For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  With only one incoming missile remaining, the whole of the ship’s defensive capabilities were able to focus on the single attacking weapon. The deflectors surged and focused their full power on the missile, producing a nearly impenetrable wall of polarized gravitons, which, like gravity in reverse but tens of thousands of times more powerful, repelled the missile and arrested its forward progress nearly a kilometer away from the hull. Sensing that it would get no closer, the missile’s computer decided that causing some damage was better than causing no damage at all and detonated the weapon.

  “Missile detonation, one hundred and two point eight kilotons, range one kill, epicenter at frame eight, azimuth one-two-five,” announced Tufeld at Damage Control in a rich, arresting voice more befitting a tridvid announcer than a Navy petty officer.

  “Several systems off-line, either tripped by EMP or damaged physically, impossible to tell at this point. Unavailable Tier One Systems at this time are number two IMU, auxiliary fire control, primary air handling, auxiliary has taken the load. Unavailable Tier Two Systems at this time are all starboard lateral sensor arrays, all starboard lateral comm arrays, all starboard amidships point defense systems, coverage of that area being picked up by starboard forward and starboard aft point defense, starboard deflectors from frame three through frame thirteen.

  “Several Tier Three systems as well, will report them if requested. My board shows DC parties responding. I’ll update you as soon as I know more. And sir, I would strongly advise that we not take another major hit anywhere in that part of the ship. If we do, you won’t need to file a report about it, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do, indeed. Thank you, Tufeld.”

  Suddenly a loud and seldom heard alarm started hooting.

  “Hull breach,” Tufeld practically shouted over the too loud alert signal.

  “Turn that damn thing off,” Max barked. The alarm fell silent.

  “Hull breach: Auxiliary Fire Control, nothing further at this time. All my feeds from that compartment are EMP tripped at this time. Reset expected in approximately two minutes.” Tufeld hit a few keys. “I’ve just detailed my Alfa DC team to that location. We should have a report shortly.”

  “Thank you, Tufeld. Good job.”

  “Hello? Hello?” Midshipman Park nearly shouted, but there was something funny about the sound. It didn’t carry the way it should have. He didn’t know what was going on except that it was very dark and very cold and there was a loud whistling sound that he didn’t recognize. For some reason, he was lying on the floor. Not floor. Deck. The deck of the ship. His ship. He managed to stand up and the room spun around him. “Hello?” he shouted again into the already noticeably colder darkness.

  No answer. Then his thoughts started to reassemble themselves. He had been at his battle station in Auxiliary Fire Control. A missile got through the defenses, and the next thing he knew, he was on the deck in the cold darkness. If only he could see.

  Wait a minute. He wasn’t just little Park Dong-Soo from a tiny village in Korea that no one had ever heard of, he was Midshipman Park Dong-Soo (the Korean custom is for the surname to come first) of the USS Cumberland, this vessel’s “Will Robinson.” And he was dressed for duty. That meant…he reached into the appropriate pocket…it was there. He pulled out his compact hand torch and turned it on, methodically sweeping the compartment with the narrow beam of light. What he saw scared him shitless.

  There were five men in the compartment, all unconscious on the deck. What had happened was obvious. The shock wave from the explosion propagated through the hull and into the air of the compartment, knocking the men unconscious. Park, on the other hand, shorter than the men and having a 170-centimeter-tall fire control console between him and the outer hull, had been shielded. The primary shock wave had passed right over his head, leaving only the much weaker reflections off the flat surfaces in the room to strike him, knocking him out briefly.

  He found the emergency lights and manually activated them. The automatic trigger had been fried by the warhead’s EMP. The only exit was blocked by one of Auxiliary Fire Control’s secondary processing units that had gotten torn from the bulkhead. The six-hundred-kilo Auxiliary Fire Control secondary processing unit. Park knew he was not leaving the compartment without help. He looked at his percom. Red light. The unit was not in communication with the network. EMP again. He tried the comm panels on each of the four consoles. All dead. More EMP. He was on his own.

  To top it off, there was a hole in the outer hull the size of his fist that was venting atmosphere.

  That was why his voice sounded so thin. The air pressure in the compartment had already gone down so much that sound no longer carried well. That was also why it was so cold. When you lower the pressure, you lower the temperature. Gay-Lussac’s law.

  CLANG! The air vents into the compartment slammed shut. The ship was protecting itself from bleeding all of its air into space by closing off the vents, stopping the flow of air into the compartment. Only when the sensors in the compartment detected that the venting had stopped would the computer repressurize the area.

  Even with Park’s limited training and experience on board a warship, the situation was absolutely clear to him: if he didn’t patch the hull breach, everyone in the compartment would die. In just a few minutes. Six lives now depended on him.

  Unbidden, the voice of the now-dead Chief Amborsky, his old Mother Goose, spoke from his memory. “You never know when some of your shipmates’ lives, maybe all of them, will depend on you. Maybe never. Maybe next week. Maybe this afternoon. But when that moment comes, you had better be ready.”

  That moment was now.

  He had been trained for this: patch the breach. He knew how to do that. Problem: the breach was near the ceiling, over two and a half meters from the deck, and he was not much more than a meter tall. He would have to climb. On what? He had to be fast. He was starting to feel the hypoxia. He knew what it felt like from training in the hypobaric chamber. He knew what to watch for: euphoria, like being drunk. He had never been drunk. Maybe now, he would never be drunk. How sad. Think. Get back on track.

  Get going, Park. You don’t have much time. First, he located the patch kit. It was where it was supposed to be, in the Emergency Locker for his compartment. There were six portable oxygen units, each consisting of a mask and a small tank. He grabbed one and put it on. It wouldn’t save his life if the air pressure in the compartment got too low, but it would buy him a little more time by enriching the thinning air around his nose and mouth with a higher proportion of oxygen molecules. He’d get an extra minute. Maybe two. It might make a difference.

  There were also six emergency pressure suits. Far too large for him. He could get into one and it would keep him alive until rescue came, but he was so small and the suits were so large, there was no way he could wear one and get the hull breach patched. He could save his own life, but only by letting five men die. No. Park would either save his shipmates, or he would pay for his failure by dying with them.

  Too bad the Navy didn’t make a Space Combat Uniform small enough to fit him. If he had been in an SCU like the rest of the crew, he could have just reached in the thigh pockets, pulled out his gloves and soft helmet, zipped them on, activated the oxygen generator in one of the breast pockets, and he would be enclosed in a flimsy but serviceable emergency pressure suit that would keep him alive for hours. He wouldn’t have to worry about passing out from hypoxia while he was trying to keep everyone else from dying. If he lived through this, there would be a nasty memo. Maybe not. His hands were already so cold that even if he had been wearing an SCU, he probably couldn’t have manipulated the zippers well enough to make them seal. He was certain he couldn’t get SCU gloves and helmets on five unconscious men in time.

  The only way anyone in the compartment was going to live was if he managed to get to the breach and seal it. First, he shoved a chair under the opening. T
hen he started piling on the chair whatever he could find. Ration boxes from the Emergency Locker, equipment and tool drawers, even two rectangular light fixtures that had been knocked loose by the shock. It looked like it might be enough, especially since the EMP knocked out most of the gravity generators in the compartment, leaving something like 0.5 G.

  He slung the patch kit’s strap over his shoulder and started to climb. Already suffering from moderate hypoxia, he grew dizzy from the small exertion and fell to the deck. He lay on his back for a few moments, staring at the ceiling, wondering why he was so dizzy and so cold. The skin under his fingernails was noticeably blue. There was a name for that. Cyano-something. Cyano de Bergerac. He giggled.

  Then it all came back to him. He stood up and saw the five men on the deck. He had only been rotated into this station a few days ago, but these men had been nothing but kind and fatherly to him. They had taught him the ropes of the systems in that room, told him interesting stories about Navy life (many of which were wildly improbable), and gave him some sensible advice about how to approach his duties and his training. They amiably referred to him as “Admiral Park,” smilingly saluting him when he came into the compartment at the beginning of watch. He always returned the salute, put on a haughty expression, and said, “As you were, gentlemen. Despite my high rank, you know I don’t stand on ceremony.”

  He gritted his teeth with fierce determination. He was not going to let the icy vacuum of space claim their lives.

  Not today.

  He stood up and slowly climbed his makeshift pyramid. When he reached the top, he was still several centimeters short of the hole. And he knew he had already piled on everything that he could move and lift and that could be stacked on the chair with any kind of reasonable stability. Think. He opened the patch kit anyway and sorted through the various sized patches. Some of them were a meter square, and some were only a few millimeters in size. Then he came up with one the right size for that breach, one about the size of a sheet of paper. But he couldn’t get it to the hole.

  Something was nagging at him. He knew he had the solution in his hand. It was getting so cold. Ice was forming on the inside of his oxygen mask. He had only a minute, maybe two, and that would be it. When they found his body it would be frozen solid, like a tiny Korean icicle. No it wouldn’t. When the DC people got into the compartment, he would still be warm and breathing. He had the solution in his hand. Yes! He had the solution in his hand. Literally.

  He unrolled the largest patch, a patch large enough that its top portion would reach and cover the hole while he held the bottom from the height he could reach. Park held it flat against the hull by placing his hands to the left and the right of the center. Then he slid it upward toward the breach pushing it as high as he could with the tips of his fingers. It was fairly stiff, so it held its shape well enough not to flop back down as he edged it further upward, shifting his hands closer to the bottom of the patch as he inched it higher and higher. Soon part of the patch was over the breach and held in place by the compartment’s diminishing air pressure. A few more shoves managed to get the breach completely covered. The whistling stopped.

  Then he pulled out the aerosol can of patch sealant and sprayed it over the edges of the patch to hold it in place. His arm was wobbly and his aim was bad. He got some of the sealant on his uniform sleeve. He hoped it didn’t stain. He so liked looking squared away and shipshape. Chief Tanaka would make him run an extra mile on the treadmill for having a soiled uniform. He hated that treadmill. Park tumbled to the deck, the low G impact of his tiny body barely making a sound in the thin air. He couldn’t remember how to get back up. The compartment seemed to be getting dark again. And cold. So cold. He needed to go to sleep. Just as he closed his eyes, he heard the whistling of air rushing into the compartment.

  “Why are they not firing their cannon?”

  “Because, Doctor, they fired missiles and don’t want to interfere with them.” Max kept himself from shaking his head. Sometimes talking with the doctor was like talking to one of the great minds of the age, and sometimes it was like talking to the newest hatch hanger. Even Mr. Wortham-Biggs, still in CIC because he liked being close to the action and because he was far too important a personage to be shooed away, could barely keep from rolling his eyes. “You use only one weapons system at a time to keep one from damaging or disrupting the other. It’s called the fratricide effect. Now that the missiles have run their course and the Krag can’t generate a new firing solution for them, I’m certain they will resume firing their pulse cannon. They just need their optical scanners to recover from the flash of that nuclear explosion so that they can aim accurately. Speaking of which, Mr. Levy, can we modify our pulse cannon to increase our range the way the Krag did theirs?”

  “Affirmative, Skipper. In fact, I put Pavelka and Healy on it a few minutes ago, and they tell me that the software modifications should be ready to be loaded a minute or so from now. It’s a simple matter of reducing the plasma volume and changing the timer on the field generator. Of course, it really cuts into the weapon’s explosive yield, which is why we don’t do this all the time. I wasn’t going to implement it without your approval, sir, but I didn’t see the need to bother you with getting a few men started on working the problem.”

  “Levy, I might just have to put you in for a citation. I’d put you in for a promotion too, but we have a rule in the destroyer service that you can’t be made lieutenant until you’re old enough to shave.” Max smiled at the very young officer. “Good job, Levy. Tell me when it’s ready. Maneuvering, I’m not in a mood to be shot at any more. Let’s open up the range to…” He looked at Levy.

  “Twelve thousand kills, sir.”

  “You heard the man. Twelve thousand.”

  “Aye, sir.” LeBlanc’s relief was audible.

  About a minute and a half passed. “We’re ready, sir,” said Levy.

  “Resume firing.” From a greater range, the weaker pulse cannon bolts from the Stinger flew toward the Krag, posing less of a threat, but accomplishing exactly what Max wanted to accomplish.

  He looked at the tactical display, then at the large CIC chrono. “Now, it’s about time for a little payback. Mr. Levy, Mr. Sauvé, have we confirmed the computer’s sequencing and timing of the next act of this drama?”

  “Aye, sir,” they replied in unison, and then looked at each other. Levy, being junior to Sauvé, made a subtle “go ahead” gesture.

  “Countermeasures timing is in place, sir. I’ve consulted with Mr. Bhattacharyya, who informs me that Krag reaction time on average is a bit faster than ours. Intelligence has subjected this problem to intense study based on combat data over the course of the war, and has concluded that mean time from the appearance of an unexpected situation, counting sensor detection, recognition and comprehension, issuance of the appropriate order, execution of the order, and physical response of the ship’s systems to that order, is thirteen point four seconds, with a standard deviation of two point one seconds. So, we plan to give Mr. Krag a ten-second look. That should allow ample time for him to see and understand what’s about to happen to him while not being long enough for even the most adept Krag crew or a particularly speedy and decisive Krag captain to do anything about it.”

  “Outstanding,” Max said. “Mr. Levy?”

  “We have been continually cross-decking our sensor readings and position data on the Krag vessels to our friends. Comms confirms receipt of the data and that the Rashidians have been putting out the welcome mat and turning down the sheets in the spare bedroom for our guests. We’ve confirmed a clear corridor for our own exit vector three ways—digital file transfer, voice, and text. Mr. LeBlanc has it. We’ve got an Egg Scrambler loaded in the number-three missile tube. Launch is set to go—synchronized with Mr. Sauvé’s play. When Mr. Krag sees what’s going on, he won’t be able to tell a soul.”

  The Egg Scrambler was a Talon missile modified to
carry a metaspacial disruptor pulse warhead, the detonation of which prevented FTL communications and operation of a compression drive within a radius of about 4 AU for roughly two hours.

  “Outstanding. Mister LeBlanc, are you ready to walk that tightrope? One false step and we’re going to be cochon de lait.” Max and Mr. LeBlanc were both born on planet Nouvelle Acadiana, a world settled mostly by Louisiana Cajuns, for whom a suckling pig communally roasted over a pit of hot coals, known as a cochon de lait, is a delicacy.

  “Mais oui, mon Capitain,” he responded.

  “Ça c’est bon. Mr. Chin, are our friends ready?”

  “Affirmative, sir. They signal Ready.” Pause. “We’ve received a signal from Admiral Jassir.”

  “Read it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand it all, sir. It says, ‘Thank you, Captain, for conceiving this inspired course of action. I look forward to drawing swords with you again.’ Now, here’s the part I don’t understand. Next it says, ‘Al-Baqarah two,’ then there’s a colon, then ‘eighty-two.’ ”

  Sahin and the minister looked at each other. The doctor gave the minister a short, deferential nod.

  “It is a citation to the Holy Quran,” Wortham-Biggs said, reverently.

  “What does it mean? I can’t even spell it well enough to look it up,” Max asked.

  “Captain, although it is preferable that the Quran be read and recited only in the original Arabic, I think that providing a translation would be acceptable under the current unusual, nontheological circumstances. The doctor here is far more the linguistic scholar than I, but I believe an approximation in Standard would be, ‘Whoever does evil and surrounds himself with sin, those are the inmates of the fire, and there they shall abide forever.’ ”