THE HELMSMAN: Director's Cut Edition (23 page)

Brim squeezed his eyes closed for a moment, thinking about a
prefect
named Valentin, then nodded in silent agreement.

“Someone told me you were worried about bein' bored this trip, Lieutenant,” Barbousse called out over the roar of the machinery, his face an impish parody of surprise.

“Must have been someone else,” Brim said, eyes rolled heavenward. “It surely wasn't
this
Wilf Brim!” He glanced out the windshield and nearly jumped in surprise. His running battle was rapidly approaching the titanic suspension structure he had viewed from a distance.

He snapped his fingers. That was it! An artificial hill — and a big one.

He activated “broadcast” on the COMM console and began to speak, taking special pains to keep a calm inflection in his voice. “Now hear this, all hands!” he yelled over the rising thunder of the disruptors. “We are about to run the high arch ahead. While we're on
this
side, you'll each have fine visibility
and
a clear field of fire below. Make the most of both! And remember that any battle crawlers you
don't
polish off will have the
same
visibility and field of fire when you are on the bottom!”

So absorbed was Brim with the unfolding battle that the ascent onto the bridge, when it came, nearly took him by surprise. Fragonard had the big disruptor in action before they climbed fifty irals. The noise was deafening, as was the concussion. Higher and higher they rose, traction system roaring and dense white vapor streaming from the cooling fins. Brim watched the ground behind them erupt in gigantic explosions as the wiry little gunner switched to rapid fire and fairly peppered the right-of-way around the speeding enemy battle crawlers. He counted ten of the lopsided enemy machines and thanked whatever powers had dissuaded him from stopping to fight the battle crawlers in place. His second field piece soon added its fire to the holocaust below, then the third. The cable pitched and swayed from dozens of frenzied discharges, sending the field piece careening wildly from one side to the other as they climbed farther and farther toward the high arch of the bridge. Without warning, a particularly bright blast on the ground was followed first by a cloud of peculiar-looking debris and then by frenzied cheering from the COMM cabinet.

“A hit!” someone yelled.

“I nailed the bastard, I did!”

“Good on you, Ferdie! Give 'em wot for!”

Soon all seven of the captured field pieces were firing rapidly and wildly, as often as their disruptors could recover. Below, the Leaguers maintained a furious barrage in return — although two more of their number were now carbonized junk mounds smoldering at the base of towering smoke columns along the right-of-way. Beneath Brim's straining vehicle, the rampaging cable was bucking violently in two axes, making Barbousse lean desperately on the rudder pedals in a frantic attempt to keep from plunging off into the considerable abyss that now separated them from the surface.

“Sweet bloody Universe!” someone screamed in panic from the COMM console. “I'm losin' it!”

Horrified, Brim looked back along the wire to see one of his field pieces skid up and off the writhing cable, its projector still firing spasmodically. Momentum carried the awkward vehicle perhaps twenty irals higher before it peaked, rolled lazily to port, and plunged like a stone through the suspension wires, disappearing in a great splash that spread rapidly in all directions from the point of impact. Heartbeats later, a single explosion rent the lagoon in a giant glowing bubble that burst with a massive eruption of smoke and greasy flame, quenched almost instantly in a plume of steam and slowly tumbling debris.

Ahead, the apex of the great arch was now visible through the windshield, no more than a few hundred irals distant. Aft and below, the remaining enemy gun layers were finally warming to their jobs — space around Brim's convoy was suddenly alive with explosions and concussion. Three of the armored windows above his head shattered, filling the control cabin with a swarm of whirring glass splinters that buzzed harmlessly along the armored fabric of his battle suit and helmet, but shredded the tough upholstery of his seat. He shook his head. Another near miss tore a huge access hatch from something near the cooling mechanism — which was itself beginning to glow again from the strain of the long, steep climb and the insatiable demands of the disruptor, now firing almost constantly. Renewed clouds of steam billowed in their wake from the cooling fins, and as he looked down along the weaving, swinging cable, he could see his other field pieces were in no better shape at all. It was now or never. He bullied the COMM cabinet back to “broadcast” and yelled over the noise, “Now hear this, all hands! Switch targeting immediately to the buried cableway five hundred irals in front of the bridge. I repeat,
in front of
the bridge.” The disruptors went silent momentarily as he talked. “Dig up the cable so the battle crawlers can't follow right away,” he enjoined the ordnance men. “But
don't
touch the bridge. We need that for our own trip home!”

“Right ya are, Lieutenant!” someone called back over the noise.

“We'll be careful, sir,” someone else echoed.

In short order, the six disruptors directed a new frenzy of flame and concussion onto the buried cableway — no more accurate than before, but at least more-or-less concentrated. The bridge began to sway again, but Barbousse was now mastering the big machine, and he tracked the cable flawlessly as it pitched and yawed like a pendant flying in the breeze.

Suddenly Fragonard's thundering disruptor went silent. Brim looked up from his COMM cabinet. They were over the top! The big field piece could no longer bear on the approach ramp to the bridge. Soon the next cannon topped the bridge, then the next. When the sixth left off firing, Brim leaned out of the cabin in the roaring slipstream. Two thousand irals below, wide areas fronting the bridge approaches looked as if they had been plowed by a large asteroid. Gaping holes here and there told of many near misses, but the area through which the cable
had
to pass was now a gigantic crater that glowed from within and vomited forth a dense smoke pillar as the underlying rock formations themselves burned from the hellfire of Brim's disruptors. While he watched, the first enemy battle crawler pulled to a halt well short of the zone of destruction, firing off a desultory round now and then toward its escaping quarry.

Brim frowned as he drew his head back inside the cab. “They're stopped,” he told Barbousse.

The big rating expressed no surprise at Brim's announcement. “Makes sense, Lieutenant,” he said. “I figure in their eyes we've made ourselves out to be a lot more trouble than we're worth.” He grinned as the field piece roared between a pair of towering and the cable disappeared once more into the ground.

“I suppose that's right,” Brim said, watching the other machines regain the surface.

“It is, sir,” Barbousse assured him. “If you can't beat somebody you're fightin', it never hurts to convince him he can't beat
you,
either.” He grinned. “Besides,” he added, “anybody who's spent his life followin' a cable isn't going to be too happy about pickin' his way through
that
mess of craters — probably fall in and never find his way out.”

“Let's hope,” Brim agreed, settling wearily back in his uncomfortable seat at the COMM console. “Now all we've got to do is catch up with Colonel Hagbut.”

“Beggin' the Lieutenant's pardon, but that bird's liable to be all the way to Avalon by now,” Barbousse said.

Brim smothered a laugh — just as the landscape ahead erupted in flashes of light. Clicks later, the cascading, rolling thunder of high-energy artillery reached them. He looked at Barbousse and frowned. “Another battle?” he whispered.

“Sounds like one to me, sir...” Barbousse started, then he was cut off by the screech of an emergency channel running overload on the COMM console.

“Brim!
Stay clear
!
We're prisoners
! Target is map locus 765
_jj
. Everything up to
you
now…” The display globe went out in a manner similar to Fronze's demise.

Galvanized, Brim displayed the coordinates of the message on the COMM console. “Nine thirteen point five by E9
_G
. Can you help me remember that, Barbousse?”

“Nine thirteen point five by E9
_G
. I'll remember it, sir.”

“Good,” Brim said, his mind working furiously as he peered off along the cable right-of-way. “Now get ready to stop us in that patch of trees coming up to starboard. We've got some serious thinking to do before we go any farther.”

Scant cycles later, the convoy was hidden under the dense foliage of a large forest glen. Brim clambered onto the cool, fern-carpeted ground and motioned for the rest of the crews to stand down for the remainder of the day, then he leaned on a stump and breathed the clean fragrance of the trees, pondering what he ought to do next.

Suddenly, he was in command.

* * * *

Late into the long summer evening, Brim sat alone on the cool forest floor, back to a stump, hands around his knees while he desperately tried to assemble a coherent mental picture of his predicament. Reduced to absolute basics, the situation appeared to consist of no more than three primary elements, which he absently counted on his fingers for the hundredth time: (1) his chances for calling anyone to assist him, (2) his mission (and what to do about it), and (3) the meager resources at his disposal.

The first element — assistance — was simply unattainable. He immediately dismissed it as such. The Fleet certainly couldn't help him. Even if he asked his BATTLE COMMs to call, any starships they might find were powerless against his target, at least until he could contrive to achieve Hagbut's original mission and remove the A'zurnian hostages imprisoned there.

The second element, his mission, was a different proposition altogether — one in which the word “impossible” had no meaning whatsoever. It represented a commitment to duty he absolutely intended to fulfill. Of course,
that
involved no less than capture of a major military facility (which he had never so much as
seen),
freeing a sizable group of hostages who unwillingly — but effectively — protected that same facility from attack, delivery of the hostages to safety (wherever
that
was), and, finally, getting himself and his charges back to Magalla'ana in time to be evacuated when the mission terminated. All this, of course, had to be accomplished notwithstanding his
secondary
obligation to search for the captured Colonel Hagbut — if he found himself with spare time on his hands.

The third element, unfortunately, threatened ill for everything else. His resources were nowhere
near
to being suitable to the requirements of his mission, and that included himself. His fewer than twenty BATTLE COMMs, for example, had superb equipment for calling in destroyers — but before they could use any of it, they
first
had to double for 180 of Hagbut's highly trained foot soldiers!

The combined lack of help, impossible task load, and inadequate resources might have daunted many a normal Imperial.
Carescrian
Imperials, however, shared a unique background of adversity, one in which even the best of circumstances normally required making do with whatever expedients came to hand. He shrugged. He knew a way existed for getting the job done; no doubt about it. All he had to do was discover what that was.

He began early in the first watch of the night with Barbousse, poring over a three-dimensional map, scouring dusty corners of his mind to remember everything he ought to know about field operations from exercises at the Academy. As photomapped in real time by an orbiting reconnaissance craft, his target, the purported research center, sat astride the cableway in a wooded location at the extreme limits of Magalla'ana. A wide, narrow structure, it cascaded down a hillside in three levels of attached terraces, courtyards, and glass-enclosed laboratory structures. Significantly, its doors were on the
ground
story. Surrounding this structure was a huge campus area protected by a stout fence with gates at two opposing cable crossings. Clearly, the big facility also doubled as a key checkpoint controlling the cableway: Both gates appeared to be protected by large guardhouses. Inside the campus and considerably removed from the gates (as well as the research center itself), a rectangular compound with separate guardhouse was set off by its own double fence. The compound contained ten rectangular buildings in two rows of five each.

“That’s where they keep the hostages,” Brim declared grimly, pointing at the buildings with the magnifier.

“Looks like, sir,” Barbousse said. “And only one entrance to the compound.” He pursed his lips. “Makes things a lot easier for us with all the guards concentrated in one place.”

“Maybe.” Brim warned with a grin, “But first we've got to get there.”

Barbousse nodded gravely. “I've been thinkin' about that, Lieutenant,” he said with a frown.

“What's on your mind?” Brim asked.

“Well, sir,” the big man said, “hasn't been much traffic on the cableway since we hid in these woods this afternoon — and during that firefight we had comin' up to the bridge, you just
know
somebody got a warning off to the lab.” He frowned and shrugged. “So by now it pretty well stands to reason they've fixed a special welcome for anyone arriving at
this
side of the research center. I mean, we know they've got battle crawlers around, so there's no tellin' what else they have in store.”

“You're right,” Brim agreed gravely. “I guess I've given that some serious thought myself. And I think I've found something that might help.” He pointed on the map to an overgrown path that formed a rough semicircle around the campus and connected to the cableway at both ends approximately five thousand irals from the gates.