The three waited only a moment for their first guidance.
"Turn about three points to your right, and go!" Aram ordered in a voice tight with strain.
"Got you," Brim answered, grinding his teeth. The young A'zurnian was fast reaching the end of his energy rope. Evidently, Onrad had heard the same bad news, because he was fairly running in the darkness. It was going to be a near thing!
Lights began to shine through the undergrowth after only a few moments. "Looks like we're there, Aram," Brim reported. "What do you see?"
"You're there," Aram assured him. He was breathing with effort now. "There's a patrol of sentries heading your way on the outside path, but I can't wait any longer. I've got to drop a couple of these grenades."
"Start dropping 'em," Onrad ordered. "We'll take care of the sentries." Then he turned to his two companions. "Ready?" he asked, unslinging his blast pike.
"Ready," Brim assured him, bringing his own weapon to hand.
Beyazh only nodded. He'd been carrying his at the ready for the last quarter metacycle.
After that, it seemed an eternity passed until a pealing discharge boomed out of the distance.
"Let's go for it!" Onrad thundered, and took off through the last of the trees like a land crawler, Brim and Beyazh at his heels. They stopped just short of the clearing, and Brim poked his head through the underbrush.
"Gorksroar," he swore, dodging back into the cover. "Hold everything!" he whispered. "Those zukeed sentries are no more'n a couple irals away." Three gray-suited Leaguers had stopped to peer through the fence at a rising cloud of smoke and flame coming from one of the hangars.
"What about the 219?" Oodam asked in a hushed voice.
"It's right where Aram said it would be," Brim answered. "Crew and all, less than a thousand irals inside the fence. But we've got to do something about those guards before we worry about anything else." He thought for a moment. "Let me try it alone. The less noise we make, the better."
"Go for it," Onrad whispered.
Thumbing off the safety, Brim waited until a second grenade rent the downpour, then burst into the clear. Before the startled Leaguers could turn to face him, he cut the first two down with a high-energy blast that burned them completely in half.
The third Leaguer, clearly faster than his unfortunate comrades, threw himself to the ground while he swung his own pike to the ready.
Brim likewise dived for the ground, but before he could aim his BL-58, the Leaguer leaped to his feet with a sideways motion—directly into the killing radius of the fence. With a blinding flash and a loud, sputtering hiss, he was instantly reduced to clouds of greasy blue smoke and steam, attracting the attention of the 239's Helmsmen who had been standing in the downpour while they watched the mysterious explosions with obviously growing concern.
"Get the fence, xaxtdamnit. Now!" Brim yelled as the third grenade detonated somewhere in the midst of the Zachtwager parking area. With that, he began to spray the deadly barrier with his blast pike.
The mesh resisted momentarily, until, under attack from three powerful beams of energy, it shredded in a blinding flash of loosed energy, sparked noisily for a moment on either side of the smoke-filled rift, then returned to silence, while the 219's crew gawked in bewildered amazement. By now, sirens were filling the air, and every light in the base was burning.
When the fourth grenade explosion momentarily recaptured the attention of the two Leaguer Helmsmen, Brim and his two comrades took off through the fence at a dead run. The two bewildered Leaguers spun around once more and did a fast double take at the three figures in Imperial battlesuits splashing through die downpour at them with large blast pikes. Desperately groping for their side arms, both made for the shelter of the 219, but a volley from Onrad's blast pike cut one of them down before he'd covered ten irals. The second dived for the ground and scampered through a puddle toward the ship on his hands and knees.
It gave Brim the few clicks he needed.
The Leaguer scrambled into the hatch, but as he tried to pull the circular door shut behind him, Brim arrived and desperately shoved the barrel of his blast pike over the dripping sill. The door stopped with a jarring crunch, and Brim heard the Leaguer shout with fright and anger. He looked up through the rain into the crack just in time to sight down the trembling barrel of a powerful Zspandu-50 blaster held by a glaring, mustached Helmsman in gray uniform. The next thing he sensed was the loud crack of a discharge—followed by a muffled splash as the Zspandu tumbled onto the ground in front of his eyes.
"Got the bastard," Oodam said matter-of-factly, swinging the door open again. "Bet he had your wind up."
"N-nonsense," Brim said over a rolling volley of thunder. "I'll get fresh underwear soon as we get back to Avalon...."
The next explosion wasn't a grenade. Even in the midst of his wild sprint, Brim could see it came from the Zachtwager parking area: source of a glowing cloud of reddish smoke or steam and tumbling debris that billowed swiftly into the morning sky. The whole base had become a chaos of sirens, rain, explosions, lightning flames, and confusion. He heard the fifth grenade go off just as he pulled himself into the 219. A headless Leaguer leaked blood across two luxurious seats upholstered in priceless ophet leather. Fighting back his gorge, he threw the body over a stack of wooden crates strapped to the deck at the rear of the passenger compartment, then ran forward to the little ship's flight bridge and flung himself into the Helmsman's station.
By flashlight, the instrument panels looked normal enough. Of course, they ought to, having clearly been designed for use by five-point people (anatomy types 2, 9, 9A). Before him, a queer-looking crystal about the size of his fist was secured at its base to the glare panel and attached to a temporary-looking box on its right by a number of bright-colored cables. Clearly, some experimental device, but at the moment, not very interesting.
"The master switch, dammit," he mumbled to himself. Where is it?
Outside, lightning revealed a number of soldiers splashing toward the hole blown in the barrier.
He'd expected the broken mesh to report its damage to Security, but the damn Leaguers were out to fix it a lot faster than he'd dreamed! Aft, in the cabin, he could see Onrad and Beyazh guarding the hatch with their blast pikes, the remainder of the grenades piled neatly in the aisle. They'd thrown the other Leaguer's body from the hatch.
Just then, another grenade went off outside—a lot closer than the others. He'd lost count, by now, but the A'zurnian must be getting to the bottom of his knapsack.
He willed himself calm by scanning the panels again for the master switch. Between the two consoles, he located the generator temperature gauges, and below them what must be an energy bypass actuator. Next to it was the graviton cutout control, and the cooling-flap levers with their indicators.
Temperature gauges, regulators, boost controllers. All there.... The grenade explosion was followed immediately by a clap of thunder he could almost feel. He'd found die Hypospeed propulsion cluster, all right. And the Drive cluster was clearly below that. But where was the xaxtdamned master switch?
Everything on the thraggling starship was worthless unless he could find it. He jumped as lightning blasted the early-morning twilight.
Wait! There right in front of his nose among the controls! A big red switch marked zomort,
"starter." He snapped his fingers in annoyance. It wasn't with the systems stuff at all. Damn Leaguers! He pushed it in, and every panel in the flight bridge began to glow. Universe!