Calhoun rolled with it but lost his grip on the phaser. It clattered away, skidding across the floor.
Calhoun came up and tried to dart toward it, but the Brethren was in his path. He feinted to the left and right, trying to get the soldier to commit to a move, but it didn’t work; the Brethren just stood there, as if it had all the time in the world…
He glanced at the command center and was flummoxed; he saw what appeared to be a tactical station, but there didn’t seem to be anything having to do with navigation.
Sending out one more fast prayer to the Xenexian gods, who seemed to be in a generous mood this day, Calhoun made a guess as to how the ship operated and shouted, “Hard to stern, forty-five degrees down angle!”
Obediently the ship tilted. He was right. It was voice responsive, and the speaker didn’t seem to matter.
The move caught the Brethren completely off guard. The Brethren started to call out what sounded like it was going to be “Ignore that!” But he didn’t quite get the order out and then, with his arms waving wildly, he tumbled off to one side, skidding across the length of the deck.
An instant before the ship tilted, Calhoun left his feet. He leaped past the falling Brethren and tried to intercept the skidding phaser. It slid just out of his reach, and Calhoun let the momentum of the ship carry him after the weapon.
The phaser skipped away as if it had a life of its own, and Calhoun twisted around while on his back, just in time to see the Brethren soldier leaping toward him. Energy was crackling in the palms of his gloves, and then pulse blasts erupted from them. Calhoun’s head snapped to one side and the other, barely managing to avoid them, and then the Brethren landed heavily atop him.
The only thing that stopped him from searing the flesh off Calhoun’s bones was that Calhoun had drawn up his legs at the last second, bringing his feet between himself and the soldier. The bottoms of his booted feet were pressed against the soldier’s chest, and he tried to shove the Brethren away from him, but the bastard was just too heavy. He felt the heat starting to burn through the soles of his boots even as he fought to keep the soldier’s hands away from his body.
The soldier grabbed Calhoun’s legs, and he smelled cloth starting to burn. He knew that his flesh would follow seconds later. Worse, the gloves were starting to charge up again.
“Forty five degrees up angle!” Calhoun shouted, and the ship tilted back, straightening out.
The phaser slid across the floor and into Calhoun’s grasping hand. Just as the Brethren’s glove reached full power, he swung the phaser up, jammed it into the vent in the side of the Brethren’s helmet, and squeezed the trigger.
The Brethren shuddered violently and instantly became dead weight. With a grunt, Calhoun shoved him off. Then he clambered to his feet and ran to the tactical station.
He figured out the workings of it very quickly. Whatever strengths the Brethren had in terms of their armor and their combat skills, they had made their technology exceedingly simple. That made sense to Calhoun: Why overcomplicate matters?
Within seconds he had the Brethren targeted on the tactical screens. They were milling about and looking up, because their vessel had been tilting one way and then the other, and they were wondering what was going on up there. From the Brethren point of view, this operation was intended to go briskly and by the numbers: they would jump down, destroy the Xenexians, and then their ship would presumably land and they would climb back aboard and head off to wherever the hell they came from.
“New plan,” growled Calhoun.
iv.
The Brethren were just starting to discuss with each other what they should do when their ship’s weaponry cut loose.
Their armor was such that it protected them somewhat even from their own pulse blasts, but it didn’t insulate them from the concussive effects that the blasts were packing. Those who were directly hit by the beams went down, their armor severely dented, onboard systems screaming that extreme damage had been sustained. Those who were simply within range of the blasts went flying in all directions as the pulse cannons ripped into them, carried through the air by waves of concussive force.
In no time the air was thick with dust and debris and confused Brethren staggering