"Well, what then have you planned for our visitors from the Empire, Placeman Zodekk?" the Prefect's voice demanded next. "I haven't all day. We dock in less than three metacycles."
"Oh, yes, sir," another voice answered, this one with just the hint of a lisp. "We are questioning them one by one right now."
"Well, go on, pretty fool. What then?"
"Wh-When we finish, we could simply shoot them," the new voice offered.
"Of course," the female voice suggested, "handpower is scarce down there. The captured Imperials might serve for a time as slaves. All appear to be well fed. They could survive a long time on next to nothing, Provost."
"Hmm," the modulated voice said "Indeed a point—and I have heard of your, shall we say, predilection for the slower forms of death." He laughed. "But what of the Bear? Do you wish his presence among the slaves?"
"Oh, the Bear is quite a windfall, my Provost," the lisping voice interrupted gleefully. "Only Imperials have any use for them on starships. But bearskin coats and carpets are in much demand among Emperor Triannic's royal court this season. It has been quite cold, as you might have heard."
"All right, Placeman," the Prefect's voice said with an ill-concealed accent of boredom. "And you will let all this be a lesson. The next time..."
Heart pounding, Brim turned and started aft again along the K tube. It was imperative that he prolong the corvette's trip in space—once it reached its destination, they all were good as dead. Especially Ursis.
Free passage along the tube ended abruptly in a solid-looking bulkhead and dogged-down hatch at the entrance to the ship's aftmost module. Illuminated warnings mounted on either side of the hatch read,
"AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" and "SIGN IN/OUT REQUIRED BY THE PREFECT."
Below these, a tabulator board hung from a hook, complete with logic scriber—the same kind of portable writing device carried by everyone in the Universe who ever took an inventory or made a survey. It was all Brim needed.
Checking behind himself for activity, he suddenly ripped the tabulator free from its hook—only one person was signed inside. He scrolled the sign-in form from its display surface, then touched a glowing panel on the hatch before him and waited.
"Yes?" a voice asked from a speaker.
"Radiation-level survey," Brim, answered briskly, pointing to the blank tabulator board as if it were his own.
"Name and ID?" the voice demanded.
Brim grimaced, heart pounding. "I have already signed that information in your tabulator board you have hanging from your hatch, fool!" he blustered, pointing to the empty hook as if it were visible from the other side of the hatch. "Now you open up before I have you fire-flogged. Do you hear?"
"Aye, sir. Aye, sir! I h-hear," the voice stammered as a series of clanks and chatterings: announced the opening of the hatch. Brim was almost knocked to the deck as it swung open toward him.
"Th-This way, please, Overmann, sir," a frightened rating stammered, face white with fear. He was short, wiry, and middle-aged with narrow-set eyes and a sharp-looking chin covered by uneven gray stubble. His hands bore the blue stains of a sometime kupp'gh cleaner.
Brim pushed his way past and into an antechamber—which ended in a second hatch. This one looked even more secure than its outside counterpart. Keeping his nerve under control, he slammed the first hatch shut and whirled on the rating with the best imitation of haughty anger he could summon. "You will also open this immediately," he demanded through tight lips.
"Oh, ah, aye, Overmann," the cowed guard said, taking a key from around his neck and unlocking the inner hatch. "And will you need assistance, sir?" be asked.
"You dare question my ability?" Brim hissed through his teeth.
The rating shrank back away from the hatch. "S-Sorry, sir," he whispered. "Don't have me whipped, Overmann. I mean no harm askin' ye."
Brim looked down his nose at the wretched rating, hating himself and what he had to do. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end. "Perhaps I may overlook the lapse this time," he said. "But I shall brook no interruption of my work. Do you understand? No interruption."
"I understand, sir," the rating said, taking his seat with a wan face. "No interruptions. I'll make sure."
"See that you do," Brim growled, then stepped into the bright, humming module and closed the door after himself. He had just dogged it down tight from the inside when he heard alarms go off everywhere.
He glanced at his watch—time was up by almost ten cycles.
"Warning!" the speakers brayed "Warning. An Imperial murderer is loose within the ship. He is armed and dangerous. Shoot on sight and shoot to kill. Repeat: shoot on sight and shoot to kill."
Brim shrugged as he threw the tabulator in a corner. It probably wouldn't fool anyone else now.
One eye out for his lone companion in the module, Brim jog-trotted from cabin to compartment, desperately seeking entrance to the generator chamber. No time to waste now. He soon found himself deep within the module, but unable to exit from the deck on which he entered—and from the intensity of sound and vibration coming from below, he knew the mechanism he sought was located somewhere deeper in the hull. Frowning, he had just returned to the K tube from another fruitless search of a parts storeroom when a dazzling explosion seared the wall beside his head and nearly knocked him from his feet. He whirled around, firing the pike by instinct as a second explosion ruptured the space he had occupied only ticks before. The shadow of a black-suited Controller disappeared inside a nearby hatch only ticks before the bucking weapon blasted its door panel from its hinges in a wild tattoo of destruction.
He rushed for the blackened, dented opening and flattened himself outside.
Panting, he readied the pike again, then blew out a whole section of overhead lights. This resulted in almost total darkness—except the bright glow streaming from the door into which this new adversary had disappeared. He dropped to a crouch, the pike ready at his hip. Gathering himself, he flexed his shoulders, took a last deep breath, and leaped through the doorway, spraying the room with deadly bursts of energy and radiation. As his feet hit the floor, a figure armed with what must have been a RocketDart pistol ran screaming toward him, launching a flurry of deadly sparkling missiles. Two hit with a searing—unbelievable—agony in his left shoulder. He heard himself scream, sank to his knees, and fired the heavy weapon point-blank into the man's stomach.
With a horrible scream of anguish, the Controller doubled over, sprayed a stinking froth of blood and vomit over Brim's blouse, then collapsed nearby in a heap on the floor, his still-smoking torso blown nearly in half.
Gritting his teeth from the burning pain in his shoulder, Brim felt blood running inside his tunic and realized he had no more than a few cycles to disarm the ship's generator before he lost consciousness.
He struggled awkwardly to his feet, stuffed the RocketPistol in his belt, and dragged the blast pike by its scorched barrel to a large open hatch set in the deck. Light and noise streaming through from below assured him be had finally reached the generator chamber. And not a moment too soon. Far down the K tube, he could already hear thumps and clangs as the ship's crew—almost certainly alerted by the sight of their dead comrade in the crew section—attempted to force the inner hatch.
Balancing himself precariously on the narrow rungs, he found the howling bass of the machinery nearly as painful to his unprotected ears as the throbbing darts in his charred shoulder. Somehow, he managed to descend with his good hand while doggedly clutched the heavy pike in his left, but at the bottom he couldn't remember navigating the last two rungs at all.