“Skipper, the tanker sends, ‘NEGATIVE.’ ”
“That would mean they are not who we are here to meet.” Max said. “I expect they’ll be along shortly.”
“Skipper?” Chin was clearly uncomfortable. “Sir, what about the tanker? Shouldn’t we be hailing her, establishing a laserlink, signaling with lights, or something?”
“Negative, Chin.” Max said. “We have orders from Admiral Hornmeyer to come here and execute a specific recognition protocol. We are neither ordered nor authorized to engage in any other communications, so we are not going to engage in any other communications with any other vessel. With what we have on board, we don’t need to be passing the time of day with every deuterium tanker we run into. We’re going to sit here and wait, if not patiently, then with the best facsimile thereof that we can manage.”
It actually took no small measure of patience. Another incoming contact presented itself three and a half hours later as a gravity wave detection that soon thereafter went subluminal seventy-five thousand kilometers from the destroyer.
“It’s small, sir,” Kasparov announced. “Mass is approximately eighty-five hundred tons. We’ve got optical on it but can’t distinguish anything at this range.”
Before Max could ask about the IFF, Chin spoke up, “IFF confirms as friendly, Skipper. A fast Courier-Scout assigned to the Task Force, registry number CSR 8655.”
“Sir.” It was Bhattacharyya, not a man from whom the captain would typically be hearing at this point.
“Yes, Bhattacharyya?”
“That particular ship is the one Admiral Hornmeyer uses when he needs to leave the Halsey. Just a registry number—no official name for something that small, but they call themselves the ‘Yellow Cab Company.’ ”
In theory, a truly capable intel officer developed “assets and resources” that allowed him to keep his skipper a few steps ahead of what the good guys were doing as well as the bad, but few men who held that billet on a mere destroyer took that part of their job seriously. Apparently, Bhattacharyya had a different outlook.
“Thank you, Intel, that’s good to know. Mr. Chin, as soon as the Yellow Cab Company is within hailing distance,” he leaned on the words to be sure no one missed the joke, “give them the same recognition signal.” The smaller vessel quickly closed most of the gap that separated the ships and in short order replied with the countersign “TRAFALGAR.”
A few seconds after that Chin announced, “Courier is establishing a laserlink. Incoming signal from the Courier. On Commandcom.”
Max read the message from his console. “I am coming aboard your vessel ASAP to view the package. If you make me wade through all that fife, drum, and honor guard ceremonial happy horseshit when I board, I will have your hide. You are ordered to prepare your vessel for a high-speed run back to Pfelung. The tanker is here to top you off and to refuel the other vessel that will arrive presently. Hornmeyer. Message ends.”
“I thought you said that there was never a redundant word in any communication received from the admiral,” said Bram, who had come into CIC a few moments earlier.
“I did. I don’t see any redundancy,” Max replied.
“There most certainly is a redundancy: ‘Hornmeyer.’ It is evident from the remainder of the signal who wrote it. Who other than he would call the piping aboard, the presentation of arms, the playing of whatever the name of that piece is with the lyrics ‘Rule the Union, the Union Rules in Space,’ and the ritual inspection of the men at arms ‘ceremonial happy horseshit’?”
“Redundancy or not, I am glad to be shed of the ‘happy horseshit.’ Apparently the admiral wants to conclude his business with us and send us in a great big tearing hurry back to Pfelung for some reason. I suppose that’s what’s behind all of this meeting-in-deep-space, double-O spy stuff. He wants to get his hands on the package ASAP and then send us on this errand, whatever it is. It’s probably another VIP escort or some such nonsense because we helped save the last one from unmitigated catastrophe.”
The admiral arrived without the usual ceremonies. As soon as he was aboard, salutes exchanged, and introductions made, he said, “All right, Robichaux, enough of this Naval Auxiliary Garden Party crap. Let’s see the package.”
“Yes, sir. Right this way.” Max led the admiral from the hangar deck, wondering if Admiral Hornmeyer had ever so much as showed his face at a Naval Auxiliary Garden Party. He doubted it.
“You should know,” the admiral said as they were making their way through the ship, “that I’ve squared the situation with Duflot for you. I issued orders confirming your failure to rendezvous with the William Gorgas, so you won’t have to jump through all those hoops to satisfy him that you were acting within the scope of Article 15, Paragraph 5.”
“Thank you, Admiral. That saves me a great deal of paperwork.”
“Fucking paperwork. The goddamn bane of the Navy. I’d rather you focus your attention on making life difficult for the Krag than on jumping through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops. After all, you’re one of my most productive commanders right now. I mean, son, have you looked at the score?”
“Score?”
“Score, son, score. War is a goddamn numbers game. Ships, tonnage, weapons, supplies, manpower, fuel, speed, distance, time. Missing. Wounded. Killed. All numbers.
“Here are some of yours. If I am remembering correctly, under your command, the Cumberland has destroyed one battlecruiser, five cruisers counting one where you got some help from the Vaaach, two corvettes, and two destroyers, as well as assisted on two more destroyers killed by the Pfelung, and played a significant role in the twenty-five destroyers the enemy lost at Rashid V B, all in just a few months. Plus two freighters captured whole, with cargo, as prizes. That’s more enemy losses inflicted than some battle groups under my command. And with crew performance ratings that are just barely in the ‘Fair’ range.” He shook his head in wonder.
“On top of that, that little stunt that you and Kim Yong-Soo pulled right under Duflot’s nose undoubtedly saved the envoy’s life. Sue was able to deliver the smooth-talking son of a bitch to the conference, where the other three envoys immediately elected him chairman and hammered out a Four Power Joint Forces Agreement in three days flat. That’s got to be a new record. By the way, he told me he thinks very highly of you. You must have filled him full of that goddamn Cajun food of yours—that shit’s so good it’ll turn your worst enemy into your friend.
“Even Duflot doesn’t want your head on a pike. Anymore. Not that it matters much now. After he almost got the envoy killed, I got him transferred to my command, and the only way that human clusterfuck is seeing the CIC of a rated warship is if he’s with a flock of Wilderness Girls on a goddamn Union Day tour. I’ve yanked all of his combat and command qualifications and assigned him to Convoy Routing and Logistics. Punctilious little son of a bitch is actually good at it too.
“But you, Robichaux, are either a budding tactical genius or the luckiest motherfucker who ever put on a uniform. I’m leaning toward the latter. Anyway, you know how I like to bet on the winning horse, so my money is on you in the next race. With what we’ve got up our sleeve over the next several months, there will be some very interesting work for ships like yours.”
He grinned broadly. “Very, very interesting work. If you can keep from being court martialed between now and then, you are going to help me make history.”
They came to the hatch that led in to Captured Hardware. Outside the main compartment was a smaller compartment with a spacer and a Marine. The spacer politely but firmly asked both men to leave their percoms behind and pointed a hand scanner at both of them to be certain that they weren’t carrying any electronic devices that would violate the compartment’s electronic quarantine. Once cleared, they went in.
Captured Hardware was crowded: fifteen people packed into one of the humbler spaces on the ship. Computer, weapons, and engin
eering wonks tinkered with pieces of equipment obtained from the enemy, trying to extract their secrets. The only thing that marked the compartment as different from several other such spaces was the presence of three compact computer cores, totally isolated in every conceivable way from the data and power networks for the rest of the ship.
You can’t just plug a captured Krag data module into your ship’s computer and expect anything but disaster to ensue. Accordingly, these cores were purpose-built to probe and operate alien computer equipment and to access alien databases and storage devices, without putting the rest of the vessel at risk from enemy viruses, Trojans, parasites, data shredders, digital con artists, lying Louies, Alzheimer’s bugs, bit rotters, succubi, incubi, turncoaters, sirens, saprophytes, mole makers, sappers, egg suckers, termites, and the full panoply of malware and other digital weapons deployed by the combatants in a war in which attacks on computing systems and databases had been nearly as important as attacks on ships and fixed installations.
Bales, in charge of probing the Krag database, walked Hornmeyer through what he had learned so far about the menu structure and the locations of the most important data he was finding. He managed to keep his discussion more germane than was usual for him, but Max could tell that the admiral was starting to get a bit annoyed at his occasional digressions into matters of interest only to people immersed in the science of data storage and processing. Surprisingly, the admiral mostly managed to conceal his impatience, and where he would have cut Max off at the knees, Hornmeyer was patient with Bales. Max couldn’t figure it out.
Bales was on his way to the section on countermeasures protocols, scrolling through a menu that appeared to consist mainly of cartographic information, when the admiral stopped him. “Son, whoa. Stop right there. Back it up. A bit more. There. See that entry for ‘Special Navigational Protocols’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Open that up for me.”
In his own researches, Bales had already scrolled past it a dozen times, had opened it up once, and hadn’t seen anything interesting.
“Admiral, it’s probably just some sort of Rules of the Road for how to keep warships from running into each other.”
“Probably. Humor me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bales opened the menu. That menu was an umbrella for other menus at a lower level of the file hierarchy. Special Navigation Protocols was divided into: Providing Escort to Logistics Convoys, Providing Escort to Personnel Convoys, Providing Escort to Mixed Convoys, Providing Escort to High Officials in Secured Areas, Providing Escort to High Officials in Unsecured Areas, Ceremonial Reviews, Inspection Reviews, and Other.
“Click ‘Other,’ ” directed the admiral.
This did not look promising, and Bales almost said something, but he took one look at the admiral and decided against it. Wisely.
“Other” consisted of Navigating in Close Company with Vessel Carrying Hazardous Material, Navigating in Close Company with Damaged Vessel in Danger of Exploding, Navigating in Close Company with Vessel Unable to Steer Straight Course, and Multivessel Transfer Procedures.
“Click on Multivessel Transfer,” Hornmeyer ordered, the barest hint of an excited quiver in his voice. Everyone in the compartment who wasn’t already looking at the wall display snapped his head around. The tension in the room suddenly jumped eight or nine notches.
The emotion communicated itself to the usually clueless Bales. The flicker of feeling from the admiral was more powerful than the most overt demonstration from another man. He clicked on the item.
It was a densely written procedural checklist, setting forth some fifty-three steps and check-offs for the accomplishment of what must be a technically demanding operation. As the men read further, they saw that it was the procedure to be used by up to eight ships when they simultaneously executed some sort of maneuver or other in close company. They read further, through steps involving synchronization of clocks to the nanosecond, relative orientation of the ships’ center of mass in the same plane to within .003 seconds of arc, and precise alignment of the plane of the formation with the metaspacial “grain” of the galaxy. Suddenly, a frisson passed through the group, as though a veil had just been snatched away to reveal to their eyes for the first time a dazzling gem of extraordinary and unexpected beauty. Some actually gasped. Five or six let out an almost breathless “Oh!”
That’s what the list was: a detailed how-to description of the most important group maneuver-procedure in the Krag arsenal, sending up to eight jump ships at the same time through the same jump point. The Krag had been using that little trick to kick the Union’s butts since day one of the war, and the Union had never managed to uncover its secret despite trillions of credits worth of research over more than thirty years.
Everyone stood in silence for a few moments. The same idea hit everyone at the same time.
This changes everything.
The admiral summed it up for everyone. He uttered the expression slowly, drawing it out for a full four seconds, maybe five. “Oy. Fucking. Mekheye.” He borrowed some of his ancestors’ Yiddish, the rich and colorful language of a displaced people.
“Regardez donc,” said Max, borrowing some of his ancestors’ Cajun French, the rich and colorful language of another displaced people.
“You know what this means, son?”
With an effort, Max managed to keep himself from telling the admiral that he did indeed know what oy mekheye meant. Instead, he said, “Yes, sir, I do. It’s a whole new war.”
The admiral ordered Bales to copy all the files in the Krag database pertaining to the jump procedure onto a data chip, which the admiral had a crewman sew into the left breast pocket of his pilot’s uniform so that there was no possibility of its getting lost. He then ordered the pilot to take the scout ship at maximum velocity back to the Task Force.
The admiral would have liked to copy the whole database, but it was so huge that it would not fit into the Cumberland’s MDC, much less on something that would fit on the scout. The jump procedure chip was accompanied by Hornmeyer’s marching orders to his staff to find a way for Union ships to implement the procedure “with the utmost celerity and in the deepest secrecy.” The tiny vessel had disappeared in a wave of compressed space, moving as fast as any ship ever designed by human minds and built by human hands.
The admiral and Max sat in CIC, with Max at his station and the admiral actually putting the Commodore’s Station to its intended use. The doctor sat in the spare seat at Comms.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t send the Vaaach data module on the scout along with your pilot,” said Max.
“Put the most significant intelligence coup in human history—one that we can’t duplicate until we can attach it to something as big as the main data core on a carrier or a battleship—in a ship that doesn’t even have a missile tube? Not a chance in hell. No, son, that data core is the solid platinum, diamond-encrusted, copper-bottomed, motherfucking lode. That little jewel and I are going to arrive at the Task Force in style. It’s going to be a hell of an entrance.”
He smiled. It was the kind of smile a wolf gives just before the object of his gaze makes the permanent change in status from being a living organism called a “sheep” to being a meal called “lunch.”
“But not nearly the entrance I’m going to make the next time I hit those rat-faced Krag motherfuckers. Not nearly.” He looked at his wrist chrono, then stood up. By that sort of commanding dynamism some leaders have, his force of will, combined with his mere intention to speak, quieted the compartment without his having given any sign.
“Gentlemen, in about three minutes, you’re going to get a mass reading at about two-four-three mark zero-one-seven. A huge fucking mass reading. Don’t shit your pants. You’re about to see something you’ll remember the rest of your lives.”
True to the admiral’s prediction, two minutes and forty-e
ight seconds after the announcement, Kasparov announced a gravity wave detection exactly on the predicted bearing. He designated the contact as Charlie Two based on “circumstantial classification,” meaning that he had no sensor evidence that it was friendly, but because the contact was where a friendly was expected, doing what a friendly was supposed to be doing, it was probably a friendly. After all, that bird swimming around in your duck pond during duck season and making quacking noises is almost certainly not an eagle.
One minute and nine seconds later, Kasparov gasped loudly. Just as everyone close enough to have heard him turned their heads at the uncharacteristic reaction, he croaked “Contact! Mass detector. Stand by while I change to a different scale.” Then to his back room. “No, bigger than that. Even bigger. There. Okay. Harbaugh, you sure that’s right?” A pause ensued. “It made its own gravity waves when it went subluminal?” Another pause. “Sweet jeeeeezus.” He took a calming breath and then announced to the CIC as a whole.
“Mass detection, dual phenomenology, bearing concurrent with gravity wave detection of Charlie Two. Mass of contact is…approximately five million tons. Saying again…Five. Million. Tons.” Heretofore, the largest warships ever made by the Union were the Nimitz class fleet carriers and the Victory class command carriers that came in right at a million tons.
“Mr. Kasparov, fire up the Arnaz scanner and let’s get a realistic number,” Max said, a trace of annoyed disbelief in his voice. “You can’t generate a compression field big enough to enclose and move a five-million-ton ship.”
“Belay that, son,” said Admiral Hornmeyer. “God help me for overriding a captain’s order in his own CIC, but you can keep the Arnaz scanner off-line. It really is five million tons.” The crusty old bastard was beaming. “And it’s ours.”
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 41