"Cook, Glen - Starfishers 00 - Passage At Arms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)
УIt helps.Ф
The Old Man says, СToo much incentive, sometimes.Ф For a minute it seems heТs finished. Then he decides to go ahead. УTake TalmidgeТs Climber. Gone now. Tried to fight the hunter-killers so he could use his missiles and be first ship back. No law against it, of course.Ф He falls silent again. Yanevich picks up the thread when it becomes obvious heТll say nothing more.
УGood encounter, too. He got three confirmed. But the rest crawled all over him. Kept him up so long half his people came back with baked brains. They set the record for staying up.Ф
The story sounds exaggerated. I donТt pursue it. They donТt want to talk about it. Even Westhause observes a moment of silence.
We climb aboard an electric bus. It takes its power from a whip running on a track clinging to the tunnel wall.
УOnly the finest for the heroes of the Climber Fleet,Ф the Old Man says, taking the control seat.
The bus surges forward. I try to watch the work going on out in the big tunnel. So many ships Most of them are not Climbers at all. Half the defense force seems to be in for repairs. A hundred workers on tethers float around every vessel. No lie-in-the-corner refugees up here. Everybody works. And the Pits keep firing away, sending up the supplies.
I think of the Lilliputians binding Gulliver, looking at all those people on lines. And of baby KrohlerТs spiders playing at little trial flights around Mom. Said creature is a vaguely arachnidian beast native to New Earth. It nests and nurses its young on its back. ItТs warm-blooded, endoskeletal, and mammalian-a pseudo-marsupial, really-but it has a lot of legs and a magnificently extrudable whip of a tail, so the spider image sticks.
Sparks fly in mayfly swarms as people cut and weld and rivet. Machines pound out a thunderous industrial symphony. Several vessels are so far dismantled that they scarcely resemble ships. One has its belly laid open and half its skin gone. A carcass about ready for the retail butcher. What sort of creature feeds on roasts off the flanks of attack destroyers?
Gnatlike clouds of little gas-jet tugs nudge machinery and hull sections here and there. How the devil do they keep track of what theyТre doing? Why donТt they get mixed up and start shoving destroyer parts into Climbers?
A Climber appears. It looks clean. Very little micrometeorite scoring, even. УDoesnТt look like thereТs anything wrong with that one.Ф
УThose are the tricky bastards,Ф the Old Man muses. I assume heТll award me another cautionary tale. Instead, he resumes staring straight ahead, playing the vehicleТs controls, leaving the talking to Westhause.
УThe critical heat-sensitive stuff gets replaced after every patrol. The laser weaponry, too. Takes too long to break it down and scan each part. Somebody back down the tube will get ours. WeТll get something that belonged to somebody whoТs on patrol already.Ф
УPass them around like the clap,Ф Yanevich says.
The Old Man snorts. He doesnТt approve of officersТ displaying crudity in public.
Westhause says, УEverything has to be perfect.Ф
I reflect on what IТve seen of Climber people and ask myself, What about the crew? It looks like CommandТs attitude toward personnel is the opposite of its attitude toward ships. If they can still say their names and crawl, and donТt scream too much going through the hatch, send them out again.
The bus suddenly wrenches itself off the main track. The passengers howl. The Old Man ignores them. He wants to see something. For several minutes we study a Climber with the hull number 8. The Commander stares as if trying to divine some critical secret.
Hull number 8. Eight without an alphabetical suffix, meaning sheТs the original Climber Number 8, not a replacement for a ship lost in action. The Eight Ball. IТve heard some of the legends. Lucky Eight. Over forty missions. Nearly two hundred confirmed kills, mainly back at the beginning. Never lost a man. Any spacer in the Climbers will sell his soul to get on her crew. SheТs had a good run of Commanders.
Westhause whispers, УShe was his first duty assignment in Climbers.Ф
I wonder if heТs trying to steal her luck.
УLiving on borrowed time,Ф the Old Man declares, and slams the bus into movement. Full speed ahead now, and pedestrians be ready to jump.
The odds against a ClimberТs surviving forty patrols are astronomical. No pun intended. There are just too many things that can go wrong. Most donТt survive a quarter that many. Only a few Climber people make their ten-mission limit. They drift from ship to ship, in accordance with billet requirements, and hope the big computer is shuffling them along a magical pathway. I think the odds would improve if the crews stayed together.
Climber duty is a guaranteed path to advancement. Survivors move up fast. ThereТre always ships to be replaced, and new vessels need cadres.
Westhause has to think about that one, as though heТs familiar with emotion and morale only from textbook examples. УSome. The jobs are the same in every ship, though.Ф
УI wouldnТt like getting moved every time I made new friends.Ф
УI suppose. ItТs not so bad for officers. Especially Engineers. But they only take people who can handle it. Loners.Ф
УSociopaths,Ф the Commander says softly. Only I hear him. He makes a habit of commenting without elucidating.
УYouТre a call-up, arenТt you?Ф
УOnly to the Fleet. I volunteered for Climbers.Ф
УHow are Engineers different?Ф Navy is a conservative organization. Engineers donТt do much engineering. They donТt have engines to tinker with. Aboard line ships they still have boatswains. ThereТs no logical continuity from old-time surface navies.
УThey stay with one ship after three apprentice missions. TheyТre all physicists. A ship always has an apprentice aboard.Ф
УThe more I hear, the more I wish IТd kept my mouth shut. This looks bleaker all the time.Ф
УOne mission? With the Old Man? With CliRon Six? Shit. A cakewalk.Ф HeТs whispering. The Commander isnТt supposed to hear. The set of the Old ManТs shoulders says he has. УYou can do it standing on your head. YouТre in the ace survivor squadron. We graduate more people than anybody. Hell, weТll be back groundside before the end of the month.Ф
УGraduate?Ф
УMake ten. Guys make their ten with us. Hell, weТre at the bay already. There she is. In the nine spot.Ф
A whole, combat-ready Climber looks like an antique spoked automobile wheel and tire with a ten-liter cylindrical canister where the hub belongs. Its exterior is fletched with antennae, humps, bumps, tubes, turrets, and one huge globe riding high on a tall, leaning vane reminiscent of the vertical stabilizer on supersonic atmosphere craft. Every surface is anodized a Stygian black.
There are twelve Climbers in the squadron. They cling to a larger vessel like a bunch of ticks. The larger vessel looks like the frame and plumbing of a skyscraper after the walls and floors are removed. This is the mother, the command and control ship. SheТll carry her chicks into the patrol sector and scatter them, then pick up any patrolling vessels that have expended their missiles and need rides home.
Though a Climber can space for half a year and few patrols last longer than a month, Command wants no range sacrificed getting to the zone, nor any stores expended. Stores are a ClimberТs biggest headache, her AchillesТ heel. By their nature the vessels pack a lot of hardware into tightly limited space. ThereТs little room left for crew or consumables.
УAwful lot of ornamentation,Ф I say.
The Commander snorts. УAnd most of it useless. TheyТre always tinkering. Always adding something. Always upping our dead mass and cutting our comforts. Patrols are getting shorter and shorter, arenТt they? This time itТs a goddamned magnetic cannon that shoots ball bearings. Just a test run, they say. Shit. Six months from now every ship in the Fleet will have one. CanТt think of a damned thing more useless, can you?Ф
HeТs steamed. He hasnТt said this much, in one lump, since I arrived. IТd better prod while the prodding is good. УMaybe thereТs a use. Might find it in the mission orders. Something new to try.Ф
УShit.Ф He folds up again. I know better than to go after him. That just makes him stay closed longer.
I study the mother and Climbers. Nine slot. That one will be my home . . . For how long? Quick patrol? I hope so. These men would be hard to endure over a prolonged mission.
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