Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [163]
The view shifted, and Conrad gasped. A father would never forget the face of his son, though years of captivity had made him haggard and gaunt. Robb was alive!
He could barely contain his excitement. He wanted to shout to Robb and let him know that they would find some way to rescue him.
Two warglobes emerged from the clouds, accelerating toward him. He had been spotted! As the diamond spheres shot upward, Conrad scrambled with the scout's controls. His heart pounded. He had to get out of here, report to Earth, convince the EDF to send a rescue mission. His small vessel was unarmed. He had no option but to run. Reversing trajectory, he streaked away.
As Conrad retreated, he was surprised to see a Manta cruiser moving toward him from interplanetary space. For a moment he thought reinforcements had come to help him--maybe they could rescue Robb!--but an ominous message broadcast on a standard EDF frequency: "Scout ship, stand down. You are our prisoner."
Conrad spotted the insignia, scanned the ID numbers, and realized that this was Admiral Stromo's Manta--the one hijacked by Soldier compies. He veered away in a hard one-eighty that nearly made him lose consciousness, or at least lose his lunch. Then he goosed the scout's engines and shot out of Qronha 3's gravity well.
The warglobes ascended in pursuit, gaining on him. Blue lightning crackled from the pyramidal protrusions. Remembering exercises from when he was a young soldier, Conrad dipped and circled, dove back toward the planetary clouds in a porpoising maneuver.
The huge warglobes could not adjust their courses so easily. Conrad reached the far side of the planet as Stromo's stolen Manta closed in. Jazer blasts ripped through space, missing him by such a narrow margin that the static discharge overloaded the scout's secondary systems. Now he wished he had a smaller, faster ship.
Throwing caution to the winds, Conrad powered up the Ildiran stardrive even before he was safely out of the system. As he accelerated, another blast from the Manta's weapons damaged his engines. Stuttering away to safety, Conrad lurched off course and engaged the stardrive.
The warglobes and the turncoat Manta closed in on the spot in space where his ship had been. Too late.
96
TASIA TAMBLYN
Even constant terror could be mitigated by sheer tedium. How in the world had Robb endured years of this?
After an uncountable number of days trapped within Qronha 3, Tasia found the monotony maddening. They couldn't go anywhere, couldn't plan anything, couldn't imagine even a crazy chance of escape. They exercised, told stories (many times over), and devised games with what little they had. Mostly, though, they just sat together, minute after minute after minute. She was surprised the captives hadn't killed each other even faster than the drogues had.
Worse than boredom, though, was when something did happen.
A Klikiss robot plunged its beetlelike body through the membrane wall like a rogue asteroid. Smith Keffa squirmed away, crying out in abject fear. The alien machine lumbered forward with a stormy sense of urgency and focused its red optical sensors on EA. "You are a spy."
The suggestion was so unexpected and absurd that Tasia actually burst into laughter. "And you're a deranged can opener."
The robot droned, "This compy has transmitted information about our activities here. We can no longer permit this."
Though baffled by the nightmarish situation, Tasia moved protectively next to her compy. "How can EA possibly be a spy? Who would she communicate with?" Robb grabbed her arm to pull her away, but she shook him off.
The Klikiss robot paused as if considering whether it should bother to answer the question. "We