Futuristic, Military Science-Fiction novel about intragalactic competition and conflict
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Only three travelers shambled from the coach at Gimmas-
Haefdon’s badly lighted Eorean station. Two of them
disappeared into the ozone-pungent darkness even before
the train’s warning lights were out of sight along the causeway. Alone
on the platform, Sublieutenant Wilf Brim, Imperial Fleet, dialed his
blue Fleet Cloak’s heating element control another notch toward
“warm,” then clambered down the wet metal steps from the elevated
tracks. The whole Universe seemed dismally cold around him as he
reached the landing. He listened to wind moaning through the station
shelter while he oriented himself, then picked his way around icecrusted
puddles barely visible beneath infrequent Karlsson lamps and
started out toward the dim shape of a distant guard shack. He was
shamefully aware of the single traveling case following him. It fairly
shouted his humble origins, and he was joining an Imperial Fleet
once commanded exclusively by wealth-privileged officers — until
First Star Lord Sir Beorn Wyrood’s recent Admiralty Reform Act
(and six years of war’s insatiable attrition) forced inclusion of talent
from whatever source it could be obtained.
Shivering despite the warm, high-collared cloak, he peered at the
predawn sky. Enough light from the star Gimmas now filtered
through the clouds to disclose the fundamentals of sprawling
Gimmas-Haefdon starbase: Lines of low, gray-painted buildings, a
world of dissected starships, and forests of shipyard cranes stationary
against a starless sky. Along the waterfront, indistinct shapes of more
or less intact vessels hovered quietly on softly glowing gravity pools
while the outlines of others projected above covered wharves and
warehouses, all a uniform shade of weather-faded gray relieved
occasionally by stains of oxidation or charring. In the distance,
mountainous forms of capital ships dominated a lightening horizon
O
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from still another complex. Brim shook his head bitterly. Fat chance
for a Carescrian Helmsman aboard one of those!
He stretched to his nearly six-iral height and yawned in the
clammy dampness. The sky was now spitting snow occasionally,
with a promise of more substantial amounts soon to come. He sniffed
the air, sampling the odor of the sea as it mixed with ozone, heated
lubricants, and the stench of overheated logics. At best, the Eorean
Starwharves – one of fifteen starship construction-and-maintenance
complexes on the watery planet of star bases called Haefdon – could
accurately be described as an untidy sprawl. To the twenty-one-yearold
Brim, it was far more than that: it was also the realization of a
dream that only recently seemed impossible. His fellow cadets (and
many sullen instructors) quietly did their utmost to make it thus, and
prevent his recent graduation from the prestigious Helmsman’s
Academy near the Imperial capital planet, Avalon. He somehow had
prevailed, determined he could raise himself from the grinding
poverty of his home in the Empire’s Carescrian Mining Sector. A
combination of fierce tenacity, hard work, and native talent finally
won him his commissioning ceremonies and this lonely outpost in
the Galactic Fleet. He counted on those same attributes to take him a
great deal farther before he traded in his blue Fleet Cloak – a lot
farther indeed.
Picking his way carefully over a series of glowing metal tracks
that paralleled a high fence, he stopped at the gate house to rap on the
window and rouse its single, nodding occupant. Inside, the ancient
watchman wore age-tarnished medals from some long-forgotten
space campaign. He was tall with thin shoulders and enormous
hands, a beak of a nose, sparse white hair, and the sad eyes of a man
who had seen too many Wilf Brims enter through his gate and never
return. “A bit early,” he observed, opening the window no more than
a crack to admit the other’s proffered orders card, while denying
passage to as much of the cold wind as he could manage. “First ship,
I’ll wager,” he said.
Brim smiled. Metacycles ago at the massive Central Terminus of
Gimmas-Haefdon starbase, he had indeed conceded the remainder of
his sleep to excitement and anticipation. “Yes,” he admitted. “In a
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way, at least.”
“Well, you’re not the original early riser, young man,” the
watchman chuckled, “nor I suppose the last, either. Bring yourself in
here while I try to find where you belong. And don’t open the door
more’n you must!” While Brim parked the traveling case and made
his way into the pungent warmth of the shack, the old campaigner
placed his orders card in the side of a battered communications
cabinet (which also doubled as storage for six cracked and stained
teacups, none particularly clean). Presently, a shimmering display
globe materialized over the crockery. He studied the contents.
“Hmm. All the way from Carescria,” he observed without looking
around. “Caught in the League’s big sneak attack, I suppose?”
Brim only nodded to the man’s back. “Lose anybody?”
Brim shut his eyes. Did people have to ask? All he personally
wanted was a chance to forget. Even after six years, the war’s sudden
onset was as real as the night before. Wave after wave of heavy
cruisers from Emperor Nergol Triannic’s League of Dark Stars
attacking Carecria’s famous asteroid fields; he’d been on home leave
in the ramshackle orbiting “city” where his parents lived.”
Concussion. Agonizing heat — his tiny sister’s last, anguished
screams. He shook his head. “Everyone,” he whispered almost to
himself, “everyone except me.”
“Sorry,” the old man said. “I didn’t mean to…
“It’s all right,” Brim interrupted dully. “Forget it.”
Neither occupant found more words until the old man broke his
silence with another pregnant “Hmm.” He scratched his head. “T.83,
eh?” Apparently, this needed no answer, for he continued moving
age-spotted fingers over his small control panel, concentrating on
rapidly changing patterns in the globe. Finally, he looked up to
consult a large three-dimensional map tacked above a ragged chair.
Tracing a long finger along the causeway, he stopped near the image
of a tiny, fenced-in square. “You’re here, now, d’ you see?” he asked.
Brim peered at the map. “Yessir,” he said. “I see.”
“All right, then,” the watchman continued. “Now let me
think, G-31 at, ah…” He peered nearsightedly at the globe again
without moving the finger. “Oh, yes, G-31 at B-19.” Now he
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continued across the map until he stopped at a basin carved into a far
corner of the island. “B-19,” he announced. “Your Truculent’s
moored here, Carescrian. On the gravity pool numbered R-2134. D’
you see?”
Brim squinted at the map near the man’s black fingernail. A tiny
“R-2134” was just visible printed inside one of seven rectangular
gravity pools bordering the circular basin. “I see it, all right,” he said.
“Bit of a distance on foot,” the old man observed, stroking his
thin, stubbled chin. “First skimmers from the transport pool won’t run
for another metacycle or so, and I can’t imagine the ship’ll send one
of their own. You’re not even signed aboard as a crew member yet.”
Brim snorted. He knew what the watchman really meant – that
they wouldn’t send a skimmer for a no-account Carescrian. He’d been
here before, often. The old man smiled sympathetically. “I can offer
you a spot of tea to warm your stomach until then, if you’d care to
have a seat.”
“Thanks just the same,” Brim said, making his way toward the
door. “But I think I’ll walk off some of this excitement before I try to
check in.” He nodded. “R-2134. I’ll find it.”
“Thought you might do something like that,” the old man
observed. “You’ll get there with no trouble. Just keep the set of blue
tracks on your left. Snow won’t stay on ‘em.”
Brim nodded his thanks and stepped quickly into the cold,
summoning the traveling case to his heel. A thickening carpet of
snow lay over the still-sleeping complex, already hiding much of the
unsightly dockyard clutter beneath a mantle of white. Carefully
keeping the blue-glowing tracks on his left, he made his way along a
dark concourse, noting that his pace curiously increased as soon as he
cleared the gate. While he hurried along the rough pavement, he
asked himself if it was the cold that made him hurry so — or was it
the excitement?
On either side of the road, powerful forms of warships loomed
through the falling snow, hovering ponderously over shallow gravity
pools, dimly lit from beneath by the glow of shipyard gravity
generators. Those near the water were often lighted. On a few, he
saw occasional crew members performing routine poolside duties
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(cursing both their superiors and the snow, he guessed with a smile).
The signs of life made him feel less alone in the sprawling confusion
of hulls, KA’PPA masts, and ubiquitous cranes which now crowded
the lightening sky.
Other ships — those grotesquely damaged or undergoing dissection
for repair — hovered like metallic corpses over inland gravity
pools half hidden by stacks of hullmetal plates and heavy
shipbuilding equipment. Brim shuddered as he passed one
particularly savaged wreck. On the convoy from Avalon he
helplessly watched one of the escorts, an old destroyer named
Obstinate, take a HyperTorp hit amidships. She had blown up with
all hands. That crew would have deemed themselves fortunate indeed
to bring her back to base at all, even in this condition! He shook his
head; everything in the Universe was relative, as they said.
* * *
Abruptly, he was there. A rusting sign announced “GRAVITY
POOL R—2134.” Beyond floated 190 lean irals of T—class destroyer:
starship T.83, I.F.S. Truculent.
He picked his way along stone jetties surrounding the gravity pool,
seldom taking his eyes from the hovering, wedge-shaped form. In the
amber glow of gravity generators below, shadows from ventral
turrets moved gently over her underside as she stirred to urgings of
the wind. Above, huddled battle lanterns still cast dim circles of light
outside her entry ports, and a sparse web of emerald mooring beams
flashed occasionally as the resting starship gently tested her
anchorage.
T—class starships weren’t big as destroyers went, and at rest they
weren’t especially pretty, either. But inside their pointed, angular
hulls they crowded four powerful Sheldon Drive crystals and two
brutish antigravity generators with at least triple the thrust claimed by
other ships their size. These latter provided astonishing acceleration
below LightSpeed, a regime in which much of their close-in patrol
duty was performed. And every iral spoke power. They were rugged,
Read more about The Helmsman and Bill Baldwin HERE.
Copyright 2008 Bill Baldwin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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