With a deep breath (one he would never admit was a sigh), Brim started grimly for the brow, his boots squeaking in the powdery snow. Around him, the first lights began to sparkle on the cranes like bright stars in rapidly moving constellations. Others winked on here and there in windows of the sheds and control shelters. But he could sense no warmth in any of them. The whole salvage complex—all of it—reeked somehow with the stench of death.
The wind seemed harsher and colder on Truculent's empty decks. Brim's ears caught the distant, crackling thunder of a lifting starship, and he suddenly found it difficult to face the ruin around him. He shivered again as he carefully picked his way across the icy, buckled hullmetal toward a temporary shelter they'd rigged as a main boarding hatchway. The cover itself was unsealed; he fought it open against the wind and stepped on the empty darkness beyond, stomping snow from his boots grating.
Maldive's station was long gone—as was poor Maldive herself. With so many of the others, they'd given her remains a Blue Cape's traditional sendoff into Universal emptiness. Her entry desk—along with Truculent's ornate sign-in register—had been reduced to subatomics in Valentin's last orgy of destruction.
The ship's interior even smelled empty—a damp staleness assaulted his nostrils, redolent of a faint but pervading scent of—he wrinkled his nose—death. No amount of scrubbing could ever rid this hull of the blood that had dried in every crack and seam.
Switching on his torch, he closed the hatch and started forward along the companionway, boots echoing hollowly in the empty stillness. He had gone only a few steps before the beam reflected from a spot of brightness on a blackened, wrinkled bulkhead. Frowning, be stopped, aimed the torch: "I. F. S. TRUCULENT JOB 21358 ELEANDOR BESTIENNE YARD 228/51988." The metal plate still shone as if it bad been polished within the last day—which on closer inspection he knew it had. By force of habit, he brushed a few strokes with his own sleeve, Someone in the skeleton crew had been polishing regularly all the way home.
Brim smiled thoughtfully. Who? It could have been any of them; they all loved the ship in one way or another: Nik, Borodov, Barbousse, the handful of starmen. Except himself. He'd been too heartsick to wander far from the bridge.
Farther along, he paused by the entrance to the wardroom—it was now only a rough blue patch in the bulkhead, shaped dike a hatch. Not enough of the riddled walls beyond remained to permit shoring-up operations, so they'd sealed the whole area off instead. Everyone took the easiest way out of solving problems in space—starship repairs were a whole lot easier in the controlled environment of a gravity pool. And in spite of his gloom, Brim found himself chuckling about Grimsby. The ancient steward had been sealed inside his pantry by an early bit—where he'd safely spent the remainder of the battle asleep.
They'd found him calm and rested the morning after the fight. Grimsby was a survivor.
Up the ladders past the ruin that was once Collingswood's cabin, he ended his climb in the twisted wreckage they still (almost jokingly) called a bridge. Now even the last of the consoles were dark—those that remained on the wrinkled deck plates. Most of the duty stations had been removed previously—either by Valentin's disruptors or parts—desperate scavengers from nearby Imperial blockade ships that swarmed to the battle site even before it was judged DD T.83 should be towed home for salvage. Brim walked slowly to the right-hand Helmsman's station—a most valuable console, it remained only because it was necessary for landfall operations. He turned his torch on full power, then melted frost covering the cracked Hyperscreens before him. Outside, it was quite dark now, but the snow had stopped and the air was clear. Round patches of light gleamed dully under the repair yard's ubiquitous Karlsson lamps.
As he stared out into the night, he could just see the blackened circle where A turret was once mounted. It reminded him of Fourier, herself blasted from existence like most of her beloved guns. In death, she traveled near Maldive somewhere, forever headed out into the Universe toward peace—if indeed such existed anywhere. Beside him, Theada's console had been removed and was certainly serving even now in as many as a dozen needy ships, salvaged like the young Helmsman himself. It would be a long time before he was sufficiently healed for a permanent return to duty. But he had survived—thanks largely to Admiral Penda's quick action moving wounded crew members from the overcrowded charnel house in Flynn's sick bay to the giant and superbly equipped hospital aboard Benwell.
He sat in the recliner to wait for the manager of the salvage team, remembering that only metacycles previously, he had used every bit of his skill—and a little more—fighting these same controls to a standoff as the two space tugs eased Truculent's almost helpless hulk down from a, temporary parking orbit. He shook his head in wonder. The transition from roaring, flaming reentry chaos to the stony silence that now enfolded the bridge was nearly unbelievable.
As he sat, he wondered what Lady Fate had in store for him. Clearly, Truculent would never need a Helmsman again. His own message queue at the base officers' quarters mentioned only that orders would be forthcoming—not when. He would hear something after the ceremonies tomorrow, he assumed, then shook his head. Somehow, he had been dreading that honor ever since Prince Onrad's message informing him Truculent's heroes would be decorated at home on Gimmas Haefdon rather than on Avalon. It made sense, the way the Prince put it—Avalon did appear to have quite enough in the way of ceremonies. The celebration would do a lot more good at the bleak outpost, where it would not be lost among the glitter of a hundred important functions.
He smiled to himself in the darkness. He found he didn't really care at the moment—only that something new was in the wind. That was enough. For the present, he was glad enough to have the almost unbelievable luxury of a few metacycles to waste on himself.
It would have been nice, he considered, had Margot been... Then he squeezed his eyes shut, forcing all thoughts about her from his mind. With her permanent reassignment to Avalon, it was clear she had already made a decision denying him any more of her life. And he'd accepted that pragmatically. There was, after all, a yawning gulf between the future queen of a large star cluster and a Helmsman lieutenant not seven years from the Carescrian ore mines. He nodded to himself as he had so often done in the past few months. An unbridgeable gulf.
Outside, the lights of a skimmer caught his eye as it churned along the main highway, then slowed and swung through the gate, drawing to a stop before Truculent's salvage berth. Brim watched its single passenger disembark and make his way toward the brow. A nearby Karlsson lamp revealed him to be none other than Bosporus P. Gallsworthy himself. Gallsworthy? He'd already been promoted to Lieutenant Commander and reassigned to important Admiralty duty on Avalon. And the man certainly couldn't plan a long visit—he was scheduled to depart on the Robur Enterprise, which left for the capital in no more than two metacycles.
Presently, footfalls sounded on the ladder to the chart room, then the senior Helmsman strode into the bridge. "Thought I'd find you here, Brim," he said with a chuckle. "Sentimental dunces like you always fall in love with the xaxtdamned-fool ships they fly."