It was the renewed A'zurnian cheering that brought him back to reality. The broken-winged shreds of once-flighted beings were now on their feet, clapping each other on the back and pointing toward the destruction like men possessed (which, in retrospect, he supposed they were).
He smiled grimly. Thus grew the seeds of Nergol Triannic's eventual downfall!
"Commander Zantir for you again, Lieutenant," Barbousse interrupted.
Brim nodded. The rumble of the destroyers was getting louder again.
"Believe we've found old Hagbut for you, Wilf," Zantir's voice chuckled from the COMM cabinet.
"Six armored personnel carriers—Imperial built. Is that right?"
"Yessir," Brim replied. "Six of them."
"Not far from you, then," Zantir said. "Two hills distant, near a quarry of some sort. Do you have a chart?"
"I've got one, Commander," Brim answered. "An A971FF."
"Good," replied Zantir. "Like mine—with the late research center at the top. Your hill is the next one down. Right?"
"Aye, sir."
"Two hills to the left of you is what looks like a stone quarry. See that?"
"I see it, Commander," Brim acknowledged.
"That's where they are, Wilf," Zantir said. "The six troop carriers are parked on the paved apron you see surrounding the pit. The whole thing's guarded by eight big Leaguer tanks of some kind—shouldn't be much of a problem for those fieldpieces you're in. They're pulled up close around the pit so they can aim at the prisoners."
"Thank you, sir," Brim replied as he studied the chart. No cableway connected him to the enemy position, but his BATTLE COMMs by now were adept at handling the big machines with rudder pedals alone, and the path to the quarry looked as if it were clear of obstructions for most of the way. "We still need your help, Commander," he added.
"Name it, Wilf," Zantir replied. "We've got more than nine metacycles to get you back to Prosperous."
"Aye, sir," Brim answered. "And what I need more than anything else right now is your noise."
"Our what?"
"Your noise, Commander," Brim repeated. "While you're orbiting the area, we can sneak up on anything, even riding these roaring monsters."
"Aha," Zantir exclaimed, laughing. "Good thinking, Wilf! Regula Collingswood said you were a bright lad, and she's seldom wrong. We'll be back in half a moment—at which time nobody will so much as hear himself think!"
Brim looked Out at the A'zurnians—no battle suits for them. No protection from anything—and in a very few cycles, a pitched battle was a distinct possibility. He slid the window open beside him, leaned out, and explained the situation in as few words as possible.
"What that means," he concluded, "is that we can leave you here in the safety of the forest or you can go with us. The choice is yours."
Not a moment of hesitation elapsed. They roared back in mass, "We go. We go against the League!"
In moments, A'zurnians on the other fieldpieces had also taken up the shout and turned it into a litany.
"We go. We go against the League! We go!" Then the stillness of the skies shattered once again as Zantir's destroyers returned.
The next cycles were the noisiest Brim could remember in his lifetime. Once he gave orders to move out, the three destroyers took up station around the quarry, circling at a constantly diminishing radius that brought one of them blasting low over Brim's galloping fieldpieces every fifteen cycles. Even in the protection of his battle helmet, the noise was absolutely deafening. He marveled that the A'zurnians could stand it out on the unsheltered flanks of the vehicle, but all were flapping their pitiful wing stumps excitedly and pointing ahead like children on a holiday outing.
The six bellowing, steam-spewing vehicles covered the distance to the quarry in what seemed to be no time at all. They were soon charging up the last hill toward a wide opening in the surrounding ring of dense forest. On either side of the opening, two huge—and incredibly old-looking—carved columns rose into the morning sky, each topped by the figure of a huge flighted warrior, wings outspread as if in gliding flight.
"Double up!" Brim yelled at the COMM cabinet, wondering if anyone on the receiving end could hear anything he said.
His answer came in moments when the second fieldpiece in line pulled abreast on his starboard side and thundered along in tandem with him, hostages grinning and laughing in the slipstream as they clung to the vehicle's bucketing deck. The convoy exploded between the two columns, scattering Leaguers left and right as they came. "Stand by," he yelled into the COMM cabinet. "Starboard column takes the starboard side of the pit, port takes port—and have your disruptors aimed at one of those tanks!" As they burst onto the apron, he saw a score of Leaguers sprinting for their tanks, but already they were much too late. The big fieldpiece careened wildly to port as Barbousse skidded out onto the apron, then again to starboard as they raced along the periphery of the pit. He watched the disruptor indexing smoothly this way and that as Fragonard compensated for Barbousse's wild maneuvering—but it was always aimed for one of the enemy tanks. The ordnance work done in the forest had not been wasted.
Then the traction engine bellowed in reverse while the big vehicle shuddered to a stop in a boiling cloud of steam.
As the other five fieldpieces skidded into place, Zantir's voice boomed from the COMM console.
"Looks as if that went well, Wilf."
"Aye, sir," Brim answered. "So far..."
"I shall put up into orbit above the atmosophere, then." Zantir said, his voice amplified above the roar of his generators. "You'll be able to negotiate with them a bit more easily if they can hear what you have to say—and we'll stick around to back you." The roaring boomed momentarily, then Brim watched the triangular shapes disappear into the clouds and suddenly the landscape was saturated with a delirious silence.
In the first tentative chirps from surrounding trees, Brim watched the stunned Leaguers begin to revive.
Beyond, at the quarry pit, the Imperial prisoners started to wave and cheer.
Beside him the ex-hostages only stared in deadly silence at their torturers. They sensed their time was near.
Abruptly, the Carescrian was galvanized into action. "Fire up the outside amplifiers," he whispered, thinking furiously. "I have a game to play with these bastards—and I learned the rules from a man named Valentin."
The amplifiers clicked on and hummed. Brim watched the dazed Leaguers freeze in place and warily turn toward his fieldpiece, waiting. Then, from the corner of his eye, he caught the turret of one of the enemy tanks as it surreptitiously began to creep around from its bearing on the prisoners. Squelching the amplifier input, he hit the turret interCOMM. "Take that tank out, Fragonard," he ordered calmly.
"Between those two piles of rocks—right now."
"No problem, Lieutenant," the ordnance man said, "now that I've got these honkers calibrated." The stubby disruptor overhead moved smoothly to the left, dropped rapidly, then thundered, rocking the massive chassis back on its gravity cushion. Opposite, the League tank disappeared in a neat cloud of blackish flame, ragged chunks of debris wobbling over the trees and out of sight. The too-clean stench of ozone filled the air, but not a stone was disturbed on either side of the void where the tank had been.