by David Tatum
She heard a very long, deep intake of breath on the other side of the microphone, and was bracing herself for him rejecting her plea again. Obviously, he couldn’t do what she was demanding of him – his own internal doubts wouldn’t let him, echoes of the one time in his past he had truly taken charge in a crisis. She was disappointed, and felt betrayed, but she had known he might refuse when she called him.
“Okay, Rache,” Chris said softly. “I’m on my way to the bridge now.” He paused. “Make sure there’s a complete tactical evaluation waiting for me when I get up there. And let’s just hope we don’t all regret this.”
Rachel closed her eyes, blinking back a tear that had been threatening to drop.
Thank you, Chris, she thought. No matter what happens from here, I don’t regret it at all.
CHAPTER XXX
EAS Chihuahua
“Dear God,” Chris gasped as he stepped out onto the bridge. “It’s even worse then you said.”
Then he saw her bloody face and was by her instantly. There had been some temporary liqui-stitches clumsily dabbed on her forehead gash by one of the Marines, and bandages across her arm and back where two pieces of shrapnel had been removed – without anesthetic. Her uniform was burnt and tattered. In short, she was still a mess.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“I’m better than just about anyone else who was on the bridge,” she sighed. “Now, quickly, find a working station and take the lead tactical position. Get your report, and take command.”
He wiped a spot of dirt and blood off of her forehead and gave her a brief kiss there. “Thank God you’re all right. I wouldn’t have argued if I’d known how bad it was,” he said softly into her ear before stepping away. “I guess we’ve both got jobs to do, now, don’t we?”
She nodded. “Yeah. And enough of that. This is hard enough without distractions like that.” She paused. “But when this is all over with, I think you and I need to have another talk.”
——————————
EAS Superb
Captain Daniels of the Superb paced across his bridge apprehensively as he studied the tactical situation unfolding around his vessel. Shortly after their combined attack had actually managed to wound that beast of a ship that had been dogging their forces, Daniels had received a communication from the Chihuahua that she was temporarily out of the action. Her bridge had been hit, and while control was quickly being re-established it would take time. That left his ship and the Ishmael in something of a bind, given that they had attracted the attention of a ship they couldn’t defend against.
The good news, though, was that the enemy seemed momentarily blind. Since hitting the Chihuahua in a counterattack, the enemy shieldclad had started making circles, emitting a band of signals much like their own active sensors. The band was too tight, however, to cover the entire solar system, and so the Superb, the Ishmael, and the Chihuahua were all able to escape its immediate attentions. It was getting harder and harder to avoid the search without leaving the fight, however, and the Chihuahua still wasn’t fully back in action.
“Sir,” Nathaniel Turk, now Daniels’ lead tactical officer, began hesitantly. “I think they’re going to catch sight of us shortly. Before they do, however... it is possible that both we and the Ishmael could get into a good firing position. In other words, we can get the first punch in.”
“Maybe,” Daniels admitted grudgingly. He continued to watch the tactical displays, keeping a close eye on the Chihuahua. It was looking a little hesitant, although at least it was starting to maneuver again... but it still wasn’t returning to action. Come on, Burkhard, what’s going on over there, he wondered.
“Encoded transmission from Chihuahua!” Lt. Eure relayed. He was doubling as the communications officer, having gained more experience with signal interception and interpretation then anyone present in a past job operating civilian comm traffic. The original communications officer had taken several of the basic Academy classes, but had no experience with such things as telemetry analysis, signal processing, or similarly specialized skills, and was instead working non-combat shifts. “They’ve asked us to clear out of the sensor sweep area, sir. They say they’ll handle the enemy ship on their own.”
The Captain’s eyes narrowed. What are you up to, Conrad?
——————————
EAS Chihuahua
“Are you sure you don’t want their help?” Rachel asked as Emily was relaying the request for Superb and Ishmael to leave. “I know you’ve been down in engineering this whole time, so you’re probably not aware of this, but we can’t get through her shields without—”
“I know that,” Chris shot back, typing at his console... which just happened to be the station next to her own. “I went through all the data on the enemy shield systems. To be blunt, we can barely scratch them even coordinating our fire with both of the other ships. We might be able to do some damage with all three of us working together, but not enough. Superb’s and Ishmael’s streaming cannons aren’t as well tuned as ours, so it’s likely they’ll burn their weapons out before we inflict any significant damage. I don’t like it, but we have to handle this on our own.”
Rachel nodded slowly. “Okay. In that case, what are we going to do?”
“We’ll lead them as far away from the battle as we can,” Chris replied slowly.
“And then?” Rachel prompted after a prolonged silence, expecting more.
“I don’t know,” Chris replied. “I don’t have any answers after that. Don’t expect miracles, here.”
Rachel’s lips tightened briefly, but she nodded briskly. “Okay, we’ll lead them away. Where to?”
“Tight zigzag evasive pattern,” Chris said after some thought. “We want to present a shield to them as much as possible, obviously. Course...” He sighed. “I’m not sure. If I knew better how that shield worked, maybe I’d know where to go. Electromagnetic shields like ours don’t function well in certain environments, and while their shields aren’t electromagnetic I expect the same would be true of their own, but without more data—”
“Excuse me, sir,” Langer interrupted. “But I think I can help you with that. At least a little bit. I’m not sure if it’ll do any good.”
Chris looked over at him expectantly. “Well? What is it?”
“I’ve co-coordinating with Ms. Mumford on enhancing the sensor readings Ms. Katz collected early in the fight,” Yannis explained. “I’m not sure what they did to make them work this way, but we’ve largely confirmed how they work.”
“Let’s hear it,” Chris said. “I want to know everything I can.”
Yannis hesitated. “Well, sir, it appears almost as if they’ve... reversed an artificial gravity field or something. Just as our shields produce so strong an electromagnetic field that energy and projectiles are distorted or deflected by, their gravity field is strong enough to deflect incoming weapons fire entirely.”
Chris nodded slowly. “That would also explain why they don’t need gaps in their shield for weapons or engines. Their field would actually accelerate any outgoing energy and matter.” He paused. “But our weapons can penetrate their shields when concentrated over time, so how does that work?”
“The strain of maintaining it at that level, I’d wager,” Yannis replied. “Any weapons fire hitting those shields shows a spike in their power consumption. The longer we maintain fire, the more power gets diverted from the rest of the shield to concentrate on the spot we’re hitting. “
Chris nodded slowly. “So, you’re saying that the longer we fire on them, the weaker their shields get where we’re not hitting them?”
“It appears as if the strain first appears on the side opposite of the heaviest point of fire, sir,” Langer answered. “It also seems as if the strain is heavier when deflecting solid matter rather than energy blasts, sir, so it’s possible even rail guns could be effective. It would take something heavier than a battleship’s rail guns to get through, though
.”
“Hm. Show me the numbers on when and where things happen,” Chris ordered. “Both for energy weapons and for solid matter.”
“We don’t have enough data to be precise on the solid matter, but I can make it an estimate,” Langer replied hesitantly.
“Well, you’d better make those good estimates,” Chris snapped. “I think I need us to be accurate within a few hundredths of a second.”
The entire bridge crew balked at that one. “Hundredths of a second?” Rachel sputtered. “What in the world are you planning which demands accuracy within hundredths of a second?”
Chris grinned a tired, lopsided grin at her. “When the Monitor and the Virginia fought in the first battle of ironclad warships, neither side could penetrate the other’s armor effectively. The Virginia was destroyed to prevent capture – and we may not even last that long if we don’t finish this thing off before he gets a good hit on us again. The Monitor, on the other hand... well, she sunk in storms trying to move along the coast.”
The smug grin on his face told Rachel that he felt he had given her the answer, but she was too busy trying to keep the ship flying to puzzle out the clue. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, if that thing’s the Monitor,” Chris said, pointing to the tactical display of the unknown ship. “It seems to me the best way to beat her is to sink her in a storm.” He then pointed at the readings of Alcyone B, which was displaying an unusual amount of solar storm activity. “And there’s our storm – all we’ve got to do is make it sink her. And thanks to the fact that we’ve got yet one more piece of obsolete technology on this ship, I think it’s possible we can do that.”
——————————
EAS Natsugumo
“What are they doing?” Beccera mused softly to himself, bending over a tactical display showing the Chihuahua’s maneuvers. The main screens were now taken up with readouts of the assault on the orbital stations, and this one small station was all that Barbara Meier could afford the Commodore as she directed her Marines to scuttle a certain orbital station that had just surrendered to them. If he’d known that she wouldn’t be able to offer him the command and control facilities she’d promised, he never would have come aboard the Natsugumo regardless of what Captain Burkhard and everyone else suggested. Still, he had the one display center, and he supposed he should be grateful for it. Meier seemed to think he was an irrelevant passenger whose presence should only be tolerated – with the appropriate lip-service provided – because he made her ship the squadron’s flagship. So far, he hadn’t said anything... but he felt the time was about to come where he would have to remind her that he was in charge.
Farmburg managed to catch what he said, however... and did appear to be taking him seriously. “Who, sir?”
The former Army officer looked up. “Excuse me?”
“You said ‘what are they doing,’ sir. I asked who ‘they’ are.”
“The Chihuahua,” Beccera answered. “She’s changed course. And tactics, I think. She’s no longer trying to shoot her way through the enemy’s shields, but instead started using a hit and run tactic to get them to chase her. Now, she’s on course directly for this system’s star.”
Farmburg hesitated. He could think of several reasons for a ship to be doing such a thing, but he doubted Beccera would like any of them. “Well, sir... there are a few possibilities. That could be, ah, retreating, sir, and hope to draw the enemy off as they go.”
“Running away? That crew?” Beccera snorted. “Sorry, I don’t see Burkhard allowing that.”
“And if Burkhard is no longer in charge?” Farmburg shot back. “We know Chihuahua took a serious blow to the bridge, sir. Possibly the Captain was hurt and someone else is in command.”
“That would be Rachel Katz,” Beccera mused, considering what he remembered of the crew. “You aren’t seriously suggesting she ordered the retreat, are you?”
Well, no, Farmburg thought. I suppose I wouldn’t say that. My intelligence reports on her were fairly extensive, and she has always been one of those cadets I was supposed to ‘watch out for.’ She is just a rookie, though, and you can never be sure how rookies will act under pressure.
“I don’t know her, sir, except by reputation,” he replied, which was true from a certain point of view. “But she isn’t exactly the most veteran of officers.”
Beccera snorted. “Son, I don’t care if an officer serves in the Army, Navy, Marines, Orbital Guard, even the Planetary Militia. It’s possible to meet and talk with someone in the service and just know they have what it takes to be in the military, to lead troops into the heat of battle, and to fight with courage regardless of the circumstances. Ms. Katz is one such officer. In fact, I’ve never seen such a crew of capable recruits and rookies as I saw on that ship. I could name for you a dozen men on board that ship who have what it takes to be the best the military has to offer, and I’d wager all but a handful of that crew will prove more than serviceable. About the only person I could see running from a fight on that crew is Lt. Commander June Ehrlich, and that’s only because she’s a doctor, sworn to do no harm. They aren’t retreating, boy, and you’d better think twice before suggesting such a thing to me again.”
Farmburg winced. Well, there goes the goodwill I’ve been building since he came aboard, he thought. “Sir... I didn’t mean to offend you, sir. I was just making a tactical analysis of the situation, without consideration of who was on board that ship. If the enemy has been analyzing the Chihuahua’s tactics, that will be what they believe, also, sir.”
Beccera grinned ruefully. “Yes, I suppose they would. But we aren’t them, Mr. Farmburg. We know better. So what is the Chihuahua really doing, Mr. Farmburg?”
Once again, Farmburg hesitated before answering. The second possibility, he was sure, the Army colonel would like less than the first. “Well, sir... they might be considering a suicide mission.”
Surprisingly, Beccera’s grin widened at that answer. “Hm. I suppose it would look that way, wouldn’t it?”
That unnerved the Cygni spy considerably. “Well... yes, sir. When we first learned of the Chihuahua’s shields during the Wargame, I talked with our engineer about them. He didn’t understand precisely how it worked without the blueprints, but he could interpret the theory well enough. He laid out for me the strengths and weaknesses of the design, and there are a few things which stood out. For example, when two shielded ships bring their shields together, the electromagnetic fields would push against each other, and whichever one had more mass and engine power could, in theory, move the other one wherever they wanted. If they can lead the enemy ship into an orbit of the star, they could use the stars gravity and this shield principle to push the enemy into the sun... although they likely would be caught by the gravitational pull and destroyed, themselves.”
“I thought of that one, myself,” Beccera chuckled grimly. “And I could see just about any one of the command line officers on that ship attempting it.”
“You what? I mean, how did you figure that one out, sir?” Farmburg asked, astonished.
“Well, I played with magnets as a kid, too,” the older Army officer explained. “I know two magnets will push against each other, and I can guess how easy it would be to push someone into a star if you didn’t care about going in, yourself, using that principle. There’s just one small problem with that.”
“And that is, sir?” Farmburg asked.
“It won’t work,” Beccera sighed. “And I’m pretty sure they know it, too, given that one of them taught me the reason why.”
“Taught you, sir?” Farmburg prompted. “Taught you what?”
“Lieutenant Commander Emily Mumford is not a great tactician, and there’s a reason she’s not in the command track, but she’s good at her job,” Beccera explained. “People think that she was put on the crew of the Chihuahua because she’s related to Admiral Mumford, but I think she was one of the ones hand-picked for the crew in spite of that partic
ular connection, rather than because of it. At any rate, she knows a few things about analyzing energy patterns.” He typed a few commands on the keyboard, and suddenly the display of both the Chihuahua and the unknown warship changed. “Now, look at this and tell me what you see.”
Farmburg’s eyes narrowed at the screen, but then he stiffened. “They aren’t the same. That other shield isn’t using an electromagnetic field...”
Beccera nodded. “Exactly. Now, it seems pretty obvious that any attempt to use the two shields to ‘push’ the enemy into the star – or anywhere else, for that matter – would fail. And if the Chihuahua’s crew could teach a luddite like me why it wouldn’t work, surely they could figure it out themselves. But I certainly agree with the assessment that they’re trying to lead the enemy ship into close orbit around the star... which brings me back to the question: What are they planning?”
Farmburg started chewing his lip nervously. “Well, sir, I... I’m stumped. If they do go into close orbit of the sun, though, it might be difficult for them to get back out without something big, like a heavy cruiser or a battleship, to tow them.”
Meier stepped up, interrupting the conversation. “Forgive me, Commodore, but we’ve completed the assault on the orbital facilities,” she said. “Time for you to order our fleet into retreat.”
“I’m not giving that order yet. We still have ships fighting,” Beccera stated firmly.
Meier smiled placatingly. “Of course, Commodore. Naturally, as part of our retreat, we should try and help our Cygni allies break free of the enemy fleet. It’ll take every ship we have available to achieve the necessary impact, but we should be able to force the enemy to scatter again and allow our allies and ourselves to make the run out of the system.”