"Dropped with surge, Cap'm!"
Miraculously, the stern had come around well, and was now in almost perfect position for backing into the slip—were the reverse circuits working. "Send the stern beam over and heave 'round the warping head!" Brim ordered tensely. The rating at the stern cupola had only a single chance to project his mooring beam for capture by the optical bollard on the wall of the satellite. If she missed, the stern would come around and he'd lose control again—this time with GravAnchors to further complicate the situation! Heart in his mouth, he watched in the aft-view display as a thin green ray flashed to the reflecting mechanism, caught, flared up, and... held! Immediately it began to draw their stern into the narrow berth.
"Check the starboard bow beam. Chief... now!" he ordered.
"Check starboard..."
Then as the distance from the two anchors became equaclass="underline" "Check port!"
"Check port, Cap'm."
They were in! Or at least aimed properly to go in. Now, it was only a matter of easing the bow beams and heaving on the stern to draw themselves into the berth. In the space of half a metacycle, the ship was safely moored, a repair crew was already swarming around the bridge, and Barbousse had sent out a launch to retrieve their GravAnchors.
All in a day's work....
It was an exhausted and aching Wilf Brim who trudged out of the brow airlock and doffed his battle helmet for the first time since leaving FleetPort 30 Avalon a number of metacycles ago. The Triad was on the opposite side of Ariel and the station's transparent boarding tube was all in shadows as he made his way toward one of the main portals leading to the station's interior. A slim, graceful figure wearing a beguilingly open Fleet Cloak met him halfway across the tube.
" 'Twas a fine landin' you made, Wilf Brim," Eve Cartier said in the gentle voice he knew so well.
"Weel done, sir." Her words seemed to cradle his exhaustion in a comforting veil, and she took his arm soothingly while she looked at him with a sparkle in her eyes. "Faith, it's also a ge'at black eye you've got, mon."
Brim tentatively touched his cheek. It was tender. "Canna' trust Carescrians," he chuckled, reverting to an accent he'd renounced (with a great deal of difficulty) more than twenty years ago.
Surprisingly, it felt almost, well, natural. "You know that, noo, chield," he continued, letting the two decades slip into nothingness. "We're always gettin' into wee scrapes."
She smiled and squeezed his arm. "Weel, weel, Mr. Brim," she said. "Perhaps I've misjudged. I always thought you were ane o' those haughty Imperials."
"That's why you ne'er came back to see me at the Benwell reception, noo?" Brim asked roguishly. Her close proximity was making him forget all about the aches and pains he'd collected from being thrown about in his seat restraints. Slimness accentuated the wide-set swelling of her smallish breasts beneath an Imperial uniform that fit like a glove—all the way to her boot tips.
Her blush was visible even in the semidarkness. "That," she said with an embarrassed little smile,
"is probably as good an answer as I'll come up wi' myself." She disengaged his arm as he held the airlock door for her. "I will say, tho'—just in case you're interested—that there's nothin' permanent between the man and myself."
In the main corridor, Brim felt his own cheeks flush, and he turned to look Cartier in the eyes.
"It's none of my business, Eve," he said, "but, yeah, I... ah... am... ah... interested."
"I sort of hoped you might be," she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye. "An' it just so happens I'm available for supper once you've reported to the sick bay an' then checked on your ship."
Brim slowed his steps and frowned at the beautiful Carescrian as he was struck with a most compelling sense of pleasure. "In that case," he said, "the bastard Leaguer who shot up my Starfury did me a big favor."
"E'en countin' the black eye?" Cartier asked.
Brim grimaced. "Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that. You sure you want to be seen with me? I must look like some low-brow street brawler, and I've no clothes but this battlesuit."
"I've seen the kind o' brawlin' you do, Mr. Brim," she said with a smile, "an' I'll be most proud to ha' supper wi' you. Besides, everybody weel want to meet the Helmsman who docked his Starfury wi' his GravAnchors."
"I'd bet a year's credits you can do the same," Brim said, looking her in the eye.
"Oh," Cartier laughed, "I've flown my share o' ore barges. It's but recently they trained Carescrians from the ground up, so to speak. We both started the hard way." Then she smiled and put her hands on his arm as they came abreast of an elevator bank. "Now get on wi' you. Sickbay is up two levels—you'll see the signs. An' I'll send someone along wi' somethin' to wear."
"Where will I meet you?" Brim asked.
"I'll be in the wardroom when you're ready," she said, "savin' us a table wi' a view."
"With a view?" Brim asked.
"But o' course," Cartier said., "FleetPort 19's a number o' years older than FleetPort 30." Then the elevator doors slid open and she nodded toward the empty tube. "On you way, Mr. Brim. You'll see for yourself soon enough."
Komenski, the Surgeon, required what seemed like at least five Standard Years before her ministrations were finished, and Brim ended up with a bandage around his forehead and an eye patch to hold a H-Plasm compress in place for the evening. "You must have been thrown around pretty violently," she said, adjusting her glasses. "You're a mass of bruises from head to foot."
Naked as a newborn and feeling every one of those aches, Brim nodded. "Accurate diagnosis, Doctor," he said, agonizingly sitting up on the examination table. "Damn Leaguer really took a dislike to us."
"Probably you won't die from it, though," Komenski mused, "in spite of his intentions."
Brim winced as he tried to move his shoulders, wondering idly what there was about surgeons that he could sit naked in front of one—a female, no less—and carry on a conversation as if he were fully dressed. "The way I feel right now, I may regret that more than he."
"Or she," Komenski amended.
"Too true," Brim allowed.
"Speaking of which," she said, pointing to a fresh uniform and Fleet Cloak hanging on the wall along with a jump suit. She turned to wash her hands. "An orderly dropped the jump suit off while I had you in the healing machine. But a little while later a perfectly huge Chief Petty Officer—a Master Chief at that—delivered the uniform. One of your crewman, I suppose. Said he always packed one of your uniforms—just in case."
Brim smiled and shook his head in awe. "Barbousse," he mumbled.
"Bless you," the Surgeon said.
"And you, Doctor," Brim chuckled, beginning to don the uniform in spite of his aches and pains.
It had been a long time since he'd dined with a truly beautiful woman—especially a beautiful Carescrian woman who made him think of lavender mists... green rolling hills strewn with mossy boulders and ancient roads that lost themselves mysteriously in the everlasting cold and drizzle... proud, ruddy faces in spite of hardship. Another Universe, almost. Carescria. For all its poverty and benighted existence, it was her home. And his, too, even as much as he'd tried to forget....
"You were certainly far away, Captain," Komenski observed, breaking into Brim's reverie.
"Yes," Brim agreed. "A long way."