The Defenders

CHAPTER 4

GravAnchors and Identities

Toward midday, local time, Onrad and Jaiswal sent word that they would require nearly the whole day in Effer'wyck learning the situation firsthand. Ursis, however, returned during the late afternoon and immediately joined Brim on the bridge.

"Nik," the Carescrian exclaimed, looking up from a display filled with administrative minutiae, "why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

"Secret mission," Ursis said as he tossed his Fleet Cloak over a darkened navigational display.

"Anastas Alexi has told you about the position I've taken with the Intelligence Services?"

"He told me of it," Brim said with a smile, "not about it."

This time, it was the Bear's turn to smile. "Everything about it is secret," he said. "Right now, everybody thinks I'm still somewhere in Gromcow."

"Pretty damned secret if you can't tell your friends," Brim complained in feigned petulance.

The Bear laughed. "I only got in last night, Wilfooshka," he said, rolling his eyes. "I haven't even checked in with the Embassy."

"What are you going to be doing?" Brim asked.

"Liaison work," Ursis replied. "I'll be back and forth all the time, so we'll have ample time to share a few goblets of Logish Meem, friend Brim."

"I'll hope so," Brim replied, then he frowned. "What's it like out there?" he asked.

The Bear shook his head gravely. "Worse than I imagined," he said, settling heavily into Onrad's jump seat. " 'Wycks have panicked. Utterly panicked. Today, Wilf, I talked to people at all levels and ranks, many from front-line planets—wherever those happen to be at any given moment. Big Cheeses in High Command try to make Onrad believe they still have control, but they don't. Nobody has control, except maybe Leaguers. Xaxtdamned CIGAs have so weakened whole government that military has no effective leadership above battalion level. Little armies, little squadrons—fragments—all try to fight same enemy, but no real coordination from High Command." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "I have talked to many brave men out there, fighting Leaguers tooth and claw. But alone—in small, uncoordinated groups—they haven't chance of icicle in collapsium furnace."

Brim pursed his lips. "And it's our turn next in Avalon," he said to no one in particular. "I wonder how we'll fare in that furnace."

"Depends," Ursis said quietly.

Brim looked up and frowned. "On what, Nik?"

The Bear smiled kindly and put a hirsute, six-fingered hand on each of Brim's shoulders. "On things you already know about, Wilfooshka," he said. "Training, spirit, bravery, commitment to dominion, equipment. Nothing new," He frowned and shrugged. " 'Wycks have it all, except perhaps spirit—and they even had that in beginning. But without coordination, then all 'usual' things break themselves individually against coordinated opposition. You understand."

Brim nodded. "Yeah, Nik," he said, "I understand."

"So, friend Brim," Ursis continued, leaning back in the seat, "when Leaguers finally come after Avalon, as they will, if everything else is in place—spirit, bravery, equipment, and the like—immediate future of our old Empire will probably depend on your countryman Baxter Calhoun, whom Onrad has determined will lead Defense Command." For a moment he peered critically at the claws extending from his long, slim fingers, then he nodded to himself. "With help of BKAEW, he will most likely prevail against confusion."

"Yeah," Brim agreed quietly. "I have already seen a little of what BKAEW can do."

Ursis grinned. "So I have heard. Voof! For first time in... what, five, six hundred Standard Years, starships can be sensed and positioned before they slow below LightSpeed. Newest BKAEW sets—as you already know—can 'see' all way across 'Wyckean Void and beyond, it may well become most critical technology in coming war. At least, is how we Bears see things. And believe me, furless friend, we watch, because no matter how things turn out in Avalon, Sodeskaya is Triannic's next target."

"Makes sense," Brim said. "But BKAEW's pretty new stuff. I've only seen a couple of stations."

Ursis laughed, "You haven't been here all that long, Wilfooshka. BKAEW is well past experimental stage. Each of your five planets has at least three of those crazy-looking satellites."

"I didn't know that," Brim said. "But then I haven't been especially looking for them, either."

Ursis laughed. "But I'll bet you have noticed how much more accurate your vector controllers have been during past month or so?"

Brim frowned. He had, come to think of it, "I guess I hadn't been doing much questioning lately,"

he admitted, nodding toward the display cluttered with day reports, manning tables, ship availability projections, budget authorizations. He laughed unhappily. "This exalted position of mine requires I spend as much time tending to admin garbage as I do trying to kill Leaguers."

Ursis laughed. "When one is busy just keeping head attached to shoulders—as you are—is quite easy to neglect other things," he said, then raised both his eyebrows and an index finger " There, my Imperial friend," he said with a chuckle, "a Sodeskayan aphorism even humans can understand."

"Amazing," Brim said in mock astonishment. "Next thing, you Bears'll be smoking deodorized Hogge'Poa in those Zempa pipes of yours."

"Fat chance of that!" Ursis chuckled. "Not so long as lady Bears think Hogge'Poa smells sexy."

"Lost cause, eh?"

"Believe it, friend Brim. Believe it...."

When Onrad and Jaiswal finally did return to the ship, Brim had little trouble guessing the outcome of their talks.

Striding directly from their limousine with no outward sign of emotion, both men quickly acknowledged Barbousse's honor guard, then hurried into the ship's tiny boarding lobby. "Let's get out of here. Brim," Onrad said, his lips pressed into a white slit in his face. "I cannot much longer stand this ichor of defeat...."

Later, once they were into deep space and safely on the way back to Avalon, Onrad gently tapped Brim on the shoulder. "I suppose Ursis has already told you about the conferences," he said.

Brim put the ship on autohelm and turned in his recliner. "He did, Your Majesty," he said, "at least the conferences he attended."

"Bad?" Onrad asked.

"In his eyes, Your Majesty," Brim replied.

"In mine, too," Onrad said grimly, "and in Jaiswal's. The defense back there in Effer'wyck is now in tatters. Oh, they'll fight on as long as they can. Especially if we send more reinforcements—which we will almost certainly have to do if we hope to put the Empire back together after the war. But they can't last anymore than a few more days, and we shall have to be on our guard every moment or they'll try to take us with them. Nations that go down fighting rise again," he asserted with a fierce look in his eyes,

"but those that surrender tamely are finished...."

The Emperor's short-range predictions were all too accurate. Within two Standard Days, the Effer'wyckean capital of Luculent was bloodlessly occupied by the League with parades and celebrations of great pomp and ceremony. Galactic media everywhere suddenly filled with views of Triannic and his henchmen marching along the Luculent's wide Boulevard of Heroes.

At last came the great blow. Even while the last Imperial troops were reembarking for Avalon, Effer'wyckean Prime Minister Holleran-Millard KA'PPAed to the Universe from the little planet Darendyl in the Forbean provinces, "It is with a broken heart," he began, "that I tell you today that fighting must cease...."

Three short days later, on the twenty-sixth (the 1,250th anniversary of the Empire's victory at the battle of Ool'retaw), an Effer'wyckean puppet government signed armistice with the League, and the Empire began final preparations for the invasion that must certainly follow on the heels of Triannic's latest conquest.

That night, as Leaguers proudly toured the Effer'wyckean capital, Onrad appeared throughout the Triad's media, broadcasting simultaneously to all five of the Home Planets and by KA'PPA to the far reaches of the Empire. Brim joined most of the off-duty officers of FleetPort 30 in the satellite's big wardroom where a huge global display had been wheeled in from one of the situation rooms.

During most of the day, the media had been rife with a succession of pundits reviewing the Effer'wyckean situation in minute detail, and by the time Onrad was due in the big globe, the room was both crowded and strangely quiet—a far cry from its usual high-spirited atmosphere. When the Emperor's image appeared in the center of the globe, a murmur of palpable admiration swept the officers.

Brim had never seen the man so wrought up, and doubted that many of the others had either.

After brief statements of introduction, the burly Emperor adjusted his spectacles and launched into the topic that everyone knew was coming. "The Battle of Effer'wyck is over..." he stated in a voice that was uncharacteristically hesitant—almost slurred. "I expect the Battle of Avalon is about to begin."

Everyone in the wardroom was now listening in absolute silence, hanging on his every word. "Very soon," he continued, glowering from the full-sized display as if he were talking personally to each of his viewers,

"the whole fury and might of the enemy must be turned on us. Triannic knows he will have to break us on these five planets or lose the war." His words grew louder and more assured as he approached his emphatic conclusion. "Let us therefore brace to our duties," he growled, thrusting his chin forward as if in defiance, "and bear ourselves in such a manner that if this hoary old Empire and its dominions last for a thousand Standard Years or more, living beings throughout the Universe will say that this was the finest moment of all!"

A stunned hush extended the silence for perhaps three clicks more, then the wardroom suddenly erupted in an emotional paroxysm of shouting and acclamation that continued until everyone was literally breathless. Brim, however, stood aside during the initial rush for the bar, watching reflectively and remembering other such nights filled with wild bravado by people who had little conception of what really lay in store when they encountered the outrageous, barbarous visage of battle. He closed his eyes for a moment while a thousand visions—each more horrible and bloody than its predecessor—paraded before his eyes. Hellish noise... blinding light... concussion. Fright so palpable you could reach out and touch it. Screams filling your battle helmet that couldn't be turned off. Death. Death. More death!

Grinding his teeth, he waited until there was room at the bar, then using Captain's privilege, he carried two whole bottles of Logish Meem back to his cabin and drank himself senseless.

Next morning, at the weekly Squadron Leaders' briefing, a badly hung-over Wilf Brim learned from Imperial staff planners that Triannic's promised invasion—which his jackbooted Controllers had code-named Operation Death's Head—might be only a matter of weeks, perhaps days, away. Hundreds of thousands of Avalonian civilians on all five planets had already been put to work under General Hagbut in what was euphemistically called the "Home Guard," making defensive preparations—while CIGAs demonstrated stridently against them. A number of fights had broken out between the workers and their noisy opposition, slowing the defensive preparations and causing general upheaval. But as General Drummond, Commander of the Home Fleet, noted in his midmorning address, CIGA membership did appear to be evaporating by the day.

His observation was the only completely positive note in a generally troubled gathering, for within Imperial military circles, it was recognized that the Emperor's ability to resist invasion was riding at absolute nadir. Even the irrepressible Hagbut admitted in secret session during the afternoon that his ill-trained and ill-armed Home Guard could do no more than delay Triannic's victory march in Avalon by perhaps three Standard Weeks—if that.

Within a week, the Triad began to feel the full might of Admiral Hoth Orgoth's Military Space Arm. It was almost a relief to Brim when the first actual blows fell, and for the remainder of the forty-day Standard Month—while Triannic gloated during visits to the sites of his conquests—Brim flew constant patrols with each of his two squadrons in the vicinity of Avalon.

As the month of Heptad began, the Imperial situation was only slightly improved from the beginning of the previous month. However, definite progress was being made, and each passing day made it a little more difficult for the Leaguers to launch a successful invasion. On the First, the number of Imperial killer ships totaled 607, an increase of 189.

Unfortunately, they were nearly alone in their defense of Avalon against what many Sodeskayans estimated to be in the neighborhood of thirty-five hundred League warships. Almost half of these consisted of GH 262s and 270s, the latter a larger and somewhat clumsier version of the 262. These killer ships were to protect little more than a thousand long-range attack ships, and approximately three hundred Zachtwager precision attack craft. ("Zachtwager" was short for the Vertrucht word Zachtwagerheizenforst, or simply "precision shooter.") According to Ursis, many important Leaguers felt that the ratio of attack craft to killer ships was much too high (approximately one to one), but Triannic continued to concentrate on building attack ships.

During the following week, invasion evidence continued to accumulate as Leaguer forces practiced landing operations on Memel, another Effer'wyckean planet. At the same time, fat Admiral Hoth Orgoth's star fleets pressed their attacks on intra-Triad shipping to the utmost—causing a noticeable strain on the Imperial Defense Fleet that now found itself flying more than three hundred sorties a day....

Leaguers everywhere! Yellow bellies, crimson dagger insignias, and chevron-profiled starships swarming like great insects around a convoy of light-limited space barges and interplanetary packets.

Great eruptions of energy flashed in the darkness like new stars. Space was crisscrossed with a veritable rainbow of disrupter beams. On patrol today in newly acquired Starfury D7436, Brim instinctively blinked as he dived close by a disabled Gorn-Hoff trailing black ribbons of smoke on its way toward destruction below—no point in wasting energy, the zukeed was already finished. Swallowing hard to clear a bitter taste from his mouth, he pulled out violently and took off after another Leaguer. Moments later, Gordon, the Gunnery Officer, pressed his triggers and the whole Universe seemed to explode as fourteen big disrupters salvoed with a preposterous roar, shaking the spaceframe and dimming the Hyperscreens.

Missed!

Clearly surprised, the Leaguer fell away. Off to starboard, Moulding fired on him and missed too—but now a gray Gorn-Hoff, its turrets ablaze with disruptor fire, was after him.

"Look out, Toby!" Brim broadcast on the short-range Helmsman network. "Break starboard!"

Quickly he skidded the Starfury around, but too late. The Gorn-Hoff was already out of range. Inside his battlesuit, Brim was drenched in sweat.

In front of him, two Gorn-Hoffs were converging to attack an ancient interplanetary packet—so old that its bridge was still decorated in the burnished gold of the Guild. Brim glanced in the rearview screen. Moulding was still there, flying as if the two ships were attached by cables.

From the rear of the bridge, Brim could hear Gordon calling off firing parameters. Outside on the decks, the turrets were swinging just left of center. Once again, R6595 shuddered from the hammerblows of its own disrupters. Three flashes, a belch of radiation fire, and an angry trail unfurled in the Leaguer's wake.

Just then, Brim spied a roiling sheet of radiation fire just where Moulding's Starfury ought to have been at that moment. His heart skipped a beat—but in that same moment it was Moulding's triumphant voice that shouted in the Helmsman's network.

"Did you see that, Wilf? I got the bloody zukeed!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Brim could see Moulding's Starfury keeping station two hundred irals off his starboard pontoon. What a relief! He opened his mouth to congratulate his friend when...

suddenly a thunderclap. A burning slap through the faceplate of his helmet. His eardrums felt as if they had just been pierced by a shriek of air exiting through a hole just melted through his forward Hyperscreen.

Another!

This blast carried away his whole forward Hyperscreen assembly in a rush of painful brilliance and concussion. He broke frantically; the Leaguer was so close that the flash of his big disrupters was blinding without the Hyperscreens for protection. But half his own turrets whirled as they opened return fire, and the Gorn-Hoff was forced to break away.

In the first moments after the explosion, Brim lost all notion of what was going on. For ten cycles at least, he blindly followed Moulding's instructions over the Helmsman's network. When he finally picked up a thread of sensibility again, R6595 was halfway back to Avalon. His head was swimming and there was a warm trickle from his nostrils. Blood? He could vaguely hear someone—the BKAEW director or Moulding?—in his helmet phones, but the COMM system was obviously damaged, and he couldn't make out what was being said. Miraculously, a check throughout the ship revealed only superficial casualties and major damage apparently limited to the bridge area. Nevertheless, Brim decided to put down at the nearest FleetPort rather than chance a really serious mishap due to battle damage that might have gone undetected. "Nesbitt, you still alive after all that?" he asked.

"More or less, Captain," the Navigator reported in a shaken voice. "What's on your mind?"

"Getting this bus into some solid, friendly berth," Brim replied. "Soon as possible and with minimum maneuvering."

"Aye, sir," Nesbitt responded. "Sounds like a great idea to me."

Moments later Brim's nav panel reconfigured with a new course. "Ariel, eh?" he muttered.

"At our present sidereal, Captain," Nesbitt replied, "FleetPort 19 seems to be the most direct route to a friendly base."

"We'll take it," Brim said, then switched a global display to the systems officer. "Thompson," he ordered, "keep an extra close watch on the steering-engine controls. I'll want to know immediately when anything shows out of tolerance. Understand?"

"Uh... understand, Captain," Thompson replied in a nervous voice.

Brim nodded and returned to his controls with a grimace. So much for green crews. He hated to think what would happen when they took some real damage. Then he shrugged. This was an easy initiation. They were bloodied now, so to speak, and wouldn't have to face their "first time" again. Maybe it was all for the best.

Maybe....

"All hands secure from deep-space quarters," squawked the blower, "man your berthing stations, special mooring details. All hands secure from deep-space quarters; man your berthing stations, special mooring details...."

FleetPort 19 appeared identical to FleetPort 30, except for the name emblazoned in old-fashioned characters below its upper antenna field. And of course its planet Ariel orbited farther out from the Triad than did Avalon. At present, only a few ships were moored about the periphery, indicating that some of its squadrons had yet to return from their sorties. Brim began his approach as soon as the controller assigned him a berth. He shook his head; if it wasn't the smallest berth on the periphery, it was certainly in the running for such a distinction—between two heavy cruisers nearly a third again as large as his Starfury.

For a moment his mind's eye remembered his days in the Carescrian ore barges when all that mattered was unloading quickly, and if you banged into a neighbor in your haste (or perhaps "accidentally" disabled a competitor that way), so be it. He chuckled grimly, What an introduction to the Fleet! At the Academy, he quickly learned that so much as a single collision—anywhere—could ruin a Helmsman's entire career. And the rule was still in effect. Imperial Helmsmanship standards tolerated only perfection. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would substitute.

With the generators at dead slow he came abreast of the berth. The two heavy cruisers and their great, frowning bridges on either side made it look half as large as he knew it was. And framed by jagged shards of the blasted Hyperscreens, the scene to port would have assumed on a character of impending danger had it not been for the superb docking systems winking at him for his shadows.

Reversing the starboard gravity generators, he applied gentle power to those in the port pontoon and...

Wait!

Instead of coming to a halt and twisting her stern to port, the ship was swinging her head to port and picking up speed—in a tight curve away from the berth! Instantly, he fed more reverse to the starboard generators, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, the damaged Starfury had continued all the way around her curve and was now heading toward the center of the station—picking up speed every moment.

Instinctively, Brim put all four generators into reverse and poured on the power while alarms beamed from the satellite jangled in his helmet.

Still nothing! Except that the ship was no longer curving, Instead, it now seemed intent on pinioning the nearest of the two cruisers beside his intended berth—dead center. The reverse actuators had failed!

"Stand by for collision bow on," the blower howled. "Stand by for collision bow on. All hands close airtight doors forward of frame thirty-four. All hands close airtight doors forward of frame thirty-four."

Grinding his teeth, Brim put the helm over hard to starboard and threw half power to both port generators while someone behind him in the bridge crew began mumbling Gradygroat litanies.

Litanies or no litanies, prayer wasn't going to be enough!

"Collision alarm, bow on! Collision alarm, bow on!"

In desperation, Brim literally stood on the right gravity brake actuator. That did it! With a grinding roar that could be heard as if it were in the next compartment, both starboard gravity generators jammed themselves into full power reverse, sending the ship into a violent cartwheel that nearly ripped the right pontoon and trouser from the main hull. Every weld in the spaceframe groaned and creaked while hullmetal on the main deck actually wrinkled before his very eyes. A cataract of stars flashed diagonally across the broken Hyperscreens and the voice circuits filled with startled shouts and screams of panic as they again headed precipitously on a collision course for the main station.

"Belay the noise, you xaxtdamned jellyfish!" Brim shouted angrily above the raucous clamor.

Coming off the brake and the power at the same time, he leaned into the helm, skidded the ship slightly to port, and passed over the boreal antenna field with nearly ten irals to spare. Then, with a little maneuvering room, he banked carefully into a vector to both cancel his orbital speed and permit gravity to bring him to a halt. Finally, rolling the ship onto its back, he headed up and over, again matching the satellite's orbital speed and using his gravity-brake circuits to activate the reverse. Only when he had regained stable control of the ship did he notice that the bridge—indeed the whole voice circuit network—had gone completely silent.

"N-nice m-m-maneuvering, Captain," the FleetPort 19 Controller stammered as Brim approached at no more than a crawl.

"Thanks," Brim said through his teeth. Inside his battlesuit, he was drenched in sweat and vexed as a wet crascon—both with himself for letting the ship get away from him and with the unseasoned crew for openly displaying their fear. Grinding his teeth until he got control of his temper, he called Barbousse at a gunnery console aft, "Chief, I'll need both GravAnchors immediately. You handle 'em, and put a good man at the aft docking cupola."

"Aye, Cap'm," Barbousse answered as if this were the normal manner of mooring. "We'll be makin' the Atalantan mooring?"

"That's it, Chief," Brim affirmed. "Drop 'em at my command." The "Atalantan" maneuver was old-fashioned ship handling—and difficult—but absolutely essential in space when working room was scarce and automatic facilities were missing. This time, the missing facility was the very ability to maneuver!

He concentrated. GravAnchors were little more than small, powerful tractor units with optical cleats for mooring beams. Once activated, their only purpose was to automatically maintain a point in space by exerting thrust in the opposite direction from any force applied to them. He'd situate both out from the satellite to secure the starship's bow while he used the stern mooring beams to draw the ship backward into her berth. Easier said than done—but achievable nonetheless.

Rapidly calculating, he worked the parameters in his head. The forward mooring projectors had a maximum range of little more than four hundred irals, so he picked three hundred as a workable scope and allowed for a good thirty-three percent margin of error.

Now, with 300 irals maximum between the anchor, and the bow, a 664-iral ship, and her stem close in to the satellite when he was finished, he ought to drop the anchors about 1400 irals out.

Narrowing his eyes, he made a small correction to starboard, but since he was eye-balling everything anyhow, "close" was as good as he was going to get.

Approaching with the satellite off to port, he waited until the ship had coasted to about 150 irals short of a position abreast the berth. "Drop starboard, Chief," he ordered tensely. "And let the beam surge as we move away." That would hold moderate tension on the beam but let it slip enough to permit the ship to move.

"Starboard GravAnchor out with surge, Cap'm," Barbousse replied.

Immediately Brim put the helm over full while twisting the nose of the ship away from the satellite with generators and gravity brakes. In the corner of his eye, he could see a torrent of gravitons streaming from the GravAnchor as the mooring beam tried to drag it along. Things were a lot easier when you could predict what was going to happen!

While Barbousse eased out distance from the first GravAnchor, inertia continued to move the slowly twisting ship along its original path until about 150 irals past their berth, he ordered Barbousse to drop the second GravAnchor.

"Dropped with surge, Cap'm!"

Miraculously, the stern had come around well, and was now in almost perfect position for backing into the slip—were the reverse circuits working. "Send the stern beam over and heave 'round the warping head!" Brim ordered tensely. The rating at the stern cupola had only a single chance to project his mooring beam for capture by the optical bollard on the wall of the satellite. If she missed, the stern would come around and he'd lose control again—this time with GravAnchors to further complicate the situation! Heart in his mouth, he watched in the aft-view display as a thin green ray flashed to the reflecting mechanism, caught, flared up, and... held! Immediately it began to draw their stern into the narrow berth.

"Check the starboard bow beam. Chief... now!" he ordered.

"Check starboard..."

Then as the distance from the two anchors became equal: "Check port!"

"Check port, Cap'm."

They were in! Or at least aimed properly to go in. Now, it was only a matter of easing the bow beams and heaving on the stern to draw themselves into the berth. In the space of half a metacycle, the ship was safely moored, a repair crew was already swarming around the bridge, and Barbousse had sent out a launch to retrieve their GravAnchors.

All in a day's work....

It was an exhausted and aching Wilf Brim who trudged out of the brow airlock and doffed his battle helmet for the first time since leaving FleetPort 30 Avalon a number of metacycles ago. The Triad was on the opposite side of Ariel and the station's transparent boarding tube was all in shadows as he made his way toward one of the main portals leading to the station's interior. A slim, graceful figure wearing a beguilingly open Fleet Cloak met him halfway across the tube.

" 'Twas a fine landin' you made, Wilf Brim," Eve Cartier said in the gentle voice he knew so well.

"Weel done, sir." Her words seemed to cradle his exhaustion in a comforting veil, and she took his arm soothingly while she looked at him with a sparkle in her eyes. "Faith, it's also a ge'at black eye you've got, mon."

Brim tentatively touched his cheek. It was tender. "Canna' trust Carescrians," he chuckled, reverting to an accent he'd renounced (with a great deal of difficulty) more than twenty years ago.

Surprisingly, it felt almost, well, natural. "You know that, noo, chield," he continued, letting the two decades slip into nothingness. "We're always gettin' into wee scrapes."

She smiled and squeezed his arm. "Weel, weel, Mr. Brim," she said. "Perhaps I've misjudged. I always thought you were ane o' those haughty Imperials."

"That's why you ne'er came back to see me at the Benwell reception, noo?" Brim asked roguishly. Her close proximity was making him forget all about the aches and pains he'd collected from being thrown about in his seat restraints. Slimness accentuated the wide-set swelling of her smallish breasts beneath an Imperial uniform that fit like a glove—all the way to her boot tips.

Her blush was visible even in the semidarkness. "That," she said with an embarrassed little smile,

"is probably as good an answer as I'll come up wi' myself." She disengaged his arm as he held the airlock door for her. "I will say, tho'—just in case you're interested—that there's nothin' permanent between the man and myself."

In the main corridor, Brim felt his own cheeks flush, and he turned to look Cartier in the eyes.

"It's none of my business, Eve," he said, "but, yeah, I... ah... am... ah... interested."

"I sort of hoped you might be," she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye. "An' it just so happens I'm available for supper once you've reported to the sick bay an' then checked on your ship."

Brim slowed his steps and frowned at the beautiful Carescrian as he was struck with a most compelling sense of pleasure. "In that case," he said, "the bastard Leaguer who shot up my Starfury did me a big favor."

"E'en countin' the black eye?" Cartier asked.

Brim grimaced. "Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that. You sure you want to be seen with me? I must look like some low-brow street brawler, and I've no clothes but this battlesuit."

"I've seen the kind o' brawlin' you do, Mr. Brim," she said with a smile, "an' I'll be most proud to ha' supper wi' you. Besides, everybody weel want to meet the Helmsman who docked his Starfury wi' his GravAnchors."

"I'd bet a year's credits you can do the same," Brim said, looking her in the eye.

"Oh," Cartier laughed, "I've flown my share o' ore barges. It's but recently they trained Carescrians from the ground up, so to speak. We both started the hard way." Then she smiled and put her hands on his arm as they came abreast of an elevator bank. "Now get on wi' you. Sickbay is up two levels—you'll see the signs. An' I'll send someone along wi' somethin' to wear."

"Where will I meet you?" Brim asked.

"I'll be in the wardroom when you're ready," she said, "savin' us a table wi' a view."

"With a view?" Brim asked.

"But o' course," Cartier said., "FleetPort 19's a number o' years older than FleetPort 30." Then the elevator doors slid open and she nodded toward the empty tube. "On you way, Mr. Brim. You'll see for yourself soon enough."

Komenski, the Surgeon, required what seemed like at least five Standard Years before her ministrations were finished, and Brim ended up with a bandage around his forehead and an eye patch to hold a H-Plasm compress in place for the evening. "You must have been thrown around pretty violently," she said, adjusting her glasses. "You're a mass of bruises from head to foot."

Naked as a newborn and feeling every one of those aches, Brim nodded. "Accurate diagnosis, Doctor," he said, agonizingly sitting up on the examination table. "Damn Leaguer really took a dislike to us."

"Probably you won't die from it, though," Komenski mused, "in spite of his intentions."

Brim winced as he tried to move his shoulders, wondering idly what there was about surgeons that he could sit naked in front of one—a female, no less—and carry on a conversation as if he were fully dressed. "The way I feel right now, I may regret that more than he."

"Or she," Komenski amended.

"Too true," Brim allowed.

"Speaking of which," she said, pointing to a fresh uniform and Fleet Cloak hanging on the wall along with a jump suit. She turned to wash her hands. "An orderly dropped the jump suit off while I had you in the healing machine. But a little while later a perfectly huge Chief Petty Officer—a Master Chief at that—delivered the uniform. One of your crewman, I suppose. Said he always packed one of your uniforms—just in case."

Brim smiled and shook his head in awe. "Barbousse," he mumbled.

"Bless you," the Surgeon said.

"And you, Doctor," Brim chuckled, beginning to don the uniform in spite of his aches and pains.

It had been a long time since he'd dined with a truly beautiful woman—especially a beautiful Carescrian woman who made him think of lavender mists... green rolling hills strewn with mossy boulders and ancient roads that lost themselves mysteriously in the everlasting cold and drizzle... proud, ruddy faces in spite of hardship. Another Universe, almost. Carescria. For all its poverty and benighted existence, it was her home. And his, too, even as much as he'd tried to forget....

"You were certainly far away, Captain," Komenski observed, breaking into Brim's reverie.

"Yes," Brim agreed. "A long way."

"A good place, I hope," she said with a quizzical frown.

"I don't know," Brim said, staring off into an infinity of thought while he pulled on his boots. "I didn't used to think so, but now...." He shrugged and shook his head. "I simply don't know...."

FleetPort 19's wardroom was a page of Ariel's pre-war past, more like Benwell's richly appointed wardroom than the stark utilitarianism of FleetPort 30's interior spaces. Low ceilings with authentic-looking wooden beams, darkly paneled walls, carved wood-and-leather furniture glowing with years of careful polishing all gave the room an aura of the exclusive supper clubs Brim associated with the very wealthy. Bustling waiters dressed in well-tailored uniforms, the subtle odors of good food and spicy camarge cigarettes, an indistinct hum of urbane conversation, and the musical jangling of expensive crystal completed his illusion—and made it nearly impossible to believe that a war was going on in the same sky only a few light-years distant.

Seated in a darkened alcove beside a blast-shuttered window that once would have looked out over the gentle curve of Ariel's far-off horizon, Eve Cartier was absolutely stunning. It took her a few moments to recognize him at the entrance, but once their eyes met, she smiled and beckoned to him.

Magically, she had again transformed a regulation fleet uniform into as seductive an outfit as he could remember. It took a real woman to get such an effect from everyday Fleet vestments, "What was all that aboot only havin' a battlesuit to wear?" she asked with a surprised little smile, smoothing her long, black hair.

"Faith, I told only the truth," Brim said, slipping easily back onto his Carescrian accent. " 'Twas Barbousse who packed m' extra uniform. I knew nothin' aboot it."

She relaxed in her chair and crossed her long legs, for a moment exposing a length of frantically white thigh. Then she smoothed her skirt. "Won't you sit, my handsomely dressed Captain?" she asked.

Brim grinned. "I thought you'd never ask," he said, taking the chair beside her. "And thanks for the loan of the jump suit."

"The battlesuit would hae been fine," she replied.

"Not with you looking the way you do," he said. "You've somehow managed to turn a commonplace uniform into something rather splendid."

She laughed. "How long has it been since you've seen a woman, Captain?" she said in mock seriousness.

''Hey," Brim laughed defensively, "I'll brook no questioning of tastes here. I'm the one at this table with special hardware for judging female appearance."

"Weel, thank you, then," she said. Color rose slightly in her cheeks, but Brim could tell she was quite accustomed to being called beautiful. She simply was.

"So what do you recommend in a Logish Meem here?" he asked.

"I fear I don't know what to recommend," she said, drawing her lower Hp between her teeth.

"Unlike you, Captain, I've spent most o' my life as a Carescrian, w' just plain meem—an' that on very special occasions." She laughed a little sadly. "I only tried m' first Logish Meem a few short years ago."

Brim nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I went through the same thing twenty years ago, myself. And it's always embarrassing. Everybody else had been doing the 'right thing' all their lives—an if you didn't know what that was, you were a xaxtdamned fool."

"It war tougher then, warn't it, Wilf?" she asked suddenly.

Brim nodded. "In some ways," he said. "I was the first Carescrian in the Helmsman's Academy, and if you think people are prejudiced now, you should have been around then." He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the indifferent cruelty his wealthy, often-titled classmates visited on him. Only a disastrously rising casualty list among Helmsmen had opened the Academy to lower-class cadets—at the price of surprisingly vile reactions from the gentry who had exclusively populated Imperial military schools for more than a thousand Standard Years. He shook his head as he returned to the present. "On second thought, you shouldn't have been around then."

"I know it's a different story today, Wilf," she said. "You took the heat for all of us."

"Oh, I took heat," Brim agreed, signaling a rating who hurried over to their table and bowed.

"Captain Brim," he said, "it is an honor to serve the man who retired the Mitchell Trophy. What can I bring for you and the Commander?"

Brim considered for a moment. "Thank you, Yeoman," he said presently. "And I think I remember a Medoc with the Logish appellation, vintage 51019, Is that correct?"

The rating's eyebrows rose. "It is, Captain," he said. "Logish Medoc, oh-nineteen. An excellent choice. But how did you know we had any? That is rare treasure."

"My Chief Petty Officer Barbousse," Brim replied with a smile. "He knows that I favor Logish Medoc from the late teens, and evidently checked out your cellar before I got here. I found this pinned to my uniform." He showed both the waiter and Carrier.

Logish Medoc, 51019, partial case.

Logish Soma-Medoc. 51012, two cases.

Logish Monor-Savill, 51017, one case.

"The Monor-Savill oh-seventeen is excellent also, Captain," the rating murmured.

"We'll start with a bottle of the Medoc," Brim said.

"Aye, sir," the rating said with another bow and disappeared into the dimness.

Cartier smiled. "I take it at least some of the heat is gone," she said. "Certainly where Logish Meem is concerned."

"Yeah," Brim agreed with a grin. "Oh, I've learned the art of ordering Logish Meem—and a few other so-called 'social graces,' Eve. But the heat is never gone completely. It returns—often in the xaxtdamndest times and places." He shrugged. "Like everything else, one way or another, it all depends on people."

"Yes," she said presently, "people." For a moment she peered at him as if she could place herself within his soul. Then she relaxed. "There's no menu, in spite of the surroundings, Wilf Brim."

Brim laughed. "I'd hope not," he said. "Because if there were, we'd most certainly be somewhere on the surface in a private club—and absent without leave."

"A pretty serious offense, in anybody's book," Cartier said as the rating delivered their meem in a gloriously dusty bottle.

"Go ahead and open it," Brim ordered. "Commander Carrier will put it to the proof."

"Aye, Captain Brim," the man said, touching a narrow band ringing the bottle's narrow neck. It sparked a few times, then fizzled. "Well sealed, Captain," the man observed with raised eyebrows. "Shall I try again?"

"By all means," Brim said, savoring the rich purple color of the meem inside.

The rating carefully place a small wire around the scorched groove produced by the fizzled opener. Moments later, this blazed up and decapitated the bottle in a small cloud of sparks.

"You said the lady will taste, Captain?"

Brim nodded. "Eve?" he said.

"But, Wilf," Carrier protested, "I do na' know onything aboot meem—especially Logish Meem."

"You'll know if you like it, I'd wager," Brim replied.

"Weel, yes," she allowed. "No question aboot that."

"If you don't like it, we'll order something else for you," Brim prompted. "See what you think."

Cartier took a careful sip from a tiny silver goblet the rating had partially filled. Then her eyes grew wide. "Great Universe, Wilf," she said. " Tis marvelous!"

Brim grinned. "So are you, Eve," he chuckled, then turned to the rating. "Mister," he said, "you may pour for both of us."

"An' perhaps bring us some supper, so I do na end up on the floor from this," Cartier laughed.

Then settling back in her chair, she grasped the stem of her goblet delicately and raised it. "Here's to the heat, Wilf Brim," she said. "You take it an' I take it, but the mair we use up of it, the less there'll be for those who follow us from Carescria."

"To the heat," Brim said, hardly believing he was saying the words—especially sober as a judge.

"And to those who follow us," he added. Witches, he thought to himself as he enjoyed his first sip of the grand old Logish Meem. Eve Cartier could weave a spell with the best of them....

After a long, relaxed supper of conversation about the war, excellently prepared fish from one of the local lakes, and most of the Medoc, Cartier extracted two slim camarge cigarettes fro somewhere inside her cape. "Ha' one?" she asked, leaning over a cleared dessert plate.

''Thanks, but I'll enjoy yours," Brim said. He meant it. He'd always loved the spiced smoke of the tiny cigarettes, but had a healthy regard for the daily runs that allowed him to eat nearly all he wanted without developing too much of a paunch.

Her camarge lit on the first puff, and she settled back to inhale deeply, suddenly staring at him so intently that she might be preparing to sketch his face. At length, she sat forward in her seat and looked him directly in the eye. "Wilf Brim, my handsome countryman," she began, "who in the name of Voot are you, anyway?"

Taken aback, Brim cocked his head and smiled. "Who am I?" he asked.

"Yes," Cartier replied. "That's what I want to know."

"Well... how about 'Wilf Brim'?"

"No," Cartier laughed. "Who are you, na what are you. An Imperial? A Carescrian? A Commander or a Helmsman? Did Margot Effer'wyck sell you out to the aristocracy? Who are you, Wilf Brim—or do you e'en know?"

Completely unprepared for her questions, Brim leaned away from her and crossed his arms, his mind whirling to grasp the questions she'd fired at him. "I—I d-don't know," he stammered after what seemed to be an eternity of largely disconnected thoughts. The crazy thing was that he'd given the answer truthfully, not simply to deflect the pressure she had suddenly placed on him. He didn't know.

"Hmm," Cartier mused. "You are a truthful ane, aren't you?"

Brim could only nod his head; her questions had landed like a sack of bricks. And he couldn't answer them because she was correct. He had no idea who he was, because after all these years, he could identify with no one but himself.

"I wondered if that might na' be the case, Wilf Brim," she said, placing a comforting hand on his arm. "Nobody could give up his own dawnin' as thoroughly as you have without throwin' away a ge'at deal mair into the bargain. Mair, perhaps, then he'd e'en planned."

After a long, thoughtful silence, Brim thrust out his chin, just a little irritated by the unexpected questions—especially since he couldn't answer them. "All right," he conceded, "I probably hove thrown a lot of personal baggage away. What's so wrong with that? What's wrong with being my own man? I've always been damned independent, and it's let me remain that way,"

"Wilf," she protested, putting a hand to her mouth. "I did na' mean to imply that anything was—or is— wrong. Voot knows you've done weel for yourself. I just wondered who you felt you were."

Brim shrugged mentally. It was nice to have such a lovely person concerned about him. "What else were you wondering about, Eve?" he asked, letting a smile break through in spite of everything.

Cartier, he imagined, could bring a smile to the visage of a stone asteroid.

She blushed. "Oh, nothin' important, Wilf Brim," she said, but her eyes told more truth than her words.

"I don't believe you," Brim chuckled. "And you aren't a very good liar."

"Are you certain you want to know what I think, Wilf?" she asked. "It might not make you happy."

Brim frowned again, and a strange feeling began in the pit of his stomach. "Tell me," he said theatrically, in an attempt to defuse a situation that was rapidly going out of control. "I'm ready for anything."

"All right, Wilf Brim," she said after a small hesitation. "But I think I'm going to forever regret bringin' the whole thing to the surface in the first place."

"Friends," Brim said seriously, "never regret what they say to each other, especially when they're telling the truth."

"Weel," she said at length, peering at him as if she could see all the way to his soul, "in my eyes, you're a lot more than simply independent. You're lonely, Wilf Brim," she said. "You're probably the loneliest man I think I have ever met."

"Lonely?" Brim asked with astonishment. "Eve. Great Universe! How could I be lonely? Why, most of the time, I've got so much company I'd give my right arm for a few moments with myself."

"Wilf," she said with a sad little smile, "that's not what I meant." But before she could go on, their rating appeared beside the table and bowed.

"My apologies for the interruption," he said, "but a Chief Barbousse is outside with an urgent message for Captain Brim."

Somehow thankful for the interruption, Brim took Cartier's hand for a moment. "Looks as if we'll have to continue this, Eve," he said. "I think Duty's just called again."

She smiled. "It ha' a way of doing that, Wilf," she replied, "especially in a war."

Then, in spite of his recent discomfiture, Brim heard himself saying, "Let's meet for supper again, Eve. Soon."

"I'd love that, Wilf," she replied, looking him directly in the eye, smoothing her long, straight hair, "... soon."

"Until then," he said, pushing back from the table. As he stood, she settled back in her chair and crossed tier legs again.

"Be careful, Wilf," she said.

"You, too...." Then he turned and made his way through the lavish old wardroom to where Barbousse waited in an anteroom with a dispatch case under his arm.

"Top secret from the Admiralty, Cap'm."

Within the metacycle, the two men were in a fast packet, bound for Avalon and another of the interminable staff meetings. Strangely, all the way in, Brim found he couldn't put Eve Carrier's words from his mind. Lonely? How could he be lonely in the midst of such chaos? And how had something so normally inconsequential become significant in the first place?

On the surface, Brim found himself with a group of Wing Commanders providing "front-line"

information to high-level staff meetings. In answer to growing demands in the High Command for more merchant-fleet protection, Calhoun was warning that the escort burden might become unbearable if the Leaguers also increased attacks on ground targets—or the FleetPort satellites.

The meetings broke up with no clear consensus (Brim disagreed). But throughout the remainder of that single week, 15 Imperial starships and most of their 12 crews were lost, for a total of more than 450 casualties. Nevertheless, if the constant struggle was beginning to wear the defending starship crews, Brim at least found himself thankful that many of his newer arrivals were receiving invaluable first tastes of space combat while the Leaguers' main intent was killing merchant ships and not defenders.

That same week, meem rationing began on the five Avalonian planets. Brim was pleased to learn that many bartenders actually blamed the CIGAs for this affront to civilized existence. It was little things like that, he observed with a chuckle, that eventually made people angry enough to win wars....