"Baldwin, Bill - The Helmsman 01 - The Helmsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baldwin Bill)

THE HELMSAN
BY BILL BALDWIN
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, Sub-lieutenant 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 wealthprivileged
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 over-heated logics. At best, the Eorean Starwharves-one of fifteen starship
construction-and-maintenance complexes on the watery star-base planet of Ginimas Haefdoncould
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 Girnmas 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."