She laughed. "My daughter and I have a rather restricted social schedule for the near future," she said. "But I shall be free at least to dine whenever you happen to be in town."
"I'll be back in a couple of days," Brim said, handing her into the first limousine. "I'll try to message you first."
Petty Officer Tutti winked as she followed her mistress through the door. "My regards to Chief Barbousse," she whispered.
"He'll be here tonight to receive them in person." Brim replied under his breath. "I will personally send him on a critical mission to the palace. It will then be up to him to decide what the mission is all about."
Watching the limousine pull away from the curb and merge into the traffic winding though the rubble-filled boulevard fronting the terminal, Brim shook his head, very much impressed by the Fluvannians' unique accommodations. At least twenty royal refugees from all over me galaxy were housed in much lesser circumstances all over the beleaguered city. Yet the helpless, deposed of Nabob of a small domain halfway across the galaxy and one of the Empire's best-known courtesans—pregnant, no less—were on their way to live in the Imperial Palace itself. Somehow, he could see the fine hand of Onrad in all of it—and Borodov: the old Sodeskayan knew about the baby. Nodding quietly to himself, he began to understand how fortunate he was, and resolved that he would somehow make the Emperor's largesse worthwhile.
As he rode the shuttle to FleetPort 30, hundreds of Imperial civilians lay dead and wounded in the tormented ruins below—but less than half the raiders had managed to actually reach the city with their weapons, and twenty-eight Leaguer starships had been destroyed in the attempt.
When the raids tapered off that night, reports showed that Defense Command had also continued to suffer. During the second day of raids on Avalon, nineteen Starfuries had been destroyed and Lord Jaiswal's struggle to keep up operational starship strength was becoming increasingly difficult: the total had dropped to 659, the lowest in nearly a month. Yet—at least so far as Brim was concerned—advantage had absolutely shifted to the Empire, for the League was no longer concentrating on military targets. Moreover, they were themselves experiencing mounting casualties without effecting commensurate damage to the Imperial war effort. Picking his way across the temporary repairs to a replacement Starfury that had arrived in his absence, he learned from Barbousse that she had been patched together from the wrecks of three fallen Starfuries. He shrugged. "She'll do," he said with a tired grin. "She'll do...."
CHAPTER 10
Loiterers
For most of the next two Standard Days, fierce gravity storms enabled Defense Command to recover some of its expended strength. Leaguer activity was limited to reconnaissance and isolated ground attacks. No Imperial crews were lost, and only one starship (a reconnaissance-configured Defiant) was missing in an extra-violent storm off Effer'wyckean border stars.
In fact, the second morning of this unexpected respite appeared as if it might just pass without any Leaguer activity at all. At midday (Avalonian Standard Time), however, Nergol Triannic KA'PPAed a boastful personal message directly to the Imperial Palace that he would call off the continued bombardment of Avalon if Onrad would simply step down and turn the reins of government over to the representatives of the League.
Afterward, Ursis reported at a broadcast staff meeting that the Leaguers believed they had everything necessary in place for their invasion—except, as usual, control of space. Triannic had made his little oration at the request of his High Command— minus Hoth Orgoth. They wanted to see if their goal could be reached by substituting a little bluff for the large number of starships that it now appeared would be realistically necessary to tame the Empire's apparently indestructible Defense Command. Ursis added, however, that barring success in that forlorn endeavor, Triannic still maintained personal hopes that Orgoth's huge raids on Avalon might also play a decisive role in the war, possibly coercing the Empire to capitulate without the necessity of invasion.
For the first time, the Sodeskayan intelligence community openly called Triannic's thinking "confused."
Late in the day, some 150 attack ships made it through slackening storms to inflict heavy damage on all parts of Avalon City. At the same time, however, Imperial Attack Command launched another of its own raids against Tarrott, this time leveling the city's prized Great Civic Terminal and blowing both dams on Lake Tegler while Brim and a number of volunteers flew raids on concentrations of invasion forces in Effer'wyck. It was extremely dangerous to attack there because of the tremendous concentrations of enemy killer ships as well as the paucity of Imperial starships available for long-range escort duty. Nevertheless, not only did the Imperial raiders raise considerable havoc among the occupying Leaguers, they also came back totally unscathed, indicating that the enemy Generals were as much unprepared to counter punishment as they were to give it out. That, in Brim's way of thinking, boded well for the Empire's future.
On his return to FleetPort 30, he found a summons to provide more firsthand testimony at another round of Onrad's War Cabinet meetings in Avalon the next day. Feeling a little guilty about missing the battles that were sure to come on the morrow—especially with Ursis's new crystal system working so well—he messaged his availability, and turned in early. Actually, he looked forward to the opportunity to more completely know this beautiful woman who—on the spur of the moment, it seemed—had decided to be the mother of his first child....
"Faint hope of our capitulation," Onrad broadcast to the people of Avalon in an official morning answer to the Tyrant's question of the previous day. "Faint bloody hope of that. The crux of this war has now arrived. We must regard the next week or so as a very important part of our history. It ranks with the days when the Vorgoth Horde was approaching Asterious or when Admiral Desterro stood between disaster and Ramoth's Grand Fleet at the Antar Triad. And as we did then, we shall again triumph...."
After Brim's subsequent attendance at the War Cabinet— where he found himself consulted far more than he had expected—he and Raddisma waited for the all-clear to sound, then dined simply in an elegant little cafe only a few rubble-strewn blocks from the palace; it was clear that the baby would be born soon. As they talked, he found himself utterly charmed by this incredibly beautiful, straightforward woman, who freely revealed her innermost hopes for the future—and especially for the future of "her" daughter. Later, as Brim took his leave at the palace gates, he felt a deep, intense pride that she had somehow chosen him to father her daughter. They promised to meet again within the week—either at another restaurant or in one of Avalon's birthing hospitals.
As if desperate to achieve the superiority in space he had promised his Emperor, Hoth Orgoth ordered wave after wave of raiders against Avalon City the next day. His initial thrust of about 250
starships comprised four formations. The first turned back early; both the second and third turned tail, aborting their attacks early after vigorous interceptions while still in deep space. The fourth squadron managed to fight its way to the outskirts of Avalon and even fire disrupters on the city—but it suffered tremendous casualties at the hands of Starfury and Defiant squadrons "fortuitously" positioned at intersections of the BKAEW aiming beams. Brim was among the defenders who savaged the unfortunate group of Leaguers.
The large formation of Leaguers had been sighted early on by watchful BKAEW operators over the planet of Avalon. All flyable starships of 11 Group—eight Starfuries and twelve Defiants in five flights of four each—were soon aloft in the area. Brim immediately dispatched two flights of Defiants (those whose leaders were without receiver crystals) to intersect the Leaguers present course nearly halfway out across the 'Wyckean Void. He then led Moulding with four Starfuries, Aram with four Defiants, and his own flight of four Starfuries back over Avalon to the general area in which Sector Control predicted the Leaguers would attack.