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Before anyone could speak, another transmission came. "Acknowledge. Acknowledge. Repeat. If you can hear me, Victor, acknowledge."
It was Lem. Victor wiped his holopad clear and popped up the holo antennas in the four corners. Lem's head appeared before them.
"Lem. It's Victor. We read you."
"Where the hell have you have been? I've been hailing you for ten minutes."
"You weren't getting through. It was the radiation. We've taken the ship."
"Yes, well the Fo
rmics know that and now they're coming to take it back. Both landers have launched from Earth. Every Formic on the planet climbed back inside the landers, and now they're coming for you. All of them."
The landers? Victor looked at the faces of the others. No one said a word.
"Our shatter boxes are useless," said Lem. "They won't initiate unless they're exactly opposite each other, and the cables aren't long enough to get on opposing sides of the lander obviously. Our lasers aren't doing much better. We're leaving scratches and scorch marks and that's it. The landers' shields must be down, but we don't have the firepower to take advantage."
"Are you still in the Valas?" asked Victor.
"I'm in my fighter," said Lem. "I'm with ships of the shield. We're tracking with the landers, coming your way, but we can't stop them. Nothing can stop them."
"We can't let them reattach to the ship," said Mazer. "If that happens, they'll retake it. It's over."
"They'll retake it," said Deen, "but they can't go anywhere. We scuttled it."
"They'll repair it," said Mazer. "They'll kill us, fix the ship, and get right back to taking Earth."
"What about a nuke from Earth?" said Victor. "If their shields are down--"
"Won't work," sad Lem. "None of us are armed with nukes. If we had a military fleet already out here, it would be a different story, but we don't. We've got a few mining ships with a few useless weapons. I'm sorry. Maybe we can reach you first and get you out in time."
"I'm not leaving," said Mazer. "We took this ship and we're holding it."
"How?" asked Shenzu.
"We destroy the landers before they reattach," said Mazer. "This ship is a weapon. We use it against them. We've done it once. Let's do it again."
They all looked at Victor.
"Is that possible?" asked Shenzu.
Victor thought a moment. "Maybe. If we can leave the launch tube and get back inside the ship. Benyawe, what are the radiation levels?"
"They've plummeted ever since Wit cut the gamma plasma. And they're dropping further by the second. It's nearly ventilated. In a few minutes, we could probably go back inside."
"Probably?" said Shenzu. "I'd like something a little more definitive than 'probably.'"
"If Benyawe says we'll be fine, we'll be fine," said Victor. "And I'm with Mazer. We should hold the ship and destroy the landers, if we can."
"What are we suggesting here?" said Shenzu. "Fire gamma plasma at the ship? We can't do that. If we open the gamma plasma again, we'll send radiation back into the ship through the rotated nozzles. We'd kill ourselves."
"So we rotate the nozzles back again," said Victor.
"Flip them back around?" said Deen.
"I know how to roll the ship," said Victor. "The apertures in that area are still open. No one has closed them. If we turn the gamma plasma back on, those same nozzles will fire and no others. I'll go to the helm and rotate us so we're pointing those nozzles at the landers when they arrive. Then I turn the wheel and we blast it."
"You'll only hit one of them," said Mazer. "You won't hit both. Can you rotate the ship fast enough after you hit the first one to slice through the second one?"
