The Defenders

CHAPTER 10

Loiterers

For most of the next two Standard Days, fierce gravity storms enabled Defense Command to recover some of its expended strength. Leaguer activity was limited to reconnaissance and isolated ground attacks. No Imperial crews were lost, and only one starship (a reconnaissance-configured Defiant) was missing in an extra-violent storm off Effer'wyckean border stars.

In fact, the second morning of this unexpected respite appeared as if it might just pass without any Leaguer activity at all. At midday (Avalonian Standard Time), however, Nergol Triannic KA'PPAed a boastful personal message directly to the Imperial Palace that he would call off the continued bombardment of Avalon if Onrad would simply step down and turn the reins of government over to the representatives of the League.

Afterward, Ursis reported at a broadcast staff meeting that the Leaguers believed they had everything necessary in place for their invasion—except, as usual, control of space. Triannic had made his little oration at the request of his High Command— minus Hoth Orgoth. They wanted to see if their goal could be reached by substituting a little bluff for the large number of starships that it now appeared would be realistically necessary to tame the Empire's apparently indestructible Defense Command. Ursis added, however, that barring success in that forlorn endeavor, Triannic still maintained personal hopes that Orgoth's huge raids on Avalon might also play a decisive role in the war, possibly coercing the Empire to capitulate without the necessity of invasion.

For the first time, the Sodeskayan intelligence community openly called Triannic's thinking "confused."

Late in the day, some 150 attack ships made it through slackening storms to inflict heavy damage on all parts of Avalon City. At the same time, however, Imperial Attack Command launched another of its own raids against Tarrott, this time leveling the city's prized Great Civic Terminal and blowing both dams on Lake Tegler while Brim and a number of volunteers flew raids on concentrations of invasion forces in Effer'wyck. It was extremely dangerous to attack there because of the tremendous concentrations of enemy killer ships as well as the paucity of Imperial starships available for long-range escort duty. Nevertheless, not only did the Imperial raiders raise considerable havoc among the occupying Leaguers, they also came back totally unscathed, indicating that the enemy Generals were as much unprepared to counter punishment as they were to give it out. That, in Brim's way of thinking, boded well for the Empire's future.

On his return to FleetPort 30, he found a summons to provide more firsthand testimony at another round of Onrad's War Cabinet meetings in Avalon the next day. Feeling a little guilty about missing the battles that were sure to come on the morrow—especially with Ursis's new crystal system working so well—he messaged his availability, and turned in early. Actually, he looked forward to the opportunity to more completely know this beautiful woman who—on the spur of the moment, it seemed—had decided to be the mother of his first child....

"Faint hope of our capitulation," Onrad broadcast to the people of Avalon in an official morning answer to the Tyrant's question of the previous day. "Faint bloody hope of that. The crux of this war has now arrived. We must regard the next week or so as a very important part of our history. It ranks with the days when the Vorgoth Horde was approaching Asterious or when Admiral Desterro stood between disaster and Ramoth's Grand Fleet at the Antar Triad. And as we did then, we shall again triumph...."

After Brim's subsequent attendance at the War Cabinet— where he found himself consulted far more than he had expected—he and Raddisma waited for the all-clear to sound, then dined simply in an elegant little cafe only a few rubble-strewn blocks from the palace; it was clear that the baby would be born soon. As they talked, he found himself utterly charmed by this incredibly beautiful, straightforward woman, who freely revealed her innermost hopes for the future—and especially for the future of "her" daughter. Later, as Brim took his leave at the palace gates, he felt a deep, intense pride that she had somehow chosen him to father her daughter. They promised to meet again within the week—either at another restaurant or in one of Avalon's birthing hospitals.

As if desperate to achieve the superiority in space he had promised his Emperor, Hoth Orgoth ordered wave after wave of raiders against Avalon City the next day. His initial thrust of about 250

starships comprised four formations. The first turned back early; both the second and third turned tail, aborting their attacks early after vigorous interceptions while still in deep space. The fourth squadron managed to fight its way to the outskirts of Avalon and even fire disrupters on the city—but it suffered tremendous casualties at the hands of Starfury and Defiant squadrons "fortuitously" positioned at intersections of the BKAEW aiming beams. Brim was among the defenders who savaged the unfortunate group of Leaguers.

The large formation of Leaguers had been sighted early on by watchful BKAEW operators over the planet of Avalon. All flyable starships of 11 Group—eight Starfuries and twelve Defiants in five flights of four each—were soon aloft in the area. Brim immediately dispatched two flights of Defiants (those whose leaders were without receiver crystals) to intersect the Leaguers present course nearly halfway out across the 'Wyckean Void. He then led Moulding with four Starfuries, Aram with four Defiants, and his own flight of four Starfuries back over Avalon to the general area in which Sector Control predicted the Leaguers would attack.

He didn't wait long. Within cycles, he sighted large numbers of approaching Leaguers, under such heavy attack they could no longer be described as a formation. Moments later, his crystal came to life—as did the other two crystals allotted his wing. Positioning two Starfuries at that intersection, he quickly located a second beam and began to circle its intersection. Moments later a big Kreissel 111 hove into view and was immediately blasted into subatomics without firing its first shot. Before he could locate another beam, however, a small group of Kreissels with an escort of two Gorn-Hoff 270s flashed past his nose. He opened fire at a point-blank range, getting one of the 270s on fire. The other broke off immediately and headed for Effer'wyck.

In the suddenly crowded sky, he next picked up another beam but before he could follow it to its intersection he encountered still another Kreissel and attacked at a high deflection angle, blowing large chunks from the port side of its bridge until at least three League killer ships drove him away.

Now, with the Leaguers on his heels, he dived for the surface, his rear turrets blasting away at a stubborn Gorn-Hoff that didn't break off until they were no more than ten thousand irals from the surface.

Making a steep, climbing turn to starboard, he zoomed vertically into the fight where his gunner got a number of shots at still another Gorn-Hoff from no more than six hundred irals' distance. As this unfortunate Leaguer dived steeply, apparently out of control, Brim spotted another Gorn-Hoff and closed to attack him from astern, all forward turrets firing short bursts from nine hundred to three hundred irals' range. This 270 dived and crashed to the ground in flames...

Brim returned to FleetPort 30 reporting two authenticated kills, and a number "damaged." Too tired for the usual victory celebrations, he headed directly for bed. Counting his tour in Fluvanna—he'd been fighting the war for nearly two solid years now—and it was beginning to tire him out. He could only thank Voot that the Leaguers appeared to be getting tired, too!

On the fifth morning of the Leaguers' onslaught against Avalon City proper, intense gravity storms returned to the area, all but shutting down operations on both sides. Brim's morning TSIB indicated that the previous day's fighting cost the Imperial defenders twenty-nine aircraft against the League's twenty-five. And even though a good proportion of the Imperial losses could be made up by midafternoon of the next day, operational starships had fallen by 12 to 679. One crew was reported lost and five were missing.

In spite of the tempestuous regional gravity, however, approximately forty-three Leaguer attack ships, most heavy cruisers, did make it through the storms that day—and indeed managed to inflict even more damage to Avalon. A further forty people were killed, and the strain in the city remained intense.

As Brim moored at FleetPort 30 after a sortie in which the ship he was flying shared destruction of a Kreissel 111 and damaged three Gorn-Hoff 262s, he learned that one of the audacious late-afternoon raiders had even blasted the Royal Palace, landing a number of disrupter hits in close proximity to where Onrad was at work in his office. His thoughts went immediately to Raddisma as Imperial media services made the most of the occasion, anxious to prove that the new Emperor was as much at risk as everyone else. But common logic told him that little danger could have come to either Onrad or Raddisma, and he dismissed the bald-faced propaganda with a smile of derision. Places like the palace were so well protected that literally nothing could harm its occupants so long as they remained inside.

Weren't they... ?

Somehow, "common logic" failed to ease his mind as he shut down the Starfury's helm, and when he wearily quit the bridge, he had still not shaken the forebodings of tragedy, especially since—for the first time since he could remember—no one was at the end of the brow to greet his victorious crew.

Had something gone wrong? Where was everybody? Before he reached the ship's boarding lobby, he found himself tearing along the corridor at a dead run—on a course for his office and a private HoloPhone from which he could place a call to Raddisma.

He never made it....

On the far side of the boarding tube, Onrad himself waited with a grim face, a black eye, and a bandage covering his swollen forehead. Silently, the two made their way through a sea of raised eyebrows to Brim's office, where Onrad gently closed the door.

Brim's heart nearly stopped from dread as the Emperor began to speak. Somehow, he knew what was coming next.

"Wilf," Onrad said quietly, "for all my supposed talent at oratory, I simply don't know how to put this nicely." He grabbed Brim's hand and looked him straight in the face. "Emperors are supposed to have no friends—only interests. The fact that you have nevertheless become a friend, and a trusted one at that, makes this so difficult that I almost sent someone else to tell you," he continued, staring at the wall as if he couldn't stand his own words. "It was that bond of trust between us that brings me here this afternoon to tell you that Raddisma was killed in the raid that you must by now have learned damaged the palace late this afternoon. Neither of us were in the deep shelters, as we should have been."

Brim staggered backward until he caught his balance on the desk. "Sweet mother of the Universe," he gasped in utter despair. He had never experienced a wave of grief tike this—not even when his sister died in his arms.

Onrad shook his head bitterly. "I shall always blame myself for her death," he continued in a voice high with strain, "both because she was here in Avalon at my personal request and because I had not moved the palace hospital farther underground."

From somewhere deep in his despair, Brim found compassion for the Galactic Emperor who had just prostrated himself because of a single death. "You can't blame yourself for doing the best you could for her," he said. Then, it began to dawn on him that the man was here to tell him about the tragedy—not Mustafa. He opened his mouth to speak but Onrad continued, his eyes fastened somewhere thousands of c'lenyts distant.

"Miraculously," the Emperor continued, "she did manage to deliver your daughter in the metacycle before her death. The little girl was still being prepared in the palace infirmary when the Leaguers' shots hit the wing where Raddisma was resting..."

"My daughter!" Brim exclaimed, the thought—and the words—about Mustafa blasted from his mind. "She is alive?" he asked.

Onrad put his great, strong hand on Brim's shoulder. "She is very much alive, Wilf," he said. "A beautiful young woman, even now. Raddisma would have been very proud—as will you."

Brim shook his head for a moment and peered at the Emperor. "Wait a moment, Your Highness—did you say, my daughter.''

Onrad smiled, "Yes, Wilf," he said. "I've known her true parentage for a few months, now."

Brim closed his eyes again. "Somehow, I thought you had. That's why you brought Mustafa Eyren and his court to Avalon, isn't it?"

Onrad smiled, "Well," he said, "I'll admit that had a lot to do with it."

"Universe," Brim whispered. "How can I ever begin to express my gratitude...?"

"For getting her killed?"

"For doing what you thought was best for her and me, Your Majesty." Brim stated firmly. "They might both have been killed in Atalanta. Hador Haelic's under attack, too, you know."

"Thanks," Onrad said simply. "You've been damned good about it." Reaching inside his cloak, he handed Brim a small, pink envelope. "Here," he said. "She left this with Petty Officer Tutti—who was fortunately with the baby when the blast came."

Brim ground his teeth as he looked blindly at the envelope— it was the old-fashioned kind of communication Raddisma favored; she had a deep respect for trappings from bygone ages. "I only hope to the Universe she didn't suffer much."

Onrad shook his head. "I was only two rooms away, Wilf," he said, pointing to the bandage on his forehead. "I got there moments later, and as I am a man, I can attest that the poor woman never felt a thing."

"What a horrible, horrible waste this war is," Brim said bitterly, unfolding the letter that was written in traditional ink on antique paper.

Dear Wilf,

Since you are reading this letter, I will have passed away for one reason or another without being able to say a personal farewell. Not what I intended at all. I believe that I loved you—or was certainly on my way to that comfortable state of repose. I also believe that I might have made you happy. Perhaps in another life.

This letter is not about me. Rather, it is about our daughter who I shall also presuppose has survived; Tutti would not have otherwise delivered this letter. I shall now have to ask that you at least keep an eye on her until Mustafa Eyren finds her some sort of a home.

With a new Chief Consort replacing me in his bed, the Nabob's interest in this female child will wane rapidly. Perhaps you can use your influence to insure that she goes to a good future, I had such fine hopes for her!

Again, it is imperative that you understand you have no responsibility for this child other than what you choose to take for yourself. It is certainly no fault of hers that she was born, but then it is none of yours, either, since the decision to conceive was exclusively mine during one special night of complete ecstasy. I am truly sorry that I failed to survive long enough to carry out this responsibility on my own.

Thank you for whatever you are willing to do.

Love,

Raddisma

Brim's eyes filled with tears and he handed the letter to Onrad. "She was quite a lady, Your Majesty," he whispered. "I think you should share this."

Carefully placing his eyeglasses on the bridge of a swollen nose, Onrad took the letter and read it. Presently, he looked up. "One night?" he asked. "That's all you knew each other?"

"That's all," Brim said.

Onrad smiled. "Well, you must have made quite an impression, my friend," he said. "Since she moved in, she followed any news that reached the palace about you. And she kept a sizable journal of media pieces that mentioned your exploits," He pursed his lips for a moment, then peered at Brim in a conspiratorial way. "Hmm," he mused. "Old Mustafa's going to be problem here for a while, but—unless you have some good objections—I'm going to take the child into the palace household. Being born here on an Imperial planet, she'll have her choice of citizenship when she grows up. So we'll simply have to spoil her sufficiently that she makes the right choice when the time comes. Besides," he said with a smile, "a little girl will considerably brighten up the palace—especially since we shall all be living some distance underground for a while. She'll have Petty Officer Tutti as her personal governess and her favorite 'Uncle' Wilf can visit her anytime he is in town. How about it, Admiral?" he asked.

It took Brim a long time to force through the rush of emotion that captured his entire being.

"W-what in the Universe could I possibly say to such kindness, Your Majesty?" he stammered, only half in control of himself.

"How about 'yes'?" Onrad asked softly.

"Yes," Brim managed to choke. "Please."

"I'll take care of it immediately," Onrad said, then he blinked and held up an index finger. "Oh, yes," he added, reaching inside his cloak once more. "The doctor gave me this for you—it nearly slipped my mind." This time, he handed Brim a small plastic envelope embossed with Onrad's Imperial seal.

Brim opened it carefully and withdrew a small, personal-sized hologram. It pictured a tiny, wrinkled infant, clearly born only metacycles before.

"She's pretty as a picture, isn't she?" Onrad said, looking over his shoulder. "What're you going to name her?"

" N-name?"

"Yeah. She's got to have a name, you know."

Brim grimaced. The furthest thing from his mind during the last year was finding a name for a baby girl. He looked at die hologram. His daughter had Raddisma's lovely almond eyes—and wore a pink ribbon around a shock of black, curly hair. By the very Universe, she was beautiful. He had closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of names, when it came to him, "I've got it!" he said.

"The name?"

Brim nodded.

Onrad waited a few moments, then smiled. "Are you going to tell me what it is?" he asked impatiently.

Brim smiled. "The only name she could have, Your Majesty. 'Hope.' "

This time, it was Onrad who closed his eyes for long moments, clearly too full of emotion to speak. Finally, he nodded and smiled. "It'll do," he said, a tear starting down his cheek. "It'll damn well do...."

As the Triad's first rays warmed FleetPort 30, Barbousse wakened Brim with a special bulletin newly decoded from the Admiralty. According to Sodeskayan Intelligence sources, Hoth Orgoth's High Command in Occupied Effer'wyck had taken advantage of the gravity storms to organize what promised to be a colossal, maximum-effort raid. For two days running, "borrowed" attack ships had been arriving from bases throughout the League's conquered empire, and were now approaching numbers that could literally swamp the Imperial defenses, good as they had become. Clearly, the Leaguers were rapidly building up to some sort of climatic event.

Only metacycles later, the midday gravitological forecast from the Admiralty predicted that the turbulent gravity would soon begin to stabilize, bringing (relative) calm to the galactic center—and a renewed threat of invasion to Avalon. In midafternoon, Brim boarded a shuttle for Avalon to meet Calhoun at another War Cabinet meeting in Avalon. There, he was called for firsthand information only twice, but he did listen to Hagbut warn that a large number of transport craft the Leaguers had previously dispersed to remote sections of Effer'wyck were now being gathered at locations on habitable spacecoast planets from which an invasion might be launched. Afterward, Hagbut's staff presented a cogent-but-lengthy dissertation warning that these movements—in conjunction with the increased scale of attacks on Avalon City itself—indicated a Leaguer incursion was not only likely, but it was imminent.

And much as he disliked giving in to fear-mongering, Brim was very close to embracing the idea that an invasion very well might take place in the near future. He shivered as he caught a staff skimmer to the shuttle stop at Lake Mersin Fleet Base.

From the reports he'd heard, the Imperial defenders were going to need a lot more than three hundred crystals jury-rigged into the odd Starfury or Defiant. If someone didn't deliver Ursis's self-propelled space mines soon, the good people of Avalon would be learning Vertrucht in the very near future.

The first Leaguer raids reached Avalon before Brim even made it to the shuttle base. Caught out on Vereker Boulevard when the explosions began, his driver pulled to the curb and ran for shelter. By now rather acclimated to being shot at by Leaguers, Brim simply got out and watched the unfolding battle with a sort of professional interest. Judging from the noise—and thundering salvos from Universe only knew how many disrupters—he estimated that at least a hundred Leaguer starships were attacking over a wide area, while bringing even more terror and death to the city. After a while, he climbed behind the controls of the staff skimmer himself and continued on toward the base. He could be hit equally well standing still or on the move, and the latter got him closer to the front of the shuttle boarding line, so he drove. But he came to an abrupt halt at the blazing wreck of a Gradgroat-Norchelite cathedral—it had clearly been hit within a metacycle. Pulling to the curb, he rushed inside—two great oaken doors had been blown across eight lanes of thoroughfare—where he encountered still another scene out of someone's private vision of Hell. Two blood-drenched women were calmly piecing bodies together and laying their ghastly creations in cartons placed in neat rows on the floor. Unable to confront the gruesome scene before him, he looked up into what must have once been a high, vaulted ceiling. Now, all that remained were shards of supports along the tops of the walls. A disrupter beam must have pierced the roof like an eggshell and burst among a group of women and children sheltering in the sanctuary. Fighting his gorge to a draw, he choked, "Can I... er... g-get help for you?"

One of the women shook her head and spoke without looking up from her terrible task. "No, thank you," she said in horror-dulled voice. "It's really not a difficult job. And actually, the stench is the worst part of it."

"Except, perhaps for all the missing parts," the other woman chimed in. She grimaced with effort as she pulled a rather hefty right leg from the large pile of scraps they'd collected between them, then placed it beside the frail left leg of a child. "If we're too lavish making one body almost whole," she said, "then others have gaps in them, you see. And we can't have that, can we?"

Next morning, as Brim sat in the splintered wreckage of FleetPort 30's wardroom, he nodded grimly reading a special dispatch from Military Intelligence. It quoted an intercepted Situation Report from Hanna Notrom, League Minister for Public Consensus, to the League's Military Attaché in a neutral country. In it, she boasted that fully six Imperial FleetPorts had been rendered useless, among them FleetPort 30, itself....

Less than a metacycle later, he laughed balefully as he set out from that very satellite to face an early-morning raid of at least 150 Leaguers. The starship he was taking into combat was so patched up it would only just fly. But the Leaguers' aiming crystal still functioned atop his center readout panel, therefore he might do some damage. Glancing aft. he could see that the majority of Starfuries he led on the mission were in much the same condition as his own: heavily patched and not always flying a true course. On top of that, he could barely hold his own eyes open, and he knew that only the greenest replacements had cadged any real rest in the past three weeks. He took a deep breath and sipped a scalding mug of cvceese' to keep himself awake. Outside, local gravity was working up to a real space purger. If the flight he led was typical, then Imperial Defense Command itself had moved very close to "overwhelmed" status—while the Leaguers were still building up to their big raid. The only thing that kept him going at all was the almost certain knowledge that his opponents were experiencing the same fatigue as his own—along with a growing frustration at their inability to clear the skies of defending starships.

Even so, it was going to be a close thing, indeed.

Early on Nonad fifteenth—amid powerful waves of violent regional gravity that rocked the whole satellite—Brim tried to rest in his office while he read the TSIB. This morning's version contained a special summary bulletin. Late the previous day, Sodeskayan Intelligence had delivered top-secret transcripts of a high-level conference held in Tarrott the previous afternoon. In effect, Triannic had officially given Orgoth only until the seventeenth to sufficiently batter the Imperial Fleet so that an invasion could take palace. Otherwise, the Tyrant would postpone his invasion of Avalon and turn his energies to other conquests.

Two more days, Brim thought solemnly. Could Defense Command hold out? This day of relative ease—thanks only to blustering gravity—was benefiting both sides equally. But Fleet gravitologists predicted a rapid clearing during the Night Watch. And then "The Great Raid," as Eve Cartier had begun calling it, could begin—at the Leaguers' pleasure. He shook his head. At least a few shipments of mines had started to arrive at the FleetPort satellites. He presently had eighty some stashed away and at least a hundred were due on the morrow. All in all, perhaps two thousand or so would be available by the time the battle began. But they would have to be used wisely, or the slight advantage they gave the Imperial defenders would be quickly frittered away...

Two urgent communiqués from Calhoun arrived shortly after midday. The first contained revised orders implementing a new Imperial strategy based on the Sodeskayan intelligence. The League's forthcoming all-out attack would be met with a single, desperate throw of the dice upon which would now rest the whole fate of the Empire. Calhoun had concluded that this was finally the time to throw all his defending forces against the League attack, including the last of his meager reserves.

Brim leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his neck and thought about the momentous decision his fellow Carescrian had just made. It meant that if Triannic decided after the battle he could now invade, Imperial forces would have no resources to meet him. He nodded to himself. It was the right thing to do. If indeed it appeared to the Leaguers that the time was ripe for invasion, then Defense Command would have pretty well been beaten anyhow. He was ready. And, he supposed, so was nearly everyone else—on both sides of the war. Taking a deep breath, he shook his head in resignation and called the second "urgent" communiqué to his display. Then he gasped aloud.

2134DSFGK-3FDG GROUP KLJ9W 375/52012

[TOP SECRET]

PERSONNEL ACTION MEMORANDUM, IMPERIAL FLEET,

PERSONAL COPY

FROM:

BU FLEET PERSONNEL;

ADMIRALTY, AVALON

TO:

W.A. BRIM, CAPTAIN, I.F., FLEETPORT 30

<893BVC-12-K2134MV/57320AS90DWQER07GW0>

SUBJECT:DUTY ASSIGNMENT

(1) AS OF THIS DATE, YOU ARE PROMOTED REAR ADMIRAL (LOWER

HALF) (UNRESTRICTED LINE).

(2) YOU ARE IMMEDIATELY DETACHED PRESENT ASSIGNMENT SECTOR

COMMANDER, FLEETPORT 30

(3) REPORT VICE ADM B. CALHOUN, COMMANDER, HOME FLEET,

DEFENSE COMMAND, AS COMMANDER, 13 GROUP.

(4) YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY RELOCATE PLACE OF RESIDENCE TO

FLEETPORT 19, ARIEL. RELOCATION ALLOWANCE DOES NOT APPLY.

FOR THE EMPEROR:

LUAN TERRIL, CAPTAIN, I.F.

[END OF TOP SECRET]

2134DSFGK-3FDG

Suddenly he remembered Onrad's words as they discussed his daughter's future: "How about it, Admiral?" the Emperor had asked. He'd known!

At that moment, Barbousse raced into the room. "Cap'm," he panted, nearly out of breath. "I've b-been transferred! An' I didn't even know."

Brim bit his lip. It was hard to believe a man with Barbousse's contacts had been surprised with a reassignment. "Where to, Chief?" he asked with a real frown of concern.

"Um... to FleetPort 19. I'm to report to—well, I don't know who I'm to report to. Rear Admiral Gamriel was killed a couple of weeks ago. His replacement, I guess, Cap'm Brim, can you do anythin' about it? I'll be glad to turn down the promotion if I can keep workin' for you."

"You mean you want to work for a Carescrian? One who regularly puts your life at risk?"

"Aye, sir," Barbousse said, visibly upset.

"And what's this about a promotion?"

"To Chief Warrant Officer, Cap'm. But all that's a bunch of Gorksroar anyway. No matter what they want to call me, I'm still a Chief and mighty proud of it..."

Brim shook his head. Notwithstanding a friendship that went back to the day he'd joined the Fleet, life would be hard without Barbousse. The fine hand of Onrad was in this, too. "Chief," he said with as serious a mien as he could muster, " I just got a reassignment, too."

Barbousse clapped a hand to his forehead, "Sweet sufferin' Universe," he swore. "What's happened to m' contacts?" He shook his head as if he were recovering from a physical blow. "Beggin' the Cap'm's pardon," he asked, "but, um... where to?"

"FleetPort 19," Brim said.

Barbousse did a perfect double take, then wrinkled his nose, closed his eyes, and nodded. "You got promoted, too, didn't you, er... Admiral?"

Brim nodded with a grin that was a lot more emotion than smile. "Congratulations, my good friend," he said, grasping the big man's hand. "There is nobody more deserving than you."

"Except you, Admiral." Barbousse stood back and saluted. "My most heartfelt congratulations to you, sir."

"That's my first flag salute," Brim said, returning the compliment solemnly. "How fitting it should come from you."

"Beggin' the Admiral's pardon—for the first time—but I think we make a fine team," Barbousse observed.

"We'd better," Brim said. "The Emperor's counting on us."

"Aye, sir," Barbousse said. "I was beginnin' to suspect he had somethin' to do w' this." He shook his head. "I mean, my contacts never get fooled like that."

"Think your contacts can find us a ride to FleetPort 19?" Brim asked. He presently had less than one Standard Day to organize for a battle that could decide the fate of the whole empires—and most assuredly his own neck.

"I'll have a shuttle waitin' in a few..." Barbousse started when Moulding suddenly burst through the door.

"Wilf!" he clamored. "What's happened to you? I've just been ordered to take over your job here at FleetPort 30?''

"It's a long story," Brim said with a tired smile.

"Um... I'll get transportation ready," Barbousse said, starting for the door.

"Oh, Chief!" Brim called. "Schedule a meeting for tonight— FleetPort 19's wardroom. Group and Squadron Commanders. Twilight and two."

"Aye, Admiral," Barbousse said, knuckling his forehead. "Twilight an' two." Then he turned to Moulding and grinned. "Oh, an' congratulations, Cap'm Moulding," he said.

"Thanks, Chief," Moulding said, then looked at Brim in puzzlement. "How'd he know that?" he demanded, but Barbousse was already hot-footing down the hall.

"As I said," Brim muttered, offering his old friend the chair and desk he was now vacating, "It's a long story..."

At precisely Twilight:2:0, Barbousse stepped to a table that had been placed at one end of FleetPort 19's once-elegant wardroom, now a mass of pressure patches and splintered wood paneling.

The Warrant Officer paused for a moment while the room quieted, then, taking a deep breath, he announced, "The Admiral!"

With a scraping of chairs, thirty-odd men and women who steered the efforts of 13 Group struggled to their feet and stood as straight as their various stages of fatigue permitted. It was not a time to demand smart military protocol, and Brim knew it as he strode through the door to the table. "Seats!" he said crisply.

After the second round of shuffling and scraping ended, he grimaced. "First," he said to the sea of haggard faces—even the magnificent Eve Cartier showed a bit of age tonight—"I appreciate what it has cost most of you to come here tonight. Metacycles of precious sleep, if nothing else. But I doubt if many of you are more tired than myself—for the self-same reasons." He paused for a moment, then nodded.

"Well, Hoth Orgoth's little operation could very well come to an abrupt end as early as tomorrow."

That got their attention. The coughing and foot shuffling that had almost immediately formed a background for his talk stopped, and many of the slouching bodies straightened in their seats. Glazed eyes suddenly focused.

"That's right," he said. "For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of plowing through TSIBs three times a day, Triannic's given Admiral Orgoth only through tomorrow to put up or shut up."

Here and there around the room, Brim watched more of the nearly enervated eyes begin to come alive. Were the thoughts behind them of opportunity—or simply apprehension at yet another battle to be fought against ever-increasing odds?

"This time," he continued, nodding at Barbousse, "we've got a few nasty surprises for the zukeeds." He frowned as the big Warrant Officer activated a globular projector that displayed a three-dimensional, holographic representation of the new space mine prototype. A number of eyebrows instantly rose in curiosity. Toward the back of the room, Eve sat with the same kind of tired little smile she always had after they'd made love. Earlier that evening, his promotion had made her as happy as if she'd been promoted herself—now she trusted him to lead her in battle. He took a deep breath. That was responsibility! He paused to let people study the image as it turned slowly above the projector.

"It's what we call a 'Loiterer'," he began presently. "An outgrowth of the inconveniently secret technology that's permitted some of us to help you pick off a few extra Leaguers the last few days. And this," he said, changing the view to an animated representation of the Leaguers' new BKAEW beam aiming system, "is how we're going to use them to break the back of Orgoth's big attack tomorrow..."

Dawn: 2:78, with the last details they could think of resolved— or at least as much resolved as possible—the collected Sector and Squadron Leaders from Group 13 rose and snapped to attention, then raced for the starships that would return them to their bases. Reconnaissance flights over a number of Effer'wyckean planets were already reporting the land of activity that normally presaged a heavy raid on Avalon. Only this activity involved the greatest number of war machines that had ever been recorded.

All along the Effer'wyckean frontier, habitable spacecoast planets were crowded with every kind of space barge known—packed with land crawlers, siege engines, and hordes of ground troops. All destined for the Triad and Avalon City.

As Eve Carrier took her leave, she quietly placed an ancient RuneStone from their native Carescria in his hand. "I weel know there's na magic, Wilf Brim," she whispered. "But this ha' alway' brought me guid fortune—an' m'forbearers, too. Today, m'blue-eyed lover, you'll need it mair than any of us..."

Reports from Moulding in FleetPort 30 indicated that day was dawning beautifully below in Avalon City. Over Ariel in the torn wreckage called FleetPort 13, Barbousse woke Brim to inform him that matching gravitational conditions had returned throughout the Triad; they both knew that the Leaguers would soon be active. The Carescrian arrived at his Starfury just as nearby BKAEW plotters picked up forty plus enemy starships assembling in the Eppeid area of Effer'wyck, then a force of twenty plus, followed by a second force of forty plus.

Now, the Leaguers moved toward Avalon without their usual feints and subsidiary attacks to lure Defense Command starships into space prematurely. Clearly—at least to Brim—they were acting in as much desperation as himself. Half a metacycle later, he personally led all of the sixteen squadrons his five sectors could muster in a "Big Wing" formation. In their wake flew a raffish gaggle of ten commandeered civilian cargo packets crewed by Imperial starsailors and loaded with some forty Loiterers each. The crews were ready to release their mines as soon as the Leaguers' aiming beams began to appear.

An estimated two hundred enemy starships appeared below LightSpeed just before midday. This was nearly ten clicks after Leaguers in Effer'wyck had designated their first targets with BKAEW beams—and at least three clicks after Loiterers had been sewn everywhere that intersections could be detected. Imperial squadrons tore into the Leaguers nearly ten thousand c'lenyts out into the 'Wyckean Void, for the first time outnumbering the enemy and shredding their formations. Within cycles, the sky above Avalon filled with dogfights.

As Brim directed his forces—mixing in with the actual Fighting whenever he could—he knew that a second League attack at the same time would be deadly, because there were m reserves. Not with his squadrons nor with the other four Imperial groups wheeling and turning in the emptiness above Avalon.

Driving towards first Kreissels and Zachtwagers, he watched the Leaguers rush in to fire their big, single-shot disrupters, only to suddenly disappear in bright puffballs of energy when they smashed into the new space mines. Wild cheering filled the voice circuits as ship after ship burst into flames over the still-smoldering city. "Belay the noise!" he bellowed, even while he slammed on the power to catch a fleeing Kreissel. No sooner had he lined up on the Leaguer from below and abeam than Lawrence, his Gunnery Officer, blew half its "wing" off in a deafening, all-disruptor salvo. On breaking away, however, he himself came under attack by Gorn-Hoff 262s from both above and astern. Evading these, he flicked off into a second attack on the surviving Leaguer attack ships, this time almost vertically from below, then dodged shots from three more Gorn-Hoffs that opened fire way too early—the enemy had rookies, too.

He was just taking out after another Kreissel when the Leaguers swung around and headed their broken formations back toward Effer'wyck. Many had yet to fire a shot at the city below.

As the Imperial BKAEW screens cleared, round one clearly belonged to the Imperials. Brim, however, found his initial elation somewhat tempered by the fact that the number of rounds to be fought was entirely up to the Leaguers—who had a lot more resources to throw into their effort than had their Imperial opponents...

Rushing here and there to regroup the forces in his group (and discreetly check on the welfare of Eve Cartier), Brim discovered that two Starfuries and three Defiants were unaccountably missing from their squadrons. Almost mysteriously so—no one could remember hearing anything about them on the voice circuits. But there was little time to consider the matter in detail. The commandeered packets had scarcely finished gathering in their unexploded Loiterers when BKAEW sites began reporting that a second force of Leaguers was on its way. This time, the warning was shorter and the formations were much larger than their predecessors, with up to fifty attack ships in a group. One wave comprised three such formations, approaching in line astern with GA 110s between each.

This time, it was 13th Group's turn to wait close in over the city while the other four groups pushed out into the 'Wyckean Void for early interceptions. With seven Starfuries in his wake, Brim banked into a wide left turn, watching the little cluster of packet ships suddenly break up into individual units darting here and there to jettison their Loiterers like a swarm of insects—the Leaguers' targeting beams were on!

In the distance, pinpoints of brilliance began to blaze and wane in the starry darkness as the battle was joined. These grew closer, spreading to fill a sizable arc of the sky. He turned and winked at Barbousse who had taken over the main forward battery.

"All hands to battle stations," he announced over the blower. "All hands to battle stations." The short respite he'd granted the crew was over.

Now it seemed as if a solid mass of gravity plumes was coming at them—what appeared to be at least a million Leaguer starships, slowing below LightSpeed as their attack craft lined up for attacks on the helpless city below. Brim watched his main turrets swinging as range finders measured the swiftly narrowing distance. To better extend their firepower, he ordered his little eight-ship squadron into independent quads and for the second time that day, a bloodthirsty thrill of elation coursed through his body. He tightened the seat restraints as his muscles keyed to the oncoming challenge. Swinging the ship's head slightly up and to port, he made for the Leaguers, even while the killer ships separated from their charges and spread out to meet his oncoming challenge.

"Break starboard!" he called, jamming the thrust dampers all the way forward. "Diving!"

Moments later, six massive Admiralty A876 gravity generators had spun up to maximum thrust and the big Starfury was hurtling down on the Leaguers like some avenging demon, with three others duplicating his every move in finger-four formation.

Lining up on the nearest Kreissel 111, he pulled slightly off to one side while Lawrence salvoed twice. The Leaguer's bridge lit up for a moment as if a great light had been ignited from within. Three or four puffs appeared in the slipstream. Then Brim had to break right countering two Gorn-Hoff escorts that rolled into a tight turn and brought themselves head-on to himself. Ruby aiming beams from their disrupters formed long, glittering tentacles snaking their way toward him, then curled down to pass close by under the pontoons. Space became a whirling confusion of brilliant flashes, hurtling starships, and tremendous explosions as disruptors on both sides hit home. In the corner of his eye, Brim saw three angular Zachtwagers dive in formation toward the city. Hauling the Starfury around, he started in pursuit until all three simultaneously disappeared in blasts of light that dimmed his Hyperscreens. Clearly, they were victims of Loiterers.

As was another Starfury beginning its run-in toward a brace of Kreissels....

"Sweet mother of the Universe," Brim swore as he caught the graceful starship literally dissolving in the self-same distinctive blue-green detonation of a Loiterer. That's how his other three ships had disappeared. They were fighting much too close to the mined area!—and so was he! He grimaced as he cranked the Starfury into a vertical climb. How to warn the others without alerting the Leaguers?

"Attention—all Starfuries," he broadcast to all channels, "keep well clear of the final target area! Repeat.

Keep well clear of the final target area!"

Below, another great explosion where a Starfury had been moments before showed that at least one Imperial Helmsman hadn't heeded—or perhaps understood—the message. He was about to broadcast another, more pointed warning but shook his head. It was a trade off. Loiterers waited at definite points in space to which Leaguers would purposefully steer. If an occasional Starfury blundered into the same point before its designated Leaguer, then so be it. Statistically, the odds were highly in favor of Leaguers getting there first— unless someone warned them off. Biting his lip because he might also be sacrificing Eve Cartier, he switched the radio to local and rejoined the fray, bagging a Gorn-Hoff and damaging two Kreissels that had escaped the dwindling supply of Loiterers before the Leaguers again broke off their vicious attack and bolted off in disorganized gaggles headed for Effer'wyck.

Round two had also gone to the Empire—if one failed to consider the additional damage inflicted on Avalon by the attack ships that did get through. Its cost had been heavy for both sides, but Leaguers had clearly suffered the greatest loss of starships and crews. Loiterers destroyed as high as seventy-five percent of their attack ships and crews. Nevertheless, early returns indicated the Leaguers' force of killer-ship escorts had been reduced only by a little more than the "average" percentage normally lost during the heavy raiding of the last week or so.

Still, Brim reasoned, the zukeed bastards couldn't very well wage effective war against cities—or conduct interstellar invasions—with only squadrons of escort killer ships. So one way or another Hoth Orgoth was hurting in a big way. If the past were any indicator, Nergol Triannic was capable of seeing through any extravagant claims his fat Admiral might make.

While tired Imperial defenders regrouped to meet the Leaguers' next onslaught, Brim received word via scrambled data link that less than two hundred Loiterers remained—including those reclaimed by the second set of salvage operations. Not good, he thought to himself—but perhaps not that bad, either. It would be difficult for the Leaguers to conceal the horrendous losses sustained by their attack craft. When little more than a quarter of the ships returned home, people were going to notice—and word would spread. With that kind of losses, the next attackers were going to be spooked before they even arrived. They'd certainly guess that some sort of secret weapon was operating against them—but they wouldn't know what it was.

Because of the Imperials' own depressing-but-inadvertent losses to the Loiterers (Eve had once more checked in, tired but unscathed), all defending starships were now positioned in a thick arc out in the 'Wyckean Void to make early interceptions and keep themselves clear of the intersections area until the Leaguers had cleared out a few of the Loiterers. Of course with only two hundred or so Loiterers remaining, it wouldn't take long for that to happen.

The Leaguers' third attack followed the model set by their previous raid: waves of large formations with up to forty large attack craft in a group. Each wave consisted of three such formations with killer-ship escorts between them. Both main bodies of antagonists met in the 'Wyckean Void at about Evening: 1:0 nearly a quarter of the way out from Avalon. Again, the battle seethed toward Avalon City, but this time, the attack craft taking off from Effer'wyckean bases appeared to be infinite. Wave after wave were reported on the way until Brim simply shut off reception from that channel.

The two lead waves soaked up the last Loiterers with devastating casualties. After that, the city began to take significant damage, especially the ancient city center and the Imperial Palace (Brim mumbled silent thanks that Hope had been taken deep underground). Within a half metacycle, two more waves of Leaguers had been literally ripped apart. Unlike the total destruction inflicted on individual attackers by Loiterers, Leaguer casualties were now simply damaged—yet damaged enough to put them out of the battle as if they no longer existed at all.

But on came the replacements, each wave succeeded by another in a seemingly endless stream of destruction coming from Effer'wyck. Brim—who had been fighting almost constantly since midday—was nearing the end of his energy. Having crippled or downed at least five Leaguers since the battle resumed for the third time, he was now operating mostly by instinct. Off to his right, a lone Defiant broke off and headed behind two Kreissels. He caught a glimpse of the Imperial's tail number: P9137; it was Aram—or at least the ship he had been flying the previous day.

Brim decided to cover him, avoiding several determined attacks by going into a tight spiral—the Leaguers were going too fast to follow him. He saw Aram's turrets flash as they fired... then his own proximity alarms went off. Abruptly, the starboard disrupter turrets swung and fired at the same moment that huge bolts of incoming energy crackled past in the opposite direction. Moments later, a Gorn-Hoff's enormous, heat-streaked wing flashed below them. The careless Leaguer had missed Brim and was now going after Aram.

Instinctively, the Carescrian curved 'round to his left, listening to the gunlayers' litany behind him.

In the winking of an eye, four big starboard turrets indexed outward, elevated their eight powerful disrupters infinitesimally, then opened fire at nearly point-blank range. Eight superfocused bolts of raw energy caught the Gorn-Hoff amidships, about thirty irals outboard of the main crew compartment, literally blowing it in half and venting its energy chambers to the perfect vacuum of space. Shaken in its course, most of the big starship skidded violently to the left, then literally disintegrated in a veritable cloud of fluttering hull panels and blazing parts that showered the Starfury with fragments.

Brim had hardly recovered from that close call when he was suddenly attacked by six more Gorn-Hoffs—how had he missed them?

Shoving maximum energy to the Starfury's six big Admiralty gravs, he tried to power out of the trap, but he was caught in a three-way crossfire. Even while his own disrupters fired broadside to counter the threat, a great, blinding flash darkened the Hyperscreens and a muffled clanging sound reverberated through the whole spaceframe. The starship bucked wildly as if smashed by some gigantic hammer.

Readout panels flickered and gravity pulsed wildly, smashing him painfully against his mechanical seat restraints. Fighting the controls—which had taken on a powerful bias to port—he glanced out the Hyperscreens to see that the whole forward half of the left pontoon was simply gone—along with an entire turret and at least one of the ship's six gravity generators. Everything from the attaching "trouser" pylon forward was simply gone—and a serious-looking radiation fire was already gleaming evilly from the shredded forward stump of the pontoon.

Cranking the damaged starship into a vertical climb, he listened to the spaceframe creak and groan over the thunder of the straining gravs. The maneuver put him temporarily out of the Leaguers' range, but not for long. This time, it was going to be a xaxtdamned close thing. Lawrence threw up a constant fusillade with his remaining disrupters, futilely attempting to discourage the six Leaguers who had now taken up station astern and were slowly closing the range. Scant moments later, they opened up, turning space around the Starfury into a veritable hell of blinding flashes and concussion. Violent waves of raw energy smashed the big ship this way and that as if it were the gamecock in a racket match between a whole crowd of colossal opponents.

Just as Brim glanced into an aft-viewing display, one of the pursuing Gorn-Hoffs abruptly disappeared in a rolling cloud of radiation fire and tumbling parts—as if somehow it had run into a stout wall eight hundred c'lenyts above Avalon. Then a second Leaguer ship stopped abruptly, its graviton plume terminating in a great, glowing ball of flame. After that, the four remaining Gorn-Hoffs skidded off in four different directions, pursued by at least six Starfuries firing in salvo mode. Brim mentally wiped his forehead (encased for the moment in a battlesuit helmet). A damned close thing indeed! "Damage Control!" he shouted over voice circuits that were only now coming to life. "I want a report."

"Control here," a stunned voice replied.

"Report, xaxtdamnit," Brim growled.

A globular display flickered to life beside Brim's console showing the view into space from inside the ruined pontoon.

"We've accounted for eight dead, Admiral," the voice said wearily. "Our whole port generator crew. But we've got the radiation fires nearly under control, already." A silhouetted figure stepped into the display from starboard, pointing forward to the ragged, blasted edges of the hull where crews in battlesuits focused unwieldy, hoselike N-ray projectors on the blazing hullmetal while others dragged massive shoring clamps to secure shattered ribs and longerons from further damage.

"Good work, Belzer," Brim said, grinding his teeth. He checked the proximity alarms, then swung the view aft where he confirmed for himself that the Leaguers' fire had indeed carried away all three forward bulkheads, exposing the entire generator chamber to outer space. Surprisingly, however, the situation was much better than he'd even hoped. Welding sparks showed that repair teams were already sealing off the main power bus. For all the apparent damage, both surviving generators did seem to be operating normally, and the Starfury hardly seemed to notice the drop in thrust.

"What about the trouser?" Brim demanded, checking through the Hyperscreens at the battle raging around him. So far, nobody on either side seemed interested in his lone Starfury. "How solid is the pontoon attachment?"

"Looks all right, Admiral," Belzer said, moving back into view. "But we'll never know until you try somethin'."

"Thanks," Brim growled. "Stand by one." He then activated the blower. "All hands not on damage teams return to your action stations," he broadcast. "All hands not on damage teams return to your action stations!" With that, he cranked the Starfury around and headed for a new wave of Kreissels just lining up on the city. "Let's blast 'em, Lawrence," he yelled— just as his COMM panel flashed immediate priority and Calhoun's visage filled the display.

"Attention, all Imperial ships," the Admiral's image intoned while the scramble/unscramble indicator on Brim's panel blinked furiously in time to some inner mathematical rhythm, "Attention all Imperial ships. You will clear the target area immediately. I repeat, you will clear the target area immediately."

"Holy thraggling Universe!" Lawrence yelled. "I've got a xaxtdamned Kreissel just comin' into my sights."

"Save it," Brim answered curtly. If Calhoun himself was on the horn, something big was up.

Dragging the Starfury 'round into a near-vertical climb, he angled out into empty space with every measure of speed he could muster. Everywhere he looked, he could see other Imperial ships had also taken the message seriously, breaking off a hundred individual fights and speeding away from the general area—with enemy killer ships in hot pursuit. To the Leaguers it must have seemed like the very mother of all routs. Far below, the Kreissels had begun firing from perfect formations gliding over the city as if they were on parade. There was no opposition anywhere. He grimaced when he imagined what it must be like in the streets below. Just after he spotted two Gorn-Hoffs sneaking into position astern, he glanced out to port and his jaw dropped. "Will you look at THAT!" he exclaimed. So did everyone else on the bridge....

Off to spinward, some twenty big Sodeskayan cargo liners of the Morzik class were streaking in over the city no more than ten or fifteen c'lenyts above the Leaguers—as if they had never heard of the war. Just before the elegant starships passed over the target area, however, great cargo doors opened in their sides and for some moments, a shower of glittering objects tumbled along their flanks, flared up momentarily, then disappeared in the glare of the burning city.

"Loiterers!" Brim shouted happily while he flicked the Starfury over on its back and drove straight for the two skulking Gorn-Hoffs. "Thraggling Loiterers!"

Lawrence fired his disrupters at the same moment the first Kreissels began to disappear below in the same prodigious explosions that had destroyed so many of their kind less than a metacycle before.

Astern, the left-most Gorn-Hoff skidded drunkenly into a diving turn trailing long showers of sparks while its partner turned tail and ran for it.

Brim frowned as he curved around seeking out slower targets for his partially disabled Starfury.

Who were those Leaguers? Certainly not the talented professionals he'd faced earlier. They'd turned tail like frightened cadets and...! That was it. They probably were cadets—or something like them. By Voot, it looked like even fat Admiral Hoth Orgoth had limits on his resources. Pulling astern of a plodding Zachtwager that had somehow eluded the new crop of Loiterers, he waited only moments while Lawrence blew it to smithereens, then flicked off in search of larger prey.

Below, the great Loiterer explosions had largely died down and harried remnants of Leaguer attack squadrons were making off in all directions, leaving the smoke-filled sky over Avalon nearly clear of enemy starships for the first time since before dawn. As he hurried toward Effer'wyck in search of fresh Kreissels, Brim watched the formation of Sodeskayan liners swoop back over the distant target area sowing what could be only a fresh crop of Loiterers. The next wave of Leaguer attack ships was really in for it, he chuckled— after he got in a few personal licks while they drove for the target area.

But they never came. The only Leaguer ships on the BKAEWs were those heading back to Effer'wyck....

Brim quickly regrouped what remained of his tattered squadrons. Out of sixteen squadrons of Starfuries and Defiants that started in the morning, only seventy-one starships remained more or less intact—including Eve Cartier's, he was again relieve to learn. Reports of lifeglobe retrievals and successful forced landfalls somewhat mitigated these grievous losses, but realistically, those would be few and far between. For the next tense metacycle, every Imperial starship that could persist in space under its own power remained on instant alert with a tense crew at action stations, ready to meet the fourth wave of Leaguers.

After still a second metacycle of inaction across the 'Wyckean Void, half the Imperial starships were recalled to their FleetPorts for refitting while the remainder continued to patrol. Finally, after three full metacycles of clear BKAEW screens, all defending starships were recalled home, Brim docked his mangled Starfury at FleetPort at precisely Night:2:64, little more than three metacycles short of a full Standard Day in space, most of it spent fighting desperately for his life. He waited until the wounded and dead were transferred to the sickbay, then he followed Barbousse from the bridge.

As closely as he could calculate, the day's losses for the Leaguers had been close to six hundred starships—a total disaster. Initial tallies indicated that the Imperials themselves had lost nearly half that many, with more than two hundred crews killed or still missing—another disaster if the battle were to continue. But for all that, the fighting had been wildly successful. Orgoth in this, his boldest move so far, had incurred the most grievous losses in the history of warfare. Now, if only Triannic would conclude that the all-important space supremacy he sought could not be won in time to save his invasion.

Bidding good night to Barbousse with a clap on the shoulder, he stumbled to the new Admiral's suite he had occupied for only one short night, then forced himself into his bunk. But it was a long time before he could force his racing mind into anything resembling sleep. Outside, maintenance crews were rearming and servicing his ship in preparation for a morning sortie, in spite of her condition. For all anyone knew, the next day would bring a full-scale Leaguer invasion, and anything that could fly and fire a disrupter would be useful—if only for a little while. ...

Brim awoke with a start, staring at his timepiece in disbelief. He had slept more than three metacycles longer than he had planned. "Barbousse!" he shouted angrily into a bedside communicator.

"How could you have let me oversleep so?" Struggling into his battlesuit, he ripped open the door and stormed into the hall... then stopped short in the quiet emptiness. Not a soul could be seen in either direction. It was like a holiday....

Presently hurried footfalls sounded around the curve to his left and Barbousse hove into view, dressed only in fatigues and running for all he was worth. His index finger was across his lips.

"Sh-h-h," the big Warrant Officer puffed in a whisper.

"Beggin' the Admiral's pardon, but everybody's still asleep 'round here."

"Gum'pas H. Voot!" Brim exclaimed in disbelief. "What about the thraggling Leaguers? Am I to believe they are still asleep, too?"

"Um..." Barbousse stuttered. "I've no information about how many of 'em might be sleepin' at this time. But they're still over there in Effer'wyck, and our latest reconnaissance ships are reportin' no action whatsoever—um, Admiral, sir."

Astounded, Brim rushed through a warren of silent corridors to FleetPort 13's third new COMM center that month, where he contacted the Office of Fleet Intelligence in a bunker hundreds of irals beneath the Admiralty. After a short conversation over the scrambler, he shook his head in disbelief and took a seat beside the tired-but-grinning Barbousse. It was true. Not a single Leaguer ship was headed toward the Triad or any of its five planets. Nor was there ground activity anywhere in Effer'wyck to indicate that the situation would change in the next twenty-five metacycles. Moments later, a rare eyes only text message arrived for him directly from Calhoun, and he took it into an empty decoding cubicle.

Brusque and emotionless, it was notification that although the Leaguers had abruptly changed their code, the last message successfully deciphered contained the following from Headquarters Tarrott to Orgoth:

"...The enemy space force is by no means defeated. On the contrary, it shows increasing activity. Advent of the new secret weapon against attack ships has destroyed much of our ability to support ground operations. The gravitological situation on the whole does not permit us to expect extended periods of calm during the next five Standard Months. Emperor Triannic therefore decides to postpone Death's Head indefinitely."