XIII
Beowulf was bad.
Valkanhayn and Spasso had both been opposed to the raid. Nobodyraided Beowulf; Beowulf was too tough. Beowulf had nuclear energyand nuclear weapons and contragravity and normal-space craft, theyeven had colonies on a couple of other planets of their system. Theyhad everything but hyperdrive. Beowulf was a civilized planet, andyou didn't raid civilized planets, not and get away with it.
And beside, hadn't they gotten enough loot on Amaterasu?
"No, we did not," Trask told them. "If we're going to make anythingout of Tanith, we're going to need power, and I don't mean windmillsand waterwheels. As you've remarked, Beowulf has nuclear energy.That's where we get our plutonium and our power units."
So they went to Beowulf. They came out of hyperspace eight light-hoursfrom the F-7 star of which Beowulf was the fourth planet, and twentylight-minutes apart. Guatt Kirbey made a microjump that brought theships within practical communicating distance, and they began makingplans in an intership screen conference.
"There are, or were, three chief sources of fissionable ores,"Harkaman said. "The last ship to raid here and get away was StefanKintour's _Princess of Lyonesse_, sixty years ago. He hit one on theAntarctic continent; according to his account, everything there wasfairly new. He didn't mess things up too badly, and it ought to bestill operating. We'll go in from the south pole, and we'll have togo in fast."
They shifted personnel and equipment. They would go in bunched, thepinnaces ahead; they and the _Space Scourge_ would go down to theground, while the better-armed _Nemesis_ would hover above to fightoff local contragravity, shoot down missiles, and generally provideoverhead cover. Trask transferred to the _Space Scourge_, takingwith him Morland and two hundred of the _Nemesis_ ground-fighters.Most of the single-mounts, landing craft and manipulators andheavy-duty lifters went with him, jamming the decks around thevehicle ports of Valkanhayn's ship.
They jumped in to six light-minutes, and while Valkanhayn'sastrogator was still fiddling with his controls they began sensingradar and microray detection. When they came out again, they weretwo light-seconds off the south pole, and half a dozen ships wereeither in orbit or coming up from the planet. All normal-spacecraft, of course, but some were almost as big as the _Nemesis_.
From there on, it was a nightmare.
Ships pounded at them with guns, and they pounded back. Missileswent out, and counter-missiles stopped them in rapidly expanding andquickly vanishing globes of light. Red lights flashed on the damageboard, and sirens howled and klaxons squawked. In the outside-viewscreens, they saw the _Nemesis_ vanish in a blaze of radiance, andthen, while their hearts were still in their throats, come out of itagain. Red lights went off on the board as damage-control crews andtheir robots sealed the breaches in the hull and pumped air backinto evacuated areas, and then more red lights came on.
Occasionally, he would glance toward Boake Valkanhayn, who satmotionless in his chair, chewing a cigar that had gone out long ago.He wasn't enjoying it, but he wasn't showing fear. Once a Beowulfervanished in a supernova flash, and when the ball of incandescencewidened to nothing the ship was gone. All Valkanhayn said was: "Hopeone of our boys did that."
They fought their way in and down, toward the atmosphere. AnotherBeowulf ship blew up, a craft about the size of Spasso's _Lamia_.A moment later, another; Valkanhayn was pounding the desk in frontof him with his fist and yelling: "That was one of ours! Find outwho launched it; get his name!"
Missiles were coming up from the planet, now. Valkanhayn's detectionofficer was trying to locate the source. While he was trying, a bigmelon-shaped thing fell away from the _Nemesis_, and in the jiggling,radiation-distorted intership screen Harkaman's image was laughing.
"Hellburner just went off; target about 50 deg. south, 25 deg. east of thesunrise line. That's where those missiles are coming from."
Counter-missiles sped toward the big metal melon; defense missiles,robot-launched, met them. The hellburner's track was marked firstby expanding red and orange globes in airless space and then byfire-puffs after it entered atmosphere. It vanished into the darknessbeyond the sunset, and then made sunlight of its own. It _was_ sunlight;a Bethe solar-phoenix reaction, and it would sustain itself for hours.He hoped it hadn't landed within a thousand miles of their objective.
* * * * *
The ground operation was a nightmare of a different sort. He went downin a command car, with Paytrik Morland and a couple of others. Therewere missiles and gun batteries. There were darting patterns of flightsof combat vehicles, blazing gunfire, and single vehicles that shot pastor blew up in front of them. Robots on contragravity--military robots,with missiles to launch, and working robots with only their own mass tohurl, flung themselves mindlessly at them. Screens that went crazy fromradiation; speakers that jabbered contradictory orders. Finally, thebattle, which had raged in the air over two thousand square miles ofmines and refineries and reaction plants, became two distinct andconcentrated battles, one at the packing plant and storage vaults andone at the power-unit cartridge factory.
Three pinnaces came down to form a triangle over each; the _SpaceScourge_ hung midway between, poured out a swarm of vehicles and bigclaw-armed manipulators; armored lighters and landing craft shuttledback and forth. The command car looped and dodged from one target to theother; at one, keg-like canisters of plutonium, collapsium-plated andweighing tons apiece, were coming out of the vaults, and at the otherlifters were bringing out loads of nuclear-electric power-unitcartridges, some as big as a ten liter jar, to power a spaceship engine,and some small as a round of pistol ammunition, for things likeflashlights.
Every hour or so, he looked at his watch, and it would be three orfour minutes later.
At last, when he was completely convinced that he had really beenkilled, and was damned and would spend all eternity in thisfire-riven chaos, the _Nemesis_ began firing red flares and thespeakers in all the vehicles were signaling recall. He got aboardthe _Space Scourge_ somehow, after assuring himself that nobody whowas alive was left behind.
There were twenty-odd who weren't, and the sick bay was full ofwounded who had gone up with cargo, and more were being helped offthe vehicles as they were berthed. The car in which he had beenriding had been hit several times, and one of the gunners wasbleeding under his helmet and didn't seem aware of it. When he gotto the command room, he found Boake Valkanhayn, his face drawn andweary, getting coffee from a robot and lacing it with brandy.
"That's it," he said, blowing on the steaming cup. It was thebattered silver one that had been in front of him when he had firstappeared in the _Nemesis'_ screen. He nodded toward the damagescreen; everything had been patched up, or the outer decks aroundbreached portions of the hull sealed. "Ship secure." He set downthe silver mug and lit a cigar. "To quote Garvan Spasso, 'Nobodycan call that chicken-stealing.'"
"No. Not even if you count Tizona giraffe-birds as chickens. ThatGram gum-pear brandy you're putting in that coffee? I'll have thesame. Just leave out the coffee."