For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  Max knew that the Krag would immediately conclude from the rapid disappearance of one ship that the envoy had gotten away from them. They could never catch, much less successfully engage, a Longbow class destroyer running at high compression across interstellar space. With the envoy gone, Krag doctrine dictated that the two cruisers (it had to be cruisers at this range on this kind of mission) would take advantage of a bad situation by engaging and destroying the remaining, inferior force.

  He also knew that when two cruisers are engaging a frigate and a destroyer, Krag doctrine said both ships are jointly to take out the more nimble destroyer first, then turn their attention to dealing with the more powerful but less elusive frigate.

  That meant that the two Krag ships would now turn from their original target, close on his position, and as soon as they could generate a firing solution for their Foxhound missiles, they would each launch a full salvo. Adieu Cumberland.

  Pas aujourd’hui.

  Time for some fancy footwork. Max looked over at Chief LeBlanc, who was watching a timer. Nine seconds had to elapse from the Broadsword’s departure for the fabric of space–time to restore itself to its previous shape. It had been seven. Eight. Nine. Chief LeBlanc simply said to his men, “Go, boys.”

  Drives ran the sublight drive to Emergency, while the men on the Yaw and Pitch controls suddenly put the ship through a radical turn away from its previous course and out of line with the William Gorgas, a maneuver that would delay the Krag from getting missile firing solutions for another four or five seconds. After two seconds, when the range between the two Union ships had opened up sufficiently, LeBlanc slapped Spacer Fleishman on the shoulder, adding, “Switch ’em, son.”

  Fleishman pulled the main sublight drive controller to zero and flipped the drive actuator to Standby, then flipped the compression drive actuator to Engage and gave its controller the barest nudge, the smallest movement that could be applied to it and still push it out of the zero detent.

  “Main sublight nulled and on Standby. Compression drive engaged. Compression field forming,” announced LeBlanc. “Field going propulsive.”

  The ship started to accelerate as the space behind it expanded and the space in front of it contracted, carrying the ship forward. “Speed is point six, point seven, point eight, point nine, point nine-eight-five. Holding at point nine-eight-five.” LeBlanc said the last sentence in a tone that clearly conveyed that “holding at point nine-eight-five” was not a common state of affairs.

  Eleven seconds elapsed, the shortest period of time that the compression drive could be engaged and then disengaged without triggering an uncontrolled field collapse that would destroy the ship, and also a period too short for deadly compression shear to arise even at a fractional c multiple. LeBlanc slapped Fleischman on the shoulder once more. “Kill it.”

  Fleischman pulled the controller back to zero, triggering a computer-controlled dissipation of the compression field, a process that took another second.

  Max had taken the almost unheard-of step (prohibited by a least three distinct naval regulations and strongly discouraged by seven others) of using a superluminal drive for subluminal propulsion, dashing outside of the Krag firing solution far faster than otherwise possible, avoiding the time-dilation effect that occurs when travelling near the speed of light in normal space, and getting “behind” the Krag warships, forcing them either to divide their attention or to both turn their more vulnerable sterns toward one of the two Union ships.

  “Now,” Max said, grinning, “time to turn and attack. Mr. LeBlanc, make for the closest Krag ship. Ahead Flank.” As LeBlanc acknowledged and carried out the order, Max turned to Kasparov and threw him a questioning look.

  “Just getting an ID now, sir, Hotel One is posident as Krag cruiser, Crayfish class. Hotel Two…” He was listening to his back room and looking at something on a display to which Goldman was pointing, and then said over his headset, “Yea, okay, same type, we’re go.”

  Then to Max, “Both contacts are Crayfish class. Bearing two-four-two mark one-six-seven for Hotel One and two-three-nine mark one-six-three for Hotel Two. Hotel One is continuing to accelerate, altering course from heading toward our former position to heading for the frigate. Hotel Two is turning, likely to engage us, range to both targets 3.27 million kills. Distance between Hotel One and Hotel Two is opening up.” A few seconds. “Okay, Hotel Two is at constant bearing decreasing range. Right for us, sir.”

  “That’s Crawfish. I keep telling those idiots at Intel. They ought to listen to a Cajun on this stuff, or at least a Southerner. Right, LeBlanc?”

  “Mais, oui, mon Capitain,” said Leblanc.

  “Right, Bartoli?”

  “Damn straight, sir.” Bartoli hit the Alabama extra hard, making sure it came out “day-umm straight.”

  “It’s unanimous. Bartoli, what’s the frigate doing?” The question was both a request for information and a reminder to Bartoli that it was his responsibility to see that the main tactical display in CIC presented a usable tactical picture of the situation. When the destroyer had run about three million kilometers from the cruisers, the other three ships in the engagement had vanished off the edge of the display. Bartoli needed to change the scale so that all four ships showed up. He did so.

  “Sir, the frigate has gone to Flank. He’s presenting his starboard beam to Hotel One, while angling away, trying to stay outside missile range. Why hasn’t he…Okay, there he goes—he’s finally got his pulse cannon into action. He’s got his starboard batteries plus his ventral and dorsal turrets laying down barrage fire. There, he got off a salvo of missiles too…at least two got through, two hits with Talons. I can’t tell at this range what kind of damage he did.”

  Duflot was implementing standard fleet doctrine for a convoy frigate under attack with no pigeon to protect: crack on as much speed as you can to complicate interception and missile targeting, maneuver for a better tactical position, present your beam to the enemy so you can use your amidships pulse cannon plus your ventral and dorsal turrets to lay down a barrage of pulse cannon fire to reduce the effectiveness of any missile attack, and try to do some damage of your own with missile fire. Not terribly imaginative, but a very long way from the worst thing he could do. He might be a tactically obtuse, condescending asshole, but it did look as though Duflot had some grit in his gizzard.

  “Weapons, abbreviated missile firing procedure. Make missiles in tubes one and two ready for firing in all respects, target on Hotel Two, set warheads for maximum yield, open missile doors.”

  “Sir,” Bartoli said, “frigate just fired an Egg Scrambler.” No FTL comms or compression drive use in the vicinity for a while. Would have been nice to have been warned.

  “Saves us the trouble, then. Weapons, pull the Egg Scrambler from the aft tube. Reload with a Talon.” Max glanced at a timer on his console, a timer that had been counting up from when the Broadsword had started maneuvering. It was at 00:01:27.

  “Aye, sir, pulling Egg Scrambler from tube three, reloading with Talon. Sir, tubes one and two are loaded with Talons.” Levy carried out the order with his usual efficiency. “I’m sure you know, sir, two Talons aren’t going to scratch that Crawfish if he’s ready for them.”

  “I know that, Mr. Levy.” Max glanced at the timer again. It was now at 00:01:35. “Our two Talons aren’t going to be the only guests at the party.”

  As the timer hit 00:01:40, Mr. Chin called out, “Skipper, receiving encrypted text on one of the JOINTOPS channels. The encrypt is MUDBATH. The decrypt is coming up now. I’m putting it on the Commandcoms channel.”

  Max hit the bright orange hard key over one of the main displays on his console that punched up the Command Officer’s Incoming Communications or “Commandcoms” data channel. The screen displayed “GREETINGS DRY CRUSTY HUMANS STOP THIS IS BRAKMOR-ENT 198 COMMANDING THE 16TH ELEMENT 332ND FIGHTER GROUP PFELUNGIAN SPACE DEFENSE FORCE REP
ORTING IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR REQUEST STOP IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO BATTLE WITH THE KRAG AND MAKE OF THEM A MEAL FOR THE LESSER FISH WE WOULD EAGERLY JOIN YOU STOP QUERY MAY WE JOIN THE FUN STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  “Mr. Chin, please send, “We welcome your assistance and believe there is enough fun for everyone. Form up on me and await instructions.”

  DeCosta looked puzzled. “Why does this message look like it’s transcribed from tachyon Morse or blinker? We’ve got a high bandwidth data channel.”

  “XO, there are all kinds of issues translating from written Pfelung to Standard. Don’t you know that they have over a hundred different punctuation marks? You get a lot fewer mistranslations if you simplify.”

  “Understood. But that doesn’t sound like the Pfelung communications I’ve read. Why are they here, anyway?”

  “Because, XO, what you’ve seen are communications from the enormous, lumbering adults, who are halfway between a grown alligator and a hippo in size and about as nimble as an elephant with arthritis. They don’t fly fighters. The fighters are flown by the adolescent Pfelung. They’re a lot like dolphins, with the personality to match. Very fast, very nimble, genetically designed to defend the baby Pfelung in the water, braver than a lion on stims, with brains specifically evolved for rapid life-and-death combat in three dimensions. Reflexes that make lightning look slow. Best fighter pilots in the galaxy, bar none.

  “This is one of the groups I was training right after the Battle of Pfelung. I signaled them back before we went on EMCON and told them to meet us in this system, wait for us to jump in, and track us at three and a half million kills on this bearing. And here they are. Now that we’ve got that nailed down, XO, don’t you have something to do?”

  Max jerked his head in the direction of the fighter coordination console, the one that Petty Officer Carlson was firing up. The one that the XO was supposed to run when a Khyber class or other SWACS ship too small to have a separate air coordination officer (generally known as a “Bird Herder”) was working with fighters.

  “Yes, sir. I’m on it.” DeCosta stepped over to the console. Carlson had already pulled up the protocols for JOINTOPS with the Pfelung and had plugged in the transponder frequencies and encrypts, the comm procedures, all the crypto information, and the standard Pfelung fighter maneuvers. By the time DeCosta sat down at the station, everything was ready for him. He turned to the petty officer. “Thanks, Carlson. Good job.” Carlson sat down at his station nearby, and the two got to work.

  DeCosta put on his headset and looked at the displays that, with the aid of the fighter’s transponders, showed him their exact location and what they were doing. The fighters were in two groups of seven, each in a formation that was essentially a three-dimensional version of the classic “finger-four” formation, the three additional ships stacked in the same arrangement as the other flankers but perpendicular to them, the seven ships making the shape of a cross when viewed from the front or behind. Both groups were approaching the Cumberland rapidly from aft, both on the port side.

  With human pilots, DeCosta would simply speak to the leader. Things were a little more complicated when the language barrier was as high as it was between humans and the Pfelung, whose spoken language sounded like (and was, in fact, derived from) bubbles being blown in soupy mud. The system was set up so that DeCosta could speak orders into the headset, which the computer would translate into Pfelungian text and transmit to the fighter group leader. The leader, in turn, could speak to his system and have his speech translated by his computer into simplified form Standard text and then transmitted to DeCosta’s console. The system, combined with the advanced sensor capabilities with which the destroyer was equipped, enabled Cumberland to control the Pfelungian fighters in combat, vectoring them to targets and coordinating their tactics.

  DeCosta had even put in a few sessions on the console directing simulated fighters, both Union and Pfelung, in simulated battles. He knew the protocol, which first required that he verify communication between his console and the group leader. He pulled up the screen that provided the automatically generated ID protocols for this engagement. He was Starfish. The first element was Halibut; the second was Tuna. Max was Starfish Actual. Each element had a leader, to be called Halibut One or Tuna One. Halibut One was the overall commander. “Halibut One, this is Starfish, comm test.”

  A second and a half later, text appeared on the FTRCOM MAIN display: “STARFISH THIS IS HALIBUT ONE STOP COMMUNICATION RECEIVED SIGNAL STRENGTH AND CLARITY WITHIN NORMS STOP QUERY HOW LONG UNTIL WE GET TO START SHOOTING AT THE KRAG STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  “Skipper, comms with the Pfelung fighters verified. They seem a little impatient, sir.”

  “They’re like that, XO. Intellectually brilliant, fantastic sense of humor, very fun-loving. Occasionally a little immature, though. Nothing like the studiously mature adults. Tell them to form up on this vessel, one group finbone star formation port, the other finbone star formation starboard.”

  “Finbone star, sir?”

  “That’s what they call that crossed finger four that they use. The angles are like the bones in their fins, just like our fingers, and ‘star’ is because the drives of the two crossed lines look like a bright star when viewed from a distance. Something like that anyway.”

  “Roger, sir.” DeCosta confirmed the order and passed it on to the Pfelung, who promptly took up station to the left and right of the destroyer that was rapidly accelerating toward one of the cruisers, which in turn was rapidly accelerating toward the destroyer and the fighters. They would be within missile range of each other in seconds.

  DeCosta’s console beeped. New message from the Pfelung: “STARFISH THIS IS HALIBUT ONE STOP QUERY ARE WE THERE YET STOP MESSAGE ENDS.” DeCosta relayed the message to Max.

  “I told you they were a bit immature,” Max said. “Tell them Wing Attack Plan Romeo. Execute on two red.”

  DeCosta confirmed and passed on the order. “The Pfelung acknowledge the order, Skipper.”

  “Very well.” Max watched the range tick down. This had better work, because a Khyber class destroyer wasn’t even a good first course for a Crayfish class cruiser. More of an appetizer, like a nice shrimp cocktail with lots of horseradish in the cocktail sauce. A few more seconds. Right. About. Now.

  “Mr. Chin, blink two red on the port and starboard signal lamps, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir. Two red. Port and starboard.”

  Before Chin could confirm that the signal had been sent, DeCosta saw the two Pfelung formations spring faster than any Union fighter could, their fusion-based sublight drives augmented by a gravity-polarizing technology that was the first step on the long, steep, difficult road to a pure reactionless drive. As they neared the Krag cruiser, it appeared to DeCosta that the Pfelung adolescents had abandoned their formation in favor of clumping together in some sort of random, swirling, chaotic aggregation.

  On closer examination, however, he saw that the fighters’ movements were not random at all, but resembled those of a school of fish. Although the individual craft were always in motion relative to one another, and fighters kept changing places, creating a visual impression of constant movement and absence of structure, at any given moment in time the formation was the same “finbone star” formation the fighters had originally adopted. But with all the shifts, and the continual rotation of the formation itself, its structure was not apparent. It would certainly be difficult for an enemy to select one fighter, engage it, and target it with weapons.

  Both groups approached the cruiser from roughly amidships, continuing to accelerate. As soon as they got near the range at which the Krag point defense systems would engage them, each formation adopted an evasive pattern that again resembled the movements of a fast-moving school of fish, deviating from its base course by darting unexpectedly in one direction and then another at seemingly random intervals, each individual fighter flying perfectly in formation
with the rest as they made their abrupt jigs and jags, too fast for any weapons battery to follow.

  The combination of the swirling movements within the group and the evasive darting of the formations as a whole seemed to be doing an excellent job of confusing or staying ahead of the cruiser’s defensive weapons, as the pulse cannon blasts all seemed to be missing their targets.

  At the last moment, both formations dispersed, and the fighters veered away from the Krag ship, fanning out in all directions more or less at right angles to their original bearing, like a stream of water spreading out when it strikes the pavement, until they surrounded the cruiser. They then swerved violently to point their noses at the flank of the vessel, perfectly aligned for an attack that would launch their missiles at the ship’s “waistline” to go for a classic simultaneous circumferential detonation.

  The computer that controlled the Krag defensive systems recognized the maneuver and threw itself into reorienting pulse cannons, transferring deflector power, and focusing the ship’s point defensive systems to respond to such an attack. Following twisting, elusive, corkscrewing, erratic paths, the Pfelung fighters bored in toward the cruiser’s midline in their uniquely evasive, fishlike way.

  Just as the Krag systems fully committed to defending against this tactic, the Pfelung fighters, as though controlled by a single mind, veered again, catching the Krag systems flat-footed. Still tracing elusive, impossible-to-follow, corkscrewing paths, they all made for one target, an unimportant looking bulbous protrusion at the nose of the cruiser. All of the Pfelung fighters maintained almost exactly the same range from the cruiser—between 4.885 and 5.033 kilometers, a narrow seam between the ship’s area defense perimeter defended by pulse cannon and the point defense perimeter defended by rail guns, short range particle beams, and interceptor missiles.

  In theory, there was no gap, but extensive testing of captured Krag ships showed that, in practice, the Krag computers’ efforts to avoid the duplication of defending any particular zone of space with more than one system created a thin layer where, under the computational challenges posed by actual combat, neither defense layer would energetically engage the attacking fighters.