For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  “I’m sure it has been, Mr. Bhattacharyya. I’ll need you to draft a paragraph or two on the issue for my report,” Max said warmly. After all, geeky enthusiasm for minute details about the militarily relevant capabilities of other species was a desirable trait in an intelligence officer.

  At the Fire Fighting and Hazard Control console, Chief Ardoin stuck Spacer Sanders in the ribs with his elbow. Sanders did not appreciate the interruption, as he was immersed in untangling a malfunctioning toxic gas alarm.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got it,” said Ardoin.

  “Got what?”

  “The nickname.”

  “What?” Sanders was starting to sound monotonous.

  “The nickname. For the skipper, dummy.”

  “Okay, Ardoin.” Sanders made a point of pronouncing the name to rhyme with “coin” instead of ending it correctly—with a sound like the “a” in “plant.” “Let’s have it.”

  Ardoin held up his hand, palm out, moving it in a sweeping motion, in time with his words, as though reading the name written in enormous letters on a gigantic sign or the side of a mountain, “The Swamp Fox. We need to start using that Vaaach name when we talk about him. Whaddya think?”

  Sanders thought for a moment. “Ardoin, you have never had one good idea in your whole life. Not one. Ever.” He paused. “Except, maybe, for this one.” They both smiled.

  Max walked over and looked at the alien gear. After about a minute, he turned to Bales. “All right, get a dolly in here and get these things rolled—very carefully—into Captured Hardware and let’s see what we’ve got. The Vaaach have sent us some meat. I’m betting we’re going to like the flavor.”

  They liked the flavor. A lot.

  “This box,” Bales explained just over an hour later and pointing to the larger of the two, “is probably a standard memory module from the Vaaach ship. It’s got traces of metal from the mounting brackets that used to hold it in place. The shape is consistent with the kinds of brackets we use to hold racks of similar-sized components in an array. We don’t know for sure, but it’s a reasonable hypothesis that the Vaaach may have dozens, even hundreds of these things and use them as the primary storage device for their computer system. God knows their ship is big enough that they could have ten thousand of the dang things for all we know.”

  He pointed to what looked like a small blue light attached to one end. “This tiny, glowing blue bump stuck on the back is a power supply. Don’t ask me how it works. There’s no opening in the case of the main unit, so we’ve got no idea about how the power gets from the power unit to the inside of the data unit. For all I know, the thing runs off of bright blue fairy dust, and the fairies transfer the power by waving their tiny pink wands. I’ve measured the rate of decay, though, and from all appearances the power will last something on the order of a thousand years. Maybe two thousand. Maybe more. Forget the memory unit, Captain, the Vaaach’s freaking battery is five hundred years ahead of us.

  “The memory unit is shielded from external scans by some sort of scrambler on the inside. So we have no idea of how it works. The case is one solid metal piece. No rivets, fastenings, bolts, or welds. Just smooth metal all the way around without any openings of any kind. We haven’t a clue as to what the metal is. The scrambler keeps us from getting any kind of useful readings from any kind of scan we can put together, including the ones we have that are designed to defeat scramblers, and the material is so hard that we can’t scrape off a sample for the mass spec. Not even a few molecules. We even poked it ten or twelve times with an old alpha proton X-ray spectrometer and got zilch.”

  Max broke in. “Okay, Bales, that’s good, but I’m a lot less interested in what the box is made of than I am in what’s inside it.” Bales, far and away the best computer man on the ship, had a tendency to get drawn into technical issues because they were intellectually interesting, not because they materially related to killing Krag and winning the war.

  “Right, sir. Sorry. We don’t know what’s inside this box and we’re never going to know what’s inside this box. All we will ever know is what we get out of it through this box.” He pointed to the second, smaller box. The two had no connection that anyone could see.

  “As near as we can tell, this smaller box is an adaptive interface. It communicates with the big box. Somehow. We can’t read any RF between the two, and there are no metaspacial modulations, so the only thing we can think of is that there’s some sort of controlled, artificial quantum tunneling effect between the two, but that’s only a wild guess. Or maybe it’s fairies with tiny crystal balls. I’m thinking we’ll never know, at least not in my lifetime.

  “Anyway, the two boxes talk to each other. The small box has got the same kind of magic blue thousand-year battery on the back powering it. And here is the only part of the whole package that we recognize. The small box has got a standard IDSSC Type 17 FODIC coming out of it. I suppose the Vaaach have scanned enough of our computers to know exactly how our systems work because the dang thing is totally plug and play, sir. I mean, the Vaaach made it so any hatch hanger could make it work. I just take this cable coming out of the box, stick it into a fiber optic data interface cable outlet, and it just boots up as a standard external device, just like I plugged in one of our secondary data modules.”

  He touched a key that brought up a menu on one of the wall displays. “Right now, we’ve got it running but under level 5 digital sequestration. I’ve got it hooked into one of the quarantined computers we use to interface with alien gadgets—you know, absolutely no connection whatsoever with the computers that run the ship. Even a totally separate power supply, plus devices with any data storage or wireless transmission capability that come into this room can never leave, all to keep any alien malware from getting into our system, which is why you had to leave your percom—”

  “Bales,” Max interrupted, “they don’t give you command of a rated warship just because you have a loud voice and a charming personality. I know the elements of level 5 data sequestration. Now,” Max said, pointing to the wall display, “that’s not our standard menu format. Why the change?”

  “Because, sir, that’s not our menu. That’s a Vaaach menu generated, presumably, by the interface device. Except for differences in the colors, the type faces, and some of the formatting conventions, it could easily be something that my department would put together using one of the standard Navy templates. This is the top level menu. We’ve got two options: ‘Access Database Directly,’ and ‘Access Database through Linguistic/Symbolic Translation/Transliteration/Conversion Matrix.’ Naturally, we’ve done both. The Conversion matrix lets us read the database, including all the scientific symbols, translated into Standard and converted into the symbol set and units we use. So we can read it all. For the first time!”

  “Read what, Bales?”

  “Captain, don’t you get it? Remember how the Vaaach read our entire main data core the moment they snagged us? Well, that little Vaaach scout ship did the same thing with the Krag ship before we destroyed it. They put the whole freaking thing in that little box, gave us a way to read it, and gave it to us as a present. Or maybe a reward. Anyway, we have the entire database of a Krag Crayfish class medium cruiser sitting right there. We’ve never gotten even a part of one of these before. The best we’ve done is pull a partial dump from some of their base mainframes and get some logistics data and some low-level decryption keys. Their warship memory cores have a quick reset. They just hit a button, and all the bits instantly go to zero, leaving not a trace of the data. We’ve got a whole main data core! Sir, it’s the biggest intelligence haul in—well, I’m no Intel guy, sir, but—”

  From the back of the room, Bhattacharyya spoke up. “I am. And sir, the intelligence implications of this—well, they take my breath away. Literally. I feel like I might need to lie down.” He steadied himself by grasping the edge of a work table.

&n
bsp; “Sir, if that box is what Bales says it is, this represents the most important involuntary transfer of information from one belligerent power to another in the history of Intelligence. Ever. I don’t just mean space combat; I mean going back to guys like Hammurabi and Ramesses. Sir, think about what’s in our MDC and imagine an enemy getting his hands on it. It means…” He trailed off, overcome by the implications of his statement.

  He was right. The implications were breathtaking. “Thank you, Mr. Bhattacharyya. I get it. What we’ve got sitting on that table right there can change the course of the war.” He walked over to the comm panel and punched up a voice channel to CIC.

  “CIC, DeCosta here.”

  “XO, this is the skipper. Are we back in Union space yet?”

  “Yes, sir. Even by the most expansive reading of the Vaaach territorial claims, we’ve been in Union space for the last four minutes or so. We’re now on direct course to rendezvous with the pennant.”

  “Change in plans. Alter course to rendezvous with the Halsey. We’ve got a delivery to make to Admiral Hornmeyer and his N2 Section. Tell Engineering to crack on everything they’ve got.”

  “But sir, we’ve just got orders from Commander Duflot to rejoin the pennant ship and escort it to the repair yards at Pfelung.”

  “Not gonna happen. Our possession of this device triggers a standing order that now takes precedence. XO, could you please punch Chin in on this circuit.” There was a click and a quiet beep.

  “Chin here. What can I do for you, Skipper?”

  “Chin, please signal Commander Duflot that we are unable to comply with his order due to Naval Regulations, Article 15, Paragraph 5. Have the signal state further that due to security requirements, we are unable to provide further explanation at this time but that a full justification of my actions will be provided at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Chin, reluctance showing in every tone. “He’s going to be hot.”

  “Don’t I know it. But not nearly as hot as the potato we’re carrying. Not even close.

  “And send the following to Admiral Hornmeyer and to the Chief of Naval Operations in Norfolk. Priority: Flash Z.”

  “Flash Z, sir? That’s reserved for the highest, highest priority communications. Stuff on which the entire course of the war could turn. Are you sure, sir?”

  “Mr. Chin,” Max said with perfect and patient calm, “I know what Flash Z means. This message easily meets the criteria. If they had a higher priority than that, I would use that one instead. Now, are you ready to take the message?”

  “Yes, sir.” He actually sounded a little shaky. Chin had never sent anything higher than “Urgent.” The man knew his job, but he tended to be a bit on the twitchy side.

  “All right, Chin. Message begins. Enigma. Repeat. Enigma. That’s Echo, Nebula, India, Galaxy, Mike, Alfa. Got that, Chin?”

  “Aye, sir. ‘Enigma. Repeat. Enigma.’ The message will go out in less than three minutes, sir.”

  “Chin?”

  “Yes, Skipper.”

  “Make it two.”

  “I don’t see why we are in such a furious rush to rejoin the task force,” said Dr. Sahin while sipping his coffee. “It’s not as though we have just been handed the keys to the kingdom and we have to rush to put them in the right hands to open the gate.”

  “Actually, Bram, that is pretty much what we do have.” Max paused to take a sip of the steadily improving ship’s beer. Spacer Bud Schlitz was proving to have a true gift for the art of brewing, and there were rumors that the crew was pressuring him into trying his hand at brewing more varieties of beer than just the standard medium tan lager that he was now making. The two men were sitting companionably in Max’s day cabin after having eaten a late supper, the Cumberland having completed the first day and a half of the seven-day high-speed run to the rendezvous with Admiral Hornmeyer’s flag ship.

  “I was sitting down with Bhattacharyya this morning. He’s had a better look at what’s in that database, and here’s just some of the major strategic implications of this data. First, the Krag ship used its computer to read encrypted signals, so we’ve got all of their military encrypt keys until they decide to change them, which may be up to one of their years, or 377 of our days. We’ll be able to read every transmission we intercept immediately, rather than after days or weeks in decrypt. That’s going to make a huge operational difference right there.

  “Second, there’s a huge database of technical specifications: ships, weapons, area sensors, communications equipment, computers, the whole lot. With those specs, we’ll be able to find hundreds, maybe even thousands, of exploitable weaknesses in those systems. We’ll know how to confuse the computers, jam the comms, deflect the weapons, blind the sensors, defeat the ships—the whole nine yards. Who knows? We might be able to find holes in their sensor net that will let one ship or maybe even a task force walk right through without being detected.”

  “That would certainly be useful.”

  “That’s just the beginning. When we had relations with them, the Krag were very cagey about some things. We never learned the exact location of their homeworld, their economic centers, the layout of their hegemony. All that stuff’s in there. If we can penetrate their defenses and get into their space, now we know where to go, where the assets are, what to attack that will hurt them the most.

  “Add to that, we now know the location of their comm relays, fuel production facilities, logistics nodes, convoy routes, the makeup and location of their theater and strategic reserve forces, and a thousand other details that tell us where and how to hit them. And my friend, the icing on the cake is that there is no way in hell the Krag know we have it. So when we start putting this information to use, they will be completely surprised.” He paused to marvel at what it all meant.

  “That’s just scratching the surface. There’s information in that box and implications of that information that we can’t even guess at yet. It changes everything.”

  “Will it win the war for us?” Bram was starting to catch on.

  “Likely not. Not by itself. But I’m confident that, used well and absent some kind of major battle defeat that destroys one of our two task forces in operations against the Krag—the one under Middleton or the one under Hornmeyer—it will keep us from losing it. At least for the next year or so. Long enough for us to accumulate more allies or to come up with something else that will give us some kind of resource or manpower or technological advantage.”

  “You say that we now know the location of their homeworld.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “Why ‘afraid,’ my friend? Why wouldn’t possession of that information be unambiguously good news, Max?”

  “Because it’s a lot further away than we thought. When we encountered them in 2183, it wasn’t by finding a planet that they occupied. Instead, one of our long-range exploratory ships ran into one of their long-range survey ships taking readings on the same pulsar. When we traded information, both sides disclosed a fair amount of information about their homeworlds, but we both studiously did not disclose their location. They found out the location of Earth from some of our trading partners easily enough. We’ve never done a very good job of keeping ours concealed. They have.

  “When the war broke out, we just assumed that their core worlds were about the same distance from the FEBA as ours. Turns out, they are more than 2500 light years back from the initial front, and that front has moved about a thousand light years closer to our Core Worlds since then. So, there’s no question for the foreseeable future of any offensive that would knock them out of the war by putting their heartland directly at risk. Even if we turn the tide and start taking great chunks of their space, we’d be years away from being able to force a surrender, much less attain what I suspect our overall war aims are.”

  “And what might those be? I don’t think I’ve ever h
eard them discussed, outside of ‘ultimate victory,’ ‘utter defeat of the enemy,’ and other similar verbal formulations ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ ”

  “That’s because I don’t think a lot of thought has been given to them. For so long, our only reasonable objective has been to stave off defeat until we can muster whatever it takes to turn the tide and push the Krag back. How far we would push them and under what circumstances we would stop pushing them in order to make peace have been categorized as bridges to be crossed when we get to them. But we don’t have much of a choice as to our war aims, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Well, the Krag have said that they have a religious obligation to destroy us down to the last child, to eradicate us from the galaxy forever. So long as they believe they have a duty to wipe out our race, we’d have to be crazy to do anything short of obliterating their military, destroying their colonies, vaporizing every space vehicle they have and the means to produce them, and parking a constellation of battle stations in orbit around their homeworld, armed to the teeth, with instructions to blow to flaming atoms anything that gets more than a hundred kills or so above the surface. That’s the minimum. A good case can be made for bombing their homeworld back to the Stone Age or even rendering the planet uninhabitable.”

  “You mean genocide? Total genocide of the entire Krag race?”

  “When and if we get to that point, it’s going to have to be on the table. After all, that’s their objective in this war, isn’t it? If all we do is inflict a few major military defeats on them, maybe destroy two or three battle groups, and they sue for an armistice or a peace treaty, how can we reasonably give it to them? What assurance do we have that they won’t just use the time to rebuild and rearm and come at us again and again and again until they finally catch us when we are weak and vulnerable and they get the upper hand and wipe us out?

  “We’re dealing with our survival as a species. We can’t afford to take any chances. If we could make a peace treaty with them and believe that they aren’t going to come at our throats at the first chance, that would be one thing, but given that their stated aim to kill every human being in the galaxy and then to sterilize the Earth and every Earth-settled world so that no trace of our genome remains, I can’t see how we can tell ourselves that we have done our duty to protect generations of human beings to come if we leave them with any kind of space capability at all. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we wind up having to wipe them out altogether.”