Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  “Now, we know from the captured data core that for the last few months the Krag have been expecting some kind of counteroffensive from us, which is probably why they pushed so hard to end their war against the Thark when they did. They’ve been rushing their ships as fast as they can from the Thark front to staging areas short distances behind the FEBA to meet our expected attack.

  “But our intel suggests that the infusion of new forces at this battlefront is stretching the Krag logistics infrastructure to the limit. It’s a journey of more than two thousand light-years, and the ships arrive out of fuel and in need of serious maintenance. Which is why they have set up a series of new logistics nodes: deep-space bases along their traffic routes with fuel dumps, supply caches, repair facilities, and a fleet of tugs to get all of it loaded and unloaded. The node that Admiral Hornmeyer wants the JOG to hit is one of the largest and is located along one of the most important lines of communication. If we can deprive the Krag of their new logistics nodes, we deprive them of much of their ability to use the newly transferred forces. But that isn’t nearly the most interesting part of what the admiral gave us.”

  “It must be pretty hot to be more interesting than what you’ve just told us,” Max said, leaning forward with interest.

  “I guarantee you, it is,” DeCosta said. “The label on this file says that it’s for the skipper and his senior officer group, which is us, I think.” He went to the Wardroom’s computer terminal, pulled up a file menu, keyed for access, and hit DISPLAY.

  The display area of the Wardroom wall went from gray to black to the standard Union Space Navy visual recording test pattern, followed by a security warning screen stating that what followed was TOP SECRET, that disclosure would result in severe penalties, that violations of security protocols were investigated by the Inspector General’s office and prosecuted by the Judge Advocate General’s office to the fullest extent of military law, and so on. After displaying this message for far longer than necessary, the display showed a head-and-shoulder shot of a strongly built, bulldog of a man just on the far side of middle age, with iron-gray hair in a severe crew cut, square jaw, craggy features, a high forehead, and piercing gray eyes. He wore the uniform of a Union Space Navy vice admiral, with enough fruit salad to feed a hundred vegans at a weeklong all-you-can-eat buffet.

  “It’s old Hit ’em Hard Hornmeyer himself,” Bhattacharyya said reverently. The admiral was practically an Olympian deity to the young officer.

  An ironic smile flickered across Hornmeyer’s features for a moment, to be replaced by his customary severe scowl. “Robichaux, gentlemen, if you’re seeing this recording, that means you figured out the subtext I hid in your latest orders. Not bad. Don’t smile, Robichaux, I know it wasn’t you. My money is on Chief Wendt or Doctor Sahin or maybe that kid Batty. There’s a reason I surround you with all that brainpower—you need it in the worst way.

  “I made this recording because I have a few words for you about your mission that are either observations that I can’t pass along through official channels or that are classified far, far above your security clearances. In fact, I have been specifically ordered—by a fleet admiral, no less—not to divulge some of this to you, Robichaux. I’m disobeying that order because I believe it is outside of that admiral’s authority to issue it. Bottom line: Norfolk doesn’t think you need to know. I do. So, I win, and the penguins lose.”

  “Pause,” the doctor said emphatically. The computer paused the recording. He looked at Max. “I know what a penguin is, but I think I’m not understanding what a penguin is in this context.”

  “Well, Doctor,” Max replied, “it’s a derisive term that warship personnel have for headquarters officers. A penguin is a bird, in formal attire, that doesn’t fly, just like these guys wear dress uniforms and don’t go into space.”

  “Ah,” Sahin replied. “I love naval insults. Extremely clever and colorful.”

  Max nodded to DeCosta, who hit the PLAY key. Computer execution of voice commands uttered by a crew of more than two hundred, with all their varying voices and accents, was problematic at best. Max and DeCosta both preferred manual controls whenever feasible. The admiral resumed speaking.

  “All right. Now that Robichaux has explained to Dr. Sahin what a penguin is, we can get down to business.” Several heads around the table shook slowly in amazement. “The first objective is fairly straightforward. The only thing you need to know that’s not in the attached materials or your orders is that I am totally fucking serious about you, Robichaux, being in command of that Joint Operations Group for the attack. Not that plodder Hajjar. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against Commander Hajjar. Good officer. Brave as a lion. Borderline brilliant ship handling. But no dash, no ability to think out of the box. And he’s ambitious, so he’ll want to take things over. It will be a fine line: knocking him down hard enough that he won’t challenge you further but not so hard as to damage his ego and reduce his combat effectiveness. You’re a subtle tactician, but in dealing with people you’re a blunt tool—like a goddamn sledgehammer. Robichaux, sometimes you need to be a laser microtome. You’ve got a few days to learn. I suggest you apply yourself.

  “But that mission’s not your biggest problem. Not by a long shot. It’ll be a tough nut to crack, but between your craziness and the firepower I’m putting under your command, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be able to pull it off. It’s this raid to take out Admiral Birch that’s the solid gold, fusion-powered, RSVP/Invitation Only clusterfuck. Actually, it’s more than a clusterfuck, Robichaux; I’m thinking that, more likely than not, it’s a trap.

  “The penguins don’t see it, but my N2 has concluded that there is probably a Krag mole in Norfolk, probably in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations or an office closely associated with it. There have been several of the navy’s most effective small rated ships, destroyers and frigates mainly, under the command of some of our most promising young officers disappear under circumstances that make me more than a little suspicious. I truly cannot share those operational details with you without seriously compromising security, but you can trust me on this. If you saw what their orders were and looked at the data we got from those ships before they went missing, you’d have some serious goddamn suspicions about what happened to them and about this Admiral Birch thing.

  “It just smells bad to me—like it’s designed to look attractive to us. I mean, every snotty-nosed hatch hanger in the fleet learns about how the United States forces took out that brilliant bastard Yamamoto. This mission looks a little too much like that one to suit my tastes. And the intel that put us onto the idea was too clear, too easy, too devoid of the contraindications and ambiguities that always seem to come with even the best intel. But we’ve got some corroboration from an independent source that makes it look better. On the other hand, about a third of my staff thinks that the raw data from this independent source is bogus: that it’s being manufactured somewhere along the data reporting chain.”

  The admiral took a deep breath and let it out. He seemed tired and his usual hard-charging “hold ’em by the nose and kick ’em in the ass” enthusiasm more muted. “Robichaux, if I were a betting man,” he smiled slightly at the thought, “and you know that I am, I would bet that this target is some kind of trap to kill you and destroy your ship. On the other hand, if we have a chance to knock off the real Admiral Birch, we’ve got to take it. That bastard is good. Very, very good. If he’s in command in this theater at the critical moment, our chances of success in what we have planned go down measurably.

  “Robichaux, there’s no denying that you are a huge pain in the ass. But you’ve been a significant asset to me over these past few months. All things being equal, I’d rather not have your crawfish head-sucking, gumbo-eating ass blown to flaming atoms. So, here’s what I’ll do for you. I’m modifying your orders, and I’ll put it in my official log that I sent the modification to you via a tachyon Morse signal, of which there will somehow be no record. Sloppines
s down in the comms department and all that. From now on, your orders for the Admiral Birch mission are to proceed on your sole discretion. If anything smells fishy to you, if the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, if anything raises a red flag that something is not right, you bug out of there and return to the nearest Union outpost.

  “In this job I have to live every day with sacrificing good ships and good men, but I will not throw them away.” He clenched his jaw. “I will never throw them away. Never. And neither will you. If you sense a trap, not only do you have my permission to get out of there, you are ordered to do so. Get back to our side of the lines, and we’ll kick some Krag ass another day, I promise you. That’s all I have to say. If anyone ever asks, I’ll deny ever sending this to you, and you will deny ever receiving it. Godspeed, kick ass, bring yourself, your ship, and your men home so you can help me win this lousy war. Hornmeyer out.”

  The display went black.

  The admiral’s departure, even if he was present only by electronic proxy, left a vacuum in the compartment into which no one seemed willing to step. In order to follow the admiral, one had to be either brave or foolhardy.

  “Coming from Admiral Hornmeyer, that message was a veritable fountain of maudlin sentimentality. I wonder if, on the day he recorded this, he was suffering from some kind of dissociative psychosis or perhaps a serious physical illness,” Dr. Sahin said.

  Damn, that man says some strange shit sometimes. God bless him.

  “That’s an interesting bit of news,” Max said. “I can’t say that I like it one bit. But if things start to go sour, the admiral gives us the choice of getting out of the situation, which I really appreciate. That’s pretty far down the road, though. We’ve got a short-term objective that has to be our focus first, and where we fit in is pretty straightforward and of enormous importance,” Max said. “The Union is about to make a major push, and the Krag have assembled a significant reserve to meet it. That reserve, however, needs to be reprovisioned, and we’re being sent in to destroy one of the key assets they plan to use to do that. If we and the other ships with similar missions succeed, the Union will probably win its greatest victory in the entire conflict.”

  “And,” the doctor said quietly, “if not?”

  “It could cost us the war.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  06:04 Zulu Hours, 12 May 2315

  “Ten seconds,” announced Stevenson from Jump Control. The Cumberland was jumping into the Angelos system to rendezvous with her tender, the Nicholas Appert, an enormous ship—though very fast for its size—that was part deuterium tanker, part supply warehouse, part cargo carrier, and part arsenal. “Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Jumping.” The Cumberland’s jump engines punched through the boundary that separated the ordinary universe of protons and neutrons, gravity and electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, matter and antimatter, humans and Krag, from the bizarre, little-understood universe of n-space—a realm no larger than a single geometric point and yet somehow vast enough under its own incomprehensible physics to be in contact with every point in our own universe and to encompass however many ships might happen to be crossing through it at any given moment in time. After spending only a Planck interval in n-space, the ship reappeared 9.4 light-years from where she started, emerging in a flash of Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation at the Bravo jump point in the Angelos system.

  “Jump complete,” Stevenson said blandly. “Systems restoration in progress.” Most humans endured the transition between spacial regimes with few difficulties. Some people experienced a brief flare of nausea. Others became dizzy, got headaches, felt tingling in their extremities, or even had premonitions or mystical visions. For the Cumberland’s skipper, going through a jump generally gave rise to food cravings that varied wildly from jump to jump. Sometimes he wanted a chicken salad sandwich. Sometimes it was seafood gumbo. Sometimes it was barbecued ribs. Sometimes it was boudin. Today it was alligator tail sauce piquante. Max smiled.

  I think the galley is fresh out of alligator.

  Many ship’s systems, however, were far more vulnerable. The transition into and out of n-space would spin the metaspacial field polarization in the Faster-than-Light (FTL) processors essential to all of those systems, seriously damaging, if not destroying, the delicate processor matrix. Virtually every major system in a warship had to be shut down when it jumped, leaving it without sensors, external comms, navigation, computers, and sublight and compression drives—nearly every other system except lights, clocks, auxiliary power, and life support. A ship’s crew restored her to functionality one step at a time, in a process that typically required about five minutes and was marked by routine reports as system after system was brought back on line and began to do its job. On this occasion, the reports were routine, until one minute and eleven seconds after the jump when the PRTY SGNL (Priority Signal) lamp illuminated on Chin’s console, prompting him to press the adjacent DSPY (Display) key. He gasped loudly enough to be heard throughout CIC and sang out, his volume too high by half, “Sir, metaspacial data transmission from the Nicholas Appert on the ALL CALL channel. She sends WHISKEY FOXTROT.”

  WHISKEY FOXTROT—the two letter “flag signal” that meant: This vessel under attack by superior force. Destruction imminent unless relieved. Only ALFA ZULU, the equivalent of MAYDAY, was more urgent.

  On his feet without any conscious decision to stand, Max ordered, “General quarters, ship to ship.” The alarms started, and the voice of Tufeld at Alerts began to echo throughout the ship, calling the men to their battle stations. Max could see and hear the watch standers in CIC reconfiguring systems to their combat settings, tying their displays into the data channels they would need to grapple with the enemy, even changing the physical properties of the compartment itself by activating CIC’s independent sources of power and life support so that the consoles and the men who served them could continue to function if those primary systems were disrupted. The men worked quickly and excitedly but with no evidence of panic.

  Max observed all of this in the way an orchestra conductor takes in the first few notes of a symphony and can tell whether the musicians are in tune and on the beat. Max liked what he heard. “Maximum stealth, all systems, all modes,” he called out over the buzz of voices. “Maneuvering, get us in motion. Best sublight speed to the rendezvous point.” He leaned over and keyed the circuit to Engineering. “Wernher. I need everything you can give me on the main sublight, as soon as you can give it to me. And I’ll probably need to make an intrasystem run on the compression drive, as well.”

  “You’ve got it.” A brief exchange could be heard between Lieutenant Brown and some of his men in the background. The fusion reactor and its massive cooling pumps started to sing a succession of ever-higher notes that told Max what he needed to hear even before the engineer resumed speaking. “Main sublight is approaching 100 percent of rated maximum right now. I’ll have her at 112 percent in thirty seconds. Compression drive will be ready for an in-system run in just over two minutes. What’s up?”

  “The tender is sending WHISKEY FOXTROT.”

  “Bugger all! Why didn’t she run, sir? She’s faster on compression drive than just about anything the Krag have.”

  “They probably surprised her and hit her with an Egg Scrambler. We won’t know until after we pull her ass out of the fire.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Max closed the circuit and turned to Kasparov. “Sensors?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much yet, Skipper. The processors for all my sensors are still rebooting, so I don’t have any reads from passive EM, Grav, Neutrino, and other particle-based detectors. We’ve got some low-tech working for us, though. Goldman is second-desking Harbaugh in the back room and came up with the idea of tying one of the high-resolution imagers into the long-focus Cassegrain astronomical telescope. We can image enough to put together a rough idea what’s going on. Between their non-reflective
hull coatings and the range, we can’t image the Krag ships, of course, but we are seeing flashes that we interpret as Krag pulse-cannon hitting the tender’s deflectors just over 750,000 kilometers from the rendezvous point. The old chiefs back there are telling me, based on eyeballing the images—none of the analytics are available yet—the rate of fire and the apparent color temperature of the pulse-cannon blasts are consistent with an attack force of two Krag ships, probably a cruiser and a destroyer. We won’t know more until we get more of our systems working or we get closer.”

  “Then we need to get closer,” Max said.

  “Plus,” Bartoli chimed in, “we need to remember that the rendezvous point is 3.7 AU away. That’s about thirty light-minutes . . .”

  “So until we get FTL sensors on line, our knowledge of what’s happening out there is half an hour old,” Max finished. “A lot can happen in half an hour.” He thought for a few seconds. “XO, time our run on the compression drive so that we arrive at the earliest possible second after all our systems are returned to full function. And tell Wernher that I want him to manage the timing of when we drop to sublight—about 150,000 kilometers from the battle. The timing is going to have to be unusually precise because we’re not going to be playing it safe by making the run at 10 c like we’ve been doing.”

  “We’re not?” Dr. Sahin, in his usual perch at the Commodore’s Station, asked with no small amount of trepidation.