Swiveling in his seat, he looked out the opposite side of his control cabin and across the broad expanse of stained, tree-rumpled metal that formed the front of the vehicle. Fragonard's huge disruptor loomed overhead, pointing their course like a stubby veined finger with three sets of grooved antiflash shields circling its tip. To starboard, tall, closely spaced buildings replaced the domes, then mixed with residences—these of clearly diminished promise, but whole nonetheless, having. U glazed windows to flash back the brilliant sunlight as Brim's heavy vehicles rushed past.
Presently, they came upon the banks of a broad canal and I took up a new heading atop a moss-covered seawall whose age-blackened stones looked easily twice the size of the mobile fieldpiece in which they rode. They whizzed past a string of rotting pilings out on the water covered with green braids of hairlike moss. The pilings curved abruptly from the seawall and terminated at a tumbledown pier before a crumbling brick structure of uncertain purpose. On the far shore, Brim could see rows of ramshackle warehouses fronted by networks of wooden piers extending far out into the stream—but few water craft anywhere: mute testimony to the ruined commerce of the conquered world.
They soon flashed across a connecting waterway, the cable exposed and suspended in an arch by rusty-looking wire bundles depending from pairs of slender pylons at opposite sides of the stream.
Then abruptly they were thundering wildly along a narrow, shadowed thoroughfare between two close-set rows of giant buildings faced with panels of dreary color decorating vast expanses of featureless wall.
Emerging again into the sunlight, they sped steadily along the stone seawall until the canal itself ended in a great lagoon. Their cable—and travel—diverged, however, in a sharp curve to the right, continuing uninterrupted through marshes and tidelands near the shore until they passed a second dark canyon of buildings in a streaming blur—this much longer than the first. Then suddenly, far off to port, Brim caught sight of a stupendous arch bridge rising gracefully a thousand irals into the afternoon sky before it descended again in the hazy distance on the otherside of the lagoon.
The trip answered all his questions as to why A'zurn was considered such a paradise. His mind drifted for a moment, and he daydreamed himself hand in hand with Margot on one of the quiet streets in Magalla'ana or lying in the still privacy of a wooded shore. He grinned to himself. The last idea—now, that was worth dreaming about! He took a deep breath and closed his eyes just as an excited voice broke into his thoughts from the COMM console.
"Lieutenant Brim! Lieutenant Brim! I think we've picked up a few extra vehicles! I can't see how many, but a couple at least."
Instantly awake, Brim frowned at an image of Yeoman Fronze in the last vehicle.
"What do they look like?" he asked.
"Don't exactly know how to describe 'em, Lieutenant," the woman said, looking off to one side. She squinted, frowned. "Big, for sure. An' squatty, like a roach or somethin'," she reported. "They're kind of keepin' their distance right now."
"Ask her if they're square shaped like this one, or long, sir," Barbousse urged from the driver's seat.
Brim relayed the question.
"Long," Fronze stated emphatically. "With three turrets. A big one to starboard and two on the port side facin' fore and aft."
"Sound like RT-91s to me," Barbousse pronounced. "About the best the League manufactures," he added.
"Comforting to know those League people are more than 'a day's march away,"' Brim snorted, then established connection with the Colonel's personnel carrier.
"WELL?" Hagbut demanded.
"Someone seems to be following us along the cable, Colonel," he reported. "Were we scheduled to rendezvous with other captured vehicles from Prosperous—RT-91 types, perhaps?"
Hagbut's brow wrinkled. "Negative," he said. "You've seen these RT-91s with your OWN eyes?"
"They've only been reported to me, Colonel," Brim answered. "But I have no reason to question—"
He was interrupted by a glowing blue-green geyser that shot skyward about five hundred irals out in the lagoon. The huge waterspout immediately burst about five hundred irals to his left with terrific flame and concussion.
"Don't bother, Brim," Hagbut blustered. "I could see that!" He immediately bawled a string of orders over his shoulder and the troop carriers began to accelerate, soon outdistancing the lumbering fieldpieces by a considerable margin.
Brim winced as a second explosion leveled a large row of warehouses to his right in a cloud of dirty flame and flying, debris. So much for doing the mission in "invisible" captured equipment, he thought. The xaxtdamned ruse hadn't worked more than a single watch! He shrugged phlegmatically. At least the Leaguers weren't having much luck with their ranging shots.
"I have ordered the troop carriers forward, Brim," Hagbut boomed from the display globe. "To insure the integrity of my mission" Brim nodded. "Aye, sir," he said.
"Not to mention the integrity of your bloody skin," Barbousse muttered under his breath. "Beggin' the Lieutenant's pardon."
"What was that?" Hagbut demanded.
"The local grass, sir," Brim said, desperately stifling a laugh. "Starman Barbousse suffers a violent sneezing reaction."
"Poor fellow," Hagbut pronounced as another explosion destroyed an island of trees a few hundred irals to port. "Damn Leaguers never could seal a driving compartment."
"No, sir."
"It is now your DUTY, Brim, to stop the bastards," Hagbut continued in what must have been his best pontifical voice. " Use those cannons soon as you can." He turned in the display for a moment to bark more orders at someone, then swung back to Brim. "Catch up to us when you've stopped whoever it is back there—but not before. UNDERSTAND? We cannot compromise the mission!"
"I understand, Colonel," Brim said, but again he spoke to a darkened display. He shook a mock fist of anger at Barbousse, then opened a connection to Fragonard in the turret. "You're the disruptor expert, Fragonard," he said. "What do you say? Can these fieldpieces really tear up a couple of tanks?"
"Easily," Fragonard replied with a frown, "if we can just aim enough. I've told the men to have a go at it soon as they've got their equipment ready. Trouble is, we haven't had time to adjust 'em well enough yet to fire accurately while they're moving. Maybe we can get close, but if we kill more Leaguers than locals, it'll be more out of good luck than good 'aiming, if you catch my drift, sir."
"Tell everybody to do the best they can," Brim yelled over the noise of another near miss. This one sent a deluge of green water drizzling into the control cabin between the panes of glass to puddle on the deck and COMM cabinet. He ruefully wished he'd thought to have the BATTLE COMMs rig a permanent KA'PPA to his fieldpiece. Perhaps he might now be calling in some close support from space—one couldn't do that with ordinary COMM gear, of course. He shrugged and dropped the subject from his mind. The fact was that he couldn't make that call—no power in the Universe could change the past. "Are they gaining on us?" he queried Fronze in the last disruptor.
"Aye, sir," she answered, face serious. "We're gettin' ready to try an' put the disruptor on 'em, Lieutenant—but Starman Cogsworthy up in the turret don't think we've much chance of hittin' them, what with no stabilizers an' all." Her image bounced in the display as the same enemy fire sounded first from the COMM console, then a tick later from the windows.
"Thanks, Fronze," Brim said. "Let me know when you get the thing going." They were passing along a relatively clear stretch of shore marsh now. His mind raced. If he couldn't get at the pursuing tanks, what could 1k do? Stop and fight? He laughed at that possibility. They'd all be sitting ducks while the ordnance men recalibrated their disruptors. He shook his head. Perhaps he ought to sacrifice the last few cannon in line—order Fronze to stop and fight a lonely battle of delay. He discarded that idea, too—not enough delay.