The bent nose of the Unfettered punched through another cloud bank just before the starboard stabilizer wrenched off the hull in a spray of sparks and charred wiring.
Len Dixon had managed to strap himself in at a systems console to Adelman's right. He watched as the soldier struggled to bring the spinning ship under control, to no avail. “We're coming apart,” the journalist observed. He wanted it to come out calmly, but it didn't. It came out a bit shrieky, which earned him a grunt and an eyeroll from the novice pilot.
“Maybe you want to take the helm?” Adelman growled.
Dixon shook his head, but didn't apologize for pressuring at all. He didn't know exactly why he cared. In a few hours, the poison injected into him by the aliens would kill him. What difference would it make to die like this? At least it promised to be quick and painless when it came. He felt bad about Adelman, though. Len wanted to ask about friends and family back home. He didn't want to die knowing nothing but the guy's name. But then another stabilizer fin shredded off the Unfettered and he recognized that their existence could now be measured in seconds.
Too bad I'm in the wrong cosmic neighborhood and the implants are offline, he thought. First-person footage of the obliteration of Soltek's faster-than-light prototype ship would be an Infomatrix ratings bonanza for Jack Lambert and the rest of the crew at CBN.
He checked the sensor holodisplay, watched as – now in topographical mode – it showed the ship's rapid intercept course with the peak of a tall mountain on the primary continent. Len Dixon didn't have the audience of billions that he enjoyed just yesterday, but he still had Adelman. Possibly, the soldier was a fan of his work. Perhaps he had watched the neurojournals on a regular basis. If so, Adelman deserved to have proper closure. He deserved to hear last words from a celebrity that didn't come out like a panicky back-seat driver. It ought to be something extraordinary, but not maudlin. Dixon didn't do mopey or sad. Instead, he decided to be as open and honest with his final words as he could possibly be. He wanted to give Adelman an insight into himself as a person, inexplicable and strange like everyone else.
“It kind of turned me on when Captain Panderyn knocked me around,” Dixon said.
Adelman jerked his head around to stare at him, mouth gaping. By the time he did so, however, the journalist was watching the holodisplay again. The Unfettered's white dot was about to slam into the icy mountain top, which was taking up most of the forward window of the cockpit. Good timing, Dixon thought. No awkward moments here! He waited, ready, for the choirs of angels or the army of pitchfork-carrying imps or the simple utter blackness to take him to oblivion.
He didn't expect the sudden arrival of a larger craft, sliding between the Unfettered and the mountain in time to target the Consortium vessel with some kind of blue energy field that arrested their descent and prevented impact.
“Oh, fuck me,” Dixon sighed, rubbing his palm on his forehead. He couldn't bring himself to look over at Adelman, but they were both far more interested in the newcomer that had snared them neatly in the skies above B'hira. The alien fighters moved to flanking positions around the wedge-shaped utility vessel that had captured the Unfettered in some kind of tractor beam. Then, while the occupants of the Consortium starship watched, the Unfettered seemed to start disassembling itself. Hull plates and rivets popped loose, floating free. Spars and bulkhead braces rolled away in all directions. Before long, Dixon and Adelman drifted in a glowing blue field of scattered starship debris, suspended about one hundred feet above the slope of the mountain. Then bits of the Unfettered closed around, under, and above them again, taking on a new shape: A heavily armored cell with a narrow glass window in one bulkhead. Through the window, Dixon watched as their new prison was pulled slowly aboard the towing vessel.
“Now THAT was pretty fucking wild,” the journalist noted, looking at Adelman with a goofy grin on his face.
Adelman wasn't smiling. “Stay on your side of the cell, cupcake.”
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