"True, but I do not think such is the case here. Can you seriously believe they'd blow themselves up with us?"
"I shall believe anything I wish. And get your paws off those controls—that is a direct order! Do you understand?"
Ursis thumped angrily back in the recliner, a grim look on his face.
Unable to contain himself further, Brim jumped into the fray. "If we don't start moving a whole lot faster than this, we are very liable to end up looking down the barrel of a disruptor—and it won't be ours, Lieutenant Amherst," he protested. "Both these ships messaged off calls for help."
"Would you rather risk being blown to subatomics, Carescrian?" Amherst snapped angrily.
"I don't see what Nik's doing as any sot of risk," Brim said, temper only barely under control. "What I do see as a risk is sitting around here at less than LightSpeed. Anybody can catch us the way we are now—and unless I badly miss my guess, we will soon be joined by a lot of 'anybodys."
"Well!" Amherst fumed. "I suppose I have no reason to be surprised. You Carescrians would be expected to side with the Bears; now that I think of it. Subhumans..."
Brim shook his head, ashamed to meet Ursis' eyes. "Perhaps you'd rather deal with our black-suited friends from the Cloud League," he said hotly. "Shall I send Barbousse to fetch them? Maybe you can persuade them to explain what they've done."
Amherst tensed. "We...we all know how much good that would do," he said, a shadow of fear passing into his eyes. "And besides, I prefer to keep them where they are."
Brim set his jaw and glowered at the starship's useless controls. He was still fighting his temper when the ship's proximity alarm started clanging overhead. He swiveled in his recliner, activating the aft viewscreens before he stopped.
"What is that?" Amherst asked, face ashen. "Are we going to blow up after all?"
"No," Brim assured him grimly. "And you are now quite safe from foreign hands tampering with the ship's Drive me mechanism."
"Well, that's better," Amherst said, taking a long bread relief. "But what was that ringing?"
"The proximity alarm, Lieutenant," Brim said, adjusting focus of the aft viewscreens and shaking his head. "Help has just arrived."
"Oh," the First Lieutenant said, "then Truculent's back?"
"No," Brim said, "but there is another starship outside. I can't make out the name. She's a Cloud League corvette. And both her long 99s are pointed right here at the bridge."
CHAPTER 3
Arms embracing his knees, Brim sat with his back against a chilly metal bulkhead gritting his teeth in frustrated anger. Twelve more would-be raiders from Truculent idled about in the gloomy compartment, faces set in like attitudes of disgust, helmets confiscated from their battle suits. Outside, in the merchantman's central K tube, he could hear disjointed bursts of guttural Vertrucht—and a lot of laughter. He understood most of what he heard: before the war, all ore-carrier Helmsmen had to learn Emperor Triannic's official language. League buyers were some of the Empire's best customers in those days. He snorted; the lot aboard this ship didn't know that about him. And he wasn't about to volunteer the information either—though so far his little secret had netted him no particular advantage. Except the knowledge that all thirteen of them were up for immediate transfer to the waiting corvette.
He listened to the uneven thrumming of the merchantman's unsynchronized gravity generators. Every so often, they rattled a bolt somewhere on the bulkhead at his back, but he couldn't locate it in the dim light. Turning his head, he glared at Amherst's rigid figure still nearly frozen by fear as he stood bolt upright, staring at the door. Nearby, Ursis and Barbousse each occupied a corner, asleep and snoring soundly. Brim chuckled in spite of his wrath—nobody in a right mind would disturb those two.
He shook his head in resignation: if nothing else, he'd learned a good lesson (though a fat lot of good it would do him grinding his strength away in some Cloud League slave brigade). But if he did taste freedom again someday, Wilf Brim swore he would never again acquiesce to anyone's reasoning flawed by fear. He shook his head in disgust. Had he taken steps to silence the frightened First Lieutenant (or had Ursis disregarded the man's orders and continued to work on the sabotaged Drive controls), they might now be boring their way through Hyperspace toward home and safety. Instead, Ruggetos and her vital cargo would soon resume their interrupted journey into a safe Leaguer harbor.
The Carescrian shrugged angrily. It was far too late now for thoughts of that sort. He purged them from his mind—self-recrimination was patently useless anyway, especially once basic mistakes were aired and thoroughly understood. He forced himself to random thoughts, conjured loose golden curls and frowning smiles. Red, moist lips—Lacerta's "Rime of The Ancients." He heard the husky voice in his mind's ear as if it were yesterday: "Roll on, thou deep and star-swept cosmos." Margot Effer'wyck—her large hand warm and soft in his for a too-short instant of total enchantment. Sturdy legs and tiny feet. Suddenly, another line of poetry crossed his mind; written especially for her, it seemed, though Lacerta penned the words more than a thousand years before those blue eyes first saw the light of day. "She walks in beauty, like the stars/ Of cloudless climes and worlds afar." He shook his head.
Strange how meeting her affected him. Just that once, and her face was never again far below the surface of his mind. "She walks in beauty..."
He chuckled to himself. Always an eye for the best! But this time those tastes had surely betrayed him.
Incredible now he hadn't tumbled to the name when be first met her. Pym had to explain the whole thing days after they'd met: Effer'wyck! The beautiful blond Lieutenant was not only grandchild of Sabar Effer'wyck (ascetic mogul of the powerful Effer Cluster), she was also a full-blooded princess and kin to the late Emperor Erioed III himself.
He snorted in embarrassment. A Carescrian talking face to face with an Effer'wyck. Even taking her hand. He pictured her and the elegant Baron LaKarn together in some ornate setting, sharing a laugh about his pitiful love of poetry. His cheeks burned with shame. Given his background of poverty, he'd need to become another Admiral Merlin Emrys—save a whole star system, perhaps—before she'd notice any interest he might have in her.
He shrugged. It was all over now anyway. Not much chance to accomplish anything heroic where he was going, or contribute anything to anybody—except perhaps to Kabul Anak's war effort. Well, he considered, if nothing else, he had his anonymity. She couldn't laugh at someone she didn't remember—and Wilf Brim was about to disappear completely, another small statistic in a very large war.
The hatch abruptly clanged open, nearly blinding him with light. Shouted commands propelled him to his feet, and a sharp blow to his head brought sudden pinpoints of light to his eyes as he started through the hatch and down the companionway. In a black mood, he stumbled off toward incarceration aboard the enemy corvette.
Shambling helmetless through the transparent transfer tube, he glanced toward Truculent's ugly little launch hanging forlornly at the merchantman's bridge, silhouetted against the blazing stars of outer space.
How differently things had begun only a few short metacycles ago! Ahead, the glasslike tube ended at a circular hatch opened in the corvette's second module, a fat cylinder mounted astride the ship's central K tube—crew quarters, he guessed. Next aft, the spherical battery module carried both 99-mmi turrets mounted at opposite poles. After this...He craned his neck, but he was already too close alongside now to see. If he remembered correctly, though, most Cloud League ships started with a spherical bridge module forward, then alternated cylinders and globes along the central K tube—so this ship would continue with a second cylinder, then a globe, and presumably end with a final cylinder containing the Drive and antigravity machinery. He wished he'd paid more attention when he could see the whole ship in the merchantman's bridge display.