"Coming up on their maximum range now, Captain," Meesha warned.
"Very well, Meesha," Brim said, sideslipping into his first jink. The fort had a few moments'
advantage before the Starfuries' shorter-range disrupters could focus in. And the Leaguers took advantage of every one as space went wild with massive barrages of detonations that blasted Starfury in every direction with near misses. Many of the near misses blasted in huge fountains of rock and debris as they hit the shoal. Then Meesha opened up with his own disruptors, bouncing the deck and every console on the bridge. "Ready, Chief?" Brim asked.
"Ready, Cap'm," Barbousse replied grimly. "I've got eight more torpedoes in the launcher, all of 'em enabled already. So if we get hit, it's good-bye Starfury."
"I'll try to avoid that if I can," Brim swore fervently. He took a deep breath. The hangar-deck doors were still out of sight, nearly a quarter of the way around the fort's circumference from Starfury's apparent aiming zone. Moments from now, while Starterror and Starspirit continued on their firing run, he would bank out to port and dive nearly to the surface of the fort where he would hug the wall until, at a predetermined point, he would pull away to minimum firing distance, reverse course abruptly, and make a torpedo run on the hangar. It seemed a lot like ancient dive bombing—only sideways. "All right, Meesha," he shouted. "Give it all you've got!" Curving slightly to starboard, he headed for a quartet of big disrupters while Meesha directed his fire at the big turrets with a vengeance. So did the other two Starfuries, with deadly accuracy—and results. The area quickly erupted into an absolute hell of energy from the concentrated fire of thirty-six big disrupters. Huge chunks of hullmetal and wreckage (including an entire turret) hurtled off in every direction from the rapidly expanding fireball while a chorus of cheers broke out around Brim on the bridge—who used the momentary lull to roll Starfury inverted, bunt under the other two ships, and set off for the wall with all the power he could feed to the generators.
Long moments later, the graceful cruiser was speeding along only a few hundred irals from the gigantic hullmetal plates, many cratered and burning fiercely as he passed. This time, he jinked only when it was necessary to avoid hitting one of the big disruptor turrets. He was moving far too rapidly for them to aim at him—much less fire. Soon, he was coming up on the array of heat exchangers Meesha's firing computers had calculated as his optimum breakaway point. "Ten clicks till the pop, Chief," he warned.
"I'm ready, Cap'm," Barbousse replied. "So are the torpedoes. Soon as Lieutenant Meesha blasts those doors."
From aft, the firing had stopped. Evidently, Starterror and Starspirit had finished their firing runs. Just beyond the fort's "horizon" Brim could see Moulding's two ships streaking away from the fort—while they drew fire from the desperate maneuver be was about to attempt. "Here we go!" he yelled, hauling back on the controls until Starfury's spaceframe began to creak in protest. As the fort receded in the distance, Brim caught himself holding his breath. In a moment the disrupters would spot them again, and then all hell would surely break loose. But there was a slightly better chance of planting the torpedoes each moment they ran in the clear—and every one of them seemed to last an eternity until at last he heard Barbousse's voice.
"Comin' up on minimum firin' distance in five, Cap'm," the big rating announced.
Brim counted an extra fifteen clicks, then hauled the controls over in a renversment, getting three red warning lights on his panel from the steering engines. He ignored them—the mechanism had better stand a little overload. Then he started toward the fort again.
And suddenly space aft burst forth in a truly colossal series of brilliant detonations. At least one—probably more—of the fort's great disruptors had picked them up and were blasting away as quickly as the big weapons could build new charges. But the Leaguer gunners had fired where they expected him to be, before he'd reversed course. He could only pray that they were too well trained to try that trick again; he was now holding a smooth precision track toward the three big hangar doors he'd centered on his Hyperscreens—and this time their trick might work! "All right, Meesha," he shouted over the roar of the generators, "blast those doors. NOW!"
The months that Meesha and his disrupter crews had spent battling Dampiers and Gorn-Hoffs had turned Starfury's gunners into extraordinary marksmen, and it all paid off in the next fifteen clicks.
Each of the ten remaining 406s thundered independently, and fully seven scored direct hits with eruptions of radiation fire and debris of all kinds. One of the doors flew off intact, spinning off at an angle that would eventually take it completely out of the galaxy.
Only a moment later, Barbousse fired his tight spread of torpedoes.
Brim watched for the eight deadly missiles to clear Starfury's forward pontoons, then he hauled the cruiser around and took off for deep space, jinking as he had never jinked before through an unbelievable hail of fire with the generators at military overload plus. The terrific barrage made sense.
Every disruptor in the fort was shooting at him.
"Skipper," Tissaurd reported as she stared into a rearview display, "couple of lifeglobes just launched from the side of the fort."
In his own display, Brim caught two pearlescent bubbles speeding away toward the protection of the shoal, but he was far too much taken up with jinking to think about much of anything except the ship, her controls, and the hellish explosions that were knocking her about like a leaf caught in a storm.
"Hey look!" someone yelled.
"Holy Voot!" another yelled excitedly, "the Chief's torpedoes just hit the doors in a tight pack.
Just like he was drivin' them himself!"
"By Universe, that's right," still another exclaimed. "All eight of 'em!"
" Universe, what a bunch of explosions!"
"Explosions don't count!" Barbousse roared. "They're the ones that missed and hit the door frame. If none of 'em got through clean, we'll have to do it again!"
Nobody seemed to hear the big rating's protest. Instead, the whole bridge continued in wild, insane cheering.
Except for Brim. Hit or miss, it was now up to him to get them out of there! He could scarcely hear anything above the thunder of six overtaxed Admiralty A876 gravity generators— and the deafening rumble of raw energy smashing against Starfury's streamlined flanks from literally hundreds of near misses.
Simultaneously the firing—and the shouting—stopped, replaced by a great chorus of astonished gasps. For a moment, only the whine and thunder of Starfury's generators sounded on the bridge. Then one solitary, awestruck female voice could be heard—later, no one would admit it was hers.
"Voot's most greasy, tangled beard," it said, "will ya' LOOK AT THAT!"
CHAPTER 11
The IVG Passes
Brim hauled the racing starship around into a vertical curve just in time to see every hatch and scuttle in the mighty Leaguer fort pulse and flash like a thousand gleaming eyes... again... and again... and again.... Then, as if the very fabric of the Universe itself had burst, the whole structure was engulfed—from the inside out—by a colossal reddish-violet fireball that pulsed and glimmered spasmodically as it expanded, peppered with stark clarity by gigantic chunks of wreckage: huge turret assemblies, KA'PPA towers, power generators, formless curved plates of hullmetal armor, all bobbing on a roiling globe of radiation flame.