The First Casualty

by Mike Moscoe

  “Explosives should expand equally in all directions. That’s what the manufacturers advertise. Mine didn’t. It wasn’t mixed properly, so it didn’t explode evenly. Did the missile that missed us before we jumped explode evenly, or did its shrapnel hit us unevenly? What did it do to our spin?”

  Mattim mashed the comm link at Sandy’s station. “Guns, pull up those pictures from just before we jumped. Enhance them all you have to, but tell me exactly what our spin was.”

  He turned to Thor. “Hold us at a gee and a half. Turn us around fast. We’re going back through the jump. This time don’t bother with lateral displacement, just spin and velocity.”

  “Yessir.”

  Two days later they were back to the four-star system. It took another two days to get turned around. The explosion had changed their rotation. The tiny fraction of one percent spin had been a bear to hunt down. Still, it had been there, and they added it as they approached the jump. The stars twinkled, then changed.

  “Two suns,” Thor shouted.

  A moment later Sandy confirmed, “We’re home.”

  “Comm,” Mattim ordered, “get me the watch at Ninety-seventh Brigade.”

  “Got them, sir.”

  “Ninety-seventh Brigade, this is the Sheffield. Are there any colonial warships in system?”

  “Hey,” came a surprised voice, “we lost the Sheffield a couple of battles back. Who are you? Uh, code Delta Alpha, one three seven. Respond.”

  Mattim looked at Ding. She glanced at the quartermaster of the watch. “We got any answer to that challenge?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The exec raised an eyebrow. “You’re on your own, Captain.”

  “Ninety-seventh Brigade, this is Sheffield. We are not lost, just misplaced. Helm, begin a three-gee deceleration. Ninety-seventh, do you have a science officer of some kind?”

  “Commander Miller on sensors was a college professor.”

  “Please patch me through to him.”

  “I shouldn’t, but the longer you talk, the better targeting fix we get. It’s your funeral.”

  “Commander Miller here,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Commander, this is Captain Abeeb of the cruiser Sheffield. We sour-jumped thirty thousand light-years. It’s taken us this long to get back. We have several new theories about how jumps work. Before we risk a jump to Pitt’s Hope, I’d like to download them to you.”

  “I imagine you would, colonial, but I don’t want to crash our system nearly as much as you do.”

  “Miller, all our codes are a month old. If you’ll give us some calls that we can answer, we will.”

  “And since New Canton was raped two weeks ago, you colonials got plenty of codes to answer with. Still no takers, you Unity bastard.”

  Mattim glanced at Ding; apparently the war had taken a bitter turn since they left. He took a deep breath. “By now, you know it was Beta jump we used. I can convert our data dump into encapsulated packets. What’s in them stays in them. Load them to a stand-alone computer and bring it up with no network attachment. It can’t crash what it’s not hooked to.”

  Before any answer could come back, Mattim found Midshipman Zappa at his elbow, “Are you professor Elaine Miller? I studied under Professor Uxbridge at Nuevo Madrid University. He still speaks of you as his best student.”

  “So how’s Gimpy getting around? Does that beer belly still look like he’s ten months pregnant?”

  Zappa eyed the mike like she might a snake. “He’s thin as a rail and jogs. Are you thinking of someone else?”

  “Nope, and you do know the old prune. Captain, what is this data you want to send me so much?”

  “I’d rather not go too deeply into it on voice. We’ve put it in our highest code. Is it enough to repeat that we’ve been halfway across the galaxy and are back?”

  “The first ship back from a sour jump” came in awe from the speaker. “Yes. Yes, I do want that data! Send me your first packet. If it causes us any trouble, I swear…”

  “It won’t.”

  Twelve hours later, the Sheffield had killed all its momentum and was heading back for the jump point when Commander Miller came back. “Sweet God, I can’t believe it. This worked?”

  “We’re here.”

  “Yes. Hey, is there any chance you could come down here? I’d love to go over this data with your specialist. What are you doing with a team of scientists on a combat cruise anyway?”

  Mattim explained their brain trust.

  “Jesus, this war is a waste. On second thought, when would a bunch of kids get a chance to cut loose and show what they can do in a situation like that? You lucky bunch.”

  “We weren’t so sure of our luck after three bum jumps.”

  “Well, say hello to the new admiral. She’s a real scrapper.”

  “We got a new admiral?”

  “We’re on our fourth.”

  “That bad?”

  “Up there and down here both.”

  The Sheffield jumped, ship steady as a rock, and moving at only a few klicks a second. Pitt’s Hope never looked so good.

  • • •

  Every jump point has a navigation buoy. It would go through before a ship did, announcing its pending arrival, avoiding a collision in space. Many buoys had a second duty, transferring speed-of-light messages from one side of a hole to the next side.

  In wartime, buoys became listening stations.

  The buoy at Alpha jump had acquired additional antennas, a faster computer, and more storage. The struggling colonial troops on the rock called it to order supplies. Intercepted messages among the Earthies were passed to it. Only very high-priority messages could cause the buoy to make a trip through the jump before it had filled its storage. The code the Earthie cruiser used raised a flag.

  The buoy slipped through the jump, transmitted the contents of its storage to the next buoy, and then returned. The message passed from one buoy to another several times, each time its code raising a flag. Emotional surprise was not registered until a human downloaded the message on Wardhaven. “This must be a beauty. Let’s see if any of the codes from New Canton like it.”

  One did.

  The technician knew a lot about communication protocols and a bit about the theory behind the codes he used. The rest of his education stopped at middle school. Still, what he saw made him whistle. “Worlds as numberless as the stars. Hey, Senior Tech, know anyplace I could get my hands on a ship?”

  “They’re either on guard or in the yard. Why?”

  The junior tech explained the message to his senior, who shook his head. “Ain’t you heard, kid? There’s a war on. If it don’t help the party kill Earthie scum, it ain’t worth shit.”

  The junior didn’t argue, but he did take special care to send a copy of the package to the folks at Intelligence Assessment. Some of those people used their brains.

  TEN

  RITA BOUNCED OUT of her car and across the lawn. She looked as excited as a puppy…and cuter. Ray smiled, in spite of his own day. First he would listen to whatever made her dance; his news could wait. The front door flew open. “Ray, you won’t believe it. Dad, are you home?” she called.

  “No, hon,” her mother answered from upstairs, “But I expect him home early.”

  Rita gave Ray a hug where he sat in his chair, then settled down at his feet. “Hon, the most wonderful thing happened. We intercepted a message from a ship that was lost.”

  “Like we wrote your ship off.” Ray leaned forward; a forehead so excited needed a kiss. Rita accepted it demurely, then captured his cheeks with both her hands and kissed him solidly. His wife was excited, and not just about her news.

  With her tongue wandering his mouth, Ray could almost forget the letter in his pocket. Rita came up for air. “We will save that for later. First you’ve got to hear what happened.”

  Licking his lips slowly, Ray asked, “What happened?”

  “The message got shuffled to Technology. There’s only three
of them, but they knew what they had after a page. One ran down the hall looking for me. ‘Mrs. Longknife, you’re a pilot. Will you read this?’ It’s so nice when they call me Mrs. Longknife.” She smiled, the tip of her tongue escaping her lips.

  Bending quickly for a kiss, Ray asked, “And what was this they wanted you to read, Mrs. Longknife?”

  “Ray, a ship came back from a bad jump!”

  The blank look on his face was not what Rita expected.

  “Ray, ships have been going into jumps and never coming out for centuries. If you make a bad jump, you don’t come back.”

  “And why were we poor passengers never told?” he growled.

  “Because we pilots worry about it enough for all of you.”

  Ray drew back, aware he’d stomped his bride’s professional pride. He kept his mouth shut. Excited, her glower was short-lived. “In the early days, they had a lot of bad jumps. For a century they’ve become rarer and rarer. We haven’t had one in fifty years. You know what causes them?” Ray shook his head, not about to risk another misstep.

  “Speed! Speed and spin. The faster you go into a jump, the farther you go.”

  Now Ray was puzzled. “You said you took the jump into that hellhole at twice the speed you would have if the admiral hadn’t ordered it?”

  “Spin and speed,” Rita repeated, “Spin the ship up, hit a hole at high speed, and zoom, you’re halfway across the galaxy. Think about it, Ray, a whole new bunch of jump lines to survey. Millions of systems to visit. Enough cheap resources and good land for humanity to stretch out in. Ray, we’ve got to get this damn war stopped so we can get on with the real stuff of life!”

  Which brought Ray back to the letter, in his pocket. He pulled it out and handed it to her. “It appears that few share your enthusiasm for peace,” he said dryly.

  Rita glanced at the letter. “You’re invited to brief the President on the progress of the war?”

  “Please glance at the second page.”

  It took her a moment to read that letter. Handwritten by an acquaintance of Ray’s who was now on the General Staff, it offered him “advice” on how to handle—more like survive—the briefing. Do not interrupt the President. Do look attentive to everything the President says, no matter how long he speaks. Do not correct him. And, most important, do not say anything that would cast doubt on the eventual victory of Unity forces.

  Rita scowled. “That’s not a briefing, that’s a…”

  “Deaf-mute leading the blind,” Ray offered.

  “I was groping for something truly obscene. But nothing I’ve heard in my Navy time was bad enough. Ray, people are dying, and the President has his head buried in the sand.”

  Ray leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m a soldier, Rita, but sitting here, trying to make this body more than a lump of wasted tissue, I’ve had time to think. Your father is an interesting source of information. As are you. We need a private talk. I imagine violating any of the general’s Dos and Don’ts would be a career-ending decision.” Ray glanced down at his legs. “Somehow I suspect I do not have much of a career left. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to go out in a blaze of glory…” He hadn’t intended to pause, but the words came to glaring life behind his eyeballs before he finished. “…telling the President what no one else has the guts to tell him.”

  Rita paled; the pause had not gone unnoticed. “Father should be home soon. Let me help you to the garden. I think he would like to talk about this among the flowers. Mother, send Dad to the garden when he gets home,” she shouted.

  “Yes, dear. Dinner will be at seven.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  • • •

  Ray managed to make it under his own power to the hidden glade of pleasant memory. Rita was at his elbow, carrying three light lawn chairs under one arm. They were just settling in when Rita whispered, “Father is coming.”

  Coat thrown over his shoulders, sleeves rolled up, and whistling, Mr. Nuu sauntered toward them. “Mother told me you had something to tell me.”

  “Yes, Father, I’ve had a very exciting day.” Her voice didn’t sound excited. Ray wished he could turn back the hour, let Rita once more bubble of doors opening and the galaxy falling into their hands. Maybe he should not have mentioned his letter. Being a husband was more difficult than he’d expected.

  “Can you tell us what time it is, Father? Mother was very specific about dinner.”

  “Of course.” He glanced at his watch, then raised an eyebrow at them. Ray nodded.

  Ernest frowned and turned around slowly. “Can’t read it in the sunlight. Just a moment. Ah, yes.” He took his chair. “We are in the clear. What must we talk about?”

  Ray nodded to Rita. “Tell him of your discovery.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, but she quickly told her father of the ship that returned from the lost.”

  “Sweet Mother of God,” he breathed. “Each jump point leads to a dozen, and we have only made use of one. Oh, my daughter, what this will mean to you and your grandchildren.”

  “There may be no children, Father.” She handed him Ray’s letter.

  He read both pages; finished, his hands collapsed into his lap. He stared at them, mouth agape, no words coming out. “I…have…been hearing things.” He shook his head as if to free himself of a daze. “I have known powerful fools who like to rewrite history, sometimes events only a week in the past. But the Unity Party is living in fantasy.”

  “What can we do, Father, to make them see?” Rita pleaded.

  Slowly, Ernest shook his head. “Maybe it’s too late. Maybe they’ve gotten away with changing the past for so long that they no longer fear the future. Major, a friend of mine sits in the Wardhaven legislature. The night we voted to join Unity, they suspended the rule barring nonmembers from the floor of the legislature. Thugs with billy clubs wandered the hall. Thugs!

  “But even with clubs, they could not thwart our traditions. The vote of the members was to join Unity after the people approved the issue in a referendum. Do you remember that vote?”

  Ray shook his head. “As a soldier, I ignored politics.”

  “Father, I have not missed a vote since I turned twenty-one. I don’t ever remember hearing of that ballot.”

  “You and the rest of the planet. I recently had cause to review the law that brought us into Unity. The official one posted on net has several differences from the one I downloaded the morning after our legislature voted.”

  “They can do that.” Ray left the words hanging. Not a question, not quite a statement of fact.

  “They did it,” Ernest answered.

  Rita rose from her chair and went to stand behind Ray. Gently she rubbed his back. “Ray is thinking of using this invitation into the presence of the President to end his military career in a blaze of glory, telling him what he does not want to hear. Would words mean anything to him?” Rita choked on the question.

  For a long time, no one said anything. When someone moved, it was Ernest. Glancing at his watch, humming a patriotic tune, he paced around them. After one circuit, he continued pacing, but talking low, as if to himself. “I have a friend you two may wish to meet. It might shock you, daughter, but I know a spy. He may see in the major’s summons opportunities that most people only dream about. Let us talk again tomorrow afternoon.”

  He quit studying his watch, looked Ray in the eye with a gently twisted smile. “Let me help you up, Major. You have got a lot of walking ahead of you.”

  • • •

  If Mattim didn’t care for the greeting they got from the 97th, he liked Pitt’s Hope’s even less. Ordered to immediately halt, they hung in space while four heavy cruisers came out to meet them. They were scanned by everything Sandy had ever heard of and a few she hadn’t. Only after they’d been boarded were they allowed to head for Beta Station. Even then, security teams spread out over the ship while ten very suspicious types under the direct supervision of Captain Horatio Wh
itebred kept everyone on the bridge under close scrutiny. The Sheffield ended up in dock while Mattim was hustled off to report to the admiral.

  The new admiral, or the newest admiral, received him without waiting. “Captain Abeeb, you were mentioned very prominently in Captain Pringle’s report of the first battle. Highly flexible approach to fighting, but good instincts.”

  “I did what I had to do to get us out of that mess. Was the Significant badly damaged?”

  “No, they patched her up before the next shoot, and lost her with all hands in that one, sorry to say.”

  It was a kick in the gut. All the risks Mattim had taken to get them out alive only added a few days to their lives. Damn! If the admiral noticed his reaction, she only hesitated a moment. “The Sheffield’s going to be a while in dock, Captain.”

  “We made most of her battle damage good,” Mattim interrupted. “The crew needed work to keep their minds off being lost. The ship’s in good shape.”

  “I don’t doubt that, Mattim, but we’ve learned a lot in the last six weeks, and your ship is about two mods behind in hardware, three or four in software. What was good enough for fifteen or twenty years of peacetime service gets replaced in two or three weeks now.

  “I’ve been wanting to do something since I took command last week, but didn’t have anyone. Now, I think I do. While the Sheffield is being updated, I’d like to detach you to the Ninety-seventh. Captain Anderson and Commander Umboto are damn good, but they’ve spent most of their careers on the defense. The squadron keeps getting clobbered in running gun battles. They keep getting clobbered from space when we’re not around. We’re each fighting our own separate battles. I want us to fight together.”

  Mattim liked her point. Still, he hardly saw himself as the man to glue two different Navies together. “You must have someone better at this than me.”

  “Captain, I came in with the Forty-ninth Cruiser Squadron. Right now every ship, except the Sheffield, is battle ready. I know what kind of battle I want to fight. Until Gamma jump starts hollering that colonials are in-system, I intend to spend every minute training the ships I’ve got to fight just that battle.