For Honor We Stand (2 page)

 Max nodded.  The kid had it figured just the way he did.  “And what if Werner gives tea time a miss and effects repairs to give us back our speed advantage over the Cruisers?”

“Sir, if I may ask, why do you call Lieutenant Brown ‘Werner’?”

“His full name is ‘Vaughn Brown.’  Sounds like ‘von Braun’ as in ‘Werner von Braun,’ the rocket guy.” 

DeCosta nodded his recognition.  “Oh.  That’s been bothering me.”

“So, XO, back to my question, what if Werner gets our main sublight back to nominal and we can outrun the Cruisers?”

“We still lose,” DeCosta replied instantly.  “Even with our twenty-three percent acceleration advantage and our seven percent top speed advantage over the
Crustaceans
restored, the interception geometry and the physics are totally against us.  The high Cruiser is already mostly out of the gravity well and at orbital velocity, so he’s got a huge head start before the race even begins.  If we try to run, he can cut us off and destroy us before we can develop enough speed to get away.”

“That’s right.  What if we try to even the odds by taking on the low ship one-on-one once the two ships are settled in different orbits?”

“No go, skipper.  It’s basic orbital mechanics.  Because of the similarity in the kinetic energy values, it’s a lot easier to transfer from high orbit to a low orbit in the same plane than to boost up to low orbit from the upper atmosphere where we’re going to be.  The high Cruiser can drop down into the lower orbit to help the low Cruiser faster than we can climb up to fight him.  That makes it two on one and they mop the deck with us.”

“Exactly right.”  Not very helpful, but absolutely right.  “OK, you’ve summarized the problem.  We’ve got about four hours to solve it.  Get with Kasparov and his people.  Their sensors expertise makes them the closest thing to planetary scientists we’ve got.  Make yourself an expert on Mengis VI and its environs.  I need to know the lay of the land we’re going to be fighting on.  While you’re doing that, I’ve got a bit of research of my own to do.”  DeCosta got up from his station, walked over to the Sensors console, and began conversing with Lieutenant Kasparov animatedly.  The two men talked in low voices, DeCosta sitting next to Kasparov in what was known as the “second fiddle position” at the large and complex Sensors Console.  The two were pulling up screens in rapid succession and quickly switching from one data channel to another, apparently plowing rapidly through a great deal of information and exchanging ideas.  Kasparov was also talking a lot to his SSR or “Back Room” to get information and advice from the specialists who gave him in depth support and detailed monitoring of every sensor every minute of every day.  Meanwhile, Max started pulling up data on the flight and control software parameters for the Talon anti-ship missile, the
Cumberland
’s
primary weapon. 

A few minutes later, Max’s comm buzzed.  “Skipper.”

“Captain, this is Engineering.”  It was Brown.  He sounded winded.  “Compression drive is ready.  Be aware that the compression drive control interface at the Maneuvering Station functions as OFF/ON only—there is currently no ability to regulate speed from CIC.”

“Understood.  We’ll manage.  Outstanding job, Werner.  Thanks.  CIC out.”  He cut off the channel.  “XO, get us to Mengis VI.”

“Aye, sir.”  DeCosta had started back to his station when Brown said the c drive was working.  He sat down and started issuing orders.  “Maneuvering, set course for Mengis VI, compression drive, prepare to engage at my command.  Deflector control, forward deflectors to full, lateral and rear to cruise.”  Both men acknowledged the commands.

“Course computed,” announced Maneuvering almost immediately.  He had plotted the course five minutes ago and configured his console to update it continuously as the ship moved through space. 

“Maneuvering, main sublight drive to standby.  Maneuvering thrusters to standby.”

“
Nulling main sublight
and bringing it to standby,” said Maneuvering, tactfully supplying the XO’s omission.  Maneuvering was personified by Chief Petty Officer 1
^st
Class Claude LeBlanc, the deeply experienced Cajun in immediate command of the three spacers who actually had their hands on the controls directing the motion of the ship through space:  one for yaw and roll, one for pitch and trim, and one to govern the propulsion systems.  Those stations, and the men who manned them, were known respectively as Yaw, Pitch, and Drives.  With a few muttered words to those three, he gave effect to the XO’s commands.  On LeBlanc’s console, the power indicator for the main sublight drive dropped to zero, and the drive’s status light went from green for “engaged” to blue for “standby,” followed immediately by the lights for the maneuvering thrusters.  “Main sublight nulled and at standby.  Maneuvering thrusters at standby.  Attitude control by inertial systems only.”

“Prepare to engage compression drive.  C factor under control from Engineering.”

“Aye, sir,” LeBlanc acknowledged.  “C factor controlled from Engineering.  The status light on the drive just went from red to amber.  Compression drive is ready for superluminal propulsion but is not nominal.”

“Hotel one and two approaching missile range.  They just powered up their missile targeting scanners,” announced Bartoli from Tactical, unable to keep the urgency from his voice.  After a few seconds, “Missile targeting scanner beams from both ships are now traversing and phase scanning.  Looking for a lock.”

“Not today.  Compression drive . . . engage,” DeCosta ordered.

“Engaging,” LeBlanc announced.  He patted his Drives man twice sharply on the shoulder.  “Fleishman, go.”  Drives moved the control all the way forward.  “Compression field forming.  Instability in the compressed space forward . . . manually corrected from Engineering.  Field going propulsive.  Speed is zero point six.  Zero point nine.”  Everyone gritted their teeth at the ear-piercing shriek of “Einstein’s wail” as the ship breached “Einstein’s wall” by exceeding the speed of light.  “Ship is now superluminal.  One point three.  Two.  Six.  Nine.  Field approaching equilibrium . . .  equilibrium achieved.  Field is propulsive and stable at nine-point-eight-six c.  ETA at Mengis VI is . . . five minutes and forty seconds from . . . MARK.”

“Leaving Hotels one and two behind.  Range opening up rapidly.  Twelve million kilometers.  Eighteen million.  Twenty-four million   No longer showing up on sensors.”

“Never fear, Tactical, we’ll see them again in about two hours,” said Max.

“Thank you, sir, I was afraid I’d miss them,” Bartoli said, his voice returned to normal. 

“You know, sir, when I got this assignment and read about the extra set of compression phase modulators on this class, I thought ‘so what, big deal, maybe it’ll save a little time crossing from jump in to jump out, but it’s not a significant combat capability,’” DeCosta said.  “But it’s pretty obvious to me now that it
is
a big deal.  The Krag don’t have it and we do.  When we scoot away at ten c, they can poke along at sublight and get left behind, or they can run at eighty or a hundred c inside a star system, which is like trying to drive a ground car at three hundred KPH in a parking structure.”

“It has been handy, no doubt,” Max agreed.  “It’s always good to have a capability that your enemy lacks.  Now, back to our problem.  You’re the one that Admiral Hornmeyer sold to me as the budding tactical genius.  What can we do?” 

“All I can think of is to find some way to even the odds.  Find something that gives us a tactical advantage so we can take on one ship at a time on favorable terms.”

“And, how do we do that?”

“Nothing’s coming to mind, sir.”

“What did General Konovalov say right before the Battle of Belogorsk in the East-West War?”  

“Other than, ‘Oh, shit, I’m surrounded by half a million Chinese?’” 

“Yes, other than that.”  Max smiled at the joke.  As much for the benefit of the rest of the tactically inexperienced people in CIC as for DeCosta, Max continued, “General ‘
Stolb
’ or ‘the Pillar’ Konovalov was surrounded by about
four hundred and eighty-five thousand
Chinese.”  He looked pointedly at DeCosta as he supplied the correct number.  “But he and his scratch force of only a hundred and ten thousand men—and remember that they were mainly reservists, garrison forces, and rear echelon truck drivers, cooks, and file clerks--managed to hold off a numerically superior force comprised of crack troops, and did so without resupply for eleven days until the joint United States/British/German relief force arrived.  Like Trafalgar, Midway, Jutland, Marathon, Sirius B, and a dozen other battles I could name, turning back that attack was the turning point of the war.”

DeCosta had been nodding as Max was talking.  He knew most of that.  “Didn’t Konovalov say something like, ‘Use terrain to even the odds’?”

“Very good.  I’m told it sounds a lot catchier in Russian.  Use the terrain.  But, we’re in space, not along the Trans-Siberian Railway near the Chinese border, so what terrain do we have to use?”

“Well, sir, the planet is a Jovian-type gas giant.  That means it’s got a complex moon system, a ring system, all manner of crazy magnetic fields, electromagnetic effects, Trojan asteroids in its orbital path . . . .”

“Is there any way to use any of that to gain a tactical advantage?”

“There will be lots of hiding places for something as small and stealthy as a
Khyber
class Destroyer, and lots of moons and electromagnetic phenomena that could temporarily conceal maneuvers or weapons deployments to prevent enemy detection of what we’re doing.”

“Yes.  There are . . . .”  An idea came to him.  “Would it be too much to hope for that one of those moons happens to be volcanic?”

“Not too much at all, sir.  One of the moons . . . .” he glanced at his display and poked at a few buttons to pull up the data, “it’s the third major moon, the eighth one out from the planet if you count the little ones too.  That one is strongly volcanic.  A lot like Io in the Sol system, spewing sulfur and other material out into space.”

Max slapped his knee.  “
That’s
our terrain.  Now, how do we use it?”  He turned toward the Weapons station, enthusiasm beginning to show.  “Mr. Levy, I seem to recall a report in the last few days saying that the
Crustacean
class Cruisers have a new countermeasures capability.  They blast some sort of signal at our Talon missiles and they veer off into useless trajectories.  Well, about sixty percent do, anyway.  Have I got that right?”

Ensign Menachem Levy had just joined the ship a week ago.  Yes, he was only nineteen and a half years old, greener than a seasick tree frog, and was pretty weak on CIC procedures, but Max would have bet he could assemble a Talon missile from spares without checking the database for instructions.  The young man knew the answer off the top of his head.  “Yes, sir, that’s right, but we’ve already developed and installed a software patch that’s supposed to cut that to less than ten percent.  And, if you ask me sir, I think that estimate is very conservative.  Now that we’ve installed the patch, I don’t think that the new Krag countermeasures would have any effect at all.”

Max wasn’t surprised that the Krag countermeasure against the weapon had been negated by a counter-countermeasure in the weapon.  It was the story of weapons and defenses through the ages:  weapons leading to countermeasures leading to improved weapons leading to improved countermeasures leading to further improved weapons in an ever-ascending spiral staircase of technological innovation and development.  In this competition, each side repeatedly gains superiority, loses it, and regains it again at the cost of staggering amounts of time and energy and money with neither obtaining a decisive or enduring advantage.  It was, like so many of man’s most energetic strivings, desperately important, yet ultimately futile.  He thought of all those trillions of credits being spent by both sides, doing little more than canceling each other out, and suppressed a desire to shake his head. 

“Thank you, Ensign.  Now, I need another opinion.  Do the Krag know we’ve implemented a counter-countermeasure?”

“I don’t know, sir.”  Apologetically, he added, “I don’t get those reports.”

“Fair enough.”  The boy can’t know everything, after all.  Max turned in another direction.  “Intel.  Mister Bhattacharyya.”  Another young officer who didn’t need to be told much.  “Mr. Levy doesn’t get those reports.  You do.  Start feeding him the ones relating to weapons and countermeasures and put together a package of the older ones you think he might find useful.  Get it to him by 06:00 tomorrow.”  In response to a questioning look, “And, yes, Mister Bhattacharyya, at 06:00 tomorrow you will still be alive to send him the package, he will still be alive to read it, and I will still be alive to be very unhappy if you don’t send it to him.  Take that to the bank.  Now, Ensign, do the Krag know about the software patch?”

Ensign Bhattacharyya considered for a moment.  “I don’t see how they could, sir, except by means of some kind of mole or signal intercept.  The patch was implemented just over forty-eight hours ago and I have no report of anyone having fired a Talon at a
Crustacean
in that time.  That makes sense, sir.  Because they’re such big ships, people generally attack them with Ravens.  There’s not much of anything that can stand up to a one point five megaton warhead.” 

“Right.  Maximum yield on a Talon is a hundred and fifty kilotons.  That won’t kill one of those big bastards.”  Max paused, his lips curling into what some CIC personnel were starting to call his “crafty grin.”  “Unless you can get in a sucker punch.  All right.  I’ve got the terrain.  I’ve got the weapon.  I’ve got the tactics.  Mr. Levy, you and I have some missile software to rewrite.”