Free MECH EBOOK by B. V. Larson Page B

door. Vaporous distillate dribbled from the seams of his top drawer after he left, as he had forgotten to stopper it. Smoking blue drops splattered his chair and the carpet beneath his desk.

    * * *

    The interceptors were Stormbringers, shipped out from the Nexus just two years ago, they were the latest in colonial-class atmospheric gunships. Built like a missile with short stubby wings and high-thrust lifters, the ship had an excellent feel in the air and was instantly responsive to the controls. Captain Dorman had loved the ships since the first time he saw them and they had always been a real pleasure to fly. Two hundred yards to his right was his wingman, a trusted flyer that he felt he could take with him on this mission without fear of treachery.
    “Dorman to central, we are overhauling the slower of the two unauthorized craft now.”
    “Dorman, this is Major Lee,” said a hurried voice, cutting in.
    “Please get off the channel, Major, this is a combat mission and the situation is under Nexus Cluster jurisdiction now. Come in, Harrington.”
    “You are ordered to return to base immediately. You do not, repeat do not have authorization to pursue.”
    “We don’t need your authorization now, Major,” replied Dorman, grinning inside his helmet. “The situation has been recorded and relayed to Nexus Cluster Command. The NCC will handle this. Dorman out.”
    Still grinning, he closed in and easily sat on the first of the smugglers. Although the pilot maneuvered with considerable skill, the bulky spacecraft wasn’t really designed with atmospheric flight in mind. The two Stormbringers paced the ship with absurd ease. Dorman was in fact more worried for their safety than about keeping up with them.
    “Captain, the other target is escaping to the north at a very high speed. We won’t be able to catch him if we don’t go to full acceleration in about two minutes,” said his wingman.
    That decided it for Dorman. There was no time for a lengthy effort on his part to talk the pilot down. He dropped down quickly and slid beneath the smuggler’s jetwash. “I’m engaging the target. It’s probably a decoy to keep us busy while the other slips away.”
    “Dorman!” screamed Major Lee. He had been listening in on their intercom circuit, and now interrupted. “Under no circumstances are you to engage that ship! Answer me!”
    Dorman flicked a switch, arming his forward cannons. “There seems to be some interference, sir. Could you repeat that last?”
    “Listen to me, Captain—” said Major Lee, his voice shaking with rage.
    “Unidentified craft is attempting to evade,” said Dorman breaking in on Major Lee. He knew he was covered on this one. With the diagnostics records black-boxed and relayed to the NCC, they couldn’t court-martial him for disobeying orders. If they tried, he could bring counter-charges that they didn’t dare to face in the Nexus courts. Without hesitation he set the mission selector to disable then depressed the attack studs, letting the microprocessors take over. Instantly, a quick burst of explosive pellets neatly removed the lifters from underneath the target. It stuttered, then dropped like a rock. Two parachutes opened as the crew ejected before impact.
    “Target has been disabled. Hope they all made it,” said Dorman, calling in a rescue-lifter. After one spiraling pass over the wreck, he lifted the nose back up and the two Stormbringers poured on the thrust. In ninety seconds they achieved low orbit, where they could use max thrust in order to catch up with the second ship, which was half-way to New Chad by now.

Seven

    The front doors of the arrivals section blew in with roar. Partly by luck, partly by design, no one was injured. Giants carrying heavy weapons and one normal man jogged into Grunstein Interplanetary. The giants all wore silver and black. Their huge jaws were grimly set, their boots crunched on broken glass fragments, grinding them to dust. Although he was quite