Impulse (6 page)

“Great,” I said, “that's just what we need. A superstitious lot of Germans onboard ready to flash their crosses and spell their hexes at the first sign of trouble.” I was actually thinking about whether this development would make my assignment tougher or easier to carry out, if the need arose.

The conversation ended there and Layton talked me into playing some virtual games to kill the time. After I beat him on a tactical scenario game, a shoot-'em-up, and a soccer game, he gave up and decided to nap. I shut off my own light and crossed my arms, trying to sleep, fearing it wouldn't come.

The massive mitt of John Marker woke me up just a few minutes before we docked at Candle. To my surprise, I found I had finally drifted off.

“Didn't want you to miss your first glimpse of a Lightship, boys, cursed or not,” he said to Layton and me.

“Thanks, John,” I said, then activated my viewers to get my first look at
Impulse
. The outrigger had her longcams focused on the leeward wing of the station, “downwind” from the jump point. There were multiple merchant ships attached to the docking ports like puppies suckling their mothers. As we continued to circle the giant station just a bit faster than the spin of Candle herself, the outline of
Impulse
came into view, stern first, then creeping along her central axis, silver-and-chrome-colored splendor emerging into the distant light of Q-prime.

A few moments more and I could see the dark charcoal smears, no doubt where she had taken the hit from the Hoagland Wave, and the ragged rips in her side. I wondered about the crew that had lost their lives aboard her. I wondered what they had gone through, if they had suffered. It made me that much more resolved to complete my mission any way I could.

Otherwise, she looked as magnificent as our own
Starbound
, hanging like a glistening jewel against the black velvet of space. Marker squeezed his head in between Layton and me and broke my rapture at my new assignment, looking in at the view I had on my screen and smiling. Then he gripped me and Layton by the shoulders and gave us a friendly shake.

“Now that, my friends,” he said, “is a Lightship.”

I couldn't have agreed more.

On High Station Candle

I
stepped off the docking ramp of the outrigger and onto the deck of High Station Candle for the first time, Marker and Layton to either side of me. I was greeted by a young Carinthian staff ensign from
Impulse
herself, who snapped to attention and greeted me formally.

“Commander Cochrane, I'm Ensign Claus Poulsen, your assistant 'scopeman and attaché,” he said in a moderate Teutonic accent. “Welcome to the Unified Space Navy.”

“At ease, Poulsen,” I said, offering my hand. He shook it with a smile. Poulsen was young, maybe nineteen, and didn't look like he shaved much. His skin was white with a firm pinkish tone, ginger hair stuck out from under his cap, and there was a bit of plumpness to his face. I guessed he wasn't of pure Germanic descent like most of the Carinthian officers. And he looked vaguely familiar.

Poulsen clicked his fingers and two ratings even younger than him quickly came up and gathered my bags from me.

“I'll keep my shoulder bag, Ensign. What's with all the attention?” I asked.

“Captain Zander has ordered you to meet with him at your first chance, sir. I'm to see to it,” said Poulsen.

“What about my bags?”

“They'll be brought up directly to your suite,” he said. I turned and smiled at my companions.

“Suite?” I said, surprised. Poulsen smiled again.

“I wouldn't get too excited, sir. You have your own bath, a bed with storage, some bookcases and a desk with two guest chairs. It's not exactly the LaandersPlatz in New Vee,” he said. I smiled at the reference to the Carinthian capital city's finest hotel.

“Doesn't have to be, Ensign, doesn't have to be,” I said. Frankly, I was excited just at the thought of something other than a standard junior officer's berth. Poulsen motioned for us to begin walking and I followed him down the access corridor and onto the promenade of Candle, Marker and Layton trailing.

“What about my men here?” I asked. Poulsen nodded.

“All taken care of, sir,” he said. “Lieutenant Layton has a junior officer's berth one deck down from you. Corporal Marker is set up with the marine detachment on the hangar deck, sir.”

I stopped. “No need to delay them on my account, Ensign,” I said. He quickly waved another rating over and he came and got Layton's bag. Marker wouldn't have it.

“Just show me the way,” he said in his gruff accent. The rating waved the two men off in a different direction. I nodded for them to follow.

“We'll catch up as soon as I have time,” I said. With that they both popped off salutes and headed off down a long corridor.

“Service port,” said Poulsen. “We'll be going down the Promenade. I think the captain wants to show off his ship to you, sir.”

“Lead the way, Ensign.” With that, we were off.

Candle had an abundance of viewing ports, and as we walked I had occasion to examine the asteroid that gave the station her name. Candle was a yellow and orange sulfur-scarred rock, pockmarked with craters, with the station carved out of one end. It was efficient, no doubt, but also very ugly.

As we continued on,
Impulse
became visible, hanging in space at the end of a long crystal and metal spider-legged tunnel. She was enormous.

I stood and stared as I waited in line with repair crews and materiel vendors for my turn through security to get into the boarding tunnel. I went to the port window to take her in as much as I could. Crews were covering the scarring to her amidships with the same superconductive compound the Earthmen had provided for building her in the first place. The repair crews extruded new skin over the damaged areas, and the compound, a unique form of nanotechnology from Earth's science labs, raced to form itself perfectly into the wounds. It was an amazing sight.

There was a golden glow coming from
Impulse
's window ports. The ports were aesthetically pleasing but would never have been possible without the protective Hoagland Field the ship generated from the twin gravimetric drives at her stern. The forward third of the ship was a long, oval-shaped tube with the conning tower on top and protective baffle shields covering her nose. The conning tower was another purely aesthetic touch, again made possible by the enveloping Hoagland Field, which let the cruiser glide through normal or hyperdimensional space with equal grace. Since the field provided maximum protection equally to any part of the ship, the Lightship designers had exercised their dramatic license and chosen the conning tower for the bridge.

It was the baffles that had failed
Impulse
at Levant, but they could only do their job if they were properly engaged to catch the enveloping Hoagland Field. Clearly, for whatever reason, they had not been prepared at the time of the accident. The dark scarring present on her hull showed that plainly enough.

Impulse
's amidships were wider and flatter than her forward tube, bulging nearly twice as wide but still managing to keep a sleek appearance. This section contained the major crew quarters, sickbay, science labs, and operational centers, as well as the landing bay for the onboard shuttles she kept as exploration vehicles.

To the aft she grew still wider, the gravimetric plasma drive generators pushed out away from the main hull of the ship, protected by the delta wings and winglets of the Hoagland HD drive generators. The final section was the stern, stacked between the Hoaglands and both serving as a rear defensive tower and holding
Impulse
's drive regulators and sub-light impellers.

When I turned back from the window Poulsen had managed to get us clearance.

I rejoined Poulsen and we passed through security and into the tunnel. The views of
Impulse
from the tunnel gave me an even better view of the damage done to her. I looked through the glass to see a crew ripping out the longscope sensor array. Whoever had used it before me clearly would not be getting another chance. The longscope officer was the one who should have detected the rogue HD displacement wave before anyone else.

Finally we were at the main hatch. I saluted the lieutenant of the guard, who was wearing Carinthian green but with a USN crest and patches at the arms, and handed him my papers. I was surprised to see both him and Poulsen in their country's uniform. I had been under the impression that USN white was the standard dress aboard the Lightships. The lieutenant glanced at my papers and then compared me to my photo, asked me to validate my digital thumbprint, which I did, then waved me through. I took in a deep breath and let it out, stepping on to the deck of an in-service Lightship for the first time.

They said you couldn't notice the output of a functioning Hoagland Field, but I always did. A slight tingle of warmth at the back of my neck, an almost imperceptible flow of fluid down the spine. I supposed it would help if we knew how the field actually
worked
, or what it
was
, but the Earth Historians kept that information on a need-to-know basis. Somehow, though, I always knew when I was on board a ship with a functioning Hoagland Field.

Poulsen and I started down
Impulse
's main galleria, what he had called the Promenade. It ran from stem to stern, cutting the ship into port and starboard, and served as the main makeway for everything from crew to cargo to parade grounds. As I looked down
Impulse
's length the Promenade swept away into the distance, the deck curving up and out of sight a hundred meters behind me and nearly the same distance forward.
Impulse
, like her sister
Starbound
, was nearly three hundred meters long and a full sixteen decks deep, not counting the conning tower, making them easily the biggest vessels humans had built in a century or more.

I'd been aboard
Starbound
enough times to know that her main gallery was nothing compared to this. The Carinthians had spared no expense. What the QRN treated as a utility corridor the Carinthian Navy had converted into a grand presentation of their culture, quite literally a space-borne art museum cutting through the center of their greatest warship. I couldn't help but be impressed.

As we walked I noted full-size marble sculptures in classical styles dotting the hallway, with intricate woodwork and gilding around the coved ceiling a good fourteen feet up. Fanciful murals were painted on the blank canvas of the ceiling, like the pictures I'd seen of historical European palaces on Old Earth. Paintings of ancient battles so large they took up entire walls were hung between the sculpture alcoves. Doors leading to officer's quarters or any important room were made of dark hardwoods. One of these doors was open and revealed an actual library with hundreds of books and wooden bookcases.

“That's the Historian's quarters,” noted Poulsen. “We don't go in there often.”

“Can't wait to meet him,” I said, with only a touch of sarcasm. It was true for more than one reason. I needed to size him up and see if he would be amenable to my secret orders, should they become necessary to carry out.

We passed a pair of portraits flanking the corridor on either side of a central rotunda. The portraits were lit by a dome that glowed with a reasonable facsimile of natural light. The subjects were the current Grand Duke of Carinthia, Henrik Feilberg, and the Lady Bertrude, his wife, no doubt from an earlier time in their lives. I paused to consider Henrik Feilberg's stern dark face, and wondered what the daughter of a man like that might look like. I was, after all, no doubt intended to eventually make the acquaintance of the Princess Karina Feilberg as part of my diplomatic duties. Thankfully an examination of the Lady Bertrude in her younger days revealed a gentle beauty with fair skin and hair and a pleasantly oval face. One could always hope.

Presently Ensign Poulsen ushered me along. “I need to get you to your cabin, sir,” he said.

I eyed him. Something was up. “I thought you said the captain wanted to see me right away?” I asked.

“You're sure you don't want to examine your cabin first? Unload your bags, freshen up and get settled a bit?” he responded.

I stopped and looked around again at the luxurious surroundings of the galleria. No doubt my cabin would be of a similar class.

“Actually, Poulsen,” I said, handing him my shoulder brief, “why don't you go on ahead and take care of things in my cabin for me. I'll be along after I meet with Captain Zander.”

“But . . . sir . . .” stumbled out Poulsen as I handed him the brief. “I've got a dress green uniform laid out for you in the cabin, sir. Your size was sent ahead. Proper attire and all that.”

I looked down at my QRN uniform: dark blue with gold piping, Cochrane family crest of three boars' heads, orange chevrons, and Southern Cross. I decided I'd make my first impression on the captain of
Impulse
wearing my own family's colors.

“I'm afraid that my Quantar blues will have to do for now, Ensign. Just point the way to the captain's cabin and take the rest to my suite. I'll be along after the meeting.”

“But, sir, standard duty uniform aboard
Impulse
is Carinthian green. You don't want to meet the captain—”

“Actually, Ensign, I do want to meet him, just as I am. Now point the way, and carry on.” The way I said it left no room for further discussion. Poulsen reluctantly obliged with directions and I headed off to a portside lifter as Poulsen made his way up to officer's country. He only paused once to look back and I waved in a friendly manner. No doubt part of his orders were to get me properly introduced to the Carinthian Navy way of doing things. I smiled a bit as the lifter doors closed. Captain Lucius Zander would just have to meet with me for the first time on my own terms.

I knocked firmly on the real wood door to Captain Zander's cabin. More precisely, I knocked on one of the
two
wood doors to his cabin. Again, it seemed the Carinthians had spared no expense. The door was opened from the inside by an ensign. I nodded at him as I proceeded through into the largest shipboard room I had ever seen.