Somewhere between Mr. Levy’s “n” and his “w,” each of the thirteen or so displays in CIC tied into the optical feeds that were following the Krag Cruiser burst into unwatchable brilliance, their protective circuitry kicking in to limit the brightness to levels that would not damage human retinas or overdrive the video outputs on the panels.
Slowly the flat white of the screens dimmed to show a four-lobed fireball in the shape of a grotesquely obese “x,” marking the spot where the Krag cruiser died, expanding and fading, rapidly becoming dimmer and more diffuse as it merged with and disappeared into the cold, tenuous gases of space.
The iron band that had been compressing the chest of every man in CIC vanished. As one, they drew in the Cumberland’s processed, recycled, conditioned, bottled, artificial, metal- and lubricant- and ripe-man-tasting air. This stale mélange was, to them, sweeter than the purest breeze from a virgin beach and more bracing than the cleanest, icy blast from a wind-swept glacier. It was the taste of life. These men knew they would not die.
Not today.
Having shared in the collective breath of thanksgiving, Max turned to Chief LeBlanc. “Maneuvering, reduce speed to zero-point-one c, standard deceleration. Make your course for Jump Point Charlie. Good job, everyone. This one will make a good story to tell your kids.”
A few of the more exuberant enlisted men slapped each other on the back. The chief had hardly finished acknowledging the order before the doctor, who had been almost beside himself with frustration stemming from unsatisfied curiosity, interjected.
“But Captain, who fired those other two missiles?” the doctor asked, his face a veritable study in confusion. He stood, too frustrated to remain sitting.
Max shrugged. “We did. Who else was there?”
“But I saw us fire only two. I remember. I was sitting right here.” He pointed to his seat in indignation, as though its mere presence helped prove the truth of what he was saying.
“And you were sitting right there when we fired the other two,” Max said placidly.
“Certainly not. I can state most emphatically that I recall no such missiles being fired. In fact, the only other missiles were the one that hit the first cruiser. Except for those other two that went…” He trailed off and started to nod appreciatively. “Ohhh…I think I begin to see. ‘All warfare is based on deception.’ You are a sly fox. I think old Sun Tzu would be proud. What did you do, then?”
“All along, my problem was how to take out these cruisers when we really didn’t have enough firepower to do it. We can fire only two missiles at a forward target at a time. But it takes four missiles to throw enough counter-countermeasures at them and to make their systems divide their attention enough so the missiles can get through. I had to get one of those cruisers with a sucker punch—you saw how we did that by appearing right in front of the first one where he least expected us.
“With the second ship, the trick was how to launch four missiles without him knowing in enough time to evade them. So I fired two when the second cruiser’s view of us was blocked by that moon and made it look like a miss and a misfire in case he had any sensor drones in the system. Levy and I programmed those two missiles to drop down to their slowest speed, take fuel-efficient trajectories around that moon, and then attack from the flank. That’s what that business about the supposed engine failure was about.
“We just had to be very careful about the timing and the velocities to put the enemy cruiser in just the right spot at just the right time so that the missiles could find it. The faked malfunction also made sure that he arrived expecting wounded and panicked prey, not a circumferential missile attack. We had very little margin for error. So, we followed Sun Tzu’s advice by appearing to do exactly what the Krag expected. They responded just like Sun Tzu said they would. They were predictable.”
“You say ‘predictable’ as though it left a bad taste in your mouth.”
“It does. In this business, predictability is a cardinal sin. When you become predictable in combat, there is only one outcome—you die.”
* * *
CHAPTER 2
* * *
18:02Z Hours, 15 March 2315
“Church, I’ll be right behind you. I merely want to make certain that this equipment is properly stowed.” Dr. Sahin watched as Nurse Church and Corpsman Worth trundled midshipman Gilbertson away to the Casualty Station. His injury, a supracondylar fracture of the humerus, was painful but presented no special problems in treatment. The boy had been hurrying while carrying some part or other and hadn’t looked where he was going, tripped over a properly marked step in the floor, tried to stop his fall by putting out one of his arms, and had broken the upper arm bone. The supracondylar fracture was one of the most common in children and was endemic among midshipman. Among naval doctors, it was, in fact, known as the “midshipman’s break.”
Once he restored the first aid kit to its proper location and noted what supplies in it would require replacement, Sahin looked around. As was true of every other compartment on board, this one wore its name prominently stenciled on the wall: Jump Drive Power Junction Compartment. One wall of the compartment was the outer hull of the ship. Dr. Sahin could see a sturdily but roughly patched three-meter section of hull that had been blasted out of existence by a Krag plasma cannon, near which there were six locations where work was being performed. It appeared that the men were constructing a complex piece of equipment from parts being brought in from another compartment.
In response to his question, one man informed him that they were “rebuilding the whole bleeding Jump Drive Power Junction from spares, and not taking their time about it, neither.” Bram could see that; at each of the six places where work was going on, there were two men installing parts and one man with a padcomp providing instructions and relaying requests for additional parts through midshipmen who retrieved the parts from stores. Other midshipmen grabbed tools for the workers as needed, with a few burly spacers and a man with a small hoist available to do heavy lifting as needed. The chief engineer stood by, ready to answer questions and solve problems.
Every man had a job. Every man was busy. No one was standing around waiting for a part, for instructions, or for someone else to get out of the way so he could do something. It wasn’t chaos—it was a symphony. Outside of an operating theater, the doctor could not remember ever seeing any operation being carried out on board ship with as much precision and coordination as this one. He had heard that Lieutenant Brown was remarkably efficient and often managed to complete repairs in record time. In light of what he saw, it was not hard to understand why. With a nod to the engineer, he returned to the Casualty Station.
Chief Engineer Brown had not been entirely truthful. He had estimated that the construction of the new jump drive power junction would take at least twenty-four hours and, according to the book, as many as thirty-eight. The job actually took eighteen and a half. The jump drive repaired, Brown could turn his attention to completing repairs to the fusion reactor cooling systems so that the Cumberland could recover all of her remarkable speed—speed that the tiny ship needed desperately to complete the kinds of missions for which she was built.
Meanwhile, Max was writing the Contact and After Action Report, relating the engagement in the Mengis system, to be sent to his immediate commander, Admiral Hornmeyer at Task Force Tango Delta, with a copy to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at Norfolk on Earth. As usual, he was struggling with where to strike the balance between the two competing goals of any after-action report: on the one hand, communicating to one’s superiors the commander’s aggressiveness, courage, dash, and daring while, on the other, reassuring those same superiors of this same commander’s prudence, reasonableness, caution, and circumspection. Maybe it would be easier to write if he had multiple personality disorder.
Max was particularly keen on getting this report right. The last time he had met with the admiral, old Hit ’
em Hard had hinted that he had some sort of interesting assignment in mind for the Cumberland, and Max didn’t want to say anything in the report that might change the admiral’s mind.
In any event, it would be several days before the Cumberland was going to be doing much of anything, interesting or otherwise. With her compression drive out of commission until she could rendezvous with a repair tender, the Cumberland could travel through space in only two ways: propelled by her main sublight drive through normal, Einsteinian space, and hurled by her jump drive from one presurveyed jump point to another, similar point in a nearby solar system, skipping over the intervening light years in an instant. With these limitations, it took the Cumberland something like sixteen hours to travel at roughly half the speed of light the average 60 AU distance within a star system from the jump point by which it arrived to the jump point by which it left. And the task force was four systems away.
Given the present performance level of this crew, though, there was always plenty to keep the men busy while the ship crossed one star system after another, mainly training, training, and more training. There were GQ drills, combat drills, firefighting drills, damage control drills, and boarder repulsion drills. There was rifle practice, shotgun practice, sidearm practice, grenade practice, and practice with the various edged weapons issued to or allowed to be used by the officers and men, including the boarding cutlass, the dirk, and the battle-ax.
Maybe, if they work very, very hard, the crew’s proficiency level will rise to the task force average. Average would represent a substantial improvement because, when Max took command, the crew’s performance rating was the worst in the task force. Max was about to summon his XO to come see him about trying to squeeze more training into the schedule, when his comm buzzed.
“Captain, here.”
“Skipper, this is Chin. I’ve just decrypted a signal that I think you need to see. And sir, this is going to sound a bit odd, but I think you’re going to want to have Dr. Sahin there with you when you see it.”
Unlike some officers, Max believed that the obligations of command ran in both directions. Obviously, subordinates owed their superiors obedience and respect. Perhaps not so obviously, but of equal importance, superiors owed their subordinates duties as well: loyalty, compassion, respect for their dignity, recognition of their value as individuals, teaching and guidance, correction and discipline, praise and reward for excellence and outstanding effort, and—maybe above all—trust. For Max, when a subordinate made a recommendation of that kind, particularly when all that was at stake was a little time and inconvenience, you didn’t cross-examine the man about his reasons. Instead, you took his advice, proving by your actions that he has your trust. It nearly always paid off.
“Come to my day cabin in half an hour. I’ll have the doctor here by then.”
Chin got there first, with the doctor arriving a few moments later. The captain’s steward served all three men some of the excellent and ruinously expensive coffee given to Dr. Sahin by Ellington Wortham-Biggs, an art dealer on Rashid IV. As always, the taste was sublime. When Chin took a sip of the coffee and recognized the flavor, an ironic smile slowly wrote itself on his lips.
“Okay, Chin, what have you got?”
The communications officer, only a twenty-year-old ensign who had never before sat drinking coffee in the captain’s day cabin, took a second or two to compose himself before beginning.
“Sir, the Cumberland has assigned to it metaspacial data channel 77580, and we monitor it constantly. We get ten or twelve transmissions on it per watch, in addition to the signals we get on the ALL FLEET channel, the Task Force Tango Delta channel, et cetera.
“Well, about an hour ago we received a signal on channel 77580—only it didn’t start off with an authentication code prefix.” To the obviously confused doctor: “That’s a twenty-seven-character identifier, changed daily, assigned to each authorized naval sender, which is how we know a signal is from Norfolk or Admiral Hornmeyer instead of from the Krag or a bunch of schoolkids in North Tonawanda, New York. Ordinarily, we would have discarded it, since civilians send signals on the wrong channel all the time. They get the digits transposed, punch in the wrong number, have a glitch in their equipment, bump the channel selector in the middle of sending, et cetera. Most of those signals are in clear. No code. No encryption. But this signal was encrypted. Not only that, it’s a Union Space Navy encrypt. Permafrost.”
Max suddenly sat bolt upright. “Permafrost? You’re sure they used that one?”
“No doubt, sir. We get a perfectly comprehensible, if a bit cryptic, message if we use Permafrost. Otherwise, we just get a lot of gibberish.”
“Pardon me,” the doctor verbally threw an elbow to get into the conversation. “But not everyone present is versed on the latest developments in military and naval cryptography. What is so special about Permafrost?”
The entire ship’s company had tacitly agreed that it was the captain’s job to answer this kind of question for the doctor. Max tried to keep his voice from sounding too pedantic. “It’s the code name of a high-level naval encrypt. In fact, it’s Indigo level, which is the second highest. We replaced it with Icicle—what? About four months ago?” Chin nodded a confirmation.
“Even if we have no indication of it having been broken, we never use any encryption for more than a year. That way, even if someone does break it, the damage is limited, and the enemy has to start off breaking a new one.
“Permafrost was the main high-level encrypt we used for sending intelligence reports, operational orders, tactical and strategic communications—basically the kind of information that would do the most damage if it fell into the hands of the enemy. There’s only one higher level, Violet, that we use for our deepest, darkest secrets. I’ve never received anything encrypted at that level—I’m not important enough, you see—so I really don’t know what is more important than the Indigo material. Who other than the Navy would have the ability to send a message in Permafrost, and why would they do it?”
“I have an idea, sir,” said Chin, somewhat tentatively.
“Let’s have it.”
“Another government with a strong defense and intelligence establishment could pull it off: Romanova, Rashid, Ghifta, Pfelung. Now, suppose a private party wanted to hint that he had high-level connections with one of those governments but did not want to come right out and say so. Or if a government wanted to communicate something to us unofficially through a private party, but in a way that said the communication had official sanction. This would be a good way to do it. The sender would be providing us with his bona fides right there, in the structure of the message. Of course, I’ve seen the message, and that theory fits with what it says.”
“Let’s see the message then.”
Chin reached into a pocket of his uniform and pulled out two slips of paper. Actual paper. Very few things on a warship were printed on paper. With each man having two or three padcomps and computer workstations and consoles with computer access all over the ship, there was little need to print anything. Perhaps more than anything else, committing the message to hard copy showed how much importance Chin attached to the communication.
He slid the printouts across the small table to the captain and the doctor. They read: “TO THE DISCIPLE OF APOLLO STOP THE MAN WITH WHOM YOU LAST TOUCHED SWORDS URGENTLY DESIRES TO MEET WITH YOU AND YOUR PRINCIPAL IN CONFIDENCE ON A MATTER OF THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE IMPORTANCE TO THOSE WHO SHARE YOUR QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN ATTIRE STOP COME TO THE PLACE WHERE THE MASTIFF SLEEPS AS SOON AS YOU ARE ABLE STOP WEAR SOMETHING TURQUOISE AND ARRIVE RIDING THE SAME HORSE AS PREVIOUSLY STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”
“Now I don’t understand all of this,” Chin said, “but based on the reference to Apollo, I thought it was probably addressed to you, Doctor, and that he wants to meet with the both of you. I don’t know the rest, but it looked extremely important to me, so I brought it to your attention right away
.”
“Outstanding work, Chin,” Max said. “Your instincts were perfectly correct. Thank you. The doctor and I will take this from here. You’re dismissed.” Chin drained his coffee cup, set it down, and left.
“Well, Bram, I hope you can make more sense of this than I can, because other than knowing who Apollo is, the rest of it is Greek to me.”
“Apollo. Greek. Your wit never ceases to amaze. But as a matter of fact, Max, I believe I understand every word of it perfectly. This is only fitting. The message is, after all, addressed to me. One might expect, therefore, that the writer would adapt the message to my particular understanding.”
“All right, then, translate it for me.”
“Very well. As Ensign Chin correctly surmised, I am the disciple of Apollo. The physician’s Hippocratic Oath begins with the invocation of several ancient deities, the first of whom is Apollo. The man with whom I recently touched swords is the merchant Ellington Wortham-Biggs. As part of our recent dealings we swore a Rashidian ‘sword oath’ that involved drawing our swords and touching them flat to flat, near the tips. You, my friend, are my principal. Those who share my questionable taste in attire are, I believe, the Navy, as we all wear the same uniform, which, I believe, the perfectly turned out Mr. Wortham-Biggs would regard as most unbefitting a gentleman. The directive to wear something turquoise is most likely a reference to the turquoise sash that goes on my uniform when I am acting as an ambassador. He wishes that I be empowered to act in that capacity when I meet with him, just as I was with the Pfelung. ‘The place where the mastiff sleeps’ is his private office. There was a most enormous, somnolent, loudly snoring mastiff there when we met.”
“And ‘the same horse’ means that we are to arrive in the microfreighter rather than bringing the Cumberland, a rated warship of a foreign power, to the capital world of the kingdom,” Max finished.
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 5