Brim nodded. "You always were a quick study, Aram," he chuckled. Then he keyed the radio.
"Gorn-Hoff 319-JE to Oddeon," he sent, looking up at the battleship's imposing superstructure and awesome disrupters in terraces of superfiring turrets, "casting off." He canceled the mooring beams that had secured the little ship to its giant counterpart and nudged the steering engine to port.
"We're free," Aram warranted, peering out the starboard Hyperscreen.
"Gorn-Hoff 319-JE to Oddeon" Brim warned, "we are clear of your boarding pipe. May stars light all thy paths," he added, passing the age-old Imperial salute to the great old battleship.
"And thy paths, Star Travelers," came his answer. Above him, on the battleship's great, towering bridge, someone waved. Then with a massive stateliness, the colossal starship began to move forward, totally unaffected by heavy gravity chop from the Triad. Moments later, the big ship banked ponderously, then turned toward the completion of its interrupted landfall, still escorted by the three squadrons of Starfuries.
Just as Brim was getting the little 219 under way again, Eve Carescrian's voice filled his helmet speakers. "Imperial P8350 to Imperial Gorn-Hoff," she said.
"Imperial Gorn-Hoff 319-JE," Brim acknowledged with a frown.
"Captain Brim," she said formally, "should I assume you will be in Avalon day after tomorrow for the Squadron Commanders' meeting at the Admiralty?"
Brim snapped his fingers. Somehow, her voice—and the mention of something so workaday as a meeting at the Admiralty—brought him back to reality. "Er, yes," he replied. "Ah... perhaps we could... meet afterward?"
"I shall count on that, Captain," she answered. "Imperial P8350 out."
"Imperial Gorn-Hoff," Brim acknowledged. And even the amused look on Aram's face couldn't erase the happy grin her message brought to his own.
The war hadn't paused at all in Brim's short absence. On his return to a badly mauled FleetPort 30 (where at least twenty large blue pressure patches covered jagged holes blown in the satellite's skin), Barbousse stolidly ignored the damage and announced with pride that Home Fleet's Attack Command had launched another highly successful strike on the League's invasion buildup in Effer'wyck. Leave it to Barbousse to ferret out the good news!
But later, in his office with Moulding, he learned that the Leaguers had been all too busy themselves. Early raids by large formations of Kreissel 111s the previous day resulted in heavy damage at the great commercial starship docks on the planet Melia while other groups—mostly Zachtwagers—continued the campaign against BKAEW satellites. The Rontnev BKAEW satellite had been so badly damaged it was rendered unusable, causing a considerable gap in Defense Command's warning chain. Later in the morning, Defense Command's starbases had again been targeted. The Hawkinge starbase orbiting polar Avalon was badly damaged during a savage attack by Trodler 215s and Gantheisser GA 87B Zachtwagers.
Throughout a lengthy midmorning respite, repairs had been made to the damaged BKAEW sites, but the next round of assaults began about midday, with more than forty attack craft, and it became clear then that the Leaguers were now specially targeting Defense Command. Defending squadrons—including Brim's 11 Group—had already been scrambled, and destroyed twelve raiders. But enough of the Leaguers got through that FleetPort 30 itself had taken the grievous damage Brim saw (with ten casualties) when he landed. And it was only one of the many other Defense Command bases damaged in the raids. FleetPort 13 (orbiting Proteus) was so badly damaged that it could only accommodate two squadrons instead of its usual three. Then, no more than a metacycle later, two full groups of GA 87s attacked FleetPort 24 over Ariel, rendering a nearby BKAEW inoperative. But this time, before they could re-form for the flight home, one of the Leaguer groups found itself intercepted by two of Aram's Defiant squadrons, which promptly shot down twelve out of the twenty-eight attackers. Elsewhere, other Leaguer attack groups had been similarly savage.
"Sounds pretty wild to me," Brim commented in self-defense. He was rapidly reaching information overflow.
"Yes, right-ho," Moulding agreed with a grim smile. "Except 'wild' isn't nearly strong enough, Wilf." He shook his head. "The word is you and Aram came through a bit of bother yourselves while you were gone on your mysterious trip, but among the chaps here at FleetPort 30, the pace is also beginning to tell...."
Old-timers, he explained—survivors of perhaps a month at the most—were fast wearing to a frazzle, and bothered by empty places that kept appearing in the mess. New faces would appear out of the training bases, become familiar for a few days, then disappear with hardly a trace. Not only that, but word of the mortality rate was spreading below, on the surface. Replacement crews were now reporting for duty frightened out of their wits, but somehow their morale held. "They may be a bunch of mollycoddles, those new crews," Moulding said proudly, "but for all that, they came through tough as hullmetal when it comes to fighting for the old Empire."
"I'd hoped that might be the case," Brim mused quietly. "Makes me wonder where—and how—Amherst and his pack ever recruited so many CIGAs."
Moulding shook his head. "I'm dashed if I know," he said thoughtfully. "But I imagine many of the swine who did are having second thoughts right now. I've only begun to tell you how the Leaguers acquitted themselves yesterday."
Brim sat back in his chair. "There's more?" he asked.
"Oh, I'm only now getting to the interesting parts," Moulding said. That very afternoon, he explained, squadrons from FleetPort 30 intercepted a third main thrust against Avalon as it moved toward Prendergast Point, the great commercial harbor area 320 c'lenyts to the Austral of Avalon. Both Starfuries and Defiants made a good intercept, causing the attackers to fire blindly to complete their mission. "But this time," Moulding said with revulsion, "the bloody murderers blasted the outskirts of Avalon City itself. I personally think they did it by accident, but...." He paused for a moment. "Mark my words, Wilf," he continued presently, "those Leaguers quite altered the pattern of the war in that raid. So far they'd been damned careful not to damage the Imperial capital itself—most probably so they wouldn't bring down the same thing on their own capital. But all that's going to change now or I'll eat my battlesuit."
Brim nodded. From what he knew of Onrad, the Leaguers' blunder would certainly precipitate some sort of immediate retaliation. However, it would be nothing in comparison to what the Emperor would wreak on the Leaguers' capital should initiative in the war someday pass to the Empire. "You're right there, Toby," he said. "Whoever made that decision sealed the fate of Tarrott." He rose from his chair and paced for a moment. Tired as he was, he couldn't fight off a certain sense of excitement. "Could anything else have happened while I was gone?" he demanded.
"Oh, absolutely, old sport," Moulding said. "Whatever else you were doing, you missed quite a bit of excitement."
Brim laughed. "Believe me, Toby, I didn't lack for 'excitement.' "
"Yes," Moulding agreed, "knowing you, I shouldn't doubt that a bit. Unfortunately, I suspect you'll have mixed thoughts about how the day ended."
"Mixed thoughts?" Brim asked him with a chuckle.
Moulding nodded. "If you're anything like me."
"Go ahead," Brim said with an abrupt sense of foreboding.
"Well," Moulding began, "the Leaguers' random firing on Avalon that morning caused extensive damage—and loss of life—no more than a c'lenyt from a hall where some five hundred CIGAs were holding a rally. They'd given it a lot of advance hype and publicity—and chosen for their theme something like 'How Our Empire Forced the League into War.' "
Brim grimaced. "Cowards and traitors, the whole lot," he growled through his teeth. "How in xaxt did they attract an audience of five hundred with total Gorksroar like that? I mean... all they have to do is look up in the thraggling sky!"