THE HELMSMAN
BILL BALDWIN
CHAPTER 3
Arms embracing his knees, Brim sat with his back against a chilly metal bulkhead gritting his teeth in frustrated anger. Twelve more would-be raiders from Truculent idled about in the gloomy compartment, faces set in like attitudes of disgust, helmets confiscated from their battle suits. Outside, in the merchantman's central K tube, he could hear disjointed bursts of guttural Vertrucht-and a lot of laughter. He understood most of what he heard: before the war, all ore-carrier Helmsmen had to learn Emperor Triannic's official language. League buyers were some of the Empire's best customers in those days. He snorted; the lot aboard this ship didn't know that about him. And he wasn't about to volunteer the information either-though so far his little secret had netted him no particular advantage. Except the knowledge that all thirteen of them were up for immediate transfer to the waiting corvette.
He listened to the uneven thrumming of the merchantman's unsynchronized gravity generators. Every so often, they rattled a bolt somewhere on the bulkhead at his back, but he couldn't locate it in the dim light. Turning his head, he glared at Amherst's rigid figure still nearly frozen by fear as he stood bolt upright, staring at the door. Nearby, Ursis and Barbousse each occupied a corner, asleep and snoring soundly. Brim chuckled in spite of his wrath-nobody in a right mind would disturb those two.
He shook his head in resignation: if nothing else, he'd learned a good lesson (though a fat lot of good it would do him grinding his strength away in some Cloud League slave brigade). But if he did taste freedom again someday, Wilf Brim swore he would never again acquiesce to anyone's reasoning flawed by fear. He shook his head in disgust. Had he taken steps to silence the frightened First Lieutenant (or had Ursis disregarded the man's orders and continued to work on the sabotaged Drive controls), they might now be boring their way through Hyperspace toward home and safety. Instead, Ruggetos and her vital cargo would soon resume their interrupted journey into a safe Leaguer harbor.
The Carescrian shrugged angrily. It was far too late now for thoughts of that sort. He purged them from his mind- self-recrimination was patently useless anyway, especially once basic mistakes were aired and thoroughly understood. He forced himself to random thoughts, conjured loose golden curls and frowning smiles. Red, moist lips-Lacerta's "Rime of The Ancients." He heard the husky voice in his mind's ear as if it were yesterday: "Roll on, thou deep and star-swept cosmos." Margot Effer'wyck-her large hand warm and soft in his for a too-short instant of total enchantment. Sturdy legs and tiny feet. Suddenly, another line of poetry crossed his mind; written especially for her, it seemed, though Lacerta penned the words more than a thousand years before those blue eyes first saw the light of day. "She walks in beauty, like the stars/ Of cloudless climes and worlds afar." He shook his head. Strange how meeting her affected him. Just that once, and her face was never again far below the surface of his mind. "She walks in beauty..."
He chuckled to himself. Always an eye for the best! But this time those tastes had surely betrayed him. Incredible now he hadn't tumbled to the name when be first met her. Pym had to explain the whole thing days after they'd met: Effer'wyck! The beautiful blond Lieutenant was not only grandchild of Sabar Effer'wyck (ascetic mogul of the powerful Effer Cluster), she was also a full-blooded princess and kin to the late Emperor Erioed III himself.
He snorted in embarrassment. A Carescrian talking face to face with an Effer'wyck. Even taking her hand. He pictured her and the elegant Baron LaKarn together in some ornate setting, sharing a laugh about his pitiful love of poetry. His cheeks burned with shame. Given his background of poverty, he'd need to become another Admiral Merlin Emrys-save a whole star system, perhaps-before she'd notice any interest he might have in her.
He shrugged. It was all over now anyway. Not much chance to accomplish anything heroic where he was going, or contribute anything to anybody-except perhaps to Kabul Anak's war effort. Well, he considered, if nothing else, he had his anonymity. She couldn't laugh at someone she didn't remember-and Wilf Brim was about to disappear completely, another small statistic in a very large war.
The hatch abruptly clanged open, nearly blinding him with light. Shouted commands propelled him to his feet, and a sharp blow to his head brought sudden pinpoints of light to his eyes as he started through the hatch and down the companionway. In a black mood, he stumbled off toward incarceration aboard the enemy corvette.
Shambling helmetless through the transparent transfer tube, he glanced toward Truculent's ugly little launch hanging forlornly at the merchantman's bridge, silhouetted against the blazing stars of outer space. How differently things had begun only a few short metacycles ago! Ahead, the glasslike tube ended at a circular hatch opened in the corvette's second module, a fat cylinder mounted astride the ship's central K tube- crew quarters, he guessed. Next aft, the spherical battery module carried both 99-mmi turrets mounted at opposite poles. After this...He craned his neck, but he was already too close alongside now to see. If he remembered correctly, though, most Cloud League ships started with a spherical bridge module forward, then alternated cylinders and globes along the central K tube-so this ship would continue with a second cylinder, then a globe, and presumably end with a final cylinder containing the Drive and antigravity machinery. He wished he'd paid more attention when he could see the whole ship in the merchantman's bridge display.
Then he was inside the hatch, where a sharp kick by a hulking, lantern-jawed Controller~rating sent him reeling along a companionway into the K tube itself. There, a second black-suited rating-with scowling mien and great bushy eyebrows-waved him aft with an ugly-looking blast pistol. A few steps farther on, a Controller officer stopped him in his tracks-an overmann (the League equivalent of an Imperial first lieutenant). Her face was horribly disfigured by a purple scar that ran diagonally across her mouth from her nose to her chin.
"You will halt!" she commanded, large almond-shaped eyes blazing with hate. Somehow Brim couldn't bring himself to blame her-no question she'd received her wound at the hands of someone dressed in the same kind of battle suit as his. He stopped and prudently froze, listening behind him to other voices, thumping, stomping, and occasional grunts of pain, as his comrades from Truculent were herded into the corridor.
The black-suited lantern jaw at the hatch evidently enjoyed kicking. His own shin throbbed, but he dared not move to rub it.
At some length, the woman banged on a hatch beside her. "All right, Overmann," she said gruffly, "here's the lot. They're yours."
The hatch opened and a serious-looking, bespectacled officer in the stiff-necked gray tank suit of the Cloud League's "normal" military starfleet stepped through. Thin and ascetic-looking, his face had more the intense seriousness of a lifelong student than the careful awareness Brim associated with military professionals. A person more likely to be addressed as "Professor" than "Overmann," he wore an antique timepiece on his wrist which sparkled in the overhead lights. He was followed by two elderly gray-suited ratings, one fat with squinting eyes and flushed face, the other with the looks of a farmer, spare and muscular, whose callused hands had not yet lost the hardness required of those who tend the soil. Each carried a wicked-looking blast pike of League manufacture. "Ah, yes, ma'am," the Overmann said in a cheerful voice to the disfigured Controller. "Just leave the whole thing to us. We'll take good care of them for you." He smiled hopefully.
The black-uniformed Overmann only raised her eyebrows. "How good of you," she sneered, then turned on her heel and walked away as if the studious-looking starfleet officer simply didn't exist. It was graphic proof to Brim that even though rank names might be the same in both starfleet and Controller organizations, actual power was lopsidedly vested with the latter.
The man shrugged embarrassedly, then watched his counterpart disappear along the K tube in the opposite direction Brim had come. "Controllers," he said, shaking his head. After a moment, he turned to the slim rating beside him. "Locar," he ordered, "you and Koch'kiss follow while I lead 'em to the interrogation chamber." Then he stopped and frowned. "Ah...how many of 'em are there anyway?" he asked.
"I don't know, Overmann," Locar said. "She didn't say."
The officer raised an eyebrow. "I suppose we'd better know that," he said, standing on tiptoe. "Let's see..."
Brim suddenly jumped as he beard his name growled in a whisper from directly behind his back. "Make a break for it, Wilf Ansor," Ursis' voice urged in a fierce whisper. "Now, before they can make that count!" Immediately, he roared at the top of his voice in feigned-and deafening-agony. Brim whirled just in time to see the Bear sink to the deck, writhing in the grip of what could only be a seizure of the deadliest kind. Stunned by the sudden outcry, the two gray-suited ratings jerked around in dumb surprise, only to be knocked into a welter of flying arms and legs by a suddenly howling and wide-eyed Barbousse. In the burgeoning confusion, Brim dropped to his knees and scuttled toward a nearby hatch, praying to every power in the Universe it was not secured. With a paroxysm of tension, he grabbed the latch. It moved! In one motion, he smashed the door open with his shoulder, blindly threw himself through, and slammed it closed behind him, gagging on the sudden sick-sweet foulness of TimeWeed, the mysterious-and poisonous-narcotic all Controllers were known to smoke (indeed, some were rumored to eat it!). Before him, dressed only in ceremonial loincloth, the room's occupant bounded up from his bunk, slowed by the drug but surprisingly agile for all that-and clearly alerted by the commotion outside his room. Roaring in anger, the Leaguer grabbed a blast pike from a nearby rack and swung the heavy weapon toward Brim's stomach. Desperately, the Carescrian grabbed its barrel and fiercely wrenched it off to one side, jerking awkwardly. The dazed Controller howled in surprise, overbalanced, and began to tumble forward, a look of bestial rage on his face. He recovered and ripped the weapon from Brim's hands, swinging its clumsy barrel like a club. Spontaneously, Brim stepped in close, the man's breath stale in his face, grabbed his slippery armpits, and drove a knee into the loincloth with all the strength he could muster.
Eyes wide as saucers, the Controller bellowed in hoarse agony. Retching on Brim's battle suit, he dropped the pike and grabbed convulsively for his smashed testicles. Instinctively, Brim reverted to Academy training-he cocked his fist at a right angle, then smashed the heel of his hand upward into the base of the other's nose with a brackling crunch as snapped bone and cartilage punctured the frontal lobes of his brain like tiny stilettos.
The Controller's eyes-still open in mortal agony-glazed and rolled upward as he sank to his knees, blood guttering from his nostrils, then he toppled face first to the deck.
Panting desperately, Brim sank to his own wobbly knees, hands trembling convulsively. Air! Light-headed, he shook his head wildly-the TimeWeed. It was still burning somewhere, filling the room with deadly narcotic fumes. The whole Universe seemed to have slowed around him. He felt light-headed and introspective. His mind was expanding-growing more and more perspicacious. Much more: conceptualizing.... He was losing control!
Using his last vestiges of strength, he willed himself to the bunk. There! The man's pipe of TimeWeed lay in a bulkhead alcove, thick smoke writhing heavily from its bowl. He lifted it in weak hands-then somehow found himself at the metal washstand. He mashed open the water valve, shoved the pipe into the trickling stream. The fragile bowl hissed, shattered with a snap-but the smoke stopped. Senses reeling, Brim next pulled himself up to the basin, reached above the top of the wash fixture itself, and dialed the atmosphere controls to "ALL FILTERED." A sudden hissing filled the room as he slithered again to his knees, gasping desperately. Why? How could the Controllers do such things to themselves? He felt himself falling, hit his chin on the basin, almost blacked out from the pain. Then a rush of cool air hit his lungs like a runaway starship and his head began to clear. Some cycles later-he never remembered how many-he was on the deck, grinning stupidly, huffing like some sort of animal. He'd made it!
Suddenly, a persistent buzzing overhead brought him jumping again to his feet. What now? His watering eyes searched the room. An alarm? Finally, there, over the door, an old-fashioned summons hooter, like the ones on ore carriers. Heart beating with fresh apprehension, he stepped over the sprawling corpse, reached above the door, and flipped the device from "MONITOR" to "RECEIVE." Then he waited-in sudden and terrifying silence. Whatever new fate awaited his twelve comrades outside in the K tube, it was evidently now decided.
In due time, the hooter answered his summons with the tinny imitation of a woman's voice: "Overmann Zotreb?"
Brim eyed the body at his feet. So that was the name of the man he killed. He shuddered. "Yes?" he responded in Vertrucht, muffling his voice through a fist.
"Overmann?"
"Yes."
"You do not sound yourself, Overmann Zotreb."
Heart in his mouth for the hundredth time since he left Truculent, Brim searched the bare walls for an answer-deciding attack was his best defense. "And just what is it you expect?" he snapped angrily, still muffling his voice.
"N-Nothing, Overmann!" the voice responded placatingly.
"You will concentrate on your own concerns in the future," Brim growled. "Now, what message disturbs my contemplation of the Weed?" he demanded.
"S-Sorry, Overmann," the voice said. "The call was placed at your personal request."
"Well get on with it, damn your worthless hide!"
"Y-Yes sir. You are due on the bridge in twenty cycles, Overmann."
"And that is all?"
"Yes, Overmann."
"Acknowledged," Brim-spat, then turned the device bacK to "MONITOR." He frowned, concentrating. Twenty cycles of relative safety before they started looking for Zotreb. After that, it was just a matter of time until...He snorted. He couldn't very well just sit in the cabin. Ursis hadn't set up his escape so he could run away to hide. And now that he found himself with a few options again, it was necessary he make the most of his time and do something about the disaster their mission had become. Soon! Every cycle brought the little crew closer to an enemy spaceport and slavery or death-eventually the latter, in any case.
Brim suddenly grimaced. Of course. That was the answer. Whatever else he might accomplish, it was necessary first to stop the corvette. That meant getting himself to the engineer's flat in the aftmost module and somehow disabling the starship's single gravity generator. Its uneven rumble irritated him almost as much as the Controllers. But how could he get all the way back there? His answer came from the corpse.
The late Overmann Zotreb had no further use for his uniforms now, but Wilf Brim did. In less than five cycles, the Carescrian was dressed in one of the dead man's hated black uniforms-too big overall, but a lot less noticeable than his own bright blue Imperial battle suit. He consulted his timepiece. About fifteen cycles remained-perhaps forty until they started looking and found the body. After that, Universe knew. But one step at a time.
Wiping clotted blood from Zotreb's big blast pike, he carefully opened the door, peered both ways along the empty K tube, then started aft toward the propulsion module at what he hoped was a casual rate of speed.
Footsteps echoing in the smooth-walled tube, Brim didn't get far at all before his disguise was put to the test. A gray-clad rating, arm around a bundle of logic assemblies, appeared suddenly from a companionway, turned on his heel, and passed at a fast walk. He saluted but never lifted his eyes. Brim breathed a deep sigh of relief as he entered the ship's central module, carefully memorizing everything he saw. One never knew....
Unlike similar modules built around a K tube, this corvette's central globe was part of the tube itself-a place where the long, cannular structure swelled to a spherical chamber before shrinking again at the point opposite his present position. The walkway cantilevered across twenty irals of open space to meet its counterpart on the other side.
Centered in the chamber, a glowing vertical tube divided the catwalk and extended through wide, circular openings at the top and bottom of the room-beyond which were control rooms located just inboard of the ship's 99-mmi disruptor turrets. BriM easily picked out the firing consoles (triggering gear all looked pretty much the same everywhere) in the harsh light that streamed from the rooms and provided most of the illumination around him. Elsewhere in the chamber, great power conduits sprang from the aft opening to the K tube and disappeared within the brilliance of the rooms. Numerous ledges jutting from the curved inner walls contained consoles-some manned, most not-many of which Brim could not identify. These oddly placed displays cast random, moving patterns of colored lights throughout the strange spherical chamber and everything it contained. Clearly, a great deal of the activity that took place on the bridge of an Imperial warship was decentralized throughout this ship. A nice point of design, he allowed, for a warship. It would make her much harder to knock out with one well-placed hit. But it also denied the close team atmosphere that resulted from concentrating decision-making power. He filed it away in his mind as he strode (more confident looking, he hoped, then he felt) across the catwalk, gripping Zotreb's blast pike and trying to act as if he belonged where he was. If he ever got back to his own side of the war, the information he memorized could prove handy in many ways. He snorted to himself. If he ever got back.
As he moved into the aft continuation of the K tube, more and more gray-clad crew members passed, all avoiding his eyes-most, in fact, cringed while they hurried by as if they were relieved to be out of his way. He smiled to himself-no more relieved than he!
Then, passing an open door in the next-to-last module, he heard voices, glanced inside, and was rewarded with a view of five Controllers sitting wound a circular table-clearly pursuing serious matters among themselves. Putting his haste aside for the moment, he stepped to a position outside the door where he could hear what was gong on inside but still remain unseen by the conferees. He rested the butt of his blast pike on the deck beside his right hoot, then assumed the Universal position of a bored-guard. So far as he could remember, Brim himself seldom questioned armed guards-especially commissioned armed guards-and guessed it was a pretty typical reaction. This was verified only moments later when he was passed by three, gray-suited ratings (who saluted) and two Controllers (who did not). Not one of them so much as met his eyes.
"It is now under control?" a smooth, perfectly modulated voice demanded in Vertrucht from inside.
"It is, Prefect," a younger voice declared, fear just below the surface.
Brim felt his eyebrows raise. Prefects were the equivalent of Imperial lieutenant commanders. The corvette was too small for more than one of these-so it was a sure bet he was listening to the ship's captain.
"And the count, Qfficiant Naddock-how many were they?" the Prefect's flawless voice demanded.
"Ah," the younger voice began. "Ah, I..." A chair scraped the deck.
"Well, Officiant?"
"We have all twelve of them locked up, Prefect," a female voice asserted. Brim recognized it as the scarred officer's from the K tube. "Gray Officer Mocht-the ex-professor-counted them just after the Bear had his fit."
Brim smiled-Ursis' distraction had come just in time. They couldn't know he was loose. Yet.
"You had better hope the Gray fool's count is accurate, my scarred beauty," the modulated voice sneered. "Or I shall make certain you are both more painfully interested in detail during any future operations you survive to join."
This was answered by a sharp intake of breath and then silence. Brim returned a melancholic salute from a fat, gray-suited rating with a painful-looking, and very swollen, black eye, who slowly limped along the corridor. Souvenir of Ursis' free-for-all in the K tube, he guessed, hard put to stifle his smile.
"Well, what then have you planned for our visitors from the Empire, Placeman Zodekk?" the Prefect's voice demanded next. "I haven't all day. We dock in less than three metacycles."
"Oh, yes, sir," another voice answered, this one with just the hint of a lisp. "We are questioning them one by one right now."
"Well, go on, pretty fool. What then?"
"Wh-When we finish, we could simply shoot them," the new voice offered.
"Of course," the female voice suggested, "handpower is scarce down there. The captured Imperials might serve for a time as slaves. All appear to be well fed. They could survive a long time on next to nothing, Provost."
"Hmm," the modulated voice said "Indeed a point-and I have heard of your, shall we say, predilection for the slower forms of death." He laughed. "But what of the Bear? Do you wish his presence among the slaves?"
"Oh, the Bear is quite a windfall, my Provost," the lisping voice interrupted gleefully. "Only Imperials have any use for them on starships. But bearskin coats and carpets are in much demand among Emperor Triannic's royal court this season. It has been quite cold, as you might have heard."
"All right, Placeman," the Prefect's voice said with an ill-concealed accent of boredom. "And you will let all this be a lesson. The next time..."
Heart pounding, Brim turned and started aft again along the K tube. It was imperative that he prolong the corvette's trip in space-once it reached its destination, they all were good as dead. Especially Ursis.
Free passage along the tube ended abruptly in a solid-looking bulkhead and dogged-down hatch at the entrance to the ship's aftmost module. Illuminated warnings mounted on either side of the hatch read, "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" and "SIGN IN/OUT REQUIRED BY THE PREFECT." Below these, a tabulator board hung from a hook, complete with logic scriber-the same kind of portable writing device carried by everyone in the Universe who ever took an inventory or made a survey. It was all Brim needed.
Checking behind himself for activity, he su4denly ripped the tabulator free from its hook-only one person was signed inside. He scrolled the sign-in form from its display surface, then touched a glowing panel on the hatch before him and waited.
"Yes?" a voice asked from a speaker.
"Radiation-level survey," Brim, answered briskly, pointing to the blank tabulator board as if it were his own.
"Name and ID?" the voice demanded.
Brim grimaced, heart pounding. "I have already signed that information in your tabulator board you have hanging from your hatch, fool!" he blustered, pointing to the empty hook as if it were visible from the other side of the hatch. "Now you open up before I have you fire-f1ogged. Do you hear?"
"Aye, sir. Aye, sir! I h-hear," the voice stammered as a series of clanks and chatterings: announced the opening of the hatch. Brim was almost knocked to the deck as it swung open toward him.
"Th-This way, please, Overmann, sir," a frightened rating stammered, face white with fear. He was short, wiry, and middle-aged with narrow-set eyes and a sharp-looking chin covered by uneven gray stubble. His hands bore the blue stains of a sometime kupp'gh cleaner.
Brim pushed his way past and into an antechamber-which ended in a second hatch. This one looked even more secure than its outside counterpart. Keeping his nerve under control, he slammed the first hatch shut and whirled on the rating with the best imitation of haughty anger he could summon. "You will also open this immediately," he demanded through tight lips.
"Oh, ah, aye, Overmann," the cowed guard said, taking a key from around his neck and unlocking the inner hatch. "And will you need assistance, sir?" be asked.
"You dare question my ability?" Brim hissed through his teeth.
The rating shrank back away from the hatch. "S-Sorry, sir," he whispered. "Don't have me whipped, Overmann. I mean no harm askin' ye."
Brim looked down his nose at the wretched rating, hating himself and what he had to do. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end. "Perhaps I may overlook the lapse this time," he said. "But I shall brook no interruption of my work. Do you understand? No interruption."
"I understand, sir," the rating said, taking his seat with a wan face. "No interruptions. I'll make sure."
"See that you do," Brim growled, then stepped into the bright, humming module and closed the door after himself. He had just dogged it down tight from the inside when he heard alarms go off everywhere. He glanced at his watch-time was up by almost ten cycles.
"Warning!" the speakers brayed "Warning. An Imperial murderer is loose within the ship. He is armed and dangerous. Shoot on sight and shoot to kill. Repeat: shoot on sight and shoot to kill."
Brim shrugged as he threw the tabulator in a corner. It probably wouldn't fool anyone else now.
One eye out for his lone companion in the module, Brim jog-trotted from cabin to compartment, desperately seeking entrance to the generator chamber. No time to waste now. He soon found himself deep within the module, but unable to exit from the deck on which he entered-and from the intensity of sound and vibration coming from below, he knew the mechanism he sought was located somewhere deeper in the hull. Frowning, he had just returned to the K tube from another fruitless search of a parts storeroom when a dazzling explosion seared the wall beside his head and nearly knocked him from his feet. He whirled around, firing the pike by instinct as a second explosion ruptured the space he had occupied only ticks before. The shadow of a black-suited Controller disappeared inside a nearby hatch only ticks before the bucking weapon blasted its door panel from its hinges in a wild tattoo of destruction. He rushed for the blackened, dented opening and flattened himself outside.
Panting, he readied the pike again, then blew out a whole section of overhead lights. This resulted in almost total darkness-except the bright glow streaming from the door into which this new adversary had disappeared. He dropped to a crouch, the pike ready at his hip. Gathering himself, he flexed his shoulders, took a last deep breath, and leaped through the doorway, spraying the room with deadly bursts of energy and radiation. As his feet hit the floor, a figure armed with what must have been a RocketDart pistol ran screaming toward him, launching a flurry of deadly sparkling missiles. Two hit with a searing-unbelievable-agony in his left shoulder. He heard himself scream, sank to his knees, and fired the heavy weapon point-blank into the man's stomach.
With a horrible scream of anguish, the Controller doubled over, sprayed a stinking froth of blood and vomit over Brim's blouse, then collapsed nearby in a heap on the floor, his still-smoking torso blown nearly in half.
Gritting his teeth from the burning pain in his shoulder, Brim felt blood running inside his tunic and realized he had no more than a few cycles to disarm the ship's generator before he lost consciousness. He struggled awkwardly to his feet, stuffed the RocketPistol in his belt, and dragged the blast pike by its scorched barrel to a large open hatch set in the deck. Light and noise streaming through from below assured him be had finally reached the generator chamber. And not a moment too soon. Far down the K tube, he could already hear thumps and clangs as the ship's crew-almost certainly alerted by the sight of their dead comrade in the crew section-attempted to force the inner hatch.
Balancing himself precariously on the narrow rungs, he found the howling bass of the machinery nearly as painful to his unprotected ears as the throbbing darts in his charred shoulder. Somehow, he managed to descend with his good hand while doggedly clutched the heavy pike in his left, but at the bottom he couldn't remember navigating the last two rungs at all.
Mounted overhead directly to the underside of the K tube the generator itself looked much like the rest of the antigravity generators he had seen. It was big, taking up the major volume of the round-bottomed chamber-the deck on which he presently stood was no more than a small platform mounted over the stout longerons and curved hullmetal plates that formed the underside of the module itself. Brim estimated the machinery stretched nearly twenty irals in length from its forward cooling vanes to the gleaming, pressure-regulating sphere where it connected to the ship's primary power supply by means of two finned wave guides arching down from the flat ceiling, then up and around to a radiation-blackened collar.
Thrusting aside the torment in his shoulder, Brim considered his options. There were only two. He could blast the regulator globe-either of the weapons he carried could do that easily. Or he could shoot out the machine's all-important phase latch, if he could find it. The second choice was much more attractive from a personal standpoint: rupturing the regulator globe would release all the generator's output directly into the chamber. The burst of raw energy would last only a gigatick at most before logic fuses sensed the runaway flow and choked it off at the source. But that was ample time to fry him (and any other organic compounds in the generator chamber) to fused carbon atoms. Grimly, he studied the big machine. Familiar as it looked overall, individual parts made little sense by themselves. He shook his head with frustration as he eyed the pulsing regulator. He grimaced. Death held no particular terror for him, especially after what he'd already been through. But he hated to give in. He concentrated again, trying desperately to discover some thread of functionality amid the complex network of conduits, insulators, logics, and odd-shaped housings. Then, almost by accident, his- eye was caught by a big synchronous compensator, calibrated by the League's crazy x-ROGEN. No wonder he couldn't find it the first time! Directly below was its logic shunt-and to the right of that, a beam multiplier, no doubt about it! And a Fort'lier tube-they'd call it a "multigrid-A" here, calibrated as it was in mega-ROGEN. He was getting close now-a good thing, too. The pain in his shoulder was all but stopped, but be had become very drowsy now-and dizzy. He steadied himself with the hot barrel of the blast pike, forcing his eyes to focus. A distant clanging and hammering commenced on the hatch above him. Not much time left now. He compelled his tired mind to function.... The Fort'lier tube. It controlled a radiation modulator somewhere. Therefore...
He shook his head. Things ~ getting terribly foggy. He traced a thick wave guide from the oblong device through... Yes. That was the modulator, and beside it the phase latch he was looking for. He could tell by the big rectifier mounted on its side. All so easy once he knew where to look!
He sniffed the air anxiously, looked up. The hatch was glowing cherry red. Bastards were burning through. Desperately, he raised his pike toward the generator-Universe, how he was shaking. The hammering commenced again. He blurred, squeezed his eyes clear. The latch was in his sights. He fired...and missed.
With a sharp ripping noise, a bolt of energy cut through the hatch and sent sparks all over a nearby bulkhead. Gritting his teeth, Brim wrestled the weapon to his shoulder again, aimed. This was his last chance. If he missed, he'd go for the regulator and a quick, painless death. He willed himself to steady the sights, counted backward. Three...two...one. Then he fired. This time, he was rewarded with a satisfying flash of light as the phase latch shattered in a wobbling ball of violet radiance. Immediately, the noise of the generator began to fade with a great, almost-human sigh.
Presently, his eyes began to fog over again. By now, Brim had no strength to counter it. He felt himself falling. The last thing he heard was the hatch grating open on its ruined hinges-guttural shouts he no longer understood. Then he heard nothing.
He noticed the glare forcing his closed eyelids at about the same time his cheek told him he was lying facedown on something cold and very hard. Groggily, he caught himself before he opened his eyes-voices on every side, all speaking Vertrucht. Where was he? So hard to remember.... But with all the Vertrucht being spoken, it couldn't be very healthy for him, wherever it was.
"Try it again," a gruff voice commanded, clearly under some sort of strain.
"I already did," a nasal voice answered. "And I'm telling you, the whole damned thing's dead. What's the big rush anyway? They've already sent a ship out to help."
"You know the Prefect as well as I do," the gruff voice said. "And he's not going to be happy taking anybody's help. So try it."
"Yes, sir. Shunt's in place. Inverters on. Grav housing closed."
Other voices stopped, listening.
"Hit it!" the gruff voice commanded. "Now."
Silence. Brim's shoulder throbbed painfully. He was cold, shivered in spite of himself.
"That's all?"
"That's all," the nasal voice confirmed. "Bastard really cocked up the phase latch, didn't he?"
The gruff voice swore an unintelligible oath. "The whole damned generator's dead as an xchort, then," it said.
The generator! It all came back to Brim in a rush. But where had they taken him? Was he still in the chamber? Somehow he didn't think so. This sounded more like the bridge.
"How long before you can get us going again?' a new, deeper voice demanded.
"None will say as yet, Placeman," the gruff voice answered. "When that one on the deck over there murdered Overmann Zotreb, he did more damage then he knew."
"Well?"
"Zotreb's assistants are a good deal slower, it seems"
"Curse all of them-especially him," the deep voice growled. Brim's side exploded with a blow that knocked the wind from his lungs-and opened both eyes wide with pain. It took only a moment to determine he was indeed on the corvette's bridge.
"Look out! He's awake," someone yelled. This was followed by a second vicious kick. Brim shut his eyes and clenched his teeth, waiting for the next one.
"Placeman! Placeman!" another voice squealed. "Would you kill him before we search his mind?"
"Putrid spawn of Greyffin's scum!" the deep voice growled. "You can be sure I shall kill him."
"But not before we extract certain information, fool," a new, smoothly modulated voice interrupted. Brim remembered that voice from the conference he'd "guarded."
"Oh, ah-no, sir, Prefect Valentin!" the deep voice stumbled. "Certainly not before."
"One must be subtle," the modulated voice interrupted, as though the other had never spoken. "Like this...."
Brim opened his eyes wide in renewed agony as a gleaming boot ground the fingers of his left hand into the metal decking. He gasped in pain, trying to pull his hand away, but the arm didn't seem to work anymore. Blinking angry tears from his eyes, he peered upward into the calm face of another Controller, clearly the corvette's commanding officer. Blond, square-jawed, young, and strikingly handsome, even from a deck-level angle of view, the man called Valentin was outfitted in immaculate black breeches, a tight, form-fitting tunic with crimson prefect's collars, and a peaked hat with silver decoration. He was the perfect embodiment of Triannic's officer corps, and the look of confidence on his face gave clear signal he was also a man on his way up someone's ladder of success.
"Keep your eyes open and attend my questions, slime of slime," the youthful officer commanded in flawless Avalonian. He sneered as he removed his heel from Brim's bleeding fingers. "You clearly understand you will die soon," he said matter-of-factly, "therefore it should be of little concern to you what we do with your body." His face exploded with cruel laughter. "How quickly and painlessly you die depends upon your answers. I reward truthfulness even for your kind."
'Hab'thall," Brim spat defiantly, picking the most insulting malediction he could dredge from his store of gutter Vertrucht-then grunted in pain as a polished boot smashed into his mouth, snapping teeth and throwing his head back against his shoulder.
"That should teach you better use of Vertrucht."
Brim willed the pain away and glared up in silence.
"Good," Valentin said at length, studying his fingernails. "Now, what is your ship? Name and home port, if you please."
Brim continued his silence as blood seeped from the corner of his ruined lips and ran warm along his lower cheek to puddle silently on the deck.
"My, my," the officer said with an innocent mien, "others in your crew have shared that secret with me. And much more, too. Now..." He stepped on Brim's helpless fingers again. "Won't you?"
Brim threw up on the other perfect boot.
Valentin roared in anger, jumped back, and kicked Brim full in the stomach.
By this time, Brim hardly noticed.
"I'll show you, cretin son of a capcloth," the enraged officer shouted, pulling a blaster from a black, shiny holster on his hip. He pointed it in the direction of Brim's stomach. "Slowly, Avalonian scum. As I promised."
Fascinated, Brim watched the man's finger curl over the trigger. Then suddenly, alarms went off all over the bridge.
"Prefrct," a rating yelled in panic. "Prefect Valentin, sir!"
Valentin growled-lowered his blaster and turned. "Well?" he demanded.
"Another sh-ship, Prefect," the voice stammered.
"Drat!" Valentin swore. "They got here much sooner than I, expected." He glared at the generator console. "Now I suppose I shall have to accept their help."
"It...it's the w-wrong kind of ship, Prefect Valentin," the rating declared.
"Well, what kind of ship, fool? How does it answer the challenge?"
"It does not answer, Prefect."
"What?"
"See for yourself, Prefect."
"Silence, fool! Where is it coming from?"
Brim couldn't see where the man pointed, but watched Valentin's boots spin round.
"Train the guns," the officer bellowed. "And..." He stopped in midsentence. "Sweet hok'kling Pokknor," he swore through his teeth. "Belay that last order. It's one of their T-class ships. Our 99s don't stand a chance."
Brim laughed through his cut and bleeding lips-though it came out as more of a bubbling noise. He mouthed the next words slowly and carefully. "What number, hab'thall?" This time, he spoke entirely in Vertrucht, then waited for the foot. It didn't come.
"You sneaking slime," Valentin snarled. "Vertrucht, eh?"
"What number, hab'thall?" Brim bubbled, this time with a smile worth twice the pain it caused his lips.
Valentin narrowed his eyes, peered through the Hyperscreens. "T.83," he snapped furiously, then turned and called over his shoulder, "Get this ordure into the seat here. Perhaps he can be of further value after all." He slipped the blaster back into its gleaming holster.
Rough hands hauled Brim from the deck and into a recliner at an empty console. He almost passed out from the pain-new blood was trickling along his chest again. His eyes fogged over and he felt himself slump toward the console. "I think you're too late, Prefect, old cock," he mumbled as a tiny popping noise exploded on his right arm.
"There, that'll bring him around for a while," another voice said.
Warmth spread rapidly from his right arm, and his eyes abruptly cleared. A rope under his arms secured him to the back of the recliner-he could see out the Hyperscreens. He focused his eyes, grinned as well as he could. I.F.S. Truculent, all right. Never had a "pick and shovel" starship looked so beautiful. Bow on, she was standing about a thousand irals off the corvette's port quarter, all seven of her powerful 144-mmi disruptors pointed, it seemed, directly at his head. Even while he watched, they flashed in unison, accompanied by great coruscating eruptions of flame and glittering clouds of radiation. Outside, the Universe went mad in a paroxysm of erupting, runaway energy. The corvette bucketed violently, seams creaking and groaning as her spaceframe twisted in the backwash of space falling back in on itself. Screams of terror filled the bridge. The lights flickered out, then relighted-much dimmer this time.
Too near the final onslaught of death to care, Brim turned to the young Prefect. The hypodermic that cleared his eyes also seemed to have stemmed the pain-at least most of it. He smiled crookedly. "She's about to blow all of us to subatomics, Valentin," be bubbled happily, "I'm sure the others won't mind."
"She?"
"Captain Collingswood," Brim said reverting to Avalonian.
"By Pokknor's beard," Valentin whispered. "Perhaps there's a chance yet," he whispered to himself. "Univers..."
"Not 'Universe,' 'Collingswood,'" Brim corrected gleefully.
"Silence, fool!"
"As you wish, Prefect."
Valentin shivered, peered through the Hyperscreens at Truculent's seven 144-mmi's. "I want to talk to her,' he said almost to himself, then turned to a rating at a nearby console. "Get me a connection to that ship," he ordered, smoothing his wavy blond hair. "Immediately!"
"Aye, Prefect," a rating with a bald head and large ears answered, bending over his console. Within scant ticks, a blank Lobe appeared on the console nearest the black-suited officer.
"Not yet to me!" he bellowed. "Him!" He pointed to Brim.
A second blast from Truculent, this time much closer, sent every loose article on the bridge crashing wildly to the deck. The ship's gravity pulsed and the Hyperscreens flashed wildly.
"Hurry, fool!" Valentin wailed, nervously shooting his cuffs. "Hurry!"
"Aye, Prefect," the rating answered. "They're listening now, I think." A new globe appeared on Brim's console, flashing once... twice. Then it filled with a Blue Cape rating-bald with fat cheeks. It was Applewood.
"Connection's made, Prefect," the League rating reported.
Applewood's image peered out from the globe, talking with someone off the display. "We've got a connection to them, Captain," he said hesitantly. "I seem to be looking into the bridge." His eyes came to rest on Brim's ruined face. He stopped, a look of horror on his face. "Oh, sweet thraggling Universe," he groaned. "It looks like Lieutenant Brim."
Brim nodded, raised his good band. He felt hot and weak. The hypodermic was rapidly wearing off and his vision was starting to fog again. Blood still trickled down his chest.
"There's blood all over him," Applewood exclaimed. He was suddenly thrust aside, replaced by Collingswood in the globe.
"Lieutenant Brim," she said, clearly struggling to keep herself under control. "What has happened to...?" She paused. She seemed to know the answer to that. "To the rest of the crew?" she asked.
Smiling toothsomely and fairly dripping masculinity, Valentin moved beside Brim and spoke into the globe. "They are safe, Captain Collingswood," he said with the earnest look of a schoolboy. "You have my word as an officer of the League."
"Oh?" Collngswood answered. "Lieutenant Brim certainly doesn't look particularly safe to me."
"As you can see from his dress, Captain," Valentin said smoothly, "Lieutenant Brim is a special case. Disguised, mind you, in the uniform of my beloved homeland-against all established conventions-this criminal ruthlessly murdered two of my offlcers." He shrugged. "We were forced to question him." -
"I see," Collingswood said slowly, a look of disgust in her eyes. "And you have, ah, 'questioned' my other crewmen in the same manner?"
"You can believe me when I say the remainder of your crewmen are, shall we say, safe for the moment." Valentin's eyes hardened theatrically the length of a well-measured instant, then the boyish smile returned.
"'For the moment,'" Collingswood repeated evenly. "Perhaps you had better tell me what that means." The corvette's bridge was deathly still by now, every officer and rating watching breathlessly as if life itself depended on the next few words.
"Simply this, Captain Collingswood," Valentin said, his voice growing more oily by the moment. "Should something untoward happen to my ship, your men would surely be affected also. And I am sure a lovely woman of your stature would never want something like that."
"Silence!" Collingswood snapped, her eyes blazing with anger. "I have no more patience with your game-and it is now clear to me you cannot move under your own power. Therefore, listen to me well," she continued, "for I am about to destroy your ship."
Valentin's eyes opened wide in surprise. "With thirteen of your men aboard?" he asked. "Would you kill them, too?"
"Absolutely," Collingswood assured him.
"She means it, Valentin," Brim laughed weakly. "I'm ready-look at me. And I imagine the others are, too." Blackness was sweeping over him and he had no strength left to fight. He closed his eyes, felt his head lolling as be collapsed against the rope that held him in place. He heard Collingswood gasp, then abruptly her voice hardened.
"Despite my own wishes to the contrary, Prefect," she said I through clenched teeth, "it is not necessary that anyone die with your ship-if my orders are followed accurately. Do you understand? No deviations. Your fate is entirely up to you."
"Wh-What can I do?" Valentin asked in a shaky voice. His part in the game was clearly over before it began.
"You have only ten cycles to carry out my orders..." Collingswood said, the sound of her voice fast fading in Brim's ears. He strained to hear the next words, too, but they were drowned by a sudden thundering roar having nothing to do with starships or disruptors either: be was dying and he knew it. Strange it didn't matter now the time had come. He even managed to relax as the last light faded from his eyes and the Universe ceased to exist. He'd done the best he could....
This time, the light filtering through his closed eyes was gentle-and wherever he was now come to, things were blessedly quiet, even warm. Comfortable. A definite improvement, be thought. Even the pain was gone, replaced by a wild tingling in his shoulder.
Alive?
He opened his eyes cautiously. A curved, transparent canopy arched overhead no more than half an iral from his face. For lack of anything better, he concentrated on that, and blinked his eyes. In one corner, it carried the stylized comet insignia of the Imperial Fleet.
Safe, too! Somehow-miraculously-he was in somebody's sick bay. He didn't even particularly care whose it was, or how he got there.
He turned his head in the cramped enclosure, sighted along his left shoulder. It had come free. The healing machine's amoebalike apparatus was evidently finished with him and retracted, or whatever it was pseudopods did when they went away. The shoulder itself was covered by a softly glowing cloth that extended all the way to his elbow. The remainder of him appeared to be dressed in a standard-issue one-piece Imperial hospital suit-minus the left sleeve and shoulder. He moved his left hand, clenched a fist. Very little tenderness.
Not bad.
In a state of almost total exhaustion, he closed his eyes again and drifted off into contented sleep.
Later, when he woke again, the canopy was open and the deep rumble of Drive crystals soothed his ears. A familiar face peered down from a balding head with considerable professional interest. "You xaxtdamned Carescrians will do anything for a little attention, won't you?" admonished Xerxes O. Flynn.
Brim grinned. "Well," he conceded, "almost-anything. I didn't let 'em kill me, after all."
"Could have fooled me," Flynn said with a serious look on his face. "Those Cloud bastards sure thought you were dead. Frightened to death of what might happen to 'em because of it."
Brim frowned. "Yeah," he conceded, "Well, they weren't alone by a long shot. I was pretty sure it was all over, too. Just how in the bloody Universe did I get here?" he demanded. "When I passed out, that prefect bastard, Valentin, was still trying to play sex roles with Collingswood."
"Collingswood wasn't playing," Flynn chuckled, "but I did hear her telling Pym she thought he was xaxtdamned cute."
Brim raised an eyebrow. "Collingswood? Valentin?"
"Valentin, indeed," Flynn answered. "He's rather famous over there, in case you hadn't heard. Quite a hero, among other things." He laughed. "And there's nothing wrong with our little Regula Collingswood, either. She's a perfectly healthy specimen in every respect. Just wasn't in the mood at the time. Probably the sight of all your blood, or something. Anyway, she worked everything out. It's a long story-you can get the details later. But she nearly melted that thraggling corvette before she left, not long after Ursis carried you over himself. In a LifeGlobe."
"Melted the corvette?" Brim asked in 'amazement. "Universe-you can't expect me to wait for that story. Come on now, Doctor. I'll never get back to sleep."
Flynn opened his mouth for a moment, pointed a finger at Brim, then shook his head and smiled resignedly. "All right," he said, leaning his elbows on the side of the healing machine. "I suppose it makes sense. I wouldn't be able to sleep, either." With that, he related how Collingswood offered Valentin a very simple plan. He and his crew could safely embark in their LifeGlobes-so long as the captured Imperials were also provided their own LifeGlobe in which they could separately return to Truculent. Once they were safely aboard and the Leaguers were a safe distance away, Collingswood would signal Pym to destroy the corvette-and one Leaguer LifeGlobe for each Imperial who was dead or had failed to return. "They were xaxtdamned careful with you after that," Flynn concluded.
"What about Ursis and Barbousse and the rest of the crew?" Brim asked.
"Oh, they're all healing, more's the pity," Flynn said. "Pym got no further target practice, and you're the only one I was able to really practice on."
"Universe," Brim said, "I'll bet everybody else all felt terrible about that."
"They didn't," Flynn grumped. "Unfeeling bastards. But you made up for it, Brim, old friend," he said with a smile of satisfaction. "Isn't much under that bandage you brought from Carescria. I practiced on you for a long time-practically had to grow you a whole new shoulder, plus a few teeth."
"Thraggling wonderful," Brim exclaimed in mock dismay. "Do any of them work?"
"Smart bastard," Flynn fumed. "I couldn't very well cock up the teeth, now could I? They come in a box, you know." Then he frowned. "I am sort of worried about the arm and shoulder assembly, now that I think about it. Might be only good for piloting starships and lifting glasses of meem." A quiet chime interrupted his banter, and he looked over his shoulder, grinning. "Couple of strange-looking individuals asked to see you when you woke, Wilf," he said. "Feel up to talking some more?"
"If they can stand me, I can probably stand them," Brim assured him.
Flynn nodded, again over his shoulder. "All right," he said, "come on in."
Brim heard a door slide open on quiet rollers. Directly, Ursis and Barbousse appeared on either side of the Doctor, grinning from ear to ear. Both wore heavy bandages. "Remember now," Flynn warned sternly, "only a couple of cycles. Then out you go."
The Bear looked down at Brim with one eye (his other was hidden by a patch), fang gems flashing the soft light. He cocked his head toward the Doctor. "Flynn here can be great nuisance when he wants," he said. "Is this not so, Starman Barbousse?"
The big rating's face reddened. "Well, sir," he said, "he does appear to do passing good work. Ah..." He peered down at Brim. "Glad to be seein' you, ah..."
"How about 'alive'?" Brim suggested. "And speaking of that, what happened to you two?"
"Oh," Barbousse said lightly, "them Cloud League scalawags didn't take kindly to Lieutenant Ursis' fake fit there in the K tube-what with all his rollin' around on the deck an' all."
"And you piling in for good measure," Ursis chuckled with a toothy grin. "As they say on the Mother Planets, 'When Hagsdoff scratches rock, Bears move snow houses out of sunlight,' eh?" He nudged the big rating in the ribs with an elbow.
"Oh. Ah...aye, sir," Barbousse answered with a confused look. "Hagsdoffs."
Flynn's eyes met Brim's, then rolled toward the ceiling. "Hagsdoffs," he repeated.
"You were both great, "Brim piped up to stifle an oncoming chuckle. "Even if you did almost get me killed."
"Sure glad you made it, Lieutenant," Barbousse repeated. "If you hadn't done what you did, we'd likely be startin' an all-day night shift at some Altnag'gin hullmetal mill."
"Not all of us," Ursis interjected with a dark growl.
"I heard," Brim said. "The bastards..."
"At any rate," Flynn interrupted quickly. "You two did show up here for a particu1ar purpose, didn't you?"
"Yes, that we did," Ursis answered, turning to Brim with a serious look on his face. He narrowed his eyes. "Someday, Wilf Brim," he said, "I shall properly thank you for all you did for us. Not now. But I want you to know your bravery would be legend, even in my homeland." He shook his head, momentarily a long way off. "Meantime," he said, turning to Barbousse, "you give it to him. You found it."
Barbousse's cheeks went red again, but he looked Brim in the eye. "Ah, I, ah, c-copped this on the way out of the corvette," he stammered as he lifted a big side-action blaster into the startled Carescrian's right hand. "Tried to return it to Lieutenant Ursis, but he wouldn't take it back;"
"We agreed you should have it," Ursis thrust in. "It belonged to my grandfather-a man of great gallantry. You will honor it, Wilf-and him, rest his spirit."
Brim opened his mouth in surprise. "I...Oh, Universe, Nik," he exclaimed emotionally, "I can't take that."
"Sorry," Flynn interrupted, "but if you people are going to argue, these two will have to leave-which they are going to have to do soon anyway."
Brim shook his head in defeat, tears of emotion burning his eyes. "Thank you," he choked when he was able. Not eloquent, but all he could manage.
"You are most welcome, Friend Brim," Ursis said with a huge grin. "And before this very inhospitable medicine man rescinds his tenuous welcome, I have something else here for you-from no less a personage than Bosporus P. Gallsworthy."
Brim raised an eyebrow. "Gallsworthy?" he asked incredulously.
"None other," Ursis said. "As your boss, he has collected all messages sent to your person since you last accessed your queue."
"And?" Brim asked. "Nobody sends me anything but debit notices."
"Don't remember Gallsworthy handing me anything like that," Ursis said, a look of ill-concealed merriment in his eyes.
"What else could it be?" Brim asked, genuinely mystified.
The Bear laughed. "This," he said, handing Brim a small plastic card. "Hard copy of personal message from Gimmas Haefdon. Thought you might want to see it straightaway."
"For me? I don't know anybody On Gimmas Haefdon. I didn't even get there until two nights before we..."
"Hmm," the Bear replied. "Perhaps it is a mistake. But I think not. Read...."
Frowning, Brim took the card, turned it to catch the light-his heart skipped a beat. Four short lines of poetry from the ancient pen of Sante' Eremite blazed from the tiny page. The power of the simple words transcended centuries; he'd read them often: "My fire burns among the stars/My long lance thrusteth sure,/My strength is as the strength of ten,/Because my heart endures." One more line completed the short message: "Congratulations, Wilf Brim." It was signed simply, "Margot Effer'wyck."