Brim maneuvered the launch until his main hatch was opposite the enemy's bridge, then watched Barbousse yank it open and aim his blast pike, finger twitching on the valve. He could see the enemy flight crew peering back at him—helplessly, he hoped.
"Give them a moment, Barbousse!" he yelled.
"Aye, Lieutenant," Barbousse assured,him. "I'll wait."
But in point of fact, the blockade runners did not need even a moment—their escape hatch flew off into the wake before Barbousse's voice faded from the bubble of Brim's helmet. The opening was immediately filled by one of the Cloud League's jet-black battle suits, arms crossed against the chest in the Universal gesture of surrender.
"Snag 'em, Barbousse," he yelled as he jerked the launch sideways, smashing the two hatches together in a cloud of sparks. Deftly for his awesome size, Barbousse lofted two explosive grappling hooks accurately through either side of the opening, then dragged them taut when they fired, securing each to baggage tie-downs on the launch's floor.
After that, nothing happened. Puzzled, Brim shut down the straining generators, his attention glued to Number One, waiting for further commands.
"Well, c'mon Amherst," Ursis growled in the resulting silence, "You are waiting perhaps for a personal invitation from Kabul Anak?"
"Oh. Er...yes. I mean no, of course not! Ah...this way, men," Amherst stuttered, pushing Barbousse through the opening first. Ursis clambered through on his heels, followed by Brim and the ten ratings of the boarding party.
Inside, a small group of civilian spacers huddled glumly on one side of the still-smoking bridge, nervous eyes darting in every direction. One, a woman, was tall with a figure even a space suit couldn't hide—she also had a nose only a mother could love. Beside her a fat old man stood with his paunch straining the power belt around his waist. Another had no hair on his head. And still another wore a crumpled little peaked cap inside his bubble helmet and sported a huge black mustache drooping from his upper lip.
Brim stopped in his tracks. So these were the enemy he so often read about. The Cloud League's storied blockade runners. He snorted in irony. These? They looked like nothing more—or less—than every workaday spacer he knew from the ore carriers; ordinary, everyday faces. In an Avalonian byway, he would not have noticed any one of them. And to a man, they were frightened, no doubt about that!
In the center of the bridge, however, three very different, human forms stood before the controls, these dressed in the black battle suits of Controllers. For no apparent reason, they instantly returned Brim to the dark mood of war. Black-uniformed Controllers were a separate—and elite—branch of the normally gray-uniformed League armed forces. In the eyes of most Imperials, they were the true Cloud League villains—killers of little Carescrian girls and destroyers of undefended villages. He could almost see bloodstains on their spotless gloves as they waited with looks of insolence on their faces.
"Ah," Amherst started lamely, "wh-what ship is this?"
"And who asks?" one of the black-suited Leaguers demanded haughtily.
"It is not your time for questions, Black Suit," Ursis growled as he ever so slightly moved the big side-action blaster in his hand. There was nothing subtle at all about the gesture—either meant by the Bear or interpreted by the Controllers.
"S-Starship Ruggetos," one said quickly.
"Good," Ursis rumbled, taking control of the situation. "You now understand our relationship. For your own good, I urge all to remember it well." He licked his chops with a long red tongue. "It has been almost a year since I visited Mother Planets for chasing live red meat."
Sweat broke out on the brows of all three Controllers. Everyone knew about Sodeskayan Bears and their annual home leave for "The Hunt." It was only natural. Certain places in the galaxy permitted nonsentient bear hunts, too.
"Take these men and lock them somewhere, Barbousse," Amherst ordered imperiously, recovering some of his confidence. "And see those Controllers are kept off to themselves," he added. "I don't want them mixing with the rest."
"Aye, sir," Barbousse, said, nudging the three black-suited Controllers into the companionway with the tip of his oversized space boot. "They won't stir no one up when I'm done with them." Cycles later, he reappeared to herd the civilians from the bridge in a different direction. Brim filed all this away for future reference. Today, the huge starman was not at all the bumbling dunce who appeared on Truculent's gangway the morning of his arrival.
Then there was no more time for random thoughts as he took his place at the master control console in the center of the ship's peculiar cross-shaped Hypcrscreen arrays. He heard Ursis thump down behind him in what appeared to be a propulsion console. The simplified layout on Ruggetos' tiny bridge was surprisingly easy to comprehend—yet as distant from Imperial design philosophy as the Cloud League's spoken Vertrucht was from Avalonian. "We'd better get some speed on this bucket of bolts, Nik," he called back as he studied the readouts before him. "Our COMM people picked up the messages these birds broadcast. We'll likely have visitors around these parts before we know it, and the first of them probably won't be Truculent."
Always different in minor respects, flight controls on one starship usually turned out to be fairly similar to those on any other—anywhere in the Universe. These were no exception. Brim soon mastered all three panels and prudently set a course for deep space, waiting for the sound of the crystals when Ursis fired them up. But—at least by the chronometer on his console—five cycles later, nothing more happened. In the corner of his eye, he detected a concerned look on Amherst's face and continued to study his own readouts, hoping to avoid drawing further attention to the clearly troubled engineer at the console behind him. The ploy was totally without success.
"What seems to be the trouble, Ursis" Brim heard the First Lieutenant ask nervously.
"Can't change the Drive's power settings," Ursis growled absently. "Something has been altered here."
His voice trailed away as he continued to concentrate.
Amherst fairly ran across the bridge to the console. "Something has been altered?" he asked, his voice suddenly tinged with, fear.
Brim turned in his seat as Ursis looked up at the First Lieutenant, blinked his eyes, then shook his head as if what he had to say pained him. "Yes, Number One," he said, frowning, "something has been tampered with that I do not yet—completely—understand. But if you let me alone for a few cycles, I'll master it. Now—"
"Don't touch that console, you damned Sodeskayan fool!" Amherst squeaked in a high-pitched voice.
"They've rigged it to blow us up!" Sweat suddenly stood out on his forehead.
"With them still aboard?" Ursis demanded indignantly as he continued to manipulate the controls.
"Ridiculous."
"Get your hands away from those, Ursis!" Amherst hissed nervously. "That is an order. Understand?"
"Would you rather wait until one of their patrols intercepts us, Lieutenant7" Ursis asked, frowning.
"I don't want to die, Ursis," Amherst spat. "Stay away from those controls before you blow us all over the Universe!"
"Wha-a-a-t?"
"You have no idea what they might have patched in there, Sodeskayan. By Slua's third eye, you toy with our lives. There's high power at the end of those controls."
"I know from power for xaxt sake," Ursis rumbled, head cocked to one side in a anger. "That's how I make my living—usually."
"You know about power systems that have not been turned into death traps, Bear," Amherst argued hotly.