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

shipyard gravity generators. Those near the water were often lighted. On a few, he saw
occasional crew members performing routine poolside duties (cursing both their superiors and
the snow, he guessed with a smile). The signs of life made him feel less alone in the sprawling
confusion of hulls, KA'PPA masts, and ubiquitous cranes which now crowded the lightening
sky.
!!!!Other ships-those grotesquely damaged or undergoing dissection for repair-hovered like
metallic corpses over inland gravity pools half hidden by stacks of hullmetal plates and heavy
shipbuilding equipment. Brim shuddered as he passed one particularly savaged wreck. On the
convoy from Avalon be helplessly, watched one of the escorts, an old destroyer named
Obstinate, take a torpedo hit amidships. She had blown up with all hands. That crew would
have deemed themselves fortunate indeed to bring her back to base at all, even in this condition!
He shook his head-everything in the Universe was relative, as they said.
!!!!Abruptly, he was there. A rusting sign announced "GRAVITY POOL R-2134." Beyond
floated 190 lean irals of T-class destroyer: starship T.83, I.F.S. Truculent.
!!!!He picked his way along stone jetties surrounding the gravity pool, seldom taking his eyes
from the hovering, wedge-shaped form. In the amber glow of gravity generators below,
shadows from ventral turrets moved gently over her underside as she stirred to urgings of the
wind. Above, huddled battle lanterns still cast dim circles of light outside her entry ports, and a
sparse web of emerald mooring beams flashed occasionally as the resting starship gently tested
her anchorage.
!!!!T-class starships weren't big as destroyers went, and at rest they weren't especially pretty,
either. But inside their pointed, angular hulls they crowded four powerful Sheldon Drive
crystals and two brutish antigravity generators with at least triple the thrust claimed by other
ships their size. These latter provided astonishing acceleration below LightSpeed, a regime in
which much of their close-in patrol duty was performed. And every iral spoke power. They
were rugged, sturdy machines with all the mass of space holes. In the hands of a good captain,
any one of them was mole than a match for the Cloud League's best.
!!!!Truculent's sharply angular hull formed a pointed, three-sided trilon resembling the curious
lance tips of Furogg warriors from the K'tipsch quadrant. Her flat main deck widened cleanly
from a needle-sharp bow nearly a quarter of its length to the rounded shape of an A turret with
its long, Slim 144-mmi disruptor. Faired in and raised three levels from this was the starship's
frowning bridge, covered by a presently transparent "greenhouse" of Hyperscreen panels
(required for hyper-LightSpeed vision), which reflected the weak dawn in runnels of melting
snow. Projecting from either side of this structure, bridge wings extended like shoulders nearly
all the way to the deck's crisply defined edge. A sizable globe atop each of the wings housed
fire directors controlling her seven main turrets. From the aft center of the Hyperscreen canopy,
her tall, streamlined mast supported a long-whiskered KA'PPA-COMM system beacon which,
by a curious loophole in Travis physics, enabled nearly instantaneous communication both
below and above the velocity of light and over enormous distances.
!!!!Immediately aft of the bridge, the starship's silhouette fell sheer to the single-level 'midships
deckhouse, which extended into the aft third of the deck. Wide as the bridge itself, this was
flanked by four stubby launches, two in succession to port and two to starboard, protected by
the projecting bridge wings. A swiveling, five-tube torpedo launcher was mounted on the flat
surface of its roof.
!!!!Behind this, a two-level aft deckhouse completed the top-deck centerline superstructure. The
torpedo launcher abutted its second-level torpedo reload and repair shop. Torpedo magazines
and general repair shops occupied most of the first-level space-vital necessities for the long
tours of blockade for which she and her sister ships were commonly employed. Slightly aft and
outboard of this deckhouse, W and X turrets with 144-mmi disruptors occupied the widest-and
most vacant-portions of the upper deck.