And for some exasperating reason, he never did quite condition himself to the point where he could comfortably think of her in the company of Rogan LaKarn. That became painfully apparent when a chance news program pictured the two together during a leave in Avalon: Princess Margot Effer'wyck and Commander the Honorable Baron Rogan LaKarn share a well-deserved leave in Avalon's Courtland Plaza near the Imperial castle.. Engaged nearly two years now, the popular couple have postponed their nuptials while they work to defend the Empire from its enemies.
Somehow, the sight of them holding hands in that manicured garden tied his heart in a knot. He gritted his teeth and felt his cheeks burns hoping against hope nobody in the wardroom noticed his helpless discomfort—he a Carescrian worked up over an Effer'wyck. What a joke that was!
In private, he railed at himself. He could claim no part of her life. How she chose to spend her leave was certainly none of his business. He meant nothing special to her—and she meant nothing to him.
But he really didn't believe the second part.
That night, as he fitfully dozed, his mind was torn by weird, wildly erotic dreams. He pictured her beckoning to him through a soft, warm fog. But when he reached to touch her, Rogan LaKarn interposed. And each time, Brim awoke to find himself alone in his tiny cabin, sweating and frustrated, the rumble of the generators no longer comforting to his ears.
In a foul mood, he dressed and made his way up to the bridge, where be spent the remainder of his free Watch tutoring Jubal Theada for a battery of upcoming tests. Even that kind of frustration was better than fighting his own imagination!
For the next three months, Collingswood's aggressive blockading techniques eroded both Truculent and her crew. Space off the Altnag'gin Complex at Trax was a busy crossroads of the League's commerce. Always there was another "runner" to be Pursued—or a pursuing Cloud League warship determined to rid the space lanes of Imperial blockaders. Borodov and Ursis constantly rushed through Truculent's battered hull patching battle damage or repairing components worn to uselessness from constant duty at maximum settings.
Flynn was similarly busy patching burned and blasted bodies—carelessness caused by advanced fatigue was at least as deadly an enemy as the League itself. Yet no relief was forthcoming, and everyone knew why. The Imperial Fleet was stretched so thin that every ship and every crew member served past all reasonable limit. No alternative existed—everyone was well aware of Triannic's vow to "punish" the Imperial Fleet "to its last man."
Only continuing success made any of it bearable. Collingswood was an extraordinary tactician, and Truculent sent a steady stream of prizes off toward Avalon—often seriously shorting the crew complement for weeks at a time. Everyone was now accruing Imperial credits in individual accounts, and even Brim found himself debt free one day—for the first time he could remember.
Following still another stormy month of desperate fighting and wearing fatigue, Truculent was even more patched and dented than before. Many of her less critical mechanisms were by now completely inoperative—the crew worked around these when possible, but mostly did without. Some of the important systems were little better than these, and operated only marginally—when they worked at all.
Often, Brim looked over the battered decks from his position high on the bridge and wondered if anyone back in the Imperial Client States had any idea at all what it really took to keep Triannic from their gates.
A small part of him wanted desperately to believe they did. The remainder doubted many of them had any idea what was going on at all.
Only when Borodov managed to convince his Sodeskayan superiors at the Admiralty that Truculent could no longer be patched enough to fight and win did Flight Operations deign to send their replacement, and by then it was nearly too late.
The Drive itself failed three times on the way home and fully half the Atmospheric Controller Modules consumed themselves in a cloud of sour-smelling vapor and sparks before they were two days en route.
The nearly desperate crew completed their return with most of the ship's environment simulating the worst elements of a steamy Crennelean Narr jungle.
One way or another, they made it. Gimmas Haefdon was a sizable disk in the Hyperscreens ahead when Brim heard the Drive finally eased all the way back to idle. He and Theada occupied observers' seats while Gallsworthy and Fourier flew the approach. "You may prepare us for landfall, Lieutenant Gallsworthy," Collingswood said, her voice loud in the unaccustomed silence.
"Aye, aye, Captain," Gallsworthy growled. Immediately, Brim heard distant alarms go off below in the ship, and docking crews began to fill the bridge.
Fourier signaled to Ursis, and a few moments later the generators shivered to life.
"Finished with the xaxtdamned Drive," Gallsworthy rumbled.
"I think it's finished with us anyway," Collingswood said grumpily.
"Drive deactivated," Borodov chuckled. Astern, the flowing green of the Drive plume flickered and disappeared.
"Drive shutters closed," Ursis said.
"LightSpeed point zero," Fourier called out as Gandom's 've effect went into full flare and the Hyperscreens stopped translating. Gradually, the view cleared as the speed dropped below the critical mark. Applewood contacted Gimmas Approach soon afterward, and within a few metacycles they were in a holding pattern for clearance at the Lox'Sands control ring—this time in zone green. Traffic was light during that watch, and presently Truculent was on final, thundering down through Gimmas Haefdon's cloudy turbulence.
With a sense of weary excitement, Brim waited impatiently for Truculent to break out of the overcast.
So far, all he could see were regular flashes of the beacon reflected back from the streaming haze outside and the occasional glow of KA'PPA rings expanding outward as Applewood talked to Approach Control. The sound of the generators was now moderated to a burbling grumble, and the muted drones and thumps of imminent landfall were well under way. Gallsworthy banked to port, revealing glimpses of gray, fog-strewn seascape wrinkled by the thickly sluggish patterns of frigid-looking swells and jagged ice fragments everyone associated with the base.
As they returned to level flight, Brim spied two or three lamp-studded causeways below like the thin spokes of some great wheel converging at an unseen hub somewhere far off to port, but the haze swallowed them completely in damp-looking muzziness before he could distinguish any details. As usual, there was no real difference between land and sky aloft on Gimmas Haefdon—no horizon, only fog and clouds and occasionally the wrinkled blackness of the inhospitable sea below.
Another turn to port, generators roaring momentarily, then Truculent settled gently onto her forward gradient and churned over the icy rollers that shone dully in the landing lights twenty-five irals below her stained and dented hull. Through a chance break in the fog, Brim saw they were now running parallel to another causeway. He watched giant waves batter themselves to wind-blown spume against its rocky bulwarks. A beacon flashed indistinctly in their direction. Ahead, fog-shrouded blue and red lights marked the opening to the Eorean section. He smiled to himself. The last time through here, he'd been considerably more occupied than he was now, sitting at his leisure in an observer's seat. Beyond, a forest of KA'PPA masts jutted from the starwharves themselves.
With Fourier at the controls, Truculent changed course smoothly, slid through the entrance, and in a few moments glided to a halt above a gently glowing gravity pool. Thick mooring beams leaped from lenses in the seawalls and Brim's nausea made itself felt when the umbilical arm connected, switching Truculent back to local gravity. Gallsworthy raised his hand silently and their gravity generators spun down and stopped—the unaccustomed silence after nearly six months of one kind of propulsion system or another was almost physical. A tentative "Hurrah!" sounded from the back of the bridge. Then another, and another—in a moment, the whole ship was gone wild in a paroxysm of cheering. Even the normally reserved Collingswood could be seen pounding Gallsworthy on the back.