"Baldwin, Bill - Helmsman 06 - The Siege - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baldwin Bill)

Enjoy lively book discussions online with CompuServe. To become a member of CompuServe call 1 -800-848-8199 and ask for the Time Warner Trade Publishing forum. (Current members GO.TWEP)

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book "

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright © 1994 by Merl Baldwin All rights reserved

Cover design by Don Puckey Cover illustration by John Berkey

Questar* is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc

Warner Books, Inc

1271 Avenue of the Amencas

New York, NY 10020

^A A Time Warner Company Printed in the United States of America

First Printing- March, 1994 10 987654321

Imperial Standard Date: 32 Diad, 52013.

Prologue

Outfitted in snug, Bearish finery, complete with requisite egg-shaped hat to cover his ears and add at least an iral to his normal six-iral height, Rear Admiral Wilf Brim, Imperial Fleet, grinned with pure pleasure as the elegant troika sped him through a dazzling Sodeskayan blizzard. Traditionally known as a "love sleigh," the rare antique was drawn by three shaggy black droshkat thoroughbreds loping effortlessly over tile powdery snow—the center 'kat trotting in shafts while the other two, loose save for long traces, padded along like ebony ghosts. The three great animals set hundreds of tiny bells to rhythmic jingling from their burnished harnesses, producing melodies from a thousand years in the Sodeskayan past. Only cloud-muted thunder from a lifting starship momentarily spoiled the illusion that the sleigh was racing through the planet's rural countryside. Tomoshenko Memorial Starport on artificially heated Lake Demyansk lay a mere thirty c'lenyts to spinward from the sprawling Borodov estate. And the capital of all Sodeskaya, "Holy" Gromcow, unfolded along a riverbank only twenty c'lenyts farmer on.

2 I BILL BALDWIN

THE SIEGE I 3

To Brim's left, Grand Duke Anastas Aiexi Borodov snapped his whip and joggled the reins with the exuberance of someone half his age. Driving a Sodeskayan troika was a special art, for the driver was required to stand—no mean feat for a Bear of Borodov's years. As a true yamschik, he was privileged to wear a special badge: two bright orange za-vencock feathers protruding from the right side of his hat.

On Brim's right, massive General Nikolai Yanuarievich Ursis, galactic-class Drive engineer and (in rare years of peace) dean of the renowned Dytasburg Academy, puffed contentedly on an intricately carved Zempa pipe as chalky trunks of ancient, somnolent birches whizzed by on either side of the narrow rustic lane. Stumps of frost-burned azalea and skeletal dogwood protruded from the snow, half screening bare stands of oak and poplar behind them.

This was Sodeskayan winter at its old-fashioned best—if not its most genuine.

Despite the quiet tranquillity of the late afternoon, however, Brim found it all too easy to recall the savage conflict— now generally referred to as the Second Great War—that was spreading rapidly throughout the Galaxy. He'd personally had a hand in turning back the League's first barbarous assault against his own homeland.

Now, only a few thousand light-years from this great capital, Nergol Triannic's League of Dark Stars was assembling an even greater invasion force than the one he'd arrayed against the Imperial capital of Avalon. In the balance was the huge agglomeration of stars, planets—and wealth—that made up the colossal Sodeskayan heartland. Commanding the vast invasion force was none other than Field Marshal Rodef nov Vobok, with fat Admiral Hoth Orgoth—recently humbled during the Battle of Avalon—in charge of space operations. This time, the Leaguers meant to take no chances for failure. Brim knew—he'd literally had to fight his way to the Sodeskayan capital....

Less than three Standard Days out of Gromcow and scarcely half a metacycle into a blustery morning watch, he had been sitting in a jump seat on the navigation bridge of the fast Sodeskayan liner Alexasander Grobkin, conversing—in Avalonian—with Captain Peter Nesterov and Chief Navigator T. P. Stefanovski. At a warning from their Helmsman, the three peered through the aft Hyperscreens toward three fast-approaching points of light that moved at an oblique angle to the normal rush of stars. Suddenly, an au-thenticator system filled the bridge with its mewling alarm— its coded KA'PPA challenge to the three mysterious ships had not been properly answered. To port, disrupters on their lone escort, a little 26,000-milston Smetlivy-class attack ship named Gordi began to index and swing like an athlete flexing his muscles.

"So," Nesterov remarked emotionlessly, "Leaguers again, eh?" Tall, ruddy-haired, and endowed with the huge, droopy whiskers common to natives of Sodeskaya's frigid Hargov-ian-Sector planets, the Bear was a very senior captain of the Sodeskayan flag carrier AkroKahn.

"League national industry is war, it seems, Captain," Stefanovski replied as flashes from the Leaguers' ranging shots sparkled brightly among the onrushing stars. A small, dark Bear from Gromcow proper, he had the nearsighted countenance of one who has spent most of his career staring into a display. Moments later, the Hyperscreens dimmed momentarily as six or eight closely spaced explosions rocked space nearly a c'lenyt to port. Stefanovski frowned into the wide-area star map of his display and shook his head. "At least they are no better shots than their predecessors in the last war," he said mordantly.

Brim chuckled grimly, thinking back on myriads of similar flashes in two separate wars over more than twenty Standard Years—so many, they failed to arouse much fear anymore. They'd simply become part of his existence. Only