Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  Max regarded the six red dots slowly moving toward the blue “you are here” dot. “Mr. Kasparov, can you refine the distance from Hotel four to the nearest Krag ship in the formation. I want it to the kilometer if you can get it.”

  “I believe so, sir,” he answered. “I just need to instruct the probes to upload their high-frequency tachyo-photon interferometer data at high resolution. I’ve been getting a low-res take because I didn’t think we needed the higher level of precision yet.”

  “Very well,” said Max. “And when you get it, I’m betting it’s going to turn out to be 27,253 kilometers.”

  “Retracting radiator fins,” Nelson announced.

  “Very well,” responded Max.

  About thirty seconds passed. “Skipper,” Kasparov said, “you’re right. Exactly 27,253 kilometers.”

  Max looked at DeCosta and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  The XO nodded. “A nice round number in Krag units, sir.”

  “So, at least we know something about the new combat group commander,” said Max.

  “We do?” DeCosta asked.

  “Sure we do, XO. Have you ever seen me position this ship a nice round number of units away from anything? When you studied their campaigns, did you ever see Hornmeyer or Litvinoff or Middleton or Barber or Lo do it?” The XO shook his head. “Damn straight you didn’t. And you never will, unless it’s part of some deeply complex head game. But unlike the wickedly competent fellow on that battlecruiser we just killed, his successor out there is failing to take the same kind of pains to avoid being predictable. In all likelihood, not only is he prone to formulaic thinking, but he’s probably also lazy. We are going to take advantage of that.

  “Mr. Bartoli, get with Mr. Nelson. I want a joint opinion from the Tactical and Stealth Sections as to the point in the fireball zone that is closest to the path of Hotel four that will still provide adequate concealment from his sensors. Weapons, load Ravens in tubes one and two.” As the Stealth console was directly behind the Tactical one, this particular bit of coordination didn’t prove difficult. Less than a minute later, Bartoli had transferred the coordinates, and Mr. LeBlanc was guiding the Cumberland into position, just over a thousand kilometers inside the edge of the fireball area.

  “Gentlemen,” Max said to CIC at large, “my intention is to take Hotel four with a Raven, waypoint bow attack. Minimum range. I’ll hold tube two in reserve in case the first missile misses or malfunctions. When that warhead detonates, we will attack the remainder of the Krag formation with the Equalizer. Attack pattern Sierra-5. As soon as all weapons are discharged, begin standard reload cycle and make for the Bravo jump point at maximum stealthy speed. You think you can manage those weapons orders, Mr. Levy?”

  “With pleasure, sir,” he said. The man was practically salivating as he repeated the order and went to work. A few seconds later, he said, “Skipper, the timings on these weapons firings are very critical. I recommend auto-fire mode on both the Raven and the Equalizer.”

  “I concur in your recommendation, Mr. Levy.” Then, in an official tone, “Officer of the Deck, this is a Nuclear Weapons Automatic Firing Order. Commanding Officer authorizes weapons free and automatic launch on the following nuclear launch systems: 1. Raven missile loaded in tube one, targeted on Krag ship identified as Hotel four; 2. HSRLMS, all loaded ordnance, targeted on remainder of Krag formation.”

  “Nuclear Weapons free and automatic launch, Raven in tube one and HSRLMS, acknowledged and logged,” said Sauvé. “Executive Officer?”

  “Executive Officer concurs,” said DeCosta. While the firing and detonation of nuclear weapons had become almost routine in the course of the more than thirty-year war with the Krag, allowing those weapons to be fired by automatic systems without a human being’s finger on the button had not. Accordingly, an order to do so required the concurrence of the Executive Officer.

  “Officer of the Deck acknowledges and logs Commanding Officer’s order and Executive Officer’s concurrence,” Sauvé said. “Weapons officer may proceed to program automatic launch.”

  “Weapons officer acknowledges. Programming as ordered. Estimated time until execution: four minutes, nineteen seconds.” Levy input the instructions and checked them. Seven times.

  Maybe eight.

  A growing expression of alarm formed on the doctor’s face, while his body language became increasingly agitated. After a few minutes, he could contain himself no longer. “Max,” he said, a certain shrillness creeping into his voice, “does all of this talk about automatic launch mean that the computer is going to launch a bunch of fusion missiles on its own?”

  “Why, yes,” Max replied, with all the worry he might express when telling the bartender that he didn’t want any ice in his bourbon.

  “Isn’t that a bad idea? You saw the CineVid we all watched together on Movie Night when we were outbound to the rendezvous—the one with Damien Matthew and Julie Angeleoni? The computer decided that it didn’t like being given orders by humans and used the nuclear weapons under its control to blackmail the human race into letting it rule them. What was the name?”

  “Colossus: The Fordman Project,” said Levy. “But, sir, the ship’s computer is not self-aware. It has no likes or dislikes; it simply follows our instructions.”

  “But when I talk to it, it sounds emotional,” Sahin said. “When I tell it I’m having a problem with a system, it sounds regretful; when I log a happy event, it sounds happy for me; and so on. When it asks questions in response to my orders, it sounds interested. It reacts like a self-aware being.”

  “That’s right, Doctor,” Bales, the head of the Computers Section, piped up. “It acts sentient. The computer has sophisticated heuristic software designed to emulate emotion, to determine the proper tone to take based on your tone of voice, content analysis of what you say or log, parsing of your word choices and tone of voice, and so on. It is a very powerful, nonthinking machine, containing brilliantly designed software carefully crafted to replicate the semblance of human emotion. Doing so makes it easier for people to interact with the computer, tell it what’s going on, and give it truthful log entries. It’s a lot easier to log some huge mistake you made running some system if you feel like you’re telling your troubles to a trusted friend than if you’re just making a recording to be stored by a soulless machine.”

  Sahin looked to Max for confirmation; he nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. Aren’t there disadvantages to giving the computer control of the weapons?”

  “Absolutely,” said Levy. “It deprives me of the satisfaction of pressing the button that nukes those sorry rat bastards.”

  Sahin pursed his lips disapprovingly. “I consider it unseemly and impious to take joy in the death, no matter how necessary and justified, of fellow thinking creatures who—”

  “Krag vessels are reducing velocity to 0.05 c,” Bartoli interrupted. “No change in course. Their main formation will pass our position in two minutes and fourteen seconds.”

  “The enemy is engaging in very intense active scanning of the space along our former course,” Kasparov added. “Their scans appear to be optimized to pick up a stealthed ship and to detect a drive trail.”

  Max turned to DeCosta. “XO, what do you think they’re up to?”

  “Sir, my opinion is that they are reducing speed to increase the efficacy of their sensors. We’ve managed to fool them a few times, and they’re getting wary. From where and how they’re scanning, it looks as though their main worry is that we will go stealthy and lie right in their path. Which, by the way, would be a pretty stupid thing for us to do. No matter how highly stealthed we were, five ships engaged in a coordinated scan of the same area would pick us up before they were within range of our missiles. They’d take us out with that damned new Ridgeback missile before we’d ever get a chance to shoot.”

  “It would be pretty dumb,” agreed Max. “You’ll learn, however, that all but the top 20 or 30 percent of Krag commanders have no problem believing t
hat our next move is going to be something incredibly stupid because their propaganda says that we’re stupid. But, yes, I agree. That is what it looks like they’re doing. What’s the impact on what we are planning to do?”

  “None, really. Unless they start trying to scan inside the warhead blast zone from the inside, which they aren’t showing any inclination to do.”

  “They are very unlikely to try that,” Max said. “Their navy has a standing order to stay out of these zones until they’ve dissipated to the point at which a ship can enter them safely with deflectors at 10 percent—that way they can experience a 90 percent deflector failure and not suffer any damage. Their commander is engaging in projection—assuming that everyone else thinks and operates the way he does. It’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

  “A principle,” DeCosta said, “that you are about to demonstrate.”

  “True,” Max replied, “but I don’t expect Monsieur le Krag out there to live long enough to make use of what we are about to teach him.”

  “Auto fire has initiated a countdown,” Levy interjected. “Tube one will auto fire in five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Firing.”

  “Phase Six: EXECUTE,” Max said.

  The five remaining enemy destroyers passed the widest point of the fireball, arranged in a ring around its circumference, with Hotel four, the enemy cruiser and now the command ship for the formation, following. The Raven missile, auto-fired by the Cumberland, headed toward the edge of the fireball at its lowest speed setting, emerging only 1255 kilometers behind Hotel eleven, deep inside that vessel’s deflector wake and drive exhaust. There, the missile turned hard toward Mr. Levy’s estimate of the oncoming Krag light cruiser’s position, activated its seeker head, acquired the target, ran its drive up to maximum, and steered itself straight at the cruiser’s bow.

  Behind a screen of five destroyers and with the humans predicted to be somewhere ahead of the screen, running for their lives, the cruiser was not ready for a missile, so much so that not only were its missile defenses not activated but the sensors best suited to missile detection were on standby. As a result the crew of the cruiser had less than a half second’s warning. The Raven easily penetrated the dormant Krag defensive systems and detonated its 1.5-megaton fusion warhead. The cruiser simply ceased to exist, its ionized atoms merging with those from the warhead and missile in a blinding globe of incandescent death.

  Meanwhile, no one in CIC had time to enjoy the spectacle of Hotel four’s funeral pyre. Oblivious, for now, to the cruiser’s fiery demise, the five enemy destroyers passed the fireball and continued to follow their estimate of the Cumberland’s course. Even before the Cumberland’s warhead blew, Max’s call to execute Phase Six triggered Fleishman to run the sublight drive up to full and the other men at Maneuvering to steer the ship to pop out of the fireball directly behind the enemy formation. As soon as the ship was in the clear, the fire-control computers correlated tracking information received from the ship’s sensors with what they had been receiving from the stealthed probes and began to grind out firing solutions for the five Krag destroyers.

  It took a full eleven seconds for the explosion’s light and radiation to reach the Krag formation and for their sensors and associated computers to process the explosion, come to the surprising and more computationally difficult (and, therefore, slower) determination that it was a Union warhead, calculate that the cruiser had been attacked and destroyed, and compute the area from which the weapon that destroyed the cruiser had likely been fired. After ten of those eleven seconds had lapsed, Mr. Levy called out, “Firing solution computed. Targeting data routed to the Equalizer. Weapon drives and warheads arming. Arming sequence complete. Warhead safeties disengaging. Safeties disengaged.” Pause. “Equalizer is ready to receive targeting data. Equalizer has accepted targeting data. Translating into individual weapon guidance commands . . . Data translated. Guidance commands loaded. Auto fire has initiated countdown. Firing in three seconds. Two. One. Firing.”

  The crew felt ten quick jolts over a period of less than two seconds as the high-speed rotary missile launch system, installed under the ship’s “chin” during her last refit and which the crew called the Equalizer, rotated its ten missile-holding cylinders past an abbreviated launch tube, each cylinder firing its missile as it came into alignment with the launch tube, operating much like a revolver. The process resulted in the launching of ten of the new Kestrel mini antiship missiles.

  “Missiles away,” Levy called out. He paused for a second to examine his display. “Missiles are hot, straight, and normal. Executing pairing maneuver now. Maneuver complete—each Krag destroyer now has two missiles on intercept.” Pause. “Missile crews are reporting by lights that they are reloading the Equalizer. Estimated time to completion: twenty-three minutes.”

  Max briefly shook his head. Twenty-three minutes was a lifetime in combat, but that was the nature of the weapon. The rotating drum that housed the missile cylinders was mounted outside the ship. Only the cylinder that aligned with the firing tube could be reached from the missile room. Accordingly, the ten cylinders had to be reloaded one at a time, a process that took even the most skilled crews nearly fifteen minutes. Between the newness of the weapon to the ship and the generally lower level of competence of the missile crews, the operation took just over twenty minutes on the Cumberland.

  Max turned to his tactical officer, who should have been updating him on what the enemy vessels were doing. Instead, Bartoli appeared to be transfixed by what he was seeing on his displays. “Mr. Bartoli,” said Max, “how about letting the rest of us in on what you find so fascinating.”

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, with genuine remorse. “Krag vessels are decelerating, so it looks as though they have figured out we destroyed their cruiser. They are still directing active sensors along their former course. Except for one: Hotel eight. He’s broken formation and is accelerating at a right angle to the rest of them and away from the fireball at course two-three-three mark zero-nine-five.” Pause. “The rest turning now, probably to close on the cruiser’s last position. Pause. Missiles just went to terminal homing, except for the ones targeted on Hotel eight. They never acquired a lock and are now in search mode . . . they’re going to miss. Okay, the other targets all went evasive, drives redlined. Missiles are setting up for pincer attacks from amidships. HIT! HIT! TWO MORE! Direct hits on all four ships. Four solid kills. Nothing left but debris.”

  “But . . . but . . .” the doctor stammered, “but how did those little missiles destroy those destroyers? I thought they were so tough that it was hard for a normal-size missile to take them out.”

  “New binary warhead design: neutron flux from a small enhanced radiation warhead pushes the deflector’s gravitons out of the way, making a hole in the deflectors for the main warhead to get through and blast the enemy ship. We borrowed the design from the Pfelung. Ask Levy to explain it in detail when we have time, Bram,” Max said. “He’d love to tell you all about it.”

  “I cannot begin to tell you how eager I am for that conversation,” Sahin said.

  “All remaining enemy targets destroyed, sir, with the exception of Hotel eight,” said Bartoli. He gave the range and bearing. “We’re passing through the field of debris and radiation created by our missile explosions, and when we emerge, it will still be screening us from him, at least for the next few minutes before dissipation of the fusion plasma and the angle change allow his sensor beams to penetrate.”

  “Very well,” said Max.

  DeCosta leaned toward Max. “But, Skipper, isn’t there a chance that he’ll deduce our location and what we’re doing anyway?”

  “More than a chance, XO. I’d rate it is a virtual certainty. This guy was smart enough to see through our play back there—remember how he dashed in one direction when the other ships went in another, and how he wound up far enough outside of our firing solution that the missiles could not acquire him? I have no doubt that he’ll see the most straightforward conceal
ment and evasion play here. He’ll come off his sprint, figure out what we just did to his buddies, and guess that we’re using the debris field to screen ourselves while we run for the jump point. He knows that’s what I’m doing because it’s exactly what he would do. Unless we want to double back, he’s got to know that we are headed for the Bravo jump point, not the Alfa or the Charlie, because only the Bravo takes us in the direction of the Union forces. We can’t run at high speed if we want to stay stealthy, so if he’s smart, he just goes to Flank or Emergency, joins up with his buddy guarding the jump point, and he’ll have us outgunned two to one when we get there. That engagement would last about two minutes, and then we would all get to have reunions with our dead ancestors.”

  “What if we don’t sneak to the jump point, but sprint instead? Can we get there fast enough to have time to defeat the cruiser at the jump point and be lying in wait for the destroyer when he gets there?” asked DeCosta.

  “Let’s find out,” Max said. He turned to Bartoli and repeated DeCosta’s idea.

  “Not likely, Skipper,” answered the tactical officer after only a few seconds’ consideration. “Setting aside for the moment the issue of whether we could defeat the cruiser given that—with our drive at Emergency—we’re not exactly going to be sneaking up on him, we’re not significantly faster than Hotel eight. Intel is a little fuzzy on the top speed of the Dervish class, since they’re so new, but we know that they are definitely in the same speed class as we are. If we beat him to the jump point, it won’t be by much.”

  DeCosta was watching Max when Bartoli was speaking. He could see that nothing Bartoli said was a surprise to Max; the skipper had elicited the information for the benefit of his still very green XO.

  The explanation also bought Max a little time. The crew was expecting him to give the orders that would extricate the ship from its current predicament, and Max had no such orders to give. He had expected to get all five of the Krag destroyers with the Kestrel mini-missiles fired from the Equilizer, after which he had planned to sneak up on the cruiser and hit it at close range from behind, with a time-on-target attack consisting of a full salvo from the Equalizer and two Ravens. But, with a Dervish class destroyer very likely to find his trail any minute, there would be no sneaking.