"Universe," another whispered aloud, "look at that burn."
Suddenly, Brim was nearly knocked senseless against his seat restraints as a stunning explosion went off just abaft Truculent's bridge and caved in a corner of the chart room. The cabin atmosphere blew out in a single, tremendous draft that took two navigation consoles with it and filled the bridge with whirling shards of jagged hullmetal and Hyperscreen crystal. Chaos ruled momentarily as agonized screams filled the voice circuits and half a dozen consoles disappeared in great sparking eruptions of energy. The Carescrian felt a heavy weight bounce off the back of his recliner—his faceplate was suddenly covered with a spray of redness, which smeared as he tried to wipe it away. He turned in time to see a headless corpse crumple in a greasy red puddle beside him, belly ripped from crotch to the shredded stump of a neck. Its severed head bounced like a child's toy at Theada's feet as the gravity pulsed in the shock waves.
Truculent's hull jolted and vibrated as more hits came aboard from the third enemy destroyer. One particularly powerful blast burst amidships, took the port launch with it, and opened the hull at the officers' quarters with a fiery plume. Brim knew instinctively he had just lost all he owned—his sister's picture in its little charred frame passed his mind's eye for an instant, then he snapped himself back to reality and hauled the destroyer around in a hard turn to port amid a howl of strikes from small weapons that shattered what remained of the aft Hyperscreens and filled the bridge with more jagged pieces of flying crystal. In the corner of his eye, he saw someone crawling along the main corridor bubbling blood from a dozen holes in a barely recognizable battle suit. Suddenly, one of the larger rents unsealed in a red mist that sprayed nearby consoles a dark, sticky-looking crimson. Whoever it was stopped crawling and spasmodically reared upward before crumpling onto a tattered, blackened shred of star chart. Brim read the word "MALDIVE" on the name tag.
He bit his lip. At least he wasn't worried about the forts anymore. The Lixorians were clearly following orders and staying out of the action. He turned to watch the first destroyer they had encountered. Fourier had just redirected two of Truculent's ventral turrets at her. Burning in three or four locations along her hull, the NF-110 was returning the fire, but only intermittently—clearly, hits had been scored on critical control centers, though the ship's propulsion systems appeared to be undamaged. At least, Brim noted with satisfaction, the Leaguers were making no attempt to continue their attack on Tandor-Ra below.
Off to starboard, the third destroyer was turning with them. Two of her turrets were out, of commission, with disruptors pointed at useless angles. The other seven, however, were firing rapidly and accurately, matching Truculent shot for shot. Brim wondered if she might be the ship carrying Valentin—then decided at the moment he had no time to care.
Soon the two ships were racing parallel courses across the bright disk of Lixor— Truculent silhouetted against the light, her opponent in the much more enviable position of blending with the darkness of space—at least so she appeared from Brim's console. Below, his decks were a ruin, littered with debris and punctured in at least a hundred locations. Fires were reported in three damage-control zones. A nearby display presented the heavily armored sick bay crowded with more than twenty bloody bodies waiting for healing machines that were already full. Flynn could be seen feverishly rushing to this one and that, trying to staunch the cries of pain—and the screaming. He was a fine doctor—Brim knew that from experience. But a lot of Truculents were going to die before this day was over, despite all the man could do.
He didn't opt for a closer look in the sick bay since the bridge itself was beginning to fill with acrid black smoke from fires raging in what was left of Collingswood's cabin. Metal fires, for certain, he noted.
Nothing burned like metal once it caught.
Another explosion jarred the deck—this one in the Communications cabin joining A turret to the lower part of the bridge. Miraculously, the voice circuits held, but the deck buckled dangerously beneath his boots. And soon the smoke was worse than ever.
"I'll have a square pattern of five torpedoes," Fourier ordered. Moments later, five torpedoes flashed from the launcher: two high, two low, one in the center.
"Torpedoes running," Barbousse intoned.
"That ought to show them!" somebody yelled in the ruby glow.
"And how!" another started.
"Oh, no!" a third voice exclaimed in dismay as the enemy destroyer reacted with unbelievable speed, executing a series of tight maneuvers that cleanly evaded four of the speeding missiles. The fifth torpedo—evidently unexpected in a square salvo—excised a small deckhouse from the hull just aft of her small superstructure in a cloud of flying debris. It did not, however, encounter anything sufficiently solid in the framework to set off its charge, and continued on into space without inflicting any important damage.
"Afraid of that," Fourier snapped angrily. "Still, it didn't hurt to try."
Another welter of shots erupted close to the starboard bow, smashing the forward docking cupola and sending jagged hullmetal splinters whizzing through the Hyperscreens in a dozen places.
"Voof!" Ursis roared through clenched teeth as he grabbed his left forearm. Brim could see his battle suit sealing off a ragged wound in a spray of blood. The Bear pounded his console in high dudgeon.
"Now," he pronounced solemnly, "that bastard Triannic is really in trouble!"
"Look out!" somebody else yelled. "Jubal's caught it...."
Brim glanced to his right in time to see Theada slump facedown onto shards of crystal littering his console—the Hyperscreens shattered in front of his station. Blood flowed freely from somewhere beneath his head and dripped in a puddle at his feet. "Somebody get a pressure patch up here!" the Carescrian yelled, then cranked Truculent around in a climbing turn as the first ship desperately took evasive action to escape his attack. The Leaguers acted only just in time. The space they would have occupied erupted in a deadly salvo of closely spaced blasts as Fourier growled in displeasure.
On the bridge aft, Brim glimpsed a crew with laser axes and power pries fighting three smoky radiation fires in what was left of the chart room and trying to free somebody pinned to the deck by a fallen support. Deep in the hull, he scanned a generator room turned to near chaos. Huge, charred holes had been opened by hits on either side of the keel—but miraculously, Borodov kept the oversized Admiralty N types churning out their enormous output of raw antigravity waves. Truculent's speed was a major reason she was still in one piece now that the enemy ships had at last joined forces. Near one shattered power console, part of a rating still sat in the recliner, burned completely away from the waist up. Beside one of the blast holes, a leaking body hung limply impaled by three long needles of hullmetal, melted then thrust inward at the time of impact.
While two blood-covered medical ratings gently eased Theada from his console, Brim watched the second enemy ship turning toward him again. Fourier's disruptor crews wasted no time in blanketing it with a barrage of shock and radiation. The Leaguer's KA'PPA tower went in a blinding flash of light and a shattered launch sailed straight down from its mountings—only irals from a direct hit beneath the bridge.
Brim smiled grimly. They'd felt those salvos, all right.
Then, with a blinding flash, Truculent's spaceframe again heaved convulsively, gravity pulsed, and loose debris bounced around the interior of the wrecked bridge like a swarm of heavy insects. A second explosion followed on its heels—this one all the way forward in the hull. It spun the destroyer like a toy.