THE HELMSMAN: Director's Cut Edition (22 page)

Five cycles later, all eight machines hovered idling at the end of the wire in reasonable approximation of line-ahead formation, Brim's foliage-littered field piece at the van. Directly behind him, the cab from the next vehicle in line hung over his savaged rear deck, where it had come to rest as the result of a badly planned stop. A red-faced BATTLE COMM rating smiled in discomfiture from the controls as Brim and Barbousse picked themselves up from the deck, strapped more securely into their seats, and prepared to follow the cable into the leafy tunnel.

Running at precisely 0.3 speed, according to his velocity readout, Brim's group of lurching vehicles cleared the boundaries of the park (and the end of his temporary cable) precisely at the same time as Hagbut's speeding troop-carrier convoy. So accurate was their arrival that they switched in line behind the last Army coach without even slowing, now following the stronger signal of a permanent cable buried in the road.

“Not bad for a worthless gaggle of Fleet types,” Brim growled under his voice as the COMM module spawned another display globe.

“congratulations, Brim,” Hagbut barked. “You do tolerable work.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Brim grumped, keeping his voice
just
the safe side of propriety. At least the zukeed didn't sound as if he wanted to press the Carescrian issue.

“Our convoy travels no faster than those field pieces of yours, Lieutenant, so keep a careful watch to the rear,” the Colonel admonished. “We have all indications that League forces are nowhere within a day's march — but with operations like this, one trusts one's own eyesight, as they say. Understand?”

“I understand,” Brim lied, wondering how much the recent artillery exchanges affected the Colonel's “indications.” Turning the controls over to Barbousse, he positioned himself at the COMM module and set up a neat row of seven display globes, one to each of his companion mobile disruptors.

“Now hear this,” he said into the COMM console. “Our friends from the Expeditionary Forces tell us all League forces have been drawn from the area,” he began. “But just to be on the safe side…” He scanned the seven faces peering at him from the globular displays. Each was serious, but showed no fear whatsoever. “Just to be on the safe side,” he repeated, “you will each keep your eyes peeled for
anything
suspicious, and report it to me immediately.”

Seven versions of “Aye, Lieutenant” joined Barbousse in the rumbling control cabin as Brim settled back in the awkward seat for a few moments of relaxation — he had been working at peak output for a considerable time, and was only feeling the first pangs of fatigue. The gentle swaying of the heavy vehicle and the steady thunder of its traction system relaxed him. He leaned back as far as he could in the straight-backed seat and crossed his legs. Forward, the giant shape of Barbousse hunched attentively over a console, poised for instant action should the machine require assistance at the controls.

Brim turned his head and peered through the thick armored glass as they roared past blackened shells of suburban homes, windows and top-story doors gaping hideously like open mouths caught forever in the great gasp of death. No sense of surprise clouded his mind's eye, only disgust. Triannic's invaders laid their cableway with the typical arrogance of all conquerors: Burning their right-of-way straight as a die through the city with no regard whatsoever for the hapless victims in its path.

The neatly spaced ruins with their pitifully blackened gardens and skeleton trees continued for a considerable distance, eventually giving way to shrub-lined fields dotted with tall, dome-capped structures — some connected by fantastic lace-like webs shimmering in the afternoon sun. Nowhere did he see the planet's winged inhabitants aloft. He pondered momentarily on this, then quickly dismissed it. He had plenty of other concerns to solve before he tackled that!

Swiveling in his seat, he looked out the opposite side of his control cabin and across the broad expanse of stained, tree-rumpled metal that formed the front of the vehicle. Fragonard's huge disruptor loomed overhead, pointing their course like a stubby veined finger with three sets of grooved anti-flash shields circling its tip. To starboard, tall, closely spaced buildings replaced the domes, then mixed with residences — these of clearly diminished promise, but whole nonetheless, having glazed windows to flash back the brilliant sunlight as Brim's heavy vehicles rushed past.

Presently, they came upon the banks of a broad canal and took up a new heading atop a moss-covered seawall whose age-blackened stones looked easily twice the size of the mobile field piece in which they rode. They whizzed past a string of rotting pilings out on the water covered with green braids of hairlike moss. The pilings curved abruptly from the seawall and terminated at a tumbledown pier before a crumbling brick structure of uncertain purpose. On the far shore, Brim could see rows of ramshackle warehouses fronted by networks of wooden piers extending far out into the stream — but few water craft anywhere: mute testimony to the ruined commerce of the conquered world.

They soon flashed across a connecting waterway, the exposed cable suspended in an arch by rusty wire bundles attached to the tips of tall pylons paired at opposite sides of the stream. With the speeding field pieces balancing themselves above the cable and wire bundles flashing by on either side at regular intervals, Brim got the definite perception that he was sitting at the controls of a flying brick.

Then abruptly they were thundering wildly along a narrow, shadowed thoroughfare between two close-set rows of giant buildings faced with panels of dreary color decorating vast expanses of featureless wall.

Emerging again into the sunlight, they sped steadily along the stone seawall until the canal itself ended in a great lagoon. Their cable — and travel — diverged, however, in a sharp curve to the right, continuing uninterrupted through marshes and tidelands near the shore until they passed a second dark canyon of buildings in a streaming blur, this much longer than the first. Then suddenly, far off to port, Brim caught sight of a stupendous arch bridge rising gracefully at least a thousand irals into the afternoon sky before it descended again in the hazy distance on the other side of the lagoon.

“Lieutenant Brim! Lieutenant Brim!”, an excited voice broke into his thoughts, “I think we've picked up a few extra vehicles to the rear! I can't see how many, but a couple at least.”

Instantly alert, Brim frowned at an image of Yeoman Fronze in the last vehicle.

“What do they look like?” he asked.

“Don't exactly know
how
to describe 'em, Lieutenant,” the woman said, looking off to one side. She squinted, frowned. “Big, for sure. An' squatty, like a roach or somethin',” she reported. “They're kind of keepin' their distance right now.”

“Ask her if they're square shaped like this one, or long, sir,” Barbousse urged from the driver's seat.

Brim relayed the question.

“Long,” Fronze stated emphatically. “With three turrets. A big one to starboard and two on the port side facin' fore and aft.”

“Sound like RT-9Is to me,” Barbousse pronounced. “About the best the League manufactures,” he added.

“Comforting to know those League people are more than 'a day's march away,'“ Brim snorted, then established connection with the Colonel's personnel carrier.

“
Well
?” Hagbut demanded.

“Someone seems to be following us along the cable, Colonel,” Brim reported. “Were we scheduled to rendezvous with other captured vehicles from
Prosperous
— RT-91 types, perhaps?”

Hagbut's brow wrinkled. “Negative,” he said. “You've seen these RT—91s with your
own
eyes?”

“They've only been reported to me, Colonel,” Brim answered. “But I have no reason to question…” He was interrupted by a glowing blue-green geyser that shot skyward about five hundred irals out in the lagoon. The huge waterspout immediately burst about five hundred irals to his left with terrific flame and concussion.

“Don't bother, Brim,” Hagbut blustered. “I could see
that!”
He immediately bawled a string of orders over his shoulder and the troop carriers began to accelerate, soon outdistancing the lumbering field pieces by a considerable margin.

Brim winced as a second explosion leveled a large row of warehouses to his right in a cloud of dirty flame and flying debris. So much for doing the mission in “invisible” captured equipment, he thought. The xaxtdamned ruse hadn't worked as long as a single watch! He shrugged phlegmatically. At least the Leaguers weren't having much luck with their ranging shots.

“I have ordered the troop carriers forward, Brim,” Hagbut boomed from the display globe. “To insure the integrity of my mission.”

Brim nodded. “Aye, sir,” he said.

“Not to mention the integrity of your bloody skin,” Barbousse muttered under his breath. “Beggin' the Lieutenant's pardon.”

“What was that?” Hagbut demanded.

“The local grass, sir,” Brim said, desperately stifling a laugh. “Starman Barbousse suffers a violent sneezing reaction.”

“Poor fellow,” Hagbut pronounced as another explosion destroyed an island of trees a few hundred irals to port. “Damn Leaguers never
could
seal a driving compartment.”

“No, sir.”

“It is now your
duty
, Brim, to stop the bastards,” Hagbut continued in what must have been his best pontifical voice.
“Use
those cannons soon as you can.” He turned in the display for a moment to bark more orders at someone, then swung back to Brim. “Catch up to us when you've stopped whoever it is back there — but not before.
Understand
? We cannot compromise the mission!”

“I understand, Colonel,” Brim said, but again he spoke to a darkened display. He shook a mock fist of anger, then opened a connection to Fragonard in the turret. “You're the disruptor expert, Fragonard,” he said. “What do you say? Can these field pieces really tear up a couple of the League’s RT-9I battle crawlers?”

“Easily, Fragonard replied with a frown, “if we can just aim 'em well enough. I've told the men to have a go at it soon as they've got their equipment ready. Trouble is, we haven't had time to adjust' em well enough yet to fire accurately while they're moving. Maybe we can get close, but if we kill more Leaguers than locals, it’ll be a case of good luck, if you catch my drift, sir.”

“Tell everyone to do the best he or she can,” Brim yelled over the noise of another near miss. This one sent a deluge of green water drizzling into the control cabin between the panes of glass to puddle on the deck and COMM cabinet. He ruefully wished he'd thought to have the BATTLE COMMs rig a permanent KA'PPA to his field piece. Perhaps he might now be calling in some close support from space — one couldn't do that with ordinary COMM gear, of course. He shrugged and dropped the subject from his mind. “Are they gaining on us?” he queried Fronze in the last disruptor.

“Aye, sir,” she answered, face serious. “We're gettin' ready to try an' put the disruptor on 'em, Lieutenant, but Starman Cogsworthy up in the turret don't think we've much chance of hittin' them, what with no stabilizers an' all.” Her image bounced in the display as the same enemy fire sounded first from the COMM console, then a click later from the windows.

“Thanks, Fronze,” Brim said. “Let me know when you get the stabilizer going.” They were passing along a relatively clear stretch of shore marsh now. His mind raced. If he couldn't get at the pursuing battle crawlers, what could he do? Stop and fight? He laughed at that possibility. They'd all be sitting ducks while the ordnance men recalibrated their disruptors. He shook his head. Perhaps he ought to sacrifice the last few cannon in line: Order Fronze to stop and fight a lonely battle of delay. He discarded that idea, too — not enough delay.

Presently, a deeper, more substantial thunder sounded from the rear, with a flash visible at mid-afternoon. A dirty column of smoke and debris shot skyward far to the rear. “Lieutenant!” Fronze yelled excitedly from a display globe. “Cogsworthy got the stabilizer goin', sir! That ought to give 'em somethin' t' think about!” Her image jumped violently as sounds of heavy return fire filled Brim’s control cab.

More of the huge, drumming thunder followed the first. These were succeeded in rapid succession by whole series of smaller bursts. “By Corfrew's beard,” someone said excitedly from a display globe, “I don't think they
liked
that!”

“Can't understand why not,” another voice said after more explosions tore up the marsh. “Look! It wasn't anywhere half near them. Bastards have no sense of humor.”

“How's it going back there, Fronze?” Brim demanded.

“Not so bad, Lieutenant,” the rating said through clenched teeth. She blanched while a whole volley of discharges thundered from the disruptor above her, then turned to peer out the rear of her vehicle, shaking her head. “'Cept,” she added, “I think
they're
shootin' closer t' us, an'
Cogsworthy's
gettin' farther away from them.” She grinned. “This single-file-on-the-wire stuff cuts our shootin' down to my one projector.” Her image danced violently in the globe as Cogsworthy let go with another shot, then continued to shake from a peppering of near misses landed in return. “Course,” she added cheerfully, “it also saves our skins from more'n one of
theirs,
too.”

Suddenly, the display globe seethed with a churning glow and disappeared. A violent flash from aft lit the afternoon sky, followed by a grating, trembling roar. Brim swung in his seat in time to see a burning turret arch lazily through the sky, trailing thick clouds of amber smoke until it disappeared with a monstrous splash and cloud of steam far out into the lagoon. “Universe,” someone bawled, “that was Cogsworthy!”

“Poor Fronze!” wailed another voice.

“Shut up, the both of
you,”
a third voice rasped. “None of those three felt a bloody thing! So just maybe
they're
the lucky ones. “

“Yeah,” said a fourth. “You'll wish that was
you
if we're ever captured, you will!”