Rawlings, an Electro-Optical Systems Officer, appeared in a maintenance display. "Shall I set the Hyperscreens to battle ready?" he asked.
Brim nodded. "Tint 'em down, Matt," he replied. In moments, the Hyperscreens darkened subtlely to the shade starsailors knew as "Battle-Tint/331." During actual combat, the 'screens would automatically darken from this tint and return to it as necessary to protect the crew's eyes against the hellish glare of disrupter fire—incoming as well as outgoing.
Abruptly Starfury began to skid sideways and "up," in relation to the fort. Brim reset the trim and glanced out to port where he could just pick up the glow of an accretion beam coming off the nearby space hole. Its rush of gravitons was like a crosswind on an old-fashioned aerodynamic vehicle, and he checked his instruments for the proper bearing—this was no time to lose control of the ship.
In a sickbay monitor, he caught Hesternal and her crew energizing banks of healing machines and laying out radiation dressings for the wounds that were certain to come about. For a moment, his mind strayed to Avalon. Did the people back there really appreciate the courageous Imperials he was leading?
Could they understand the sacrifices that would soon be made? He snorted grimly. Doubtless mere was appreciation, for all that—but little comprehension. To comprehend what these starsailors would soon endure, one had to be there in Starfury's racing hull, listening to the disrupters fire and feeling the ship lurch when she was hit. One had to feel the fear in his own gut—to know that in the next moment, he could be blasted to atomic particles or the screaming in a ruptured battlesuit while his blood boiled in the vacuum of space. One needed to survive that hell of hells called "battle" to really comprehend. And few citizens of Avalon would ever experience that. It was why Starfuries and Wilf Brims and Nadia Tissaurds and Utrillo Barbousses and all the other brave starsailors on the mission existed at alclass="underline" so ordinary folks weren't required to live through such an experience. And because of it, ordinary people would never— could never—appreciate, nor even understand, the very special breed of people collectively referred to as "military."
By now, the gravity "crosswind" from the accretion beam had become a problem. The ship was lurching violently in severe graviton turbulence. Brim set his jaw and finessed the controls with all the skill he could bring to bear. Ordinarily, he would have simply used Starfury's tremendous reserves of power to blast her free. However, doing that would also result in a greatly amplified wake from the generators—easily spotted from the base because it would be flowing at almost a right angle to the accretion current. And it certainly wouldn't look like one from a Fluvannian antique.
Brim bit his lip as the turbulence worsened and he struggled to keep on course without increasing speed. No wonder the Leaguers had picked this spot for their space fortification! It was damned near impossible to approach the area unless you came in along the very edge of the asteroid shoal—where they had concentrated extra firepower. The bridge was almost silent as the big starship bucked and pitched through the invisible violence. Beside him, Tissaurd cleared her throat with a look of concern, and he could hear anxious voices behind him. He brushed away a momentary sensation of annoyance. All of them were excellent starsailors, representing aggregate centuries of deep-space experience. As warriors, Voot Himself could not question their bravery. But for half a millennium now, starships had been designed with energy overload capabilities to power out of this sort of situation—and did so as a matter of routine. He ground his teeth and fought the turbulence. There was nothing he could do but endure—and trust that the other three Helmsmen would somehow make it through the storm as well.
As the distance narrowed. Brim could see that the CIGAs in Queen Elidean had ominously lighted the great Imperial Comet Crests on either side of her bridge. Pretty evident what that meant—they'd been spotted. From the lack of firing, however, it was almost certain that the traitors were uncertain of whom they were facing. "We'll need all the power we can get soon, Strana'," he warned.
The Bear nodded in a display. "I'll tell the Chief," she said.
This brought forth neither questions nor gripes from the pontoons. The deep grumble of Chief Baranev's big plasma generators slowly began to build deep within the hull. That extra power would presently exhaust through waste gates. But when Starfury needed it, she wouldn't have to wait.
Then abruptly they cleared the gravity stream. Cheers sounded all over the bridge, even while the colors on Brim's power panel deepened with the increase of ready energy. He glanced outside as the other three ships re-formed in close formation—they'd somehow made it safely through the gravity torrent, too. Now came the hard part....
"They still can't be certain we'll attack at all, with the old Queen standing by like that," Brim muttered to Tissaurd as he peered at the distant Leaguer installation, "and surprise is the only edge we'll ever have against those fixed batteries in the space fort. So we'd better be on with this business quickly."
He peered at Ulfilas Meesha. His gray eyes looked as if they might bore holes in the status displays before him. "Enable your disrupter triggers, Lieutenant," he said, feeling his breathing grow shallower as the tension mounted. "Now."
"Disruptor triggers are enabled, Captain."
"Check," Brim replied, as always, boggled by the prodigious quantums of energy ready to surge through the mains to the turrets. Outside, the tip of each disrupter began to glow as the mammoth weapons accepted their initial firing charges.
"The Queen's corning up at maximum firing range, Captain," Meesha said in a tense voice.
"Is she tracking us with her firing directors yet?" he asked.
"She is, sir," Meesha replied. "And the fort's main batteries are enabled, too. You can see the fire director beams from here."
Brim nodded. "Very well, Meesha," he said. In Sodeskayan terms, the fat was in the fire now.
Next, he punched in Barbousse's torpedo console on a COMM display. "Chief—you going to have trouble putting a spread of torpedoes into the old Queen if we have to?" he asked.
"No trouble here, Cap'm," Barbousse replied. "The launcher's already armed with eight 533s, an' they're all energized."
"I mean—blasting an Imperial ship," Brim amended.
Barbousse shook his head. "I appreciate you askin' me, Cap'm," the big rating said. "An' I suppose I love that old ship as much as any Blue Cape. But, Cap'm, when you give an order, it's my duty to carry it out as long as I'm still alive to do it." Then he frowned. "Besides, sir," he said, "it's just like the old girl's been captured anyway—I mean, CIGAs aren't nothin' but Leaguers in Fleet Cloaks."
Brim smiled grimly. "If they fire on us, Chief," he said, "I'll break off Starfury's pass at the fort and we'll make a torpedo ran—just like we used to in old Truculent. Give 'em whatever it takes. Understand?"
"Understand, Cap'm," the Chief replied with a firm look. No other words were necessary.
Brim turned in his seat for a moment to look back over the bridge. Beside him, Tissaurd was running a last-moment systems check. The firing crews had already begun their litany of target acquisition:
"Bearing eight nine; range nine nine one and closing; disruptors steady at two twenty-seven."
Brim nodded to himself. By now, Moulding would either be in position and key his attack on Starfury's—or he was going to miss the whole show. Activating the switch that would soon send an attack signal to his other three Starfuries, he glanced at Tissaurd. "Call it for three cycles, Number One," he ordered and pulled his helmet shut, toggling all five seals in his battlesuit.