A lot of snow had fallen on the old building during those intervening fifteen years, and clearly, it had served its last patron sometime previously, probably with the closing of the base. Inside, he could imagine me huge fireplaces dark and cold, with only swirling soot marks from the last fire to serve as evidence that the rooms had ever known life-giving warmth.
He stood before the derelict inn only a few cycles before something drove him away. The cold?
The snow? Perhaps the lonesomeness? Whatever it was, he soon climbed back into the launch and departed shortly thereafter for the warmth and fellowship of Starfury's wardroom. Certain memories were simply too painful to countenance.
As the days passed. Brim began to settle more comfortably into his role as commanding officer.
It was a proprietary sort of feeling, and it became more firmly established as the ship proved herself. She was all he'd expected, and then some. Quite apart from her prodigious turn of speed, she was enormously easy to fly and maneuverable at nearly any speed. Her only major snag, if a major snag really existed, was with her new reflecting Drive units: three crystal shells grown around a central core in layers.
During normal operation, all layers fired aft as a unit, with the shells contributing nearly thirty percent of the unit's total thrust. However, when short bursts of speed were necessary, the outer shells could be reversed, firing forward into a ring-shaped focusing reflector that fed back this specially modulated energy directly to the core and increased the power output by nearly fifty percent.
The process, of course, exuded tremendous heat as a byproduct, and it had to be radiated quickly lest its blistering presence damage portions of the hull; collapsiums like hullmetal had physical limits like everything else. But therein lay a problem. Even Starfury's prodigious radiating surfaces were insufficient to continuously dissipate heat energy from four Wizard Cs running flat out in reflecting mode.
And because of it, speed runs at absolute flank speed had to be suspended when the Drive crystals passed maximum operating temperatures, usually after no more than fifteen cycles. The situation also required a great deal more diligence at the helm, especially at high speeds. Brim had no problem managing the situation. Except when running under unusual or dangerous conditions, he flew with a sixth sense anyway. But not every Helmsman was so fortunate to be born with his perfect eyesight and coordination. The Sodeskayan engineers from Krasni-Peych would have to do something about that minor flaw before combat conditions changed it to "major."
And fix it they did, in a most amazing manner. No more than a fortnight after Strana' Zaftrak's first complaints, a new and much-more-efficient space radiator system had been fabricated and was waiting for installation when Starfury made landfall after her second series of disrupter trials. The starship was laid up only two days while the immense system was installed—by a much larger party of technicians than Brim had guessed were housed aboard the Sodeskayan supply vessel. But then the huge system had been fabricated in a seemingly miraculous fashion also. Besides, it worked, and that was the only important point, anyway. Years ago he had learned that unnecessary questions could be a matter of embarrassment for everyone concerned.
The morning before their last day on Gimmas, Brim found a large notice on the ship's bulletin board:
NEW ABSOLUTE VELOCITY RECORD SET
The Imperial HyperDrome
Alcott-on-Mersin, Avalon, 369/52009
Today, nearly a year after the Mitchell Trophy was permanently retired here at the Imperial HyperDrome near Avalon, Commander Tobias Moulding, I.F., set a new absolute speed record over the Standard three-light-year course at 111.97M LightSpeed. Moulding, a member of the Imperial Fleet's High-speed Star Flight Team, set the new record in the same Sherrington M-6 Beta that he would have flown as backup, had Commander Wilf Brim, then Principal Helmsman to the Imperial Starflight Society, failed to capture the trophy himself. Moulding's M-6B was powered this year by a specially prepared Krasni-Peych WizardS (for "sprint") Drive.
The Carescrian smiled as he read the brief bulletin. Toby Moulding was one of his closest friends, and he was genuinely glad the man had a chance at the record. But even more, it made him aware of Starfury's potential. During her final trials, she reached 80.723M LightSpeed, approaching seventy-five percent of Moulding's new absolute speed record! If Sodeskayan intelligence estimates were correct, this easily made her the speediest warship in the galaxy.
Eventually, Brim presided over a small ceremony in the wardroom where he cleared all but a few minor Action Reports pending against the ship and her systems, then signed Sherrington's crimson Builder's Book on page 5054. Starfury was now ready for her official commissioning, which occurred promptly the following morning. At precisely Dawn:2;00, her entire crew plus most of the lonely base personnel assembled in the bitter cold outside her main hatch. In a simple ceremony. Brim formally muttered a few official platitudes concerning Emperor, Duty, Home, and Hearth. Then Tissaurd stepped to the bow and broke a bottle of meem against the docking cupola, after which two burly mechanics affixed a polished brass plate to the aft bulkhead just inside her main boarding hatch:
I.F.S. STARFURY
JOB 5054
SHERRINGTON STARSHIP WORKS
BROMWICH, RHODOR
388/52009
With that, Starfury entered the Fleet lists as a fully "commissioned" warship, and Brim led her crew back to their stations by stopping at the new nameplate and burnishing it with the sleeve of his Fleet Cloak. It was a tradition he'd learned on old Truculent, established by his greatest commander, Regula Collingswood herself. He swore to abide by it so long as he commanded a ship— any ship.
Immediately after the commissioning ceremony, activities got under way for the celebration Brim scheduled for the conclusion of Starfury's space trials. Tired as everyone was, the idea of a party, where everyone could let down their hair and relax for the first time in weeks, seemed to create its own energy.
At least there was enough energy to clean and decorate the wardroom as well as ice down a great quantity of Logish Meem in the ship's freezers.
But once again, Brim never got to celebrate. This time, however, neither did any of Starfury's crew. Less than two metacycles before the first guests were to arrive, Brim received a secret transmission from Prince Onrad himself, in his persona as Commander in Chief of the Imperial Fleet. The ship was ordered immediately to Bromwich where an urgent, top-secret dispatch waited for personal delivery.
Onrad's message was met with considerable grousing from the exhausted crew, including a few choice words from Brim. But within a scant twenty cycles, Strana' Zaftrak connected her four Admiralty A876 gravity generators to the mains, and Starfury was spaceborne less than a metacycle afterward, coursing across the galaxy at maximum cruise velocity for Bromwich and the Sherrington plant. As Brim set the big starship on autohelm, he shook his head. Here we go again, he thought.
"What's going on. Skipper?" Tissaurd queried from the CoHelmsman's recliner beside him.
"Nobody told us anything back there, except that we had to leave in one perdition of a hurry."