Bill Baldwin - Helmsman 3 - The Throphy

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The Mitchell Trophy
Following the Treaty of Garak in 52000, intragalactic commerce began to expand at breakneck speed.
The Great War had introduced literally millions of people on both sides to space flight and forced
loosely linked dominions all over the galaxy into new dependence upon one another. A burgeoning
transportation industry found itself pressured for more and more speed as frontiers rapidly
expanded to the most remote parts of the galactic spiral, and beyond.
To conquer distance, to couple new power generators with the subtle properties of HyperSpeed
Drives and hull configurations, then spur all three to the limit of their potential—that was the
challenge. The urge to produce the fastest starship in the known Universe became an obsession that
captivated the best technical minds everywhere.
Among the major galactic dominions, this burning quest for speed was eventually subsidized by
government treasuries and entrusted to special government employees who contended as much for
national honor as for personal glory. The starships they flew evolved rapidly from reconditioned
war machines that coursed through space at perhaps forty thousand times the speed of light
to such engineering masterpieces as Sherrington's M-6B in which (then) Lt. Commander Tobias
Moulding, I.F. achieved an absolute velocity of nearly 112M Light-Speed late in 52009.
A major part of this battle was fought in the laboratories of great commercial enterprises by
designers who repeatedly pushed themselves to create faster and more powerful systems. But the
final proof was in absolute performance, and prodigious races became the battlegrounds where these
creations were actually put to the test.
The most distinctive of the competitions—for the Mitchell Trophy—offered little in the way of a
stipend to the victor; moreover, its rules seriously restricted the nature of vessels that could
enter. Yet those same starships are largely credited with extending the boundaries of civilization
beyond the galaxy and into the Universe itself.
Mitchell, son of a Rhodorian industrialist, believed that practical starships were the key to
intragalactic commerce, and therefore to the survival of civilization itself. He concluded that
true starship utility depended not only upon raw HyperLight velocity through deep space but, in
equal measure, upon the ability to land and take off readily from the surfaces of planets
anywhere. Accordingly, he began a speed competition for private starflight societies and
personally donated its unique trophy to be awarded at yearly races until one society won three
times in a row, thereby gaining permanent possession. Each year's race was to be hosted by the
previous year's winning society. But despite Mitchell's hopes to keep the race out of state
arenas, military and government-employed Helmsmen competed regularly.
From The Galactic Almanac (And Handy Encyclopedia), 52015
CHAPTER 1
End of the Line
"Thraggling Universe, Peretti—the gravs have tripped out. I can't keep her on course. Crank 'em
up—now!"
"Power's gone, Mr. Brim. Readouts say she's blown the feed tube."
"Better send out an alert then, Sparks. Looks like we're going in. Pam, get everybody down in
the cabin."
While Hamlish frantically broadcast the timeworn litany of trouble in deep space, Wilf Ansor
Brim struggled alone with the old starship's controls. Beside him Jana Torgeson slumped over her
co-Helmsman's console, reeking of cheap meem. "Morris," he yelled into a flickering display, "see
about jettisoning some of the cargo back there!"
"Ain't enough of us here ta do much good this trip, Mr. Brim," Morris responded with a smug look
on his face. "Warned ya before we left, we did...."
Brim ground his teeth. At the beginning of the trip, there had been hardly enough hands to staff
Jamestown's bridge, much less handle a cargo bay. "I understand," he growled. "But you'd better do
all you can. The more you get rid of, the more chance we all have of surviving the crash."
"That puts things in a whole new light, Mr. Brim," Morris responded. His thin visage disappeared
from the screen like a gray wraith.
Dressed in a tan civilian Captain's uniform—a threadbare remnant from some long-defunct
spaceline—the thirty-seven-
year-old Brim shook his head. No wonder Morris had never been in the Fleet. He'd have spent his
whole life in the brig. Through the ship's forward Hyperscreens—normally transparent crystalline
windshields that simulated conventional vision when traveling faster than LightSpeed—he watched
the first tongues of flame begin streaming aft from protrusions on the hull. Reentry time and no
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gravs! He shook his head in disgust. All he had to work with now was the steering engine. The
little gravity kicker wasn't much, but it gave him a chance—one of the few he could presently
think of. Like any good Helmsman, he always tried to have a trick or two up his sleeve, just in
case Voot decided to strike—which, in this case, he surely had. Suddenly, the ship jolted.
"There goes the pallet of hullmetal rolling machines," Morris reported from a display. He was
now dressed in a bright orange space suit and helmet.
"Good work," Brim acknowledged through clenched teeth. Those big machines were worth a whole lot
more man old City of Jamestown herself. Luckily, they'd been insured by their wary owners before
takeoff. Little StarFleet Enterprises could never have raised that kind of ante in a million
Standard years. Without them, however, mere would now be no hauling fee, and Universe knew the
company needed every thraggling credit it could earn. He shook his head in frustration and peered
down at the solid undercast, still c'lenyts below. At least the ship didn't seem to be falling so
fast now....
"That's the last of the mobile crawlers," Morris reported momentarily. "Cargo deck's empty, all
right?"
Brim nodded. "Very good, Morris," he said. But it wasn't very good at all. Even if he managed to
bring the old starship in without killing anybody—which was still quite problematical —things
looked bleak for StarFleet Enterprises. Jamestown was the only ship left in the fleet.
"Port Authority's dispatched a rescue tug," Hamlish reported presently. His beige-colored
uniform was a lot newer than Brim's, even though it did start life in a different spaceline. "I've
given 'em our predicted landing coordinates, just in case we get there."
Brim laughed grimly to himself. They'd get there, all right. No way to go anywhere else with
only a steering engine. "I'll have the space radiators out, Jana," he ordered absently, preoc-
cupied with his own readouts. Moments later, he shook his head in disgust, then reached over the
gray-haired woman's rumpled form to activate her controls himself. Almost immediately, old
Jamestown began to shudder and rumble while long, tapered panels deployed from either side of her
torpedo-shaped hull. In the presence of any atmosphere at all, they had a startling effect.
Peretti chuckled contemptuously. "Not much left to cool with those old radiators, is there,
Brim?" He was the only one in the crew with a new, made-to-order StarFleet Enterprises uniform.
Clearly, he had access to funds above and beyond anything the faltering spaceline could disburse.
"Not radiators—wings," Brim snapped through his teeth as he concentrated on flying. One mistake
now and they were all dead.
"Wings?"
"Yeah, wings," Brim answered instinctively. In the Fleet, it had once been his duty as Principal
Helmsman to help train junior officers. "You haven't logged much time in these old kites, have
you?"
"What's that got to do with the price of cawdor nails?" Peretti asked defensively, attempting to
pull his coat over a sizable paunch.
"Not much anymore," Brim grunted while stratoturbulence rattled the old hullmetal plating, "but
if you'd spent any time at all with these old ships, you'd know that their radiators are shaped
like wings—as a safety feature. Probably for situations just like this."
"Passengers are down," a woman's voice interrupted from the alternate console—his main-cabin
display had been out for the last month.
"Very well," Brim answered, conjuring her face in his mind's eye: Pamela Hale, the Chief
Stewardess. During the war years, she'd been executive officer of a battlecruiser. Pam was at
least ten years older than himself and still stunningly beautiful. "Better get yourself down while
you're at it," he added, "and strapped tight, somewhere against the aft side of a bulkhead. Local
gravity won't hold long after we hit."
"I thought I heard the gravs go," she said from the intercom. "Can't Peretti get them going?"
"They're dead," Peretti interjected apathetically. "Like us, probably."
"No problem," she quipped easily. "A lot of people I run into these days died years ago."
Brim smiled. Hale was a brave one, all right. He guessed that she'd probably seen enough wartime
action that nothing in the Universe could much faze her. "As long as those steering engines hold
out," he said—hoping he sounded a lot more assured than he felt—"I'll bring us in." He glanced out
the Hyperscreens again and shook his head. He couldn't even see where they were going to make
landfall.
"Well, don't let me keep you, then," Hale said in the same bantering voice. "I wouldn't want
anybody to think I was interfering with operations or anything."
"Go strap yourself down," Brim teased. People like that could calm a thraggling thunderstorm if
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they wanted to. He wondered how she'd ever wound up in an end-of-the-line outfit like StarFleet.
He guessed it would be quite a story.
Outside, reentry flames were now flooding along the decks, and Jamestown's great, tapered
radiators looked like dazzling sails spun of light itself. In the raging slipstream, their thunder
raged through the old starship like a disruptor barrage.
"Going through about fifteen thousand irals," Hamlish reported, peering over Torgeson's still-
inert form.
"Thanks, Sparks," Brim acknowledged. "I can use that kind of help a lot more than communications
now."
"I'll switch consoles then," Hamlish grunted, and dragged Torgeson to a nearby jump seat. She
wore a nondescript green jumpsuit and Brim noticed she had worn holes in both her boots.
Afterward, the little COMM Operator slid behind the co-Helmsman's readouts and adjusted his
glasses while he grinned awkwardly. "You'll have to tell me what you want to see."
"Start by calling out the altitude every couple thousand irals or so," Brim said grimly. "My
altimeter conked out this morning."
"Twelve thousand irals," Hamlish announced presently. "I guess we've slowed some, haven't we?"
"Yeah," Brim agreed, "the rate indicator shows that." It was better, but still awfully fast.
"Button up the cargo holds, Mr. Morris," he warned, speaking into the display.
"Cargo holds are secure, Mr. Brim," Morris replied calmly.
Brim envied him his space suit; it would be a big help in a crash landfall. Since passengers
didn't wear them, however, bridge crews couldn't either.
"Ten thousand irals, and the checkout panel's lit, Mr. Brim," Hamlish reported.
"Got you—read the checklist to me as it displays."
"Aye, Mr. Brim. Shoulder harnesses?"
"Check," Brim answered, struggling into a network of faded webbing. He wondered how strong it
actually was after all these years.
"Buoyancy chambers?"
Brim checked an emergency area beside the altimeter readout. Three green lights—the old
rustbucket thought she could float, anyway. "Ready," he said hopefully.
"Eight thousand irals."
"Check." The undercast seemed to be coming up at them faster as the distance narrowed. He
shuddered.
"Steering engine on continuous power?"
"Continuous power—check."
"Autoflight panels?"
"Off," Brim said emphatically. Under these circumstances, he wasn't about to trust anybody's
hundred-year-old autohelm.
"Emergency beacon?"
"It'll be on soon as you hit the green panel under your forward Hyperscreen."
"It's on."
"Check."
"Six thousand irals. That's the last item from the panel checklist, Mr. Brim."
"Very well," Brim acknowledged. "Just stay where you are. I'll call out a few more items myself
in a moment."
Suddenly, they plunged into the clouds. At once, torrents of rain began to thunder against the
fiery Hyperscreens, transformed instantly to steam while the old starship bounced and groaned in
the darkening gloom. They were soon in such dense vapor that their forward position light bathed
the outside world in a ghostly white glow, while the rotating beacon blinked dazzling green across
it like disrupter fire.
"Speed brakes?" Brim asked. "Five lights over there on panel two."
"Five lights... on."
"Good work, Hamlish," Brim said. Then, "Pam, are you strapped in down there?"
"With my back against a bulkhead, Wilf."
"What about the passengers?"
"Safe as I can make 'em."
"Wish me luck, then."
"You bet—real good luck, sweetie."
"Three thousand irals..."
A heartbeat later, they broke out into driving snow over a seascape of whitecapped swells. Brim
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glanced at the leaden gray combers below while ice suddenly frosted the fast-cooling Hyperscreens.
He switched on the heat and melted it, but he didn't need ice to tell him that it was cold down
there.
An altitude warning horn sounded. "One thousand irals," Hamlish reported.
"Thanks," Brim acknowledged, almost wholly consumed in setting up his landing. "What's our
airspeed?" Now, he was clumsily turning upwind across the troughs of the swells. They suddenly
looked bigger than battleships.
"Airspeed one sixty-three." Hamlish's voice was getting tight and squeaky.
Brim chuckled to himself. He wasn't the only one terrified by the view through the forward
Hyperscreens. Only a few hundred irals separated them from the rolling violence of those swells.
"Brace yourself," he warned. "Here we go."
"Pull up! Pull up!" cautioned the ship's altitude alert.
He punched the alarm into silence as he rolled the port radiator into a rogue gust, then dropped
the nose slightly. Speed meant lift, and he'd soon need all of the latter he could get. Somehow,
he had to set her down on the relative calm of an upward slope while traveling in the opposite
direction. Long patterns of lacy spume marked the troughs parallel to his flight path. A sudden
gust threw Jamestown's nose to starboard again; this time, she began to crab sideways. Grinding
his teeth, Brim rolled the port radiator lower. After what seemed like an eon, she began to line
up again—but now, no more than thirty irals separated her belly from the crest of an oncoming
swell. Time to get her down. Brim carefully raised her nose till she slowed, barely maintaining
lift. Timing was everything now; a false move and they were all dead. The old starship trembled
vio-
lently as the radiators began to stall, but Brim deftly willed her airborne with the steering
engine at full forward until—moments before the next crest passed beneath the hull—he brought the
nose up sharply, then plunged behind the mountainous wavetop as it surged astern, dousing the
Hyperscreens with foam and spume.
A split click later, old Jamestown smashed onto the back of the wave, launching two massive
cascades of green water high overhead and shuddering back in the air while Brim struggled to raise
her nose from the next impact. Suddenly he stiffened. In the corner of his eye he caught a large
inspection hatch hanging from the leading edge of the port radiator. It had clearly torn open at
the first violent impingement, and was now scuffing the surface in short bursts of mist. Before he
could react, it caught the roiled surface, then separated in an explosive cloud of spray, dropping
the wingtip precipitously. In desperation, he put the helm hard to starboard, but it was too late.
The radiator's tip dug into the water and the starship cartwheeled. With the steering engine at
full detent, he struggled to whipsaw back on course, and almost made it—but not quite. When the
ship slammed into the next wave, her nose was still down. The concussion knocked out the local
gravity and pushed the City of Jamestown violently back to starboard. Loose equipment cascaded
wildly along the bridge floor while the air filled with screams from the lower decks and Brim's
face smashed into the readout panel. The starboard Hyperscreens gave way to a tempest of dazzling
high-voltage sparks. Before Brim could move, green water erupted onto the flight bridge like an
explosion.
Spluttering and coughing, Brim fought against the shoulder straps in a desperate effort to keep
his head above the flood. Whining emergency pumps began to labor in the background as waves surged
in all directions through the flight bridge. Then the water stopped pouring in as the old starship
reared her nose skyward, hung for awful clicks, and plunged back in a great welter of spray.
Moments later, she careened to a stop, rolling wildly, parallel to the endless ranks of swells.
Somehow, she was down.
With Hamlish back at his station anxiously contacting various manned compartments to see who
might have survived, Brim secured the few controls that yet needed attention, then leaned out the
side window and looked sadly back along James-
town's listing hull. Here and there, her plates were wrinkled like cheap tissue paper. The
spaceframe had clearly given way in a number of locations. He'd done his best for the old girl. It
simply hadn't been good enough.
He shook his head as he watched a tug materialize out of the driving snow overhead and begin
setting up a landfall. Clearly, this was the end of the line for old City of Jamestown—and
probably StarFleet Enterprises as well. Then he took a deep breath and pursed his lips grimly. For
all practical purposes, he supposed, it was also the end of the line for Wilf Ansor Brim, at least
economically.
Later, Brim balanced himself precariously atop Jamestown's shattered bridge as the tug pulled
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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
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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
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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."
Iverson's face twisted with resentment. "So you waited," he continued in a bitter voice, "like
the rest of the carrion-eaters who have feasted on the Fleet since Triannic's xaxtdamned Treaty of
Garak."
"Think what you will, Iverson," the little man said with a grim scowl. "But were it not me here,
someone else would be scrapping those ships." He touched the neck clasp of his cloak. "Like
others, you mistake good business practices for traitorous double-dealing. But I am just as
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patriotic as the next man on Avalon, perhaps a little more, were the truth known."
"More like a thraggling CIGA, from where I stand," Iverson sulked.
Jaiswal's lip curled with ill-concealed rage. "Fortunately," he said, drawing a saffron plastic
envelope from his cloak, "I am under no obligation to endure your petty insults. But you are under
obligation to pay this."
"Yeah," Iverson groaned, with a look of utter defeat. "I know—let me have the invoice."
With a grim little smile, Jaiswal handed it over.
Iverson glanced at the scrap of plastic, then set his jaw and took a deep breath. "Pretty
xaxtdamn sure of yourself, weren't
you," he snorted. "You've already included the tow to the breaker's yard."
Jaiswal shrugged indifferently. "I can make you a separate invoice, should that be necessary."
"Maybe I'll get some other estimates," Iverson spat back petulantly.
"Suit yourself, Iverson," Jaiswal sighed with a detached shrug, "but your rent on my gravity
pool is high, as are the fees for my tug that even now waits—with its meters running—to tow this
ship to the breakers."
Iverson clenched his fists and looked down at his worn boots. "I suppose you already know how
much old Jamestown's worth as scrap."
"To the very credit," Jaiswal said, inspecting his fingernails. "I had an estimate made from my
tug. The amount you receive will precisely cover the credits owed to your crew plus my towing
invoice, with a modicum extra that will pay Mr. Brim, here, for making the trip. Imperial law
requires a certified Helmsman aboard all commercial tows, as you know."
"You bastard," Iverson groaned lifelessly.- "I'm almost sorry Brim didn't let her sink."
"She would have sunk, Iverson," Jaiswal reminded him, hands at his chest, palms up, "without
Brim at the controls. And you would now be up to your reddish neck in murder charges for every
passenger lost in the crash."
Iverson shook his head and looked at his feet again. "You don't have to remind me," he said.
"I assume it is settled then?" Jaiswal asked. "Shall we tow this wreck to the breakers before
you owe me more credits than she is worth?"
Iverson peered around the cabin for a moment, fastening his gaze finally on Brim. Peretti and
Hamlish were already packing their gear. "You'll ride her?" he asked.
"Yeah," Brim agreed, "I guess I might as well. Looks as if that's the last I'll ever get from
StarFleet Enterprises."
"You're right there, Brim," Iverson assured him. "Poor old Jamestown was the last card I had to
play." Then he laughed cynically. "Nergol Triannic and all his StarFleets never even touched me
during the war. It took the CIGAs and their xaxt-damned peace efforts to really mess up my life."
"And shatter the Fleet," Hale added from the companion-
.J&H&fe/
way. A small traveling case hovered at her heels, and she was dressed for the outdoors.
Brim stepped to the hatchway, frowning. "I guess you heard you'll get paid," he said, a discreet
specter of perfume tempting his nostrils.
"Yes, thank the Universe," she said quietly, "Hamlish left the COMM channel open."
"I guessed that Jaiswal might do something like that," Brim said. Then, on an impulse, he took
her hand—surprisingly soft and warm in his. "What can I do to help you?" he asked.
"You're helping right now," she said softly, smiling down at her hand. "And, of course, I am
still alive."
Brim frowned and shook his head. "No," he protested. "I mean—"
"I know what you mean," she stated quietly. "And I appreciate it. But there's nothing much
anybody can do about me—except myself. Besides, Mr. Brim," she said with a wink, "you'll be tied
up for at least two days with the tow, and by that time, I intend to be well on my way—wherever
that way turns out to be."
Brim nodded and released her hand. He expected that she'd waste no time. Unless he missed his
guess, there was considerable resilience under all her feminine sleekness. "I hope our paths cross
again, Pam," he said. "You're pretty special."
"You're pretty special yourself, Mr. Wilf Ansor Brim," she chuckled grimly.- "Maybe we can get
together the next time." Then she peered past him into the bridge. "Don't take any wooden credits,
gang," she laughed. "Especially you, Jaiswal —I'd hate to hear that there was anybody around slick
enough to take you for a ride."
"Even wooden credits from such a sweet hand as yours would seem precious to me, splendid lady,"
he said, bowing elaborately and fixing her with a penetrating stare. "Perhaps I can drop you off
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somewhere in my limousine."
Hale raised her eyebrows, and she considered the dark little man for a moment with new interest.
"All right," she said at length, "perhaps you can." She turned for a moment to wink at a surprised
Brim, then started back down the companionway, her traveling case bobbing along the treads after
her. "I'll be outside the brow, Jaiswal," she called over her shoulder. "Don't
-2S
~*:4KP^H
be long." Then, except for the exquisite afterglow of her perfume, she was gone.
The scrapyard of Z. Jaiswal & Co., Shipbreakers, at the dismal seaside town of Keith'Inver was
ugly—extravagantly so. Located on Inver Bight, a bend of the Imperial continent's bleak and nearly
treeless boreal coast, the mean little village incorporated cheap wooden housing, bad sewers, and
worse pavement. During winter, which was both heavy and long, the air was chilly, and the dampness
penetrated to the marrow of one's bones. Local dwellers coughed and sneezed and watched
advertisements for useless patent remedies, in an age that had all but forgotten disease. It was a
grim annex of the Imperial capital that never appear in tourist ads. Due to a perverse ocean
current, its sky was gloomy most of the year, as were its gray, squalid landscape and most of the
structures that interrupted its cheerless uniformity.
Defunct and empty, City of Jamestown listed silently in thick quayside scum, moored alongside
the unkempt corpses of I.F.S. Treacherous, a relatively late-mark T-Class destroyer, and the
battle-worn I.F.S. Adamant, an ancient frigate. Behind these luckless starships, busy cutting
torches were already throwing showers of sparks over the grimy, opened hull of I.F.S. Conqueror,
once-mighty flagship of Vice Admiral (the Hon.) Jacob Sturdee during the historic battle for
Atalanta. Busy, weather-blackened derricks hoisted massive plates of dulled hullmetal from the
great starship's savaged cadaver and dropped them unceremoniously into waiting scrap barges bound
for collap-sium forges elsewhere in the galaxy.
Halfway across the bay, a cloaked, one-eyed hunchback with a crooked mouth and twisted hands
bent over the controls of an open ferry taking Brim to Keith'Inver's public dock and the single
daily train to Avalon City. The Carescrian shivered in biting, wind-driven dampness, hardly able
to gaze back at the old warships. But no matter where he cast his eyes, some gallant vessel was
being dismantled. Z. Jaiswal & Co., had ample jobs, all right—for people with no regard for what
they were doing. He ground his teeth at the appalling irony going on before his eyes. In six years
of bloody, pitiless warfare, the enormous battlefleets of Nergol Triannic had been unable to
achieve what the Imperial Admiralty was doing to itself of its own voli-
tion. With a bit of assistance, of course, from Nergol Triannic's Treaty of Garak, as well as
patriotic organizations like the Congress for Intragalactic Accord.
Brim shook his head sadly as the unkempt ferry ground alongside the terminal wharf. The Treaty
of Garak: CIGAs stal-wartly claimed it had ended a war—but had it actually? Were Nergol Triannic's
minions really sending ships to the breakers as they claimed? He'd called Leaguers a lot of vile
names in his day, but "quitter" wasn't one of them so far as he could remember.
He carefully counted out his fare to the hunchback, then climbed to the grimy surface of the
wharf and made his way to the train platform. A lot of other people claimed that the treaty was
only a ruse. And if they were correct, then the only benefit would accrue to the League, buying
them time to recover from the unsuccessful attack on Atalanta at Hador-Haelic. And while powerful
CIGA peacemongers—many within the Admiralty itself—busily demonstrated their willingness to banish
war by calling for more cuts in the size of the Imperial Fleet, the League of Dark Stars was
probably rebuilding theirs in secret, biding time until they were handed their goal of galactic
domination on a silver platter.
After a chilly wait, Brim watched his train snake out of its tunnel like a long segmented
needle, then sigh into the station, radiating heat as it slowed to a hover over its single glowing
track. A door hissed open and Brim, alone on the dingy platform, stepped inside, taking a cramped
seat at the rear of the windowless third-class compartment. He looked at his timepiece and nodded
to himself. With a little luck at the Avalon end, he'd be back in his flat just in time for the
message Margot promised to send when she returned.
That thought produced visions of loose golden curls framing a glamorous oval face, languid blue
eyes, generous lips, and a brow that frowned in the most lovely way possible every time she
smiled. Her Serene Majesty, Princess Margot of the Effer'wyck Dominions and Baroness of the Torond
was not only Brim's one true love—as well as extravagant lover—she was also intelligent,
courageous, and deliciously heretical. At the time she and Brim met aboard I.F.S. Defiant, she
specialized in perilous covert missions to League planets that produced some of the war's most
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valuable intelligence information. How-
ever, once Emperor Greyffin IV, her uncle, caught wind of these dangerous activities, he forbade
them to continue. A politically dictated marriage (to Baron Rogan LaKam, first in succession for
the throne of the Torond) was simply too valuable an asset to risk. Temporarily stymied in her
efforts at direct action, she continued her military career by directing an important intelligence
organization in Avalon, and even found time to secretly participate in the defense of Atalanta,
during which she was severely wounded.
Wryly, Brim considered her coming visit. He'd seen so very little of her since his return to
Avalon. Not that he could blame her for it. She was, after all, obligated to accompany her husband
wherever he went. And LaKarn was a devoted traveler. Until he was someday crowned Grand Duke—upon
the eventual death of his mother—he ostensibly served as Ambassador to the Empire, with residence
in Avalon. But the "residence" part was little more than a joke, as was his post at the embassy.
Like many other superwealthy young men of the postwar civilization, LaKarn was on a pleasure
spree, traveling regularly among the great cities of the galaxy, visiting celebrated spas and
casinos, and hobnobbing with other members of a new, fast-moving, freewheeling leisure class.
During the rare times Brim and Margo had been able to steal a moment together, she often decried
the meaningless life she was forced to live. But during her long absences, Brim found himself
struggling bitterly against resentment for the vast difference between his own deepening poverty
and the lavish lifestyle she followed.
Little more than a metacycle later, he was back in Avalon, hurrying through the wintry streets
on foot. With the job market as unpromising as it was, he needed to save every credit, especially
if he expected to eat with any regularity. As he crossed over a busy thoroughfare, speeding
limousines below reminded him of the days past when he traveled these same boulevards in similar
transportation—once in one of the Emperor's own. And even though he'd been poor most of his
existence, the taste of the good life he'd received in the Fleet was not easily forgotten, nor
relinquished.
A large and colorful holoboard farther along the street touted someone's news service. Brim
stopped to look. What caught his
eye was a sleek starslrip in fhe "background of the ad. Lean and powerful-looking, it was one of
the three modified attack ships the Imperial Starflight Society planned to enter in the Mitchell
Trophy Race, scheduled to take place in less than a year as he remembered. By the Universe, he
thought to himself, there was a ship he'd like to fly! He grinned and thought of Pam Male's words
about being "rich and famous." Well, he might be broke and obscure, but he'd once rubbed elbows
with a few of the swells that belonged to that exclusive club, although he suspected they'd be
ashamed to admit they knew him these days.
He sighed as he made his way up a narrow staircase to his apartment. Cooking odors from
neighboring flats reminded him that the last morsel he'd eaten was a cold box lunch provided by
the tugboat captain almost a day ago. Tonight, he would skip supper as well. He wanted to toast
Margot's visit with good Logish Meem, and that meant he must economize.
He keyed the lock on a peeling, age-stained door, then entered his chilly one-room flat, nearly
devoid of furniture, or much of anything else for that matter. As his funds had dwindled, he had
sold off most of his meager possessions—even his prized wartime medals and a rare old Sodeskayan
blaster— always optimistic that new employment was around the corner. But it never was. So many
jobless Helmsmen were idle on the streets of Avalon, and so few ships were still in commission,
that only the well connected found jobs; skills were secondary attributes in that cutthroat
market. Unfortunately for Brim, "connecting" with the influence he unquestionably possessed meant
accepting help. And that was something quite beyond his experience.
Seating himself on a carton before a battered public correspondence socket, he called up his
mail. Immediately, messages appeared from Nikolai Yanuarievich Ursis and Anastas Alexyi Borodov,
wealthy Sodeskayan Bears and comrades from a thousand days of desperate warfare. They were again
solicitously offering employment on freighters of G.F.S.S. (Great Federation of Sodeskayan States)
registry.
Concluding one more time that the Bears' proposals were made more from compassion than from
actual need, he turned them down by return mail, writing of fictitious opportunities that would
keep him lucratively busy for a year or more. When
he finished, his face burned with embarrassment; he had an almost morbid fear of receiving
charity. Carescrians might collectively be the poorest people in the Empire, but they were also
proud, and fiercely independent.
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摘要：

file:///G|/rah/Bill%20Baldwin/Baldwin,%20Bill%20-%20The%20Helmsman%2003%20-%20The%20Trophy.txtTheMitchellTrophyFollowingtheTreatyofGarakin52000,intragalacticcommercebegantoexpandatbreakneckspeed.TheGreatWarhadintroducedliterallymillionsofpeopleonbothsides ospaceflightandforcedlooselylinkeddominio...

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