One evening, a traveling company—brave souls all—put on a popular Laserta musicale in FleetPort 30's patched-up assembly hall. Brim and some 250 off-duty personnel formed a wildly appreciative audience. During one of the more popular ballads, raid alarms began to howl throughout the satellite. The troupe paused while audience and actors alike donned battlesuits, then the show went on, as if Hoth Orgoth and his Deep Space Fleet were just as unreal and innocuous as the clowns.
Less than a metacycle after the musicale, Brim found himself at the helm of a cobbled-together Starfury that was recently deemed more or less spaceworthy. Damage in the Drive crystal area made it incapable of faster-than-light flight, but it could still put up a good fight below the speed of light. He was just getting under way when yet another attack slammed into the base, this one much larger than the last.
In a welter of explosions, the Starfury to his left was flung 'round like a cartwheel, then continued out of control like a huge child's top until its starframe crumpled and all three hulls disintegrated in a roiling burst of energy. Nearby, a second Starfury whirled aimlessly, both pontoons broken off. Grinding his teeth and expecting to be the Leaguers' next victim, he fed the emergency energy to the ship's big gravs and got away—temporarily. Directly ahead were echelons of League attack ships, and his disrupter crews opened fire on two GA 88s in succession, but the Leaguers had already completed their attack and were racing off into Hyperspace, where Brim could not follow. Abandoning them to other crews, he returned to the damaged base in high dudgeon, where not even Barbousse could find words to claim his angry frustration.
During another series of the raging gravity storms indigenous to the galactic center, Brim was called to Avalon to make a situation report. At first, he angrily refused to leave the battle, but Calhoun insisted. So grudgingly he caught a shuttle for the surface. Within the metacycles, he landed on Lake Mersin—in the midst of a vicious raid. Sprinting off the brow toward a shelter, he paused to look toward the sound of a starship diving at high speed, Moments later, it broke through the high haze, heading straight for the lake. Its turrets were all askew, and for a moment he took it for a GA 87B. It was turning very slowly, in a lazy sort of spin, and as its full silhouette appeared, he recognized it as a Starfury. At about five hundred irals, the turrets swung a little, and then just before it reached the surface, its gravs seemed to blow up and disintegrate. The doomed starship disappeared into the lake as a cascade of individual waterspouts, leaving only a puff of colored smoke to mark the common grave of forty-odd Blue Capes, and even that was gone long before Brim reached the shelter...
Finally, the Leaguers departed. Brim's staff skimmer picked its way through rubble-strewn streets to the meeting, where briefers confirmed what he'd known all along: that Imperial starbases everywhere were suffering terrific damage. Before the meeting ended, however, all reported that they were back to nearly full operation—except his own, which was capable of reduced operations only by superhuman effort. Conditions at all the damaged starbases were miserable, especially at FleetPort 19. In answer to anxious questions by Calhoun and his staff officers, Brim expressed his thoughts that if Imperials like himself seemed stressed, the Leaguers must be equally so—perhaps even more. According to the reports he'd heard earlier in the meeting, the last two days had cost Hoth Orgoth seventy-seven starships. And while his fellow Imperials had themselves lost sixty-five, a much higher percentage of their crews had survived to fight again (although a number of Leaguers survived as Imperial prisoners).
Wearily trudging along an Admiralty corridor after the meeting, Brim noticed few CIGA buttons and discovered that Amherst's once-lavish office had quietly been converted to a much-needed main-floor snack bar.
In the lobby, he was just about to reserve an after-supper skimmer-pool lift to the shuttle when he heard the musical lift of a familiar voice.
"Skipper, Hey, Skipper. Captain Brim!"
Tired almost beyond caring he turned—then in spite of his fatigue, he broke out in what felt like an ear-to-ear grin. He'd almost forgotten how. "Tissaurd!" he hooted to the diminutive officer. "What in Voot's name are you doing in the middle of this snakepit?" he demanded. "I thought bender people simply went invisible and stayed clear of trouble like we've got here."
Turning a few heads in the great domed lobby, she planted a long kiss on his lips before she stood back, grabbed his forearms, and shook her head. "Wilf Brim," she said, ignoring his banter, "you look absolutely terrible."
Brim stolidly maintained his grin—he didn't want to lose the sudden rush of pleasure he'd felt when he first saw her. "I'm all right, Nadia," he chuckled. "It's just that time has allowed you to forget how ugly I normally am."
"And how full of Gorksroar you are, Brim," she growled, looking up into his face, "You're killing yourself, pure and simple. You should see your eyes—maybe you shouldn't at that. There's more red in 'em than there is white."
"I'm not the only one who looks like that," he said. "Every Defense Command starsailor is the same way—at least the ones who are still alive."
"From the looks of you, Skipper..." she started. Then, biting her lip, she stopped in the middle of her sentence.
" 'From the looks of me,' what?" Brim demanded.
"Nothing," she said firmly. "How long's it been since you relaxed with a woman?" she asked.
"Naked, I mean."
He laughed. "The last time I tried something like that, we both fell asleep before we could get anything going. Since then... well, the Leaguers have kept everyone pretty busy."
"What are you doing tonight?" she asked.
"I'd planned to catch supper somewhere, then head back to FleetPort 30 in time to catch the Dawn Watch patrol. Only the toughest Leaguers fly when there's bad regional gravity."
"So you're not due back right away, are you?"
He made a sham leer from her chest to her legs. "Well," he said pointedly. "I ought to get back and..."
She shook her head phlegmatically. "We won't make those kind of plans for tonight, Skipper," she said. "When you and I finally get it on in bed, you're going to do a lot more than sleep," she laughed.
"What I'm talking about tonight is making sure you get a decent supper—with all your clothes on, or at least part of 'em."
Brim sighed theatrically. "Seems as if every time we get together, something always gets in the way," he said.
"Yeah," she chuckled. "It does seem that way." Then she smiled. "Well," she added with an impudent look, "if you're up to it, you can have a little after-dinner feel."
"First let's see if I last through supper," he said with a tired laugh. Actually, the thought of a few metacycles shared with the personable—and very attractive—middle-aged woman was, well, stimulating. He had greatly enjoyed their tour of duty together, and somehow the promise of an evening filled with spicy conversation seemed to be pumping energy into him from Voot knew where. "All right," he agreed. "You tell me where."
Her choice was the quiet, wood-paneled bar of a grand old hotel. Brim found himself immediately comfortable, and even alert, or relatively so. A single musician sat at the console of a massive looking instrument coaxing melodies from out of its depths that made him feel relaxed without being sleepy. "This is wonderful, Number One," he said. "My sincere compliments."