Tissaurd needed only a glance through the forward Hyperscreens. "Bloody Gorn-Hoffs," she swore under her breath. "The new 262s! We've got to take out that xaxtdamned fort somehow."
Brim nodded grimly. "If we ever have a moment when we're not fighting for our lives." Abruptly, the Drive wakes flickered out and the enemy starships slowed to Hypospeed. He switched on the COMM and set it for general. "Special threat alert, all firing crews!" he announced throughout the ship.
"Hands prepare for unknown enemy warships. Special threat alert, all firing crews. Hands prepare for unknown enemy warships!"
A moment later the Dampiers literally evaporated in breakneck retreat and the Leaguer warships surged forward to replace them. Brim no sooner disengaged from the last fleeing Toronder than he was immersed in a fight where suddenly life and death hung in the balance. He pulled Starfury into a half loop, passing so close to a pair of the big Gorn-Hoffs that for a moment he could see through their bridge Hyperscreens—but the three ships passed so closely to each other that none could bring its disrupters to bear. The Gorn-Hoffs followed in their own half loop, but by this time, Brim had cranked Starfury into a tight turn and the IVG disrupter crews were able to get off two good volleys from eight 406s that sparkled along the left-hand Leaguer's starboard "wing" and blasted one of its 375-mmi turrets out into space like a top.
A hail of return fire smashed the Sherrington cruiser aside like a cork in a millrace, blanking the Hyperscreens momentarily and pulsing the cabin gravity so that Brim's restraints constricted painfully around his body.
The Carescrian tightened his turn, Starfury's rugged spaceframe groaning in protest as the steering engines struggled to bring the speeding ship onto a new course. But they had him cold, sitting on his tail as if they were under tow. As he angrily ground his teeth, he realized that they had probably been watching him for several cycles and planning the whole thing.
From their position, he guessed they would expect him to tuck Starfury's nose under and try to run for it. Instead, he twisted upward and toward them in a corkscrew. He'd guessed right! As he thundered at them, it was they who had had to turn.
But the zukeeds had been ready for that, too! Two more Gorn-Hoffs suddenly appeared directly in his path; clearly they'd been waiting on the chance that he might do the unexpected.
Brim was a brave starsailor—and survivor of more than his share of battles against "impossible" odds—but those battles had also made him smart. Clearly, anytime one ship was up against four that were flown by crews of that caliber, the prudent thing to do was to execute a well-known maneuver known as "getting the xaxt out of there." As an old Carescrian proverb put things: It's no disgrace to run if you are scared.
He was!
Accelerating to the upper limits of Starfury's Hypospeed envelope, he zigzagged and skidded like a madman in an attempt to break for home. But the four Gorn-Hoffs hung on like Drive cement, two high and two low—just out of lethal range....
Why didn't they fire?
Spasms of anxiety danced up and down Brim's spine like ice. He glanced at Tissaurd who was sitting bolt upright in her seat, her forehead beaded with sweat.
"Aren't the zukeeds going to fire?" she growled through clenched teeth. "We could thraggling die of old age!"
Starfury had become easy meat, sandwiched between two pairs of expert crews. Her main armament was divided among four attackers, and the percentage certainty of destroying one of the Leaguer ships with a salvo of only three disrupters was a little less than fifty percent. Sooner or later, somebody would make a mistake, which at least one of the Leaguers would spot instantly. After that....
And then it came to him. "A mistake!" he half shouted. "Wow I remember!"
"Mistake?" Tissaurd asked, glancing his way for a moment. "What do you remember? Whose?"
Brim grunted, hauling the big starship around in a tight curve with the four Leaguers still hot on his tail. "Gorn-Hoff's design team made the mistake," he growled, checking the rearview display on his panel.
"They didn't build enough power into those new ships of theirs to fly at top speed and simultaneously fire all fourteen of those new superfocused Theobold disrupters at maximum power."
Tissaurd met his eye. "Voot's beard!" she exclaimed. "That's true. I remember it from somebody's briefing—yours, probably."
Brim nodded. "Like right now," he said, "those four ships on our tail can probably muster no more than eight of their Theobold 375s apiece. I figure that gives each of them something like a forty-five percent certainty of destroying us, per salvo: about the same chance we have of getting one of them with three of our 406s. But since that certainty percentage isn't additive among the four ships, those twenty-four big Theobolds behind us still share only a single ship's forty-five percent chance of stopping us." He laughed grimly as he steered into yet another extreme maneuver. "It's a standoff, so long as I can keep them from catching up. At this speed, if they fire, they'll also deprive their generators of energy, cutting into their ability to maneuver." He chuckled. "Of course, they could fire a bigger salvo at lower power—and change the percentages significantly. But with a proportional decrease in range, they'd come closer to our 406s. And then they might not get off any shots— ever."
At that moment, one of the low Gorn-Hoffs became vulnerable as it attempted to follow Brim's wild maneuvering and blocked his partner's field of fire. But for only an instant.
That was all it took.
Straightaway, Brim pushed over, drew back on the power, and as Starfury's nose came down, the disrupter crews fired a terrific salvo ahead of the errant Leaguer. Perhaps the enemy Helmsman didn't even see the thick bolt of energy sizzling past in front of him, but at any rate, he flew right into it, with devastating effect. The concentrated firepower of six 406-mmi disrupters tore her entire bow away, along with the bridge, then rippled along the hull until it blasted her Drive section open like an overripe fruit. Rescue globes popped into the doomed ship's wake as the few surviving crew ejected. Then clicks later, the big Gorn-Hoff exploded in a blinding flash, bombarding its partner with a hail of hullmetal shards and whirling debris.
When the Hyperscreens cleared, Starfury's twelve main disruptors were now tracking four apiece among the remaining Gorn-Hoffs, and his kill probability had now risen to fifty-eight percent.
Moreover, the surviving low Leaguer had clearly been damaged by its exploding partner. Huge areas along its starboard "wing" had been shattered and raked with debris.
Had Brim been either of the two high Leaguers above him in such a situation, he would have attacked at that very moment, counting on surprise for extra protection. They didn't, hesitating for one fateful moment while he decided to attack. In the wink of an eye, he pulled back on the nose and judiciously applied full power, coming over at them in a complete renversment with Starfury's steering engines howling in protest.
The Leaguers were caught with their battlesuits at half mast. Before Starfury's disrupter crews could set up for another salvo, they turned and fled, accelerating toward LightSpeed on maximum output.