"You're right," Brim agreed gravely. "I guess I've given that some serious thought myself. And I think I've found something that might help." He pointed on the map to an overgrown path that formed, a rough semicircle around the campus and connected to the cableway at both ends approximately five thousand irals from the gates.
"I see, sir," Barbousse said dubiously, studying the map. "What do you suppose it is?"
"Looks like a construction road to this ex-miner," Brim pronounced. "Couple of years old at least.
Might well have supplied gravel from these pits it runs beside. The research center probably used plenty, the way it's built." He laughed. "Whatever they used to use it for, that old right-of-way just might make our job a whole lot easier and less risky tonight."
"How's that, sir?" Barbousse asked, scratching his head.
"Because," Brim explained with a smile, "we could leave the main cable and use that road to go around to the other side of the research center. Then we'd simply get back on the cable again—coming from the opposite direction—and arrive where they're not even looking for us. Like a convoy of Leaguer reinforcements. After all, that's why Hagbut says he brought these captured cannon in the first place."
Barbousse nodded his head and smiled. "And if they've got most of their troops at the other gate like we think they do, Lieutenant, it evens the odds a little better." He laughed darkly. "We aren't exactly the best substitute for the Colonel's hundred and eighty foot soldiers."
Brim chuckled. "You've noticed?"
"I've noticed," Barbousse agreed, "but it's yet to worry me, sir." He laughed quietly. "We'll make a go of it, Lieutenant. You've already figured out a good way to get at the bastards. Catch a little sleep now, and the rest of your answers will come in the morning."
Brim nodded sleepily and leaned back in the uncomfortable chair as the big rating switched out the light on the map table. He remembered nothing more until the first crimson rays of dawn filtered through the trees.
Following an early morning assembly, Brim set the various crews to searching their fieldpieces for anything of possible value to the task at hand. Not surprisingly, they found each vehicle had been well equipped at Gimmas Haefdon. Emperor Greyffin IV was a steadfast Army man, and consequently, the Imperial Expeditionary Forces were known everywhere for the wealth of equipment they carried in the field.
With the sound of distant artillery grumbling through the morning air, Barbousse and Fragonard lowered a number of heavy packing cases to the ground with two cables, then broke the seals with a power draw bar. From these, they lifted packages of blast pikes, oversized power cartridges, cartons of proton grenades, and a brace of battle lanterns—wiping each clean of "proof" grease and preservative gel.
"Gantheissers, no less," Fragonard said admiringly, turning one of the big blast pikes in his hands. "Not bad for emergency-pack stuff." He slotted a power cartridge in place and grinned with pleasure as the self-test finished. "All ready to fire, too," he said. "Got to give those weird Ganthers credit. If they do nothing else well, they surely can build weapons." He departed shortly to make sure the other crews had their weapons under control.
When all the stores were prepared and distributed, some of the orphaned BATFLE COMMs set to unpacking one of the portable KA'PPA sets. "Sooner or later we'll need it to call in. the destroyers, sir," Barbousse explained to Brim. "I suggested they get their testing over with now."
"Good idea," Brim agreed, watching two ratings reverse a large plate in the packing crate—which soon became a control panel. Others attached an auxiliary power unit via heavy cables with complex connectors, while nearby a third team unfolded the antenna lattice from a slender silver container. These tasks complete, everyone pitched in to lever the longish structure into the air and guy it in place with a triad of insulated wires. Immediately, operators busied themselves with integration tests using equipment contained in a third pack the size of the power unit. Operation of the complete assembly was verified in half a metacycle, then the whole bulky unit was restored in five more. A'zurn's star was high in a hazy, cloud-dappled sky by the time the BATTLE COMMs replaced the unit aboard Brim's fieldpiece, then marched off toward still another task with Barbousse in the lead.
By midafternoon, the clouds had changed to a low overcast and a brisk wind was rustling the treetops.
Brim stood at the edge of the cable right-of-way, inspecting a larger portion ft of sky than he could view from the forest floor. It was the fourth time he'd come; each time he did, he became more confident than the last. This time, it even smelled like rain. He smiled. Had he ordered the weather himself, he could scarcely have done a better job.
Later, rejoining the mobile fieldpieces, he visited the ordnance men adjusting their disruptors.
"Probably get a mite better performance out of 'em this time," Fragonard assured him from one of the boarding ladders. "None of 'em was ever fine-tuned before—thank the bloody Universe they were ready to fire, even if we couldn't hit anything, in a manner of speakin'" He chuckled mirthlessly. "We'd all be dead by now."
"Or worse," Barbousse added under his breath.
Inside the quietly humming turret, Brim watched two ratings concentrating their efforts on the big disruptor, aiming the heavy weapon indirectly by means of a rigged index point—a hatch cover tied in a distant sapling—just visible through the trees. Leveling devices and compensators whirred and hummed, dizzily (to Brim) changing the attitude of the huge turret as the ordnance men fine-tuned elevation and transverse targeting controls in both automatic and manual modes. "This time," Fragonard said confidently, "if we need 'em, we'll know better how to use 'em."
By late afternoon, everything appeared to be ready eluding the rain. A few drops filtered through the trees while Barbousse patched broken glass in the control cab and Brim completed his equipment checkout with Fragomird.
"Got the map," the rating declared.
"Check."
"Blast pikes?"
"Nine. One of 'em couldn't run diagnostics, so I pitched it."
"Good. Positron grenades?"
"Forty-six energized, Lieutenant. Four duds with no power."
Brim nodded. "That's it," he said as the gathering storm began to drum loudly against the fieldpiece's metal flanks. "The KA'PPA's tested, everybody's armed in one way or another, and you've got the disruptors tuned. I think we're about ready as we're ever going to be." A smell of rain filled the control cabin, fresh and damp to his nose. He peered around at the other fieldpieces. Probably it was his imagination, but somehow each one looked much more deadly new that he knew the disruptors were tuned. Then he closed his eyes and forced his racing mind to relax. Tonight would be a long night indeed.
Later, when storm-gray daylight faded to the near darkness of A'zurnian evening, the rain—which was previously, only falling lightly—now began to come down in torrents. "We're not going to make much speed with visibility like this," Barbousse observed, peering through the water streaming along the windshield, "even with all the lights on."
Brim nodded agreement. It was raining with a vengeance. "At least we don't have far to go," he observed. "And anyway, it'll make it harder for them to spot us.