by Jo Zebedee
“Mr Voyna,” asked the Admiral, “do we have a fix on Sabre Horn?”
“Not yet, ma’am. We still have a sixteen second time-lag.”
“You have the velocity and course plotted?”
“Ma’am.”
The Admiral took note of the relative positions of Vengeful and Sabre Horn in the battle-consultant’s glass. “Coxswain,” she called.
Mate Leka demar Kowo turned from her station behind the two helmsmen. “Ma’am?”
“Make course four-five degrees starboard, six-oh degrees keelwards.”
“Aye, aye: course four-five starboard, six-oh keel.”
“Course four-five on,” sang out one helmsman.
“Course six-oh on,” called the other.
“Mr Hayomernok, ahead three-quarters,” the Admiral instructed her chief engineer. “Get me within range of Sabre Horn.”
“Mr Voyna, get me a bearing on the target, if you please,” ordered the Admiral.
“Yellow forty-four, ma’am, green thirty-two,” read out the lieutenant of battle order.
The Admiral stared at the sphere of battle depicted on the battle-consultant, imagining Sabre Horn somewhere within the device’s workings. Until some savant invented a three-dimensional display, naval tactics would be as much the product of a commanding officer’s mental discipline as it would the laws of physics.
The predicted course for the red arrowhead representing the enemy frigate had yet to solidify to a single line. Its vector was still too difficult to forecast. “Mr Voyna,” asked the Admiral, “you have enough for a solution?”
“Ma’am, I can only provide a range: there’s still a twelve second lag, and Sabre Horn is moving too fast.”
“Moving out of range of the torpedoes’ guidance-mechanisms.” That was Falconet. “They’ll not acquire us.”
“Pass what you have to Fire Control, Mr Voyna,” the Admiral said. “I can’t afford to let her launch another salvo.”
“Six minutes to full power to main gun,” reported Falconet.
“Drop me a spread of torpedoes, Mr Falconet.”
“They’ll likely miss, ma’am,” he replied. “The lag is still too great to be sure of her course or velocity.”
“I am well aware of that, Mr Falconet. Ms Kowo, course three-oh degrees starboard, ten-five degrees topwards.”
It was the Admiral’s intention the torpedoes would encourage Sabre Horn to turn to port, such that she and Vengeful were on converging courses. With the signal-lag at ten seconds—some 950,000 miles—the frigate’s captain would not learn of his mistake until it was too late.
“Implosions detected!”called Voyna. “Range four hundred thousand miles.”
Sabre Horn’s torpedoes, having realised they had lost their target, had self-destructed.
“Do we need countermeasures?” the Admiral asked.
Falconet replied: “I should say not, ma’am. The Mountain Hunter class can only put six torpedoes into space at once.”
“Why only a single salvo?” The Admiral turned to her communications-console, seeking an answer from the faces in the glasses.
“Perhaps they have no reloads,” suggested Mubariz. It was true that a warship on extended picket duty which had seen combat could be short of munitions.
“If they’d fired a second salvo,” put in Lieutenant-Commander Voyna, “we would have detected it by now: it takes only four minutes to reload the tubes on a Mountain Hunter.”
Lieutenant-Commander Hayomernok shook his head in disagreement: “The munitions delivery system aboard Mountain Hunters is notoriously prone to jamming. If it failed at the torpedo-hatch from the armoury, they can’t reload the tubes until it’s fixed.”
“You’ve served aboard a Mountain Hunter, Mr Hayomernok?” asked the Admiral.
The chief engineer nodded. “Two tours as technical-lieutenant. They’re uncomfortable ships, ma’am.”
Voyna: “Signal-lag five seconds.”
Falconet: “Full power to main gun in ten seconds.”
The Admiral: “Fire when ready, Mr Falconet.”
The captain of guns nodded, waited a beat, and said, “Fire!”
Moments later, the lights throughout the conning tower dimmed momentarily as power was fed to the main gun. The deck vibrated with the forces unleashed.
After six seconds, the captain of guns instructed, “Close down the main gun.”
“A hit, Mr Voyna?” asked the Admiral.
The lieutenant of battle order paused before replying. “It seems not, ma’am. There’s nothing in Sabre Horn’s spectrum consistent with a hull-breach.”
Falconet: “Three minutes until main gun recharged.”
“Then we shall have to try again,” said the Admiral. “Mr Hayomernok, make ahead full. Mr Voyna, work on your firing solution. We may out-gun the frigate, but that’s of no consequence if we continue to miss her.”
“Ma’am,” acknowledged the lieutenant of battler order. and then: “Six more torpedoes!”
Commander Mubariz shifted from one foot to the other, and grunted something under his breath. The Admiral caught the movement and focused on him, one eyebrow raised.
“The captain’s a fool, ma’am,” the commander said. “His first salvo was wasted. He’s throwing ordnance away to no effect.”
The Admiral smiled grimly. “I think desperate measures are acceptable, given his situation. He is out-matched, after all.”
Sabre Horn’s main armament comprised a directed-energy main gun with a two-foot aperture, one-sixth the power or range of Vengeful’s. Perhaps at close range, 100,000 miles or less, with a signal-lag of a second or under, Sabre Horn might manage to inflict some damage on the battlecruiser. At long range, the engagement was very much one-sided. The frigate could only hope to use its superior manoeuvrability to escape destruction.
“Mr Voyna,” asked the Admiral, “how is our firing solution?”
“We’re down to three seconds lag, ma’am.”
“Can you guarantee a hit?”
“No, ma’am. The target is making evasive manoeuvres.”
The commander spoke up: “Ma’am, the battle-consultant does not have enough information to calculate the evasion algorithm.”
“Where are my torpedoes, Mr Voyna?”
“Leaving the battle-space, ma’am. They should self-destruct shortly.”
“Mr Falconet, drop me another spread. We have ordnance to spare. Bracket Sabre Horn: let us limit her options for evasion.”
The Admiral regarded the view depicted in the battle-consultant’s glass: Vengeful’s course, the six lines representing her torpedoes, the predicted course of the frigate… Falconet had set the ordnance to spread out as they travelled. Sabre Horn would choose a course between them, far away from each to avoid setting off their proximity detectors.
Which greatly narrowed the volume of space in which the frigate was likely to be found.
“Good,” she murmured.
“Fire when ready, Mr Falconet,” she ordered.
Falconet nodded, his image turned away from the communications-console glass. “Ready, gentlemen?” A pause. “Fire!”
Again the lighting dimmed and the decking thrummed.
“Three seconds,” said Falconet. “Close down main gun.”
“Mr Voyna?” asked the Admiral.
“Coming in… now, ma’am.” He sounded distracted… Abruptly, he lifted his head and grinned. “Ma’am, we have an oxygen line in the spectrum. She’s lost hull integrity!”
The Admiral was sanguine. “Control your excitement, Mr Voyna. It may not signify much.”
Voyna, hearing something from one of his rateds, spun about. He turned back to face the communications-console. His grin, wiped from his face by the Admiral’s gentle reprimand, was back. “Static across the board, ma’am. High-intensity radiation source ahead.”
Moments later, he added, “Source dissipated, ma’am.”
&n
bsp; A silence fell.
Sabre Horn had exploded.
The Admiral gripped the lip of the battle-consultant with a fierceness that owed nothing to victory and everything to the deaths of the frigate’s crew. She felt the loss keenly because the vessel had been Imperial Navy. She knew the traditions that informed the warship’s shipboard culture, the uniforms her rateds and officers wore, the drives which motivated every man and woman aboard… Familiarity gave the destruction of Sabre Horn a heart-breaking immediacy.
There would be no victory celebration aboard Vengeful this watch. The Admiral knew her crew well enough to be sure of that. She herself would spend time in the chapel in prayer to Chian. Not to ask forgiveness: that was not on offer. More to remind herself of His mysterious ways. Sabre Horn had not been the enemy, even though she had been on the enemy’s business.
The Admiral opened her mouth to speak, and it was a moment before she felt sufficiently controlled to say anything. “Gentlemen,” she said, “we are in this system for a reason. Let us be about it. Coxswain, lay in a course for Darrus. Lieutenant-Commander Rinharte awaits us.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Somewhere in the region of Maradagaz, Divine Providence ripped a tear in the universe and slipped into the toposphere. Ormuz turned from the scuttle, disappointed. He had wanted to see the data-freighter leave one universe and enter another. But, as usual, he saw nothing. One moment, the view through the scuttle consisted of blackness, liberally sprinkled with stars… The next, formless, shapeless darkness, more grey than black. An eye-twisting colour, made worse by the lack of anything on which to focus. Stare at it too long, Ormuz had learnt, and it would bring on a headache.
He returned to his desk and stared listlessly at the circular display set into its top. The captain had him reading the Imperial Navy Fighting Instructions:
“Ships of the line will approach the enemy vessel to within no more than 150 thousand miles, and from that point bring to bear the full strength of their main gun. Only at such range can accuracy be assured, and changes be made to a warship’s attitude fast enough in response to alterations in the enemy’s situation. In all cases, a fleet admiral will only engage with an enemy if the enemy’s forces number less, or the admiral has a superiority in firepower.”
He could almost picture the scene: two huge battleships hanging in space, thousands of miles apart, firing great beams of energy at one another. But the text was so dry that reading the Imperial Navy Fighting Instructions was proving less interesting than the subject promised. He sighed and dropped into the chair before the desk.
Someone rapped on the hatch to Ormuz’s cabin. He called out, “Come in,” and the hatch slid open. It was Captain Plessant.
“I don’t understand why I have to read this,” Ormuz complained, gesturing at the words on his display. “Shouldn’t I be learning about astrogation, or the topologic drive, or something?”
Plessant stopped, taken aback by his outburst. “It’s useful to know,” she said automatically.
“Why? We’re not in the Navy.”
“I know, but… You never know when it might come in useful.”
“What about the other books you’ve made me read?” He reeled off titles from memory: “Major Battles of the Empire, The Electoral Process and Peer Responsibility, Mechanics of an Information-based Economy—”
“Cas,” said Plessant, “you’re a smart lad, and you did well at school. But what they teach you is no real preparation for this kind of life. You’ll probably never need to use any of the stuff from those books, but it’s good to know about them. You can never know too much.” She shook her head, as if to dislodge whatever chain of thought Ormuz’s comment had initiated. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”
Ormuz waited patiently for Plessant to remember her reason for visiting his cabin. For several seconds, she stared at him, her brow furrowed. “Ah, yes,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about what happened on Darrus.” She leant against the hatch-jamb, arms crossed.
“The murder of that soldier?” asked Ormuz eagerly. Here was a subject worth studying.
“Yes and, well… no. Something did happen in Amwadina, but that Housecarl was only a small part of it. You know we’re heading for Ophold?”
Ormuz nodded.
“From there, we’ll travel to Kapuluan. It’s well off our usual route, but I’ve been instructed to meet, ah, my liege’s factor there.” Plessant straightened, took a step forward, and paused in indecision. She glanced at the bunk. “Look, Cas, I want you to trust me—”
“I do, captain.”
“Shut up and listen to me. I can’t tell you why that regimental-lieutenant attacked you—”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Stop bloody interrupting me. I can’t tell you because I was ordered not to do so—”
“You mean you know?”
“Cas,” growled Plessant. “There was a reason why the Housecarl wanted you dead—” She held up a hand to forestall another interruption. “Yes, Cas, he was trying to kill you. That’s one reason why we’re going to Kapuluan: we’ll be safer there. You’ll be safer there.”
Ormuz smirked. Plessant’s motherly tone was something new. He liked her and it seemed she felt the same, after all.
She opened her mouth, said nothing, snapped it shut. She stepped forward, paused, scowled; she said, “I can’t. I won’t. Corruption!”
Her features abruptly hardened. “Get back to your studies.” She made to leave. Halting in the hatchway, she told him, “And don’t forget to swab the ward-room out later. It’s a disgrace.” The cabin hatch slid shut behind her.
While he directed a cleaning-mechanism about the ward-room, Ormuz returned to his heroic daydream adventure, foiling the evil Grey Princes at every turn of their fiendish plots. It was a favourite pastime, and had been for years. As a child, he’d played games in which he was secretly the son of a powerful noble—a child’s rationalisation for the lack of resemblance between himself and his parents and brothers. An easy game to play: he was slim where they were stocky; he did not share their colouring. Over the years, through schooling that did not stretch his capacity for learning and jobs that were dull and routine, he had expanded his fantasy world and his role in it. He dreamt of marrying a princess—and not just any princess, but Her Imperial Highness Princess Flavia umar Shutan, oldest of Emperor Willim IX’s two daughters and a serving Navy officer. When she had been killed in action shortly after his thirteenth birthday, he was heart-broken. But she lived again in his fantasy world: her death transformed to merely “missing in action”, allowing him to rescue her time and again from perilous primitive planets. He filched historical events and exploits from his eclectic reading—populating his invented world with steadfast Black Dukes, perfidious Golden Earls, and diabolic Grey Princes. His affections shifted from the princess-captain to the mysterious and alluring Masked Princess of ancient literature. He rescued her, and earned her undying gratitude and love. She was beautiful, of course. No matter that the same plot featured in almost every book, play or melodrama about her. Perhaps that was why it continued to be told five thousand years after the events the legend depicted.
The more time he spent daydreaming, the greater the need to lend his fantasies verisimilitude. He plumbed data-pools for reading material: Legends of the Anyol, The Quest for Anuras, Heroes of the Zhlakta Crusades, Battles of the Pacification Campaigns…
He became something of an expert on myths, legends and histories of dubious truth. The Anyol, who gave the people of Geneza the stars when the Genezi found three ancient wrecked starships in orbit about their world; Anuras, the Anyol’s mythical homeworld; the zhlakta, landless scions of Geneza’s nobility who conquered worlds and so brought about the Old Empire four thousand years ago.
The Book of the Sun, the bible of the Chianist Church, had proven too dry a read to provide much material for his fantasies. Ormuz had been raised nominally Chianist—it was the Imper
ial religion, after all.
Despite that, there was something fascinating in the various Avatars as historical personages. They had lived in Shuto’s primitive past, had each performed some great act, or lived a life of worthy triumph, which showed the hand of Chian in their achievements.
Ormuz saw nothing childish in his inventions. He had, in fact, stopped daydreaming when he left Rasamra. But the dull days in the toposphere—fourteen of them this journey before Divine Providence arrived at Ophold—had soon driven him back to his imaginary alter ego.
The cleaning mechanism wheezed and whirred about the cramped ward-room, brushes buffing the wooden decking. Ormuz followed it, one hand held before him as if gripping a sword. He lunged, parried and riposted, each move accompanied by a stamp of his leading foot. Unhappily, there wasn’t enough space for a truly epic sword-fight—
He paused in thought. What had happened to the Housecarl’s sword? Lexander Lotsman had brought it back to the ship. Had he given it to the captain? If so, she’d never let him near it. But if Lex still had it, he might…
Ormuz bent and switched the cleaning-mechanism to stowage mode. It drew in its brushes and polishing-pads, and trundled into the gangway. Ormuz left it to return to the ship’s locker unaccompanied. He hurried for’ard and scrambled up the ladder to the control cupola.
“Hey, kid.” Lotsman was stretched out in the pilot’s chair. He twisted round and grinned. “What’s up?”
“Hi, Lex. Have you still got that sword? The one from the soldier who attacked us?”
Lotsman frowned. “Gave it to the captain. What did you want it for?”
“To, er, do some research.”
“Look up ‘regulation sword’ in the data-pool. That’ll tell you all you need to know. If we had the Regimental Rolls aboard, you could even look up— what was his name?”
“Merenilo.”
“Yeah, Merenilo. But we don’t, so you can’t.”
Ormuz pouted. “No sword?”
The pilot laughed. “You could always ask the captain.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Ormuz flashed Lotsman a quick smile, and disappeared down the hatch.