Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  “Why was the good Dr. James Kelly Delbosque not at the table with us this evening? I would have enjoyed meeting another physician.”

  “It’s not my doing,” Max said defensively. “I specifically included him in the invitation. Captain Anderssen informed me, though, that Delbosque is a particularly blunt, undiplomatic, and painfully direct man, prone to blurt out whatever comes to his mind and somewhat deficient in social skills. He further said that, in the interest of intership amity, it might be best if the doctor were introduced to us under more controlled circumstances. Quite naturally I told the captain that Dr. Delbosque would be welcome—notwithstanding his bluntness—and that, in fact, he might find a kindred spirit on board, but I wasn’t able to change Anderssen’s mind.”

  “When you say kindred spirit, I’m certain that I have no idea to whom you are referring,” said Sahin, with just a trace of a smile leaking out from under his mask of mock indignation, “unless, of course, it is yourself. I am, after all, an accredited diplomat and the very soul of subtlety, whereas your bluntness and lack of decorum are renowned in two dozen star systems.” He stood. “Nevertheless, with your permission, I am of a mind to meet this Dr. Delbosque immediately.”

  Max nodded his assent, and the doctor strode from the compartment with a spring in his step, leaving Max alone with the three midshipmen who had started to clear the table. He noticed that the young men had managed to get most of the plates and utensils but had not yet touched the glasses, mugs, and pitchers, many of which still contained wine, beer, and liquor. He also noticed the midshipmen occasionally stealing glances at him, as if to gauge how soon he would leave. It was the oldest midshipman trick in the very thick book of midshipman tricks (a book that Max not only knew very well but to which he had added several of the more interesting chapters), and Max was certainly not going to fall for it.

  “Kurtz,” he said to one of the midshipmen, “bring me three of those water glasses from the sideboard. And Chang,” he said to another, “draw half a pitcher of beer from the tap. Now, you three young gentlemen take a seat at the table.” Kurtz, Chang, and Rodriguez took a seat. They were all from the second or third youngest group of midshipmen. Each had been on the ship for about a year, and they were nine or ten years old.

  Max poured about 150 milliliters—maybe ten or twelve good swallows for their small mouths and throats—of beer into each of the three glasses and gave one to each mid. “Now,” he said, “drink that down.” They did so with evident relish. This was not their first taste of beer. “Good. Now, lads, given your age and size, you’ve had all the strong drink that it is prudent for you to have today.” The young men’s disappointment at this statement was evident. Max had given them only enough beer to get them very, very slightly tipsy; they had been expecting to scavenge enough alcohol from the leavings at the table to get roaring drunk.

  “All the rest goes down the Wardroom Galley drain into the recycling tanks instead of down your young hatches. Do we have an understanding, gentlemen? Do I have your word of honor as midshipmen and as members of the crew of the USS Cumberland?”

  “Yes, sir,” the three said, with an undertone of reluctance. Maybe not so much of an undertone.

  “Outstanding,” Max said, ignoring the undertone. “Remember, gentlemen, a navy man’s word is his bond. It is as sacred as any oath or promise in Known Space. If you break it, your reputation and—very likely—your career are gone for good. So, now that I have your word, I feel safe in leaving this room. And remember,” he said with just a trace of menace, “if you ever break your word to me, on even the smallest matter, you are going to wish you had never been born.” He rose. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “Good evening, sir,” the three mids replied, somewhat abashed.

  Max left them to finish clearing the table.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  22:45 Zulu Hours, 13 May 2315

  “No contacts,” Kasparov announced, as he (or someone at his station) had announced every fifteen minutes—exactly—for the last fifteen hours and forty-five minutes.

  “Very well,” Max responded as he (or someone else at his station) had responded every fifteen minutes—exactly—for the last fifteen hours and forty-five minutes. Despite the repetition, neither man’s voice held even the most infinitesimal hint of boredom.

  For the last fifteen hours and forty-five minutes, the Cumberland, alongside the Nicholas Appert, had been crossing the roughly two light-years of space that separated the space unambiguously controlled by the Union and its newly acquired, quasi-allied “Associated Powers” from the space unambiguously controlled by the enemy. While under the dominion of neither human nor Krag, the zone being traversed by the Cumberland was by no means devoid of hazards. Any Union force attempting a crossing faced aggressive enemy patrols, extensive minefields, stealthed sensor buoys, even stealthier kamikaze drones, and the occasional hidden Fishbait or Fruitbat class fighter mini-base. Any Krag coming from the opposite direction would encounter similar perils.

  The Admiralty’s precise but typically bureaucratic and bloodless name for this area was the Zone of Indeterminate Control. There was even a set of standing special orders governing vessels operating in the zone: Rules of Engagement “S.” The vessel commanders who guarded and patrolled the zone cut through all those syllables and generally referred to the area by the word for the letter “S” in the navy’s phonetic alphabet, calling it “the Sierra.”

  But ordinary spacers had a way of coming up with names for things that had both less precision and more real meaning than the official ones. For the zone, they adopted a name derived from a term first coined (in Middle English) around the year 1320 by the people of London for the location of the frequent hangings imposed by the brutal justice of the day: nonesmanneslond. The term evolved over the centuries, and people, usually soldiers, applied it in many different contexts; but it was during the First World War that the name truly took hold.

  No-Man’s-Land.

  In places such as Sectors Z-114, Z-403, Z-410, Z-415, Z-424, and Z-509, the fleets were at that very moment clashing as one or the other side attempted to force a crossing. But over more than 99 percent of their border, human and Krag stared at each other across two light-years of generally quiet space, neither knowing when and where the other might attack.

  Max had chosen to take the Cumberland and the Nicholas Appert across No-Man’s-Land in Sector Z-948, which was not only quiet at that time, but over which human and Krag had never fought. Indeed, because the Union and Krag star systems adjacent to Sector Z-948 were of little strategic value, neither side expected the other to attempt a crossing there and, accordingly, devoted few resources to guarding it. Few resources, that is, in comparison to those lavished on those sectors where strategists deemed an attack to be more likely. The two skippers, with the help of officers from both ships, had used intel gathered by Union patrols, as well as the captured Krag data, to plot and then follow a course that avoided the relatively few known obstacles in that part of the Sierra.

  That was the easy part.

  Destroyer and tender were traveling on compression drive in line abreast formation 1248 kilometers apart at the relatively sedate speed of 1039 c, which had brought them across most of No-Man’s-Land to a point less than three hours away from Krag space. As far as Max and Anderssen knew, their ships had not yet appeared on Krag sensors. But as both captains and all the men on board both ships were keenly aware, the danger of detection and subsequent attack increased with each AU they crossed.

  “Tactical,” Max said to Bartoli, “show me the Krag sensor coverage and deployments in this sector.”

  “Aye, sir.” Bartoli had been expecting this request and tapped a blinking square on his console. The Cumberland’s CIC had three holographic tactical displays, all on the front half of the Command Island: the main, about a meter and a half in diameter and right in front of the skipper, and two secondaries, eighty centimeters across, one o
n each side of the main. The starboard secondary, in front of the XO, went to flat gray, indicating that it was being switched over to receive new data.

  “Here is Sector Z-948,” Bartoli said. A greenish cube appeared in the lambent column. “And here,” another touch to the screen, “is the near half of the abutting sector of Krag space.” A red block fading out on the far edge appeared adjacent to the cube. “And here,” another touch, “are the three long-range early-warning stations providing overlapping sensor coverage of this sector.” Three white dots winked into existence, forming an equilateral triangle just inside the red rectangle and parallel to the boundary between the two sectors. The triangle was off-center to the left and low about a third of the way to the sector boundary in each direction—Krag and Union sectors weren’t the same size and didn’t align with one another. “These are the last-known locations of the fighter squadrons detailed to this sector.” Eight red dots appeared, scattered through Krag space near the border with the Sierra. “And here are the projected locations of the cruiser/frigate groups assigned to back up the fighters.” Four orange dots joined the red ones. “In addition, Intel suspects that there is at least one enemy fighter base concealed in this part of the Sierra, relying on the early-warning stations for sensor coverage. Intel also conjectures, without much in the way of hard evidence to back it up, that there is a battle group consisting of a battlecruiser, four cruisers, and an unknown number of frigates and destroyers assigned as a strategic reserve about ten light-years back dedicated to respond to any major incursion into this or any of the neighboring sectors. And don’t miss the blue dot, sir. That’s our present location.”

  Max didn’t miss the dot. It was only a finger’s width from the display’s color change marking where Krag-controlled space began.

  “Mr. Bhattacharyya, can you pin down the location of that fighter base or that strategic reserve force?”

  “I’m afraid not, Skipper,” the Intel officer replied. “The very existence of the strategic reserve force is conjectural, so its location is speculation based on conjecture. We haven’t picked up any ship-to-ship comms that we can attribute to the force, none of our signal intercepts localize to any of the places the Krag are likely to put it, and there don’t seem to be any especially favorable places for such a force to hide. Accordingly, any estimate of where it is would be pure guesswork on my part.” Bhattacharyya said “guesswork” the way a Roman Catholic Cardinal would say “mortal sin.”

  “As far as the fighter base,” he continued, “if there’s one out there, the enemy has been playing his cards close to his vest, if Krag have cards and vests. They’ve maintained total EMCON—we haven’t picked up a single localizable signal. None of our patrols in the Sierra have any sensor contact consistent with enemy fighters, other than roving fighters on regular patrols, nor anything that even smells like a fighter base.” Max thought he heard something in the way that last sentence sounded.

  Hearing that sort of “something” is in the skipper’s job description.

  “Mr. Bhattacharyya,” Max prompted, “was there something else?”

  “Well, sir,” he said with obvious reluctance, “this might sound a bit odd given my widely known aversion to speculation, but I think I have a pretty good idea where the Krag fighter base is located. Or, at least, where I’d put one if I were a Krag admiral.”

  “Really?” Many skippers would have loaded that word with several metric tons of sarcasm, particularly given Mr. Bhattacharyya’s comparatively low rank and seniority. Max’s tone, however, conveyed only genuine interest. “And where might that be?”

  “Alderson I. Here.” He touched one of his flat screens, causing a purple dot to appear in the tactical display just over a centimeter away from the blue dot representing the Cumberland. “When this area was under Union control, Alderson I was home to a moderately large mining colony. The planet is basically a nickel-iron rock—what’s left from a protoplanet collision that stripped away the crust and mantle. It’s tidally locked, with one side permanently facing its sun and one side permanently in the dark. The colony was on the dark side. Anything on the sun side would be cooked in a few seconds.

  “Right now, though, the planet would be perfect for hiding a fighter base. One,” he counted on his fingers, “sensors would have a hard time distinguishing metal spacecraft and support equipment from a metallic planetary surface. Two, sensors will have an even harder time distinguishing ships and base from the refined metal mining equipment and support structures left behind when the miners bugged out. Three, sensors won’t work all that well anywhere near the planet because of all the radiation and magnetic effects you get when trying to scan a planet that’s just 0.27 AU from a class B star. None of that bothers the fighters, though, because they’re shielded by the planet—eighteen hundred kilometers of nickel-iron. They don’t need sensors that we could pick up because the fighters will launch and get their initial intercept vector from the early-warning stations. It’s exactly where I’d hide a fighter base.”

  Max noticed that Bartoli was smiling. “Something to add, Mr. Bartoli?”

  “Only that I like the way Batty thinks.” Bartoli called the ensign by his newly earned nickname. Under perverse naval logic, giving the man a nickname connoting craziness expressed the collective judgment of Ensign Bhattacharyya’s comrades that his predictions and estimates were exceptionally reliable. In the navy if your shuttle pilot is known as “Gonna Crash” Nash or your navigator as “Wrong Way” McVay, you know you’re in good hands. “If Mr. Bhattacharyya ever gets tired of his Ouija board, tarot cards, and tea leaves, I’m sure we could find a berth for him in the Tactical section.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Lieutenant, but I prefer something more intellectually challenging than looking out a viewport and shouting, Hey, look, there’s three Krag warships off the port bow, and I think they’re hostile,” Bhattacharyya said, acknowledging the compliment with a smile while returning good-natured insult for good-natured insult in the time-honored naval manner.

  “Well, Mr. Bhattacharyya, we’re well past the Alderson system now, and we’ll be sure to give it a wide berth on our return leg,” Max said.

  The scattered chuckles at the well-played banter between Bartoli and Bhattacharyya did little to dispel the growing tension in CIC. No matter how busy each man kept himself at his station, it was impossible to ignore the knowledge that each second not only brought the two ships just over 300,000,000 kilometers closer to Krag space, but also carried them 300,000,000 kilometers deeper into the sensor coverage generated by the Krag early-warning stations. At the forefront of every man’s mind was the knowledge that, if the Krag identified them as Union vessels, they would almost certainly die shortly thereafter.

  It wasn’t long before CIC was much quieter than normal. There was still the background chatter of officers speaking over the loops to their back rooms, people in CIC exchanging information with each other, and sections making their periodic reports to the XO, but the exchanges were short and the voices muted. The banter was gone: the men said what duty required, not one word more. And almost as though the Krag could hear them across the vacuum of space, the more superstitious men also kept their voices very low. Time crawled forward in quiet agony.

  “This is unbearable!” the doctor suddenly exclaimed in a voice far too loud for the currently muted sound level in CIC. “I don’t know how you people stand this.” Several men looked at him in abject horror. There were things that navy men endured but of which they never spoke.

  “Doctor,” Max said evenly, “do you need to return to the Casualty Station?”

  For a moment, Sahin pondered the question and the implicit order that it contained, sighed, and then responded with quiet resignation, “No, sir. I don’t believe that I do.”

  “Very well.” Max met his friend’s eyes, measuring the man’s stress level. He judged it to be very high but still manageable. “You’re welcome to remain in CIC.” Max held Bram’s eyes for two full seconds a
fter he finished speaking, reinforcing his earlier implicit order. But if you can’t keep it together, you need to leave.

  Sahin nodded.

  Max looked around at the men at their stations. While these men had seen a lot of action in the last few months, most of them weren’t veterans by any stretch of the imagination. As much stress as Dr. Sahin was under, the men were under more because they had a clearer idea of what was happening and what could go wrong. Not to mention that they bore the stress of performing difficult, often highly technical, duties while being subjected to the anguish of waiting to be detected. But they were all managing. Some of them, though, looked as though they were near their limit: pale, sweaty, fidgeting. Dry tongues occasionally emerged from dry mouths to lick dry lips—a parchedness that no coffee or juice could ever quench.

  But there was a treatment that Max could administer. “COMMs, give me MC1.”

  “MC1, aye,” Chin responded.

  “Men, this is the skipper,” Max said in a studiously relaxed tone. “Hang in there. It won’t be long now before we know whether we continue sneaking or commence running. Whatever happens, you can take comfort in knowing you’ve got a good ship and outstanding shipmates quite capable of handling it. That is all.” He nodded to Chin, who broke the circuit, avoiding the THUNK that would reverberate through the ship when Max cut the feed from the button on his own console.

  Max had told the men that things were going to be all right. Now he needed to show them. He caught the eyes of the midshipman posted to CIC—Vizulis for this watch—and pointed to his coffee mug, causing the boy to begin the process of providing the skipper with a refill. Max’s fixed stare at DeCosta’s mug, combined with a raised eyebrow and a subtle nod, induced the XO to do the same. Max studied the young midshipman, who had been milking cows on his family’s farm in Latvia on Earth just thirteen months ago. The young man was pale, taking shallow and rapid breaths, and his hands were shaking slightly. Yet he served the coffee, prepared the way he knew each of the officers liked it, without error and without spilling a drop. It was a seemingly inconsequential duty, but it was the duty assigned to him. And though he was afraid, he did it.