Tommy and Vashti reached the front door of the hangar.  It was unlocked, and Tommy opened it trepidatiously, watching for signs of a guard.  As she stepped inside, an alarm sounded.

“I guess they know we’re here,” she said.

“Did we trigger that?” Vashti asked.  Tommy looked around.

“I don’t see anything that we might have hit, but we’d better move all the same.”

Going straight ahead they passed through double doors into the vast cavernous space that housed the huge saucer-like spaceship.

“Why does everyone think that spaceships should look like saucers?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Ours did,” Vashti replied.  “It’s reasonably aerodynamic, crosses the atmospheric boundary reasonably smoothly, deflects debris efficiently, and also retains heat fairly well.”

She didn’t really need to know all that.  She also didn’t really need to find the spaceship.  She glanced left and right, and decided that if she went left she would be following the wall that would lead to the loading bay where Derek had seen the Blackmask Gang.  She waved for Vashti to follow and struck out in that direction.

It took less than a minute for the gang to come into view.  They were carrying crates in through a doorway and up a ramp onto the ship.  Tommy stopped walking; Vashti stepped up beside her.

“How do you want to handle this?” Vashti asked.

The question surprised Tommy.  She thought of Vashti as the more experienced verser and the older sister; she sort of expected that that would put her in charge.  On the other hand, some of that was because she was with Derek, and really Tommy had about the same amount of experience in the verse as she did.  It was just different experience.

“I’m open to suggestions,” she said.

Vashti shrugged.  “I don’t have any knockout drugs or choke attacks.  About all I can do is beat on them until they die, collapse, or flee.  You?”

“I’m about the same,” she said.  “I can tie someone up, but I only have two ropes, and one of them is my weapon.”

“Then I guess we’re going to have to charge in and start hitting.”

They stared at each other for another moment, and then both nodded and began racing toward the men in their black masks, screaming like banshees.  Tommy started whirling her kawanaga over her head like a lasso; she noticed that Vashti had drawn a knife.

Their quarry paled at their approach.  Some put down their packages; others just dropped them.  A few appeared to prepare themselves to fight, while others were obviously confused and uncertain.

Tommy flung her hook forward and wrapped the legs of one of the larger adversaries, then with a quick pull put the man on his back.  With a stroke of luck, he hit his head on the concrete floor hard enough that he was at least dazed, and she quickly untangled the rope while at the same time dodging another attacker by ducking under and rising up, throwing him also on the floor.  She jumped on him, already swinging the weapon over her head, and heard the wind come out of the cushion under her feet as she jumped forward into a flip and smacked someone in the face with the hook.  He fell back a few steps, and she plowed into him, knocking him down as well.

Three down, she looked around.  Vashti was holding her own, having apparently floored two and now fighting two more, weaving and dodging, kicking and slicing.

A third attacker was running at Vashti, and Tommy didn’t think but just ran that direction.  She flung the end of the kawanaga, but the rope was a bit short, so she flipped it back into a spin as she closed the gap.  Then with a diving roll she put herself on the floor between the attacker and Vashti, and kicked him as he tripped over her.

She had been inattentive, though.  While she had been running toward Vashti, two Blackmasks had been chasing her.  Now that she was on her back on the floor they were descending upon her.

Mistake.  Well, they were outnumbered, and it was a longshot anyway.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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