He was also due in Avalon to receive an unheard-of honor, his second Order of the Imperial Comet. The medal itself consisted of an eight-pointed starburst in silver and dark blue with a single word engraved in its center: valor. This was attached to an ivory sash embroidered in gold with the full title of the awarding Emperor. An even greater honor, at least for Brim, was that his sash would be the first to read: onrad v, grand galactic emperor and carry a serial number of "1." Over the history of the Empire, only forty-one had been awarded. Each was still in existence, preserved through the centuries in a collection that was considered to be one of the most important Imperial treasures. The Comet was an honor for all eternity—at least so long as the Empire existed.
As Brim mused, a gravity pool three ships distant from Starfury erupted with landing crews and glowing optical bollards. Overhead, Brim watched one of the billion visible stars execute a smooth curve down from the heavens, level out, and thunder to a landfall just off the strand, its passing marked only by sound and a long glowing trail on the bay. Later, he watched the cruiser nimble in, great white wakes creaming away on either side of her gravity footprints. In a few cycles more, the pool complex had returned to the quiet of evening, broken only by occasional shouts as the starship's crew debarked and maintenance crews prepared her for the next patrol.
He leaned back on his hands and stared again at the glittering farrago of stars. Somewhere out there was Margot Effer'wyck. She was either alive or reduced to atomic particles, but he stubbornly chose to believe the former. The fact that "LaKarn" was tacked to her family name had little meaning for him anymore. Perhaps they might never meet again—or love again—but he truly believed the bond between them existed as a two-way spiritual ligature that not even the Universe could sunder again. Ever.
Meanwhile, he thought, climbing to his feet and starting toward the hatch along a dark divider strip between two Hyperscreen panels, there was a war to win. It might be temporarily on hold, but it could—and would—begin again in earnest on a moment's notice.
Like everyone else, he had a responsibility to be ready for it....
Baxter Calhoun's IVG came to an official end one morning when fifteen superbly outfitted new Starfuries made landfall at Varnholm Hall, arriving direct from the great Fleet base at Atalanta. The ships had been prepared and crewed there under the special supervision of one Claudia Valemont on the orders of Chief Commissioner Bosporus Gallsworthy himself.
Three days afterward, and precisely one Standard Year following Brim's arrival at Varnholm Hall, the IVG and its seven battered Starfury survivors were ordered back to Sherrington's for a refit and eventual reassignment. Because Starfury had clearly suffered the most damage, she was the first to depart, with a short stopover in Avalon.
Now, with Tissaurd at the controls, the ship was descending in and out of an indefinite overcast directly above the Imperial capital, trailing long contrails that whirled in the damp air like gray streamers of raveling cable. Through a chance break in the overcast, Brim momentarily glimpsed the Grand Terminal before all was swallowed up in clouds again. To port, Lake Mersin was completely lost to view, covered by a thick mass of gray—right down on minimums for the area.
They intersected the outer marker at two thousand irals in dense white nothingness while Brim cross-checked the altimeters to make certain nothing was missed. Clearly, Tissaurd would have to feel her way down to the water, and a normally "inconsequential" error of thirty or forty irals could have quite an impact—literally—near the surface. Starfury was now stabilized on speed, with gravity gradient and lift modifiers down and all checklists complete. Brim's only job now was to monitor. They'd left the landing lights off to improve the contrast outside. It was an old trick Brim had picked up during his youth in Carescria where the weather was usually unpleasant. Often, it meant the difference between seeing the welcome red glow of a landing vector or a cloaking reflection of white incandescence.
At a thousand irals, Brim verified that a small amber flare light in the forward panel had illuminated, indicating that the autohelm's self-test was complete. They could now continue their approach through the soft white haze to a fifty-iral decision height. By that time, if Tissaurd hadn't seen the landing vector, Brim—who was monitoring instruments—would take over controls and execute a missed-approach procedure. Busy Lake Mersin was simply too crowded with small shipping to risk a totally blind landing.
At five hundred irals, both sets of eyes were now looking for things that could go wrong as the soft white cloud lulled them closer to the bay. They double-checked the minimums and ran a second test of the autohelm, but as they passed through two hundred, the view outside the Hyperscreens continued to remain featureless, and brightened only slightly after another hundred irals of descent.
"Approaching minimums; going heads up," Tissaurd said, concentrating all her attention outside, as though she could drill a hole in the remaining few irals of fog. She was ready to follow through with the autohelm if she elected to land with it or disconnect and let Brim manually fly the starship on a go-around.
"Hope there's some water down there by now," she added with a tight little laugh.
"That would make me happy," Brim joshed back gently. "I'm the one who signed for this battle-weary bus, you know." His hands were over his own controls now, poised for a go-around with the autohelm disconnect under his right thumb and Starfury's missed-approach procedure memorized by countless hours simulating blind landings at Varnholm Hail.
Slightly above the fifty-iral decision height—when Brim was just about to start a go-around—Tissaurd announced, "I have the landing vector," and took the controls. Brim's eyes remained glued to his flight panel while he called out radio-altitude increments every ten irals until the starship settled firmly onto her gravity gradient in towering cascades of spray. He chuckled they slowed to taxiing speed amid happy shouts and cheers from all over the bridge. They were home! Now, all that remained was the hard part: finding their way to the military complex through approximately four c'lenyts of intermittent pea-soup fog....
As Tissaurd eased Starfury onto a transient gravity pool and the last mooring beams flashed into place, a huge, late-model limousine skimmer—in Fluvannian scarlet—pulled up at the foot of the brow with diplomatic flags flying. The chauffeur and footman no sooner had the passenger doors open than Drummond and Beyazh popped out one side while a Blue Cape wearing the two and a half stripes of a Lieutenant Commander exited the other. The three strode to the brow as if they were in a hurry.
"Looks like big doin's down there, Skipper," Tissaurd observed, shutting down the propulsion controls.
"At least," Brim replied with a frown. "I think I'd better go meet them."
"You'll have to hurry"—she laughed—"they're liable to beat you here."
As it turned out, they met in the main corridor, just outside Brim's cabin. "Brim," Drummond said, somewhat out of breath, "meet Commander Ambrose Contrell. He's replacing Tissaurd, who's been reassigned as skipper of this clapped-out derelict." He offered both his hand and an official-looking envelope. " These, you will be glad to know," he continued with a chuckle, "are your reassignment orders and travel voucher. We pride ourselves in the advance notice we give people."