Lowering her eyes, Rina shook her head, her distress visible.

"Neither am I the same person I was a year ago."

Had she gotten through to her? Could this woman-child do what Dax could not; believe that the woman Califa had been was as dead as this Rina's parents?

Rina lifted her gaze, not to meet Califa's eyes, but to linger on the golden collar. "Why did they do that to you?"

Eos, help me, Califa thought, if I tell her it was because I once owned her king, she will never forgive me. Just as Dax never will. She didn't think she could bear the loss of them both. Then she jeered at herself silently;you never had Dax to lose.

Still, she chose her words carefully.

"They blamed me for the escape of a slave."

"So they made you one?"

Califa nodded.

"Was the escape your doing?"

"No."

She wavered, wondering if going on would do any good. It hadn't with Dax, but he had been so very angry, so horrified at the fate of his dearest friend...For an instant she felt a pang of self-pity, an emotion she had denied herself since the age of nine; there had been no one to care whenshe had been cast into slavery. And in that moment of weakness, the words slipped out.

"But I did not help them to catch him, when I could have."

Rina considered this for a moment, her eyes fastened on Califa with that look that seemed incongruously ancient.

"Would it have saved you?" the girl asked at last.

"Perhaps not my position." She fingered the collar. "But it would have saved me this."

"Then why didn't you help them?"

Hadn't she asked herself that question a thousand times, especially in the nights after she'd recovered consciousness after the implantation of the collar's probes? Hadn't she cursed herself for her stupidity, the Coalition for its injustice, and Shaylah Graymist for her betrayal? Yet in the end, she had done nothing. She had been offered her freedom, the return of her honor and position, even a reward, for one simple thing: the name of her one true friend.

"I...To help them, I would have had to betray a friend."

Rina's eyes widened. Her gaze went to the collar, then back to Califa's face. "It must have been a very dear friend."

Califa's mouth twisted wryly. "My only friend."

Shaylah had had many, Califa knew. She drew people to her. While she herself...discouraged them.

Only Shaylah had persisted, had insisted on calling her friend until Califa had let down her protective walls enough to let her in.

Irony again, Califa thought. How many times had she baited Shaylah with jokes about her belief in love and bonding in the face of the legislated reality of uninvolved mating that was the doctrine of the Coalition? How often had she indulged herself in that casual pleasuring, secure in her knowledge that since she never cared beyond the moment, she could never be hurt? And now here she was, shaking at the anger of one man, and devastated at the thought that he hated her beyond redemption.

She forced her mind to abandon that futile subject, and looked again at Rina. "Tell me, then, Rina. You were my friend yesterday. Do you hate me today?"

"I...I don't know. I wish"

The alarm that blasted down theEvening Starts pa.s.sageways was near-earsplitting. Rina leapt to her feet.

"An attack!"

Almost simultaneously with the words the ship jerked fiercely. The lights flickered, then came back on steadily. The sound of running footsteps echoed back to them. Rina ran to the door, shouted at someone pa.s.sing. An answer came, short and sharp, and Rina voiced a curse that would have done the crude Hurcon proud.

"I'm not sitting here waiting it out," Rina snapped. Another blast shook the ship; again the lights faded and returned. Rina reached out to the door to the small room.

"Rina, please, no!"

The girl looked back at her.

"Don't lock me in here. If there's more damage, or a fire"

"But Dax said"

"I know. He's very angry with me. But I can do you no damage, not without risking myself. And I cannot reach the bridge, or the weapons or fighter stations." Rina looked doubtful. "I can't explain now, there's no time. But the collar limits me."

Still Rina hesitated. "I don't know."

"Do you really wish me to die before you make up your own mind whether I deserve to? Even Dax"she barely managed his name"is waiting to decide that."

Again the ship shuddered, and this time the lights flickered and went out.

"We'll all die if this keeps up," Rina said grimly, "so I guess it doesn't matter." Then she was gone, racing up the companionway toward the bridge.

Califa stood for a moment, unable to quite believe the girl had left her unconfined. Then she dashed out into the pa.s.sage.

She could hear the distant shouts, and the firing of weapons. It had been a long time since she'd been in battle, yet the adrenaline rush was familiar and exhilarating. But she had no part in this battle, and if she tried to change that, she would no doubt be executed on the spot. At Dax's order. And, she grudgingly admitted, were she a captain faced with the same set of circ.u.mstances, she would do the same.

But at least she wouldn't die cowering in some dark, small closet of a room. If she were to die, she wanted to see her enemy. And that was one thing shecould do.

She saw no one as she ran to the narrow stairway she had last seen as they had dragged her down them and to Dax's quarters. TheEvening Star jerked again, staggering her, but the shields held. She knew the shields of a ship of this cla.s.s would normally have given way on that third hit; obviously Dax had modified well.

She was halfway up the steps when they took another hit.Sparks spewed across the pa.s.sageway below her. She froze as two men, Larcos and another she'd never met, hurried past, never even looking up to notice her.

"crazy! That's a Coalition cruiser out there!" the one unknown to her was yelling.

"Of course it's crazy, but try telling Dax that! He's d.a.m.ned well decided the fighter can help, and he's the only one who can fly it."

"He'll be fried before he gets off a shot"

They had disappeared around a comer, headed, Califa realized from the layout of the shipand the end of the collar's rangefor the launching bay she had heard held two small fighters. She didn't know what kind, the crew was at least that cautious around her, but if they were the Y-cla.s.s ships, long discarded by the Coalition, that other skypirates had been known to have, they were in trouble. The fighters were solid, and fast, but the price was maneuverability; their lack of agility was what had made the Coalition abandon them. And what had consequently made them available on the underground market to any skypirate with the funds.

And if Dax was going out after a Coalition cruiser alone in a Y-cla.s.s fighter, he was worse than crazy. He was suicidal.

She scrambled up the last of the stairs and onto the observation deck. As usual it was not lit from the inside, to avoid becoming a bright and irresistible target.

She could see nothing. She checked again in all directions, but saw nothing but the reaches of s.p.a.ce, a scattering of stars, and the distant sparkle of Boreas, a bit brighter than the stars, as if the ice there were collecting what light there was and sending it on.

Her mouth twisted wryly at the thought; she knew quite well it was only the planet's relative nearness that made it seem brighter than the more distant others. She'd never been given to such frivolous thinking, that had been Shaylah's domain. Her mouth quirked as she wondered if that, too, along with the gift of flight, was a trait of Triotian males: the subverting of logical thought into silly fancifulness.

The Coalition ship must be out of the line of sight of the observation deck, she thought. If she just waited, at some point the angle would be right andNo sooner had she thought it than there it was, just coming into view on the port side. They'd called it right; it was a Coalition cruiser, a lightweight warship, fully armed and approaching in an attack stance.

But it would do them no good. Dax would never surrender. He would fight to the death, because he knew, as she did, what would happen to these men, already so devastated by the Coalition, if they were captured. And Rina. She didn't want to think what would happen to the girl in the hands of a victorious Coalition crew. But she knew, and she knew that Dax knew.

As she pictured what was happening aboard the Coalition vessel, something occurred to her. It was standard on some smaller Coalition ships, Shaylah'sSunbird had been so equipped...She turned and ran to the comlink panel on the bulkhead beside the steps. She tapped various parts of the panel until it lit up. She studied the markings for a moment. There were enough similarities to systems she knew that it took her only moments to find what she wanted. She raised the volume until she was sure she had the bridge communications tuned in, then ran back to her position below the curve of clear plaxan.

The cruiser might be larger, and more heavily armedalthough she didn't know what armament the Evening Star carriedbut next to the quick, agile brigantine, it would be a Daxelian slug. Even as she thought it, she heard Roxton's voice crackle over the comlink.

"So they think they can take us with a few cannon rounds, do they?"

Laughter, sharp and tinged with an adrenaline pitch Califa recognized all too well, came over the comlink. Dax. Her heart seemed to quiver for an instant in her chest, forgetting its natural function.

"Then they can join those who have tried before."

She heard a burst of noise, a cheer for Dax's bravado. But from what she knew of his reputation, it wasn't bravado at all, it was fact. She found herself smiling without knowing quite why.

"Give me fifteen seconds on my mark, Rox."

"Right, Cap'n."

A pause, then, "...two...one...mark!"

"Copy," came Roxton's voice.

Califa held her breath, waiting, wondering, watching. No matter that Dax had clearly turned theEvening Star into a very special ship that performed beyond her original design, there was no way anyone could turn a cast-off CoalitionY fighter into anything that could go up against "Eos," she breathed as something caught her eye to starboard, "what in Hades is that?"

She'd never seen a ship like it. The only two things she was sure of were that it could only be, at that size, a fighter of some kind. And that Dax was flying it. She would have known even had she not heard the two men talking; the very look of the craft would have told her it was his.

It was a long, slim delta shape of sharp, angular planes, with a power source at the tail that glowed oddly blue against the blackness of s.p.a.ce. It had no markings, was just a pure, unrelieved black that would make it difficult to track by eye alone; only the fact that it had come into her line of vision silhouetted by the distant glow of Boreas made her sure she had seen it at all.

And it was moving faster than anything she'd ever seen.

The dark fighter rolled up and over the top of theEvening Star. At the same instant, theEvening Star herself fired; long-range thermal cannon, it appeared. The fiery nimbus of disruptive energy hit near the bow of the Coalition ship, then spread and leapt along the shields in a glowing display. Another round followed, then another, lighting up the cruiser's shape against the darkness.

"Three hits, Cap'n."

"Copy, Rox."

It would only weaken the shields, not take them down, Califa knew, unless they expended many more rounds. If they had nothing larger, they were in trouble, she thought; the cruiser normally carried a dozen of the same cannon, and a full complement of photon guns. But if they did have something bigger, then Roxton was wise to hold back.

And then, belatedly, she realized that that had not been the sole purpose of the succession of blasts.

They had also been a diversion, to distract the crew of the Coalition ship from the appearance of the fighter. And it had apparently worked; the cruiser hadn't changed position, but Califa could see the dark, wedge-shape closing fast.

"They've spotted you," Roxton warned Dax.

"Too late," Dax said.

She could almost see him grinning. Before his words had faded away, she saw a burst of light from beneath the dark fighter. It faded, but her trained eyes spotted the thin glow that arced toward the Coalition ship, headed straight for the weakened portion of the shields.

A torpedo. He had a photon gun aboard that lethal-looking craft. She saw it hit, explode, and the cruiser shuddered. When the debris cloud cleared, she saw that the cruiser had been damaged, just how severely she couldn't tell.

Without realizing it she tensed, leaning forward as she stared out at the battle scene. She had forgotten the reality of it. She had taught tactics for so long, had used nothing but models or computer-generated simulations for so long, that she had lost the edge, had forgotten the tension, the adrenaline rush...That she felt it again now, in a ship going up against her old colleagues, seemed only another example of the travesty her life had become.

She could almost see them aboard the Coalition ship, shifting tactics, adjusting to a second flank. When the cruiser altered course, she instinctively nodded at the accuracy of her guess. They were playing this by the book most of which she had written. They would maneuver until they were in position toHer breath caught in her throat. If the Coalition captain indeed took a page out of her own book...

It wasn't a conscious decision, she just ran to the corn-link and spoke into it without thinking.

"Roxton! They'll maneuver until you're both ahead and then lay down an all-direction field of fire with everything they've got. Get out of here!"

"Who in Hades"

"She's right, Rox!" Dax's voice came sharply over the speaker. "Full speed, head on! Full port thrusters at the last second!Now, Rox!"

Califa realized instantly what he was doing, and she couldn't stop the flood of pride that swept her.

Without question Roxton followed Dax's orders; Califa felt theEvening Star accelerate powerfully. The Coalition ship loomed larger through the bubble.

Califa nearly laughed aloud. It was a stunt worthy of the wiliest of opponents, and with any luck it would take the habit-bound, regulation-choked Coalition vessel by surprise. To see their intended victim suddenly bearing down on them on a collision course at full throttle would no doubt freeze them into shock. Not for long, Coalition crews were too well trained, but those few moments gained could be the difference between escape and destruction by the rain of firepower about to be unleashed on them. All Dax would have to do was get clear himself He wasn't going to do it.

She saw the delta-shaped shadow, arrowing down at the cruiser. Lightning bright bolts from a thermal cannon erupted in a stream as constant as a laser tracer from the belly of the fighter; lighting the cruiser's weakened shields until the ship itself seemed on fire.

He was making sure theEvening Star escaped. He was making sure the crew of the cruiser had too d.a.m.ned much to think about to lay down that lethal field of fire for another precious few moments. And he was d.a.m.ned close to making sure he got killed in the effort.

She watched the fighter plunge, still firing, until it seemed that all three ships would collide, leaving nothing to mark their destruction but a ma.s.s of debris that would drift for aeons.

"Pull up, Dax," she whispered urgently. "Pull up!"

Only when theEvening Star veered sharply right did she realize she hadn't once spared a thought for her own destruction. The seeming suicide of the man in that extraordinary craft had consumed her to the point of forgetting her own ship was on a deadly course. But Roxton had followed Dax's orders to the letter. And Dax's ruse had worked; the Coalition ship had never gotten off another shot at them.

But had his life been the price? Was that why he had insisted on taking a fighter out alone? Had he truly intended to commit suicide, to sacrifice himself in the hopes his ship and his crew could escape? She couldn't see, the Coalition vessel was far out of her field of vision now. She wanted to ask, but she doubted Roxton would answer her, even now. Then she realized she would probably know all too soon of Dax's death; the comlink was still on. Even as she thought it, Roxton's voice blasted the sudden stillness.

"Dax, we've lost sight of you. Come in!"

Silence. Califa sank down into a chair; she had no choice, her knees were suddenly too wobbly to hold her.

"Dax, come in!" Roxton's voice had risen, taking on a note of anxiety. And the silence continued.

Califa shivered violently.

"Dax!" The anxiety had become desperation. Califa wrapped her arms around herself, as if that could stop the hollow ache inside.

And the silence settled down over her like the deadly cold of s.p.a.ce.