THE HELMSMAN: Director's Cut Edition (18 page)

They sat in panting silence for a moment, Brim's heart pounding all out of control.

“I th-think I'd better go right now, Wilf,” Margot said in a shaken voice. “My 'reset' is going to be difficult enough as it is. “

Opening the door of the skimmer to the noisy bustle and confusion outside, he nodded wordlessly and jumped to the snow, touching his fingers to his lips. She returned the salute as he gently pressed the door closed, then moved off in a cloud of snow and was quickly lost in the throng of vehicles.

With an unaccountably heavy heart, Brim pushed his way through the crowd toward the guard shack where someone who looked very much like Utrillo Barbousse waited with a familiar battered traveling case.

“Barbousse ?”

The huge starman saluted as Brim stepped into the lighted area at the entrance to the brow. “Lieutenant Gallsworthy thought you might need some assistance, Lieutenant, sir,” he shouted above the noise of the big ship's generators. “An' I hadn't made plans for the layover, so I took the liberty of signing on the cruise with you.” He handed Brim the side-action blaster. “It's the kind of mission you might be needin' this.”

Brim shook his head and grinned with honest appreciation. He clapped the big starman on the shoulder (which felt like Octillian shore granite). “Let's be on our way, then, Barbousse, my friend,” he said. “It's becoming
very
clear I have an awful lot to learn about the Fleet — and everything else as well.”

Swept along in the lines of soldiers and military vehicles coursing up the wide lanes of the brow, Brim and Barbousse caught only glimpses of the great starliner as she hovered on her monster gravity pool. She seemed to stretch for c'lenyts on either side, and lighted only by the weak glow from beneath, she still looked splendid. Her forward deck tapered gently upward from a conoid bow to a high, rakish superstructure surmounted by two enormous KA'PPA beacons and a dwarfed control bridge, the latter providing the ship with a nearsighted and, to some extent, surprised expression overall. The remainder of the wide, shallow hull — at least three-quarters of her overall length — appeared to be covered by cascading Hyperscreen terraces, which gleamed brightly from within as the big ship loaded.

Below, streams of tarpaulin-covered cargo lumbered along under the lights of at least a dozen cargo-level brows; Brim glimpsed giant cargo tractors levitating a line of self-propelled disruptor cannon into an access hatch deep in the hull. Enormous machines. A great turret squatted on each flattened hull, ridiculously small for the apparent weight it bore, and angular glassed-in driving cabins projected awkwardly like afterthoughts from the forward port and aft starboard corners. Inboard of these, massive cooling systems were ample proof of the prodigious energy required to fire the thick, stubby disruptors that protruded from the turrets.

“What do you make of those?” he asked Barbousse, nodding toward the big vehicles crawling along below.

“Captured Leaguer field pieces, by the looks of 'em, sir,” the big rating answered. “I think e call ‘em ‘Nine-ks.”

“No wonder they looked strange,” Brim remarked. “Won't
they
be a surprise to a couple of Leaguers somewhere?”

Barbousse laughed as they crested the uphill portion of the brow. “Serve Triannic right to have
those
turned against him, Lieutenant. Nine-Ks are mean weapons, I've heard. Big, but exact for all their size. Use 'em for knockin' armored vehicles around, as I hear it. Like battle crawlers and things.”

Suddenly the whole ship was spread before them. Brim shook his head in wonder, imagining how she might have appeared before the war, hullmetal in brilliant white and the legendary IGL logo shining ostentatiously on her bridge. “She must have been beautiful,” he whispered, literally stunned by the immensity of the gigantic machine floating before him.

“Aye, sir,” Barbousse agreed beside him. “Another world all by herself, so they say.”

“Not a Carescrian's world, you can bet,” Brim said as they continued their journey down the other side of the brow toward the main aperture 'midships.

“Nor mine, Lieutenant,” Barbousse said, then he chuckled. “But in the Fleet she belongs to all of us, in a manner of speakin'. War has a funny way of redistributing the wealth.”

Even stripped of peacetime luxury,
Prosperous'
Grand Receiving Lobby was everything Brim expected — and more: A spacious pillared concourse with wide, arched corridors leading off in all directions to other parts of the ship. Tracks glowed everywhere in the deck, and they guided dozens of hooting trams piled high with military luggage pushing slowly through the noisy crowds. The air was alive with the smell of excitement, and everyone seemed to have somewhere important to go, although it was not at all clear any of them knew precisely
where
that somewhere might be located.

In the center of the lobby, a crew of harried-looking clericals toiled desperately within the perimeter of a huge circular desk, fielding questions, peering into half a hundred terminals, and generally assisting the mob of newcomers struggling into the ship. It was here Brim and Barbousse found themselves separated, the latter assigned to a damage-control unit, Brim to Flight Operations.

“I'll keep an eye on you, sir, just the same,” Barbousse said, voice raised to be heard in the crowd. “When you want me, just ask any of the ratings.” Then he was gone, pushing his way confidently toward one of the large companionways as if he had been assigned to the mammoth starship all his life.

Brim smiled as the big man disappeared in the crowd.
Prosperous was
a large ship, with a lot of strangers on board — a likely place for feeling lonely. He laughed to himself, before
Truculent,
he hadn't really thought that much about loneliness; he'd been simply used to it. Now... It was
nice
to have Barbousse around. Someone from home, so to speak.

“You'll want to check in with the Flight Ops,” a bucktoothed rating with narrow eyes and a long nose said as she handed him back his identification. Her perfume suggested crushed ca'omba cookies, somehow. “Concourse 3, Fifth level, zone 75 — catch the 16-E tram, Lieutenant..” She pointed vaguely across the room. “One comes by every few cycles during loading operations.”

Brim nodded and started through the crowd, chuckling to himself. So far as he could remember, this would be one of his very first rides in a shipboard tram. All the really big ships had them, of course — even giant Carescrian ore carriers. The big difference was that presumably ones on
Prosperous
worked!

* * * *

“Oh, you're welcome on the bridge anytime, old boy,” said a youngish-looking Operations lieutenant commander wearing prominent Ka'LoomKA signet rings (one of which displayed his name as “C. A. Sandur”). With a bulbous nose, pursed lips, and enormous gray eyes, his round face wore a perpetual look of pleased astonishment. “But probably you'll never touch a control,” he added uncomfortably. “Pity they dragged you along at all. You're clearly dressed as if you had better plans for the evening.”

“I did indeed, Commander,” Brim answered, looking bleakly around the spacious cabin assigned to Flight Operations
— everything
was big on this ship. “I'm replacing someone suddenly ill, is that it?”

“That seems to be the drill,” Sandur said.

“Just my luck,” Brim grumped, thinking of a warm room in a warm tavern with a warm Margot. “All that trouble and now I've got nothing to do..”

“The woman you are replacing had nothing to do, either, if it makes you feel any better,” Sandur answered patiently. “She was just a temporary Helmsman like yourself. We
always
have full crews of IGL people to man this particular liner — same ones who fly her in peacetime. Like myself.” He snorted humorlessly. “Yet the movers and shakers in your Admiralty think we need Fleet types to help us run our own equipment now they've got a war.” He shook his head in good-natured frustration. “It's not as if we hadn't been piloting this elegant rustbucket for close to seven years now.” Then he laughed amiably. “But that isn't your fault, is it, Brim? Any more than it is my fault you find yourself here. Is there anything I can do to make your stay more, ah…?”

“I'll say there is,' Brim piped up. “Sir,” he added quickly. “They called me out so quickly, nobody told me anything about the mission.”

Sandur shook his head. “Oh, my,” he said sympathetically. 'They
really
did the job on you, didn't they, Brim?” He laughed. “Well, that seems about the very least I can do.” He swept his Fleet Cloak from a nearby recliner and fastened it around his neck with an expensive-looking — and
very
nonstandard — collar clasp. “Why don't you follow me up to the bridge? We can observe the takeoff from there, and then I shall tell you what I know.”

Less than a metacycle later, Brim watched Gimmas/Haefdon recede in the aft Hyperscreens from a large, but discouragingly normal-looking control bridge. He chuckled to himself, wondering why he'd expected anything special about
Prosperous.
Bridges were, after all, bridges — some larger than others, but in most aspects alike as so many shells on a beach. Another study in relativity, he decided while he settled down to his first details of the mission code-named “Raid Prosperous.”

As Sandur put things, the operation had been sorely needed for a long time now. A'zurn, a mild, lushly vegetated world on the edge of Galactic Sector 944-E, had been violently seized by Triannic at the outset of the war. The solitary planet of Brandon, the star that gave it sustenance, lay directly astride one of the principal trade routes leading to the League’s most important starports. Location itself made the invasion one of military as well as economic necessity, at least the way the Leaguers saw things. To provide a modicum of propriety in which to wrap this outright rape of a blameless republic (and longtime ally of the Empire), Triannic immediately constructed a colossal research center within the capital city of Magalla'ana. Then he broadcast far and wide that the new facilities would be dedicated to beneficial purposes, i.e., ridding primitive worlds populated by avian beings of viral diseases that threatened their most promising life forms.

Of course, nobody believed a word — special weapons research is difficult to conceal anywhere. And the center was successful at its
real
work from the outset: so much so that its destruction soon became an obsession throughout the Home Galaxy, especially in the Empire. But the Leaguers stayed one step ahead in defenses. They cleverly used A'zurnian natives (a race of flighted humanoids) for on-site laborers
and
hostages — with the latter function much more vital than the first. While big, starship-mounted disruptors could easily wipe out the whole complex without even coming into orbit around A'zurn, they could not do so without slaughtering thousands of innocents imprisoned in a circle surrounding the target area. Only if the hostages could first be evacuated to safety could units of the Imperial Battle Fleet accomplish their mission. Essentially, the operation called for a swift ground foray to save the natives closely followed by heavy bombardment. Coordinating the diverse units necessary to field such an operation eventually led to Raid Prosperous, hosted by Imperial Fleet Operations and implemented as a joint effort by the tradition-steeped Imperial Avalonian Expeditionary Forces, units of the Nineteenth and Twenty-fifty Destroyer Flotillas, and His Majesty's Royal Transport Command, whose temporarily Blue-Caped IGL employees operated
Prosperous
in war as they did in peace.

During the last day out, Brim audited a series of briefings conducted by native A'zurnian officers. These onetime diplomats and military attaches had been stationed in Avalon at the outbreak of war and found themselves unable to return home before their dazed government capitulated to Triannic’s massed invasion forces.

Even Carescrian children studied pictures of A'zurnians — everyone in the Universe did, it seemed. But Brim had never yet encountered one in real life. Close up, they were stunning. Men and women alike were tall, barrel-chested individuals who dressed in wonderfully old-fashioned regimentals: tight gray tunics with high crimson collars (elaborately embroidered), gold epaulets, dark knee breeches with crimson side stripes, and high, light-weight boots. The uniforms cast an odd but beguiling grandeur wherever they appeared.

From the front, A'zurnians were normal enough humanoids, resembling most all of the space-traveling sentients Brim had encountered so far. From the back, however, their wings — really a second, very specialized set of arms — set them apart from all the rest. Midway between the shoulders, their tunics opened to accommodate a down-covered, pillow-sized lump common to all adult A'zurnians known as a “tensil.” This protrusion (manifesting itself at puberty) covered an outgrowth of the reflexive nervous system that automatically coordinated the complex motions of feather and flesh necessary for flight. From each side of the tensil, great folded wings arched upward like golden cowls trailing long flight feathers in alabaster cascades that reached all the way to the floor. Brim found himself awestruck.

The briefings themselves were well prepared and easy to understand. Careful lectures from a whole staff of experts gave Brim details of the landscape and climate, planetary transportation system, the Magalla'ana city layout (including the research center itself), and known effects of the League occupation.

This last subject was covered by a tall female with the huge eyes and large retinas of a born hunter — she instantly captured Brim's imagination. Her presentation, however, drove all thought of pleasantries from his mind, for she described an A'zurn that suffered mightily under Triannic's iron fist.

As she explained it, League soldiers intended no special malice toward their A'zurnian thralls, but the net effect was much the same as if they did. Triannic's military structures were specially designed to stifle independent thought of any kind. Pragmatic rules covered everything — including how conquered peoples were to be governed. So, when the fragile A'zurnians were subjected to the same general treatment that subdued a planet of sturdy warriors like the seven-iral giants of Coggl'KANs, their hollow bones and fragile wings literally tended to crumple and shatter upon contact. Broken extremities were so common that fully a quarter of the A'zurnian population was known to have succumbed in the first two years of occupation alone. And if this were not enough, the feared black-suited Controllers (who
were
occasionally permitted independent thought) soon discovered it was much more convenient to imprison A'zurnians once their wings were snapped in half just below the “elbow.” Captives altered in such a fashion could then be impounded without the Leaguers' first having to construct sky barriers as well as walls. It wasn't so much cruelty that led the Controllers to devise such gross tortures — it was simple pragmatism coupled with a total absence of empathy.