With a coldness that reached across the void of space and gripped their hearts with icy fingers, the three cadets heard their skipper give his squadrons the deadly order!
"Fire!"
Coxine snapped his order at almost the same instant and the three cadets felt the Avenger shudder as her turrets began blazing away, returning round for round of the deadly atomic missiles.
Racing from scanner to the control panel and back again, Coxine watched the battle rage around him. With speeds nearing that of light, exhaust trails cut scarlet paths through the black space, as the two opposing fleets attacked, counterattacked, and then regrouped to attack again. The rhythm of the blasters on the Avenger had taken on a familiar pattern of five-second intervals between bursts. Gradually, one by one, the pirate ships were hit, demolished or badly damaged, but still they fought on. Coxine, his eyes wild with desperation, now kept lining up ships in his radar sights and firing, with no way of knowing which was friend and which was foe.
Tom, Roger, and Astro watched the dogfight on the scanner in horrified fascination. Never before had they seen such maneuvering, as the giant ships avoided collision sometimes by inches. Once, Tom tore his eyes away from the scanner when he saw a rocket destroyer plow through the escaping swarm of jet boats after one of the pirate ships had been hit.
Fire and change course, fire and change course, again and again, Coxine performed the miracle of escaping the deadly atomic blasters aboard the Solar Guard ships.
Suddenly the three cadets saw the outline of a rocket cruiser bearing down on them. The white blip on the scanner came closer and closer to the heart of the scanner. Just in time Coxine saw it and shouted for a course change. But even as the Avenger swung up and away from the attacking ship, the cadets saw the flash of flame from the cruiser's turrets and a moment later felt the bone-rattling shudder of a near miss.
The control deck suddenly filled with smoke. A flash fire broke out in the control panel and the circuits sparked and flared. Tom was thrown across the room and Roger landed on top of him.
"Up ninety degrees! Full starboard thrust!" roared Coxine into the intercom. "Hurry, you space crawlers! We've got to get out of here!"
Tom quickly realized that in the smoke and confusion Coxine couldn't possibly direct the ship back into the fight. There was only one explanation. He was deserting his fleet and trying to escape.