Suddenly: "Lox'Sands-98 buoy in the wake, Lieutenant Brim," the Chairman confirmed. Brim smiled with anticipation. "That's it, Nik," he said. "Half ahead, all crystals."
"Half ahead, all crystals," Ursis echoed. Quiet thunder from Truculent's four Drive crystals joined the roar of her straining gravity generators, the starscape wobbled and shimmered, then blended to an angry red kaleidoscope ahead until space itself came to an end in a wilderness of shifting, multicolored sparks.
When this phenomenon (the Daya-Peraf transition) at last subsided, the LightSpeed indicator had moved through 1.0 and began to climb rapidly again as Truculent's Drive crystals took over the job of hurtling her through Hyperspace.
"Finished with gravity generators," Brim announced.
"Gravity generators spooling down," Ursis confirmed.
Immediately, the Hyperscreen panels darkened while their crystalline lattices were synchronized with the Drive—then they cleared once more, blazing with the full majesty of the Universe. On this side of the LightSpeed barrier, however, flowing green Drive plumes trailed the ship for at least two c'lenyts surrounded by a whirling green wake as Truculent's Hyperspace shock wave bled off mass and negative time ("Tneg" of historic Travis equations) in accordance with the complex system of Travis Physics. In a few moments, the noise of the generators faded completely and Gallsworthy once more caught his eye.
"Yes, sir?" the surprised Carescrian asked, braced for still another rebuff.
A shadow of humor passed the senior Helmsman's reddened eyes, before they clouded again. "You may have proved a point or two this morning, Brim," he allowed emotionlessly. "I shall take over now and let you watch the scenery."
Jolted, Brim suddenly understood he had just received rare praise from this taciturn officer and groped for something appropriate to say. Then he brought himself up short with the sure realization that words were tools Gallsworthy simply didn't understand. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he said matter-of-fact. "I should be glad for a moment to relax."
When control was subsequently restored to the left-hand console, Brim settled back in his recliner and closed his eyes for a moment, smiling inwardly. It was a morning of two victories so far as he was concerned—though few of the Imperials on Truculent's bridge could have logically explained why. As thralls to Avalon's Galactic Empire, Carescrians were rarely praised for anything they accomplished.
Most became highly adept at ferreting out life's little triumphs wherever and whenever they could be found. And even Gallsworthy's acceptance of his flying skills could in no way match Brim's satisfaction in the sour look still manifested on Amherst's long, homely face.
Truculent was well on her way to war—so was Wilf Brim.
Blockades in intergalactic space were mounted for pretty much the same reasons they were mounted anywhere else: starve a critical component of a civilization into collapse and other, dependent components suffer with it. Starve sufficient critical components, and the whole civilization suffers. To this end, I.F.S. Truculent was assigned patrol duty off the periphery of the League's great Altnag'gin hullmetal fabricating complex at Trax. Without imported metallic zar'clinium, a rare trace element, its mills could forge no hullmetal plate—and without hullmetal plate, dependent shipyards could turn out no more warships.
The actual implementation was as simple as it was effective: cargo starships cruising Hyperspace at anywhere between ten and twenty thousand times the speed of light were simply not "maneuverable" in any normal sense of the word. It was first necessary to exit Hyperspace before approaching anywhere near a space anchorage, and this meant Hypolight runs of at least two or three metacycles at the end of each journey. During this interval, "runners" (enemy ships headed in either direction) were quite visible in the normal spectrum—and vulnerable to attack from predators like the Empire's specially equipped T-class destroyers. Truculent was one of six patrol craft assigned to sealing Altnag'gin; she relieved a smaller N-class destroyer, which had been constantly on station for three standard months.
It came as no particular surprise to Brim when the duty quickly boiled down to mostly hard work and boredom—a lot of space was like that. However, the routine was often enough punctuated by periods of deadly action, and Truculent found herself immersed in one of these no more than a few standard days after the ship she replaced gleefully turned her bow homeward and surged off into deep space at full thrust.
A chance break in one of the region's interminable gravity storms some hundred or so c'lenyts off the Nebulous Triad (a key departure point from one of the Cloud League's most important manufacturing centers) had just revealed two fast transports racing in from deep space.
Besides metallic zar'clinium, blockade runners in this part of the League nearly always carried other basic commodities to fuel the maw of Nergol Triannic's war machine: food ripped from starving farmers of Korvost, freshly mined crystal seedlings, and always quantities of life-sustaining TimeWeed from the Spevil virus beds—frequent drafts of the latter were necessary for each member of the dreaded Controller class and their rulers, expatriates from Triannic's royal court at far-off Indang.
Only cycles out of Hyperspace, the enemy ships had run out of luck.
Gallsworthy and Pym worked briskly at Truculent's Helmsmen's consoles, Collingswood on her feet behind them, one hand on each recliner, staring through the Hyperscreens. An off-duty Brim sat as observer in a jump seat, concentrating on the proceedings as if his life depended on learning each movement at either console—someday, he knew it would.
No escort craft accompanied these two high-speed beauties—Kabul Anak had recently siphoned nearly all protection from the area to support a large combined attack on nearby targets in the Empire.
And the gravity storm that only cycles in the past covered their dash for safety also served to conceal Truculent. But the latter's military scanning devices picked up two traders long before her own image activated their civilian-proximity alarms. Now the deadly warship was postioned so as to deny any possibility of escape to Hyperspace and was surging along in their wakes like the legendary wraith of Zoltnark, Dark Lord of the Universe.
"We shall have a warning salvo, if you please, Anastasia," Collingswood ordered quietly. "They are surely aware of our presence by now."
"And probably yelling for help on every channel they scan," Amherst grumbled nervously. Brim's glance strayed to the communications consoles where two ratings quietly nodded to each other. No time to waste today. The broadcast alarm would attract every enemy warship remaining in the area.
Outside, he watched Truculent's three upper-deck turrets Index slightly to port, then return to starboard, finally coming to a stop with their long, slim 144s pointing dead ahead: toward the distant targets. His mind's eye visualized four identical turrets that had just danced the same little gigue out of sight on the starship's dorsal planes.
"Stand by for a close pattern about half a c'lenyt off their bows," Fourier ordered.
Brim watched fascinated while firing crews hunched over their Director consoles, faces lit from beneath by the ever-changing colors of information pouring into their globes.
"Range six thousand and closing. Fifty-nine hundred...fifty-eight hundred..."
"Connect the mains, all disruptors."
"Connected."
"Deflection seventy-six left. Rate eighty-one plus."
"Range fifty-five hundred and closing. Sharply now...."