Читать книгу Fleet of the Damned (Sten #4) - Allan Cole - Страница 24

CHAPTER NINETEEN

OTHERS IN THE class were killed, some stupidly, some unavoidably. The survivors learned what Sten already knew: No amount of mourning would revive them. Life—and flight school—goes on.

The barracks at Imperial Flight Training were not as luxurious as the psychologically booby-trapped ones in Phase One. But passes were available, and the pressure was lightened enough for cadets to have some time for consciousness alteration—and for talk.

A favorite topic was What Happens Next. Sten’s classmates were fascinated with the topic. Each individual was assuming, of course, that he would successfully get his pilot’s wings.

They were especially interested in What Happens Next for Sten. Most of the cadets were either new to the service or rankers—they would be commissioned, on graduation, as either warrant officers or lieutenants. Sten was one of the few who was not only already an officer but a medium-high-ranking one. The topic then became what would the navy do with an ex-army type with rank.

“Our Sten is in trouble,” Sh’aarl’t opined. “A commander should command at least a destroyer. But a destroyer skipper must be a highly skilled flier. Not a chance for our Sten.”

Sten, instead of replying, took one of Sh’aarl’t’s fangs in hand and used it as a pry top for his next beer.

“It’s ambition,” Bishop put in. “Captain Sten heard somewhere that admirals get better jobs on retirement than busted-up crunchies, which was all the future he could see. So he switched.

“Too bad, Commander. I can see you now. You’ll be the only flight-qualified base nursery officer in the Empire.”

Sten blew foam. “Keep talking, you two. I always believe junior officers should have a chance to speak for themselves.

“Just remember… on graduation day, I want to see those salutes snap! With all eight legs!”

* * * *

Sten discovered he had an ability he did not even know existed, although he had come to realize that Ida, the Mantis Section’s pilot, must have had a great deal of it. The ability might be described as mechanical spatial awareness. The same unconscious perceptions that kept Sten from banging into tables as he walked extended to the ships he was learning to fly. Somehow he “felt” where the ship’s nose was, and how far to either side the airfoils, if any, extended.

Sten never scraped the sides of an entry port on launch or landing. But there was the day that he learned his new ability had definite limits.

The class had just begun flying heavy assault transports, the huge assemblages that carried the cone-and-capsule launchers used in a planetary attack. Aesthetically, the transport looked like a merchantman with terminal bloats. Sten hated the brute. The situation wasn’t improved by the fact that the control room of the ship was buried in the transport’s midsection. But Sten hid his dislike and wallowed the barge around obediently.

At the end of the day the students were ordered to dock their ships. The maneuver was very simple: lift the ship on antigrav, reverse the Yukawa drive, and move the transport into its equally monstrous hangar. There were more than adequate rear-vision screens, and a robot followed me sat on tracks to mark the center of the hangar.

But somehow Sten lost his bearings—and the Empire lost a hangar.

Very slowly and majestically the transport ground into one hangar wall. Equally majestically, the hangar roof crumpled on top of the ship.

There was no damage to the heavily armored transport. But Sten had to sit for six hours while they cleared the rubble off the ship, listening to a long dissertation from the instructor pilot about his flying abilities. And his fellow trainees made sure it was a very long time before Sten was allowed to forget.