They didn't need the order; Vann Larch was speaking rapidly into his hand-phone, and Alvyn Karffard was hurling his voice all over the Nemesis, warning of sudden deceleration and direction change, and while he was speaking, things in the command room began sliding. In the telescopic screen, the other ship was plainly visible; he could see the oval patch of black with the blue crescent, and in his screen Dunnan would be seeing the sword-impaled skull of the Nemesis.
If only he could be sure Dunnan was there to see it. If it had only been Dunnan's face, instead of Ormm's, that he had seen in the screen. As it was, he couldn't be sure, and if one of the missiles that were already going out made a lucky hit, he might never be sure. He didn't care who killed Dunnan, or how. All he wanted was to know that Dunnan's death had set him free from a self-assumed obligation that was now meaningless to him.
The Enterprise launched counter-missiles; so did the Nemesis. There were momentarily unbearable flashes of pure energy and from them globes of incandescence spread and vanished. Something must have gotten through; red lights flashed on the damage board. It had been something heavy enough even to jolt the huge mass of the Nemesis. At the same time, the other ship took a hit from something that would have vaporized her had she not been armored in collapsium. Then, as they passed close together, guns hammered back and forth along with missiles, and then the Enterprise was out of sight around the horizon.
Another ship, the size of Otto Harkaman's Corisande II, was approaching; she bore a tapering, red-nailed feminine hand dangling a planet by a string. They rushed toward each other, planting a garden of evanescent fire-flowers between them; they pounded one another with guns, and then they sped apart. At the same time, Paul Koreff was picking up an impulse-code signal from the third, crippled, ship; a screen combination. Trask punched it out as he received it.
A man in space armor was looking out of the screen. That was bad, if they had to suit up in the command room. They still had air; his helmet was off, but it was attached and hinged back. On his breastplate was a device of a dragonlike beast perched with its tail around a planet, and a crown above. He had a thin, high-cheeked face, with a vertical wrinkle between his eyes, and a clipped blond mustache.
"Who are you, stranger. You're fighting my enemies; does that make you a friend."
"I'm a friend of anybody who owns Andray Dunnan his enemy. Sword-World ship Nemesis; I'm Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith, commanding."
"Royal Mardukan ship Victrix." The thin-faced man gave a wry laugh. "Not been living up to her name so well. I'm Prince Simon Bentrik, commanding."
"Are you still battle-worthy?"
"We can fire about half our guns; we still have a few missiles left. Seventy per cent of the ship's sealed off, and we've been holed in a dozen places. We have power enough for lift and some steering-way. We can't make lateral way except at the expense of lift."