"Well, First," Telegrand said in a low voice, padding up behind. The other mice were all busy at stations, checking systems, assaying damage from the weapons hit they'd taken. "Looks like you saved our lives, ordering your Executive Officer to q-jump through the star. Got any other bright ideas?" Telegrand wasn't as cynical as by rights his life should have made him. Nor as vindictive towards his insubordinate. Primus wouldn't be disciplined, both knew. And this was as close to asking for advice from the mus as Tele would ever bring himself.

The first officer shook his head. "Sorry, boss. Tapped out for today. We can't see them; they can't see us. Well, at least not with sufficient certainty for a safe jump at us. The best their captain can hope for is a diametric jump to a really high orbit, far out of our gun range. That would put him above us, so to speak, with us between him and the start - and he'd have an easy target. But perhaps he won't think of that." Primus suspected that the hesitation of the other ship to match velocity with Sherpa had actually been wavering on the part of its commanding officer.

"We'd only have to q-jump again ourselves. Instantly." Telegrand looked quickly around the bridge, to be sure they would be assured of a prompt response. He wished he hadn't been so quick to downplay the mus' intelligence, Primus' contributions before. "Besides... maybe his engines won't allow him to q-jump that far - ours wouldn't, not through a star. So maybe the best he can do is to follow us in orbit, carefully peeking over the horizon, trying to spot us before we get a weapons fix on him."

"Aye. And I'm sure he realizes that won't be easy. The Doradus Affair, Lt. Cdr. Rupert Smith's demotion, isn't a big secret. But the way to catch the squirrel on a tree trunk is easy: you simply call in another hunter. We don't know that this guy is alone."

That was food for thought, Tele admitted.

One way or the other, without weapons, there was little they could do, even if they knew exactly where the attacker's ship was. Or wasn't. And Primus was right on the other point, Tele knew. It was madness to suppose for one moment that the attacker didn't have allies, backup which was at that very minute bearing down on the Sherpa.

"Bridget," the negalion called into the communicator at his wrist. Her image appeared, oddly serene, varnish reflecting red from an unseen indicator. "Bridget, we need the weapons operational. What's status?"

He didn't mean to hurry her, but the situation was critical. Bridget's skills at repair were first rate. She'd only ever made one mistake, had that once unfortunate failure of backup system at the same time. Telegrand clenched fangs, fought for control. This wasn't the moment for guilty memories like these.

"It's... I've found the problem, fixing it now. Just don't ask - Owww!" Her voice cut off, surreal control replaced by the clanging of a furious tool against deck grating. "I'll call ya when I've done. Bye."

Telegrand had never, not in all the time he knew Bridget, and not through all the pain he'd caused her, ever seen her so angry as to so thoroughly dismiss him out-of-paw.

He glanced towards Primus, who'd been watching. The mus was still monitoring for probability warps on their side of the star as they held position, no longer taking his eyes from the scanner. He had attended to the conversation, though, Telegrand noticed. But the mus didn't appear to have picked up on Bridget's murderous fury. So much the better, Telegrand realized, as even Tele didn't know its cause.

The black lion sat on the deck, head on paws, golden mane flowing around. Even if - assuming it worked - Bridget brought the weapons on-line again, they were still in a bind. Escape wasn't possible against a ship like that, and they were stuck in orbit around Cygnus X as their only defense. But neither would quantum-jump ambush work; it was Russian Roulette for the attacker. And hoping against hope to just sneak up on the other ship was a fool's lottery. Tele couldn't see how they were substantially any better off than they were several moments ago.

At the sound of a small sigh beside him, the negalion looked up.

"You know what's get to me?" suggested Stuart. "It twists my tail that they can't see us, and we can't see them. And whoever looks first, loses!"

"Whoever looks first?"

"Yeah. See, if we peek our noses just over the horizon, there's a chance - just a chance - that the bad guys will be waiting for us, and blow us away. Same with them hunting us.

"Yeah. I know that."

"But... what would happen if we could get them to chase us?"

"You mean... make them come over the horizon first?" It sounded intriguing to Telegrand. The Sherpa was only outmatched by the other ship in deep space. Near to the black hole, the laws of physics gave the smaller, less massy vessel the advantage in speed and maneuverability.

But even with his full ship's weapons, and the element of surprise which enticing the enemy into a catastrophic over-the-horizon chase would bring, that still wasn't enough to ensure success. And one mistake, one single miscalculation or system failure, and a much larger spaceship with certainly superior shields and weapons power would be all over them like a cat on a crippled mouse.

If only there was a way to create a diversion, Tele pined. Or some sort of trap. But how do you trap a spaceship the size of a city? It was too much like rampaging horses bearing down upon an unseated charioteer in coliseum. The Sherpa didn't carry mines, and caltrops don't work in the wine-dark sea of space - not that anyfur had used caltrops in millenia.

But slowly, like the paw of the rosy-fingered dawn of that other age, there came an idea to the negalion. By the time Bridget had rejoined him on the bridge, given her fiat to the use of the weapons (and tested them), the beginnings of a plan had formed their curds in the milky thoughts of his imagination, a cyclop's cheese in testament to greater intellect than assumed by the glance of rude appearance. Telegrand showed fangs, an unlikely predator with an ancient and uncommon weapon.

"Battle Stations!! We're gonna nail that bastard!!"

Bridget spared them the klaxon alert, but the crew jumped to, made fast for combat.

"Secundus, plot an epicycloid path - like a daisy or something. Keep us on our side of the star. But just barely. We don't want to peek out - we want them to peek in!

"Right away, Captain!"

"Bridget, arm the escape system. We're going for broke this time."

"But Tele! This isn't Dawn Treader. The Sherpa's emergency exit system is only for use when landed - it just blasts external hatches so you can crawl out."

Tele shook his mane, but the ligna feline continued unabated.

"And anyway, we don't have evacuation pods. How long can you survive alone in a spacesuit?"

Telegrand grinned. "We're not gonna bail. As soon as the enemy ship spots us, and gives chase - Primus: I want you to fix their lag time, determine how far they are behind us. Or the intercept time, if it looks like they'll overtake. I don't expect them to hang back, this try, at all. In fact, I'm counting on it!

"Primus, listen: there won't be a lot of time to spare, so I'm putting this in your paws. Get a fix on them as soon as they show up over our horizon - " Telegrand winked at Stuart, who blushed. "Then call out to Bridget. Bridget: give us full power, and point us away from the other ship. Don't bother to plot a course - just turn and run! Get as much acceleration as you can, bait the other skipper into opening up his throttles, too.

"Final step. Primus, when Bridget's hit full power, she'll call out. The other ship is sure to make its move to overtake, pronto. I expect you to have the lag time or overtake time updated and accurate by then. And on your call, we'll blast open the ship's external hatches."

"Tele! That's crazy!"

"Then as the lag time elapses, just when the other ship is about to reach the spot where we were when the hatches were blown - Primus, give the order to turn about hard, and open fire! If my guess is right, we won't even have to aim that well.

"Tele! That's crazy! You're out of your mind!"

"Crazy like a fox! (Which we haven't got.) But what will happen when we blow the doors off is that the atmosphere that's now inside the Sherpa will vent explosively into space. I figure it will expand to roughly a kilometer or so. The water vapor will instantly freeze to crystals, and the oxygen and nitrogen and what-not will spray out in diffuse molecules."

"But their shields will make quick work of it!"

"Possibly. But I don't think so. We're in deep space - better, because we're up close to the event horizon of a black hole. There aren't many stray particles out here, nothing that navigation shields won't protect us from. It's not like there's a dense atmosphere, like when we'd land on a planet, to make us power up the full ablation shields to protect ourselves from air particles. Right now, we're running with anti-weapon shields, but no particle shields. I bet the captain of the other ship is doing the same!

"And even if he isn't, it may make no difference. There's gonna be a hell of a surprise when a kilometer-sized mass of matter appears suddenly in their path at the speeds we'll both be traveling. They'll take evasive action, try and turn, rather than waste precious time trying to figure out the best way to save themselves. And in that same time, we'll be tearing them up with the weapons system that Bridget has so expertly brought back on-line.

"And if they do hit the particle field... I figure at these speeds, it will either core a kilo-wide hole through their hull, or else the velocity of the particles relative to the speeding ship will cause a huge burst of radiation on impact, point-blank inside their anti-weapons shields. I don't think it will do any less than fry every mother's son of them alive."

There was a strange silence on the bridge, Bridget noticed. The mus had all heard. She wondered if they, heads down or staring off in blankness, might not be contemplating what they were all about to do. The mass murder of the crew of the bigger ship, even in self-defense, was a far cry from Mus playing at military maneuvers in a hired ship. They were suddenly about to get blood on their paws, and war wasn't just kits at a videogame.

She knew it wouldn't be easy on the mus, if they wound up killing the other ship. She remembered the first time she and Tele had been left with no option, and fired on a Federation blockade ship. It had been a close thing, and Bridget, at the weapons that day also, didn't think to simply disable the other vessel by selective firing. The attackship, and her crew, lasted almost an hour, after. And Bridget had been too horrified to tear her eyes from the viewer, to throttle the communications channel which had been open pending negotiations. Her nightmares lasted years.

Telegrand stood calm, steadfast, with a sort of moral gravity beyond the claws of a young lion. Bridget knew that such a decision as he was having to make wasn't easy. They'd nearly given up running cheese after that first fatal encounter. Tele never once spoke of it after. But in the dead of night, she would often find him missing from their bed, adrift before the viewport of conscience and memory.

"Are we ready?" he asked, softly.

"Helm ready, Sir." Bridget knew he could use her confidence right then.

"Navigation ready, Captain." Secundus nodded, anxiety clouding her shiny back eyes.

"Aye, ready on sensors and telemetry. Shall we arm weapons?"

Tele nodded. "Power-up weapons. Full charge. And - everyfur! - check your tethers and suit seals. Once we depressurize the ship, there's no going back. And we'll head for the nearest source of atmosphere, I promise, but I have no idea how long we'll be in suits. Last chance for the head, and all..." And with his crew watching, Telegrand stepped into his own spacesuit, all stiff and musty-smelling from age and disuse. He locked down the helmet, tested the internal air supply. The bridge of the Sherpa had two suit supply ports they could all share by turns, and he jacked into one of them, testing.

He could hear the viperous hissing of the air, see the tell-tales on the suit show green. There wasn't anything to wait for, no reason left to delay. His crew trusted him, and wavering would only make them each feel more uncomfortable about what they were all about to do. Telegrand stood between them and the horror of Choice, a priest of the Existential beseeching Fate for mercy, who offers a bloody propitiating sacrifice of living beings.

The negalion raised his head, stretching his jaws as before a savanna dawn. After this point, things would happen too fast to think, too quickly to react with adaptation. The decision to trust is often harder than the decision to kill.

"Weapons ready! Sensors, stand to. Nav, be ready for evasive." That last, he need not have added, he knew, listening to his own voice echo in the electronics of the helmet. There simply would be no time for Plan B. He fastened his restraint tether, ordinarily used for spacewalks, to a pillar of his chair. It felt like no going back.

"On my mark... Engage!"

The Sherpa began an intricate, beautiful orbital pattern, something like the peaceful blossom of the lotus, and something like the joy of the daisy. At apogee she passed just close enough to the horizon of Cygnus X that a ship on the far side might detect her, give chase, yet not so far as to present a target for weapons. The view on the screen of the featureless black hole beneath them, unchanging forever past the heat-death of the cosmos, provided no clue as to their motions. Primus, assisted by Secundus, kept watch for the first traces of discovery, the signs of looked-for pursuit. It was very quiet, before it got very exciting.

"Return on sensors!" Secundus screamed through his helmet. Tele knew they'd screwed up. If the mus had seen the ship that was hunting them, they were already a firing solution in the enemy's computer.

An explosion over their heads confirmed it.

"Bridget, zenith! Full power!!"

With a surge of acceleration, the ship leapt perpendicularly away from Cygnus X. Those crew who were not already seated became so, as G-force went off scale. Only Bridget, not encumbered with the weakness of flesh, kept her head erect.

"They're coming!" yelled Primus. "Closing fast!"

"Full shields aft! Primus, can you get a fix?" Telegrand hoped they would not be fried by the guns of the pursuer too soon.

"Lead's dropping fast. He lagged that time, too. Standby escape system and weapons!"

"First, take 'em at six seconds! Ready, everyfur."

"Ten! Nine! Eight! ... Detonate!"

A deafening gale-force wind of three hundred kilometers per hour sprang up from nowhere in the cabin of the Sherpa as the atmosphere spewed orgasmically into space. Mus officers strained at their tethers as the vacuum sucked at their small bodies, tearing at will and confidence as life-sustaining air and heat was voided into the sink of time and eternity. In a flash, so rapid that nofur ever remembered hearing the explosion which ripped the external hatches from the ship, the surfaces, deck, overhead, bulkheads and controls all glazed over with a crazed sheen of ice, the ghost of humidity from the dying air.

And suddenly there was silence inside their helmets. Two seconds.

"Turn!" One second.

"Fire! Full to weapons!"

The lights dimmed, the deck shuddered, and even gravity seemed to fade, as the weapons of the Sherpa spoke with the seven-headed authority of a dragon.

Tele prayed for a direct hit, his lion's claws tipped with mercy.

Bridget held full power to the guns until the breakers tripped. If that hadn't killed something, she thought, I'm pencil shavings.

Secundus scanned space, looking for signs of success. Primus scanned space, looking for the enemy ship, sign of certain failure.

They found neither.

"Bridget! Forward rotate, drop shields. We've gotta find her. Is the vapor cloud still there?"

"Yeah, Tele. No signs of wreckage."

"There's oxidation, Captain. Nitrous oxide, unstable oxides of argon, ozone. We fired into the atmospheric net."

"Understood, Second. Did we screw up and burn the cloud away?"

"No, definitely not," answered Primus. "I monitored until we lost scanner power during our attack. The enemy ship took a hit, just as they turned to avoid the cloud. But they weren't revectoring fast enough - the surprise had got them. I was going to order Bridget to cease fire, and divert power to shields against our impact with the vapor barrier. But then they were gone."

"Gone? The whole ship?"

"Looks that way," admitted Bridget. She's not out there, and there's only traces of heavy metal ions. No wreckage."

The blast would have killed them all, had a pressurized, conducting atmosphere remained inside the Sherpa. Gravity winked out, then surged as the power systems failed, leaving Telegrand and his crew in darkness, helmets reeking of nausea and fear. The cabin seemed to heel over, and screaming mus grabbed for any pawhold available.

"Bridget! Readings! What's our status?"

"Unknown. Systems dead! Indicators inoperative!"

"Open a viewport, then! Attitude in space?"

Her voice came back cold as the eternity which awaits after the last sun dies.

"We're not in space."

"What?!"

"We're not in space. Look."

Telegrand moved to the bridge porthole, shoved her aside. They certainly appeared to be inside the cargo hold of a ship. A ship so large, he couldn't see the far bulkhead.