THE HELMSMAN
BY BILL BALDWIN
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 1
Only three travelers shambled from the coach at the 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 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 ice-crusted 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 now filtered through the clouds to disclose 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 char. In the distance, mountainous forms of capital ships dominated a lightening horizon from still another complex. Brim shook his bead bitterly. Fat chance for a Carescrian Helmsman on one of those!
He stretched to his nearly three-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 starbase planet of Gimmas Haefdon—could accurately be described as an untidy sprawl. To the twenty-eight-year-old Brim, it was far more than that: it was also 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 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 cater 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 Gimmas Haefdon's Central Terminus, he had indeed conceded the remainder of his sleep to excitement and anticipation. "Yes," he admitted. "In a 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 Anak'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. Concussion. Agonizing heat—his tiny sister's last, anguished screams. He shook his head. "Everyone," he whispered almost to himself, "everyone."
"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 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 I 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. "1 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?