No Plan Survives

by L. D. Robinson

  “I’ll look at that.”

  The captain took out a pen, circled the action in the plan, then drew an arrow down to another spot. “Put it here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Otherwise, it looks good.” She handed the paper back to Hiranaka. “Is the meeting room set up?”

  “The quartermaster’s working on it.”

  “All right, get everybody in there now.”

  “Now?” Damn, she wasn’t ready; she hadn’t had time to change the document.

  “Uh huh,” the captain said, giving her what looked like an expression of consolation. But it didn’t feel very consoling. It was more like the consolation prize. Booby prize. Her plan sucked.

  Her stomach hurt. She hadn’t been able to eat much the entire day, and what little she had eaten now burned in her gut. This was the worst duty she’d ever had. Not anything like what she was used to.

  Being a pilot, flying jets, was immeasurably easier. Yes, there were times when you had to make decisions and rely on fast thinking, but it was nothing like having to put together these crazy plans, with not enough information, and everyone second-guessing her. When she flew, she knew the physical forces that kept her aircraft working, she knew how to operate everything inside the cockpit with her eyes closed, and she knew what the procedures were for any contingency. But now, she didn’t have a clue. For the first time in her military career, Hiranaka didn’t know how to proceed, and that meant she could fail at this job.

  Colonel Mehta stood. “I’ll see you in the meeting room.” Then she walked out.

  Hiranaka swallowed, then turned and rushed out the door. Hell with changing the document. She could remember what the commander had said.

  When she got to the meeting room, the quartermaster and his people were fussing with tape on the table. “It needs to go like this,” someone said.

  “No, no! The console’s not shaped like that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hiranaka said. “Just give them a delineated space to work in. They can use their imaginations.” They were going to have to do that, anyway.

  She looked over her notes again. It was show-time, and she wasn’t ready. She was going to fall on her ass.

  The bridge crew filed into the room, taking their spots. Mlendish was at communications, and that couldn’t be a good thing. He was such an argumentative little troll.

  Opash walked in and surveyed the group. “Where’s navigation?”

  “She’s waiting for her back-up to get back to the bridge,” Mlendish said. “I think she was having a bathroom break or something.”

  Colonel Mehta walked in.

  “Captain’s on the bridge,” Hiranaka called out.

  “Take your seats,” Colonel Mehta said. “We’re still missing one?”

  “Right here,” a voice came from the door. Yagran hurried over to the mock console.

  Colonel Mehta took her seat behind the mock bridge consoles, approximating where she would sit in an actual scenario. Then, she nodded at Major Hiranaka.

  Here goes nothing.

  She looked down at her paper. “Welcome to the ship rescue rehearsal of concept.” She looked up, searching their faces for a sign that they understood. But they looked as confused as she was flustered.

  Just keep going. You can’t freeze up here.

  “First,” she continued, “I’m going to brief you on the plan, and what actions you are to take at each point. Once that’s done, we’ll go through the process in slow motion, and each of you will perform your actions in this mock bridge. Then, if that goes well, we’ll do it again at normal speed. Are there any questions?”

  She scanned the faces, briefly glancing at Colonel Mehta. She didn’t dare look straight at her. “As we go through the actions, I’ll tell you what’s happening. I’ll give you the information you would be getting from your instruments and sensors.” She glanced over the silent crowd. “All right, let’s begin with the briefing.”

  Hiranaka read the whole thing from her paper, trying to sound animated enough that she wouldn’t put them to sleep, and to slow down in the more complex parts, to give them time to soak it all in. But when she ended, they all looked bewildered.

  Great. That really went well.

  “Any questions?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Okay. Now let’s begin the scenario. You are at your stations on the bridge. Neither Colonel Mehta nor Executive Officer Opash are on the bridge. Communications, you pick up a signal from the ship in sector five-fourty-six.” She looked at Mlendish.

  He stared at her.

  “What do you do?”

  “Go to ‘radio silence’?” he said.

  She sighed. “Inform the others on the bridge.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He sat with his hands in his lap.

  “Do it,” Colonel Mehta said.

  “Do what?”

  “Inform the bridge.”

  “They already know.”

  “No, they don’t,” Hiranaka said. “You’re the only one who’s seen the communications.”

  Mlendish sighed. “This is stupid.” He waited for another moment, then said, “Incoming communication from sector five-fourty-six. Looks like they’re about to engage someone.” He flicked his fingers over the fake console. “There. The broadcast is now on the auxiliary screen.”

  Hiranaka looked down at her paper. “The sensor operator on the other ship has confirmed that it is Species X coming toward them.”

  She looked back at the bridge crew.

  They looked at her.

  “Sound the alert,” Hiranaka said to Mlendish.

  He rolled his eyes, then stabbed a finger onto the table. “There. Are you happy now?”

  Colonel Mehta frowned. “I am now on the intercom,” she said. “This is Colonel Mehta. What’s the situation?”

  “Species X is attacking in sector five-fourty-six,” Vril said. “What are your orders?”

  “Execute a meeting engagement,” Mehta said.

  “Right,” Vril said, then thrummed his fingers over the table in front of him. “Preparing to go into Netherspace. Navigation, what’s the course?”

  “I’ll give you that,” Yagran said testily. “You don’t have to ask for it.”

  “Okay, I have the course,” Vril said. He flicked a finger. “We’re in Netherspace.”

  Hiranaka looked at Yagran. “We’re ten minutes from the battle site.”

  “Ten minutes,” Yagran repeated.

  Everyone looked at each other.

  “I’ve arrived on the bridge,” Colonel Mehta announced. “I’m looking over ship’s status.” She walked over to stand behind Rbemfel, then nodded.

  Hiranaka glanced at Yagran. “You’ve made sensor contact.”

  “We wouldn’t be able to make contact this far out,” she said.

  “Okay, then, we’re closer,” Hiranaka said.

  Yagran huffed. “Okay.” She looked at the others. “I see them on sensors.”

  “Personnel on the other ship are saying that Species X will be in weapons range in three minutes.”

  “What angle are we going to come in at?” Colonel Mehta asked Vril.

  He gave her a sharp look, like he thought she was asking unnecessary questions she didn’t need to ask. “I don’t know.”

  It looked like she did need to ask that one.

  “About 60 degrees on the X axis,” Yagran said. “That was the number you gave us, right?”

  “Right,” Hiranaka said. At least somebody had been paying attention. They needed to arrive at an angle that let them shoot at the side of the enemy ship. And they needed to make certain they weren’t going to move into the other Mralan ship’s line of fire. Back in her work as a fighter pilot, they knew how to do these things. They had specific maneuvers they made that ensured they neither fired at each other nor crashed into each other. But this was different. She was working with another craft whose crew didn’t even know she was going to show up.

  “Okay
,” Colonel Mehta said, walking back to her chair, “we’re almost there.”

  Everyone looked at each other. “I don’t remember what comes next,” Yagran said.

  “Power distribution,” Hiranaka said.

  “Right,” Rbemfel said. “I’m getting ready to transfer all power to weapons.”

  “Good,” Hiranaka said. “Then, after you do that—”

  A loud noise interrupted her instructions—the alert klaxon.

  Colonel Mehta pressed the button on her datapad. “Bridge, what’s going on?”

  “Species X is approaching the ship at sector five-fourty-six,” the voice came through the speakers.

  “How long until we get there?”

  “Still eight hours.”

  Damn. Hiranaka could see the pain on the colonel’s face. This was not how the plan was supposed to work. They were going to fail, and it wasn’t in their control at all.

  “Gravity,” the colonel said.

  “What?” Had she flipped her lid? Was she just spouting crazy non-sequiturs because it had all gone wrong?

  “Primary staff to the bridge,” Colonel Mehta said then. Everyone jumped up and hurried out. Mehta lifted her datapad again. “Lower the ship’s artificial gravity to fifty percent and funnel the extra energy into propulsion. I’m on my way to the bridge, and when I get there, I need a new estimated arrival time.”

  Hiranaka swallowed as she watched Colonel Mehta bound toward the door. Halfway there, the gravity changed, and suddenly Mehta rose several feet higher than normal with each step. When she reached the door, she put her hand up to grab the top of the door frame to keep herself from slamming into it.

  Hiranaka stood in her spot. The room was almost empty, and her soul sank more with each person who left. She had failed them. She had not gotten the plan together in time for them to rehearse it right, she had not explained it well enough to them, and now they were going into battle unprepared.

  The room was empty.

  Hiranaka closed her eyes. What could she do now?

  Then her eyes popped open. She was the only person besides Colonel Mehta who understood the plan. She needed to be on the bridge, coaching everyone, making certain they did what they were supposed to do without Mehta having to order every single little move.

  She looked at the table in front of her, then smiled. Why not? She flexed her knees and jumped. Her feet easily cleared the obstacle and the chairs behind it. Time to soar.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Running in low gravity was not as easy as Mehta had thought it would be. Every time she pushed off, she gained more altitude than she had anticipated, and that slowed down the process. But by the time she had reached the bridge, she had almost mastered the change in muscle movements required to give her strides more forward momentum, and less upward drive.

  Just about.

  She hit the top of the door frame with her head as she entered the bridge. “Ow, damn it.”

  Several crewmen turned to look at her.

  Act normal. Everybody’s going to experience this. No big deal.

  “What’s our time to intercept?” she asked.

  “Three hours,” Yagran said.

  Damn. That was still way too long.

  She looked at the auxiliary screen. The crew looked calm for the most part, only a few ticks revealing nervousness.

  The bridge door opened, and Ndrem and Ramirez entered, walking to the chairs in the back, datapads in hand.

  “What’s their game plan?” Mehta asked Opash.

  “Their what?”

  “Their tactic. What are they planning to do?”

  “They’re going to fight,” she said.

  Mehta shook her head. Bad plan. That would get them destroyed way before anyone could reach them. Mehta turned around. “Ndrem, I need a system with a comet cloud in their sector. Which one is nearest to the other ship?”

  “Give me a second,” he said, nose buried in his datapad. Ramirez leaned over and watched.

  She turned to communications. “Mlendish, as soon as Ndrem identifies the system, break radio silence and contact the other ship. Tell them we’ve discovered something at the comet cloud of that system that’ll enable them to win the battle. They must travel there before they engage Species X.”

  Mlendish looked at her for a moment, then turned back to his console.

  “Got the system,” Ndrem said. “U-five-oh-eight.”

  The bridge door opened, and Hiranaka walked in, hands gripping the door frame and then running along the walls, grasping at anything that would function as a hand-hold.

  “Davis,” Mehta said, “I want you to head down to engineering and make sure they’re managing the damage control teams the way they need. I’ll be in contact.”

  “Right,” he said and bounded through the door.

  “Okay,” Mehta said, “give me a new time estimate. How long until we can reach U-five-oh-eight?”

  “Two hours.”

  Better, but not enough.

  “And how long will it take the other ship to get there?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  So, the other ship would have to survive for an hour and forty-five minutes in the comet cloud before Mehta’s ship arrived. And they were going to be wondering, probably demanding to know what this thing was that would enable them to win.

  They were going to be very angry, right before their ship blew up.

  Even in Netherspace, with its monstrous speeds, the vastness of space was overwhelming.

  “Lower gravity on the ship to one third,” she ordered. “Then send that to propulsion.”

  Rbemfel turned to Mehta. “I don’t know how much more energy the propulsion system can take.”

  “Are you getting warning indicators?”

  “Not yet. But we’ve never put this much power through propulsion before.”

  “Okay. If you see indications of problems, stop increasing at that point and let me know.”

  His head ratcheted up and down in what looked like an attempt to nod. Then he turned back around.

  Mlendish turned to Mehta. “They want to know what’s at U-five-oh-eight that’ll help them.”

  “Tell them we can’t say, but they’ll recognize it when they see it.”

  “I don’t think they’ll like that answer.”

  “Have they started toward the system?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.” She rubbed her hand over her face. “Have you got a better way to convince them, without telling them we’re going to be there?”

  Mlendish puckered his face for a moment, then turned back to his console.

  That was scarier than anything else. What the hell was Mlendish going to say? She stood and walked up to him, so she could hear him speak.

  “There’s a weapon hidden in one of the comet fragments, and when the Species X ship passes it, it’ll explode.”

  That was credible, since Species X knew the Mralans had tried such a tactic before.

  The woman at communications on the other ship shook her head. “Why weren’t we told about this before?”

  “I don’t know!” Mlendish said. “I just found out about it myself.”

  “How can we trust this?”

  “Eanseth,” Mlendish said, “we are your friends. We’re trying to save you. I have dear ones on your ship, and several of our crew members have family there.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mehta, and she nodded at him to continue. “And anyway, it can’t hurt, can it? You’ll just have your battle in a different spot.”

  “Which comet holds this weapon?”

  Mlendish looked up at Mehta.

  She shrugged. “Do they have designations?”

  “Just by location.”

  “Okay, give them the location of the one closest to us.”

  Mlendish nodded, then turned around again, tapping a query into his console. When he got the result, he relayed it to the other ship.

  Mehta turned to Vril and Yagran. “Okay, when the Species X s
hip passes by that comet, they’re going to have all their shields on. We don’t want to arrive at that moment.”

  “We’ll be well past that,” Yagran said. “We’re down to an hour to get there.”

  Still an hour. Could the other ship last forty-five minutes bobbing in and around the comets, using them for cover?

  Mehta paced for a moment. What else could she do?

  “Reduce gravity to 25%.”

  Rbemfel groaned. “We cannot do any more speed.”

  Mehta looked over her shoulder. “Show me your systems status.”

  Rbemfel called up a display that showed a large bar graph. “This line, here,” he said, his voice wavering, “is the danger zone. The manuals say never to let the bars cross it.” Several bars were a hair’s width from crossing over.

  “What’s that one a reading of?” Mehta said, pointing to the bar closest to the top.

  “Temperature.”

  Mehta swallowed. If she overheated the propulsion systems, things could melt and fuse, and then they would be stuck in space, stranded. “Call engineering and ask them if there’s anything they can rig up to siphon off some of the heat.”

  “If it’s possible,” Rbemfel said

  “Do it. And keep easing the speed up,” Mehta said.

  His nod was so shaky it looked like he had a neuro-degenerative disease. But he turned back to his console and began working.

  There had to be something else they could do. But what?

  “Weapons, um…” she said, snapping her fingers. Seems like they’d been introduced.

  “Uazik,” the woman there said.

  “How well do these energy weapons propagate through clouds and things?”

  Uazik frowned. “They scatter. But if you’re thinking about using a nebula, they’re not dense enough for the scattering to make any difference.”

  “How about a Mralan-made nebula?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What if you hit a small comet with your weapons? Would it shatter?”

  A smile appeared on Uazik’s face. “If you hit it right.”

  “Could you set your weapons to maximize the size of the cloud and get the particles to scatter the most?”

  “I think I can come up with something that’ll do that.”

  Mehta nodded. “When you’ve got it figured out, pass it on to communications, so he can relay it to the other ship.”