Rumors of War

by Jake Elwood

  Tom swore as the thruster icon flashed and went dark.

  His screens went blank, the faceplate on his helmet retracted, and a chiding voice said, "Now, is that appropriate language for a naval officer?"

  Tom stood and turned. "No," he said disconsolately.

  A woman in a dark uniform stood in the doorway of the simulator, leaning against the doorframe and grinning at him. "I don't think I've ever made it through one of these battle simulations without swearing," she said. "And I don't expect you to. But you need to remember that when the faceplate of your helmet comes down, the suit radio starts broadcasting. And not just to the bridge crew, either. Depending on the ship, every word you say might go to your department heads, or the gun crews, or the entire ship. So once you lose air, you need to watch your tongue."

  "I'll remember," he said, flushing. He outranked Training Chief Rodriguez, but there was no question which one of them was more valuable to the United Worlds Navy. He respected her utterly, craved her praise, and dreaded her gentle criticism.

  "You did well." She smiled. "You had a better ship, but you were outnumbered. You completely disabled two of them, and did some real harm to the third. But any mission you don't survive is a failure." She gestured at the console. "I know it's a simulation, but someday there'll be a ship full of living people who'll die along with you if you get carried away."

  "Right."

  She smiled. "Oh, don't look so glum. You're doing fine. I sent you some homework. Check your bracer. I want to see your scenarios by nineteen hundred." She glanced at her own bracer. "Now scram. I think you're almost due for OPT."

  "All right. Thanks." He stepped past her, breaking into a jog. Capricorn Base was small, maybe half a kilometer wide, which was a blessing, because there was never enough time to do everything. Everywhere he went, he went at a run. He found a radial corridor, took it to the perimeter of the station, and ran down a hallway that curved to match the hull of the station.

  OPT meant "Orientation and Physical Training". Orientation meant visiting half a dozen small ships and familiarizing himself with their layouts. The physical training part came from doing the orientation at a dead run.

  He arrived panting at Airlock Delta just in time to see a young man in an officer's vac suit step into the lock. A young woman waited, her helmet under her arm. Protocol called for a three-minute delay between students on OPT runs, so Tom knew he had six glorious minutes of free time.

  Sublieutenant Garvin gave him a nod, then busied herself putting on her helmet. Tom tapped his forearm, where his bracer was mirrored by a screen set into the sleeve of his suit. He scanned his homework assignment, knowing he'd have to work out the details during his OPT run.

  He had three scenarios, all of them casting him in the role of an enemy plotting mischief against the United Worlds Navy. There was a fleet battle in the Yellow Zone, where the UW would be fighting if they were drawn into the Galactic War. In the opposite direction he had to imagine himself as an admiral for the Dawn Alliance and plot an attack against Garnet, the fleet base in the Green Zone.

  The third scenario was on a much smaller scale. He was a pirate with a rag-tag fleet of very small ships, assaulting a convoy guarded by a single frigate.

  For several minutes he read through the assignment, memorizing details. He had a few ideas for the fleet battle. It would be the most complex part of the assignment, but the least interesting. There were textbooks for effective tactics in fleet battles. There wasn't much room for creativity. It was fill-in-the-blanks warfare.

  The pirate attack would be a lot more fun. He was tempted to swarm the corvette and overwhelm it, like his opponents had done in his last simulation. He'd lose at least half his fleet, though. No, he decided, he'd do something more elaborate. He'd harass and distract the corvette, and do his best to divide and scatter the unarmed cargo ships. He might only capture one or two prizes, but with a little luck he'd escape with his entire fleet intact.

  As for the attack on Garnet, it looked impossible on the face of it. He pushed that one to the back of his mind and let his subconscious play with it while he stepped into the airlock and prepared for his run.

  The outer hatch slid open and Tom swung out of the station, feeling his weight drop away. He held a handle just outside the lock and planted his boots against the hull, feeling the magnets engage. The stars, bright and cold, glittered before him, and he wasted a few precious seconds just taking in the view. He wondered if he would ever grow so jaded the stars would no longer thrill him.

  He hoped not.

  Two of his target ships were in view, a frigate perhaps fifty meters away and a corvette three times as distant. He had a sneaking suspicion he could shave a couple minutes off his run by jumping for the corvette first. It would be foolhardy to try, though. The ship was as small as a toy at this distance. He'd never hit it.

  He focused on the frigate instead, bending his legs and deactivating the magnets in his boots.

  And then he kicked off and sailed into the void.

  There was nothing quite like free flight in vacuum. He'd done this a dozen times, but it still filled him with a giddy blend of terror and exultation. Even with the comforting bulk of the frigate dead ahead and growing, he felt his stomach tighten as adrenaline flooded his system.

  Frigates were built like dumbbells, with the bulbous forward section containing the bridge, surgery, galley, and so on, an aft section containing the engines, and a long thin spine connecting the two. For some assignments the spine would be ringed by cylindrical cargo pods. This frigate, used primarily for training missions, had no cargo.

  The nose of the frigate loomed closer and closer, and Tom scanned the hull, getting his bearings. A judicious squirt of compressed air right now might save him time traversing the hull. But there was only so much air in the canisters on his belt, and if he ran out he'd have to make an ignominious call for rescue as he sailed helplessly into the void. He decided to err on the side of caution.

  Tom brought his knees in and turned his body until his feet pointed at the frigate. He extended his legs, keeping some bend in his knees, and braced himself for impact. At the last instant he remembered his boot magnets and tapped frantically at the screen on his forearm. The magnets activated an instant before his feet thumped into the hull.

  As landings went it was less graceful than he might have hoped for. He grunted, momentum driving his knees into his chest, and had to plant a hand on the hull as his body twisted sideways. One boot came loose, but the other boot held. That, Tom decided, was good enough. He got the second boot planted, stood up, and started walking toward the nearest lock.

  The frigate held only a skeleton crew and Tom saw no one as he dashed through the ship. He had to visit a gun turret in the nose and the engineering department in the aft section. As he ran down the spine of the ship he mulled over the Garnet scenario.

  The biggest threat to the UW was the danger of being dragged into the Galactic War in the direction of the galactic core. Rimward, though, the Dawn Alliance was a serious interstellar rival. Over the last two centuries Earth and the other United Worlds had terraformed dozens of worlds and established colonies throughout a region known as the Green Zone. A massive investment in terraforming was finally paying off in the form of lush worlds ready for human occupation. And just on the other side of the Green Zone, the five star systems of the Dawn Alliance looked on with covetous eyes.

  The most likely scenario, according to strategists, was that the Dawn Alliance would wait for the UW to enter the Galactic War. Once the UW was bogged down in a war toward the core, the Alliance would sweep into the Green Zone, annexing planets while the UW had its hands full. It was one of the strongest arguments for keeping out of the Galactic War.

  The heart of the UW's strategy in the Green Zone was the base at Garnet, home of the Green Zone Fleet. The base itself was heavily armored and bristling with guns, and it hosted a substantial fleet. Tom ran through the scenario details, which gave him a conside
rable fleet for his attack. He'd still be outnumbered and outgunned.

  His only real chance, he decided, was a surprise attack. If he could hit the fleet while it was docked at the base, or while crews were in their bunks or down on the planet, he might be able to dish out serious damage before the fleet could react.

  The problem was Garnet's second layer of defense, a network of scanner buoys drifting in seventh-dimensional space and surrounding Garnet on all sides. Anything larger than a mini-corvette would be spotted instantly while it was hours from the base.

  Of course, he had bombers, which were a good deal smaller than mini-corvettes …

  He stepped through the door of the engineering department, waved to a lone engineer working at a console inside, and headed for the nearest airlock. He stepped onto the hull, spotted the mini-carrier that was his next stop, lined himself up, and jumped.

  As he soared through the void he brought up a description of the Garnet defenses, and the technical specs on the Dawn Alliance's Wasp-class bombers. And frowned, disappointed. The Navy's strategists had known what they were doing when they set up the scanner buoys. If a carrier parked just outside the net of buoys and launched bombers, the bombers would barely be able to reach Garnet before running out of fuel. He already knew the simulators would refuse a solution that required the pilots to make a suicide run.

  Tom tucked, rolled, and landed on the hull of the mini-carrier. The ship was little more than an engine and a portal generator. It had docks for four fighters, which together massed as much as the carrier itself. He would be on board for no more than a minute.

  As the lock cycled an idea occurred to him. What if the carriers stayed outside the buoy perimeter until the attack began, then advanced almost to Garnet to pick up the bombers? He felt a rush of excitement, thinking he'd found a way to beat the assignment, until the ramifications started to sink in. Without the rest of his fleet for support, the bombers would be shot to pieces. Even if the bombing run was successful, he didn't have enough bombers to cripple the UW fleet. Those ships would be in hot pursuit of the remains of his bomber fleet by the time the carriers arrived to pick them up. The raid would end in disaster.

  Still, he toyed with his scheme as he ran down the single long corridor that ran the length of the mini carrier. What if, instead of a mixed fleet, the raid consisted of carriers and enough bombers to demolish Garnet and the entire fleet? Were the base and the fleet vulnerable?

  Surely not. Surely most of the fleet would be ready, fully crewed and undocked from the base. A battle-ready fleet and the guns of the base itself would be more than enough to handle even a massive wave of bombers.

  Still, the Dawn Alliance might do some real damage if they were willing to sacrifice enough bombers.

  As he left the mini carrier and leaped again into space he turned his attention to the Yellow Zone fleet scenario. One of the things that bugged him about small boat training was that, in fleet actions, the corvettes and frigates were considered expendable, used to protect the battleships and carriers while those ships did the real work. This assignment gave him command of an entire fleet – and he found himself concentrating his strategy on a pair of battleships and using the small ships for missile interception.

  He sighed, shook his head, and went ahead with a conventional battle plan.

  The next ship on the OPT run was a tiny scout craft. Tom messed up the jump and used nearly all his compressed air correcting his course. By the time he connected to the hull his back was damp with sweat. He entered the cockpit, dropped into the pilot's seat long enough for the ship's AI to mark his presence, then swung back out onto the hull.

  The corvette was next. He wanted to aim directly for the distant ship, but he had only a tiny squirt of air left. He jumped for the mini carrier instead, landed, and kicked off for the corvette. The detour cost him time, and he heard the thump of the next student's boots on the hull as he entered the corvette's forward lock.

  He rushed through the ship, pushing past a cluster of exasperated spacers in the main corridor, and let himself out through the aft lock. Capricorn Base was a huge target, impossible to miss. He pointed himself at the middle of the station and jumped.

  The student behind him came sailing in and touched down on the skin of the base while Tom was plodding toward the nearest lock. The two of them entered the lock together, Tom blushing inside his helmet. Running out of air between ships would have been worse, but having someone catch up during an OPT run was still pretty embarrassing.

  The base AI marked them complete as the lock finished cycling, and Tom sighed, unsealing his helmet. The other sublieutenant did the same, setting her helmet down while she ran gloved fingers through her hair.

  "Good run."

  She smiled. "Thanks. I'm usually a good minute behind your time. I got lucky today."

  "I'm getting sloppy in my old age."

  She giggled. "Sure, gramps." She clipped the helmet to her belt. "I guess I won't see you for a day or two."

  Tom lifted an eyebrow.

  "You didn't see the new assignments?" She held up her bracer. "You're going on an orbital run."

  "Oh." He brightened. An orbital run meant circumnavigating Jupiter in a runabout. There wasn't much to do on an orbital run. He'd be able to catch up on his homework. And his sleep.

  "Don't get too happy," she told him. "You're going with Abercrombie."

  His shoulders slumped. "Ah, well. You can't win 'em all."

  She smiled. "Maybe it won't be so bad. I'll see you when you get back."

  "Sure." He watched her walk away. He liked her. She seemed to like him too, which meant she probably didn't remember him from Basic Officer Training. She'd been in the Hummingbird Platoon.

  According to his bracer he had just under thirty minutes before his ship was to leave for the orbital run. If he hustled he'd be able to shower and grab a snack before setting out on his favorite training activity – with his least favorite fellow student.

  Chapter 7

  The little ship didn't have a name, just a three-letter callsign. Tom sat in the cramped cockpit, watching storms swirl across the face of Jupiter and wishing he was alone.

  David Abercrombie had a chip on his shoulder, a chip the size of the Red Spot. Tom wasn't sure just what the man's problem was, but he didn't seem to like Tom one bit – or anyone else, for that matter. He was a sublieutenant, a reservist who'd taken his Basic Officer Training six months earlier. He didn't seem happy about having to train with the regular navy.

  Their assignment might have been quite exciting if it hadn't been stretched out over two days. Tom and Abercrombie were assisting a squad of marines with their own training mission. The marines were doing something – Tom didn't know what – on an abandoned mining platform orbiting high above Jupiter. They would be evacuating the base in a hurry and boarding this ship. He and Abercrombie would help the marines on board, then take them to a rendezvous with another ship.

  It didn't sound interesting on the face of it – but the ship wouldn't be docking with the mining platform. No, those lunatics would hurtle themselves through the void in vac suits and sail through the open hatch one deck below, at high velocity and without the ship even stopping.

  Abercrombie, sitting at the helm station, turned his head to give Tom a disdainful look. The man turned his gaze to the forward window as Tom stuck out his tongue. Even when Abercrombie didn't speak, he made the bridge feel claustrophobic and ugly. Tom badly wanted to retreat to the lower deck, just to be away from him. Only a stubborn refusal to be chased from the bridge kept him in his seat.

  He glanced at his forearm and used the screen to check the time. It was twenty minutes until the rendezvous with the marines. He needed less than five minutes to prepare, but twenty minutes was close enough that he could leave the bridge without feeling like he was hiding.

  The only problem was getting Abercrombie to agree. The man had an infuriating habit of contradicting every single thing Tom said. Something as trivial as a
bathroom break could turn into a morass of unsolvable conflict. The man was pig-headed and mindless in his pursuit of pointless obstruction.

  Tom, however, had figured out how to handle him.

  "Hey. Abercrombie."

  Abercrombie turned his head and arched an eyebrow.

  "You want me to take the controls?" Tom said. "I bet you could use a break." He pointed at the deck plates. "I thought you might like to head down and open the bay for the marines."

  Abercrombie's mouth scrunched up like he'd closed his lips with a drawstring. "We should have a good pilot here. It's a delicate manoeuver, after all. You go down and open the bay."

  Hiding a smirk, Tom nodded. "Sure." The little ship had no artificial gravity. He pushed off from the arms of his chair, then brought his knees up and put himself in a backward spin. By the time he reached the ceiling of the bridge he was moving feet-first. A gentle kick sent him in the direction of the hatch at the back.

  The corridor and ladder behind the bridge were claustrophobic, but leaving Abercrombie behind made Tom feel as if he had all the space in the galaxy. Smiling with simple relief, he pulled himself down to the ship's lower deck and went into the bay. The largest compartment in the ship, the bay was a good three and a half meters wide with a hatch that took up most of the outer wall. Tom put on his gloves, sealed his helmet, and unspooled an umbilical from the wall. He plugged the rubber tube into his chest and started the flow of air.

  He turned on the pumps that would draw most of the air out of the bay, waited until an indicator light flashed amber, then open the hatch.

  And stared out into vacuum.

  There was something about hard vacuum that fascinated him. There was nothing to see, of course. Literally nothing. But knowing that nothing separated him from the void but the fabric of his suit and a thin film of air inside his helmet always made him feel wonderfully alive.