"Take over, Tissaurd!" he barked. "Farnsworth. Call down to the Duty Officer on the double!
Order him to watch for Captain Regula Collingswood at the main port; then tell Chief Barbousse to show her to the wardroom—he'll recognize her!"
"Aye, Captain," the two officers replied in unison, switching on their intercoms with raised eyebrows that seemed to have replicated themselves everywhere on the bridge.
Brim felt his face burn as he sprinted for the companionway. How soon people forgot. In her days of active service, Collingswood had been one of the finest skippers in the Imperial Fleet. At his cabin, he rinsed his face and struggled into a clean uniform, then dashed into the corridor, dodged along three crowded companionways, and arrived at the wardroom just as Barbousse served the elegant ex-officer a sparkling goblet of Logish Meem. "Captain Collingswood!" he huffed before she could take the first sip. "What a great surprise!"
Collingswood was a statuesque woman who never, even for a moment, let the power of her high station interfere with the basic femininity that shaped virtually everything about her personality. She was statuesque, tall, and ageless with a long patrician nose, piercing hazel eyes, and soft, graying chestnut hair that she wore in natural curls. Dressed in a beige business suit with huge, puffed shoulders, and fronted by great cascades of lace, she appeared to be completely ageless—which, Brim considered, she probably was. Shortly after Nergol Triannic foisted the disastrous Treaty of Garak on the war-weary Empire, she had resigned her commission and married Admiral Erat Plutron, her whispered longtime lover, who—as a recently elected member of the Imperial Parliament—had become a major opponent of the CIGAs. Now, for some reason, she was here in Avalon to meet I.F.S. Starfury. She smiled as she indicated a second chair Barbousse had drawn to the table. "Wilf Brim," she demanded, "when are you going to remember that my name is Regula—not Captain?"
Brim bowed, took her hand, and kissed it. "Right now—I think," he said, slipping into the chair just as Barbousse quietly placed a goblet of Logish Meem before him. "Thanks, Chief," he said, touching the big rating's arm. "Sometimes, only very special friends will do."
Barbousse gave a little wink and smiled. "Special friends are most honored to offer their assistance, Captain—er— Captains." Then he vanished into the Steward's room like a specter.
"I thought you were still at Bemus Manor," Brim said. "And here you are in a government limousine, no less. What's happening?"
Collingswood smiled. "Well," she explained, "ever since Erat was elected to Parliament, I seem to have become more and more involved with the Admiralty, at least the non-CIGA people there. And since starfleets require organizers as well as disrupters, Harry Drummond asked me to become his Operations Director." She laughed. "I even get a salary."
Brim rolled his eyes. "What are you going to do with all that wealth?" he asked jestingly.
"Donate it to the Fleet Relief Drive, of course," she said with a little smile. Then she chuckled.
"As willing as I was to trade in my Blue Cape for a comfortable business suit, I never could get that far away from the Fleet. It's been a part of me too long."
Brim savored the ancient Logish Meem that Barbousse had ordered from the ship's well-stocked meem vaults. "Somehow, I didn't think you'd last," he admitted, "especially after you got involved with the Imperial Starfiight Society." Then he frowned. "But..."
Collingswood grinned. "But why am I here?" she interrupted.
"Well," he answered, "with nothing but a two-and-a-half-stripe Commander for her Captain, Starfury isn't often met by Directors in big government limousine skimmers."
Collingswood nodded. "Probably that is true sometimes, Wilf," she said. "But today, you are expected at the Imperial palace in a little more than a cycle so you can personally assist Commodore Calhoun and General Drummond when they brief Greyffin IV on the Fluvanna Plan. They scheduled the whole thing around Starfury's return, and you know what a hectic schedule Greyffin IV keeps every day." She smiled. "So at least for this exercise, you're a very important person, Wilf Brim."
"It's not difficult to be important when you command the only starship in the game," Brim chuckled. "I suspect I'll be a lot less in demand when deliveries start on the production Starfuries."
Collingswood sat back to sip her Logish Meem with an enigmatic smite on her face. "We'll see about that. Captain Brim," she said. "We'll see...."
"Saltash tells me that you've taken Magor by storm," Drummond chuckled, clapping Brim on the back as they sat in one of the palace's elegant waiting rooms.
"Tough on clothes, tho'," Calhoun interjected. "I signed the order for your replacement uniform yesterday." He chuckled. "Brim, you act like a lightnin' rod when it comes to trouble."
The younger Carescrian laughed. "If it weren't for the honor of the thing. Commodore," he quipped, "I'd just as soon someone else had the title."
"Aye," Drummond said. "I can understand that, all right."
"At any rate," Calhoun declared, "Mustafa is ane hundred percent in support o' the plan. An' a lot o' that decision had to do wi' his impression o' you. He's already ordered his embassy here on Avalon to sign the papers just so soon as we draft them up."
"Now," Drummond interjected with a nod of his head, "all we have to do is to make certain our own Emperor's behind the plan."
"An'," Calhoun said, nodding toward the door of the elaborate waiting room, "I believe that we gat to begin that process immediately."
Brim turned to confront an Imperial paige, dressed in a traditional high-collared blue uniform with four gold frogs down the front of the tunic. He carried a gilded AnGrail reed at least six irals tall.
"This way, gentlemen," the paige said, bowing from the waist. Straightening, he pointed his AnGrail at the rear of the room and part of the wall simply vanished. Beyond was a huge oval chamber whose elegant walls were entirely lined by lofty beveled mirrors inscribed with intricate scrollwork.
Colorful renderings of legendary flighted beings and baroque starships decorated the ceiling above a trompe l'oeil arbor "supported" on ornate columns separating the mirrors. At one end of the room was a huge rococo table beneath a canopy of deep blue velvet, and beside the table stood the slim form of Emperor Greyffin IV, Grand Galactic Emperor, Prince of the Reggio Star Cluster, and Rightful Protector of the Heavens.
A spare man of medium build—neither young nor old— Greyffin still looked surprisingly like the portraits that hung in every Fleet starship large enough to have a wardroom. He was dressed in a magnificently tailored Fleet uniform adorned by the insignia of a full Admiral. His hair, a little grayer than Brim remembered, was stilt short, parted on the left, and combed straight back from his narrow face. He had close-set gray eyes on either side of a prominent, squarish sort of nose and a diminutive, pointed beard. As the three officers approached his table, he returned their salutes with that particular bearing of total impenetrability that seems to define people who are both very wealthy and very powerful.
Offering his hand first to Baxter Calhoun, then to General Drummond, he turned at last to Brim and smiled warmly. "Good afternoon, Commander," he said, extending his hand. "It has been quite some time since I've been referred to as 'His Nibs,' to my face."
Brim felt his cheeks flush. He'd done that inadvertently the night Greyffin awarded him the Imperial Comet. Then, as now, the Emperor seemed to value the little slip as a rather good joke. "Your Majesty," he said, solemnly shaking the Emperor's hand, "I have been extremely careful ever since to look before I speak."