by Bill Baldwin
"If you were being held hostage," Brim interrupted, "how'd you get into their COMM room—and where did you get those blasters for that matter?"
Margot's eyes hardened for a moment. "We took the blasters," she answered. "In spite of what I have become, Wilf Brim, don't ever forget my years as an agent." She closed her eyes for a moment. "I am no more a stranger to killing than you are. And this COMM room is a very special one—reserved for the private affairs of visiting ministers and high-level officers. It has its own power and transmission systems. Rogan used it when he brought me here."
Brim closed his eyes for a moment. "I understand," he said.
"You had better understand," she replied, "and quickly. Because if you continue to whittle away at this fort, long before you can silence its disrupters, all of your ships will have been destroyed. You must already suspect that yourself."
Brim nodded. "I do," he admitted.
"Then listen and listen well, Wilf Brim," Margot said, "for I shall have time to tell you this once, then we must take to a lifeglobe." She paused and glanced at Ambridge.
The man nodded. "But you will have to be quick, my Princess," he added.
Margot returned her gaze to Brim. "The fort's one weak spot—if such a thing exists at all—are the doors to the hangar deck. You'll easily recognize them five levels above the bottommost disrupter gallery. There are three of them, and the whole assembly has oversize Bilmes beacons at all four corners—you know, the ones with the big ruby globes."
"I think I can find it," Brim replied, suddenly beside himself with turmoil. Could he trust this woman?
"Good," Margot said, "because the designers centrally located the power chambers directly behind the hangar deck. You will need to blow the doors away first with your disrupters, then send in torpedoes so they can traverse the hangar to the power chambers. Get Barbousse to fire them," she said excitedly. "It's your only hope. Disrupter fire dissipates rapidly within a closed space—as you well remember from the Battle of Atalanta."
"Your Highness," Ambridge interrupted, "we must leave now. Either they will capture us again or we will be caught in the explosion!"
Margot nodded. "I'm coming, Ambridge," she said, then turned once more to face Brim. "Good-bye for now, Wilf," she said, "the Universe speed your flight," Suddenly her retainers began to fire their blasters at something along the hallway, and young LaKarn attempted an escape by kicking the old chauffeur in the shins. "Try to remember that I have loved you always," she added, starting for the door, "even when I had no control of my mind."
Then, before Brim had a chance to reply, the little party was gone, and the display presented only an empty room. Shortly thereafter, three armed Controllers burst through the door shouting at each other in their guttural dialect. Immediately, one of the Controllers seemed to point at Brim. "Sondghast vellersahn vonell gannist!" he shouted in the Leaguers' language of Vertrucht: The machine is transmitting! Angrily, he smashed his hand somewhere behind the pickup lens, and the display went blank.
Totally spellbound by the incident, Brim had to force himself back to some sort of reality. If he decided not to trust Margot, there was a better-than-even chance that all five remaining star-ships would be lost while failing to destroy the fort at all. And even if he were successful in "whittling" the fort away, the odds were overwhelming that he would still lose two or even three more Starfuries—perhaps Starfury herself—in the process. On the other hand, if he did trust Margot and made a run for the hangar doors, he had at least some chance that he would indeed destroy the fort with no further IVG casualties at all. "Toby," he exclaimed, his mind working furiously, "here's what we're going to do."
"I say, old bean," Moulding said caustically, "you promised to tell me that at least five cycles ago. And I'm still waiting."
"Sorry," Brim replied, "I've just been talking to Margot on another display. She's in the fort."
"How nice, Wilf," Moulding continued, raising his eyebrows theatrically. "You two certainly do find the oddest places for renewing that little friendship of yours...."
"No! Wait, Toby. This has nothing to do with friendship—she was a prisoner there." He shook his head—that wasn't going to do it. "I'll have to explain later," he said. "Just trust me that she may have given us the ticket to blowing that fort."
"Wilf!" Moulding objected, "she is the same Margot who tried to have you killed a while back, isn't she?"
"She is," Brim admitted, "but, well, I have this feeling that this time she's telling the truth."
"And so do I," Tissaurd interrupted, leaning over to talk with Moulding's aristocratic visage in the global display. "Sorry, Skipper," she said out of the side of her mouth, "but I've been eavesdropping. Toby," she called, "I watched the whole thing, and unless Effer'wyck's better able to pull the wool over my eyes than she was a few months back, I think she's on the level."
Moulding's image stared at Tissaurd for a long time, but finally he shrugged. "I suppose there's only one way to find out, then," he acquiesced, his lopsided smile back in place. "Now, my old racing friend," he said, returning his gaze to Brim, "how about telling me what it is you want us to do...."
* * *
Brim came in fast along one bank of the shoal with Starterror and Starspirit above and behind him. Starsovereign and Stardemon were speeding in from the other direction, attempting to split the Leaguers' defensive fire before it began. The tactic might help a little, but Brim knew it wouldn't be enough.
"Maybe the zukeeds won't shoot quite so fast now that we've taken out some of their disruptors," Tissaurd observed hopefully over the whine and thunder of Starfury's big Admiralty generators.
Brim could only grunt out similar hopes as he concentrated on flying the ship; he was so close to the shoal now that its huge asteroids appeared to be rushing past only a few irals from Starfury's belly. He could well imagine what the Leaguers must be thinking while they watched the five Starfuries home in on them. The remaining IVG ships were still a major threat, and the Leaguers knew it—but not so much as when there were eight of them. Both sides knew that.
"Coming up on their maximum range now, Captain," Meesha warned.
"Very well, Meesha," Brim said, sideslipping into his first jink. The fort had a few moments' advantage before the Starfuries' shorter-range disrupters could focus in. And the Leaguers took advantage of every one as space went wild with massive barrages of detonations that blasted Starfury in every direction with near misses. Many of the near misses blasted in huge fountains of rock and debris as they hit the shoal. Then Meesha opened up with his own disruptors, bouncing the deck and every console on the bridge. "Ready, Chief?" Brim asked.
"Ready, Cap'm," Barbousse replied grimly. "I've got eight more torpedoes in the launcher, all of 'em enabled already. So if we get hit, it's good-bye Starfury."
"I'll try to avoid that if I can," Brim swore fervently. He took a deep breath. The hangar-deck doors were still out of sight, nearly a quarter of the way around the fort's circumference from Starfury's apparent aiming zone. Moments from now, while Starterror and Starspirit continued on their firing run, he would bank out to port and dive nearly to the surface of the fort where he would hug the wall until, at a predetermined point, he would pull away to minimum firing distance, reverse course abruptly, and make a torpedo run on the hangar. It seemed a lot like ancient dive bombing—only sideways. "All right, Meesha," he shouted. "Give it all you've got!" Curving slightly to starboard, he headed for a quartet of big disrupters while Meesha directed his fire at the big turrets with a vengeance. So did the other two Starfuries, with deadly accuracy—and results. The area quickly erupted into an absolute hell of energy from the concentrated fire of thirty-six big disrupters. Huge chunks of hullmetal and wreckage (including an entire turret) hurtled off in every direction from the rapidly expanding fireball while a chorus of cheers broke out around Brim on the bridge—who used the momentary lull to roll Starfury inverted, bunt under the other two ships, and set off for the wall with all
the power he could feed to the generators.
Long moments later, the graceful cruiser was speeding along only a few hundred irals from the gigantic hullmetal plates, many cratered and burning fiercely as he passed. This time, he jinked only when it was necessary to avoid hitting one of the big disruptor turrets. He was moving far too rapidly for them to aim at him—much less fire. Soon, he was coming up on the array of heat exchangers Meesha's firing computers had calculated as his optimum breakaway point. "Ten clicks till the pop, Chief," he warned.
"I'm ready, Cap'm," Barbousse replied. "So are the torpedoes. Soon as Lieutenant Meesha blasts those doors."
From aft, the firing had stopped. Evidently, Starterror and Starspirit had finished their firing runs. Just beyond the fort's "horizon" Brim could see Moulding's two ships streaking away from the fort—while they drew fire from the desperate maneuver be was about to attempt. "Here we go!" he yelled, hauling back on the controls until Starfury's spaceframe began to creak in protest. As the fort receded in the distance, Brim caught himself holding his breath. In a moment the disrupters would spot them again, and then all hell would surely break loose. But there was a slightly better chance of planting the torpedoes each moment they ran in the clear—and every one of them seemed to last an eternity until at last he heard Barbousse's voice.
"Comin' up on minimum firin' distance in five, Cap'm," the big rating announced.
Brim counted an extra fifteen clicks, then hauled the controls over in a renversment, getting three red warning lights on his panel from the steering engines. He ignored them—the mechanism had better stand a little overload. Then he started toward the fort again.
And suddenly space aft burst forth in a truly colossal series of brilliant detonations. At least one—probably more—of the fort's great disruptors had picked them up and were blasting away as quickly as the big weapons could build new charges. But the Leaguer gunners had fired where they expected him to be, before he'd reversed course. He could only pray that they were too well trained to try that trick again; he was now holding a smooth precision track toward the three big hangar doors he'd centered on his Hyperscreens—and this time their trick might work! "All right, Meesha," he shouted over the roar of the generators, "blast those doors. NOW!"
The months that Meesha and his disrupter crews had spent battling Dampiers and Gorn-Hoffs had turned Starfury's gunners into extraordinary marksmen, and it all paid off in the next fifteen clicks. Each of the ten remaining 406s thundered independently, and fully seven scored direct hits with eruptions of radiation fire and debris of all kinds. One of the doors flew off intact, spinning off at an angle that would eventually take it completely out of the galaxy.
Only a moment later, Barbousse fired his tight spread of torpedoes.
Brim watched for the eight deadly missiles to clear Starfury's forward pontoons, then he hauled the cruiser around and took off for deep space, jinking as he had never jinked before through an unbelievable hail of fire with the generators at military overload plus. The terrific barrage made sense. Every disruptor in the fort was shooting at him.
"Skipper," Tissaurd reported as she stared into a rearview display, "couple of lifeglobes just launched from the side of the fort."
In his own display, Brim caught two pearlescent bubbles speeding away toward the protection of the shoal, but he was far too much taken up with jinking to think about much of anything except the ship, her controls, and the hellish explosions that were knocking her about like a leaf caught in a storm.
"Hey look!" someone yelled.
"Holy Voot!" another yelled excitedly, "the Chief's torpedoes just hit the doors in a tight pack. Just like he was drivin' them himself!"
"By Universe, that's right," still another exclaimed. "All eight of 'em!"
"Universe, what a bunch of explosions!"
"Explosions don't count!" Barbousse roared. "They're the ones that missed and hit the door frame. If none of 'em got through clean, we'll have to do it again!"
Nobody seemed to hear the big rating's protest. Instead, the whole bridge continued in wild, insane cheering.
Except for Brim. Hit or miss, it was now up to him to get them out of there! He could scarcely hear anything above the thunder of six overtaxed Admiralty A876 gravity generators— and the deafening rumble of raw energy smashing against Starfury's streamlined flanks from literally hundreds of near misses.
Simultaneously the firing—and the shouting—stopped, replaced by a great chorus of astonished gasps. For a moment, only the whine and thunder of Starfury's generators sounded on the bridge. Then one solitary, awestruck female voice could be heard—later, no one would admit it was hers.
"Voot's most greasy, tangled beard," it said, "will ya' LOOK AT THAT!"
Chapter 11
The IVG Passes
Brim hauled the racing starship around into a vertical curve just in time to see every hatch and scuttle in the mighty Leaguer fort pulse and flash like a thousand gleaming eyes... again... and again... and again.... Then, as if the very fabric of the Universe itself had burst, the whole structure was engulfed—from the inside out—by a colossal reddish-violet fireball that pulsed and glimmered spasmodically as it expanded, peppered with stark clarity by gigantic chunks of wreckage: huge turret assemblies, KA'PPA towers, power generators, formless curved plates of hullmetal armor, all bobbing on a roiling globe of radiation flame.
The shock wave of raw energy that preceded it slammed first into the mottled wall of the shoal, scattering asteroid-size chunks of rock like toy balls. Suddenly a vision of Margot's fragile lifeglobe racing among the great boulders forced its way to Brim's mind, tearing at his very soul. Had she been able to work her lifeglobe far enough back among the protecting rocks to save herself? Or was she now ground to space dust among the surface asteroids? His stomach churned in horror....
A moment later the energy wave hit Starfury like a physical presence. Her whole starframe bucked violently, pulsing the ship's gravity and throwing people against their mechanical restraints with force enough to snap bones and fling bodies around like broken toy dolls. Screams and groans filled the voice circuits; somebody vomited loudly in his helmet. Whole arrays of Hyperscreens on the port side of the bridge shattered behind a wave of explosive decompression, while debris cascaded across the decks in a rolling cloud of sparks and the nameless detritus of mortal habitation. And—accompanied by a whole panel of indicators changing to brilliant crimson—the big Admiralty gravity generators tripped out completely.
By sheer chance, the colossal fireball never quite reached Starfury's hull, but despite protectively darkened Hyperscreens, its radiated heat alone was enough to turn the rubble-strewn bridge into a raging, airless oven that melted portions of a navigation table and baked everything that was not specially battle-protected. Then the boiling sphere of radiation fire began to subside, falling into itself as it had exploded outward, and in a few moments dissolved into a dappled array of glittering radiation clouds that eventually scattered to the eight corners of the Universe.
Now the ship glided along on momentum alone, quiet as the starscape itself. Off to starboard, no trace of the Leaguer fort remained at all. Only the distant, massive wreck of I.F.S. Queen Elidean remained in view against the shoal—blasted at least ten c'lenyts from her original position and drifting slowly through space like a great skeletal meteor, still glowing with the heat of her own demise.
And the massive, all-prevading stillness! For a moment Brim was certain the voice circuits had all been destroyed. But then a surprised voice rang out in his helmet tike a trumpet on a still morning.
"U-Universe," someone said as if he didn't quite believe his own words, "we did it!"
"Yeah. We did, didn't we?"
"H-help!"
"Who's that?"
"Huugo. S-Sublieutenant Huugo."
"Anybody else alive here on the bridge?"
"I am—I think."
"So'm I."
"Sweet mother of.... He's bleedin' inside hi
s battlesuit. Medics! On the double!"
"Yeah. Hurry. Poor zukeed didn't want to leave his family in the first place!"
"MEDICS!"
A damage-control team with armored mittens was cleaning up razor-sharp Hyperscreen splinters by the time Brim had a chance to check Tissaurd. Behind her face plate, she had what appeared to be a nasty cut on the forehead, but otherwise she wore her customary smile. Carefully, as if checking each bone for consistency, she raised her fist in a "thumbs-up" gesture and winked. "See, Skipper," she said, "I knew we could believe her this time."
"I won't ask how you knew, Number One," Brim replied, "but thanks for the trust. Something tells me it was the last thing she did. We'll have to go look for her before the Leaguers return."
"Skipper!" Meesha interrupted. "I've got six ships coming at us at a high rate of speed. And they aren't IVGs."
"Wonderful," Brim pronounced disgustedly. "Just thraggling wonderful! Who are they?"
Meesha bent over his debris-strewn console and frowned. "They're returning what appear to be Torond IFF codes, Captain," he said.
"Any sign of Moulding or the other two Starfuries?" Brim demanded. Somehow, he had to go search for Margot—but how?"
"None, Captain. Sorry."
Brim forced his mind back to the ship and switched a display to Zaftrak's huge console. "Strana'," he demanded, "did the generators require a cold start?"
"Is so, Captain," the Bear replied with a serious look. "When generators go into overload like that, is shutting themselves down. But not all bad, that. Keeps from blowing up."
"How long before we can get under way again?"
"Chief Baranev says he can give you little less than half power right now, Captain," the Bear replied. "Perhaps more later, depending on damage. You should be able maneuver, at least."
Brim nodded. Cold starts were difficult. The Chief was producing an authentic miracle to restore any motive power at all.
"Set it up, Strana'."
"Aye, Captain," the Bear said. Moments later a number of indicators on his power panel returned to steady green.