THE HELMSMAN: Director's Cut Edition (9 page)

“Aye, sir,” Barbousse, said, nudging the three black-suited Controllers into the companionway with the tip of his oversized space boot. “They won't stir no one up when I'm done with them.” Cycles later, he reappeared to herd the civilians from the bridge in a different direction. Brim filed all this away for future reference. Today, the huge starman was not at all the bumbling dunce who appeared on
Truculent's
gangway the morning of his arrival.

Then there was no more time for random thoughts as he took his place at the master control console in the center of the ship's peculiar cross-shaped Hyperscreen arrays. He heard Ursis thump down behind him in what appeared to be a propulsion console. The simplified layout on
Ruggetos'
tiny bridge was surprisingly easy to comprehend, yet as distant from Imperial design philosophy as the Cloud League's spoken Vertrucht was from Avalonian. “We'd better get some speed on this bucket of bolts, Nik,” he called back as he studied the readouts before him. “Our COMM people picked up the messages these birds broadcast. We'll likely have visitors around these parts before we know it, and the first of them probably won't be
Truculent.”

Always different in minor respects, flight controls on one starship usually turned out to be fairly similar to those on any other-anywhere in the Universe. These were no exception. Brim soon mastered all three panels and prudently set a course for deep space, waiting for the sound of the crystals when Ursis fired them up. But — at least by the chronometer on his console — five cycles later, nothing more happened. In the corner of his eye, he detected a concerned look on Amherst's face and continued to study his own readouts, hoping to avoid drawing further attention to the clearly troubled engineer at the console behind him. The ploy was totally without success.

“What seems to be the trouble, Ursis?” Brim heard the First Lieutenant ask nervously.

“Cannot change the Drive's power settings,” Ursis growled absently. “Something has been altered here.” His voice trailed away as he continued to concentrate.

Amherst fairly ran across the bridge to the console. “Something has been
altered?”
he asked, his voice suddenly tinged with fear.

Brim turned in his seat as Ursis looked up at the First Lieutenant, blinked his eyes, then shook his head as if what he had to say pained him. “Yes, Number One,” he said, frowning, “something has been tampered with that I do not yet understand. But if you do not interfere for a few cycles, I shall master it. Now…”

“Don't
touch
that console, you damned Sodeskayan fool!” Amherst squeaked in a high-pitched voice. “They may have rigged it to blow us up!” Sweat suddenly stood out on his forehead.

“With them still aboard?” Ursis demanded indignantly as he continued to manipulate the controls. “Ridiculous.”

“Get your hands
away
from those, Ursis!” Amherst hissed nervously. “That is an order. Understand?”

“Would you rather wait until one of their patrols intercepts us, Lieutenant?” Ursis asked, frowning.

“I don't want to
die,
Ursis,” Amherst spat. “Stay away from those controls before you blow us all over the Universe!”

“Wha-a-a-t?”

“You have no
idea
what they might have patched in there, Sodeskayan. By Slua's third eye, you toy with our lives. There's high power at the end of those controls.”

“I
know
from power for xaxt sake,” Ursis rumbled, head cocked to one side in anger. “That is how I make living — usually. “

“You know about power systems that have
not
been turned into death traps, Bear,” Amherst argued hotly.

“True, but I do not think such is the case here. Can you seriously believe they'd blow themselves up with us?”

“I shall believe anything I wish. And get your paws
off
those controls — that is a direct order! Do you understand?”

Ursis thumped angrily back in the recliner, a grim look on his face.

Unable to contain himself further, Brim jumped into the fray. “If we
don't
start moving a whole lot faster than this, we are very liable to end up looking down the barrel of a disruptor, and it won't be ours, Lieutenant Amherst,” he protested. “Both these ships broadcast calls for help.”

“Would you rather risk being blown to subatomics, Carescrian?” Amherst snapped angrily.

“I don't see what Nik's doing as any sort of risk,” Brim argued, temper only barely under control. “What I
do
see as a risk is sitting around here at less than LightSpeed. Anybody can catch us the way we are now, and unless I badly miss my guess, we shall soon be joined by a lot of 'anybodys.' “

“Well!” Amherst fumed. “I suppose I have no reason to be surprised. You Carescrians
would
be expected to side with the Bears, now that I think of it. Subhumans...”

Brim shook his head, ashamed to meet Ursis' eyes. “Perhaps you'd rather deal with our black-suited friends from the Cloud League,” he said hotly. “Shall I send Barbousse to fetch them? Maybe you can persuade them to explain what they've done.”

Amherst tensed. “We... we all know how much good
that
would do,” he said, a shadow of fear passing into his eyes. “And besides, I prefer to keep them where they are.”

Brim set his jaw and glowered at the starship's useless controls. He was still fighting his temper when the ship's proximity alarm started clanging overhead. He swiveled in his recliner, activating the aft Hyperscreens before he stopped.

“What is that?” Amherst asked, face ashen. “Are we going to blow up after all?”

“No,” Brim assured him grimly. “And you are
now
quite safe from foreign hands tampering with the ship's Drive mechanism.”

“Well, that's better,” Amherst said, taking a long breath of relief. “But what
was
that ringing?”

“The proximity alarm, Lieutenant,” Brim said, adjusting the focus of the aft Hyperscreens and shaking his head. “Help has just arrived.”

“Oh,” the First Lieutenant said, “then
Truculent's
back?”

“No,” Brim said, “but there
is
another starship outside. I can't make out the name. She's a Cloud League corvette. And both her long 99s are pointed right here at the bridge.”

Arms embracing his knees, Brim sat with his back against a chilly metal bulkhead gritting his teeth in frustrated anger. Twelve more would-be raiders from
Truculent
idled about in the gloomy compartment, faces set in like attitudes of disgust, helmets confiscated from their battle suits. Outside, in the merchantman's central K tube, he could hear disjointed bursts of guttural Vertrucht — and a lot of laughter. He understood most of what he heard: before the war, all ore-carrier Helmsmen had to learn Emperor Triannic's official language. League buyers were some of the Empire's best customers in those days. He snorted; the lot aboard
this
ship didn't know that about him. And he wasn't about to volunteer the information either, though so far his little secret had netted him no particular advantage. Except the knowledge that all twelve Imperials were up for immediate transfer to the waiting corvette.

He listened to the uneven thrumming of the merchantman's unsynchronized gravity generators. Every so often, they rattled a bolt somewhere on the bulkhead at his back, but he couldn't locate it in the dim light. Turning his head, he glared at Amherst's rigid figure
still
nearly frozen by fear as he stood bolt upright, staring at the door. Nearby, Ursis and Barbousse each occupied a corner, asleep and snoring profoundly. Brim chuckled in spite of his wrath — nobody in a right mind would disturb
those
two.

He shook his head in resignation: if nothing else, he'd learned a good lesson (though a fat lot of good it would do him grinding his strength away in some Cloud League slave brigade). But if he
did
taste freedom again someday, Wilf Brim swore he would never again acquiesce to anyone's reasoning flawed by fear. He shook his head in disgust. Had he taken steps to silence the frightened First Lieutenant (or had Ursis disregarded the man's orders and continued to work on the sabotaged Drive controls), they might now be boring their way through HyperSpace toward home and safety. Instead,
Ruggetos
and her vital cargo would soon resume their interrupted journey into a safe Leaguer harbor.

The Carescrian shrugged angrily. It was far too late now for thoughts of that sort. He purged them from his mind — self-recrimination was patently useless anyway, especially once basic mistakes were aired and thoroughly understood. He forced himself to random thoughts, conjured loose golden curls and frowning smiles; red, moist lips; Lacerta's “Rime of the Ancients….” He heard the husky voice in his mind's ear as if it were yesterday:
“Roll on, thou deep and star-swept cosmos.”
Margot Effer'wyck, her large hand warm and soft in his for a too-short instant of total enchantment. Sturdy legs and tiny feet. Suddenly, another line of poetry crossed his mind; written especially for her, it seemed, though Lacerta penned the words more than a thousand years before those blue eyes first saw the light of day.
“She walks in beauty, like the stars/ Of cloudless climes and worlds afar.”
He shook his head. Strange how meeting her affected him. Just that once, and her face was never again far below the surface of his mind.
“She walks in beauty...”

He chuckled to himself. Always an eye for the best! But this time those tastes had surely betrayed him. Incredible now he hadn't tumbled to the name when he first met her. Pym had to explain the whole thing days after they'd met: Effer'wyck! The beautiful blond Lieutenant was not only grandchild of Sabar Effer'wyck (ascetic mogul of the powerful star nation), she was also a full-blooded princess and kin to the late Emperor Erioed III himself.

He snorted in embarrassment. A Carescrian talking face to face with an Effer'wyck. Even taking her hand. He pictured her and the elegant Baron LaKarn together in some ornate setting, sharing a laugh about his pitiful love of poetry. His cheeks burned with shame. Given his background of poverty, he'd need to become another Admiral Merlin Emrys — save a whole star system, perhaps — before she'd notice any interest he might have in her.

He shrugged. It was all over now anyway. Not much chance to accomplish anything heroic where he was going, or contribute anything to anybody, except perhaps to League Admiral Kabul Anak's war effort. Well, he considered, if nothing else, he had his anonymity. She couldn't laugh at someone she didn't remember. And Wilf Brim was about to disappear completely, another small statistic in a very large war.

The hatch abruptly clanged open, nearly blinding him with light. Shouted commands propelled him to his feet, and a sharp blow to his head brought sudden pinpoints of light to his eyes as he started through the hatch and down the companionway. In a black mood, he stumbled off toward incarceration aboard the enemy corvette.

Shambling helmetless through the transparent transfer tube, he glanced toward
Truculent's
ugly little launch hanging forlornly at the merchantman's bridge, silhouetted against the blazing stars of outer space. How differently things had begun only a few short metacycles ago! Ahead, the glasslike tube ended at a circular hatch opened in the corvette's second module, a fat cylinder mounted astride the ship's central K tube: Crew quarters, he guessed. Next aft, the spherical battery module carried both 99-mmi turrets mounted at opposite poles. After this… He craned his neck, but he was already too close alongside now to see. If he remembered correctly, though, most Cloud-League ships started with a spherical bridge module forward, then alternated cylinders and globes along the central K tube. This ship, then, would continue with a second cylinder, then a globe, and presumably end with a final cylinder containing the Drive and antigravity machinery. He wished he'd paid more attention when he could see the whole ship in the merchantman's bridge display.

Then he was inside the hatch, where a sharp kick by a hulking, lantern-jawed Controller rating sent him reeling along a companionway into the K tube itself. There, a second black-suited rating with scowling mien and great bushy eyebrows waved him aft with an ugly-looking blast pistol. A few steps farther on, a Controller officer stopped him in his tracks — an
Overmann
(the League equivalent of an Imperial lieutenant). Her face was horribly disfigured by a purple scar that ran diagonally across her mouth from her nose to her chin.

“You will halt!” she commanded, large almond-shaped eyes blazing with hate. Somehow Brim couldn't bring himself to blame her; no question she'd received her wound at the hands of someone dressed in the same kind of battle suit as his. He stopped and prudently froze, listening behind him to other voices, thumping, stomping, and occasional grunts of pain, as his comrades from
Truculent
were herded into the corridor. The black-suited lantern jaw at the hatch evidently enjoyed kicking. His own shin throbbed, but he dared not move to rub it.

At some length, the woman banged on a hatch beside her. “All right,
Overmann,”
she said gruffly, “here's the lot. They're yours.”

The hatch opened and a serious-looking, bespectacled officer in the stiff-necked gray tank suit of the Cloud League's “normal” military starfleet stepped through. Thin and ascetic-looking, his face had more the intense seriousness of a lifelong student than the careful awareness Brim associated with military professionals. A person more likely to be addressed by “Professor” as
“Overmann,”
he wore an antique timepiece on his wrist, which sparkled in the overhead lights. He was followed by two elderly gray-suited ratings, one fat with squinting eyes and flushed face, the other with the looks of a farmer, spare and muscular, whose callused hands had not yet lost the hardness required of those who tend the soil. Each carried a wicked-looking blast pike of League manufacture. “Ah, yes, ma'am,” the gray
Overmann
said in a cheerful voice to his disfigured Controller counterpart. “Just leave the whole thing to us. We'll take good care of them for you.” He smiled hopefully.