"That's it," Brim broadcast through clenched teeth. "Get the zukeeds. They fired first!"
Immediately, each of the four Starfuries picked a particular ship and—with the accuracy born of long, brutal practice—poured a devastating salvo right down into their guts with devastating results. Imperial destroyers were powerful starships in their own rights, but no match whatsoever for cruisers. Especially cruisers armed with battleship-size disrupters. Even near misses were enough to rip open their thin-skinned hulls from stem to stern. Considering the quantums of energy blasted at them, the first four ships perished with surprisingly little radiation fire. They simply came apart at the seams. The surviving two ran for open space without firing a shot.
Brim bit his lip. It wasn't that the little ships had been without teeth. Small as they were in relation to a cruiser, all classes of Imperial destroyers carried the same huge torpedoes as did Starfuries, And they were powerful weapons. Had he gone by the book, after hitting the fort, he would have pulled out straight ahead, then started jinking around to set up for the next run in on the fort. And that would have made the Starfuries targets for six salvos of the powerful weapons. Properly fired, they might have knocked out all four of his ships at the end of their very first run. He shook his head bitterly. CIGAs....
As he swung around to starboard for a second run, he watched the firing crews preparing their big weapons. E turret was always fastest, and as he switched a display to its interior, the crew had already completed their test procedures and the big weapons were ready to fire. Moments later all six turrets reported a status of READY.
Off in the distance, the fort was still battling huge radiation fires where the Starfuries' powerful salvos had landed. And as he watched, Moulding's four Starfuries made their first pass—this time from the direction the fort had originally expected: along the rim of the asteroid shoal. However, now the great batteries were still tracking Brim's four-ship element, which was presently out of range. And before the big disruptors could be retrained on the new threat, forty-eight more 406-mmi disruptors were blasting away at the fort, resulting in a second area of huge radiation fires that quickly spread over nearly a quarter of the fort's irregular surface.
In spite of the obvious damage, Brim wondered how much real harm his ships had actually accomplished with their first passes. Radiation fires occurred when collapsiums were subjected to high-energy impingement—usually by disrupter fire—and began to "un-collapse." The system of reactions gave off tremendous heat and light as a byproduct, and thus earned the soubrette "fire." Sustaining such a reaction required significant additional energy, and if other, undamaged collapsiums were available nearby, it could spread rapidly. However, more often than not, such conflagrations were controlled by saturating the runaway reaction with N rays—the very same rays that were used to spot benders in spectral mode. And that is precisely what Brim suspected the Leaguers might be doing at the fort: controlling the radiation fires in an attempt to convince their attackers they had inflicted much more damage than was actually the case. Somehow, he had the feeling that they'd yet to land a telling blow....
Then Moulding's ships cleared the target area, and it was time to line up again. This time, the fort would be triggering off every weapon they could bring to bear, and all eyes were on the Queen. Would she open fire, too? Her big turrets were clearly tracking Brim's four Starfuries as they sped toward her.
The cruisers' only defense now was to keep jinking: moving up and down, rolling slightly from one side to the other, slipping, skidding—anything to aggravate the enemy's problem of tracking as they aimed their weapons.
But jinking also aggravated the problem of aiming from the starships as well. So at some point, the jinking had to stop, replaced by smooth, precision tracking while the IVG's firing crews got ready to do their work. That was the payoff, the only reason for being there in the first place. And both the Leaguers and their CIGA lackeys knew it as well as anyone....
It was just as Brim rolled over the top and acquired the fort that old Queen Elidean—grand symbol of a proud empire— opened fire on her own kind with a tremendous barrage of raw energy that smashed MacAlda's port pontoon and blasted Starspite nearly a thousand irals sideways in a huge eruption of flame and debris. Brim's wingman was out of the fight—and perhaps out of the war.
The Carescrian immediately signaled Starterror and Starspirit to continue jinking on their run in—and damn the accuracy— then he hauled Starfury hard to port. "All right, Chief!" he said angrily into his display, "it's you and me again. Let's get it over with!"
"I'm ready, Cap'm," the big rating said. "Just like in ol' Truculent."
Brim smiled grimly as he began to jink violently—all the time lining up for a torpedo run.
Barbousse understood. So far as this run was concerned, they were the only two on the ship. "Meesha," he growled, "I want you to keep firing those disruptors of ours at the Queen as fast as they'll recover.
Aim for the bridge if you can. Keep those zukeed CIGAs plastered with plenty of energy. Got that?"
"Got it. Captain," Meesha answered. Moments later Starfury's big disrupters went into rapid-firing mode turning space outside the speeding cruiser into a colossal inferno of tight and concussion—and peppering the battleship's thickly armored hide with a barrage of hits that would literally pulverize a lesser ship.
The Queen was returning fire in deliberate, deadly salvos. Her CIGA disrupter crews were trying for accuracy; Brim had counted on that—and their deliberation might just save his mission. Up... down... roll... skid... slide... His jinking had become violent, now. He was literally racing for the great eruptions that marked the battleship's latest salvo, trusting that the fatuous, "peace-loving" CIGA crews would never aim for the same place twice.
The Queen... proud and beautiful. Brim loved her. Everyone who loved the Fleet loved her!
"Outer doors open," Barbousse reported.
Brim blinked away bitter tears and glanced at his instrument panel where eight indicators had abruptly changed from red to a flickering green. "Outer doors open," he seconded.
At that moment one of Meesha's random salvos hit a section of the Queen's bridge that exploded in a blinding flare of radiation fire, sending wreckage flying in all directions. That would hurt the zukeeds who'd stolen her. Brim thought. Maybe they'd quit. "Keep it up, Meesha!" he yelled—just before he was nearly knocked from his recliner by a near miss that pulsed Starfury's gravity system and threw everyone violently against their mechanical restraints. Startled shouts of pain filled the bridge, and Tissaurd turned in her recliner with eyes big as saucers. Reedwich from Damage Control came on immediately, his long, narrow countenance unruffled by the blast. "Clean miss, Captain," he said as calmly as if he were reporting something no more threatening than a burst soil pipe.
"Inner doors open," Barbousse reported through tight lips as the eight flashing lights went to steady green.
Brim glanced at Barbousse in his COMM display; the big rating was hunched over his torpedo console, concentrating for all he was worth, while his face and eyes reflected the patterns of information traversing his displays. "Steady as she goes, Cap'm," he said, without taking his eyes from the displays.