Unthinkable! He trained a second display aft, watching his gravity generators ram the view to shimmering haze, men remembered to breathe as afternoon light began to blank the blue glow of stationary repulsion units at the bottom of the pool. The stern was beginning to swing out, angling away while the solitary spring took the starship's slow thrust like a great leash.
Starfury was soon skewed across the gravity pool at about ten degrees, with the PoolMaster's cupola hidden beneath the port pontoon. Brim drew the starboard damper ray back to idle. "Let go aft spring!" he ordered.
"All clear aft, Captain!"
At the precise moment the last spring beam disappeared, Brim moved both damper rays forward together. With only a moment's hesitation the big starship eased off her gravity pool and out over the strand, hovering a regulation twenty-five irals above the unique, three-element footprint she pushed into the surface of the dirty water thumping and foaming beneath her hulls. "Bromwich Ground," Brim sent,
"K5054 requests taxi instructions."
"K5054: cross one seven left without delay and hold at locus six five."
"K5054," Brim acknowledged. He glanced off to starboard. A trio of Sherrington F.7/30 attack ships was running up at the landward termination of takeoff vector Seventeen Right, clouds of mist and spume mounting into the pale blue sky behind them. They'd have to salute Starfury, of course. "Ready to take the honors, Lieutenant?" he prompted Morris at the COMM console.
"Ready, Captain,"
Presently, old-fashioned characters flashed across his KA'PPA display, "may stars light all thy paths."
He looked up in time to see glowing KA'PPA rings shimmer out from Starfury's high beacon—the message would arrive instantaneously throughout the Universe, though all but the three F.7s would ignore it; "and thy paths, star travelers." Gradually moving both damper rays forward, he hurried across their path, then slowed and came to a hover with hold buoy number sixty-five off the tip of Starfury's port pontoon. Moments afterward, the malevolent-looking F.7s thundered past in close formation, trailing three lofty cascades of spray that doused Starfury's Hyperscreens like a waterfall before they abruptly subsided about a c'lenyt out on the bight, where the three ships soared gracefully into the sky.
Brim grinned to himself. Cheeky rascals, those young Helmsmen, just about as cheeky as he'd been himself twenty-live years ago in his native Carescria—especially when he thought he had a faster ship. They clearly hadn't heard of Starfury's dazzling acceleration—yet. He relaxed in his recliner and listened to Tissaurd and Zaftrak completing their liftoff checklist.
"Transponders and 'home' indicator?" Tissaurd asked.
"On," Zaftrak responded.
"Fullstop cell?"
"Powered."
"Warning lights?"
"On."
"Engineer's check?"
"Complete."
"Antiskid?"
"Skid is on."
"Speed brake?"
"Forward."
"Stabilizer trim—delete the gravity gradient, if you please."
"Gradient null."
"Course indicators?"
"Set and checked."
"Liftoff check is complete, Captain," Tissaurd reported.
"Very well, Nadia," Brim responded, then used the next brief moments to make his own audits of the starship's systems, finishing only moments before Ground Control came back on line. "K5054; taxi into position, hold one seven right," the controller sent. "Contact Bromwich Tower. Good day."
"Into position and hold, 5054. Good day," Brim acknowledged, easing forward again to follow a series of bobbing markers until a ruby light gleamed out of the distance. Then he put the helm over, turned into the wind, and centered the glimmer in a small circle projected on the Hyperscreen from his console. "Bromwich Tower K5054 in position and holding...."
"K5054 is cleared for liftoff," the Tower sent. "Wind three one five at two seven gusts four seven."
"Cleared for liftoff, K5054," Brim acknowledged. He flicked the blower. "All hands stand by for liftoff," he warned the crew, then glanced over his shoulder.
Zaftrak was holding her left hand up, thumb in the air. Starfury was ready.
In all his years at a helm, Brim had never outgrown the wild, almost-physical thrill of liftoff. "I'll have full military power, Strana'," he said.
"One hundred percent military," Zaftrak replied.
"Steering engine's amidships," Tissaurd added—the last item on Starfury's preflight checklist.
Taking a deep breath. Brim stood on the gravity brakes and cautiously moved both damper rays forward until they passed from amethyst to blue, then to green... yellow... orange... finally to flashing red.
The deep rumbling of the gravity generators changed voice to a thunderous bellow that shook Starfury's whole spaceframe and resonated deafeningly through the Hyperscreens as if the big ship were centered in the midst of some gigantic explosion. Astern, a long strip of the Bight had suddenly flattened into a madly flowing millrace that ended in a towering cloud of spray and ice particles soaring at least a c'lenyt into the pale winter sky.
"Six lights are on, Captain," Zaftrak called above the noise, "you've got one fifteen thrust!"
Brim cleared his flight path visually, made another pass over his readouts. "Here we go!" he shouted, then released the brakes....
Instantly, the big starship began to move forward—completely unlike generations of predecessors that took what seemed to be eternities at full power before they would even respond to their steering engines. In only moments Starfury was trailing lofty cascades of spray and plunging smoothly across the water at tremendous velocity. The enormous quantities of power available did little to interfere with the ship's naturally delicate, quick, and positive response to control manipulations. After a moment, her bows lifted slightly to the mighty beat of the generators, then fell again while speed increased through 165 c'lenyts per metacycle. At about 170, Brim eased back on the controls overcoming a slight tendency to nose down farther, then as she accelerated through 180, he lifted the bow and let the ship's weight transfer to the gravs, applying about a third rudder to check a normal swing to port during liftoff. A moment later she separated from her shadow and began climbing smoothly over the Sherrington Works on the way to the ultimate freedom of her native element: deep interstellar space.
"K5054 is at one thousand and climbing," Brim reported.
"K5054: turn port fifteen to join two thirty radial outbound blue, contact Blue District Departure Control," Sherrington Tower advised while Starfury bounced through light turbulence.
"K5054: turning port fifteen to two thirty radial outbound blue. Good day," Brim replied.
"Best o' luck on the trials, Commander."
"Thanks, Control, we can always use it."
As he trimmed the ship's head toward the assigned departure radial, Brim glanced down at fifteen Starfury-class warships on gravity stocks below—in various forms of completion. He'd inspected three of them the previous afternoon. Another fifteen —fitting out on bay-side gravity pools—were on hold status while Sherrington engineers awaited results of his prototype's space trials. He shook his head while the course indicator settled onto its new heading. Those ships down there were being put together on little more than faith alone: faith that I.F.S. Starfury's original design was sound—and a sincere hope that the mistakes she did embody could be easily and economically corrected. Major modifications to a fleet of thirty-one warships could actually spell financial disaster to the credit-strapped Imperial Fleet. They would almost certainly mean that Crown Prince Onrad would be deprived of his succession. The only son of Emperor Greyffin IV and heir to the Imperial throne at Avalon, Onrad had personally ordered Starfury's creation at the historic Dytasburg conference in Sodeskaya the previous year, then immediately funded thirty additional "prototypes" using discretionary development funds. He took these seemingly rash actions because he truly believed that war might soon engulf the "civilized" dominions of the galaxy, during a time when the once-great Imperial Fleet had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former might.