"Just so," Ursis growled quietly. "And because of it, I for one will never unthinkingly follow an order from him again. Nor, I suspect, will you."
Brim nodded. "You're right, Nik," he said. "Never again."
"Therefore," Ursis pronounced, holding his hands at his chest, palms inward, "we may be the only team that can operate successfully, given the circumstances." He narrowed his eyes and looked Brim directly in the face; "Others might well hesitate to cross him—as I hesitated. And with the same disastrous results."
"I was as guilty of that as you," Brim interrupted.
"'Guilt' is a word that looks only toward the past," Ursis observed with a smile. "One of the most useful truisms from my homeland. This duty is in the present—and future. No?"
"It is."
"Then Lady Fate has smiled once more on the tired old Empire," Ursis said. "Let us notify our large compatriot, Barbousse, and prepare for whatever the Lady has in store."
Shortly after midwatch, the "volunteers" gathered at Truculent's main hatch in time to view their rendezvous. Directly on schedule, a light cruiser swooped up out of the blackness and pulled smartly abreast. "Brand new," Ursis observed. "One of the new Nimrons, from her silhouette."
"I.F.S. Narcastle," Brim read, squinting through the Hyperscreens.
"That one's just finished fitting out," Theada said. "They must have called her in from her space trials."
Outside, brows connected with a muffled series of clangs. Only moments later, air hissed into the passage and a mooring crew unsealed the main hatch.
"Look lively," Amherst whispered impatiently. "I shall brook no slackers while I am in command."
Motioning the others to hurry, he shoved Barbousse roughly toward the transparent tube. Brim frowned.
Something was definitely bothering the First Lieutenant. He briefly wondered what it was as he followed the Torpedoman into the hatch.
On his way through the tube, he got a good look at the new starship. She was shaped like an oversized lance and appeared twice the length of Truculent's angular hull. Like all Nimrons, she was specially built for high-speed reconnaissance work—supporting battle-fleet operations in deep space.
Accordingly, she was also lightly armed for her size, carrying only six small turrets on rings about a third of the way from bow and stern. A scant superstructure was topped by a sharply raked control bridge, and six hefty Drive plumes merged from oversized blast tubes exiting just behind her aft turret ring.
Inside, she smelled every bit as new as she was. Ozone, sealant, hot metaclass="underline" all the familiar detritus of a starship—except the smells of life. Those latter took time to accumulate. And she certainly was called in from her space trials. She was filled with civilians everywhere he looked. Even the tube operators were dressed in the distinctive silver and green space suits of the big commercial shipyard at Trax.
The team was met at the opposite air lock by a tight-faced lieutenant commander with a large red mustache and narrow-set eyes, who regarded them as if they were some special brand of nuisance. "This way, gentlemen," he directed unceremoniously, directing the way down a narrow companionway to a large cabin clearly intended to house portions of a permanent crew. "I shall have to ask all of you to stay here for the remainder of the trip," he said. "Someone doesn't want you mingling with any of the trials crew we've got on board—too many civilians and all that sort, you know."
"By whose authority, Commander?" Amherst protested peevishly.
"Mine will do as well as any, Lieutenant," the officer said pointing to the lieutenant commander's insignia on his left shoulder. "And besides," he added as he slid the door shut in front of Amherst's face, "I'm not authorized to talk to any of you, either."
Brim shrugged and looked at Barbousse, who was standing politely with his five ratings. "What do you know about this?" he asked out of the side of his mouth. "You always have advance word on what's going on."
Barbousse chuckled quietly. "Aye, sir," he admitted. "That I usually do—but not this time. It's caught me as much by surprise as you."
Moments later, the steady rumble of the cruiser's Drive increased to a deep thunder, and Brim watched through a small Hyperscreen scuttle as the familiar shape of Truculent dwindled rapidly in the distance. Ursis cocked a furry ear for a moment, then frowned "The flight crew is certainly in a hurry to go somewhere," he said. "Drive crystals are wide open, from the sound of things." He settled into a recliner, crossed his legs, and folded his hands across his chest.
"Just what do you think you are doing, Lieutenant?" Amherst demanded angrily.
"Relaxing, Lieutenant Amherst," the Bear said as he shut his eyes. "Until someone lets us out of this cabin, it seems to be the most intelligent thing we can accomplish." Brim and Theada spent a few moments in desultory exploration of what little there was to see in the room, but eventually thumped into recliners beside him. Barbousse and the other ratings followed suit.
Amherst looked annoyed, but clearly had no acceptable rejoinder to any of them. "Oh, very well," he said lamely. "I shall, ah, notify you what is expected next."
"I look forward to that," Ursis grunted quietly. In a few moments more, he was snoring.
The team was confined in the cabin for more than two Standard days—during which time the sound of the Drive never slackened from its original setting. They finally transferred to a large, curiously rust-colored shuttle craft when the Narcastle had driven deep into a very empty-looking portion of the galaxy.
Their mysterious destination turned out to be a barren, irregular chunk of red-oxide rock orbiting an isolated gas giant where none of the star formations looked familiar to Brim. A flattened, bubble-shaped structure perhaps one hundred irals in circumference clung to a reasonably "level" section of the rock-colored to blend into the background. As the shuttle dove toward landfall, a worried-looking Amherst nudged the pilot and pointed below. Outside the bubble, three mean-looking starship torpedo scout craft hovered in the stillness at the end of short mooring beams. All three were League ships and all looked heavily armed.
"Don't let our STSs bother you," the pilot drawled through a reddish mustache as he turned onto final approach. "All three of those little tubs down there belong to us." Oddly, his name was Blue, though his hair was red, crested to a remarkable degree, and his complexion a chalk-like white. He had a narrow face with a thin nose and long freckled hands. He wore no battle suit (strictly against Imperial regulations in a shuttle), only a rumpled fatigue uniform with soft, casually scuffed boots that looked far more comfortable than military. He also handled the big shuttle as if he had been born at its controls.
Brim chuckled to himself with a strong suspicion that Blue and he would have much in common, as backgrounds went, but elected to keep his silence. The subject of pasts wasn't one of his favorites, either. He peered down at the enemy scouts—clearly Collingswood's "little starships"—and felt his curiosity piqued again. What now?
Inside, the bubble structure was divided into a warren of "rooms" by partitions that did not quite touch the curviform top. Everything about the structure looked ready to be dismantled at a moment's notice.
Military gray prevailed nearly everywhere, though occasional areas were finished in more humane colors.
The air was uniformly dry and almost unappetizingly without odor—an attribute of all such tiny, self-contained way stations which recycled the same limited set of atoms to sustain life in the midst of the lonely void.
After a squat, gruff-looking woman with Mechanic's blazes on her collar took charge of Barbousse and his ratings, the officers followed Blue into a narrow companionway. This ended in a severe cubicle containing a few display cabinets and a circle of uninviting field chairs—clearly some sort of conference room. Before they could sit, a door opened at the rear. "Gentlemen," Blue announced, "Colonel Dark."