'Through optical sights, sir," Barbousse grumped with a smile.
"Those jammers in the hull ought to confuse their other sensors some." Brim offered.
Barbousse smiled. "They won't believe it if they do pick us up, Lieutenant," he said. "Nobody would go out on a night like this."
"Absolutely," Brim agreed as he stretched forward and opened the phase converter. "You make sure the traction gear works and I'll test the COMM. After that, we'll get started and find out."
Five display globes again hovered above the shifting light patterns of the COMM cabinet as Barbousse gunned the traction engine from the driver's seat. "Everybody ready?" Brim asked this time in short-range "secure" mode.
Five versions of "Aye, sir" provided his answer from the other fieldpieces.
"Fragonard?"
"Ready, sir," came his answer on the interCOMM from the turret.
Brim peered around the hunched form of Barbousse in the driver's seat. The big rating had his windshield cleaners in action, and the trees appeared like specters in the dim illumination of the battle headlights. "All set?" he asked.
"All set, sir."
"Let's move out."
"Aye, sir." Barbousse nodded and carefully lowered the thrust sink. The big machine lumbered into motion, its traction system throttled back just above idle. Brim swung in his seat, watching five pairs of battle headlights follow in a serpentine track among the trees. "There," the rating muttered, manhandling the heavy vehicle into a sharp left turn.
"Cableway?" Brim asked.
"Aye, sir," Barbousse answered. "But I'm not lockin' on the cable—just as you ordered, Lieutenant."
He cocked his head momentarily. "Do you suppose they can track who's followin' the cable?"
"Don't know for sure," Brim admitted. "But it's always possible—and besides, the construction road isn't that far away."
"Aye, sir," agreed Barbousse, peering out into the rain ahead.
To Brim, the raging torrent looked like a meteor shower in the battle headlights' dull glow.
They drove in silence, Barbousse picking his way carefully with the trees a bare ten irals to his left.
"Break in the woods coming up, sir," he said tensely.
Brim peered past the man's shoulder. "About the right time," he confirmed. "Try it." Then he turned to the five COMM displays. "Hard right coming up," he warned the others. "Watch for a break in the woods to starboard." The landscape abruptly skidded to the left and the fieldpiece tipped precipitously, then righted, Barbousse swearing under his breath. Then they were once more under control, picking their way slowly along the overgrown construction road.
Considerably time elapsed before the six vehicles completed their circuitous route around the research center—successfully avoiding nine open quarry pits along the way. By the time they drew to a halt at the cableway again (this time on the far side of the campus), neatly half the night had passed.
"Everybody still with me?" he asked the COMM cabinet.
"Aye, sir," five voices replied.
"Barbousse?"
"Doing fine, sir," the big rating assured him.
"Very well," Brim said. "Let's be at it—just as if we'd been coming this direction all day."
"Aye," Barbousse called over the roar of the traction engine. He swung the heavy vehicle left onto the cableway. "Picking up the cable now," be reported as a trio of green lights began to pulse on the panel before him. "Lock on."
"Good," Brim replied. "Let's put the lights on—we might as well get it over with and be done for once and all."
Barbousse switched energy to the three big forward illuminators and all the running lights. The other five fieldpieces followed suit. Brim mentally shuddered as trees bordering the cable right-of-way stood out in sudden detail. He imagined the lighted machines looked a lot like six oversized refugees from a Gambian Feast of Lights.
In due time, they coasted to the foot of a lengthy downgrade, then began what the map promised was a short climb to their first view of the research center at the bottom of the hill.
Just before they crested the rise, Barbousse drew to a halt, hovering in place over the cable. Outside, the right-of-way was now lined with a row of tall night illuminators like Karlsson lamps. They made hazy orange circles in the driving rain. "All right, Fragonard, it's time," Brim called into the interCOMM.
A moment later, the turret hatch opened and the ordnance man scrambled down a ladder, raced across the deck, and fairly burst into the control cab in a spray of rain. "Universe!" he sputtered as he struggled out of his battle helmet. "Make sure you've got your suit dogged down tight; otherwise it could fill up and drown you."
"I'll do that," Barbousse laughed. "And we've got a long way to walk."
"All set?" Brim asked.
"Aye, sir," Barbousse answered.
"Remember to flash the signal three times—soon as you can see my lights," Brim reminded them.
"Three times it is, sir," Barbousse assured him. "If the map's right, we shouldn't need more'n twenty cycles to get there." He pulled his helmet over his head, then followed Fragonard over the hatch coaming and out into the storm.
Brim slammed the hatch shut in a shower of flying rain, watching the two men scramble down the ladder. At the bottom, Barbousse waved, touching his thumb and forefinger together, then the two figures set off through ankle-deep puddles toward the top of the hill and soon disappeared into the gloomy downpour.
Brim hovered, idling a full thirty cycles just to be sure, then settled in the driver's seat, lowered the thrust sink, and drove the lumbering cannon up over the crest of the hill, locked on to the cable. Behind, five more brightly lit vehicles followed.
Interminable cycles later, a ruby glow clawed its way through the deluge three times in succession. He stepped up his speed along the downgrade until a number of high illuminators began to show through the rain ahead: Hagbut's target—now his own—was less than a cycle away. He forced himself to relax. Now was the time for calm, not mind-numbing tension.
He pulled up sharply just outside the guard shack, adjusting the big vehicle's traction system to its highest—and noisiest—power level. Then, taking his cue from the officers aboard Valentin's illfated corvette, he boldly activated the external amplifiers. "Well?" he broadcast imperiously in Vertrucht.
"Hurry, fools. We have little time to dawdle here at your gate. Enemy vehicles are in the area."
"P-Please identify yourself, s-sir," a voice responded unsurely from the guard shack.
Brim smiled to himself. Just as he guessed. "Identify myself, indeed!" he growled. "You will present yourself immediately to open the gate in person, fool."
"But w-we have orders..."
"How long," Brim interrupted, "has it been since your last fire-flogging, fool?"
"But sir..."
"You will immediately present me with your name for the Center's flogging roster or you will, alternatively, open the gate."
"A moment, sir."
"Immediately."
The door to the guard shack opened and a fat, slack-jawed guard waddled onto the stoop as if his feet hurt. His hand was palm up in a very unnecessary verification of the teeming rain. Behind him, Brim saw a second guard struggling into some sort of foul-weather suit. As the first stepped all the way out into the storm, a great arm materialized suddenly from the shadows and wrapped itself around his face. In the next instant, a jeweled knife flashed in the glare of the headlights. Then the guard's tunic was covered with a rain-thinned curtain of red before everything disappeared again in the shadows. Brim gunned the traction system to muffle any further noise when the second guard met a similar fate. Abruptly, Barbousse and Fragonard scrambled around the corner—battle suits surprisingly free of stains—and disappeared inside the guardhouse. Each carried a big Gantheisser ready at his hip. Light flashed explosively for a few heartbeats from the half-open door, then the two reappeared at a dead run for the main gate.