"Baldwin, Bill - The Helmsman 03 - The Trophy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baldwin Bill)

Later, Brim balanced himself precariously atop Jamestown's shattered bridge as the tug pulled them slowly into harbor. Two bright green hawser beams crackled from optical bollards on the stubby, hunchbacked rescue ship to the nose of the ED-4, but for the last hundred c'lenyts or so, those beams had disappeared ahead into heavy fog that set in as the storm subsided. There was no sky and no horizon, only the mist, cold and wet on his face. The sea's leaden swell was long and slow, littered with ice fragments. Listing heavily to port, Jamestown sloughed unwillingly through the sluggish water, shouldering aside half-frozen mush that streamed past her ruined flanks and tumbled in her wake with a distant, whisperlike chuckle. Aft, he could see the misshappen curve of the hull, the dull, corrugated segment outside the failed generator chamber, a number of open hatches, the stubby KA'PPA tower, and farther on, white arcs of foamy water jetting from the pump outlets.
Then it started to snow again. Small white flakes whirled past his face like moths near a Karlsson lamp. He shivered. His old tan uniform didn't heat well anymore, and a tear below the collar let a lot of frigid dampness in. But it felt better trembling out there in the cold than sitting uselessly below. With the Hy-perscreen frames empty and open to the weather. Jamestown's bridge was, for all practical purposes, just as cold and wet as the outdoors. Besides, the wrecked, waterlogged consoles tended to remind him of his own fortunes during the last two years. Somehow, none of it seemed credible—not even now.
Less than two months after he (then Lieutenant Wilf Brim, Imperial Star Fleet) reported to a new assignment aboard I.F.S.

Thunderbolt, Emperor Nergol Triannic and his League of Dark Stars had unexpectedly sued for an armistice. The war had ended precisely three standard weeks later, with Triannic sent into exile on remote little Portoferria, orbiting a huge gas giant in the sparsely populated ninety-first region of the galaxy. During the peace euphoria that followed, the Thunderbolt was ex-peditiously paid off, declared surplus, then towed to the breakers—early victim of the Congress for Intragalactic Accord, or CIGA. This burgeoning new organization had quickly infected the Imperial Government as well as the Admiralty when the war's patriotic fervor began to wane.
Brim's own career had followed the same path a short time later. After six weeks of inactivity at the great Fleet base on frozen Gimmas-Haefdon, he had been summoned to a large auditorium at one of the headquarters buildings, packed in with other recently orphaned Fleet officers, and indifferently discharged with a month's credits in his pocket, a one-way ticket to anywhere in the Empire, and a printed citation ("suitable for framing") from Greyffin IV, Grand Galactic Emperor, Prince of the Reggio Star Cluster, and Rightful Protector of the Heavens. "We wish to personally thank you," the citation began, "for your tireless devotion to the cause of..." Heartsick, Brim had thrown it away—the signature was clearly a fake. He'd seen the real thing the day he'd been awarded the Emperor's Cross, and that citation was actually signed. He'd even met the Emperor in person. During another life, it seemed now....
Afterward, with throngs of other displaced Blue Capes, he'd made his way back to Avalon, the Imperial capital. Even if he had wished to return to his native Carescria—which he did not—nothing remained of his earlier life there. After the Helmsmen's Academy and the life of an Imperial officer, there was no returning to that poverty-blighted desert, not even with the specter of approaching destitution. And his meager savings had dwindled predictably in the fast-paced, explosive life of Avalon City—capital of nearly half the galaxy.
Brim shook his head as the fog thickened again, making him blink. There would certainly be no income from this trip—not with a jettisoned cargo and a wrecked starship. He shrugged as the mist isolated him completely for a moment. It was some satisfaction to have spared everyone on board, especially the

passengers, unfortunate wretches that they were. Most of them were clearly on the bottom rungs of the Empire's economic ladder. They were the only kind of fares little StarFleet Enterprises could attract: people who could pay so little they'd take passage on a clapped-out antique like Jamestown.
Just to get to Avalon....
He laughed with half-cynical compassion. All too soon, they'd find out—as he had—that they'd only gone from some distant frying pan into a brand-new fire....
The fog cleared again for a moment, revealing a bleak forest of gantry cranes, most of them inactive. When the huge port reverted to a peacetime economy, many of the great commercial terminals had been forced to close their piers from lack of traffic. Brim shook his head; it certainly wasn't the kind of postwar paradise he'd once imagined. But then, he'd been a bit more idealistic in those days, expecting people to feel some appreciation—perhaps even a little obligation—for returning veterans and the wartime sacrifices they'd made. He snorted. The CIGAs took care of that with their ceaseless attacks on everything even remotely connected with the military. Instead of making him feel as if he had finally earned some worth in the Empire, he'd gotten the idea early on that he was actually part of a national embarrassment. The war was over, and the sooner people could forget about every part of it, the better.
He shrugged, then started momentarily as Pam Hale materialized out of the fog, expertly negotiating the wet hullmetal on spike-heeled boots as she took her place beside him. A full-length cloak and hood covered everything but her face with woolly tan. She had soft, mist-covered features: a dimpled chin with generous lips and high cheeks, a pug nose, and enormous blue eyes whose comers were developing a network of tiny wrinkles. "Not a pretty sight," she observed, nodding toward the empty docks and boarded-up cranes. "A lot of folks are out of work now that peace has come to the Empire."
"Yeah," Brim muttered. "Unless someone's actually aiming a disrupter at them, most people these days don't seem to attach much importance to Reels or Blue Capes."
She met his eyes. "You're right," she agreed, "they don't." The she shrugged wistfully. "Though the Admiralty does seem to maintain adequate ships in commission for people with the

proper pedigree—'political interest,' I think is the term they use."
Brim nodded. So far he could see, that was the normal way of the Universe. In the end, all privilege was skewed toward wealth. Every Carescrian knew it, fatalistically expected it, even. That didn't mean he particularly liked being treated the way he'd been treated. At one time, he'd hoped that things would change. But those hopes had been short-lived indeed. And, he supposed, it was easier for him to return to being nothing than to experience it for the first time, as were many of his presently out-of-work ex-Fleet colleagues. Only Margot made things really difficult for him. He felt for the ring she had given him, hanging from a chain around his neck. He hated being nobody, because of her.
"What'll you do now?" Hale asked, interrupting his musing. "I doubt if Iverson can keep StarReet running with no starships to fly."
Brim snorted grimly and nodded. "I doubt it, too," he said. There was no use pretending otherwise. The little company had been in a precarious financial position for a long time. It was the only reason they'd hired him in the first place—he was willing to fly for almost no pay at all. He shrugged. "Maybe I'll go into another line of work," he said lamely.
"Oh?" Hale looked at him with an expression of concern. "What else do you know how to do?"
"Well," Brim said, struggling to maintain his facade of confidence, "this isn't the only flying job in the Universe. Who knows, I might just get myself a job jockeying one of those hot starships they're getting ready for the Mitchell Trophy Race."
"Really!" Hale asked with an exaggerated look of awe. "I thought the Imperial Starflight Society was only for the rich and famous. Or is there something I should know about you, Wilf?"
Brim grinned in spite of himself. "No," he answered, "I've got no secrets—nor fame nor money. So I guess I won't show up in A'zurn for the races next year." He shrugged. "I suppose I don't know precisely what I'll do next, but I'm bound to find something." Deep down, the thought cut him like a knife. How could he carry on a romance with a Royal Princess like Margot Effer'wyck if he had to live in a slum and work as a common laborer, with calloused hands? He ground his teeth. That part of

his rapid economic descent frightened him more than anything else. But then, maybe it didn't matter much anyway. After all, her duties left her little time to spend with him these days. He forced the dismal thought from his mind. "How about you, Pam?" he asked. "What kind of plans do you have?"
"Like everybody else, Wilf," she said, "I'll find something. I always have before." She looked away into the fog. "Something ..."
Brim knew she wasn't any more sure of herself than he was.
At length, the tug dragged City of Jamestown into a filthy basin adjacent to a salvage yard. While Brim sat disconsolately at the Helmsman's console, blowing on his hands to keep them warm, she was floated over submerged gravity pontoons that eventually restored her to the standard twenty-five irals altitude that starships maintain while at rest. After this, heavy cranes nudged her broken hull over a dilapidated stone gravity pool where she connected with a rusty brow indifferently smeared with bright patches of orange anticorrosion compounds.
"Not exactly the royal landing pier on Lake Mersin," Peretti observed gloomily.
"It's a lot better than the bottom of Prendergast Bight," Hamlish countered.
"I guess," Brim allowed, but his sentiments were closer to Peretti's. In the Fleet he'd always landed on the lake, close in to the city instead of the drab, sprawling commercial port hundreds of c'lenyts to the austral pole. He looked down at the brow, just concluding its efforts to attach itself with Jamestown's sprung main hatch. The first person across was J. Throckmorton P. Iverson, owner and Chief Executive of Star-Fleet Enterprises, pushing upstream against a stampeding throng of passengers who wanted to be rid of starships forever. When finally he stepped onto the bridge, wearing a food-spotted gray business suit, scuffed shoes, and threadbare cuffs, he had the dazed look of someone who had been recently smashed between the eyes by a meteor. With his fat pink cheeks and narrow, near-sighted eyes, he looked more like a bookkeeper than an entrepreneur. "I, ah, hear nobody got killed," he said, glancing around hesitantly.
"Nobody," Brim assured him quietly. "Three or four were a little shaken when their seats tore loose, but nobody was sen-

ously hurt, except old Jamestown herself." He peered down at his boots. "I guess she's gone for good."
"Yeah," Iverson said, clearing his throat nervously and looking across the old ship's twisted decks. "Looks like she's gone, all right, the way the hullmetal's wrinkled."
"Sorry," Brim said lamely. Nothing else seemed appropriate.
Iverson dropped his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. "Wasn't your fault, Brim," he admitted quietly. "Everybody more or less expected the generators to go pretty soon. We just thought that, well, you know, maybe she'd last one more trip and pay for the repairs she needed so badly. I guess we should have told you."
Brim felt his gorge rise, along with a nearly uncontrollable rage. "You mean you knew about that power supply tube?" he snorted, taking an angry step forward, "And you let me take all those people into Hyperspace anyway?"
"Well," Iverson said, shrinking back and wringing his hands. "We didn't exactly know, you understand..."
Brim took a deep breath and, shutting his eyes, let out a long sigh. What use was it? Everything was all over anyway, with no one badly hurt, at least in a physical sense. And Iverson never would understand. Bean counters didn't see things the way Helmsmen did—they weren't supposed to. After a long silence, he unclenched his fists. "It doesn't matter, Mr. Iverson," he said. "Just pay us off and we'll be on our way."
Iverson nervously pinched the fleshy part of his hand. "Y-yeah," he stuttered, "T-that's what I came to talk about, Brim."
"You do have the credits to pay us, don't you?" Brim demanded, narrowing his eyes.
"Um," Iverson stammered, "I d-don't exactly have that much now, but..."
"But," interjected a deeper voice from the aft companion-way, "Mr. Iverson is counting on that many extra credits once he's sold this twisted wreck for scrap—and paid me for the services of my tug." Centered in the hatch was a squat, muscular man dressed in white satin coveralls and a gray ebony cloak. Wearing a black velvet cap gathered and puffed over the crown with elaborate ribbon lacings, he had a massive frowning brow, sharp nose, pointed moustache, and the cold gray eyes of a professional assassin. Brim recognized him in a moment: one of

the most influential—and reputedly dangerous—men in Ava-lon's dockyard milieu.
"Zolton Jaiswal!" Iverson grumbled, a disagreeable look forming on his face. "I, urn, was just coming to see you."
"Ah, I am comforted to know that, friend Iverson," Jaiswal pronounced without changing his own brooding demeanor. "We of the salvage brotherhood have been expecting the arrival of your ship for quite a while, now. Old Jamestown has functioned without repairs much longer than many of my colleagues expected." He laughed sardonically and stepped into the bridge. "They clearly reckoned without placing Mr. Brim in their equations—as I did not. That is the reason my tug arrived alone." He chuckled quietly. "Everyone else assumed that you must have taken the old ship to another port for repairs. They stopped anticipating your call for assistance. On the other hand," he said, placing a hand over his heart, "I continued to monitor the distress channels, certain that you—with neither assets nor credit for such costly work—would count on Mr. Brim here to keep your rickety equipment in operation until the last possible moment. And of course," he added, "I was right."