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The transport didn't flinch.
Forty meters.
No movement.
"Brace for impact!" said Mazer.
At ten meters, the transport jinked to the left to avoid a collision, but Mazer reacted instantly, adjusted their approach, and threw down the talons right before impact.
The two aircraft collided violently--the bottom of the HERC slamming into the roof of the transport with a bone-rattling jolt. The HERC would have bounced off had the talons not seized the side of the transport and gripped it tight. Mazer was thrown hard against his harness as alarms went off in the cockpit.
The transport dipped momentarily, then it righted itself and wiggled side to side, trying to shake loose its new cargo. Mazer shifted violently back and forth in his harness, the talons creaking and straining.
Wit called up from the back. "We can't do this if they treat this like a rodeo. Are their shields on?"
Mazer flipped through the exterior camera feeds and saw that the talons were a few inches away from the transport's hull. "Affirmative. Shield's are still up."
"We can't hold on forever," said Wit.
"Then we convince them to turn off their shields. Are you still strapped in?"
"Yes, but what you are planning? I've had enough aerial maneuvers."
"Last one," said Mazer.
He shut off the forward thrusters. At once he felt the increased drag and decreased velocity. Now they were dead weight. The transport was pulling them through the air, the HERC held in place by the biting grip of the talons, like a spider clinging to the back of a sparrow. Mazer reached into the holofield and rotated the HERC's two jet engines: one ninety degrees to the right, the other ninety degrees to the left. Now both intakes pointed inward, perpendicular to their flight direction.
"We're going to roll. Hang on."
Mazer tapped the throttle on the left engine, and the sideways thrust put the HERC and transport into a barrel roll, rotating them 180 degrees. Now the HERC was upside down, with the transport upside down and above them. Mazer equalized the thrust on the two engines so they exerted thrust in opposite directions and held the HERC in that position.
"Get ready," said Mazer. "If I'm right, they'll deactivate their shields any moment now."
"We're upside down!" said Wit.
"The plan's the same. I open the hole in the floor, now the ceiling, you cut through and pop in grenades."
"They'll deactivate their shields because they're upside down?" Wit shouted.
"No, they'll deactivate because I'm taking away their gravity."
Mazer rotated the direction of the grav lenses 180 degrees and switched it to full power. Whenever the HERC flew upright, everything above it had less gravity because it deflected the gravity waves from Earth. Now that they were inverted, he had to flip the lenses to achieve the same effect. It also meant the grav lens could once again keep them aloft.
He imagined what was happening inside the transport, with the Formics suddenly experiencing less gravity. Were they strapped down? Were they standing in the cabin? Either way, he'd give them a shake and return the favor. He tapped the two throttles back and forth, rocking the transport from side to side.
The Formics didn't disappoint. Suddenly the HERC flew backward and then caught itself at the rear of the transport, jolting Mazer violently. For a terrifying instant he thought they had been hit with something. Then he realized that the Formics had disengaged their shields and the HERC's talons had clung to nothing for a fraction of a second until they had pinched inward and gripped the hull.
"Shields are down!" Mazer shouted. "Opening door."
The door in the floor of the cabin opened, filling the HERC with the roar of the wind. Mazer watched in his helmet feed as Wit moved to the hole, reached upward with the laser, and cut into the transport's hull.
It was going to work, Mazer thought. It was a ridiculous, half-baked idea, but it was going to work.
Then he saw the Formics.
There were three of them--there in front of him, outside the windshield, clinging to the hull of their transport, flat on their stomachs, looking right at him. They wore gloves on the end of their appendages shaped like flat discs that clung to the surface of their ship. Magnets perhaps.
They scurried forward, rushing toward him, and Mazer saw that his initial assessment was wrong. Only four of their appendages clung to the transport. The other pair held a weapon, short and cylindrical like a dirty metal jar.
