"Our Leaguer friends again," Beyazh commented with the same taunting look on his face. "It seems as if this time they really mean to cut you off." He spoke as if he were waiting to see what Brim would do about it. "There is always a long wait for pilot boats this time of day in Magor," he added pointedly.
"I see," Brim growled, deliberating only a few clicks before deciding on a course of action—one that matched Starfury's motto, "Go Boldly!" It was clear that the Leaguers had no conception of Starfury's post-landing capabilities; it was also high time someone put a stop to their foolish antics before they did something dangerous. "I'll have military energy to gravs two, three, four, and six, Strana'," he ordered. "Number One: sound the collision alarm to starboard."
"Military to gravs two, three, four, and six," the Bear acknowledged from a display on his console. Her voice was all but drowned out by of sirens sounding through the ship.
"Stand by for collision, starboard side, frame seven fifty-five," Tissaurd announced on the blower.
"Stand by for collision, starboard side. All hands close airtight doors forward of frame seven fifty-five."
The cruiser was closing very rapidly now and throwing a huge wake that rose high enough to hide the aft portion of her hull. Without a doubt, the Leaguers intended that Starfury would slacken speed or give way, thus relinquishing the pilot boat. The imperials would then be forced to wait at the entrance to the Levantine—in clear view of the whole harbor as well as the Fluvannian Fleet—until such time as the next pilot became available.
"If you speed up, you will maintain your right-of-way," Beyazh urged, his voice more of a challenge than a comment. "He'll eventually have to give way." Then he chuckled. "Of course, if he does get ahead of you, you will then be an overtaking vessel—and he will perpetually have the right-of-way."
Brim nodded wordlessly, judging distance between the two ships and giving Starfury's crew time to reach their collision stations, just in case.
"Will you really permit him to accomplish this indignity?" Beyazh demanded in a bantering voice.
"The pilot boat is assigned to you after all."
For Brim, it was almost as if he were back in Carescria as a youth flying the incredibly dangerous ore barges of the region and racing to be first at the weighing stations. He had quickly discovered that a fractional load delivered first at the receiving station was worth a lot more than a full load delivered later.
So he'd learned to come back with the holds only partially full on those early runs—it gave him critical reserve maneuverability, acceleration, and—most important—braking energy he needed to win the post-landing "races" that helped bring him to the attention of the Imperial Helmsman's Academy so many years ago. He smiled as he watched the Gorn-Hoff. Whoever was running that ship had never spent much time in Carescria. She was unquestionably moving at her maximum surface speed with no reserve whatsoever.
Abruptly, Brim moved both damper rays forward until they passed from amethyst through to greenish yellow. A sudden growl rose to a crescendo from the pontoons and Starfury drove forward in a tremendous burst of speed, throwing prodigious cascades of green water and spray backward into the harbor. Easily drawing ahead of the lumbering Leaguer ship, she first smashed it broadside with a tremendous wave that had begun to curl off below her bows, then drowned it from stem to stern in the tremendous backward deluge from her oversize gravs. Moments later Brim hauled back on the power and applied his gravity brakes, watching in the stern viewers as the Leaguer emerged from the cloud of spray, skewed almost sideways. A great wash shot sideways from her steering engines, but the ship was too far out of control for that. She spun end around three complete revolutions, snapping her KA'PPA tower in a great burst of sparks, and came to a stop canting heavily to starboard with her bow ignominiously dragging the surface.
"Dispatch a signal to the Leaguers," he ordered in a matter-of-fact voice.
"Ready, Captain," a startled COMM rating answered from a display.
"Can we be of assistance?" Brim dictated.
After a moment of silence, the rating cocked his head to one side. "That's all, Captain?" he asked.
Brim smiled. "It'll do for now."
The signal went unanswered.
At the entrance to the canal, Brim looked down over Starfury's nose at the little pilot boat in admiration. A real floating boat. He couldn't help wondering what it must be like to look up from a wildly tossing wooden deck to see thirty thousand milstons of starship suspended twenty-five irals above three great, thrashing imprints in the water little more than a hundred irals distant. The noise alone would be dumbfounding. Yet there they were, two men in the yellow slickers common to seafarers everywhere: one was at the controls, the other signaling with flags using the most basic expressions known in the galaxy. Probably, Brim considered, with only a few basic commands to communicate, it was a lot more pragmatic to rely on flags than try to match the thousands of known COMM protocols.
As he carefully followed the little boat into Magor's vast system of canals, he got his first close-up look at the city proper. Fleets of ferries, both floating and levitating, darted to and fro among lumbering starfreighters, some larger than Starfury. And dodging catlike through all of the disarray, veritable squadrons of fragile-looking sky-caiques took off and landed at all angles with open decks burdened by cargo bound for riotously colored, tented bazaars that topped the age-blackened stone walls of the canal. To port—past at least half a dozen ranks of gravity pools occupied by merchant ships of every size and description—rose the low hill on which the crowded old city was built. Most common among the structures visible through the whitish mist that Beyazh described as "sea haze" were dome-capped buildings of all sizes and heights, many topped by long, elaborately decorated spikes. The lofty cupolas were overlaid in a profusion of materials, ranging from burnished gold and silver to clay tiles—some of the latter magnificently decorated. Interspersed among the domes were slim towers, many reaching hundreds of irals above the other structures. Here and there between stolid-looking stone walls, trees pushed themselves into the light, dwarfed and stunted by years of struggling with the city for essential room to grow. Whiffets of smoke streamed from chimneys as well as the interstices between domes that must have been streets. In a way, its ancient vigor reminded him of the famed starport of Atalanta, half a galaxy away. But where Atalanta—in appearance—was clearly an outpost of Greyffin IV's Empire, Magor looked foreign to Brim in every respect.
Within the metacycle, Starfury was moored on a gravity pool whose outer perimeter was constructed of stones so badly weather-blackened they reminded Brim of Gimmas Haefdon. Below, a score of thundering repulsion/levitation units dated from at least three centuries in the past. After a moment of consideration, he leaned over the console and directed Tissaurd to order additional levitation energy from Starfury's own gravity units—just in case the ancient units failed. However, he was nearly five cycles too late. Tissaurd had been bothered by the same thing and had already issued me orders on her own. For a moment their eyes met and she smiled, providing Brim with a most bothersome feeling of... well... deficiency. As if something important were missing from his life—something like Tissaurd herself. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to dismiss the strange mood, but perversely, it refused to withdraw.