Carrier seemed unhurried. There was no indication that adrenaline powered him; it was more like he was going through a set of mechanical motions, cut, parry, dodge, cut. He would keep doing it until Hayden was dead.

Hay den dove for the door but Carrier anticipated him. They came together in the center of the room, thrusting with their sword-arms while reaching to try to catch sleeve or foot with the other hand. For frantic seconds they tumbled and then a thrust by Carrier took Hayden through the. left bicep. He shouted at the jolt of pain.

Carrier gave a grunt of satisfaction. Hayden tried to pull back but Carrier fluidly moved with him, keeping the blade embedded in flesh as Hayden cursed.

Not so gracefully, Carrier flailed at a wall-strap with his other hand. He caught it—barely—and swung his sword, with Hayden attached, outward. Hayden knew he was seconds away from being placed motionless in midair, out of reach of the walls, at which point Carrier could bounce around and cut him to pieces at his leisure.

Desperately Hayden let go of his own sword, grabbed the blade of Carrier's, and pushed. The metal slid out of his skin, dotting the air with blood, and then Carrier yanked it out of his grasp, slicing Hay-den's fingers open to the bone. Hayden writhed out of the way of the backhanded cut that followed. He tried to snatch his own sword out of the air but it had drifted too far away. He saw then that he really was stranded, two meters from the nearest handhold.

Carrier sneered and stood up from the wall-strap which he'd hooked with his foot. Hayden twisted around again and managed to kick the older man in the face. As Carrier cursed and spat blood, Hayden very slowly drifted across the room.

Carrier dove past him again with a vicious slash. Hayden did as Katcheran had drilled him to do: he rolled into a ball in the air and presented his feet to the blade. The sword chopped right through the tough leather but a cut foot wasn't going to kill him. And the pressure of the blow put him closer to the bike.

His sword twinkled as it turned on the far side of the room. Carrier perched at the inner door now, and was carefully lining up his next jump. This time he would thrust rather than cut, Hayden knew; there would be no evading the blow.

He stretched out, reaching for the bike. Carrier laughed. "Even if you can reach that what are you going to do?" he asked. "Throw ft at me? Bounce somewhere? I'll never let you get your sword, yo i know."

Hayden's taut fingers brushed the curving metal of the bike. Ami Carrier jumped.

"FULL ABOUT!" CHAISON dove for the portholes, missed his grip, and banged his chin on the wall. He pressed his face up against the glass, staring out at vast sensual curves of green-lit cloud. He still had the advantage here, because the dozens of flare drifting out of the cloudbanks lit only a small volume; the plan had counted on the fact that there were many smaller clouds dotting the edge of winter. His ships could dive through them with impunity. But while the six battered, obsolete Slipstream vessels still had an advantage of speed and maneuverability here, it wouldn't be enough. Falcon simply had too many ships.

The Rook pivoted in midcourse, air tearing at its hull, and Chaison strained to catch a glimpse of what was behind her. Lurid tumbles of cloud; arms and arches of vapor. And emerging from it only one other ship, so far.

"All batteries, target that ship! Don't give it a chance to sound!' Too late. Even as the first rockets lurched toward the distant cruiser, a faint echo of its clear-air signal came to Chaison's ears. Hi cursed. "Take it out! "The noise of battle would prevent most of the other vessels from hearing that lone horn—but if only one picked it up, it would repeat it, and so would every other one that heard.

Soon the clouds would be ringing with the signal that open air had been found.

He went back to the radar display. The shadow of Falcon Formation's giant ship still lay some miles inside the cloud, and it was slowing. "All ships: put everything into stopping the dreadnought. Release parachute nets ahead of it, mine the air—anything!"

—Hammering sound of bullets hitting the hull. Sudden flame of a missile veering past. He heard the Rook's own machine-gunners opening up at something. "Put us back in the cloud deck," Chaison commanded as he regained his chair.

The ship took a hit before they managed to escape into the mist. There was chaos over the speaking tube for about a minute, then an all-clear. Chaison frowned at the indiscipline, but most of his attention was on the radar.

They had arrived at this battle late. Daybreak was little more than an hour away. By the time Falcon's suns were glowing full, Venera would have had Mahallan switch Candesce's defensive systems back on.

During this long night of dark maneuvering, Slipstream had thrown the Falcon Formation fleet into disarray, had wiped out its bikes and smaller vessels, and scored crippling blows on a number of midsize ships. The troop carriers appeared damaged as well. But that was all—and it was nothing.

If they didn't score a decisive blow to Falcon's invasion plans in the next minutes, the whole mission would have been for nothing.

"Sir!" It was the radar man. "We—I think we've lost a ship."

Chaison looked where he was pointing. One of the fast-moving dots on the screens had broken in two pieces. As he watched the pieces subdivided and disintegrated. The dots dissolved into smudges on the screens.

"Any idea who that was?" Chaison asked into the sudden silence. He scowled at the display. The damn fools flirted with a mine cloud.

There was silence in the bridge; the men glanced at one another "Back to the dreadnought," Chaison commanded. "I want the cutters packed with explosives—warheads, bullets, everything we've got. Rockets haven't had much effect on it, so we're going to ram something bigger down its throat."

Aid if those don't work, we'll make the Rook itself into a missile.

CARRIER JUMPED.

Hayden grabbed the seam of the bike's saddle and pulled as hard as he could.

The cargo net he'd stuffed under the saddle flowered into the ail and he spun as best he could, throwing it at Carrier. The spymaster shouted and tried to evade it but he was in midleap now and there was nothing he could do. Tangled, swearing furiously, he bounced off the bike and back into the air.

Hayden planted both feet on the metal and pushed. The dive took him across the length of the room and he plucked his sword out of the air before spinning and kicking off from the far wall. Carrier was struggling to free his sword from the net; his awkward parry went bad and suddenly he was staring down at Hayden's sword which stuck out of his chest.

"Wh—" He tried to reach up; failed, and looked in Hayden's eyes. Carrier was trying to speak.

"Don't talk to me," said Hayden. "The one you need to explain yourself to isn't here. You'll see him soon enough." He let go of the sword, turned, and jumped back to the bike. Reaching around the exhaust vent, he caught a loop of the thin cable he'd stashed there before they had left the Rook. He pulled out the loop and began to unreel it.

When he was sure Lyle Carrier was dead he unwove the net from around him, and attached the cord to it. Then he moved to the door and looked for the first of the packages he'd ordered Candesce to provide.

AUBRI MAHALLAN WAS acting very nervous, and it was driving Venera crazy. After the tenth time that the woman bounced a circuit around the room, Venera said, "Is there something you need to do?"

Mahallan shook her head, becoming very still. "No. Nothing."

"Then settle down. It's not your husband who's in the middle of a battle right now. Your man's just down the hall."