THE HELMSMAN: Director's Cut Edition (20 page)

Brim held his tongue. There was nothing more he could say.

After a few moments in thought, Hagbut shrugged to himself and looked Brim directly in the eye. “Your xaxtdamned fleet stinks, Brim,” he said with his upper lip raised.
“You
can't help it, and neither can I.
But it does
. Luckily, your uselessness probably won't mean a thing to me this time anyway. Since the A'zurnian underground staged their big show in Klaa'Shee a couple of days ago, those rotten Leaguers hardly have
anybody
left in the area at all — much less battle crawlers to fight the cannon
you're
here to drive. All you've got to do is follow along and keep your head down when there's fighting to be done.” He drummed his fingers on the altar. “For
you,
the mission ought to be easy as falling off a cliff. You follow us to the research center in your cannon, wait out of the way while we free the hostages they've got penned up beside the main laboratory, then you call in your destroyers to blow the
whole
thing up once we're on our way back.” He shook his head in disgust. “Do you think you can handle
that
much?”

“I shall certainly try,” Brim answered.

“Well,” Hagbut said bleakly, “at least you seem willing. It's better than nothing, I suppose. But not much.” He gazed balefully across the altar, apparently lost for a time in some inner thought. “Probably,” he continued presently, “the worst part of the trip will come when we get to the hostages themselves.”

“I understand they've been pretty roughly treated.”

“An understatement,” Hagbut said with a grimace. “Those Controllers they use as guards aren't very nice people at all — I even dislike coming up against them in combat,” he said. “Hard to go about the job professionally, without emotion, you know.”

Brim felt his eyebrow raise. “Sir?”

“We Army officers usually go out planning to fight our opposite numbers in the League Army,” Hagbut answered, “ — like the guards they'll have at the outer gates to the compound. No emotion there. It's simply professional against professional; somebody wins and somebody loses. But what kind of person do you think they’ll have guarding the inner gates to the hostage compound? Army types? Not on your life. They'll have Controllers. Bloody, black-suited Controllers. And when I come up against
them,
then the fighting gets bitter. Because those scum of the Universe deserve anything we do to them.” Suddenly he stopped, looked at his shaking hand, and thrust his jaw in the air. “I don't know why I feel constrained to tell all this to you, Brim,” he said. “This interview is at an end.” He raised a pontifical finger. “As for your cannon, I shall direct you
personally
as to
where
and
when
I want them fired. It will save you from overtaxing what little of your gray matter remains operable in your head after a tour in the Fleet Academy.” He looked down his nose. “Do you have any questions, Lieutenant?”

Brim stifled an urge to laugh in the man's face and nodded instead. “I
do
have one question, Colonel,” he said.

“Well? Be quick about it.”

“Who else do you have scheduled to crew those eight field pieces, Colonel?” he asked. “They sent only two
of
us down from
Prosperous.”

Hagbut laughed triumphantly. “I have
already
seen to that,
Lieutenant
,” he boomed. “More than a metacycle ago, I deposited
eight
of your ordnance ratings with the disruptors to help do that.” He spat again. “And since I
knew
they'd be worthless as any other Fleet type on land, I gave you fourteen equally worthless extras to assist.” He frowned. “Those last are a BATTLE COMM group, all worthless females, but they're at least warm bodies — I think.” He guffawed without humor. “Now get moving. You've
less
than five metacycles to jump-start that blasted machinery into useful equipment, then get it operating.” He turned back to the desk in a clear gesture of dismissal.

Brim saluted uselessly, then trudged back down the staircase to where Barbousse sat waiting, a black look on his brow.

“Cod'dlinger,” the big rating glowered in a low voice. “If you please, sir.”

“I xaxtdamn
well
please,” Brim grumped. “Come on. Let's see if we can find someone who knows where those mobile disruptors are. Maybe we can use one to run the bastard over once he's in the field — accidentally, of course.”

“Of course, sir,” Barbousse chuckled darkly. “Accidentally, by all means.”

Barbousse worked his magic rapidly in the old temple, and within a few cycles, he both discovered the location of the mobile disruptors
and
lined up another ride. Presently, the two Truculents found themselves deposited in a large urban park bordering dense groves of tall, gnarled trees. Nearby, the mobile disruptors sat disconsolately on their warty rounded bottoms, leaning drunkenly at odd angles like toys discarded by some titanic child. A row of twenty-two Blue Capes dangled their legs from one of the hulls, kicking their heels against the giant cooling fins beneath and talking excitedly.

Brim glanced at a flight of starships traveling so high he couldn't even make out what kind they were — but he could hear them. He suddenly felt homesick for
Truculent.
Truth to tell, he felt more than a little out of place here on the land; inadequate was more to the point. Then he laughed to himself. Fat lot he could do to change things anyway! He braced his shoulders and strode across the field. Might as well look confident, he thought, even though he didn't feel that way.

As he approached the field pieces, two of the ratings jumped from their perches and ran to meet him, saluting smartly.

“Leading Starman Fragonard here, Lieutenant,” one announced importantly. “I’ve got seven ordnance men with me.” He was short and rawboned, his hair was gray, and he seemed to be in motion standing still. His constantly darting green eyes were those of a master thief — or a master gunner. Right from the beginning, Brim suspected he was
both.
On his uniform, a number of gold and crimson ribbons presaged excellence in his specialty of Ordnance. Too bad nobody gave awards for mischief, Brim thought with a stifled smile. At least none were approved for wearing on a Fleet Cape!

Brim returned their salutes, then nodded toward the second StarSailor with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeoman of Signals Fronze reporting, Lieutenant,” she said — a squat, heavyset woman with broad shoulders and neutral hair. Her flat, amorphous countenance served merely to highlight a coarse, open-pored complexion. Only flashing eyes and a winning smile saved her from total, unmitigated plainness. She was neither young nor old, but her large hands suggested long periods of manual toil long ago in another life. Both she and Fragonard would have been nearly invisible on a crowded metropolitan street in Avalon, but where Fragonard might well have made a diligent effort to achieve such an effect, for Fronze it would have been automatic. She indicated thirteen women of various sizes who jumped to the ground and saluted raggedly. “Two mobile KA'PPA beacons and the best BATTLE COMM in the Fleet,” she added with a toothy grin.

Brim smiled back as his heart sank. BATTLE COMM people to drive League battle-crawler destroyers. Wonderful! He supposed somewhere nearby a squad of qualified drivers were probably attempting to fathom the arcane operation of a KA'PPA beacon. “Ordnance and Communications,” he said lamely. “Well, I'm, ah, certainly glad to have you … aboard. I don't suppose anyone knows anything about starting one of these mechanical marvels, does he — or
she
?”

“Us?” Fragonard asked incredulously, holding a slender (and reasonably clean) hand to his chest. “Lieutenant,” he said, “we ordinance types only fire the disruptors, we don't do nothin’ like drivin'.” He stopped suddenly as the rumble of heavy artillery intruded from a distance.

Barbousse stepped quietly to the side of the rawboned little man and plucked him from his feet by the scruff of the collar, smiling pleasantly all the while. “You,” he said gently over the far-off booming, “are, of course, volunteering yourself and all seven of your men for whatever duties the Lieutenant suggests. Is that correct, Starman Fragonard?”

Fragonard's eyes bulged, became large as saucers. He tried to swallow something much larger than his throat, but the latter was constricted by the peculiar way his collar was twisted within Barbousse's huge fist. “
Of course,”
he choked.

“M-My s-signal ratings, too,” Fronze piped up hurriedly.
“Always
glad to help out anywhere we can.”

Barbousse nodded silently, returning Fragonard none too gently to his feet. “My apologies for the interruption, Lieutenant,” he said, regaining his position behind Brim.

“Er, yes,” Brim mumbled, struggling to stifle a smile. He looked over the heads of the assembled Blue Capes to the huge machines lying cold and silent in a forlorn pile of — unless he could start them — space junk. He counted heads for a moment, frowned, and scratched his head, listening to renewed artillery fire in the distance. “All right,” he said to the two ratings, “we've got eight of these monsters to operate. That means teams of three each. Count off your people, Fronze: Two in a control cab. One of yours in each turret, Fragonard. Understand?”

“Aye, sir,” Fragonard answered, his face a picture of concentration, “but twenty-two people only crews
seven
of those big thumpers.”

Brim nodded his head. “That's right,” he said. “Barbousse and I crew the eighth. And
you
run the turret for us. Does
that
fit with your previous views on the proper division of labor?”

Fragonard peered at Barbousse for only a moment, then he nodded. “Absolutely, Lieutenant,” he said, grinning. “Besides, I'm a very good gunner — and a very bad wrestler.”

* * * *

Brim sat uncomfortably upright in the cold, stiff-backed control seat, a dark instrument panel staring balefully at him in the afternoon glare. The distant artillery duels had recessed for a moment, birds sang in the background, and heavy vehicles rumbled somewhere on a crowded highway. His mind drifted to Ursis and Borodov — most likely off at a hunting dacha on one of the Sodeskayan planets, happily drinking Logish meem and hunting the great, two-headed mountain wolves which shared, and ravaged, many areas of the Bears' home worlds.
Bears
would know how to start this hulking bucket of bolts!

He shook his head enviously as another flight of distant starships thundered across the sky at the edge of space. Little more than a metacycle remained before his own part of the operation was expected to move out. And the thrice-xaxtdamned field piece that fell to his own lot to drive was canted at a perfectly sickening angle to the horizon. It made him dizzy every time he looked outside. Drumming his fingers on the console, he gazed in helpless disgust at the bewildering array of controls.

For the hundredth time, he considered the large red button that occupied a prominent place on his lower starboard instrument quadrant. Its center ring displayed the Vertrucht symbol for “begin,” but Brim was not about to blow himself to atoms by
that
sort of simpleminded error. In the League's crazy vocabulary, the word “detonate” started with the
same
symbol. He grumpily looked outside at the other seven inert forms, also canted at uncomfortable angles. In the last, precious forty-five cycles, he had managed to accomplish nothing, and now spare time was virtually gone, along with his options. He shrugged to himself, squeezed his eyes closed, gritted his teeth, and mashed the button, waiting anxiously for the explosion that would snuff out his life.

Instead, he was greeted by bird-punctuated silence, broken now and then by heavy breathing — his and that of his two compatriots.

Cautiously opening his eyes, he found himself confronted by nothing more threatening than all the lights on the vehicle blazing out as if it were the blackest darkness outside. That and a newly operational instrument panel. Moreover, one of its readouts, C
_L-2
intensity (all C
_L-2
readouts looked more or less the same), was already starting to rise. He watched it for a few cycles, then smiled. Normal. Even at its present rate, he estimated it would take about fifteen cycles to reach operating parameters.

He showed the button to Barbousse and Fragonard, then sent them out to help power up the other machines. “By the time you get back,” he called down the ladder after them, “maybe I'll have the next step figured out.”

As he expected, the remaining controls and readouts were all more or less incomprehensible, except for a big pulse limiter; anybody could recognize one of
those.
And to its left, a primitive linear slide control was mounted in the panel. It looked a lot like an adjustable thrust sink — common, cost-conscious substitute for antigravity brakes on many large military vehicles built for the League. The slide itself was pushed all the way to the top of its slot, where the highest index numbers were. An “on” position, probably, but he couldn't be sure, so he kept hands off while he studied further.

He frowned. Most heavy ground equipment operated by ducting energy from a pulse limiter into a gravity-defraction transmitter. The latter acted as a simplified antigravity generator, providing lift and directional thrust through a simple logic-lens arrangement. It couldn't fly, of course, any more than a traveling case could fly. Antigravity technology guaranteed no more than vectored thrust. To actually fly, one needed a lot more major systems than one could economically cram into a ground vehicle.

Grimacing, Brim pondered the correct amount of energy to gate from the pulse limiter: How much C
_L-2
was good? Or bad? It was still building steadily, according to the readout in front of him — but to what? He considered the possibility he had just sent Barbousse and Fragonard on a mission to blow up the other seven vehicles in his tenuous command, then shook his head. If that was the way things were going to turn out, then so be it! He had to start
somewhere.
He returned his concentration to the controls