THE HELMSMAN: Director's Cut Edition

by Bill Baldwin

  Brim nodded again. At least she was honest.

  “And no record of Amherst's report will ever find its way into your friend Ursis' records.” She glanced at her empty display, then grimaced in an unmistakable sign of dismissal. Brim got up to leave.

  “Your report was first rate, as were your actions, Lieutenant,” she added. “You weren't thinking of returning to bridge duty immediately, were you?”

  “Not for two more days, Captain,” Brim answered.

  “Dr. Flynn knows best,” Collingswood said as her display began to fill with data.

  Brim left feeling better about his future than he had ever dreamed possible. So long as the Fleet had a few Collingswoods, Carescrians still had a chance.

  * * * *

  The endless succession of days that followed was notable only by their sameness until danger and boredom became two great stones, which ground Truculent and her crew alike. And all around, the larger war waxed and waned. Victories and defeats: There were still more of the latter, but one could sense an occasional ray of hope among the grim news KA'PPAed in from powerful transmitters halfway across the galaxy.

  To Brim's utter astonishment, his abbreviated answer to Margot's note established a lively — if disappointingly chaste — correspondence. During the long stretches of boredom, he often argued with himself concerning that. After all, any kind of treatment was more than he should ever expect. She was, aside from being promised to someone else, a person of noble blood. Very noble blood. And a full military rank above his own into the bargain. What more could he expect?

  Sometimes this sort of logical approach worked. Sometimes it didn't. But most of the time, it didn't.

  And for some exasperating reason, he never did quite condition himself to the point where he could comfortably think of her in the company of Rogan LaKarn. That became painfully apparent when a chance news program pictured the two together during a leave in Avalon:

  Princess Margot Effer'wyck and Commander the Honorable Baron Rogan LaKarn share a well-deserved leave in Avalon's Courtland Plaza near the Imperial castle. Engaged nearly two years now, the popular couple has postponed their nuptials while they work to defend the Empire from its enemies.

  Somehow, the sight of them holding hands in that manicured garden tied his heart in a knot. He gritted his teeth and felt his cheeks burn, hoping against hope nobody in the wardroom noticed his helpless discomfort — he a Carescrian worked up over an Effer'wyck. What a joke that was!

  In private, he railed at himself. He could claim no part of her life. How she chose to spend her leave was certainly none of his business. He meant nothing special to her, and she ought to mean nothing to him

  But he really didn't believe the second part.

  That night, as he fitfully dozed, his mind was torn by weird, wildly erotic dreams. He pictured her beckoning to him through a soft, warm fog. But when he reached to touch her, Rogan LaKarn interposed. And each time, Brim awoke to find himself alone in his tiny cabin, sweating and frustrated, the rumble of the generators no longer comforting to his ears.

  In a foul mood, he dressed and made his way up to the bridge, where he spent the remainder of his free watch tutoring Jubal Theada for a battery of upcoming tests. Even that kind of frustration was better than fighting his own imagination!

  * * * *

  For the next three Standard Months, Collingswood's aggressive blockading techniques eroded both Truculent and her crew. Space off the Altnag'gin Complex at Trax was a busy crossroads of the League's commerce. Always there was another “runner” to be pursued — or a pursuing Cloud League warship determined to rid the space lanes of Imperial blockaders. Borodov and Ursis constantly rushed through Truculent's battered hull, patching battle damage or repairing components worn to uselessness from constant duty at maximum settings.

  Flynn was similarly busy patching burned and blasted bodies: Carelessness caused by advanced fatigue was at least as deadly an enemy as the League itself. Yet no relief was forthcoming, and everyone knew why. The Imperial Fleet was stretched so thin that every ship and every crew member served past all reasonable limit. No alternative existed; everyone was well aware of Triannic's vow to “punish” the Imperial Fleet “to its last man.”

  Only continuing success made any of it bearable. Collingswood was an extraordinary tactician, and Truculent sent a steady stream of prizes off toward Avalon — often seriously shorting her own crew complement for weeks at a time. Everyone was now accruing Imperial credits in individual accounts, and even Brim found himself debt free one day, for the first time he could remember.

  Following still another stormy month of desperate fighting and wearing fatigue, Truculent was even more patched and dented than before. Many of her less critical mechanisms were by now completely inoperative — the crew worked around these when possible, but mostly did without. Some of the important systems were little better than these, and operated only marginally, when they worked at all. Often, Brim looked over the battered decks from his position high on the bridge and wondered if anyone back in the Imperial Client States had any idea at all what it really took to keep Triannic from their gates. A small part of him wanted desperately to believe they did. The remainder doubted many of them had any idea what was going on at all.

  Only when Borodov managed to convince his Sodeskayan superiors at the Admiralty that Truculent could no longer be patched enough to fight and win did Flight Operations deign to send their replacement, and by then it was nearly too late. The Drive itself failed three times on the way home and fully half the Atmospheric Controller Modules consumed themselves in a cloud of sour-smelling vapor and sparks before the ship was two days en route. The nearly desperate crew completed their return with most of the ship's environment simulating the worst elements of a steamy Crennelean Narr jungle.

  One way or another, they made it. Both Gimmas and Haefdon were sizable disks in the Hyperscreens ahead when Brim heard the Drive finally eased all the way back to idle. He and Theada occupied observers' seats while Gallsworthy and Fourier flew the approach. “You may prepare us for landfall, Lieutenant Gallsworthy,” Collingswood said, her voice loud in the unaccustomed silence.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Gallsworthy growled. Immediately, Brim heard distant alarms go off below in the ship, and docking crews began to fill the bridge.

  Fourier signaled to Ursis; a few moments later the generators shivered to life.

  “Finished with the xaxtdamned Drive,” Gallsworthy rumbled.

  “I think it's finished with us anyway,” Collingswood said grumpily.

  “Drive deactivated,” Borodov chuckled. Astern, the flowing green of the Drive plume flickered and disappeared.

  “Drive shutters closed,” Ursis said.

  “LightSpeed point zero,” Fourier called out as Gandom's 've effect went into full flare and the Hyperscreens stopped translating. Gradually, the view cleared as the speed dropped below the critical mark. Applewood contacted Haefdon Approach soon afterward, and within a few metacycles they were in a holding pattern for clearance at the Lox'Sands control ring, this time in zone green. Traffic was light during that watch, and presently Truculent was on final, thundering down through Haefdon's cloudy turbulence.

  With a sense of weary excitement, Brim waited impatiently for Truculent to break out of the overcast. So far, all he could see were regular flashes of the beacon reflected back from the streaming haze outside and the occasional glow of KA'PPA rings expanding outward as Applewood talked to Approach Control. The sound of the generators was now moderated to a burbling grumble, and the muted drones and thumps of imminent landfall were well under way. Gallsworthy banked to port, revealing glimpses of gray, fog-strewn seascape wrinkled by the thickly sluggish patterns of frigid-looking swells and jagged ice fragments everyone associated with the base.

  As they returned to level flight, Brim spied two or three lamp-studded causeways below like the thin spokes of some great wheel converging at an unseen hub somewhere far off to port, but the
haze swallowed them completely in damp-looking muzziness before he could distinguish any details. As usual, there was no real difference between land and sky aloft on Haefdon — no horizon, only fog and clouds and occasionally the wrinkled blackness of the inhospitable sea below.

  Another turn to port, generators roaring momentarily, then Truculent settled gently onto her forward gradient and churned over the icy rollers that shone dully in the landing lights twenty-five irals below her stained and dented hull. Through a chance break in the fog, Brim saw they were now running parallel to another causeway. He watched giant waves batter themselves to wind-blown spume against its rocky bulwarks. A beacon flashed indistinctly in their direction. Ahead, fog-shrouded blue and red lights marked the opening to the Eorean section. He smiled to himself. The last time through here, he'd been considerably more occupied than he was now, sitting at his leisure in an observer's seat. Beyond, a forest of KA'PPA masts jutted from the starwharves themselves.

  With Fourier at the controls, Truculent changed course smoothly, slid through the entrance, and in a few moments glided to a halt above a gently glowing gravity pool. Thick mooring beams leaped from lenses in the seawalls and Brim's nausea made itself known when the umbilical arm connected, switching Truculent back to local gravity. Gallsworthy raised his hand silently and their gravity generators spun down and stopped — the unaccustomed silence after nearly six months of one kind of propulsion system or another was almost physical. A tentative “Hurrah!” sounded from the back of the bridge. Then another, and another — in a moment, the whole ship was gone wild in a paroxysm of cheering. Even the normally reserved Collingswood could be seen pounding Gallsworthy on the back.

  Theada grasped Brim's hand. “We made it!” he gasped joyfully. “We actually made it!”

  “Yeah,” Brim said, himself overcome with a strange sort of relief. He could plan on living at least a few weeks more. It was a strange feeling. He hadn't encountered that kind of confidence since their departure.

  Truculent was home.

  * * * *

  With little to occupy him at the moment, Brim forsook the noisy throng exiting from the bridge. A traditional homecoming celebration was scheduled shortly for the wardroom, but according to wartime rules, crew members joined only after completing a session with someone from a debriefing team, and with his lack of seniority, Brim appeared next to last on the schedule of officers. He looked out through the Hyperscreens at the gray landscape: Another of Haefdon's long, drab evenings was beginning in a driving snowstorm as the Harbor Master's peculiar vehicle scuttled off down the snow-hazed road. A large group of utility skimmers in various sizes was already parked near the breakwater, and below the bridge he watched a line of figures leaning into the wind-driven blizzard as they trudged across the brow toward the ship. One particularly heavy gust momentarily freed a shock of golden hair from beneath a parka before its owner hurried out of his sight. It made him laugh at himself. Nearly anything was sufficient to remind him of Margot Effer'wyck these days! He shook his head. Beyond all reason, and he knew it.

  Nearly three metacycles passed before he was finally summoned for his debriefing — in Amherst's cabin, of all places. Somewhere in the Universe there was irony in that, he chuckled as he knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a familiar voice called out from the other side. Brim frowned as he pushed the door open. Where had he heard that? His heart skipped a beat.

  “Wilf Brim,” Margot exclaimed, brushing a soft blond curl aside. “I have surely saved the best for last.”

  He stopped short in the doorway when he felt his face flush. His breath had suddenly gone short, his ears burned, and he felt like a foolish schoolboy with his first serious crush. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. The image she sent in her message didn't begin to do her justice at all! “M-Margot,” he stammered, then his eyes went to the full lieutenant's insignia on the left shoulder of her cape. “I mean, 'Lieutenant.'“

  She smiled warmly. “'Margot' is fine, Wilf,” she said. “And we shall never get to the wardroom if you don't come in and let me start your debriefing.”

  Somehow, those words brought him around. “Sorry,” he said, regaining at least some of his composure and breaking into his own smile of honest pleasure. He shook his head. “I guess I never expected to see you here,” he said.

  “Some ships get special treatment, Wilf,” she said. “Ones that carry special people.”

  Brim looked at her hands, smooth and shapely and perfectly manicured, as she set up the keyboard of Amherst's Communicator. He listened to the sounds of the cooling hull, the raucous celebration in the wardroom. “Thank you” was all he could think to say. She was disconcertingly beautiful. Then he lost all track of time while she probed his mind with professionalism and skill that nearly took his breath away. He was first surprised and then fascinated by her deep understanding of the technology of warfare, and especially starflight mechanics. She posed questions that led to others and to others still — forced him to recall details that he had forgotten as unimportant but which were decidedly the opposite, from her viewpoint.

  'The triggering gear you saw in the corvette's central globe, Wilf, was it in the upper firing room only, r was it in both?”

  “Both, I think,” he answered.

  “Then, were they the same?” she asked, blue eyes searching his very soul. “Could both disruptors be operated from the same firing room if the other was shot out?”

  He thought for a moment. “Yes,” he answered finally, “because the power cables went to both firing rooms.”

  Every word he uttered seemed to have some value. He had never met anyone like this before, never a woman both so beautiful and so talented all at once. When she finished, he found himself dazed with mental fatigue. They had worked without interruption for nearly three metacycles.

  “You have quite a memory, Wilf Brim,” she said, fatigue slowing her own voice, “which has provided me a great deal of material for study.” She smiled comfortably. “Now I shall claim the further pleasure of sharing some meem from your wardroom. How does that sound?”

  “Wonderful,” Brim said, looking at her softness. “Just wonderful.” Then other words suddenly crept into his mind. He grinned. .. 'Oh weary lady Geraldine,/I pray you drink this crystal wine,'“ he recited, gesturing dramatically.

  Margot closed her eyes for a moment and frowned. Then she laughed, a look of pleasure spreading from her lips. She pointed a finger at him. .. 'It is a wine of virtuous powers;/My mother made it of wild flowers.' There! Something out of Leoline's 'Silver Lamp,' isn't it? You've yet to stump me, Wilf Brim. Even when you choose some of the very worst poetry in the whole Universe!”

  They both laughed at that, then she deactivated Amherst's Communicator and they made their way to the wardroom.

  They were late to the party, much of which was by now moved off to other ships and wardrooms across the sprawling base. Truculent's badly depleted meem supplies would be better stocked for the next round of celebrations. The wardroom was still well populated, but the early frenetic energy was now worn into a comfortable hum of conversation and the musical clink of goblets. Most of the lights were dimmed, and here and there couples shared the privacy of shadowed tables. A gathering of Bears talked quietly at one end of the room; Ursis signaled “hello” from a seat close to a slim female whose eyes never strayed from his face. The air was heavy with the scent of perfume and hogge'poa. Two other female Bears talked animatedly with Borodov while a number of other furry couples toasted in the Sodeskayan manner: Goblets raised empty and upside down while they chanted the age-old Bearish drinking litany, “To ice, to snow, to Sodeskaya we go!”

  Margot nodded toward Borodov. “He's everybody's darling,” she said with her husky laugh. “The sly old Bear.”

  Brim smiled and nodded. “I didn't realize so many of their females had joined the Fleet,” he commented.

  “More of them arrive from Sodeskaya all the time,” Margot continued as he helpe
d her into a chair at a table away from the lights. “Bears can't get along without them any more than men can,” she laughed softly. “Professionally, that is.”

  “The Logish Meem you ordered, Lieutenant,” Steward Grimsby said, materializing cadaverously from the smoky darkness.

  Startled, Brim looked up as the ancient steward placed two goblets before them. “I didn't order...” His eyes met Margot's; they were laughing and sleepy all at the same time.

  “It's a fine choice, Wilf,” she said as Grimsby half filled her goblet.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, ma'am,” Grimsby said to Margot. He poured Brim's with total aplomb. “My compliments, Lieutenant Brim,” he said. “I can only agree with Princess Effer'wyck. It is a fine choice. Saved for a special occasion.” Then, quickly as he appeared, he was gone again.

  Margot shrugged and raised her goblet. “To you, Wilf,” she said, “and to old Truculent here — and to Nergol Triannic's slipping on a ca'omba peel.”

  He lifted his goblet and touched hers with a tiny musical note. “I'd duel a dozen Nergol Triannic’s — ripe ca'ombas at ten paces — if you would promise to debrief me each time I got home.” The Logish Meem was like silver fire in his throat. He had never experienced such fine vintage.

  “One Nergol Triannic is quite sufficient for this war,” Margot said with a wink, “in spite of what I am sure are your very formidable talents throwing ripe ca'ombas.”

  As the cycles slipped by, they talked of poetry, Haefdon, and the endless duty watches. She clearly had the broader picture of their war, and by the time Grimsby materialized with a second bottle of the same rare Logish Meem, Brim had a confused impression that her mysterious Technology Division was actually beginning to grasp some of the enemy's meter, that Baron Rogan LaKarn didn't find his way to Gimmas as often as she thought he should, and that even when he did, her own work schedule took its toll of an already abbreviated love life. Somehow Brim found nothing unusual about her last comment. She was that sort of person. Besides, he reminded himself, this was simply a social occasion shared between two professionals. But, oh, how he wished he could satisfy that particular area of her needs!