For Honor We Stand

by Harvey G. Phillips

  “But how do you get it to go anywhere except on sublight and jump? No one can sustain a compression field that big. So much energy is lost between the center and the periphery . . . .”

  “Son, son, son,” the Admiral interrupted Max. “You’ve got your feet stuck in the old goddamn paradigm. We don’t sustain a field. We sustain four.”

  “Four?” He was incredulous. Then the light went on. “You mean, we solved the problem of field synchronization? But, I thought the mathematics and physics of that were supposed to be fifty years out. Maybe a hundred.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Robichaux, they still are. We bought the field synchronization algorithms from the Sarthan. You know how they are. If they have it, it’s for sale, and the price has lots of zeroes in it.”

  “I know, but the word is that they wanted three and a half trillion credits for the algorithms. No credit, either. Cash on the barrelhead in Tri-Nin Depositary Instruments, or gold, platinum, palladium, uranium 235, or plutonium 239.”

  “This is one of those cases in which the rumor was absofuckinglutely accurate. “Happens more often than I like to think about. The greedy motherfuckers would also have accepted payment in antimatter, although why anyone would want to be within a parsec of the hellish stuff, I’ll never know. But we managed to talk them down from three and a half trillion to two and three quarters along with waiving our claims to an uninhabited star system we’ve had in dispute with them. Cleaned out just over a quarter of the gold and platinum reserves of the entire Union. Goddamn blood suckers. Anyway, we’ve got a whole new generation of ships being designed and built around dual and quadruple field generators. On vessels of equivalent displacement with equivalent power plants, we’re getting thirty percent more speed and a fifty percent increase in fuel efficiency. And, the sky is now the limit on displacement. Now we can build them big enough to carry weapons with the punch to get through the Krag defenses, deflectors powerful enough to shrug off anything they throw at us, and gigantic fusion power plants big enough to power the lot.

  “When you add in this new jump thing, we’re going to move faster and hit harder. My friends, we’re going to fucking kick some Krag ass. Given a year or two we’re going to kick the bastards back at least two hundred light years. Maybe three hundred.”

  Then, his enthusiasm muted somewhat. “It’s no guarantee of victory. It’s not even a guarantee that the bastards won’t defeat us in the long run, but they’re not going to beat us in the short run now. They’ve still got an advantage in population, population growth, and industrial capacity, but our new ships are going to give us a qualitative advantage, what’s in that memory core is going to give us a while toolbox full of dirty tricks to use against them, and multiple ship jump is not only going to let us throw more firepower at them faster, the first time we use it on them, they’re going to piss themselves with surprise. And, when we start rolling them back, I bet that we start picking up allies like the Ghiftee and the Texians and the other independent human powers, and maybe even some more aliens. Everybody loves a winner. It’s a new fucking war, gentlemen, and we’re going to be serving the Krag some of what they’ve been serving us all these years.

  “Now, Robichaux, you and I have a few things to discuss out of the hearing of the children and then I’m going to take command of my new flagship. This time, if the Captain over there asks me nicely, I just might let them break out the white gloves, flags, fifes, bugles, drums, and all that other happy horseshit. After all, it isn’t every day that a man takes possession of the biggest goddamn warship in Known Space.”

  Chapter 15

  09:42Z Hours, 15 April 2315

  “So, gentlemen, in conclusion, it appears we are bound for what has got to be the strangest rendezvous in the history of the Union Space Navy. The men are acting spooked about the whole thing, and it’s our job to reassure them. We need to project calm, assured confidence, to let them know we believe that everything is bound to come out fine. They look to us as examples, not just of how to act and how to comport themselves, but of what to think and feel. They must see in us the traits we want to see in them. And, right now, that’s courage and confidence.”

  Max was meeting with his “brain trust” in his day cabin. The assembly was powered by sugar, in the form of an impossibly delicious pound cake, and caffeine, in the form of the impossibly delicious Wortham-Biggs Four Planet Blend coffee. If only the news he had just delivered had been one tenth as good as the refreshments.

  “I am not in the least certain that I am capable of engaging in so profound a deception,” said the doctor. “I have no confidence whatsoever that the outcome of this series of events is going to be favorable. I would be much more courageous and confident were we still in the Pfelung system, training fighter squadrons to go into battle with a Union Destroyer as their Battle Coordination Vessel. That was looking as though it would turn into a truly effective gambit.”

  “Tactic. A mode of operations or combat procedure is a ‘tactic.’ ‘Gambit’ refers to a particular stratagem or maneuver, especially the opening move in an encounter, particularly if it is designed to deceive or manipulate the enemy.”

  “Tactic, gambit, stratagem, maneuver, ploy . . . you naval people have so many different words for what is essentially the same thing: a means of killing your adversaries. Why just not call them, ‘killing moves’ and then be done with it?”

  “Because, doctor,” DeCosta joined in, “military science and military history cannot be adequately developed without a detailed and specialized vocabulary that allows the varieties of ‘killing moves’ to be distinguished from one another. You medical people don’t just call every sickness a ‘disease’ and call yourselves done, do you?”

  “I fail to see why any kind of ‘detailed and specialized vocabulary’ is necessary, at least for military history. I’ve been reading the Military History texts in the database used for the training of the Midshipman and instruction of Junior Officers and have concluded that Military History is childishly simple. I can summarize the lot in a few sentences: Group A, for reasons of greed, pride, or malice, or some combination thereof, begins to kill group B. For some indeterminate period of time, A and B kill one another. Then, in the most common scenario—at least in interstellar warfare--one side kills so many of the other and takes so much of its economic/population centers, territory, and resources that the other side can no longer maintain an organized resistance, its defense collapses, and it is conquered. Or, less frequently, so many of one group have been killed that they can no longer efficiently kill the other, or there are so many dead that one combatant no longer can bear any more to die, and one side or the other gives up, giving the other group what it wants. In either case, it is at that point, and no sooner, that the killing stops. Until, of course, it starts again. Military history is nothing but a set of variations on that theme, and a dark, grim, and bloody theme it is.”

  “I would have thought that you might be feeling a bit more optimistic in light of what has happened recently.” Major Kraft thought of the study of the methods of waging war, and particularly the methods of waging war against the Krag, as anything but gloomy and disagreeable. “The Krag database is now in the hands of our best Intel people and is proving to be a gold mine of things we can use against them. Our people have determined that the Krag multi ship jump technique is something that we can implement. We’ve successfully tested it. The Churchill and her sister ships are now reaching the fleet and will be used in the next major fleet action, offensive or defensive. And, someone—identity unknown—managed to pull a magnificently effective prank on Commander Duflot thus restoring the honor of this vessel. What grounds do you have for gloominess?”

  “What, exactly, did these mysterious individuals do?” asked Sahin.

  Max smiled at the memory as he recounted what he had learned from the Admiral. “Someone hacked Duflot’s computer, inserting a faked memorandum complaining about my insubordinate attitude, and then attaching to that memorand
um his recording of him abusing me—the very recording he was holding as his ace in the hole to show how insubordinate I am if I ever crossed him--and causing the computer to send the whole package to Hornmeyer. A stroke of genius. For the next several months at least, he’s going to be relegated to protecting low-priority convoys, after attending remedial training on the Halsey in both tactical flexibility and appropriate management of subordinate vessel commanders. By the way, the people who put that prank together, whoever they may be, should not feel too proud of themselves,” Max said while looking pointedly at DeCosta and Brown.

  “And, why shouldn’t they?” DeCosta blurted, provoking a dark look from Brown.

  “Because, XO, the Admiral told me that he immediately smoked it as a put up job. The memo was too—how did he put it—‘whiney and supercilious and not sufficiently priggish and condescending,’ to have come from Duflot. He says the authors of the forged memorandum got Duflot’s ‘writer’s voice’ entirely wrong. Old Hit ‘em Hard says he was very familiar with the way the man writes memos, having read dozens of them, and that he picked the man for the escort assignment specifically because of his personality.”

  “That man was hand picked by the Admiral?” The doctor was incredulous as were, judging from their faces, the rest of the group. “It is as though he wanted the enterprise to fail.”

  “Not fail, Doctor. He did, however, expect it to become known to the Krag and to cause the Krag to attack the group. But, he thought they would hit the group with one ship, not two. With Captain Kim and me in the group, he expected that we would disregard Duflot, and destroy the enemy force, preventing an attack on the real Envoy.”

  “Don’t tell me . . . .” the XO groaned.

  “Yep. You got it. We were a diversion. Duflot was picked because, no matter what the orders were, he would send a profusion of signals before departing, usually complaining about minutia, often to departments that are as leaky as a house with hundred year old pipes, whining among other things that he can’t be expected to ‘transport an important diplomat to a multi-power conference in a vessel with only a single oven in the pastry kitchen.’ The Cooperation of Forces Agreement was worked out by the four senior field commanders. The Union, the Pfelung, the Romanovans, and the Rashidians will be fighting together under a joint command with Admiral Hornmeyer as Supreme Commander and Khalil as his Deputy Commander. Khalil and Rear Admiral Pulaski will command the two main strike forces. Can you imagine what Hornmeyer would be like as a negotiator?” He shook his head in wonder. “I bet the other three gave him what he wanted just because they were scared shitless of him. Hell, I’d be.” Numerous smiles around the room as they all imagined the irascible, profane, crusty, yet somehow lovable and charismatic Admiral at the negotiating table. “So, getting back to Duflot, the Admiral gave him the job for that reason and one other.”

  “What could that possibly be?”

  “A test, XO. Not for him, though, but for me and Kim. Hornmeyer picked the most condescending, insulting, rigid frigate skipper he could find and put us to serve under him. He wanted to see if we would follow orders, bow our heads, and take his shit and then, if things got really serious, toss his orders aside and do what we needed to do to save the mission. We passed with flying colors on both counts, which is why we were both picked for this new Pfelung joint squadron thing. He wanted people with the maturity to get along with an alien race and the tactical judgment to make a good decision in a jam. These joint species fighter units were the Pfelung’s idea. It turns out that we humans get along better with the Pfelung adolescents than the Pfelung pair-mated males who command their rated warships do. We’re in between—serious enough to get along with the adults while free-wheeling and spontaneous enough to get on well with and understand the adolescents. Our SWACS system designed to make these destroyers good control ships for our fighters is equally good at working with theirs. The only wrinkle has turned out to be the Pfelung liaison officer who stays on our ship, but he turned out to be fun to work with once we solved the minor problem of how to get his control console inside his water tank.”

  “The problem might have been minor for those who were not actually involved in solving it,” Brown said. “But I’ve got to tell you it was, as you like to say, ‘a cast iron bitch.’ We had to design and built a console consistent with what the Pfelung officer was accustomed to using and that could be used with our systems and that could be fully immersed in salt water and that could be operated by fins and prehensile mouth part appendages. The task was anything but straightforward.”

  “In any event, going into battle with the capabilities of a Khyber class Destroyer along with the things those Pfelung fighter squadrons can do is going to be one of the most exciting things I’ve had the chance to do in the service.” Max’s excitement showed in his eyes and his voice. “Kim’s unit and our unit are prototypes for what might turn out to be dozens, even hundreds of similar units, but Kim and I are going to be the ones who develop the tactics and work out the bugs in combat. We’re going to do things to the enemy that he has never imagined.”

  “And, it doesn’t hurt that our own performance is starting to look more like it’s supposed to,” added DeCosta. “As the Training Officer, I can report that when I perform a crew proficiency evaluation excluding the Sweet Seventeen from the computation, the numbers are improving across the board. Even excluding our best men, we still come in only eight percent below the task force average. With them, we’re just over one percent above the average. So, skipper, it looks as though your ‘special training’ gambit is working. Once we get the weak men up to a reasonable level, we can then resume the more challenging training to move everyone up together. It’s going to take a while, but we’re getting there.”

  “Outstanding. How about our REFSTAMAT?” Max asked, looking at Brown.

  “We still have a bit of clean up to do but most systems are at least five balls now with a few six packs thrown in. We’re now to the point of correcting the numbers on non critical systems and inert components. It will take another week to catch all of those, and then we will have all the erroneous entries corrected. On a related note, have you seen the little covered wagon stickers that have been cropping up around the ship?”

  Max said that he had not. Brown went on to explain the “Mark of Excellence” stickers and the results of his testing the marked equipment.

  “Outstanding. That’s exactly the kind of change in institutional culture that I was trying to bring about. Keep an eye on it. As you see fit, deal out some minor rewards to the men responsible—commendations in their jackets, you know. And, maybe . . . I’ve got it. An unofficial award. Something like a little pin in the shape of the wagon that the men have put on those stickers. They came up with the symbol, so it has special meaning for them. Run them off on the FabriFax and hand them out every now and then when someone does a particularly good job of maintaining or repairing something. I’ll issue a standing order creating an on-ship partial waiver of the uniform regulations to allow them to wear the pin on duty. They’ve made a big change in how they do things. Now, it’s up to us to show that we’ve noticed and to reward it. We can’t just accept these things as our due, you know. We owe these men more than that.” Heads around the table nodded.

  “I should also let you know that Admiral Hornmeyer and I talked about the gundecked SINs and worked out a solution,” Max said. “We’ve already done our part under the regulations: completing and filing the requisite reports and reference to a Court Martial. Now, he’ll make sure that nothing comes of it. Either the documentation will get ‘misdirected,’ or there will be an affirmative decision on the part of the JAG office not to prosecute. He was satisfied with the penance solution, especially given the manpower problems we are having these days.”

  “That’s all well and good,” said the doctor, “but I’m worried about this rendezvous. The Vaaach asking for you, Max, by name, and wanting to get together out in the Great Inner Gap for an unspecified reason. Why th
e Great Inner Gap? No one goes out there.” The region of the Milky Way galaxy known to humanity and the races with which humans had commercial and cultural relations, called Known Space, lay in the Orion-Cygnus arm of the galaxy. Coreward and rimward of this area are two relatively star poor areas separating it from the adjacent galactic arms: the Great Inner Gap, between it and the Sagittarius Arm, and the Great Outer Gap separating it from the Perseus Arm. The star systems in the gaps were too few and far between, not to mention too poor in jump points that connected together in a useful network, to make them attractive targets for colonization and conquest; accordingly, military operations in the Gaps were very rare. “And why ask for you by name, anyway?”

  “Elementary, my dear doctor,” said Brown. “They know him. And, what’s more, he is now a ‘peer hunter.’ They can deal with him as a low-ranking one of their own rather than as an inferior with whom they are not supposed to have anything but the most cursory contact.”