"Baldwin, Bill - The Helmsman 07 - The Defiance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baldwin Bill)
"Good," I said. "I'll take my four ships in first. Harris, you make a circuit and follow with Blue quad, next Kimple with Yellow, and finally Bell with Green. Any questions?"
"None, Admiral."
"See you on the surface," I said as a solid ruby light flashed out of the evening magenta ahead. A gust of wind pushed the ship to port, and the light began to dissociate into horizontal lines. As I corrected to starboard, the ruby lines converged, then separated again, this time to vertical lines. One last correction and they coalesced againЧon centerline. Increased the lift augmenters and fed in ten degrees more power to take up the load.
More landing checklist. Continuous boost ON; radio nav switches set on RADIOS; flight panels checked. The other three ships in my quad had now moved into line-ahead formation behind me, each ship slightly offset to the left. It was time I got everyone belowdecks down in their seats. "All hands secure personal stations. All hands secure personal stations..."
Altimeter, flight, and nav instruments set and crosschecked; airspeed EPR bugs reduced to one thirty nine and cross-checked, speed brake levers LOCKED. The starship began to sink as I reined in the power. Off to starboard, a virtual forest of shipyard cranes slid by my Hyperscreens, then huge rounded towers, darkened globes, and a maze of tall crystalline structures catching the last of Hador's failing light. Three thousand irals to my left a veritable city of darkened goods houses and wharves materialized out of the night, most of the latter occupied by one sort of starship or another.
Only a hundred irals' altitude, nowЧthe part that separates Helmsmen from wannabes. Walked the steering engines carefully, concentrating on the ranks of waves glittering out ahead in the landing lights. Glide path... descent rate... speed... angle of attack. None perfect, but close enough at this altitude, especially with a human at the helm. Called up a little more thrustЧshould be 3-4 cpms fastЧthen eased off the steering engines. The bow swung to windward, then I slanted the deck a little for drift. Nose up ever so slightly. Judging the wave troughs... held her off... deftly leveling the tri-hull only an instant before cascades of dark water shot skyward past the side Hyperscreens, diminished as we slid through a trough, then shot skyward once more as I gently plastered the pontoons to the surface. We sliced through two more of the big rollers before I pulsed the gravity brakes gently, sending long streams of gravitons out ahead to flatten the waves and slow the ship. Moments later, we were stopped, rolling gently on the surface of Grand Harbor while I switched to local gravity (as always, nearly losing the contents of my stomach), then configured the controls for surface running. In the overhead 'Screens, the clouds had passed, and stars from the galactic center shimmered like a great canopy of lights to set the water glittering with a million-odd colors and hues. After a number of momentous years, I had again returned to Hador-Haelic's AtalantaЧand perhaps a middle-aged woman with long brown hair who had never been far from my mind during thirteen long years. Focused on the ship againЧno time to think about her now!
* * *
We'd scarcely cleared the landing vector when a harbor controller with an anxious look appeared in my globular display.
"Harbor Control to all quads of Convoy ART-19... Harbor Control to all quads of Convoy ART-19," she said. "Slave your ships to individual blue taxi vectors with all haste. I repeatЧwith all haste. Enemy raids are imminent."
"Red quad scanning for vectors," I respondedЧnot at all surprised. The zukeeds had us nailed! Configured for surface running, our Starfuries were much too far behind the energy curve for quick lift-offsЧespecially in the face of an attack. As I spoke, Red Four turned hard to port, followed by Red Three, then Red Two. Abruptly, a blue harbor vector gleamed in my own port Hyperscreen. Pointed an acquisition tube at it until three blue lights converged in my nav panel, then it was up to the Starfury. Now, remotely steered from somewhere in the darkness ahead, we headed straight for the vector. Rising from the helm, I peered aft through the darkness, where Blue quad was skimming to a landing in clouds of spray no more than a thousand irals behind us.
By the time Yellow quad reported they were down, I could sense rather than see a large opening in the massive seawall ahead, where the water's reflection ended in the darkness. My taxi vector was beamed from it. "Docking and mooring details to stations," I ordered on the blower. Moments later, hatches popped open atop the pontoons and soon crews of starsailors dressed in attractor boots, sea slickers, and big insulated mittens were scurrying along the wet, dimly lighted surfaces to open our optical mooring cleats.
As our four ships approached the massive entrance, a searing flash lighted the sky and dimmed the Hyperscreens, almost as if a nearby star had exploded. Startled, I jumped in my seat, then steadied myself. Of courseЧthe Gradgroat-Norchelite orbital forts! They'd be the first to fire on an attack from space.
Another blinding flash. Then another, and another until the darkness was turned to a throbbing, toneless blue-white daylight. Then... darkness againЧdarker still for the contrast.
I knew the attackers were now either past the forts or destroyed as I listened to the ships of Green quad report their landing runs, then make an abrupt turn shoreward. Breathed a little easier. All of Convoy ART-19 was at least safely downЧif not yet safely sheltered.
Suddenly our four ships were safe inside the darkened cavern, running four abreast along what appeared to be a wide canal. From her position at the extreme right of the quad, my Starfury seemed to be speeding along only a few irals from a very solid-looking seawallЧwith nobody at the helm!
Abruptly, we came to an halt with the 'Gravs idling, and I glanced aft againЧJust in time to hear the ships of Blue quad report themselves safely through the entrance, four dim white wakes against the near darkness. Then the unmistakable flashing of disruptors lighted the sky outside of the hangar, bathing Yellow quad in brilliant strobes of light as the four ships raced for shelter through a veritable forest of glowing, yellow-green waterspouts just short of the entrance.
I watchedЧhorrifiedЧas the rightmost Starfury lifted from the water atop a glowing, coruscating eruption of greenish energy and water. While its luckless Helmsman struggled with the controls, the Starfury's nose reared higher and higher, then fell off sharply to starboardЧJust as it managed to reach the hangar entrance. Next moment, the speeding ship slammed broadside against a solid-rock column, then broke in two and exploded, spewing glittering clouds of hullmetal sparks as it sideswiped its closest neighbor. More disruptor flashes outside, these much brighter. The Fleet Base was finally shooting backЧjust as the doors began to close,
But where was Green quad?
Another tremendous explosionЧfollowed by an angular-looking starship tumbling into the mouth of the hangar, aflame from stern to Drive tubes. One of The Torond's new Dampiers! The stricken ship erupted in a blinding sheet of pure energy while the massive doors continued to slide shut. Without warning, a Starfury burst through the incandescent rubble, followed by a second... then a third, only just squeezing through the narrow opening that remained. Then a secondary explosion and the doors finally slammed together.
Moments later, when the hangar's internal lighting came on, a glance around revealed that we were in a huge, arched tunnel carved from solid rockЧat least two hundred irals high and perhaps five times that in width. The "canal" I'd sensed in the darkness was actually the ends of piers lining either side of the underground passage, which appeared to extend for nearly a quarter c'lenyt in either direction. Wreckage from the downed Dampier still smoldered just inside the massive doors, and the six survivors from Yellow and Green quads were idling in two ranks behind the four ships of Blue quadЧall apparently undamaged, as were my own Starfury and the three other ships of Red quad.
I'd lost two of the sixteen Starfuries in my chargeЧbetter than twelve percent. Not a record to be proud of, especially since the ships had come all that way safely. They'd be missed; no doubt about that. From my position on the canal, I could count twenty-nine other Starfuries moored in three groups along the tunnel. Fifteen older Defiant-class attack ships were clustered into two additional groups. The remainder of the occupied wharves nearby were taken up by various utility and transport starships as well as three bizarre-looking "benders" that could "bend" nearly all radiation around their hulls, rendering them virtually invisible to all known receptors.
Clearly, the defending squadrons of 71 Group had been caught with their collective pants down. Why? With the sophisticated, late-model KA'PPA-based BKAEW early-warning systems that had been shipped here only Standard Months earlier, they should easily have been spaceborne in plenty of time to bluntЧor even completely foilЧthe assault that had destroyed two brand-new attack ships and their crews. Yet none of the ships appeared even to be manned, although a few maintenance crews could be seen working on their hulls.
Well, by Voot, I'd been warned. What a state of affairs! With a fast-growing sense of indignation, I promised myself that tomorrowЧfirst thingЧI would start rooting out the bastards who were responsible, starting with the present, outgoing commander, one Rear Admiral (the Hon.) W. Groton Summers, who would soon be on his way to a comfortable staff job in Avalon. My angry musings were interrupted by a surface-traffic controller who appeared in his globular display with a mooring assignment at one of the empty piers....
* * *
14 Heptad 52014, Brightness: 3:30
TO: Wilf A Brim, RADM, I.F.
From: Hathaway Cottshall, Administrator
For: W. Groton Summers, RADM, I.F.
Admiral Brim: RADM Summers sends compliments, and directs me to convey that it will be his pleasure to receive you in his private Headquarters office at Morning:00:00 sharp for Transfer of Command Ceremonies to be held promptly at noon. Formal uniform recommended.
Formal uniform, eh? So that's the sort of thing that concerned Summers. Certainly didn't seem worried much about his base being attackedЧor about safe arrival for badly needed reinforcements to its defense. Except for a few dock-side mooring squads, no one had even bothered to meet my tired ferry crews as they stiffly piled out of their Starfuries at pierside. And it couldn't be that they'd mistaken our arrival time; the message had been forwarded here to the VOQ late yesterday afternoon.
Later yesterday, when I'd personally inquired about what sort of defenses had been aloft when the Dampiers arrived for their attacker, I was informed that only the orbiting space forts and the harbor's fixed disruptor batteries had been put on full alert. Yet even in worst case, many of those twenty-nine Starfuries I counted had to be operational. So where in xaxt were their thraggling crews? And why hadn't at least a few of the zukeeds been flying a Combat Space Patrol? Maybe Summers was a CIGA, but he certainly couldn't have effected damage on this scale without a lot of help.
The Ops Officer was responsible for much of the way the base appeared. But first responsibility lay with Summers and his Executive Officer; that's where I'd start. After that, I'd root out the decay so that this kind of treason would never happen againЧever.
The next message was from Master Chief Petty Officer Utrillo Barbousse, highest-ranking noncom in the Imperial Fleet and a trusted personal associate since our days together aboard I.F.S. Truculent during the First Great War. Barbousse and I had formed such an effective team that for years Emperor Onrad insisted the two of us be stationed together. According to the him, it was the most damaging thing he could do to the League.
WO9FGU7BVJW405967HGJQ0W9E8RG
[TOP SECRET]
FROM:
U. BARBOUSSE, MCPO, VPOQ, IFB, AVALON,
AVALON-ASTERIOUS
TO:
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