Legacy by Steve White Read Free Book Online

others. "All right, boys and girls. You heard the lady. Suit up and strap in."
    "But the lab equipment . . ." Natalya wailed.
    "Forget it!" Sarnac was already commencing the prelaunch checklist. "Likewise any personal stuff. We lift off in exactly one minute." He turned the process over to the computer and then sought his own light-duty vac suit in the locker just aft of the cramped passenger compartment.
    Little more than the stipulated minute passed before the shuttle rose into the alien night on grav repulsion, landing gear retracting into her belly. Sarnac swung her out past the beach and over the darkened sea on gravs, not wanting to ignite the fusion drive before getting well away from the Danuans he had met. What , he wondered, will they make of our unannounced departure? And this overpowered little military craft could make it to a fairly respectable altitude before being too high above the surface to maintain stability while reacting against the local gravity.
    "Bob!" Natalya suddenly cut into his thoughts from the sensor station. Her voice got his full attention, for it was controlled in the same way Papandreou's had been. Too controlled. "Bogies—two bogies—at four o'clock high. Range about two hundred klicks, and closing fast."
    Sarnac whipped his acceleration couch around to face her, feeling the bottom fall out of the universe of common sense. "Natasha," he said slowly, "did I understand you to say 'bogies'?" Unbidden came a lunatic image of Neolithic Danuans rigging a glider of vegetable-fiber fabric stretched over a wood frame, and rising in pursuit.
    "Affirmative, sir," she replied, armoring herself in formality. "Performance parameters are consistent with the Korvaash Talon-6 fighter-configured shuttle."
    Sarnac was saved from blithering only because Frank found his tongue and started doing it first. "But . . . but the Korvaasha are still coming in from the outer system . . . God knows how far out they are . . . they can't be."
    "It looks like they are!" Sarnac snapped. "Prepare for acceleration! Frank, get all weapon systems on-line." His hands swept over the controls, going to lift-only with the gravs and bringing the shuttle around into an eastward course. He also dropped to a lower altitude; to continue to try to make orbit would be to invite interception. Then he activated the fusion drive. The shuttle sprang ahead, pressing them into their deeply padded couches, leaving a roar of sonic boom and a wake of boiling seawater behind.
    " 'Tasha, raise Durendal and report our status." The orbiting battlecruiser was now below the horizon, but Shannon, applying standard procedure, had deployed a necklace of relay comsats around the planet.
    As the sun broke over the eastern horizon—Lugh of the Shining Spear, sun god of a small island on a world that suddenly seemed very far away—the continental coastline seemed to Sarnac to zoom insanely toward him. In an instant, they were feet-dry, fleeing eastward over forest rather than sea.
    "I'm unable to raise Durendal ," Natalya reported. Sarnac was not surprised—if fighters could be down here, so could other things able to take out a comsat. "And," she added, "bogies still closing."
    "I see they are," Sarnac muttered, most of his attention on flying the shuttle. Natalya had the details, but the gross tactical situation appeared on a small simulation for the pilot. They were indeed closing; those were high-performance combat craft. And it was too much to hope that the Korvaasha would approach from six o'clock, allowing him to use the fusion drive as a short-range plasma cannon. However, like every Fleet craft in wartime, they carried some defensive armament. And the fact that the opposition was approaching gave them a range advantage.
    "Launch at will, Frank."
    "Roger," Frank called out from the weapons station. He waited until the hostiles had crept up within range of the aft-facing launchers, taking finicky care with his targeting solution. He