"Universe," Brim whispered. "Of course I remember—the nobleman."
Aram smiled. "Yes," he said. "First Earl of Xeres—and cousin to Crown Prince Leo who decorated you. The other A'zurnian in the field piece was Tharshish of Josias, our Prime Minister at one time. You and your men freed them both from the prison at the Research Center. It was by their personal petitions that you were awarded our Order of Cloudless Flight."
Brim ground his teeth as gruesome memories of the raid flooded back. The prisoners had all been horribly mangled—wings cruelly snapped in half to prevent their escape. To the Leaguers, such treatment was quite normal—there was no conscious desire to inflict punishment. Pragmatism ruled their entire military establishment—especially the black-uniformed Controllers. Wingless prisoners simply required fewer guards than one who could fly.
"Never for a moment pity them," Aram said gently, breaking the Carescrian's awful reverie. "Even though they are now flightless, they are still proud—and quite capable of considerable fight, as the Tyrant discovers each new day they are free."
Brim smiled and nodded his head. "Yes," he said quietly. "I understood that by looking into their eyes."
The A'zurnian lieutenant returned Brim's smile. "Thank you," he said simply. "Perhaps aboard Defiant I can somehow begin to repay my personal debt to you and Mr. Barbousse."
It took Brim a few moments to understand just what the young A'zurnian was talking about. Then he shut his eyes and shook his head. "No one owes anything to anybody," he stated firmly. "Barbousse and I were only doing our jobs as imperial soldiers." He laughed.
"Besides, if you have even half the guts of the other A'zurnians I met during that raid, then we'll all feel xaxtdamned lucky to have you aboard. We've got one hell of a war on our hands—all of us." With that, he motioned Defiant's new Helmsman Second Class into the simulator room. "Now, let's introduce you to this new ship of ours...."
On the stocks, Defiant herself gained a somewhat finished appearance amid the coils of wire, hullmetal plates, cables, ducting, hoses, rumbling generators, and other detritus that littered the construction site. Within two weeks, the officers' quarters were more or less completed, and Brim moved aboard—marveling that his fortunes had so improved that he now required two traveling cases instead of the one that bobbed at his heels when he first passed through the gates of the Eorean Complex on Gimmas Haefdon, fresh from the Academy.
While more systems were completed within the hull, each succeeding day saw larger groups of crew members muster through Barbousse's makeshift office near the main hatch, and the ship began to take on some aspects of an operational Fleet unit.
In due course, Defiant's hull and superstructure exteriors were finished, and the day arrived when the starship could be moved to an ordinary gravity pool for completion.
According to hoary tradition, a small launching ceremony marked the occasion—sadly rushed by a mysterious construction speed-up that had suddenly affected the entire shipyard.
Brim and Ursis witnessed the late-afternoon proceedings from Defiant's rain-soaked, half finished bridge with the ships two CL-Standard-84 Vertical Gravity Generators rumbling steadily in the background. Barbousse's great banner snapped and fluttered in the strong wind from a temporary flagstaff at the bow. Overhead, a dreary sky was pregnant with lowering, scudding clouds—sure precursors of another in a constant parade of violent summer thunderstorms that had darkened most of the day and wrinkled the lead-toned bay with whitecaps.
" Defiant is certainly a much larger ship than was our little Truculent," the Bear observed, standing at the forward starboard corner of the bridge beside the only control console yet installed. He was holding on to his hat and motioning toward a pair of large, humpbacked tugs that had turned from the main waterway and were battling into the teeth of the wind toward the stocks. The powerful vessels rode atop streaming clouds of spray and foam as they ploughed contemptuously over the deeps troughs. "I have often seen T-class destroyers moved with a single tug," Ursis observed with a grin, "but even incomplete, our Defiant requires at least two." He bent over the shoulder of Sublieutenant Alexi Radosni Provodnik to check the Vertical readouts personally. Provodnik, a new engineering officer fresh from Sodeskaya, was a much smaller Bear who had been assigned to Defiant only a short while.
He had sharper, more pointed ears than most of his colleagues and smaller fangs—inlaid with two positively immense Starblazes. The young Bear was clearly scion of an extraordinarily wealthy Sodeskayan family. He was also enthusiastic about anything that provided an opportunity to learn about starships, and had quickly become the darling of the whole crew.
Brim smiled as he leaned his elbows on a control ledge beneath empty frames for the ship's Hyperscreens—glasslike crytals that provided "normal" views of the outside at faster-than-light velocities. "From the feel of things in The Box, Defiant will be a lot bigger to fly, too," he observed with a chuckle. "Probably a lot like one of those tugs."
"If that is the case, friend Wilf," Ursis growled with a sparkle of humor in his eyes, "we shall tow Nergol Triannic to his doom. One fights with the weapons one finds at hand." His wink was punctuated by a lengthy rumble of approaching thunder.
Aft, at the beam ends of Defiant's stern, teams of shipyard workers dressed in reflective clothing were already balancing themselves on the slippery hullmetal while they retracted protective covers from stout optical cleats set in the afterdeck end of the sheer strakes. By this time, the tugs had lumbered into position some two hundred irals out from the stocks and were hovering just clear of the tossing waves. Presently, thick hawser beams flashed from their huge optical bollards, contacted the cleats, and brightened as the tugs smoothly shifted into reverse, laying on the tension against Defiant, which was still fastened securely to the stocks.
To landward, a small crowd had gathered at a temporary platform near the bow—automatic umbrellas bobbed and hovered nervously in the gusty wind. Someone read a short speech that was totally unintelligible on the bridge. Then a brass band energetically yerked out a few off-key bars of Heroic Music from the Grat'mooz Sector— that came through all too well, at least to Brim's way of thinking.
"Hull 921," a voice rasped suddenly from a temporary COMM module fastened to a stringer by two oversized C-clamps, "contact Lauch Operations on GTD zero five one. Good afternoon, sir."
"Hull 921 on GTD zero five one, and thank you," Brim answered, switching frequencies on the battered little box. "Hull 921 checking in from the stocks."
"Hull number 921, good day," a female voice answered promptly. "Verify readiness to melt the trennels, please."
"Hull 921, one moment," Brim answered. He looked as Ursis and raised his eyebrows.
"OPS wants to know if we're ready to melt the fastenings to the stocks," he said.
The bear bent to peer at the readouts again, frowned, then shook his head thoughtfully and spoke to Provodnik at the console. "Before the launch crew frees us from the stocks, Alexi Radosni," he said gently, "you may wish to balance the gain on the portside Hartzel feedbacks. We want Defiant to ride an even keel from the very beginning, eh?"
"I think ve mayeh have problem, here, Nikolai Yanuarievich," the younger Bear said, passing delicate hands over an array of power controls. Immediately, a bank of indicators turned from yellow to steady green. "Is third time port generators have lost balance in last couple of cycles," he asserted; "I vas about to bring this to your attention." As he spoke, the indicators suddenly changed color again. "Ah, like that, sir," he added. "One of the feedback circuits seems to drop control data. Ten'stadt Fields there in X-Damper quadrant dump all the vay to minus sixtyeh-seven just before it happens."