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Jason was distracted from answering that question by what was happening
outside. "Look in the southern half of Orion, Mitch."
Jason could see the drives of the light cruisers. They were several degrees
apart. Suddenly one of the ships turned briefly into a glowing pearl a bomb
had spent itself against the ship's Dykstra shield.
Another pearl appeared down and to the right.
There had been no drive flame there, and Jason assumed one of the Belt ships
had gotten off a missile of its own.
A fireball flared on the extreme left of the view. "Damn, that was another one
of our fighters," Mitch said.
"I couldn't tell," Jason replied. "We have three ships left, then."
"At the moment."
A set of three pairs of white streaks converged in the region of the light
cruisers. Pearls appeared around each ship, but instead of fading, grew
brighter and brighter. Almost simultaneously, the pearls collapsed to be
replaced by incredible explosions that again momentarily overloaded the
viewscreen. The screen came back up just in time for Jason to witness the last
fighter going up, which again knocked the viewscreen out for a welcome
three-second-long respite.
"That's that," Mitch said. "Maybe they'll leave now."
Jason was watching Mitch's cutter again. A white streak terminated near him.
Cranking up the magnification, Jason could see the alien ship. "There's one
behind you, Mitch!" he yelled.
The alien fired and Cutter One turned into a thousand pieces with no shortage
of hellfire and smoke.
"Oh damn."
Jason noticed the berg he and Mitch had carved out. Another of the aliens was
by it. One by one it drilled the thruster ships, and the explosion of the last
was hammerblow enough to cause the berg to shatter. Then the ship turned and
started accelerating toward
Lulubelle
.
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- Chapter 4
But Jason had been waiting for this. He was already lining up his ship
properly. The lasers used in cutting comets apart, though not tuned to the
optimum frequency for attacking shields, were nevertheless among the most
powerful ever constructed by the Belt.
Jason picked his moment. He let the alien have it with the full fury of the
cutting beam. A pearl, followed by a most gratifying glimpse into hell, and
the ship was no more.
Jason expected the others to come get him. Instead, he witnessed seven white
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streaks that disappeared into the vastness of interstellar space.
He turned up the radio transmitter to full. "Is anybody out there?"
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Contents
Framed
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- Chapter 5
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- Chapter 5
I
The alien femur lay clamped in its cradle within the sealed chamber, not
showing much of anything yet.
Primarily a tube of steel, the interior crosshatched with countless interwoven
struts, the bone was extremely strong. It was the sort of thing one might
expect to find in a piece of heavy equipment, like a bulldozer or crane, which
befitted creatures who relied on hydraulics pistons, cylinders, and pumps to
make their bodies go.
The bone looked slimy.
It was covered with a thin nutrient solution, a close copy to the wet
environment inside of a living
Phinon. Or so Samantha MacTavish hoped. Right now, her genanobugs were
flitting through that slime.
They had work to do.
Sammi watched the monitors with intensity. In addition to the camera viewing
the bone from the side, another was situated to look down the long axis
through the interior of the tube. She wanted to observe the activity of the
genanites from both angles.
Though it was through her toil that this set of bugs had come to be, she
wasn't certain how they'd behave in the real environment. Would their attack
on the surface of the bone appear first, or would the interior structure
suffer the initial ravages of the bug invasion?
Blond, beautiful, with a smile so bright it had earned her the nickname of
"Sunshine," Sammi had of late borne witness to none of the usual adjectives
her friends would use to describe her. Lately she'd been tired, drawn, and it
was obvious that she'd lost weight, and most certainly not in a good way.
An internal sensor indicated that the bone's temperature was rising slowly.
Sammi continued to watch.
She'd been toiling in the lowest regions of the System Patrol High Command
complex for weeks now, working hellishly long hours, sleeping only when she
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