By the fifth salvo, a bright sparkling of hits commenced in what appeared to be totally empty space. Abruptly, the Leaguer ship became visible by the light of a nearby star, then went spectral again.
"Good shot!" Brim shouted.
"We pranged 'em, all right, Lieutenant!" Barbousse shouted excitedly as he continued to fire the seventy-five with deadly accuracy. Moments later, the bender again cycled through visible to spectral-and then again as more and more hits continued to glitter in the distance.
The Leaguers stopped firing abruptly-but Barbousse increased the rate of his lethal barrage....
On the moment, Calhoun's admonition rang in Brim's ear: Today, you may cause only enough damage to deprive yon Leaguers of a means to escape. The real mission is to get a bender safely back to Atalanta...."
He was about to shout out an order when Barbousse stopped shooting on his own.
"It's gone," the Chief said with a frown of concern. "It's just plain gone\"
. "What happened?" Brim asked, putting the launch back on coarse for Prize and its N-ray illumination.
"I don't know," Barbousse answered, staring off past Brim into the starry darkness. "All of a sudden, it stopped flying a predictable course-and I lost it." He looked across the console at Brim and grimaced. "It was just like somebody new took over at the controls."
His voice was cut off precipitously by a furious volley of disruptor fire-this time close enough to rock the launch violently. On its heels came a second barrage, even closer. Brim put the helm over and shoved the power levers all the way forward- just outrunning a third volley that would have burst in precisely the space they would next have occupied.
"Somebody new just took over at the disruptors there, too!" he growled.
"Swing her back to vector blue. Lieutenant," Barbousse growled, peering into his display.
"I'll stop the sons of grok-fuls!"
"Not firing blind like that!" Brim groaned. "You might hit something vital and blast her to pieces." He shook his head desperately. "I've got to get us back into Prize's N-ray beams so you can see what to fire at-straightaway!" Outside, another furious salvo tossed their launch on its side, the concussion blasting streamlined covers from their port nacelle and altering its thrust vector. Immediately out of control, the little spaceship pivoted viciously around its damaged spin-grav-less than a click before space once again erupted in an enormous discharge that smashed them sideways like a Vixlean shuttlecock, shattering the canopy in an avalanche of spinning crystal shards. Blinded for the moment by the flash, Brim sightlessly fought with the controls, desperately struggling to retrim the launch before her wild oscillations fractured the spaceframe.
"I see the bastards!" Barbousse suddenly yelled. "Try an' hold 'er, sir-right where she is!"
Brim bit his lips and sweat poured down his forehead as he strained to wrest control from the launch's runaway physics. With the port generator stuttering along at half power, he somehow willed the stars to stop sliding sideways until... There it was! Dead ahead and lighted by Prize as if it were high afternoon. The bender was coming about slowly, but directly bow on to them, her aft-facing disruptors masked by the tall control bridge.
On the instant, Barbousse opened fire again, and this time he needed no calibrations. At his first shots, the bender's control bridge erupted in a glittering shower of Hyperscreen crystals. Then the launch plunged diagonally under the hull. This time, however, Barbousse continued his withering fire on the other side. The top of the control bridge-and both its disruptors-were now visible in the bright starlight, protruding from starry emptiness above a jagged line where the bender's logic chips were no longer functional. Below this, numerous "holes" in the vastness of space revealed those areas the Chief had previously hit while firing blind.
Firing with the precision of a master surgeon, Barbousse next rendered both Leaguer disruptors inoperative with a well-placed inferno of radiation and shock. As Brim circled 'round for another firing run, the weapons could be seen dangling loosely from blackened mountings, their firing chambers glowing red hot and completely open to space. They would never fire again....
Peering over his control panels, Brim at last found time to search for Prize. He discovered her straightaway, now fairly bristling with her powerful disruptors, and vectoring in at top speed toward the bender from green zero. Unavoidably, she was also squarely in the path of a torpedo attack! Brim soon found he wasn't the only one who had grasped the opportunity for a devastating bow-on shot-the bender's torpedo doors were sliding open even as he glanced their way!
"She's gonna' fire a torpedo," Barbousse swore. "We can't stand back and let 'em do that, Lieutenant!"
"Put a shot past the bridge, Chief," Brim ordered grimly. "Then if they don't shut the doors, take out the whole bridge!"
"With pleasure, Lieutenant," Barbousse grunted through clenched teeth as he peered intently into the disruptor display, "but I hope he leaves 'em open, all the same!" Shortly, the seventy-five spoke once, and a tremendous, fulgurating explosion tore the fabric of space only irals from the bender's bridge. When the sparkling radiation cleared, every logic grating covering the Hyperscreens appeared to be gone, and at least three of the ten panels were now empty frames. "Oof," Barbousse muttered under his breath, "perhaps that was a mite too close...."
Brim chuckled in spite of his anxiety. "I'll give them a count of five to react, Chief," he cautioned. "They may be a bit shaken up in there. One... two... three..." Precisely on the count of four, the bender's image became crystal clear as she came out of spectral mode.
Moments later, a figure dressed in gray battle gear appeared at one of the blown-out Hyperscreens and placed its hands atop its head in a clear gesture of surrender.
Simultaneously, both torpedo doors slid closed.
"Now what?" Brim asked with a shrug.
Barbousse shook his head. "I don't know, Lieutenant. D'you suppose they might try to scuttle her or somethin'?"
Brim tried to scratch his head, but the closed helmet of his battle suit got in the way. "I suppose that's a definite possibility, Chief," he said, hoping Barbousse had missed his little gaffe, "especially if they have Controllers aboard."
"Those dudes in the black uniforms with the TimeWeed habit, Lieutenant?"
"Yeah," Brim acknowledged. "It rots their minds-at least that part that has anything to do with ethics." He shook his head. "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to interfere with much else. If that bender really was on a training mission, it's my guess that Controllers were doing the training."
"Maybe it was Controllers who took over the disruptors when they almost got us," Barbousse said.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Brim speculated. Those bastards are good- and wholly dedicated to Triannic's League. I'll wager there's one horrendous struggle going on inside that bender right now about surrendering. You'll want to keep our disruptors ready to fire just in case the wrong side wins."
Barbousse leered evilly. "Wouldn't I love that," he said, fingering the trigger mechanism of his seventy-five.
Only clicks later, the Blue Capes watched thirty-odd, gray-suited figures clamber through two deck hatches, dragging the limp forms of three others clad in jet black.
Brim had his answer when the first two stretched what appeared to be a white hammock between them and began to shake it vigorously in a clear message of surrender. "Smart move, Hab'thalls," Brim whispered in the Leaguers' native language of Vertrucht.
"What in the name of Voot?..." Barbousse interrupted, pointing suddenly to one of the black-suited figures that had regained its knees and was painfully crawling toward the rear hatch, unnoticed by the other Leaguers.