A small favor to be grateful for. Whatever happened to us, at least this part of my plan had worked. "Okay. We're starting our first strafing run—"

Abruptly, my headset exploded with static. I grabbed for the volume control, vaguely aware of the others scrambling with similar haste around me. "What happened?" Kelly's voice came faintly, muffled by two helmets and the thin atmosphere in the boat.

"It's occurred to him that jamming our radios is a good idea," I shouted, my voice echoing painfully inside my helmet.

"Took him long enough," Waskin put in. "What was that about the drive? He trying to get away?"

"Probably." But no matter how powerful the Drymnu's drive, with all that mass to move, he wouldn't be outrunning us for a while, anyway. "We've still got time to do plenty of damage. Get cracking."

We tried. We flew all the way around that damn ship, skimming its surface, blasting away at anything that looked remotely interesting... and in the process we discovered something I'd somehow managed not to anticipate.

None of us had the faintest idea what Drymnu sensors, intakes, or surface radiator equipment looked like.

Totally unexpected. Form follows function, or so I'd always believed. But there was clearly more room for variation than I'd ever realized.

Which meant that even as we vaporized bits of metal and plastic all over that ship, we had no idea whatsoever how much genuine damage we were doing. Or even if we were doing any damage at all.

And slowly the Drymnu began to move.

I put off the decision as long as possible, and so it wound up being Waskin who eventually forced the issue. "Gonna have to go all the way, aren't we?" he called out. "The full plan. It's either that or give up and go home."

I gritted my teeth hard enough to hurt. It was my plan, and even while I'd been selling it to the others I'd been hoping like hell we wouldn't have to use it.

But there was literally no other choice available to us now.