"That's Onrad," Brim whispered with a grin. "Just as if he'd been here a hundred times before."
"Emperors always know where they're going," Aram whispered back. "Don't they?"
Brim rolled his eyes toward the top of the tube. "I shall forever hope they do," he said in mock reverence.
"So shall I," Aram chuckled. He clearly meant it.
Inside, the BKAEW station seemed cramped, as it should with walls as thickly armored as the bridge of a heavy cruiser. Brim and Aram were the last ones into the scanning chamber and just in time to hear one of the operators inform Onrad that forty Leaguer attack ships had just slowed out of HyperSpace and were approaching from nightward. As wild patterns of multicolored data flowed over the large master display, Brim watched the ship's progress and visualized unflappable controllers in distant filter centers calling up Starfuries and Defiants to meet them. Within cycles, strong forces of Imperial defenders began to appear at the edges of the display and converge on the incoming Leaguers.
Brim watched Onrad monitoring the developing battle with intent concentration. After a few more clicks, he began to shake his head in rapt, clearly emotional silence while his eyes actually filled with tears.
"Are you feeling all right, Your Highness?" Ismay asked.
With obvious effort, the Emperor nodded. "Yes, Ismay. I'm all right. Just please don't speak for a moment. I have seldom been so moved in all my life." After that, he watched in silence, listening to the whispered undertones of the operators as they worked their displays. Finally, after watching the battle for what must have been at least five cycles, he sighed and shook his head. "Never," he rumbled to Ismay, "in any field of mortal conflict—has so much been owed to so few by so many."
The words burned in Brim's mind. Onrad had personally been out there in the heat of battle—he'd seen trusted friends blasted into particles and die screaming for air in ripped-open battlesuits. And because of it, he was one of the few Emperors in history who could actually feel what things were all about. Intrinsically, he understood the effects his pronouncements would have. Brim had always trusted that the man would be a fine Emperor; it was times like this he felt he knew why....
Scant moments later, a whole squadron of GA 87B Zachtwagers took advantage of the confused situation to attack the BKAEW site itself, and Brim instantly discovered one of the most terrifying aspects of duty aboard the new early-warning stations. The station occupants got to actually watch the plot as League warships zeroed in on their particular satellite. And there was no way to shoot back!
"Great Universe, Onrad," Beyazh gasped in apparent fascination, "what a party! There's the whole bloody League Fleet out there, except for Hoth Orgoth himself, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear his voice on the COMM channels!"
But despite the Ambassador's bravery—or was it ignorance? —tension began to mount in the crowded control room as it became evident that the station itself was to be the target.
"I think it would be a good idea," Ismay warned calmly, "if everyone donned his helmet. Now!"
No stranger to the hazards of war in space, Brim had gotten into his clicks before the man's warning, and was activating its seals when the first attack arrived in the form of a direct hit on one of the two power globes. The whole structure juddered violently, pulsing local gravity and knocking everyone from his feet. Brim ground his teeth in surprise. How in xaxt had the Leaguers managed a direct hit with the first salvo. They'd hardly slowed below LightSpeed, yet their shooting was... magnificent—no other word would do. Less than a click later, a second disrupter salvo smashed home with terrific concussion, shutting down all the displays in blinding flashes of light. And so far as he could discern, the Leaguers had fired no more than a dozen salvos. For two direct hits! Yet they'd passed at such velocity that their targeting systems couldn't have had a chance to take effect....
A third, more distant hit smashed home with a terrible creaking and groaning as if one of the spheres had been torn away completely. The local gravity pulsed violently, then faded, throwing the occupants of the chamber around like rag dolls, caroming off the walls and cabinets in a horrible confusion of arms, legs, and smashed furniture. The voice circuits filled with a cacophony of screaming fright and pain. And in the midst of this utter chaos, still another hit ripped a great crack in the armored shell of the control room, decompressing the chamber with an atmospheric explosion that carried whole consoles—with their operators—into the blackness of space itself. Brim found himself plastered against a curved surface beside a light fixture that once must have been the ceiling of the scanning chamber. Beside him, Emperor Onrad shook his head inside his battlesuit with a bloody bruise on his forehead. By the dim glow of a battle lantern, he could see Aram's wings spasmodically fluttering inside his special battlesuit jacket, clearly stunned though just as clearly alive. But where was...? "Beyazh!" he yelled over the voice circuits. "Where the xaxt are you?"
"Over here," the Ambassador answered, his words cut off by someone vomiting noisily in her helmet. Brim whirled to see an arm waving feebly from beside the crumpled remains of a display console—only irals from the great ragged fissure, through which the little HSTS could be seen bobbing at the end of a single mooring beam that had somehow managed to remain powered. Its four crewmen, protected only by their battlesuits, could never have survived the blasts, but the ship appeared to be undamaged. Turning quickly to the Emperor, he peered into the faceplate to see a brow wrinkled with absolute rage. "You all right, Your Majesty?"
"I am thraggling well NOT all right," the big man bellowed angrily. "I am bloody incensed!" He turned to Brim as still another hit landed somewhere in the structure and shook the floor, silently now that there was no air to carry sound. "I want to get those bastards!"
Brim chuckled in spite of the desperate circumstances. That was Onrad. No thought of escape or safety—he wanted to fight back!
Suddenly the Emperor glanced outside and fastened his attention on the HSTS. His brow wrinkled in thought. "Brim," he demanded, nodding toward the little ship. "Suppose you'd be willing to go after those bastards if we could?"
Another hit smashed home. "You bet I would," Brim growled. "But what'll we use to...?"
Onrad nodded toward the HSTS. "How about putting a torpedo up their bloody arses," he whispered with a smile. "Xaxtdamn better than sitting here for Leaguer target practice. Brim! D'you suppose that little ship still flies?"
Brim considered only a moment. "We won't know unless we try, Your Majesty," he said.
"Did you ever fly one?" Onrad demanded,
"At the Sherrington plant, Your Majesty," Brim replied with a nod. "A number of times."
"For Voot's sake, Brim," Onrad bellowed, sending the confused babble on the voice circuits into absolute silence, "drop the thraggling 'Your Majesty' for a while. If that little ship'll fly, you're in charge. Got that?"
"I'll try, Your... er... All right. We go. Aram!" he yelled. "You hear all that?"
"Aye, Captain," the A'zurnian replied weakly. "I'm ready."
"Good," Brim said. "You're in the right seat. Oodam. What shape are you in?"
"Mad as a soaked Rothcat," the Ambassador roared. "Let's get the bastards. In my day, I was a damn fine torpedoman."
"I'll take the disrupter," Onrad rumbled. "I'm a xaxt of a shot."
Brim glanced around the ruined chamber. There was nothing any of them could do here. And the Leaguers seemed to have temporarily broken off their attack. "Let's get started then," he yelled, "before the bastards have another go at us." Pulling himself hand over hand in the lack of gravity, he started for the new exit the Leaguers had provided.