by Bill Baldwin
“By whose authority, Commander?” Amherst protested peevishly.
“Mine will do as well as any, Lieutenant,” the officer said, pointing to the lieutenant commander's rings on his cuff. “And besides,” he added as he slid the door shut in Amherst's face, “I'm not authorized to talk to any of you, either. “
Brim shrugged and looked at Barbousse, who was standing politely with his five ratings. “What do you know about this?” he asked out of the side of his mouth. “You always have advance word about what's going on.”
Barbousse chuckled quietly. “Aye, sir,” he admitted. “That I usually do — but not this time. It's caught me as much by surprise as you.”
Moments later, the steady rumble of the cruiser's Drive increased to a deep thunder, and Brim watched through a small Hyperscreen scuttle as the familiar shape of Truculent dwindled rapidly in the distance.
Ursis cocked a furry ear for a moment, then frowned. “The flight crew is certainly in a hurry to go somewhere,” he said. “Drive crystals are wide open, from the sound of things.” He settled into a recliner, crossed his legs, and folded his hands across his chest.
“Just what do you think you are doing, Lieutenant?” Amherst demanded angrily.
“Relaxing, Lieutenant Amherst,” the Bear said as he shut his eyes. “Until someone lets us out of this cabin, it seems to be the most intelligent thing we can accomplish.”
Brim and Theada spent a few moments in desultory exploration of what little there was to see in the room, but eventually thumped into recliners beside him. Barbousse and the other ratings followed suit.
Amherst continued to look annoyed, but clearly had no acceptable rejoinder to any of them. “Oh, very well,” he said lamely. “I shall, ah, notify you what is expected next.”
“I look forward to that,” Ursis grunted quietly. In a few moments more, he was snoring.
The team was confined in the cabin for more than two Standard days, during which time the sound of the Drive never slackened from its original high setting. They transferred to a large, curiously rust-colored shuttle craft only when the Narcastle had driven deep into a very empty-looking portion of the galaxy.
* * * *
Their mysterious destination turned out to be a barren, irregular chunk of red-oxide rock orbiting an isolated gas giant where none of the star formations looked familiar to Brim. A flattened, bubble-shaped structure perhaps one hundred irals in circumference clung to a reasonably “level” section of the rock — colored to blend into the background. As the shuttle dove toward landfall, a worried-looking Amherst nudged the pilot and pointed below. Outside the bubble, three, tiny, mean-looking astroplanes hovered in the stillness at the end of short mooring beams. They were examples of an entirely new type of starship with comparatively short range but often capable of speeds in excess of 150 LightSpeed. Many Helmsmen — including Brim — thought starships with such capabilities might well become dominant in many types of future applications. All three of these were of League manufacture, and all appeared to be heavily armed.
“Don't let our little astroplanes bother you,” the pilot drawled through a reddish mustache as he turned onto final approach. “All three of those little tubs down there belong to us.” Oddly, his name was Blue, though his hair was red, crested to a remarkable degree, and his complexion a chalk-like white. He had a narrow face with a thin nose and long freckled hands. He wore no battle suit (strictly against Imperial regulations in a shuttle), only a rumpled fatigue uniform with soft, casually scuffed boots that looked far more comfortable than military. He also handled the big shuttle as if he had been born at its controls.
Brim chuckled to himself with a strong suspicion that Blue and he would have much in common, as backgrounds went, but elected to keep his silence. The subject of pasts wasn't one of his favorites, either. He peered down at the enemy astroplanes and felt his curiosity piqued again. What now?
Inside, the bubble structure was divided into a warren of “rooms” by partitions that did not quite touch the curviform top. Everything about the structure looked ready to be dismantled at a moment's notice. Military gray prevailed nearly everywhere, though occasional areas were finished in more humane colors. The air was uniformly dry and almost unappetizingly without odor, a common attribute of such tiny, self-contained way stations, which recycled the same limited set of atoms to sustain life in the midst of the lonely void.
After a squat, gruff-looking woman with Mechanic's blazes on her collar took charge of Barbousse and his ratings, the officers followed Blue into a narrow companionway. This ended in a severe cubicle containing a few display cabinets and a circle of uninviting field chairs, clearly some sort of conference room. Before they could sit, a door opened at the rear. “Gentlemen,” Blue announced, “Colonel Dark.”
Long-legged, slim, and graceful, Colonel Dark was dressed in the sleek blue coveralls of Lord Wyrood's Imperial Intelligence Service. On her, the tight uniform revealed a great deal more than it concealed. Her complexion was almost chalky white and she wore long jet-black hair in a braid that coiled all the way to her knees. Her eyes were large, almond shaped, intelligent, and hard. As she spoke, she fingered a curiously shaped obsidian fragment that could only be a splinter of hullmetal: Some grim personal reminder, Brim considered, and decided he wanted to know nothing more about it — ever.
“Special-duty crew from I.F.S. Truculent reporting, Colonel,” Amherst began importantly. “I am Lieutenant….”
“We are aware of everyone's identity, Lieutenant Amherst,” Dark interrupted in a soft, husky voice, nearly ignoring his salute. “While you are here on Red Rock 9, we shall have little time for amenities of any kind.” She bit her lip as she unconsciously worked the hullmetal fragment between long, well-manicured fingers. “Sit down and listen carefully;' she said. “You have approximately two days to qualify for the mission. “
As he took his seat, Brim glanced quickly at Amherst. An ill-concealed look of astonishment had taken root on the First Lieutenant's face. He was clearly unprepared for military conduct outside the strict rules of Fleet protocol.
“If you prove to us you can master an astroplane, the operation's 'go' and you'll have all the details you want. If you can't, we'll simply scrub the whole thing and send you back home with our thanks for making the try. But…” She paused significantly in midsentence to look each officer squarely in the eye.
Brim felt his eyebrows rise.
“But,” Dark repeated, “a surprise attack mounted by the Leaguers on another starbase — it doesn't matter which one — deprived us last night of your backup crew. So if you don't make it, the mission won't happen at all, and a very important person will probably die. Additionally, the Empire will lose a lot of information it vitally needs for its survival.”
Amherst suddenly looked concerned, almost frightened. He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak.
Dark held up a warning hand. “Don't ask questions, Lieutenant, until after your crew masters operation of the Leaguer astroplane. Before you have accomplished that, I have nothing more to say.”
* * * *
Brim and Theada spent the next half day buried in a captured astroplane simulator while the others learned what they could about the astroplane’s systems makeup from Imperial data bases. Brim had never flown anything like the little starship, but was immediately impressed with its possibilities. Following a short rest, the entire team donned battle suits and pulled themselves along zero-grav lifelines to the little ships themselves.
“Apparently, they want us to use the one marked 'E607;” Amherst said on the suit circuit, pointing to the rightmost of the three docked starships. “They say they keep the others here for spare parts.”
Closer inspection proved this to be true. Two of the astroplanes were clearly missing important components, with hatches opened to the emptiness of space and holes yawning blindly in the control cabins in place of Hyperscreen panels.
E-607, however, was ready to fly: A deadly
wedge of raw destructive power. Overall, its sharply angular sixty irals described nothing so much as a narrow, single-edged ax head turned on its side with a small control cabin located midway along the length of its upper surface. On either beam, angular outriggers extended forward from the squared-off stem, each virtually filled with a powerful Klaipper-Hiss type—41 antigravity generator. The ship's wide, keen-edged bow was deeply notched on port and starboard extremes to accommodate torpedo-tube doors in the beam-ends of the hull. Between these, a squat, dome-shaped turret housed a 6O-mmi rapid-fire disruptor. Aft of the rakish control cabin, a spacious well deck extended to the stem, bounded on port and starboard by the breech ends of the torpedo launch tubes and storage for the single reload carried for each. Offset a few irals from the center of the well deck, a row of twelve repulsion rings ran over the stem from a squat autoloader. These marked the little ship's limited capability to strew star mines in its path. Her flat bottom was clear from bow to stem except for an oversized weapons dome housing a powerful 91-mmi disruptor. Within the crowded hull, a single Drive crystal provided thrust for HyperLight dashes and occasional long-distance cruising.
Inside, the cramped control cabin was laid out in a conventional half circle with the two Helmsman's positions facing the forward Hyperscreens. Along the starboard side, a systems console extended to the air lock in the aft bulkhead, and, curiously, included activators for firing the big 91-mmi in the ship's belly turret. Miscellaneous controls, including those for the torpedo tubes and repulsion rings, were built into a neatly organized collection of panels that made up the port control array. The rapid-firing disruptor forward was operated directly from either of the Helmsman's consoles.
Once Ursis stabilized the ship's power, Brim doffed his battle helmet and sniffed the cabin's thin, stale air, taking stock of the uncomfortable seats and drab, strictly functional decor around him. “Grim” was probably a good characterization, he thought. Leaguers built fighting ships with only three real abilities: flying, fighting, and surviving. Everything else was sacrificed to the minimum necessary for operational reliability — including crew facilities. One small cabin composed the single acquiescence to living occupancy. Crammed under the forward deck between the torpedo tubes, it wasn't merely uncomfortable, it was xaxtdamned near to being unacceptable. He shrugged. Clearly, only tough, dedicated Leaguers survived on these grim little ships. “Fire up the generators, Nik,” he said, nodding to the Bear as he perched his bulk atop an undersized recliner. “Let's get this bucket out in space.”
Ursis nodded, checked the immediate area outside, then hit the start sequencer. Moments later, the big generators shuddered into life, filling the crowded cabin with a savage, uneven thunder that shook the hull with brutish power. The Bear busied himself with various displays and controls for a few moments until the uneven tumult quieted to a steady rumble and the deck ceased to tremble. “Both generators standing by, Wilf,” he announced with a thumb in the air. The hull rang with vents clanging shut, and the air lock rattled.
Brim checked his own readouts, then looked at Amherst from the left Helmsman's seat. “The ship is ready when you are, Lieutenant,” he announced.
“You may proceed,” the First Lieutenant sniffed, nodding conspicuously down his nose. But his manner failed to hide the sweat standing out on his forehead — in the coolness of a battle helmet he had yet to remove.
“Aye, sir,” Brim said, squelching one more flash of anger. As the power director came up on forward thrust, he nodded to Barbousse. “Cast off, fore and aft,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir,” the big rating said, and spoke into a small personal communicator.
Outside, balanced on the decks, four of Truculent's borrowed ratings wearing huge reflective mittens to protect their hands raced up to extinguish the ship's mooring beams, then dogged down protective hatches over the optical cleats and jogged across the deck to the control cabin. He waited until the men were inside, then watched for his signal from the bubble house aft. Presently, a ruby-colored beacon began to strobe in the darkness at the far end of the asteroid.
“Safe takeoff vector dead ahead,” Theada reported.
“Got it,” Brim acknowledged. He entered the course manually on the flight director (astroplanes were too new for Chairman systems), then called for full military power and stood on the gravity brakes. Again, the cabin filled with the brutish sound of surging generators, and the deck began to vibrate beneath his feet. He glanced at Ursis, who grinned and yanked his thumb in the air.
“Let's go, Wilf Ansor,” the Bear growled in a huge voice.
Brim winked and returned his attention to the controls. He’d no sooner released the gravity brakes when the beacon — and all of Red Rock 9 — instantly vanished astern in a bellowing surge of power from the generators. Zero-gravity takeoffs all tended to be rapid, but the captured Leaguer astroplane was in a class by itself! He grinned; he hadn't had so much fun since he'd flown the little JD-981s at the Academy—but they were toy-like in comparison.
During their next two watches, the team worked tirelessly, exercising each of the ship's flight systems at high speeds, first in free space, then through a crowded asteroid reef orbiting the gas giant at a slightly lower altitude. After two close brushes with disaster (the last of which badly pitted a quadrant of the ship's unprotected Hyperscreens), Brim began to get the hang of things.
“Voof!” Ursis exclaimed admiringly as the Carescrian completed a particularly complex course. “'Wind and cold seek lakes and trees, but Bears claim only wolves,' as they say on the Mother Planets. Wilf Ansor, my friend, you exceed yourself!”
Brim laughed and cranked the skittish little ship into a vertical turn across the reef, huge rock clusters scorching past on the port side in an avalanche of riotous color. “Once you do something like that on a Carescrian ore barge,” he yelled over the thundering generators, “it seems pretty easy in something like this.”
“You will concentrate on flying, not talking, Lieutenant Brim,” Amherst warned through tight lips. “Have you forgotten so quickly what you did to the Hyperscreens?”
Brim glanced up at the pockmarked screens. “I haven't forgotten, Lieutenant,” he acknowledged, biting his lip to control his voice. At the same time, he noticed that sweat was now running freely from Amherst's face. The man was afraid!
On his way back to Red Rock 9, he fairly skimmed the surface of a particularly jagged asteroid — and smiled with satisfaction as he watched Amherst squeeze his eyes shut. The Universe kindly provided more than one way of extracting life's little dollops of revenge, he noted with silent satisfaction.
* * * *
The eleven Truculents passed a second set of watches exercising the astroplane’s weapons systems (during which, Barbousse accurately torpedoed a ship-sized asteroid), then invested a short period in HyperSpace running on the Drive crystal. When they finally returned to Red Rock 9, an abrupt message recalled them to a meeting with Colonel Dark — immediately.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” the almond-eyed woman said as the tired crew clambered into the conference room still dressed in battle suits. “It seems my call for assistance from the Fleet was answered this time with reasonably competent Blue Capes.” She smiled for the first time that Brim could recall. “Sometimes we get the best,” she continued, “often the worst. It depends on the captains involved, I suppose. Regula Collingswood seems to have done us proud.”
“You mean we qualify for the mission?” Amherst asked, a genuine look of concern on his face.
“The team has indeed qualified, Lieutenant,” Dark answered, “but only in the merest nick of time. At that, I have been forced to delay your departure until commencement of the second watch tomorrow — my ground crew needs additional time to replace Hyperscreen panels damaged by the initial sloppiness of your Helmsman, Lieutenant Brim,” she said pointedly.
The Carescrian felt color rise in his cheeks as he mentally braced for more criticism. Instead, for the second time he watched Dark's
face break into a smile as she turned to face him. “Don't take my 'sloppiness' too much to heart, Brim,” she laughed suddenly. “No one expected you could do what you've done at all — and you've triumphed.” Then her face darkened. “But it also means you now have the actual job to accomplish. And when your crewmates hear all the details, they may wish your Helmsman's talents ran more toward singing or sculpting, perhaps, than piloting a small starship.”
At that moment, Brim noticed Theada and Ursis glance uneasily toward Amherst; he followed their gaze. The First Lieutenant had again broken into profuse sweating, though Dark kept temperatures low in her conference room. The Carescrian winced to himself. Somehow, trouble was coming, and he was reasonably sure the least of it would be with the League. But before he could fret about the situation, Dark began her final briefing, and no time remained for anything but concentrating on the mission.
During the remainder of that watch and well into the next, Dark described their task in detail: flying the astroplane to the very heart of Triannic's League — almost within sight of the great capital planet of Tarrott itself — executing a tricky landfall on Typro, a barren mining planet, retrieving an important Imperial spy, then retracing their steps to a rendezvous with an Imperial warship. “On the surface, it sounds simple,” she said. “We've set up three time windows for the pickup. You will determine which one to use after you arrive on the basis of safety: Yours and the operative's.” She fingered her hullmetal fragment absently and frowned, staring bleakly across the room. “Unfortunately,” she continued, “I have only described the easy part — your mission as originally planned was quite straightforward and relatively free from risk. However, recent developments have made the job somewhat more symmetrical in that it now involves a difficult part, too.”