“We accepted that design limitation,” the minister continued confidently, “because our enormous investment in the best early warning system in Known Space gives us sufficient lead time. We can detect any attacking force at least twenty-seven hours away, giving us an adequate safety margin.”
Max’s cold feeling got colder. “And Minister, is any essential part of this early warning system accessible to the emir or individuals who might be loyal to him?
“I am not really familiar with the infrastructure associated with the system. It has never been within my sphere of responsibility. Allow me to check.”
He walked over to a side table that held a coffee service, a water carafe and water glasses, an ice bucket, a stack of coasters, and a stack of napkins, all on a tray. He removed the tray, setting it on the conference room table. He then pressed a hidden lever that caused a keyboard on a sliding tray to deploy from the table. He pulled a chair out from the meeting table and positioned it in front of what was now a portable workstation, adjusted the position of the workstation so that it faced a nearby wall, and keyed a sequence on the keyboard.
A portion of the wall changed into a black rectangle that in turn displayed a log-in screen. The minister logged on to the system, supplied what was undoubtedly a very high-level password, and navigated through a series of menus to display a diagram of the infrastructure for the early warning system, which was apparently code-named al Qasr (“the Castle”).
“Here are the sensor arrays.” A sphere of red dots appeared, enclosing Rashidian space. There had to be at least a hundred and fifty of them. “And here are the command posts where the signals are aggregated and turned into warning and tracking data.” Ten blue dots appeared, arranged in a sphere, the surface of which was about halfway between Rashid and the arrays. “And here are the limits of the space controlled by the emir. A yellow area, shaped roughly like a lopsided egg, appeared. It enclosed none of the arrays or command posts.
“It does not appear that any of the facilities lies within his territory,” said the minister.
“I’m not so sure,” said Max. “How do the arrays get their data to the command posts?”
“I would assume by standard high-bandwidth metaspacial tunneling transmission,” the minister replied.
“Which means that, unless those emitters have planetary class–power generating capabilities, there have got to be some relay stations along the way, probably every couple of light years or so, right?” Max stood near the screen, a little off to one side.
“Let us see.” He entered some more commands on the keyboard. A smattering of green dots appeared, about thirty of them, in two concentric spheres, roughly twenty in the outer and ten in the inner. Each dot bore the label, “RLY STN” and then a number. Number 9, one of the outer group, was in the yellow egg.
“Can we see the lines of communication? Which arrays communicate with Relay Station Nine?” More keystrokes. The station in question sprouted fifteen orange lines leading back to sensor arrays, and a description of the network’s operating protocols appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“I know what you are thinking, Captain,” said the minister, “but the emir has not sabotaged this relay station. Had he done so, under this set of protocols the system would have notified its operators, and the computer would have automatically rerouted the data transmissions from the affected arrays to unaffected relay stations that can handle the additional signals by reducing bandwidth and, as a result, provide the data, albeit at a lower level of temporal resolution. There has been no such notification.”
He clicked some keys, and the al Qasr diagram was replaced by a status table. “As you can see from this status report, every aspect of the system is functioning nominally.” A few more keystrokes, and the status display was replaced by a series of panels, each apparently representing a section of space surrounding the Kingdom. There were several contacts indicated, but all bore labels showing them to be innocent.
“Can we see the section of space that is scanned by the arrays that use Relay Station Nine?” Max was squinting at one of the panels.
A few more keystrokes, and one of the panels, by apparent coincidence the one that Max was looking at, expanded to fill the screen. There were about forty targets, all friendly freighters and civilian craft. “There do not seem to be any threats in that region of space,” said the minister.
“Minister, you mentioned that if this relay station went out, the signals would be routed through other stations. Is there a way you can do that without alerting the station in question?”
“Yes, the command goes to the arrays, not the relay station. The arrays can be commanded to double up on their download cycle and to send the second download to their alternate station. The primary would never know anything.”
“Would you humor me by doing so, and then display this section of space as viewed by means of the alternately routed scan data?”
“Of course. Give me a moment.” Rather than entering commands that reconfigured the system, the minister sent a message to the system controller who managed such things. A few minutes later, a message appeared on the screen.
“It will take about five minutes for the command to propagate through the system and for the alternately routed signals to reach us, be processed, and then be displayed.”
“While we’re waiting, could you tell me more about the disposition of your forces right now?”
“We have one carrier and an escort of two frigates deployed in the outer system, and the other ships I mentioned earlier that have gotten their reactors going, as well as two destroyers and a few corvettes on system patrol. The remainder of our fleet is moored.”
“Moored? How? Where?”
A flurry of keystrokes. “Here. At the Fleet Harbor Facility in orbit around Rashid V B.” He pointed to a schematic of the system. “Here’s the gas giant, Rashid V. There’s its first moon, Rashid V A, which is inhabited and is a significant mining and industrial world. And here is Rashid V B, a moon with an ocean of largely comet-originated water covered by a layer of ice. The fleet moors here to be close to its fuel source. And here is the mooring facility.”
A few more clicks. A schematic showed row after row of ships held in place by automated tugs only a few dozen meters apart from one another, in synchronous orbit around Rashid V B. There did not appear to be any defensive batteries protecting the approaches to the facility.
“What protects these ships?”
“Time, distance, the early warning system, and a few patrol craft to keep saboteurs and unauthorized civilian craft away.”
The icy feeling was becoming a dagger-like icicle of certainty stabbing into his heart. He knew what was coming next.
An alert began to flash on the screen. “Our signal reroute is nearly complete.” The minister entered the commands to return the display to the area of space in which Max was interested. The screen continued to show ordinary civilian traffic. Then, the data source indicator changed from “VIA RLY STN 09” to “VIA RLY STN 04.” A second later, amidst the innocent civilian traffic, appeared twenty-five red dots, neatly arranged in five rows of five. A few seconds later, the computer supplied labels for each: “KRAG DSTR DERVISH CLS” along with range, bearing, and speed.
The minister grew pale. “No. How?”
Max dropped into a nearby chair. “Twenty-five Krag Dervish class destroyers,” he said, almost to himself. “They must have left Krag space three or four days ago, making the trip on compression drive only.”
Then, to the minister. “It’s a trick we’ve theorized about for years, but never seen in practice. The emir hacked the relay station, most likely with Krag technical assistance, and inserted a signal-processing routine that blocked display of the enemy ships, probably by adding characteristics to the target detections that would cause the computer to classify them as noise or natural phenomena or your own side’s covert mi
litary traffic that you don’t want tracked. Anything that the system would not report to its operators.”
He turned to the doctor, knowing that further explanation would be required for him to understand. “What you see on the screen is never a real, unprocessed sensor return like they used to get on the old-fashioned radar scopes where they relied on the operator to distinguish between airplanes, icebergs, sea return, ships, clouds, rain, flocks of birds, atmospheric turbulence, and submarine periscopes. Now, what the operator sees is a computer interpretation of the sensor returns, in which not only does the computer identify the targets but it scrubs out anything it judges that the operator doesn’t need to see. As you can see, sometimes the computer can be fooled.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Minister, this projection doesn’t show the distance from the mooring facility—how long until they reach the fleet?”
The minister tilted his head slightly and looked up and to the left, the way people sometimes do when they are performing mathematical calculations in their head. “Approximately six hours. More than ten hours before the fleet is able to defend itself. Horrible. Just horrible. Of what historical event does this remind me? Some other naval disaster. A saltwater fleet, attacked by surprise, bombed at its moorings. It was a terrible defeat. I can’t remember the name.”
“None of your ancestors came from the United States, did they?”
“No, Captain, I don’t think that any of them did. Why do you ask?”
“Because, if they had, I don’t think you would have any problem with being able to remember Pearl Harbor.”
* * *
CHAPTER 5
* * *
00:44Z Hours, 20 March 2315: The Battle of Rashid V B
“Your text message from the Clover was a huge surprise,” DeCosta said, finding that he liked having a name to hang on the microfreighter. “But when the CO says he needs his ship in the Rashid system ASAP, it’s the XO’s job to find a way. We were ready to undock and part company from the tender within fifteen minutes. But we ran into a problem with her skipper. Apparently, he believed that Admiral Hornmeyer’s replenishment and refit orders took precedence over a CO summoning his own vessel. The man was actually concerned about incurring the admiral’s wrath, if you can imagine. I was very happy, at that point, to have Major Kraft’s help.”
Max turned to the Cumberland’s Marine Detachment Commander, Major Gustav Albrecht Kraft who, despite the seriousness of the situation, seemed as always to bring an enthusiasm bordering on mirth to the performance of his duties.
“My Marines and I are always ready to do whatever is necessary for the good of the ship. Think nothing of it,” he said to the young XO.
Then, to Max, “It was a simple matter, really. Some of the tender’s crew members on board needed some, shall we say, ‘encouragement’ from my Marines to find their way off the ship.”
“What kind of encouragement?” Max was wary. He could just see the Formal Complaint from the tender captain about assaults on his crewmen, trouble that he most decidedly did not need. As it was, he was trying not to think about the admiral’s reaction to what was essentially a violation of a direct, written order by pulling his ship away from the tender in the middle of a refit.
The timing, however, was lucky. When DeCosta received the order Max sent from the microfreighter as soon as his sensors spotted the first group of escort fighters, the repair crews had already finished their work on the reactor cooling system and jump drive. Their remaining work (interior bulkhead and fixture repair as well as a fair amount of instrumentation work) could wait.
Kraft smiled and waved his left hand in a dismissive motion. “Not that we weren’t prepared to frog march them or even carry them off the ship, but it never came to that. Most left immediately upon a polite request from one of my Marines.” Of course, those Marines had their weapons with them. Always. Even the most polite request from one of Kraft’s heavily armed, highly trained killing machines would feel like an order from a grand admiral. “If anyone was particularly reluctant, I just sent Zamora and Ulmer to have a conversation with them, and we never had to lay a finger on anyone. Of course, they did just happen to be carrying battle axes at the time.”
Max almost laughed out loud. The Marines on naval vessels tended to run big, and Zamora and Ulmer were big even for Marines. They had to be 210 centimeters tall, easily massed 125 kilos each, had necks the diameter of tree trunks, and looked like grizzly bears with crew cuts. No, come to think of it, Max didn’t think that there were many warship repair and refit technicians who would want to argue with Zamora and Ulmer. Their customary disarming grins and boisterous laughs would have been put away in favor of their Marine war faces, which would have given pause to Chesty Puller himself.
“The only other problem was that, since our departure was contrary to the admiral’s orders, the tender captain refused to withdraw his accommodation tubes and equipment transfer ramps. We couldn’t get underway without causing severe damage to both ships. Lieutenant Brown helped me with that,” said DeCosta.
“Wernher, what did you do?” Max wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.
“It’s not what you think, Captain. We didn’t hack their systems, shut down their computers, override the ramp controls, or anything of the sort that might constitute ‘damage or interference with the operation of a naval vessel in a war zone.’ They shoot people for that, I hear. Instead, I just had Tomkins make up a few small packages with tiny antennas protruding from them and then attach them to the tubes and ramps.”
“Packages? Like packages of Plasti-Blast with antennas for the remote detonators?” Max’s voice carried more than a hint of alarm.
“What an astonishing coincidence, Captain! Now that you mention it, the packages did—by pure coincidence mind you—bear a striking resemblance to that very thing. As it is, they were nothing of the kind.” Brown practically oozed innocence.
“What, exactly, were they?”
“Ham sandwiches.”
“Ham sandwiches?”
“Yes, sir,” Brown answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “Ham sandwiches. On white bread. With spicy mustard and kosher pickle slices. Chief Boudreaux in the galley made them up just the way you like them. We wrapped each sandwich in brown, opaque flexawrap, attached an antenna with ordinance tape, and then stuck them with adhesive putty right where they would go if they had been explosives and if we were going to blow the tubes and ramps. And of course, when he was attaching them, Tomkins conspicuously and obviously handled the packages with great delicacy. After all, we didn’t want to damage the captain’s lunch, did we? Then, we gave them all a once-over with a hand scanner, just to verify that the ham was fresh, you understand.
“And you never know, the more I think about it, the more I believe that those scans will come in very handy if we ever have need—for whatever reason—to prove that those packages contained ham sandwiches instead of something else. In any event, somehow the presence of these innocuous offerings of delicious food changed the tender captain’s mind. When he agreed to retract his tubes and ramps, we removed the sandwiches, closed the airlocks, powered up the main sublight, and we were on our way. In case you’re wondering, sir, the sandwiches are in your day cabin cooler. You’ll want to eat them in the next day or so, or the bread will get soggy.”
“I’ll be sure they don’t go to waste, Lieutenant.” Max shook his head appreciatively.
“Thank you, gentlemen. For your ingenuity, for your loyalty…well done. Very well done.”
The conversation took place in the Cumberland’s CIC, Max sitting at the CO’s station and DeCosta sitting at the XO’s station, with Kraft and Brown standing on the command island at their sides. The doctor sat in his accustomed seat at the Commodore’s Station. Clouseau, rather than lying beside him as usual, was curled up on top of the projector for the 3D tactical display, which was just the right size for a cat of his rather considerable si
ze and was always warm.
In a seat near Chin at Comms, sometimes used by a second Comms officer, sat the man whom Max and the doctor still thought of as Mr. Wortham-Biggs, who had talked his way aboard the Clover on its redlined journey to return Max and the doctor to their ship in time, Max hoped, to prevent the impending destruction of the bulk of the Rashidian fleet at its moorings around Rashid V B.
“Approaching rendezvous point in thirty seconds. Preparing to go subluminal,” announced Chief LeBlanc from Maneuvering. The Cumberland had been making the cross-system journey from Rashid IV to the vicinity of Rashid V on compression drive at 10 c. The two planets at the time happened to be at nearly opposite points in their orbits, a nearly 4 AU trip, taking just over three minutes. “Disengaging compression drive in three, two, one, now.” At the “now,” Spacer Fleishman moved the compression drive controller from the .02 setting to the NULL setting. “Ship is subluminal and coasting, sir,” announced LeBlanc.
“Very well,” said Max. “Lay us alongside the Rashidian carrier, fifty kills off her port beam. Speed and course at your discretion.”
After the chief acknowledged the order, Max turned to DeCosta. “So, XO, we have a few hours until twenty-five Krag Dervish class destroyers arrive. To combat them, we have one Khyber class Union destroyer, that Rashidian carrier over there and its three fighter squadrons, plus a mixed bag of superannuated Rashidian destroyers, frigates, and corvettes. Can we stop them?”
DeCosta didn’t need even a second to provide the answer. “No, sir. Not with conventional tactics, anyway. The Dervish is the Krag’s latest generation of destroyer. Very tough. They’ll just brush off those Rashidian destroyers, frigates, and corvettes like gnats. They’ve got those dinky little 35-gigawatt Bofors-Plasma Dynamics Corporation pulse cannons. Good units, but the Krag’s new deflectors just laugh at them. Actually, they’re not even worth a laugh. More like a snicker. And because of their antiquated fire control systems, those older Rashidian ships are limited to firing an outdated old missile that’s based on our Wolfhound. It’s just not fast enough and smart enough to get through the Krag countermeasures and point defense systems. Their new missile—I forget the designation, it’s just a string of letters and numbers—would do all right—not great but all right. But those old ships can’t fire it.”
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 12