For Honor We Stand

by Harvey G. Phillips

  “Sir,” it was Bhattacharyya, not a man from whom one would typically be hearing at this point.

  “Yes, Bhattacharyya?”

  “That particular ship is the one Admiral Hornmeyer uses when he needs to leave the Halsey. Just a registry number—no official name for something that small, but they call themselves the ‘Yellow Cab Company.’” In theory, a truly capable Intel Officer developed “assets and resources” that allowed him to keep his skipper a few steps ahead of what the good guys were doing as well as the bad, but few men who held that billet on a mere Destroyer took that part of their job seriously. Apparently, Bhattacharyya had a different outlook.

  “Thank you, Intel, that’s good to know. Mister Chin, as soon as the Yellow Cab Company is within hailing distance,” he leaned on the words to be sure no one missed the joke, “give them the same recognition signal.” The smaller vessel quickly closed most of the gap that separated the ships and, in short order, was replying with the counter-sign, “TRAFALGAR.”

  A few seconds after that Chin announced, “Incoming signal from the Courier by blinker. It’ll be on Commandcom as soon as it finishes and I get it input.” It took a few minutes before coming up on Max’ console: “COMING ABOARD YOUR VESSEL ASAP TO VIEW PACKAGE STOP IF YOU MAKE ME WADE THROUGH ALL THAT FIFE DRUM AND HONOR GUARD CEREMONIAL HAPPY HORSESHIT WHEN I BOARD I WILL HAVE YOUR HIDE STOP PREPARE YOUR VESSEL FOR HIGH SPEED RUN BACK TO PFELUNG STOP TANKER IS HERE TO TOP YOU OFF AND TO REFUEL OTHER VESSEL THAT WILL ARRIVE PRESENTLY STOP HORNMEYER SENDS MESSAGE ENDS.”

  “I thought you said that there was never a redundant word in any communication received from the Admiral,” said Bram, who had come into CIC a few moments earlier.

  “I did. I don’t see any redundancy,” Max replied.

  “There most certainly is a redundancy: ‘Hornmeyer sends.’ It is evident from the remainder of the signal who wrote it. Who other than he would call the piping aboard, the presentation of arms, the playing of whatever the name of that piece is with the lyrics ‘Rule the Union, the Union Rules in Space,’ and the ritual inspection of the men at arms ‘ceremonial happy horseshit’?”

  Max was impressed that the doctor was able to accurately recite the ceremony prescribed by custom and naval regulations when a Flag Officer came aboard a rated warship, even though he did not know the title “Rule the Union,” sung to the old tune “Rule Britannia.” Apparently, he had been studying the database after all. Of course, Sahin would never learn that from him. “Redundancy or not, I am glad to be shed of the ‘happy horseshit.’ Apparently the Admiral wants to conclude his business with us and send us in a great big tearing hurry back to Pfelung for some reason. I suppose that’s what’s behind all of this meeting in deep space double naught spy stuff. He wants to get his hands on the package ASAP and then send us on this errand, whatever it is. It’s probably another VIP escort or some such nonsense since we helped save the last one from unmitigated catastrophe.”

  The Admiral came aboard, as ordered, without the usual ceremonies, much to the disappointment of many of the crew who delighted in such things. As soon as the Admiral was aboard, salutes exchanged, and introductions made, he said, “All right, Robichaux, enough of this Naval Auxiliary Garden Party crap. Let’s see the package.”

  “Yes, sir. Right this way.” Max led the Admiral from the Hangar Deck wondering if Admiral Hornmeyer had ever so much as showed his face at a Naval Auxiliary Garden Party. He doubted it.

  “You should know,” the Admiral said as they were making their way through the ship, “that I’ve squared the situation with Duflot for you. I issued orders confirming your failure to rendezvous with the William Gorgas, so you won’t have to jump through all those hoops to satisfy him that you were acting with the scope of Article 15, paragraph 5.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. That saves me a great deal of paperwork.”

  “Fucking paperwork. The goddamn bane of the Navy. I’d rather you focus your attention on making life difficult for the Krag than jumping through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops. After all, you are one of my most productive commanders right now. I mean, son, have you looked at the score?”

  “Score?”

  “Score, son, score. War is a goddamn numbers game, son. Ships, tonnage, weapons, supplies, manpower, fuel, speed, distance, time. Missing. Wounded. Killed. All numbers. Here are some of yours. If I am remembering correctly, under your command, the Cumberland has destroyed one Battlecruiser, four Cruisers and an assist on another killed by the Vaaach, two Corvettes, and two Destroyers, as well as assists on two more destroyers killed by the Pfelung, in just a few months. Plus two freighters captured whole, with cargo, as prizes. That’s more enemy losses inflicted than some battle groups under my command. And with crew performance ratings that are just barely in the ‘Fair’ range.” He shook his head in wonder. “You are either a budding tactical genius or the luckiest motherfucker who ever put on a uniform. I’m leaning toward the latter. Anyway, you know how I like to bet on the winning horse, so my money is on you in the next race. When we start throwing these new ships at the Krag there will be some very interesting work for ships like yours.” He grinned broadly. “Very, very interesting. If you can keep from being Court Martialed between now and then, you are going to help me make history.”

  They came to the hatch that led in to Captured Hardware. Outside the main compartment was a smaller compartment with a spacer and a Marine. The spacer politely but firmly asked both men to leave their percoms behind and pointed a hand scanner at both of them to be certain that they weren’t carrying any electronic devices which would violate the compartment’s electronic quarantine. Once cleared, they went in.

  Captured Hardware was crowded: fifteen people packed into one of the humbler spaces on the ship, the small compartment where computer, weapons, and engineering wonks tinkered with pieces of equipment obtained from the enemy, trying to extract their secrets. The only thing that marked the compartment as different from several other such spaces where men worked on equipment (such as repair and maintenance workshops) with their work stations, work benches, and tools, was the presence of three compact computer cores, totally isolated in every conceivable way from the data and power networks for the rest of the ship. You can’t just plug a captured Krag data module into your ship’s computer and expect anything but disaster to ensue. Accordingly, these cores were purpose-built to probe and operate alien computer equipment and to access alien databases and storage devices, without putting the rest of the vessel at risk from enemy viruses, Trojans, parasites, data shredders, digital con artists, lying Louies, Alzheimer’s bugs, bit rotters, succubi, incubi, turncoaters, sirens, saprophytes, mole makers, sappers, egg suckers, termites, and the full panoply of malware and other digital weapons deployed by the combatants in a war in which attacks on computing systems and databases had been nearly as important as attacks on ships and fixed installations.

  Bales, in charge of probing the Krag database, walked Hornmeyer through what he had learned so far about the menu structure and the locations of the most important data he was finding. He was managing to keep his discussion more germane than was usual for him, but Max could tell that the Admiral was starting to get a bit annoyed at his occasional digressions into matters of interest only to people immersed in the science of data storage and processing. Surprisingly, the Admiral generally managed to conceal his impatience and, where he would have cut Max off at the knees, Hornmeyer was patient and, even, gentle with Bales. Max couldn’t figure it out.

  By coincidence, at that same moment, the Admiral thought fleetingly about exactly the same thing: why he was being so nice to Bales when he was always so tough with Max. Simply put, he believed that different people need to be handled in different ways. Bales, a somewhat shy soul who in peacetime would probably have been designing stellar navigational software for an astrionics company, was like a pet deer, requiring quiet moves, encouragement, and patience. Max was more like a big Labrador Retriever, needing sharp orders, stern corr
ection, and a rambunctious ten year old boy with whom to roughhouse and roll around on the grass.

  Bales was on his way to the section on countermeasures protocols scrolling through a menu that appeared to consist mainly of cartographic information when the Admiral stopped him. “Son, whoa. Stop right there. Back it up. A bit more. There. See that entry for “Special Navigational Protocols?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Open that up for me.”

  In his own researches, Bales had already scrolled past it a dozen times, had opened it up once, and hadn’t seen anything interesting. “Admiral, it’s probably just some sort of Rules of the Road for how to keep warships from running into each other.”

  “Probably. Humor me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bales opened the menu. That menu was an umbrella for other menus at a lower level of the file hierarchy. Special Navigation Protocols was divided into: Providing Escort to Logistics Convoys, Providing Escort to Personnel Convoys, Providing Escort to Mixed Convoys, Providing Escort to High Officials in Secured Areas, Providing Escort to High Officials in Unsecured Areas, Ceremonial Reviews, Inspection Reviews, and Other. “Click ‘Other,’” directed the Admiral.

  This did not look promising, and Bales almost said something, but took one look at the Admiral and decided against it. Wisely.

  Other consisted of: Navigating in Close Company with Vessel Carrying Hazardous Material, Navigating in Close Company with Damaged Vessel in Danger of Exploding, Navigating in Close Company with Vessel Unable to Steer Straight Course, and Multivessel Transfer Procedures. “Click on Multivessel Transfer.” There was actually the barest hint of an excited quiver in Hornmeyer’s voice. Everyone in the compartment who wasn’t already looking at the wall display snapped his head around. The tension in the room suddenly jumped eight or nine notches.

  The emotion communicated itself to the usually clueless Bales. The flicker of feeling from the Admiral was more powerful than the most overt demonstration from another man. He clicked on the item. It was a densely written procedural checklist, setting forth some fifty-three steps and check offs for the accomplishment of what must be a technically demanding operation. As the men read further, they saw that it was the procedure to be used by up to eight ships when they simultaneously executed some sort of maneuver or other in close company. They read further, through steps involving synchronization of clocks to the nanosecond, relative orientation of the ships’ center of mass in the same plane to within .003 seconds of arc, and precise alignment of the plane of the formation with the metaspacial “grain” of the galaxy. Suddenly, a frisson passed through the group, as though a veil had just been snatched away to reveal to their eyes for the first time a dazzling gem of extraordinary and unexpected beauty. Most actually gasped. Five or six let out an almost breathless “oh.”

  That’s what the list was: a detailed “how to” description of the most important group maneuver-procedure in the Krag arsenal, sending up to eight jump ships at the same time through the same jump point. The Krag had been using that little trick to kick the Union’s butts since day one of the war and the Union had never managed to uncover its secret notwithstanding trillions of credits worth of research over more than thirty years.

  Everyone stood in silence for a few moments. The same idea hit everyone at the same time.

  This changes everything.

  The Admiral summed it up for everyone. He uttered the expression slowly, drawing it out for a full four seconds, maybe five. “Oy. Fucking. Gevalt.” He borrowed some of his ancestors’ Yiddish, the rich and colorful language of a displaced people.

  “Regardez donc,” said Max, borrowing some of his ancestors’ Cajun French, the rich and colorful language of another displaced people.

  “You know what this means, son?”

  With an effort, Max managed to keep himself from telling the Admiral, that he did, indeed, know what oy gewalt meant. Instead, he said, “Yes, sir, I do. It’s a whole new war.”

  ***

  The Admiral ordered Bales to copy all the files in the Krag database pertaining to the jump procedure onto a datachip which the Admiral had a crewman sew into the left breast pocket of his pilot’s uniform so that there was no possibility of its getting lost, and ordered the pilot to take the Scout ship at maximum velocity back to the Task Force. The Admiral would have liked to copy the whole database, but it was so huge that it would not fit into the Cumberland’s MDC, much less on something that would fit on the Scout. The jump procedure chip was accompanied by Hornmeyer’s marching orders to his staff to find a way for Union ships to implement the procedure “with the utmost celerity and in the deepest secrecy.” The tiny vessel had disappeared in a wave of compressed space moving as fast as any ship ever designed by human minds and built by human hands.

  The Admiral and Max were both in CIC, with Max at his station and the Admiral actually putting the Commodore’s station to its intended use. The doctor sat in the spare seat at Comms.

  “I’m surprised that you didn’t send the Vaaach data module on the Scout along with your pilot,” said Max.

  “Put the most significant intelligence coup in human history—one which we can’t duplicate until we can attach it to something as big as the Main Data Core on a Carrier or a Battleship--in a ship that doesn’t even have a missile tube? Not a chance in hell. No, son, that data core is the solid platinum, diamond encrusted, copper bottomed, mother fucking lode. That little jewel and I are going to arrive at the Task Force in style. It’s going to be a hell of an entrance.” He smiled. It was the kind of smile a wolf gives just before the object of his gaze makes the permanent change in status from being a living organism, called a “sheep,” to being a meal, called “lunch.” “But not nearly the entrance I’m going to make the next time I hit those rat-faced Krag motherfuckers. Not nearly.” He looked at his wrist chrono, then stood up. By that sort of commanding dynamism some leaders have, his force of will combined with his mere intention to speak quieted the compartment without his having given any sign. “Gentlemen, in about three minutes, you’re going to get a mass reading at about two-four-three mark zero-one-seven. A huge fucking mass reading. Don’t shit your pants. You’re about to see something you’ll remember the rest of your lives.”

  True to the Admiral’s prediction, two minutes and forty-eight seconds after the announcement, Kasparov announced a gravity wave detection exactly on the predicted bearing. He designated the contact as Charlie two based on “circumstantial classification,” meaning that he had no sensor evidence that it was friendly but, because the contact was where a friendly was expected, doing what a friendly was supposed to be doing, it was probably a friendly. After all, that bird swimming around in your duck pond during duck season and making quacking noises is almost certainly not an eagle. One minute and nine seconds later, Kasparov suddenly sucked in enough air to fill both his lungs and a whole nine year old’s birthday party worth of kiddie balloons. Just as everyone close enough to have heard him turned their heads at the uncharacteristic reaction, he croaked “Contact! Mass detector. Stand by while I change to a different scale.” Then to his Back Room. “No, bigger than that. Even bigger. There. OK. Harbaugh, you sure that’s right?” Pause. “It made its own gravity waves when it went subluminal?” Pause. “Sweet jeeeeezus.” He took a calming breath and then announced to the CIC as a whole. “Mass detection, dual phenomenology, bearing concurrent with gravity wave detection of Charlie two. Mass of contact is . . . approximately five million tons. Saying again . . . Five. Million. Tons.” Heretofore, the largest warships ever made by the Union were the Nimitz Class Fleet Carriers and the Victory Class Command Carriers that came in right at 1,000,000 tons.

  “Mister Kasparov, fire up the Arnaz scanner and let’s get a realistic number.” Max said, a trace of annoyed disbelief in his voice. “You can’t generate a compression field big enough to enclose and move a five million ton ship.”

  “Belay that, son,” said Admiral Hornmeyer. “God help me for
overriding a Captain’s order in his own CIC, but you can keep the Arnaz scanner offline. It really is five million tons.” The crusty old bastard was beaming. “And it’s ours.”

  Chin broke in. “IFF, sir. Sirs. Confirmed Union transponder code, identity: USS Winston Churchill, registry number BSD-zero-zero-zero-one, Type: Battleship.” Pause. “Classification . . . Super Dreadnaught.”

  Admiral Hornmeyer looked eleven feet tall and ready to beat the entire Krag Hegemony in single combat. “There she is, gentlemen, my new flagship, fresh from the fleet yards at 40 Eridani A. She’s still got contractors on board calibrating some of the electronics and ironing out the bugs, but she’s a warhorse born and bred and she is foaled at the turning of the tide. Because, gentlemen, the tide has turned. From now on, we take the initiative. We go on the offensive. We’re done second guessing where the Krag are going next. Let the Krag worry about where we’re going to attack them next. And, we’re done with falling back. Let them worry about Defense in Depth and staged retreats and evacuation corridors because we are going forward. Forward. Forward to engage and destroy their fleets. Forward to wipe out the Krag’s supply nodes and fuel dumps and their mines and war factories. Forward to retake our systems and free our people. Forward, men! Forward to victory!” Only the strict “no outbursts or demonstrations” rule in CIC kept the men from cheering. Max could see the confidence in their eyes: if anyone could lead the fleet to triumph, it would be this brilliant, ass-kicking, profane, iron assed son of a bitch.

  “Admiral,” Max said, almost breathless, “I thought the upper limit of what you could get a compression field around was about two million tons. That was going to be size of the Churchill Class Carrier we kept hearing all those rumors about. What happened to the Carrier?”

  “The Churchill Class Carrier project was the cover for the Churchill Class Battleship project.” The Admiral spoke as though he was confiding a great secret to Max and his men. “There’s no fucking way you can hide a great goddamn Battleship, son, and you can’t hide the appropriations, the millions of tons of materiel, the tens of thousands of workers, and the city’s worth of infrastructure, so we hid the fucker in plain sight, along with the other Battleships being built in other yards around the Union. We compartmentalized the work so most men never saw the big picture, hid the shape behind enough Zero G scaffolding to build half a dozen skyscrapers. We even had a thousand workers fabricating dozens of launch catapults and flight decks to go on a giant carrier. Won’t go to waste, though. We’ll put ‘em on the next carrier we build. Biggest goddamn warship mankind has ever produced and we’ve got four more of the motherfuckers to be launched in the next forty-five days: Leonidas, Charlemagne, Shaka, and George Washington. More after that. Maybe smaller and faster, maybe bigger and meaner. Haven’t made up our minds yet.”