Brim shuddered at the thought of the trapped men dying by inches in the most excruciating pain known in the galaxy. He gritted his teeth as the report went on.
"...One officer located under wreckage in companionway nineteen-moved to sick bay, all countermeasures personnel on bridge duty killed by flying Hyperscreen shards..."
Brim forced his mind from the horrible disclosures, visually cleared space again-for whatever little that seemed to be worth anymore-then looked up as Collingswood tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out through the Hyperscreens.
"Dora, Wilf," she exclaimed breathlessly, "look-the Leaguer battlecruisers are moving out wide. They're getting ready for Onrad and leaving the old battleships to protect the transports. Now's the chance for a torpedo run!"
Brim understood immediately. With Defiant's tremendous speed, they could be in and out of the formation before the lumbering old warships could fly into range. Liat-Modal had committed a disastrous mistake-one the Imperials had learned to avoid by their own costly process of trial and error. "Aye, Captain," he responded, completely forgetting the dull throbbing in his arm as he eased the helm over to starboard nadir.
"Chief Barbousse!" Wellington ordered over the intraship. "We'll have the torpedoes, if you please."
"Aye, Commander," Barbousse's voice answered from Wellington's console. "All tubes are loaded and primed."
Wellington glanced over at Brim and pointed into the Leaguer formation. "I'm going after that one, Wilf," she said, "the transport second from port in the top echelon-I think it's the biggest. We've got it locked in on the directors."
"I see it, Dora," Brim said grimly, skidding the ship slightly to provide a better angle of fire. She'd picked the biggest one, all right, but one of the old battleships was still cruising nearby, her massive turrets even now swinging Defiant's way. The disruptors looked to be at least ten c'lenyts in length! He shuddered, but held his course. Ahead and to starboard, the transport was growing steadily in the Hyperscreens, but at best Barbousse faced a terrible deflection shot.
"We'll use a spread of all four torpedoes, Chief," Wellington ordered.
"Aye, Commander," Barbousse's voice answered tensely from Wellington's console.
"Spread of four." Then the big rating's visage appeared on Brim's intraship. "Steady, sir," he said.
"Steady..." Brim started to answer, but he was interrupted by a tremendous explosion outside as the old battleship fired off a ranging salvo at them. It missed, but the energy concussion nearly knocked Defiant on her beam ends. Loose equipment and debris cascaded along the deck again while startled crew members stifled screams on the voice circuits. No sooner had Brim fought the cruiser back on an even keel than the battleship's old K-149A disruptors began glowing as they built up their next charge. Grinding his teeth, Brim steered closer to the transport. It would be hard for the battleship to fire without risking damage to its ward. "How're you doing, Chief?" he asked.
"We're awfully close, Lieutenant," Barbousse answered through clenched teeth. "I can't miss at this distance, but you'll have to get out of here fast when I let 'em go, or we'll get caught in our own blast."
"I'm ready," Brim said tightly. "Let 'em go."
"Aye, sir," Barbousse said. Presently four torpedoes streaked past the starboard Hyperscreens, hurtling toward the transport from point-blank range.
"Nik!" Brim bellowed, "lemme have full EVERYTHING!"
"Full everything coming up, Wyilf!" Ursis said in an excited voice. "Now!"
A split instant later, all four torpedoes hit the speeding transport in a tightly spaced pattern just abaft the bridge, In the scant clicks Brim could watch, the big starship's hull erupted first in a glowing pulse of flame and debris that was rapidly followed by a huge, expanding puffball of atmospheric vapor as the hull ruptured, then split lengthwise like some gigantic rotten fruit. Brim squeezed his eyes shut for a moment-he'd never seen ten thousand beings perish before-at least not all at one time. He felt the gorge rise in his throat.
"Voot's beard, you two!" Wellington exclaimed happily over the thunder of the straining Drive crystals, "nobody told me you two practiced using cannon. Where'd you get the powder?"
"Thought you'd brought it aboard!" Brim bellowed as he headed straight for the rear deckhouse of the battleship. The aft turrets were indexing around at him, but not nearly fast enough to track his speeding cruiser. Suddenly, he had an idea. "Chief!" he exclaimed through the intraship, "you got a couple of space mines on the tracks back there?" In the display, he watched Barbousse glance down at his consoles.
"Four, Lieutenant," the big rating answered. "Like the regulations say." He touched a bank of sensors. "They're armed now...."
"Let 'em all go on my count of three," Brim said through clenched teeth. "One..." The angular battleship was huge in Defiant's Hyperscreens now-and so were the disruptors as they continued to index. "Two..." He clenched his teeth and headed for a point only a few irals from the top of the battleship's bridge. "Three!" A milli-instant later, the massive stern and huge aft turrets passed under Defiant's, sharp bow, and in a trice he cleared the bridge, hauling the controls back into an almost vertical climb away from the battleship's deck.
Almost spasmodically, the forward turrets erupted in full salvos, but the great energy beams passed far beneath Defiant's soaring hull. Then a great pulsing glare flooded the bridge from aft as the powerful space mines exploded-with no Hyperscreens to filter the blinding flash. Brim swiveled in his seat in time to watch the massive old ship swerve sharply off course, her entire stern a mass of seething radiation flame. An instant later, she was rammed by a transport coming up at full speed from aft. The latter scraped along the massive armored flank of the battleship in a bright shower of sparks, then rose up at the bow as if in pain as the battleship slid beneath its hull in a secondary discharge of flame and shimmering ice crystals.
Brim had just turned back to his controls when Defiant seemed to stop in midspace as if she had struck some preposterously invisible wall. The bridge lurched violently upward, and he was again thrown against his restraining harness so brutally that his neck nearly snapped. Whole consoles broke loose in the absence of cabin gravity, smashing through the side Hyperscreens in cascades of flying debris. A bright glow pulsed from beneath the hull, then died suddenly-along with the thunder of the Drive. Without Alpern or his crew to man the countermeasures gear, they'd been torpedoed themselves. He knew it! Abruptly, the big ship rolled on her side and veered off to nadir-only moments before a second swarm of torpedoes blazed overhead. They'd never had time to launch a decoy pseudopod.
"We've lost E turret!" Wellington exclaimed over the intraship.
"Both crystals are fractured, Wilf!" Ursis roared a moment "And something terrible's happened in the Drive chamber."
Suddenly, Provodnik's helmeted face appeared in the intraship. Behind him, the Drive chamber was a blazing arena of destruction. Bodies lay everywhere, and great bolts of energy probed here and there through the thick smoke from fractures in the feed tubes. The young Bear's eyes were opened wide, almost as if he couldn't believe what had happened.
He slowly dropped his jaw as if be wanted to speak; instead, he vomited a crimson spray of blood against the faceplate of his helmet. When this cleared, his eyes had turned up in his head, and he soon slid from the intraship's view.
Brim almost threw up himself as the remainder of the transport fleet boiled around the cruiser's faltering path. One big vessel passed so close she scraped her KA'PPA tower along Defiant's keel plates, filling the hull with an ear-splitting, clanging rasp and shaking the bridge so violently that Brim momentarily lost his touch on the helm. Before he could recover, Defiant veered off to starboard, narrowly missing another transport-but inadvertently saving herself from an onrushing battleship whose field of fire was suddenly obscured. Biting his lip, Brim hauled the ship over into a tight bank and charged around into the very teeth of the convoy-which immediately disappeared in streaks of shimmering light as they swarmed past at double Defiant's present speed.