Long-legged, slim, and graceful, Colonel Dark was dressed in the sleek blue coveralls of Lord Wyrood's Imperial Intelligence Service. On her, the tight uniform revealed a great deal more than it concealed. Her complexion was almost chalky white and she wore long jet-black hair in a braid that coiled all the way to her knees. Her eyes were large, almond shaped, intelligent, and hard. As she spoke, she fingered a curiously shaped obsidian fragment that could only be a splinter of hullmetal—some grim personal reminder, Brim considered, and decided he wanted to know nothing more about it—ever.
"Special-duty crew from I.F.S. Truculent reporting, Colonel;" Amherst began importantly. "I am Lieutenant—"
"We are aware of everyone's identity, Lieutenant Amherst," Dark interrupted in a soft, husky voice—nearly ignoring his salute. "While you are here on Red Rock 9, we shall have little time for amenities of any kind." She bit her lip as she unconsciously worked the hullmetal fragment between long, well-manicured fingers. "Sit down and listen carefully," she said "You have approximately two days to qualify for the mission."
As he took his seat, Brim glanced quickly at Amherst. An ill-concealed look of astonishment had taken root on the First Lieutenant's face. (He was clearly unprepared for military conduct outside the strict rules of Fleet protocol.)
"If you prove to us you can master an STS, the operation's 'go' and you'll have all the details you want.
If you can't, we'll scrub the whole thing and send you back home with our thanks for making the try.
But..." She paused significantly in the midsentence to look at each officer squarely in the eye.
Brim felt his eyebrows raise.
"But," Dark repeated, "a surprise attack mounted by the Leaguers on another starbase—it doesn't matter which one—deprived us last night of your backup crew. So if you don't make it, the mission won't happen at all, and a very important person will probably die. Additionally, the Empire will lose a lot of information it vitally needs for its survival."
Amherst suddenly looked concerned—frightened. He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak.
Dark held up a warning hand. "Don't ask questions, Lieutenant, until after your crew masters operation of the Leaguer STS. Before you have accomplished that, I have nothing more to say."
Brim and Theada spent the next half day buried in a captured STS simulator while the others learned what they could about the scout's systems makeup from Imperial data bases. Then, following a short rest period, the entire team donned battle suits and pulled themselves along zero-grav lifelines to the ships themselves.
"Apparently, they want us to use the one marked 'E6O7,'" Amherst said on the suit circuit, pointing to the rightmost of the three docked starships. "They say they keep the others here for spare parts."
Closer inspection proved this to be true. Two of the scouts were clearly missing important components, with hatches opened to the emptiness of space and holes yawning blindly in the control cabins in place of Hyperscreen panels.
E607, however, was ready to fly—a deadly wedge of raw destruction. Overall, its sharply angular sixty irals described nothing so much as a narrow, single-edged ax head turned on its side with a small control cabin located midway along the length of its upper surface. On either beam, angular outriggers extended forward from the squared-off stern, each virtually filled with a powerful Klaipper-Hiss type-41 antigravity generator. The ship's wide, keen-edged bow was deeply notched on port and starboard extremes to accommodate torpedo-tube doors in the beam ends of the hull. Between these, a squat, dome-shaped turret housed a 60-mmi rapid-fire disruptor. Aft of the rakish control cabin, a spacious well deck extended to the stern, bounded on port and starboard by the breech ends of the torpedo launch tubes and storage for the single reload carried for each. Offset a few irals from the center of the well deck, a row of twelve repulsion rings ran over the stern from a squat autoloader. These marked the little ship's limited capability to strew star mines in its path. Her flat bottom was clear from bow to stem except for an oversized weapons dome housing a powerful 91-mmi disruptor. Within the crowded hull a single Drive crystal provided thrust for Hyperlight dashes and occasional long-distance cruising.
Inside, the cramped control cabin was laid out in a conventional half circle with the two Helmsman's positions facing the forward Hyperscreens. Along the starboard side, a systems console extended to the air lock in the aft bulkhead—and, curiously, included activators for firing the big 91-mmi in the ship's belly turret. Miscellaneous controls, including those for the torpedo tubes and repulsion rings, were built into a neatly organized collection of panels that made up the port control array. The rapid-firing disruptor forward was operated directly from either of the Helmsman's consoles.
Once Ursis stabilized the ship's power, Brim doffed his battle helmet and sniffed the cabin's thin, stale air, taking stock of the uncomfortable seats and drab, strictly functional decor around him. "Grim" was probably a good characterization, he thought. Leaguers built fighting ships with only three real abilities; flying, fighting, and surviving. Everything else was sacrificed to the minimum necessary for operational reliability—including crew facilities. Two small cabins composed the single acquiescence to living occupancy. They were crammed under the forward deck between the torpedo tubes: a two-bunk cabin for officers, a four-bunk cabin for ratings. It wasn't merely uncomfortable—it was xaxtdamned near to being unacceptable. He shrugged. Only tough, dedicated crews survived on these grim little ships. "Fire up the generators, Nik," he said, nodding to the Bear as he perched his bulk atop an undersized recliner.
"Let's get this bucket out in space."
Ursis nodded, and the big generators shuddered into life, filling the crowded cabin with a savage, uneven thunder that shook the hull with brutish power. The Bear busied himself with various displays and controls for a few moments until the uneven tumult quieted to a steady rumble and the deck ceased to tremble. "Both generators are standing by, Wilf," he announced with a thumb in the air. The hull rang with vents clanging shut, and the air lock rattled.
Brim checked his own readouts, then looked at Amherst from the left Helmsman's seat. "The ship is ready when you are, Lieutenant," he announced.
"You may proceed," the First Lieutenant sniffed, nodding conspicuously down his nose. But his manner failed to hide the sweat standing out on his forehead—in the coolness of a battle helmet he had yet to remove.
"Aye, sir," Brim said squelching one more flash of anger. As the power director came up on forward thrust, he nodded to Barbousse. "Cast off, fore and aft," he ordered.
"Aye, sir," the big rating said, and spoke into a small personal communicator.
Outside, balanced on the decks, four of Truculent's borrowed ratings wearing huge reflective mittens to protect their hands extinguished the ship's mooring beams, then dogged down protective hatches over the optical cleats and raced across the deck to the control cabin. He waited until the men were inside, then watched for his signal from the bubble house aft. Presently, a ruby-colored beacon began to strobe in the darkness at the far end of the asteroid.
"Safe takeoff vector dead ahead," Theada reported.
"Got it," Brim acknowledged. He entered the course manually on the flight director (small starships seldom carried Chairman systems), then called for full military power and stood on the gravity brakes.