"General quarters! General quarters—all hands man your action stations! General quarters!
General quarters—all hands man your action stations!" Brim's calm was shattered as he raced for the bridge. Boots thumped on the deck as running figures scampered to their posts, groping for antiradiation gear and battlesuit helmets, making sure at least two air cartridges were secured loosely around their waists.
"Special duty starsailors to your stations! Secure all airtight doors! Down all deadlights!"
"I'll take the con, Number One," he said to Tissaurd, sliding breathlessly into the left-hand helm.
"You're welcome to it today, Skipper," Tissaurd said with a grin—as if it were just another exercise.
It passed Brim's mind that the tiny woman enjoyed perhaps the strongest character on the ship.
She was positively unflappable. He checked his helmet and air cartridges, then tightened his seat gravity to maximum and ran a quick systems check. Behind him, the whole bridge hummed with similar checkouts: power, propulsion, fire control, damage control, communications, sensing systems, medical.
Outside on the pontoons, he watched A and B turrets swing and elevate their twin 406-mmi disrupters as firing crews ran final systems checks. Overhead, the business ends of two more 406s, these belonging to E turret, traversed past the dorsal Hyperscreens. He knew that three other emplacements performed similar oblations out of sight beneath the pontoons and hull. In the distance, nearly out of range, a few suspicious lights were now moving improperly against the great canopy of stars.
Abruptly, one of the gun layers broke the relative silence of the bridge. "Look out, chaps. Here they come." His voice was strangely calm, as if he had been giving that same sort of warning for years. At one time, he had, of course, during the last war. As Emperor Greyffin IV once so succinctly pointed out, experience counted. Moments later, a proximity alarm sounded.
Brim banked Starfury in a slight left turn and looked up to confront at least twenty-five starships coming at them, slowed below LightSpeed for a ground attack. Even though he couldn't identify them, they were uniquely from The Torond. The untidy formation and nervously juddering graviton plumes were unmistakable. As the disrupters swung up to meet them, his thoughts momentarily touched on his unresolved feelings for Margot Effer'wyck. Then, before he could concentrate, an old Helmsman's Academy instructor's voice echoed ancient Fleet doggereclass="underline" "Beware the ships wot bear out of a glare, me boy."
Brim closed his mind to all of it. This was his very purpose for being. Nothing else mattered. "All killing systems energize," he ordered over the blower.
As his muscles keyed to the oncoming challenge, he pictured Chief Baranev and his Sodeskayan Propulsion Engineers out in the pontoons with their gravity generators, sealed in a brightly lit hell of noise and hair-raising energy. He switched his COMM to the work chambers. "You people in the pontoons," he ordered grimly, "take to your lifeglobes if I give the word. No heroics; got that?" He didn't wait for an answer. He'd seen too many people burn in streams of escaping energy from radiation fires. It was a slow, painful death.
Everybody would be at his action station now... waiting. There were no passengers aboard warships; even people like cooks and disbursing clerks would be down with the damage-control parties.
He thought about Penelope Hesternal back at the base hospital. She'd be getting ready for the first casualties of the war. On the far side of Tissaurd's station, the Navigator was correcting a HoloChart in his oversize globular display. The firing crews in the next stations aft were busily tracking possible targets in their arcane language of pure mathematics. Beside him, Tissaurd followed his every move, ready to take over instantly should he be disabled.
"Warn the generator rooms, Strana'," he said into a display, "I'll want maximum thrust when I give the word."
The Bear nodded silently and turned to her own displays.
Suddenly Brim's introspection vanished. He altered course toward the squadron of graviton plumes and called out, "All gravity generators, full power." He was ready to fight.
A moment later Zaftrak's furry visage appeared in a COMM display, her mouth open to speak.
Brim spoke up before she could utter a word. "I know what the Chief and his Drive crews are saying down there, Strana'," he said, "but I want everything they've got— now!" Baranev—hefty, even for a Sodeskayan—was the best Drive crew supervisor in the business, but sometimes he loved his equipment a little too much.
Zaftrak's race disappeared from the display and moments later the whine from all ten K-P K23971 plasma generators simultaneously rose in pitch while rolling thunder from the big Admiralty A876s shook the very deck; stars began to cascade past the Hyperscreens in an insane flood. Starfury was made for tearing along like this, above and below LightSpeed. She was in her element now.
Ahead, the squadron of graviton plumes fanned out and veered to meet them.
"Break port!" Brim commanded to the other starships in his quad. "Climbing!"
At nearly the same instant, Brim's power indicators reached their rated maximum three thousand standard thrust units. Outside, the oncoming ships had defined themselves into Dampier D.A. 79-IIs, driving in toward Magor. He made for the first group, and all space seemed to explode as the big 406s discharged. An instant later the leading Dampier lit up with explosions—but the focus was 'way short.
Three or four shimmering energy puffs nonetheless appeared in the Dampier's wake. Even near misses from a brace of 406s could be deadly.
Two more Dampiers made a tight turn, bringing themselves head-on. Energy beams from their 280-mmi disrupters formed long, glittering tentacles snaking remorselessly toward Starfury, at the last moment curling down just under her hull. In the next instant, all space became a swimming kaleidoscope of The Torond's black triangle insignias. At half the speed of light, Brim sensed rather than saw the presence of starships circling 'round until suddenly his eyes fixed on one of them. "There's one!" he shouted.
Immediately half the battery swung aft. "We see him, Captain," a deep voice called tensely from a display.
Brim didn't even acknowledge. The big Dampier was still circling, its black triangles edged with yellow, Hyperscreens glittering in Ephail's bright starlight as she banked back and forth, settling on an opponent.
"Tracking...."
"Out of range and closing...."
Suddenly the Dampier appeared to spot them.
"Good proximity alarms," Tissaurd commented dryly.
The enemy ship fell off to starboard in a tight turn. Two shimmering streamers of gravitons appeared at her extremities from the steering engines. Without warning, she climbed vertically at tremendous speed, then violently flipped over on her back, disrupters firing spasmodically as their director systems tumbled. Brim flinched. In a moment of frenzy, her Helmsman had overcontrolled and outrun the steering engines. Now the big ship continued in the same direction, flat, on momentum alone.
Such a mistake was easy to make with the new breeds of powerful ships that had begun to appear subsequent to the final Mitchell Trophy races. This mistake, however, would also be fatal. Starfury was narrowing the distance quickly.
Brim listened to one of the Director crews behind his helm. "Range nine thirty-one Green and closing...."
He watched the long-nosed Dampier grow in the Hyperscreens. She was so close now he could see the blue radiation flames close in where her graviton plumes began. She was almost factory new. The electron waste gates abaft her crystal chambers were hardly stained. Too late, her turrets were beginning to swing!