'What now?'
He gunned the engines and threw us out over a dust bowl after the pursuit ships.
'Mouse becomes cat/ he said.
Within seconds, a bright blob on the weapons array had been covered with red crosshairs.
Ahead of us, through a landscape of giant rocks and towering mesas that whipped by at a distressing speed, I saw the flare of afterburners.
'Scratch one/ said Midas, firing the wing cannons.
The engine flare far ahead flashed and then turned into an expanding ball of burning gases which swept past us in jagged streaks.
I was pulled back into my seat as we jinked painfully down another valley. There was another flash, of sunlight off metal, a kilometre ahead.
'And two/ said Midas.
The read-out on the autoloaders notched up red tags as drums expended. The flash blossomed with light, and then again more brightly as it spun and struck the valley wall.
Something blindingly brilliant went off to our right, and the cabin rocked, alarms squealing.
'Smart boy, too close/ said Midas, hauling on the stick to avoid an incoming cliff.
One of the fighters had gauged our feint and come around across us.
Where's the other? Where's the other?' Midas murmured.
We had firepower on our side, firepower and Midas. The fighters were Lightnings, small, fast and dextrous, less than a quarter our size. For all intents and purposes, the gun-cutter was a transport, but its drive and weapon enhancements and its vertical thrust capability made it a formidable fighting ship when it came to a skirmish close down over terrain like this.
Something hit us hard, and we went over in a dizzying fall. Midas cursed and drew us back round in a tight turn. An Imperial fighter, just a blur of silver, crossed our field of vision.
Midas turned us again, and went after it. It ducked and turned down the deep gorges of the moon, flying by instruments alone in the cold shadows.
The gun-sensors picked up its heat trail. Midas fired on it.
He missed.
It tried to turn in a loop to come round at us. Midas fired again.
Another miss.
It came right at us. I could see the tracer jewels of its shots ripping at us.
Head to head. In a steep, deep gorge.
No room for manoeuvre. No room for error.
'Goodbye/ said Midas, thumbing the fire stud.
An explosion lit the deep gulf and we flew right through the flame wash.
'Had enough yet?' Midas asked me.
I didn't reply. I was too busy gripping my armrests.
'I have/ he said. Time for phase two. There's another hunter right around us, and the blindsiders will be coming up in ninety seconds. A little theatrics now. Uclid?'
The chief servitor warbled a response.
We went into a dive, hard. A display told me we were venting a trail of engine gases.
'Damage?' I asked.
'Play acting/ he told me.
The dark canyon floor rushed up to meet us.
'Jettison, Uclid/ Midas ordered.
There was a thump and a bang. The cutter rocked. Behind us, something flared.
What was that?'
Two tonnes of spares, trash and expendable supplies. Plus all the grenades from your weapons store.'
He banked us around hard, and we zoomed into a darker cavity, a wide, deep cave in the canyon base. The walls and roof seemed dangerously close.
Six hundred metres into the cave, Midas turned the cutter to the left, cutting the thrust, floodlights piercing the gloom and reflecting off the jagged cavity.
Another hundred metres, and we settled into the dust on our landing struts. Midas cut power, cut the lights, cut everything except the most rudimentary life support.
'Nobody make a sound/ he said.
The wait, which lasted for sixty-six hours, was neither comfortable nor pleasant. We wore heat gowns and sat in the gloom as, above us, the heretic fleet scoured Obol and its immediate zone for traces of us. Eight times in the first ten hours our passive sensors registered vehicle movement and scanning in the gorge where we had faked our destruction. The deception was apparently convincing.
But we bided our time. There was no telling how persistent they would be, or how patient. Midas thought it likely they might be playing the same trick as us, lying up quiet and waiting until we betrayed ourselves by movement or signal.
