Sung nodded.
“Sung, why the hell do we store all this hydrogen right next to the pressurized crew spaces? Every time we get poked, we have to worry about O2 contamination, hydrogen and oxygen getting mixed up and turning us into the fucking Hindenburg in space. Now Robinette . . . ” He broke off and shook his head.
Sung squinted and looked away for a moment, trying to come up with an answer. Sam realized the question he’d asked must have been stupid. Stupid questions from superiors always require that sort of thought.
“Lieutenant, I’m just a dumb tac-head. Don’t worry about offending me with a grade school answer. I just want to know.”
Sung nodded. “Well, sir, it’s not so much a question of where to put the hydrogen as where to put us. Liquid hydrogen ain’t very dense, so even though it’s just a little more than half our loaded mass, it takes up over two thirds of our enclosed volume. Puebla’s mostly a big hydrogen tank with a little bit of other stuff tucked inside. Any place you put something, it’s going to be next to hydrogen. That’s why any time we get a puncture of a crew compartment, first thing we do is pump it down to vacuum, to keep the O2 from leaking into the hydrogen tanks. Here, there wasn’t a puncture, least not that we could detect.”
Sam’s commlink tone sounded.
“Captain here.”
Sir, Signaler Lincoln. I have the commodore on tight beam commlink for you.
“Wait one, Lincoln.” Sam closed his eyes again and took a steadying breath.
Robinette wasn’t dead because the boat’s designers had screwed up and he wasn’t dead because Carlos Sung made a bad call. Much as he wanted there to be someone to blame, Sam wasn’t even sure Larry Goldjune had sent him to his death. That might have been the right call as well. Jerry Robinette was just dead, and that’s all there was to it. He opened his eyes.
“Sung, what shape are we in other than this hit?”
“We can do a workaround on the data feed, get you maneuvering control in probably a half-hour, sir. The power feed’ll take longer, hour at least, maybe two. After that she’ll be a hundred percent operational. Didn’t even shake that radiator patch-job loose.”
Sam nodded and dismissed him with a wave.
“Go ahead, Lincoln. Patch the commodore through.”
Bitka! I was worried about you, Bonaventure said as soon as Sam opened the connection. You sure did a job on that cruiser, Amigo. How bad is your damage?
Sam moved through the hatch to the forward access tunnel and pushed himself toward his quarters.
“We lost an officer and three ratings. Everything else is repairable, sir, and we’ll have maneuvering control in thirty minutes. I’ll start reversing vector then, but I want to do it at low thrust, keep our reaction mass expenditure down. We’re still not sure how much hydrogen we lost this time, but it’s starting to add up. How did you do against the raiding force?”
Both the uBakai cruisers dropped their cargo into the atmosphere and escaped under full acceleration, but one traded hits with Petersburg. The uBakai cruiser ceased firing after that but kept accelerating. Petersburg lost two lasers aft and half its radiators, but they’re working on fixing the radiators at least.
I think the two uBakai will jump away as soon as they’re clear, but the wreck of that cruiser you killed is passing close by K’tok. The only boat with a chance of matching course with it and getting back here in less than a day or two is Queretaro, so I’m going to have them check for survivors.
You’ve probably been pretty busy over there, Bitka, too busy to realize what just happened. That cruiser you took out was the first hostile spacecraft ever destroyed in combat by the United States Navy while at war.
Sam thought about that for a moment and then shook his head.
“What about Captain Gasiri in Kennedy three years ago? She took out two uZmatanki cruisers, didn’t she?”
That was while serving as part of a combined Cottohazz peacekeeping force. We weren’t technically at war. This is different. Until today we’ve just been taking it from the uBakai. It’s about time we started paying some of that back. So you give your crew a hearty well-done from me, comprende?
“Aye aye, sir.”
Sam signed off and slipped through the hatch to his quarters. He pulled off his scorched shipsuit and put on a fresh one and then glanced in the mirror. His face was bright red and glistened from the burn spray Tamblinson had applied. He’d lost his eyebrows and all the hair on the front part of his skull. He took a few minutes to shave the rest of it off; at least it would grow back evenly.
He tethered himself to his desk but did not bring up any files. Instead he spent a moment thinking about the deteriorating condition of the task group. Every one of these encounters left them diminished in some regard, and the damage mounted steadily. Petersburg: down two lasers and at least some of its radiators. Puebla: down two lasers. Oaxaca: no coil gun. Queretaro: only half its power ring.
They really needed the four boats in DesDiv Five. Sam checked the chronometer. Seven more hours and they’d be here. He pinged Lincoln in the comm seat.
“Get me all-boat.”
You’re live, sir.
“All hands, this is the captain. I have some sad news. Four of our shipmates died from that fire lance hit. We will hold a memorial service later today. Otherwise the damage is repairable and engineering will have us up and running in a couple hours.
“I also just spoke with the commodore and he informed me the uBakai cruiser we splashed is the first official kill of a United States Navy vessel in this war, so we’re in the record books. He sent, in his own words, a hearty well-done, and I concur. It couldn’t come at a better time than the day after those bastards hit Earth. So far no other ship or boat has done what we just did, and we did it because everyone did their job the way we’ve trained. The first beer’s on me tonight. Toast our fallen shipmates and remember the folks back home. I’m sure they could use good news right now and we just gave them some.”
As the afternoon wore on and turned to evening, Sam presided over the memorial service for the dead and went over all the repairs with Rose Hennessey. He also stopped back in the wardroom and had Tamblinson give him another shot of burn spray on his face. Then it was back to work. He met with Marina Filipenko and her three chiefs to refine the tactics he’d improvised earlier in the day, and put Chief Joyce Menzies to work converting more of their remaining missiles to the sunflower configuration.
Their missile supply was becoming a concern. They fired nine in the First Battle of K’tok, as that disaster had come to be called, but had resupplied from Hornet before it passed on its way to Mogo. That topped their magazine off at thirty, but they shot eight more off today. Twenty-two left, with four to be rigged as sunflowers and eighteen as standard ship-killers. Was that a good mix? It was as good as he could come up with for now.
If it hadn’t been for the casualties, Robinette in particular, Sam would have been glad the uBakai hit them when they did. Everyone had still been in shock over the news about the attack on Earth. There was nothing like the threat of imminent death to snap your mind back to the here and now. They needed that, he supposed, but every time he thought about Ensign Robinette he felt a weight on his chest, a pain in his heart. How could someone start off so wrong-footed and end up so good? Maybe because he had all the bullshit stripped away and found something worthwhile in himself: duty. And it hadn’t been just a word for Robinette, had it? It sure hadn’t.
As they re-entered K’tok orbit they saw the sensor echoes from five new lethal satellites in orbit, the first fruits of the salvage teams on Champion Hill. Sam wondered how Huhn was working out and, as if in answer to his thoughts, Commodore Bonaventure tight beamed him not long after.
Huhn and Reynolds had come up with a plan to make Champion Hill operational again.
The reactor and drives were undamaged, as was the aft power ring and the four aft point defense lasers. Their plan consisted of permanently sealing the bulkhead at frame forty
-seven and cutting away everything forward of there. Removing all that twisted wreckage would balance the boat and they could use the maneuvering drive, although they’d have to do some fine tuning of the exhaust angle. They’d have to con the boat from the auxiliary bridge, and they didn’t have many sensors working, but the communication suite was in excellent shape and they could use sensor feed from the satellite network around K’tok.
If all they ever wanted to use Champion Hill for was an orbital gunboat, it might work. Bonaventure was reluctant, however.
“Well, sir, you don’t have to make a decision right now, do you? I mean, they’re going to be busy for a while just recovering and placing those missiles in orbit. Let them refine the plan. Make your decision later.”
Bonaventure agreed and signed off, but within an hour was back on tight beam.
I just got some bad news, Bitka. I’m telling you first as task group N-2. We weren’t the only ones the uBakai paid a visit to today. DesDiv Five got jumped, too.
Sam felt a surge of adrenaline. He’d been counting on those reinforcements.
“How bad, sir?”
Amiens bought it—fire lance hit in engineering apparently took down the fusion reactor bottle while they were under full thrust. No survivors, but at least they went quick. The other three boats got beat up, too, but Rocky says they’ll all be under power in time to decelerate and enter orbit
“Rocky?”
Sadie Rockaway. She runs the division. You’d remember her if you’d met her. Anyway, that pretty much decided me on Champion Hill. I’m going to let Huhn and Reynolds patch her up and use it for the low orbit boat. We can weld the saddle rig to it or something.
“How long will that take, sir?”
I don’t know, but we need the extra boat. We’re just spread too thin.
Sam didn’t have an answer for that; it was true.
Also, I think I’m going to give the boat to Huhn. Reynolds gave me a pretty good report on him and she says she’d be more comfortable backing him up than trying to run the boat herself. What do you think?
Sam spent a moment listening to the soft conversations between his own bridge crew, watching the data feeds scroll across his work station as K’tok grew larger on the smartwall forward.
“Sir, I think . . . I’m glad I don’t have your job.”
Bonaventure chuckled.
You’re a pretty smart hombre, Bitka. Okay, I’m giving Champion Hill to Huhn, assuming they can actually get it working. I’m also sending over the initial tac recordings from DesDiv Five’s fight with the uBakai. Take a look as a tac-head, see if there’s anything in there we can use.
“Aye aye, sir.”
One more thing, Queretaro is getting close to matching velocities with that cruiser you wrecked. The Varoki apparently have an emergency transmitter running off of stored power or something. The Varoki captain’s still alive. He says he’s not uBakai, he surrenders to us unconditionally, and he needs to talk to us about something big.
“That sounds interesting, sir. He must be one of those uKa-Maat guys, huh?”
We’ll see. Since you’re acting N-2, you do the interrogation. Set it up by holoconference with Queretaro.
“Me? I’ve got a damaged boat to nurse back into orbit, sir.”
I read your damage report, Bitka. You’re fine. Talk to this hombre once he’s on board Queretaro. See what this big thing is he has to tell us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
7 January 2134
(the next day) (eighteenth day in K’tok orbit)
The uBakai cruiser KBk Five One Seven was not as badly damaged this time as it had been at K’tok, but smoke and the smell of compromised electronics still drifted through the passageway, and damage control parties still had priority of movement. Once several of them had passed, Vice-Captain Takaar Nuvaash, Speaker For the Enemy, made his way down the corridor and to the infirmary where Admiral e-Lapeela’s wound was being dressed. The wound was not serious, and Nuvaash was unsure how he felt about that. In a sense he had already made his choice when he shared the details of the conspiracy with the uKa-Maat Captain Lorppo. He was simply not sure he had chosen wisely.
He entered and saw the admiral in an undignified position, bent over and holding an examination table. The lower half of his pressure suit had been cut away, and a medtech was laser-cauterizing the open gash across the . . . back of his hip, Nuvaash decided, was the polite way to describe the location of the wound.
“Another scar earned in the service of our race,” e-Lapeela said when he saw Nuvaash.
“No one who views it will deny the admiral’s courage. I bear new intelligence on the battle at K’tok yesterday.”
“Does it tell us anything about the new destroyer missiles? The ones that did not work and now do?”
“Unfortunately no, Admiral. Although we received no communications from KBk Zero Two B—the uKa-Maat salvo cruiser which was lost—ground stations there partially monitored the battle in orbit.”
e-Lapeela rolled onto his side to face Nuvaash and momentarily winced with pain.
“So, now you believe my decision to send just three ships against K’tok was in error?”
Nuvaash looked to the medtech, who had finished his work and was now simply listening. The technician hastily gathered his equipment and left. As he did, Nuvaash activated his commlink and pinged the admiral’s orderly.
“Bring a pressure suit for the admiral to the medical bay, procedure room three.”
At once, Vice-Captain.
That done, he turned back to the admiral. To his surprise, e-Lapeela stared at the blank wall of the treatment room, eyes empty, mouth slack, ears sagging.
“Admiral, are you unwell?”
e-Lapeela gave a start and his façade of tough determination returned immediately.
“A moment of weakness, thinking of the warriors who died with us yesterday, and at K’tok. I sent them to their death, Nuvaash. But that is what a leader does in wartime: sends warriors to their deaths. I cannot flinch from that, will not flinch from it. But it is not a task which lifts my heart. The Humans we slew at Ktok and here seem a poor payment for the good lives I spent. I am sure you agree with that, especially now, with the unsuccessful attack against K’tok by three ships.”
Nuvaash studied the admiral and again saw depression or remorse hiding behind his war mask. Did e-Lapeela now regret his part in the rash conspiracy which ignited this war? If so, did his regret change anything important? Did it even change how Nuvaash felt about him?
“Your decision did not produce its desired results, but was worth the risk, which I believe was well-calculated. Dispatch of a single salvo cruiser, coming on the heels of a two-ship raid, gave those three ships their greatest chance of success. Detachment of enough ships to guarantee success at K’tok would most likely have resulted in defeat against the reinforcing destroyer force we attacked here, and that action was equally important.”
e-Lapeela studied him for a moment, perhaps trying to decide if Nuvaash meant what he had said. For a change, Nuvaash did mean exactly that. The admiral’s death in battle might have given Nuvaash some satisfaction, but the loss of a fine uKa-Maat cruiser at K’tok gave him none at all, even if its loss might reflect poorly on e-Lapeela.
“Kunka suurilaa yus haluaat?” Lieutenant Moe Rice said.
“You’re kidding, right? How the hell do you speak aGavoosh?” Sam asked. Heading forward to his cabin, he banked softly off the wall of the central transit tube to avoid the next half-bulkhead.
“Cap’n, I’m a logistics specialist,” Moe answered, gliding along beside him, “here in the Navy and back in my civilian job. As in interstellar logistics? Ship stuff from here to there, sooner or later you got to deal with leatherheads. You speak their lingo, they treat you with a little more respect. Saves a lot of time and money.”
Although the Varoki had as many different languages as Humans did, each race had one language used in interstellar commerce, government, and diplom
acy, a sort of off-world lingua franca. For Humans it was English and for the Varoki it was aGavoosh.
“Yeah, but what’s wrong with using auto-trans? It does a good enough job, doesn’t it?”
Moe shook his head. “It’s okay for meaning, not so much for inflection. When you’re doing business, inflection counts. Might not hurt when you’re interrogating a prisoner, neither.”
He had a point there. Sam opened the hatch to his quarters and they floated in and attached their tethers to his desk. He brought up the flat-vid feed and for a moment the two of them looked at the Varoki naval officer tethered in a secure compartment on Queretaro, his helmet on and ready for the holo-con interrogation.
“What I don’t get is why you’re s’posed to grill this feller,” Moe said. “Queretaro picked him and his boys up. Why not have them do it?”
“I’m the task group smart boss, remember? Commodore wants me to handle it. So here’s how this works. It’s a standard three-way holocon except he only gets the feed from my helmet, not yours. He won’t be able to see or hear you. He’ll hear the autotrans version of my questions. You feed me the translation as he answers. If I want to consult with you, I’ll freeze the conference feed and we’ll talk by commlink. Okay?”
“Let’s do it,” Moe answered,
They helmeted up and Sam opened the connection to the conference. The Varoki officer looked up, his face grew animated, and his ears immediately stood out to the side, or as far as his now-invisible helmet allowed.
“Ah wonderful, you are here. But you are only a lieutenant? I must speak with your admiral as soon as possible. I have vital information about the war he must know.”
Sam realized he’d heard the direct audio feed, not the machine-generated translation. He stared wordlessly for a moment.
“Surely you speak English,” the Varoki officer said impatiently.
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