Heart of Steel: Book II of the Jonathan Pavel Series

by J. S. Hawn

“Don't sir it was the right move, if you hadn’t taken out the collier it would have gotten away. As it is, any Colonial warships that escaped have to make course for home.”

  “True Major, you know you have a good mind for the bigger picture.”

  “Thanks sir,” she replied.

  “Are you planning on making the Marines a lifelong career?” he asked.

  “Probably, I’ve been in since I was 17. Opted to volunteer rather than do the National service. Next thing I know, they tap me for OCS.”

  Jonathan nodded, unlike the Army and the Navy, the Solarian Marines didn't have a military academy for officers. Instead, recruits who exhibited strong leadership skills would be selected for a two year Officer Candidate School. This involved one year of intense academic training and one year serving in the field as a subaltern, basically an apprentice officer. It was a highly unorthodox system, but it kept the Marines true to their philosophy of every Marine being a rifleman. It also meant a good number of senior officers were much younger than in other branches.

  “Well, I’m glad your people made it through Major.”

  “Me to sir,” she replied. “I did want to ask if you’ll let us do some boarding practice in the near future. My grunts are a good bunch, but they are a couple points we could improve on.”

  “There always is. I’ll see what we can do.”

  “Thank you sir, also I heard you are quite the boxer. Let me know if you’d like to spar with us sometime.”

  Jonathan laughed, “Maybe ten years and ten pounds ago I’d agree to that, but I think you're quite out of my league.”

  A mischievous grin hovered at the edge of the Major’s smile. “I don't know sir, I’d go easy on you. Now, If you’ll excuse me I have to get back to bed rest before Perkins gets up the courage to come looking for me.”

  She turned to go before Jonathan could say anything else. Had she been..no Jonathan dismissed the idea from his mind. She was a lovely woman, but aboard ship it was professionalism first and foremost, and sometimes a lot of cold showers.

  Chapter XII

  Matosa System, Solarian Republic

  On board RSNS Sound of Fury

  November 14th 844 AE

  The reshuffling of cargo, loading of prisoners and reforming of the convoy took a bit longer than Jonathan had planned, but finally on the 14th of November the Fury and her escorts arrived in the Matosa system. As he resumed his seat on the bridge following the transition, Jonathan asked Tai Heath to do a data pull from the system’s com relay. The high volume of high priority traffic streaming through the com relay was causing less urgent communications such as general updates on the war and personal correspondence to be shunted into the com relay’s data buffers, only to be sent through the wormway when higher priority traffic had cleared. A data dump would pull those low priority messages into the Fury’s own data banks were Heath and his staff could sift through them at will.

  “Sir, six contacts closing rapidly,” Ben Elman said from his desk.

  “Can you confirm they are bogeys Mr. Elman?” Jonathan asked.

  “Wait one,” Elman said.

  The moments ticked by and Jonathan gripped the armrest of his chair tighter. Matosa should be under Solarian control, but if it had fallen.

  “Sir Lidar paints the incoming craft as Olympian Class Destroyers. They are ours,” Elman said finally.

  Jonathan relaxed a bit, “Transmit the countersign Mr. Heath.”

  “Uh, Captain we have not received a signal challange,” Heath said.

  Uh oh Jonathan thought. This was obviously the system picket who had been on edge for the last several days. Fatigue and constant combat wore on men. Once that happened, procedure began to lapse and without proper procedure mistakes could be made. Sometimes fatal ones.

  “Mr. Heath transmit all appropriate signals and in the clear announce our identity,” Jonathan said.

  “Aye sir,” Heath replied.

  “Mr. Elman how long till they are in range?” Jonathan asked.

  “Ten minutes sir,” Elman replied.

  Yes, that tracked. It was a dangerous thing to keep a picket so close to a wormway, but if you wanted to catch an enemy force at their most vulnerable it was worth the risk.

  Finally, Heath looked up from his console relief on his face.

  “Sir we have confirmation Captain Shun of RSNS Hermes sends his compliments, and welcomes us to,” Heth stopped for a minute his face grim then he looked up, “the new headquarters of the 5th Fleet.”

  “Shit,” Jonathan said.

  Matosa was not suppose to be a headquarters for anything, but as Fury and her convoy proceeded into the system escorted by Hermes and her fellows, it became clear how bad the situation was. The 5th had held off the Colonial thrust into Sagus, though the San Cristobal dockyards had been damaged. However, the Colonial move on Sagus had turned out to be a diversion. Colonial ships had pushed through League systems and attacked Cyrila directly overwhelming the forces sent to defend it. Admiral Hopper, who Jonathan knew from personal experience was a bastard but a smart bastard, had seen the writing on the wall. The 5th had pulled back to consolidate its line of defense, and acting on his own authority Hopper had ordered all Solarian forces withdrawn from the League as the Republic's former ally seemed to lurch further into chaos with each passing day. Jonathan cringed as he saw the forces in orbit of Xifeng, Matosa’s primary world. The 5th fleet was suppose to be Solaria’s primary fighting force in this sector, but it had obviously been hit badly. The fleet was down to two thirds of her pre-war strength even accounting for vessels in neighbouring systems. It appeared that among the casualties were at least one of the 5th’s carriers and four of her battleships. It was a two day trip to the orbit of Xifeng where Fury would deposit her prisoners and hand the convoy over to the 5th’s command and find out what Fury’s next assignment was. Jonathan did his best to pass the time in a productive manner. Currently, that meant pretending to go over reactor power levels with Harold Okai and his assistant Hilper. It wasn't a task Jonathan relished. He was well versed in engineering principles, so much so it had been heavily suggested he pursue the engineering tract instead of the tactical one while he was enrolled at Overwatch. However, nothing in the entire universe could make it even remotely interesting to Jonathan. Oh sure he understood what Okai and Hilper were saying, but that didn't mean his eyes weren't going to glaze over.

  Okai, on the other hand, had an enthusiasm for this and a meticulous attention to detail that Jonathan could never hope to imitate.

  “As you can see sir, during our action in Casaopia the kinetic barriers were creating a pretty heavy draw on on the reactor when we are burning at full power,” Okai was explaining as he and Jonathan huddled over a diagram in reactor control while Hilper her face ever set in something between sullen and sulking stirred her coffee. Despite being onboard for nearly a month, Jonathan still couldn't quite figure Hilper out. Following what happened with Doneghy and Taudown though, he was happy to have her aboard.

  Okai continued, “In fact I’m glad you called off the pursuit of that other destroyer when you did, otherwise we might have had major trouble.”

  “Yes that’s what I wanted to discuss, Lt. Commander. You mentioned in your After Action Report that we ran a real risk of redlining, but you didn't inform the bridge crew.”

  “Ugh..I..I” Okai said.

  “We were a bit busy fixing the problem to get on the horn sir,” Hilper said her tone somehow both respectful and acidic.

  “Yes, I’m sure you were. Just next time make sure I’m up to date on any issues we run into,” Jonathan said.

  “Right. Yes skipper,” Okai said realizing he wasn’t in for a busting he no doubt had expected.

  “Now, this issue. Is it a problem with the Fury’s design or is it something we can fix?”

  Hilper piped up, “It’s fixable sir.”

  “Lt. we discussed this,” Okai said a bit agitated.

  “We did sir,” then she continued, �
��In my opinion sir, the problem is fixable. The issue is with the primary junction relay. When they did the refit a couple years back, they used a TS-900 instead of the TS-650, which is what the Horatio class were designed for.”

  “And to fix it we would need to remove the TS-900 and swap it for a TS-650, but we would need yard time for that since the TS-650 is the size of a ground car and weighs about twenty tons,” Okai said sullenly. “Considering that Matosa has one tenth the yard space of Macran in the whole system, I don't think such a fix is possible,” Jonathan replied.

  “Not if we retrofit it,” Hilper said.

  “Which, as far as I can tell, has never been done before,” Okai replied.

  “That doesn't make it impossible,” Hilper countered.

  “Excuse me,” Jonathan said his voice a few octaves below a snap.

  “Sorry sir,” Okai said.

  “Sir,” Hilper said sullenly.

  “How much risk would it be to retrofit Lt. Commander?” Jonathan asked.

  “Well,” Okai said glancing at Hilper. “As far as I can tell, the actual retrofit won't be much of a risk. Of course we’ll need to take the engines and barriers offline along with the weapons, but we’ll be able to keep the life support running.”

  “How long would we be offline?” Jonathan asked.

  “Couple of hours, maybe a day or two maximum,” Okai said.

  “The risk is, sir, is that if we don't do it properly we could have a massive cascading failure, which could drop our barriers and blow out our engines.”

  “I can see how that would be bad,” Jonathan replied. He pondered a moment then nodded.

  “Okay we get into orbit of Xifeng the day after tomorrow. Once we are there, go ahead and do what you need to. I’d rather we try to fix the problem than ignore it and hope it goes away.”

  “That sounds like a good idea sir,” Okai said.

  Hilper just nodded and put down her coffee, “If you’ll excuse me sir, I need to see to something.”

  “Of course Lt. you are dismissed,” Jonathan said saluting. Hilper returned his salute and strode out of the room, closing the hatch behind her.

  “Well that could have gone worse,” Okai said leaning over his schematics.

  “Everything alright between you and your No 2?” Jonathan asked.

  “Aye sir, she’s a smart girl. Smarter than me even, and I’ve never seen anyone who knew reactors better. The problem is she’s got a lot of what you could call unbridled enthusiasm.”

  “Well do what you can to temper it, while you're at it though no reason not to start sorting out how to best manage a retrofit.”

  “Aye sir, I’ll get the lads on it.”

  Jonathan nodded and excused himself. Heading out of engineering, he was struck by the good cheer of the crewmen all of whom snapped to attention at his coming and resumed what they were doing as he passed. It wasn't a surprise, not really. They had see their first action and lived through it. Such an experience tended to make men's spirits a bit more buoyant. The situation might be dire with the war, but that was abstract to the crew of the Fury. They knew their little corner of the war had ended with victory and they were proud of it. They were far from the only ones. News of Fury and her consorts destruction of the Colonial wolf pack, the capture of the Maltese and three Colonial warships was already spreading across the fleet. The Fury's crew had received many hearty congratulations from their comrades on other ships as well as command. More privately, Jonathan had received a congratulatory letter from both Hopper and the OMI section chief of the 5th for his capture of Abouet’s intact data core. Jonathan didn't kid himself. This was a lull between storms. Soon Fury would be facing danger again, and privately Jonathan worried about the old girl. She had performed well enough, but she was an old girl and her age was showing. Coming down the central corridor Jonathan almost bumped squarely into Terrance Knowles, who seemed deep in thought.

  “Watch it…” Knowles began but seeing Jonathan's rank pins turned as bright a shade of red as his dark skin would allow and snapped to attention.

  “Apologies sir, I wasn't with myself.”

  “No problem Bosun. I’m sure most folks who bump into you just bounce off.”

  That caused a smile to appear on Knowles’s face but just as quickly vanish. Knowles had a fixation on proper decorum that most conservative Landeds would find obsessive.

  “Actually sir, I was looking for you,” Knowles said his face the picture of proper deference as he handed Jonathan a memo pad.

  “It took some doing, but I’ve put together everything I know about the Octavian class frigate and any other warship the ETO has deemed exportable.

  Jonathan took the pad and skimmed it briefly. It was a very detailed report and Jonathan was impressed.

  “I’ll have Lt. Commander Heath pass this on to OMI. You never know if they could glean something useful from it. This shows some real initiative Knowles I dont suppose...”

  Knowles held up his hand, “I know what you're going to say sir and no I’m never going to sit for the OCS test. No offense sir, but I dont have the class. Slum rats like me don’t fly ships. We’re just along for the ride besides I’m happy where I’m at.”

  “I think you are wrong Knowles, how long have you been in the navy now?”

  “Almost 25 years now skipper.”

  “And you never noticed the meritocratic streak that runs a star system wide through the navy? The Admiral of the Fleet is the son of a mill foreman.”

  Knowles nodded, “That may be true sir, but you no doubt know there's good wogs and bad ones, and a Terran wog would be a curiosity at best. Besides, like I said I’m happy where I’m at.”

  Jonathan nodded, “I won't push you on it Bosun, but if you ever change your mind I’ll write your recommendation letter myself.”

  “Much obliged sir.”

  “Now Boats, anything I should know going on below deck?”

  A ghost of a smile graced Knowles’s face again.

  “You were a spacer born weren't you sir? Not a lot of other officers so attentive to the pulse of what's happening, but so light footed about it.”

  “Goes with the experience.”

  “Right. Well, first of all that Gremlin you let onboard has only gained about ten pounds. Half the crew thinks he's our good luck charm, and the other half thinks he's cute as hell and loads of fun. Either way, he gets fed wherever he goes.”

  “Well spread the word the Gremlin is on a diet. Spacer Jung has been caring for the creature for years. He’ll know what to feed him to get him back to a healthy weight. Wouldn't do any good to have our good luck charm keeling over from a cardiac arrest now would it.”

  “Suppose not sir. One other thing. Have you talked to the Vicar lately?”

  “Reverend Hightower, no why?”

  “She’s having a hard time sir. Not really use to ship life. Her last two sermons were... well...they were tough to sit through.”

  “I’ll have a word with her. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment sir.”

  “Very well then Bosun carry on,” Jonathan said saluting Knowles.

  The ship's chapel was located just off the passageway to the forward bottom turret. It was a modest room capable of seating about a hundred people. The limited space aboard ship meant that only half that seating was available with the rest being used as temporary storage. The altar was also modest. It was a wooden table bolted to the floor, and the denomination of the chaplin determined what religious icon decorated the altar. Jonathan knelt before the plain wooden cross and two chalices one wood one gold, well actually the second one was brass but it looked gold.

  “Captain!” Came a startled cry from behind Jonathan.

  He turned to see Hightower, her messy brown hair pulled in a bun, and on her neck was the space sickness patch.

  “Reverend, how are you?”

  “I well enough, I…” she looked at Jonathan. “In the Naval hierarchy where do I fall? Am I allowed to confide
in you or is it inappropriate?”

  Jonathan did his best not to laugh because it was a serious question. “Your outside the hierarchy Reverend. As Captain of this ship, it's my job to see to the needs of its crew, all of its crew. What’s troubling you?”

  She sank down onto a pew exhaustion showing in her eyes.

  “I haven't slept since I came aboard. I mean I get a few hours here and there, but I haven't really slept. Every time I take my patch off I puke, which is alright because the food doesn't taste right, and I miss the sun. God I’d kill just to feel the breeze on my face.” She looked up at Jonathan her cheeks turning red with a blush.

  “Oh god I just said all that didn't I, sorry I didn't mean to let it all come tumbling out it’s just...”

  “Easy, easy, no need to apologize Reverend,” Jonathan said putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. He saw the problem right away and he kicked himself for not seeing it earlier. Hightower was a true civilian in uniform. She was having a hard time coping with life aboard ship. Come to think of it...

  “Reverend when was the last time you were in space?”

  “The first time was when I was on the transport coming out here. I’ve never been off of Solaria before, actually I’ve never left New Albion.”

  “Oh,” Jonathan said well this complicated things. “Have you tried getting a script from the medbay?”

  Hightower’s face flashed briefly with something approaching anger, “I did. It didn't take.”

  Jonathan sensed something behind the comment. He’d been hoping Perkins’s new attitude had resolved the lingering resentment his personality could cause. Apparently it had not, but one crisis at a time.

  “Well then Reverend I guess I have to ask, why are you here?”

  “I...it’s not going to sound logical sir.”

  “Captain, Skipper, or Jonathan if you prefer when we are alone. No need to sir me. You're outside the chain of command remember,” Jonathan said.

  “Oh right sorry Skipper,” Hightower said trying out the word.

  “No problem. So why?” Jonathan asked.

  Hightower seemed to hesitate until finally she said in a voice so quiet Jonathan barely heard her.