out all other thought.
And on the periphery of her awareness were emotions to which she could put no
name.
Bowie looked at her worriedly, but there was no time to stop to find out
what was wrong. "I show enemy craft at one hundred miles and closing."
Angelo had swung around in his acceleration chair. "Lieutenant, she said
`take command.' Dana? C'mon, snap out of it!"
"Save it, Sergeant," Marie cut him off. "I'll take fire control. Gunners
select targets and fire as soon as they're within range."
The assault ships started pitching at longer range than that of the
shuttle's guns, but soon the two forces were sufficiently close to each other
for both to be throwing out everything they had. The shuttle had a defensive
shield that protected it from immediate damage, but the shield couldn't last
long under the pounding it was taking.
Marie, Angelo, and the others bent to their guns-all except Dana. The
firing controls were standard Robotech setups, as familiar to the ATACs
troopers as to the TASC pilot.
The assault craft spread out. "They're trying to surround us!" Marie
called as the twin-barreled gun mounts swung and threw out torrents of flaring
disc bolts, the enemy answering with the same. "Take evasive action," she
added to Heideger.
"Trying, Lieutenant," he said evenly, but the wallowing shuttle was no
match for the attackers.
"Sir, enemy vessels are surrounding Challenger," a command center
officer relayed the news.
"Has it been hit?"
Nova Satori, watching the displays at Colonel Fredericks's side, dreaded
the answer. She might have little use for Dana's and Marie's lack of
discipline, but Nova was behind them one hundred percent right now, and
rooting silently.
"Heavy activity out there, sir, and we're still not getting reliable
sensor readings-we can't be sure."
Nova watched the screens and waited.
"One coming your way, Sergeant!" Marie yelled.
"I see 'im," Angelo said distractedly, poised over his scope and
pistol-grip control stick. He led his target and got it dead center; it
vanished in a cloud of superheated gas.
"Good shooting!" Marie called. At that moment another bandit drilled a
line of holes along the shuttle's port side.
"Shields failing," Heideger said. "Still no contact with Liberty or
ground control." Another close one shook the spacecraft.
Marie realized abruptly that Dana wasn't firing. "Sterling, what's the
matter with you?" A quick look told her Dana wasn't hurt. "Come on, defend
your sector! We need you!"
Got to...get hold of myself, Dana kept repeating as if it were an
incantation. But she couldn't move, hypnotized by the visions assailing her.
By sheer force of will she compelled herself to say, "Yeah. I'm okay."
All at once her trance turned to an all-engulfing fear. I shouldn't be
here! I can't handle this! I'll let everyone down!
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Marie was up, to swing Dana's chair around and slap her hard across the
face. "Snap out of it! Stop acting like a coward!"
Dana sat, dazed. Marie turned to Heideger. "Get someone else up here to
man these guns!" She jumped back for the pilot's seat.
Dana was staring at the firing control as if she had never seen one
before, and another energy disc impact sent the shuttle lurching. "Missed
him!" Angelo yelled. "Dana, he's coming around to your side."
More were doing the same; the aliens had realized that Dana's sector was
a vulnerable point.
The lurch had thrown Dana against the fire-control grip, and she clung
to it by reflex. She instinctively thumbed the trigger button over and over.
The assault craft broke off its attack run as her fire nearly nailed it.
"It's nice to have ya back." She heard Angelo's grin in his tone as she
fought to center the gunsight reticle on the assault craft.
What was I doing? I could've gotten us all killed! But she thrust the
thought aside as the bogie came around for another pass. The reticle centered.
Your time's up, chump!
She thumbed the trigger again and again. The assault boat suddenly
wobbled off course, leaking flame, and explosive decompression turned the leak
into a brief whoosh, like a blowtorch. The crippled invader disappeared
beneath the shuttle.
More enemy ships had been coming in at Dana's field of fire, and
thinking it a soft spot, crowded together. She picked off another, and damaged
a third as they sought frantically to evade.
"Good shooting, Lieutenant," Angelo admitted.
Heideger got the shuttle back under control and stabilized the damage
while the others tried to drive back the assault ships and Bowie made
desperate efforts to get a bearing on Liberty.
"I think the only way we're gonna do it is to get the shuttle back on a
steady course," he said.
"We're closing with the mother ship," Marie informed them. There wasn't
much hope of evading. "Everybody get ready."
Dana waited at her station; it had been a good try, a good try.... A
gallant final fight.
She wondered where the targets had gone. Then Heideger called out, "The
assault ships are withdrawing. They appear to be breaking off the attack."
The shuttle's guns went silent and the crew sat stunned, not believing
that they were still alive. "I don't get it," Dana blinked. Nobody else did
either.
But Angelo reported, "I'm picking up a directed force field on the
mother ship. I think it's a charged particle beam projector."
Suddenly, enormous hyphens of energy were blazing all around them,
monster discharges like nothing the Humans had ever seen before. But it seemed
the megavolleys were so enormously powerful that they were far less accurate
than the flagship's other weapons.
Or maybe they're just playing with us again, it occurred to Marie. We'll
know in a few seconds. She hit the ship's thrusters, accelerating as quickly
as she dared-straight for the flagship. "Now, if we can just get in under it
before it gets us!"
The bright comets of the Masters' superweapon cascaded around the
shuttle as Marie wove and sideslipped with all the skill at her command. There
were shouts and objections from everybody else on the flight deck.
"There's no such thing as `out of range' to that particle gun!" Marie
cried. "We'll have to get in close, where it can't get a fix on us!" The
shuttle shook and seemed to want to come apart. "Brace yourselves!"
The Challenger IV dove in at the flagship, homing in under its vast
belly. Far above, they could make out something like an enormous fish-eye lens
between the hyphens of destruction it spewed forth. Then all at once the
shuttle was in an area of peace and quiet, out of the megaweapon's field of
fire. The Bioroids, of course, had pulled way back once that big Sunday punch
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let loose. The shuttle was zooming along all alone.
"Nice move, Lieutenant," Angelo conceded.
She headed in under the gargantuan ship's belly, weaving in and out of
the superstructural features. "This is just a breather! There are still those
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