Mounted overhead directly to the underside of the K tube the generator itself looked much like the rest of the antigravity generators he had seen. It was big, taking up the major volume of the round-bottomed chamber—the deck on which he presently stood was no more than a small platform mounted over the stout longerons and curved hullmetal plates that formed the underside of the module itself. Brim estimated the machinery stretched nearly twenty irals in length from its forward cooling vanes to the gleaming, pressure-regulating sphere where it connected to the ship's primary power supply by means of two finned wave guides arching down from the flat ceiling, then up and around to a radiation-blackened collar.
Thrusting aside the torment in his shoulder, Brim considered his options. There were only two. He could blast the regulator globe—either of the weapons he carried could do that easily. Or he could shoot out the machine's all-important phase latch, if he could find it. The second choice was much more attractive from a personal standpoint: rupturing the regulator globe would release all the generator's output directly into the chamber. The burst of raw energy would last only a gigatick at most before logic fuses sensed the runaway flow and choked it off at the source. But that was ample time to fry him (and any other organic compounds in the generator chamber) to fused carbon atoms. Grimly, he studied the big machine. Familiar as it looked overall, individual parts made little sense by themselves. He shook his head with frustration as he eyed the pulsing regulator. He grimaced. Death held no particular terror for him, especially after what he'd already been through. But he hated to give in. He concentrated again, trying desperately to discover some thread of functionality amid the complex network of conduits, insulators, logics, and odd-shaped housings. Then, almost by accident, his eye was caught by a big synchronous compensator, calibrated by the League's crazy x-ROGEN. No wonder he couldn't find it the first time! Directly below was its logic shunt—and to the right of that, a beam multiplier, no doubt about it! And a Fort'lier tube—they'd call it a "multigrid-A" here, calibrated as it was in mega-ROGEN.
He was getting close now—a good thing, too. The pain in his shoulder was all but stopped, but be had become very drowsy now—and dizzy. He steadied himself with the hot barrel of the blast pike, forcing his eyes to focus. A distant clanging and hammering commenced on the hatch above him. Not much time left now. He compelled his tired mind to function.... The Fort'lier tube. It controlled a radiation modulator somewhere. Therefore... He shook his head. Things ~ getting terribly foggy. He traced a thick wave guide from the oblong device through... Yes. That was the modulator, and beside it the phase latch he was looking for. He could tell by the big rectifier mounted on its side. All so easy once he knew where to look!
He sniffed the air anxiously, looked up. The hatch was glowing cherry red. Bastards were burning through. Desperately, he raised his pike toward the generator—Universe, how he was shaking. The hammering commenced again. He blurred, squeezed his eyes clear. The latch was in his sights. He fired...and missed.
With a sharp ripping noise, a bolt of energy cut through the hatch and sent sparks all over a nearby bulkhead. Gritting his teeth, Brim wrestled the weapon to his shoulder again, aimed. This was his last chance. If he missed, he'd go for the regulator and a quick, painless death. He willed himself to steady the sights, counted backward. Three...two...one. Then he fired. This time, he was rewarded with a satisfying flash of light as the phase latch shattered in a wobbling ball of violet radiance. Immediately, the noise of the generator began to fade with a great, almost-human sigh.
Presently, his eyes began to fog over again. By now, Brim had no strength to counter it. He felt himself falling. The last thing he heard was the hatch grating open on its ruined hinges—guttural shouts he no longer understood. Then he heard nothing.
He noticed the glare forcing his closed eyelids at about the same time his cheek told him he was lying facedown on something cold and very hard. Groggily, he caught himself before he opened his eyes—voices on every side, all speaking Vertrucht. Where was he? So hard to remember.... But with all the Vertrucht being spoken, it couldn't be very healthy for him, wherever it was.
"Try it again," a gruff voice commanded, clearly under some sort of strain.
"I already did," a nasal voice answered. "And I'm telling you, the whole damned thing's dead. What's the big rush anyway? They've already sent a ship out to help."
"You know the Prefect as well as I do," the gruff voice said. "And he's not going to be happy taking anybody's help. So try it."
"Yes, sir. Shunt's in place. Inverters on. Grav housing closed."
Other voices stopped, listening.
"Hit it!" the gruff voice commanded. "Now."
Silence. Brim's shoulder throbbed painfully. He was cold, shivered in spite of himself.
"That's all?"
"That's all," the nasal voice confirmed. "Bastard really cocked up the phase latch, didn't he?"
The gruff voice swore an unintelligible oath. "The whole damned generator's dead as an xchort, then," it said.
The generator! It all came back to Brim in a rush. But where had they taken him? Was he still in the chamber? Somehow he didn't think so. This sounded more like the bridge.
"How long before you can get us going again?' a new, deeper voice demanded.
"None will say as yet, Placeman," the gruff voice answered. "When that one on the deck over there murdered Overmann Zotreb, he did more damage then he knew."
"Well?"
"Zotreb's assistants are a good deal slower, it seems"
"Curse all of them—especially him," the deep voice growled. Brim's side exploded with a blow that knocked the wind from his lungs—and opened both eyes wide with pain. It took only a moment to determine he was indeed on the corvette's bridge.
"Look out! He's awake," someone yelled. This was followed by a second vicious kick. Brim shut his eyes and clenched his teeth, waiting for the next one.
"Placeman! Placeman!" another voice squealed. "Would you kill him before we search his mind?"
"Putrid spawn of Greyffin's scum!" the deep voice growled. "You can be sure I shall kill him."
"But not before we extract certain information, fool," a new, smoothly modulated voice interrupted.
Brim remembered that voice from the conference he'd "guarded."
"Oh, ah—no, sir, Prefect Valentin!" the deep voice stumbled. "Certainly not before."
"One must be subtle," the modulated voice interrupted, as though the other had never spoken. "Like this...."
Brim opened his eyes wide in renewed agony as a gleaming boot ground the fingers of his left hand into the metal decking. He gasped in pain, trying to pull his hand away, but the arm didn't seem to work anymore. Blinking angry tears from his eyes, he peered upward into the calm face of another Controller, clearly the corvette's commanding officer. Blond, square-jawed, young, and strikingly handsome, even from a deck-level angle of view, the man called Valentin was outfitted in immaculate black breeches, a tight, form-fitting tunic with crimson prefect's collars, and a peaked hat with silver decoration. He was the perfect embodiment of Triannic's officer corps, and the look of confidence on his face gave clear signal he was also a man on his way up someone's ladder of success.
"Keep your eyes open and attend my questions, slime of slime," the youthful officer commanded in flawless Avalonian. He sneered as he removed his heel from Brim's bleeding fingers. "You clearly understand you will die soon," he said matter-of-factly, "therefore it should be of little concern to you what we do with your body." His face exploded with cruel laughter. "How quickly and painlessly you die depends upon your answers. I reward truthfulness even for your kind."