"As you can see from his dress, Captain," Valentin said smoothly, "Lieutenant Brim is a special case.
Disguised, mind you, in the uniform of my beloved homeland—against all established conventions—this criminal ruthlessly murdered two of my officers." He shrugged. "We were forced to question him." "I see," Collingswood said slowly, a look of disgust in her eyes. "And you have, ah, 'questioned' my other crewmen in the same manner?"
"You can believe me when I say the remainder of your crewmen are, shall we say, safe for the moment." Valentin's eyes hardened theatrically the length of a well-measured instant, then the boyish smile returned.
"'For the moment,'" Collingswood repeated evenly. "Perhaps you had better tell me what that means."
The corvette's bridge was deathly still by now, every officer and rating watching breathlessly as if life itself depended on the next few words.
"Simply this, Captain Collingswood," Valentin said, his voice growing more oily by the moment.
"Should something untoward happen to my ship, your men would surely be affected also. And I am sure a lovely woman of your stature would never want something like that."
"Silence!" Collingswood snapped, her eyes blazing with anger. "I have no more patience with your game—and it is now clear to me you cannot move under your own power. Therefore, listen to me well," she continued, "for I am about to destroy your ship."
Valentin's eyes opened wide in surprise. "With thirteen of your men aboard?" he asked. "Would you kill them, too?"
"Absolutely," Collingswood assured him.
"She means it, Valentin," Brim laughed weakly. "I'm ready—look at me. And I imagine the others are, too." Blackness was sweeping over him and he had no strength left to fight. He closed his eyes, felt his head lolling as be collapsed against the rope that held him in place. He heard Collingswood gasp, then abruptly her voice hardened.
"Despite my own wishes to the contrary, Prefect," she said I through clenched teeth, "it is not necessary that anyone die with your ship—if my orders are followed accurately. Do you understand?
No deviations. Your fate is entirely up to you."
"Wh-What can I do?" Valentin asked in a shaky voice. His part in the game was clearly over before it began.
"You have only ten cycles to carry out my orders..." Collingswood said, the sound of her voice fast fading in Brim's ears. He strained to hear the next words, too, but they were drowned by a sudden thundering roar having nothing to do with starships or disruptors either: be was dying and he knew it.
Strange it didn't matter now the time had come. He even managed to relax as the last light faded from his eyes and the Universe ceased to exist. He'd done the best he could....
This time, the light filtering through his closed eyes was gentle—and wherever he was now come to, things were blessedly quiet, even warm. Comfortable. A definite improvement, be thought. Even the pain was gone, replaced by a wild tingling in his shoulder.
Alive?
He opened his eyes cautiously. A curved, transparent canopy arched overhead no more than half an iral from his face. For lack of anything better, he concentrated on that, and blinked his eyes. In one corner, it carried the stylized comet insignia of the Imperial Fleet.
Safe, too! Somehow—miraculously—he was in somebody's sick bay. He didn't even particularly care whose it was, or how he got there.
He turned his head in the cramped enclosure, sighted along his left shoulder. It had come free. The healing machine's amoebalike apparatus was evidently finished with him and retracted, or whatever it was pseudopods did when they went away. The shoulder itself was covered by a softly glowing cloth that extended all the way to his elbow. The remainder of him appeared to be dressed in a standard-issue one-piece Imperial hospital suit—minus the left sleeve and shoulder. He moved his left hand, clenched a fist. Very little tenderness.
Not bad.
In a state of almost total exhaustion, he closed his eyes again and drifted off into contented sleep.
Later, when he woke again, the canopy was open and the deep rumble of Drive crystals soothed his ears. A familiar face peered down from a balding head with considerable professional interest. "You xaxtdamned Carescrians will do anything for a little attention, won't you?" admonished Xerxes O. Flynn.
Brim grinned. "Well," he conceded, "almost anything. I didn't let 'em kill me, after all."
"Could have fooled me," Flynn said with a serious look on his face. "Those Cloud bastards sure thought you were dead. Frightened to death of what might happen to 'em because of it."
Brim frowned. "Yeah," he conceded, "Well, they weren't alone by a long shot. I was pretty sure it was all over, too. Just how in the bloody Universe did I get here?" he demanded. "When I passed out, that prefect bastard, Valentin, was still trying to play sex roles with Collingswood."
"Collingswood wasn't playing," Flynn chuckled, "but I did hear her telling Pym she thought he was xaxtdamned cute."
Brim raised an eyebrow. "Collingswood? Valentin?"
"Valentin, indeed," Flynn answered. "He's rather famous over there, in case you hadn't heard. Quite a hero, among other things." He laughed. "And there's nothing wrong with our little Regula Collingswood, either. She's a perfectly healthy specimen in every respect. Just wasn't in the mood at the time. Probably the sight of all your blood, or something. Anyway, she worked everything out. It's a long story—you can get the details later. But she nearly melted that thraggling corvette before she left, not long after Ursis carried you over himself. In a LifeGlobe."
"Melted the corvette?" Brim asked in 'amazement. "Universe—you can't expect me to wait for that story. Come on now, Doctor. I'll never get back to sleep."
Flynn opened his mouth for a moment, pointed a finger at Brim, then shook his head and smiled resignedly. "All right," he said, leaning his elbows on the side of the healing machine. "I suppose it makes sense. I wouldn't be able to sleep, either." With that, he related how Collingswood offered Valentin a very simple plan. He and his crew could safely embark in their LifeGlobes—so long as the captured Imperials were also provided their own LifeGlobe in which they could separately return to Truculent.
Once they were safely aboard and the Leaguers were a safe distance away, Collingswood would signal Pym to destroy the corvette—and one Leaguer LifeGlobe for each Imperial who was dead or had failed to return. "They were xaxtdamned careful with you after that," Flynn concluded.
"What about Ursis and Barbousse and the rest of the crew?" Brim asked.
"Oh, they're all healing, more's the pity," Flynn said. "Pym got no further target practice, and you're the only one I was able to really practice on."
"Universe," Brim said, "I'll bet everybody else all felt terrible about that. "
"They didn't," Flynn grumped. "Unfeeling bastards. But you made up for it, Brim, old friend," he said with a smile of satisfaction. "Isn't much under that bandage you brought from Carescria. I practiced on you for a long time—practically had to grow you a whole new shoulder, plus a few teeth."
"Thraggling wonderful," Brim exclaimed in mock dismay. "Do any of them work?"
"Smart bastard," Flynn fumed. "I couldn't very well cock up the teeth, now could I? They come in a box, you know." Then he frowned. "I am sort of worried about the arm and shoulder assembly, now that I think about it. Might be only good for piloting starships and lifting glasses of meem." A quiet chime interrupted his banter, and he looked over his shoulder, grinning. "Couple of strange-looking individuals asked to see you when you woke, Wilf," he said. "Feel up to talking some more?"