Suicide Mission

THE BLACK PLASTIC ship nosed up alongside the Khalian frigate—black, so that light-based sensors couldn’t find it, and it couldn’t be detected visually as it drifted in between the ships of the Khalian perimeter; plastic, so that radio-based sensors couldn’t find it. Darts sprang out from its side, darts tipped with synthetic-diamond covering explosive charges. They slammed through the Khalian’s hull, and four explosions mushroomed their heads.

Inside the black barracuda, winches whined, reeling in line, pulling the two ships close together. Then a metal ring slammed into the Khalian, and current flowed, binding the collar to the Khalian while automatic screws dug into the ship’s skin. A man sprang onto the mesh tunnel that joined the collar to the plastic ship and began slapping explosive gel onto the Khalian’s hull in a widening circle.

Bound together in an embrace of hatred, the two ships floated in the void. Distant stars gleamed—Khalian ships and Terran ships, twinkling with death as they circled Dead Star 31.

When he was a kid, Corin had wished he’d had a brother. And sometimes he’d wished his father could stay home all the time, like other dads.

He wished he’d had anything but three older sisters and a younger one, and a mother who screamed at him all the time.

“It’s a chance for a breakthrough,” the captain said. “It’ll only work once—but it only has to. Break through their line, and there’s their home world, right in front of us. We have one chance in a hundred of bringing it off, but it’s worth the risk.” He raked the line of marines with his glare, “Any questions?”

Silence.

Then Sergeant Krovvy stepped forward. “Sir!”

The captain turned back, frowning. “Yes, Sergeant?”

“If the odds of success are one to a hundred, what’re the odds on coming back alive?”

The captain grinned like a shark. “How about one in a million?”

That was when Corin stepped forward.

The captain turned to him, frowning, “Are you volunteering, or just going crazy?”

“Volunteering, sir.” Hands to his sides, eyes straight ahead, face wooden.

“Should I call the medics, or should I ask why?”

Corin shrugged. “Anything’s better than waiting through a stalemate like this.”

The captain nodded. “And ... ?”

Corin grimaced. “I want to find out what the plan is.”

“And you’ll only learn that by volunteering.” The captain nodded. “Good enough.” He turned back to the other marines. “Anyone else?”

He looked up and down the long, silent row.

Sergeant Krovvy cleared his throat and took another step forward.

The captain’s grin touched his ear lobes. “Two out of fifty! Not bad, not bad at all! But I need a dozen. One more! One more to die for the glory of the Fleet! ... No one? Dismiss!”

The corporals barked, and the marines marched away.

“You two.” The captain jerked his head toward the airlock. “Come on.”

Aboard his courier, he told them the plan.

Which was great. Now Corin knew it couldn’t work.

Daddy was away. Daddy was always away, and when he was home, he was in his room.

“I told him you shouldn’t let him keep coming through our yard,” Mommy had yelled at him. “I told you, and told you, but you wouldn’t even ask him to stop!”

“It’s not that important,” Daddy had mumbled.

“It is that important! I don’t want some old coot walking through my yard just any time, without even asking! That’s why I went to the lawyer! And do you know what he said? The old man’s got the town council declaring it a right of way! But would you lift a finger to stop him? Oh, no!”

And Daddy had gone to his room. Daddy always went to his room. And stayed there.

It was a dumb idea, but Corin had known that when he stepped forward, even though he hadn’t heard what it was. But he knew that it couldn’t possibly work, and that even if it did, it would get every last one of them killed. And when he found out what it was, he was sure.

But it would be worth it just to get this infernal waiting over with, he told himself. It would be worth it.

It was really very simple. Pick out the largest ship in the Khalian horde, find a frigate next to it, board that, and use its guns and torpedoes to shoot the other down. There were rumors the Khalians were using larger ships. Then the Fleet’s dreadnoughts could bull through the gap, swatting lesser ships as they went—and the captured frigate could keep running interference for them, shooting down any other Khalian ships within range. It should be able to do a lot of damage before the other Weasels figured out what was happening and blew it to vapor.

The trick was getting close enough to board a Khalian frigate without the Weasels finding out, by eye or by sensor, and being able to take over so fast that they couldn’t call for help. Which they weren’t apt to do. The Khalian ideal of cooperation being what it was, the Weasels would want to take care of their own interlopers.

Privately, Corin figured the captain’s odds on coming back were a little high.

But that, he realized with surprise, was okay with him. In fact, it was just fine.

“Take out the garbage, Corey,” Mom said. “Don’t be like your father, always putting it off.”

So he took out the garbage and came back in, and she said, “You missed the bathroom wastebaskets. Go do them all.”

He hated the bathroom wastebaskets. Darlene made such a mess out of them, what with her makeup tissues and hair and all.

And when the wastebaskets were done, and dinner was over, she came out screaming, “You didn’t wash it out! Now go out there and take the hose, and wash out that wastebasket!”

It was November, and it was cold and dark, and his hands were blue when he came in.

Except for the long rows of facing seats, the ship was stripped to the hull, and the marines were stripped to raw emotion. They sat, belted in, tense and expectant. The ship rocked, and Corin knew they had fired their grapples. He waited, taut, till he heard the crash of the electromagnetic collar taking hold of the Khalian’s skin. What if it isn’t iron?

Just in case this Khalian’s hull wasn’t ferrous, the electromagnetic ring had borers built in. The grinding noise filled the Fleet ship as the long screws bit into the pirate’s skin.

“Demolition!”

“Here!” And Valius was, as the iris dilated in the side of the barracuda. He leaped through and started slapping plastic onto the Khalian hull, building it out in a widening circle almost to the lip of the circular electromagnet—a shaped charge, strong enough to blow a hole in the side of a spaceship, strong enough to kill anybody who happened to be in the chamber it holed.

Overhead, plastic vaporized in a long, wide trough.

“Stand fast,” the captain ordered. “He can’t depress his cannon any more than that—and you’re already breathing your own tanks.”

The marines were all in pressure armor, of course, breathing bottled air. And by the time the pirates were suited up, the marines would be among them.

The barracuda’s hull vibrated, but the humming of the pump dwindled quickly as it pulled air out of the ship’s interior and into storage tanks.

Valius scurried back, a length of wire unreeling between himself and the circle of explosive.

“Blow!” the captain commanded.

And it did, incidentally, cutting the feeds for the frigate’s artificial gravity.

Corin. It was a perfectly good boy’s name, his father had told him so. It came from Shakespeare; it was the name of a shepherd or something. But there was a girl in school. She was named Cornelia but everybody called her Corey, so the boys called him Corey, too.

“Corey, Corey! Tell us all a story!” they’d yell in a mocking singsong.

And he’d come home with a black eye, still trembling, still angry, and his mother had started screaming, “Do you know who that was? That was your teacher on the phone! She told me she saw you picking a fight out there in the playground! Don’t you ever do that again!”

And the anger had surged up, and he had shouted, “Mom! He hit me first!”

“Don’t you dare shout at me!” Crack! The slap caught his face where it still ached from a punch, and she was screaming, “They always hit you first. I know your kind, you always find some way to make them hit you first.”

“They were making fun of me. They were calling me ‘Corey!’”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a perfectly nice name.”

“It’s not! It’s a girl’s name! I want a boy’s name. Why didn’t you give me a boy’s name!”

“How dare you speak to your mother that way!”

This time, he saw the slap coming, and ducked.

“Oh! You little monster! Don’t you dare try to get out of your punishment!” She grabbed him by the shoulder this time and boxed him on the ear, so his head was ringing with her screams as she slapped him and slapped him again.

They saw their own hull vibrate with the blast, saw the burst of smoke, saw the sudden hole where the explosive had been, saw the mist as the air exhausted from the frigate.

“In!” The captain’s voice roared from his earphones, and Corin dived through the mesh tunnel and into the Khalian frigate, holding down the trigger button with his thumb, spraying slugs in a cone, all around him. Three of his mates jumped in with him, their cones blending with his. Who cared if the slugs pierced the Khalian’s hull? Who cared if they lost air? They had their helmets on, and they were trying to kill the Khalians, anyway ...

And they had. The hell with the bullets, too. Three dead Weasels drifted in the nets they used for bunks, half uncurled from sleep; one even had his sidearm in his hand. But little red globes drifted away from their noses and mouths. One had a big globe, as though he were blowing a bubble of death. Explosive decompression had done the marines’ work for them.

As he reloaded, Corin stared at the dead, floating Khalians, and thought, These were the easy ones.

The other boys had found out about the old folk song and jeered after him all over the playground, but he didn’t dare fight, or Mom would scream at him. His little sister, Snookie, had heard them and started singing it as soon as they came in the door.

“Wake up, wake up, darlin’ Corey! What makes you sleep so sound?”

“Shut up,” he snapped at her.

“I don’t have to shut up. This is my house, too, you know.” And she turned away, singing. “Now, the first time I saw darlin’ Corey, she was sitting by the sea ...”

“Shut up!”

“Why should she shut up?” Mom jumped on it even as she came into the room, glaring. “You don’t give orders here, Corey. She can sing whatever she likes, in this house. And don’t you dare try and stop her!”

So he had to swallow his anger and turn away, and after a while, Mom had tired of hearing the song and sent them out to play. It was catch, and she hadn’t brought the glove up in time, and the ball had hit her cheek, and, with a sick sinking in his stomach, Corin had realized what Mom was going to do to him when Snookie ran in screaming—

Unless he could make Snookie laugh it off.

So he shrieked in horror, “Snookie!” and dashed over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Did it hurt?”

She was still a moment. Then she laughed a little, blinked away the forming tears, and chuckled, managing a brave little smile. “Naw, it was just rubber.”

And they had gone back to playing catch, Corin with the sickening knowledge that he had caved in, capitulated, chickened out and before he was even challenged.

Corin glanced about the chamber, seeing the circular holes at fore and aft, either end—hatches, blocked now by steel plates. The Khalians didn’t waste money on anything inessential, but they had every safety feature in the book. Valius had placed his charge where the fo’c’sle was, to make sure they took out any crew who were off duty. It had worked; they had taken three out of six or seven—but as soon as the pressure had dropped, bulkheads had sealed off the fo’c’sle from the rest of the ship to limit loss of air and Khalians. Now the rest of the Weasels had both.

“Jakes and Boblatch, aft!” the captain barked. “Valius, make room for ’em.”

Valius slapped a shaped charge on the aft bulkhead.

“But, Captain,” Jakes objected, “there won’t be anyone there.”

“If there isn’t, you can come join us fore. If there is, you can join us after he’s dead. Blow it, Valius.”

The bulkhead blew; air blasted out. Jakes and Boblatch dove through into the galley.

“The rest of you come fore.” The captain turned. “That charge ready, Valius?”

“Uh ... it is now, Captain.”

“Blow it,” the captain commanded.

Smoke erupted in the hatchway, awesome in its silence.

“Don’t just stand there gaping,” the captain bellowed. “Now!”

Sergeant Krovvy hit the trigger button as he pushed himself through the hatch—and his head exploded.

Corin stared at the expanding globe of red and gray, his stomach heaving.

“You were supposed to make the sale!” the sales manager. “We don’t keep you here just so you can walk around looking important!”

“I—I’m sorry.” Corin lifted his chin and set his jaw, but he could feel his shoulders slumping. “He even had me chalking up the measurements, and then he just said that—”

“I heard what he said! I heard what he said to me! That you’re an arrogant little twit who shouldn’t even be working in the stockroom!”

“All I said was that he should wear the cuffs a little higher ...”

“If they want advice, they’ll go to a couturier! You’re just here to sell the clothes, understand?”

“But, look! If he got ’em chalked up wrong, he’d be a dissatisfied customer!”

“Don’t argue with me!” the sales manager bellowed.

“I’m not arguing, I’m trying to explain—”

“Don’t.” The boss’s eyes narrowed. “Explain it to Welfare. You’re fired.”

Corin’s mouth opened in a scream as he dove through the hatch, landing flat on his belly, slugs chattering out of his gun, the recoil kicking him back. But his heels butted against the bulkhead as two Khalians trained their own slug throwers on him. A ricochet smashed into the barrel of his rifle, stinging his hands as it wrenched the weapon away, but Lurkstein shot through to join him, as did Danvel and Parlan, their weapons shuddering. The Weasels had to split their attention, while Corin could pull his rifle back, check it, and aim his stream of bullets sweeping across one Khalian, then the other. Danvel’s body bucked, gouting redness, but the Weasels flipped backward, almost jackknifing. They were probably screaming, but they were wearing pressure helmets, and the atmosphere was gone, and they had a different com frequency from Corin’s. Then Lurkstein’s and Parlan’s slugs caught them, and their bodies spasmed in a grim dance of death, but they wouldn’t be screaming any more.

Then Morton and Dunscythe were in, racing past what was left of Krovvy, and Valius was slapping a charge on the forward bulkhead across the room, and suddenly, the cabin seemed to be filled with Fleet marines.

The captain was pulling Corin up by the arm. “Hurt, mister?” the voice demanded in his earphones.

“No, sir,” Corin gasped, giving his head a shake. “I should be, but I’m not.”

Catherine laid down the menu. “You could have let me order first!”

Corin looked up, startled. “I waited. And you didn’t order, so I went ahead.”

“And made it look as though I was just waiting to disagree with you. Honestly, Corin, just because we’re living together, doesn’t mean you get to run my life!”

“I didn’t order for you.”

“You could have offered. It just so happened that I did want the chicken Kiev, but I couldn’t say that after you had ordered it.”

“There’s no crime in our liking the same things,” he protested.

“Look, if you think you’re going to boss me around, you can just forget about this whole relationship!”

“But I wasn’t trying to boss you around.”

“Well, just see to it that you don’t.”

Corin finished reloading just as the deck lurched out from under him, and Dunscythe went cartwheeling across the chamber. All Valius could do was hang on for dear life as the gel he’d been applying flipped away off the bulkhead.

“The Weasel’s taking evasive action!” the captain yelled. “Grab hold!”

Marines grabbed for handholds wherever they could find them, and Corin grabbed an ankle and pulled himself up enough to grab someone else’s arm, which he used to pull himself up some more. Then he got a hand on the fire-control console and pulled himself to his feet. It was like climbing a mountain with a hundred-pound pack, but he made it, pulling himself up and reaching out to grab the lump of quivering gel.

Then, suddenly, the bottom of the hill was its top, then its side; the pilot was tumbling to his left, and Corin slammed into the console. Pain seared through his hip, but he kept his holds on both console and explosive. Then he pushed himself away enough to get a foot against the console’s side, and he flipped around enough to grab the T-handle the Weasels used for dogging hatches. He inhaled sharply, stiffening his muscles against the pain in his side, and hauled himself up to slap the lump of plastic onto the bulkhead.

“That’s it, Private,” the captain’s voice said in his earphones. “Pound it out, now!”

Corin hit the lump twice before “up” suddenly became “sideways” again, and “down” was under his back. He hung on to the T-handle grimly, jackknifing to get a knee over one bar of it, and went back to pounding the gel.

“Shape the sides, now,” the captain told him. “Make it a dome.”

Corin pushed and prodded the material, wondering crazily if he was supposed to be a marine or a sculptor.

“All right, now back off,” the captain snapped.

Corin unhooked his knee and let his body swing out at right angles to the bulkhead, hanging by his hands. He checked below, saw empty wall, and let go.

He dropped like a rock, absorbing the impact with bent knees, and grabbed a stanchion.

Then the captain hit the button, and the hatch blew in.

“Look, I like Jody, and if I want to go out to lunch with her, I will!”

“All right, all right!” Corin turned away, raising his hands. “So we don’t have a lunch date. So I’ll see you this evening.”

“Not ‘this evening.’ I have a sales meeting.”

“All right. I’ll be here when you come home.” Corin wondered if he really should be. He wondered if he should ever have moved in with her,

“Oh, that’s right, just load me with the guilt trip!” Ellen stormed. “Poor little Corin, who just can’t stand to be home alone! Not a friend in the world—”

“That’s enough,” Corin grated.

“Nowhere nearly enough! Be a man, will you?”

Corin turned, frowning. “I thought that’s what I was.”

“You’d never know it at night.” Ellen marched over to the door and yanked it open. “Try to get some rest when you get home, will you? Maybe things will work better.”

“Down” ceased to exist; the explosion had rattled the Weasel pilot enough to make him let upon the acceleration. Either that, or he was bracing for combat ...

“Get in there!” the captain shouted. He slipped a hand under Dunscythe’s boots and threw the marine like a javelin. He flew through the hole, but he hit the trigger button too soon, and the recoil bounced him back out again. Just in time. Weasel slugs were hailing around the hole in the bulkhead, with the odd one careering through to ricochet among the marines. They took cover fast, but one creamed Dunscythe’s knee on the way. He yelped and pulled himself into a ball as he bounced into a corner.

“Just two of them left!” the captain shouted. “They can’t hold off seven of us forever.”

But they could, and he knew it. They had one hell of a defensive position.

Then the pilot went back to playing games—but this time, he outsmarted himself.

Suddenly the new hole was “down.” Corin glanced about him, aimed his feet toward the gap, and let go. As he fell, he swung his rifle down to aim right in front of his toes. The Weasel let up on the acceleration, but Corin had a lot of momentum by the time he shot through the hole and hit the trigger, moving the rifle to make a cone.

Slugs spattered around the pilot’s cabin as the recoil slowed him just enough for a safe landing.

A safe landing on nothing! Nothing under him at all, nothing but blackness filled with stars. There was a huge hole in the hull with a console in front of it, complete with two Weasels in pressure suits, pointing rifles at him. Them or me, he thought crazily, and swept the stream of bullets toward them.

A blur swept past him, and a spiderweb spread across the stars at his feet. Of course! It wasn’t a hole, just a huge view port to give the Weasels 270-degree vision. They were still primitives; they still wanted eye contact, in spite of their screens.

He landed bending his knees to take up the impact against the solidity of the panoramic port that lay between him and the rest of the universe. He looked up to aim, just in time to see the Weasels go cartwheeling away in streamers of red from holes in their suits. He glanced up and saw two marine rifles poking through the hole in the bulkhead with helmeted heads behind them.

Then he realized there was pain in his rib cage, swelling and swelling until it engulfed him, till all the world was a sheet of bright pain that darkened, and was gone ...

“But he’s my father, for crying out loud!”

“But I want to go see Swan Lake.”

“Well, if you’d just told me you had tickets for it, I could have—”

“What, am I supposed to report every little thing to you? Are you going to try to keep tabs on every little move I make?”

“Well, no, but I thought you were going to be out late again tonight, and—”

“And you could go slinking off to whimper all about me to your father!” Ellen sighed and shook her head. “Honestly, Corin! You’ve got to grow up and get away from him some day.”

“I’m pretty far now! I only see him when he’s in town, and that’s only once or twice a year.”

“Real solid citizen, isn’t he?” Her lip curled. “Can’t even hold a job in one town.”

“He’s a salesman!”

“Yes, and after forty years at it, he still can’t make sales manager. You shouldn’t ever talk with that loser!”

The rage surged up, but so did the shame—and with it came the sharp awareness that he shouldn’t pick on a woman. So he just stood there, growing pale and rigid.

“Look,” she said, “if you know I’m right, just say so.”

Corin turned on his heel and slammed out of the apartment.

He went back the next day, packed his clothes in one suitcase and his books and knickknacks in another, and walked out. There was nothing left that mattered; he could buy a new computer easily enough, and he wouldn’t miss any of the little presents she had given him.

All that was left was two months’ rent on the lease. He sent it in a single check and didn’t tell her his new address.

The pain was back, but it was dull, remote. Corin found his oxy intake in his mouth; he spat it out and cranked his eyelids open.

The captain’s face grinned down at him.

Corin squeezed his eyes shut.

“Back on duty, mister,” the captain said cheerfully. “I patched your suit ... and you, too.”

“Set my ... ribs?” Corin opened his eyes again.

“Taped them. It’ll hold you till we’re through here.”

Corin looked down and saw a wide band around the abdomen of his suit. “What happened to the pain?”

“An anesthetic.” The captain’s grin widened. “Plus five shots of adrenaline.”

Just then, it bit. Suddenly, the mental fog cleared, and Corin felt fine, just fine, if feeling like a current was flowing through you was ‘fine.’ “I don’t need that much, Captain.”

“So pay it back when the battle’s over.” The captain jerked his head toward the console. “For now, get over, there. Your buddies are having a great time blasting blips, but you’re the only one who talks Weasel.”

Corin felt the elation begin. He grinned, set his feet under him, and pushed off.

He grabbed the center of the console and swung himself down to stand behind Kank and Lisle. The screen was alive with green blips and red blips, and the two marines were each moving a set of cross hairs around the field, pressing trigger buttons and leaving bright spreading pools of yellow wherever they touched a green blip.

The com grid chattered crazily in Weasel.

“That’s for me,” Corin said.

Kank looked up, irritated, then reluctantly moved aside to make room for him. Corin swung himself down onto the odd contour that served as a Weasel chair.

The chattering went on.

Corin could just make it out; it translated roughly as, “What the hell is wrong with you, Frigate Thirteen?” He pressed the mike patch and shrilled back, “Control system malfunction. Beware! Move clear! Directional control system malfunction! Fire control system malfunction!”

On the right-hand side of the screen, a larger blip was appearing, and in the view port, a disk was swelling as Lisle nudged his joystick—the Khalian cruiser, such as it was. Corin realized he couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes. If he could just stall the Weasels for a little longer ...

“Sheer off! Sheer off!” the Weasels were chanting frantically.

“Control system malfunction!” Corin yammered back, watching Lisle center his cross hairs on the biggest blip. “We have lost steering capacity! Acceleration is locked at full thrust! We are attempting to regain control! Stand by!”

“Cease firing!” the Weasels answered in a manic gibber.

“We cannot,” Corin answered, and Lisle hit the button on his joystick. Corin went on, “Guns are locked at full fire. We are trying to cut the circuit, but it will not respond.”

The laser beam was on its way, lancing out at the speed of light toward the cruiser, invisible where there was no atmosphere, no dust. Corin locked his sights onto the cruiser too, and hit his button, staring at the expanding disk of the cruiser, hoping, hoping ...

The next Weasel phrase translated roughly as, “They are mad, or their ship is!” And another gibber answered, “They must be destroyed.”

Then light blossomed on the side of the cruiser.

“But you were so right!” Corin stormed, turning away from Nancy. “Everything was perfect while we were dating! You were so beautiful, and the music wrapped us up, and the two of us were all there was, just the dancing and your eyes—”

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Do you know what you’re doing to me? Stop it!”

He turned back to look at her—eyes red and swollen, tangled hair hiding half of her pudgy face, bathrobe a little too far open, showing just a glimpse that was supposed to be tantalizing but was flat now, and sagging.

“Your friends would be my friends, you said.” He moved back toward her. “And my friends would be your friends.”

“If you think I’d be seen in public with that bunch of superannuated sociopaths—”

“All right, so we won’t! Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve even talked with Sean or David?”

“Aw, poor little boy! Not a friend in the world!”

He reddened. “Not yours, certainly.”

“You don’t think I’d let them see me like ... this!”

“Why not?” he flared. “You let me see you like this.”

“But you’re my husband!”

“So I deserve less than your friends?”

“You should be ashamed to let my friends see what you’ve turned me into.”

“Oh, so I made you drink like a fish? I made you quit going to the health spa?”

“Yes! And I just can’t face them now.”

“I won’t ask you to,” he sighed, turning away. “But I did want to take you out again. We used to have such a good time.”

“While you still had a job, sure,” she snapped. “And you asked me to give up mine ...”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

“You did.” Her lips thinned. “I distinctly remember you sitting there on the sofa nibbling my ear and saying, ‘Give it up, honey. I’ll take care of us both.’ ”

“I didn’t! We were sitting there on the sofa, all right, and I was nibbling your ear, but you were saying, ‘Look, now that you’ve got such a good job, I don’t really need to keep working, do I?’ And I said—”

“I did not! How dare you accuse me of lying! Just because you couldn’t keep your ‘good job.’ ”

“Look, the company went broke!”

“I should have realized you’d choose a loser!”

He looked up slowly, eyes narrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She gave him an acid smile. “It takes one to know one.”

He was beside her in a single stride, fists clenched, eyes glaring.

She flinched back, hands upraised. “Go ahead, hit me! I don’t care!”

He almost did, just because she had said she didn’t care. But he caught himself in time and stormed out the door.

He always did that. He always wound up doing that, somehow, whenever they had a fight—always going out the door.

Some time, about two hours later, he came out of a morose alcoholic fog to look up and see a sign that said JOIN THE FLEET! with a picture of a marine in front of a spaceship.

He looked around and realized that it was the only lighted shop window left on the street; even the bar down the block had turned off its sign.

So he went in—just to get warm, he told himself. It was the only warmth in sight.

He never went back. He’d never even been within five light-years of Earth since then. But his paycheck went to her every month, and his letters went out every time they touched a Fleet base. She never answered them, though—until he received the letter from her lawyer with the divorce papers.

The beam didn’t show in space, but its impact did. And Corin was one with the two sets of cross hairs: one with the particle beams that were burning through to the cruiser’s control systems, and one with the torpedoes that sped toward it with warheads of nuclear death. He could finally kill everything in sight with a clear conscience—ships, Weasels, Khalians, bosses, lovers, wife, sister, mother! But Corin could see the sudden snowlike hail of blips that were torpedoes, moving outward from a dozen Khalian destroyers like hate and the consuming hunger that women called love, and coming finally to destroy him, as he had always known they would, to purge him in the fire of annihilation, but too slowly this time, too slowly ...

Then the largest blip on the screen turned yellow, and in the view port, the expanding disk mushroomed, swelling in a moment to double its diameter. The five shots of adrenaline had Corin at threshold anyway, teetering on the edge, and the sight of that fiery blossom blew him over into the sheer, blinding ecstasy of fulfillment, the fulfillment of destruction. As he saw Lisle’s cross hairs traversing downward to the swarm of torpedoes. and as he moved his own joystick to follow, he knew they couldn’t ever get them all, knew that even if they did, they couldn’t stop the lasers that must even now be burning through the hull to crisp them all.

He hoped a torpedo would make it first.

Then one did; its warhead blew up in their power plant, converting their fusion-generator into an H-bomb and, in the instant of life left to him in the midst of the nuclear flame, the consciousness that had been Corin knew it had all been worth it.