“The Emperor’s Cross . . . for this? For what it stands for?” The senior commander remained unmoving in the sunlight of the early afternoon.
“Commander?”
The plaintive sound in Hursen’s voice jerked him back to the present, where he stood in a pleasant garden before a large, but not ducal, military home.
“Sorry, Hursen. Just . . . remembering...”
He took several steps back to the stone archway and coded the momentary release that dropped the screens for the younger officer.
“Come on in.”
“Than you, ser.” Hursen cleared his throat, once, twice, then finally spoke again. “You were here before, set?”
“No. Just reminded me of something that happened a long time ago. A long ways from here.”
“I imagine you’ve seen a great deal, ser.”
“Hardly, Hursen. Hardly. Sometimes it amazes me to find out how little I’ve seen.”
He turned and began to walk slowly down the stone walkway toward the small but well-restored formal garden, with the dark green of its low hedges, and the intermittent splashes of small flowers.
Had Caroljoy known he might have rated such quarters, would she have considered contacting him after she discovered she would have his child?
He shook his head once more, slowly and with a faint smile.
The Lieutenant Gerswin he had been could not have competed in the same universe as the Duke of Triandna. In life, they had inhabited separate worlds, and not even death, whenever it might come, would change that.
Death? Hardly yet, he thought with another quirk to his lips.
His steps picked up as he marched toward the house. So much time for self-pity and reflection, and no more. Neither sadness or self-pity would help reclaim Old Earth . . . or Standora Base.
“Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s get on with it.”
He did not smile as he sensed the puzzled expression on the young supply officer’s face. Instead he took the stone steps two at a time.
XVII
“THE SMALL HANGAR at the end? Those are the museum pieces, ser.”
The I.S.S. pilot laughed. “Museum pieces? You have to be joking.”
“No, ser,” answered the technician. “When the commander got here, he said that since we were only fit to work on museum pieces, we should at least make them the best there were. Was before I came. Each year, we restore another old one from the scrapyard. Make it fully operational. Off-duty time, but it gets to you.”
The pilot—young, female, blonde, square jawed—stared at the technician. “You’re serious?”
“Ser . . . why don’t you take a look? The hangar’s open to the public, too. Got headquarters to classify it as a public exhibition. Must get a couple hundred visitors a day.”
“All right. Nothing else to do.”
As the young officer strolled down the plastarmac, she could feel the technician grinning behind her back. She wondered if the man told the same tall tale to all the transients at Standora.
Still . . . the hangar was less than half a kilo, and she had little enough to do until the emergency repairs on the Dybyykk were completed.
“Standora . . . for Hades’ sake.” She shook her head. The place should have been closed down years ago.
That was what the Operations officer had said.
She glanced at the arrayed hangars, all clean, and the clear tarmac that stretched to the “museum” ahead. While the base appeared less busy than many, it did not appear deserted or run-down, nor did its personnel conduct themselves as if they had been consigned to a dying installation.
She glanced inside the hangar to her right, then glanced again. The grids positively glittered, and the hull inside seemed the focus of a full crew.
This is the junkyard of the fleet, supposedly? What other ships had been sent here recently? From the Fleet Dispatch log, she couldn’t remember any.
Her steps brought her to the hangar at the end closest to the main gate toward the local community.
A sign a meter square caught her eye.
IMPERIAL SMALLCRAFT—HISTORICAL DISPLAY
None of the craft displayed here are currently in Imperial Service. For historical and academic research purposes, all displays are fully functional and in complete working order.
She read the caption twice before entering the hangar.
Once inside she had to blink, for she had been expecting the hushed, dimly lit recesses of a museum. Instead, the lights were those of a first class repair installation, clear illumination from both direct and indirect sources.
The plastone underfoot was the clear blue of a newly constructed hangar, and outside of the faint hint of metal and ozone, the air was fresh.
From where she stood inside the hangar entryway, she could see eight smallcraft, the largest of which was an ancient corvette.
Another look around the hangar revealed details she had missed. Both entrances, the one from the base and the one from the other side, open to the locals, were guarded by I.S.S. techs. Not by Imperial Marines, but by armed technicians who wore regulation side arms and whose uniforms matched almost any marine’s for sharpness.
Beside each craft was a small stand with a vidcube display to explain the background of the particular boat or ship. And at the far north end of the hangar, suspended from the overhead, were the crossed banners of the Empire and the I.S.S.
Each of the displays appeared as ready for liftoff as the outside caption had claimed.
The pilot headed for the one she recognized from the tapes, a Delta class flitter, which had been retired less than a decade earlier, and which seemed to be the most modern of the craft displayed.
She grimaced as she approached, realizing that the canopy was seal-locked, as it should be if the flitter was indeed operational. She climbed the steps to the platform to view the controls. At least she could get some idea whether the flitter was indeed functional.
“Lieutenant?” A voice intruded upon her observations.
She turned to see a senior technician at her elbow.
“Would you like to try the controls?” He did not wait for her answer, but turned to the seal and made some adjustments. The canopy recessed, and the climbsteps extended from the hull.
“Why—“
“Commander likes to have pilots see what ships used to be like. Can’t open them to everyone because they’re all hot. He does most of the test flights. Makes sense. Only one checked out in most of them.”
“Checked out . . . all of them hot? Even—“
“Even the old black scout, even the Federation Epsilon corvette. If it doesn’t work, then it’s not on display. We’ve got some in the work area below. May take years to get in shape. Big project is the Ryttel.”
The lieutenant dropped suddenly into the padded accel/decel control shell.
“The Ryttel?”
“No one could bear to scrap her. Been out in the ‘serveshells for two cees.”
Her hands touched the controls, controls that felt new, as recent as the shuttles and flitters of the Dybyykk.
“These don’t feel old.”
“They’re not. They work. Commander insists they all work. Every one is absolutely stet with the original specs, except in cases where the original specs were changed in Service to improve operations.”
She touched the power readout plates. Ninety-eight percent power. Again she shook her head for what she felt was the hundredth time.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Not many do. Commander says it shows what we can do.” The tech paused. “Just close the seal when you’re done. Set to relock.”
The pilot shifted her weight to get the feel of the shell, and of the flitter, letting her fingers run over the controls, trying to set up a scan pattern with the different positions of the board instruments.
Even without the power assists on, without the full panel lit, or the heads-up display projected, the flitter felt new, felt ready to lift clear of the hangar.
At last she took her hands from the stick and thruster controls, unfastened the webbing, and eased out of the cockpit. With a final look at the interior, she touched the closure panel and stepped back onto the platform as the canopy slid into place with a muffled clank.
Straightening her tunic, she turned and took the steps back down to the hangar floor.
She wanted to see if the old Federation Epsilon class corvette felt as new as the Delta flitter had, knowing in her heart that it would.
Before she reached the wide steps to the viewing platform, she could tell her assumption had been correct. Not a single scratch marred any individual plate, leaving the full-fade finish more perfect than any she had yet seen. Her eyes wanted to twist away from the corvette, to forget it was there.
Licking her dry lips once, she glanced around the rest of the hangar, surveying the six crafts she had not yet approached.
What could he do if he had a real ship to work with? she wondered.
Then she laughed. The commander, the mysterious commander both techs had mentioned almost reverently, did have a real ship to work with. He had the Dybyykk.
If his crews were half as good with the cruiser as with the antique wrecks they had reconstructed, the captain wouldn’t need to go on to New Glascow.
The lieutenant turned back to the corvette, concentrating on the details such as the placement and finish of the heat drops, to avoid having her vision twisted.
From the corner of her eye she could see the same senior tech moving toward the stand.
She knew she would have to check out the controls of the corvette, and perhaps the Alpha shuttle . . . if not the scout in the far corner.
XVIII
FROM: C.O.
H.I.M.S. DYBYYKK
TO: 12 FLT HQ.
LOG/SUPP (CODE 3B)
SUBJ: REFIT STATUS
1. DYBYYKK ARRIVED STANDORA
DEC/12/2100/76.
STATUS: DELTA ARO BTTL ACT
2. SPECIFICS DRIVES: OMEGA WITHIN 10 W/O REPAIR
SCREENS: OMEGA
SYSTEM INTEGRITY: DELTA
3. REPAIRS/REFIT COMPLETE SEC/07/0900/77.
4. DYBYYKK DEPARTED STANDORA
SEC/08/2100/77.
5. SYS/CHK/STATUS: ALPHA DRIVES: ALPHA PLUS
SCREENS: ALPHA SYSTEM
INTREGRITY: ALPHA
6. OTHER: (A) REFIT UNNECESSARY THIS TIME
(B) STRONGLY RECOMMEND
GREATER UTILIZATION
STANDORA RP
© REQUEST REPLACEMENT LT
A.L. INGMARR/I.S.S./PLO/2:
MEDICAL LWP (MAT/DET DUTY STANDORA)
XIX
THE NEWBORN HAD only cried once, enough to clear his lungs, and, placed on his mother’s stomach, had immediately tried to go to her breast.
Both the mother and the nursing tech pushed him gently into position, somewhat awkwardly because neither had much experience in the matter.
The I.S.S. surgeon completed her work, focused on the sterilizers, and gave the mother a quick jolt from the regen/stim tube, all according to the tapes she had studied and studied for the past week.
The infant resisted when the surgeon lifted him away from his mother for the prescribed checks, reflexes—respiratory and neural—but did not cry, though his eyes were wide.
His look bothered the surgeon, but she completed the checks as surely as she could, and returned him to his mother’s breast. Them she entered the results on the health chart, a standard Service chart suitably modified for the newborn, whose reflexes had topped the scale, and who plussed the green for neural potential.
Dr. Kristera repressed a sigh. Standora wasn’t the best place for a newborn, not with the background contaminants from the facility, and not with the lack of dependent care facilities.
The mother, stretched out on the light-grav stretcher, cradled the tiny boy at her breast with her right arm.
The doctor could see the sucking movements, and both the gratitude and tiredness on the mother’s face.
“Why?” murmured the surgeon to herself. To have had the child could not have been a spur of the moment decision, not when having a child had to have been a positive choice before the fact. And the interruption in the young lieutenant’s career as an I.S.S. pilot wouldn’t help her promotion opportunities, since it would be more than a year before she could leave detached duty for accel/decel related duties—if she chose to stay in Service and if she chose to leave the child.
The I.S.S. surgeon looked again. Carefully, she approached the mother and child. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. Tired.” Her smile was wan. “But glad.”
“How’s your friend”
“Hungry.”
The surgeon bent down, trying to get a better look at the boy’s eyes, which opened for a moment, as if the newborn had sensed her approach.
The baby’s eyes were not blue, but yellow-flecked green, a strong color intensified by the short blond fuzz that would become hair. Dr. Kristera had to stop herself from pulling away from the intensity of the newborn’s look.
“He’s . . . strong . . . ,” she temporized to the mother.
The pilot nodded, closing her eyes.
The surgeon straightened and took the mother’s pulse. Strong. The pilot was in excellent condition, had kept in shape, obviously, even though the birth had cost her more than any single high gee maneuver in the operations manual.
The surgeon stepped back as the nursing tech returned.
Maintenance stations were not equipped for childbirth, and for some reason the mother had rejected adamantly the local civilian health care. The C.O. had granted her request to use base facilities.
The surgeon wondered if his permission were yet another part of his efforts at upgrading Standora. Already, the load on the docks was increasing, after decades of neglect.
“You can go now, doctor,” suggested the nursing tech, a stocky mid-aged woman.
The I.S.S. surgeon nodded and turned, worrying at her upper lip with her lower.
What was it about the child?
The blond hair was uncommon at birth, but certainly not rare. But the eyes . . . it had to be the eyes.
She wished she had more background for O.B. work, but who expected much in the Service, particularly away from the main staging and training centers?
All babies had blue eyes at birth. Or dark ones. Didn’t they?
Who had eyes like that? Like a hawk?
She sucked in her breath.
“It couldn’t be . . . it couldn’t . . .”
She remembered who had eyes like a hawk, eyes that missed nothing. How could she have forgotten? How could she have possibly forgotten? Was that why he had given his permission?
Mechanically, Dr. Kristera began to peel off her gloves. She shook her head.
Who ever would have thought it?
Shaking her head slowly, she began to remove the rest of her operating room clothing.
XX
SCREEE . . . THUD!
The mass of metal that had once been a pre-Federation scout came to rest in the makeshift cradle in the middle of the small hangar.
The man in the gray technician’s suit, a repair suit without decoration or insignia, watched as the salvage trac eased back out into the gray morning. His hawk-yellow eyes scanned the black plates and fifty meter plus length of obsolete aerodynamic lines.
The pre-Federation scouts had been a good thirty percent longer and more massive than present scouts, with the attendant power consumption, but they had one impressive advantage from his point of view. They had been true scouts, able to set down and lift from virtually any world within thirty percent of T-type parameters.
Not that the jumble of metal, broken electronics, and missing equipment before him was really a scout. But it had been, and would be again.
“You MacGregor?” asked the trac operator, who had returned with the clipack after stopping the salvage trac outside on the tarmac. The shuttle port outside the hangar
door served the few commercial interests of Standora and the small amount of native travel.
“Same.”
“Need some authentication.”
“Stet.” The man in the technician’s repair suit produced an oblong card.
The trac operator inserted the card in her clipack, which blinked amber, then green.
“That’s it.” The salvage operator glanced over at the long black shape and shook her head. “What you going to do, break it down for higher value scrap?”
“Client wants her restored.”
“Restored? That’d take years, thousands of creds.”
“You’re right.”
“Why? No resale. Black hole for power use. Wrong construction for a yacht.”
“Prospecting.”
“If you say so.”
The salvage operator was still shaking her head as she left the hangar for her cab.
The technician, who was not exactly a technician, cranked down the hangar door. At one time, when Standora had been on more heavily traveled Imperial trade corridors, before the increasing power consumption of the newly colonized planets had pushed jumptravel for commercial purposes into fewer and fewer ships and trips, all the hangars had possessed luxuries such as individual conditioning units and powered doors. As the commercial travel had dropped, so had the amenities.
The long-term lease on the hangar barely covered the taxes and expenses to the owner, but the lease terms provided that any upgrades in the facility would revert to the owner at the end of the twenty year contract.
According to the logs that had accompanied the mass of metal that had once been a scout, the official name of the craft had been the Farflung.
While the hull contained the fragments of drives, generators for screens and gravfields, all the communications gear and the minimal weaponry associated with scouts had been removed before the auction. That was fine with him, since weaponry mounted for use was illegal and since he intended to use the equivalent of equipment associated with more impressive craft.
He laughed once as he turned back toward the graving cradle. The power consumption from what he planned for the main drives and screens would really have stunned the salvage operator.
The Silent Warrior Page 7