Max thanked the boy with a nod.
Max and DeCosta made an elaborate show of sipping their coffee, perusing the displays on their respective consoles, and keeping an apparently anxiety-free weather eye on everything in CIC. The always-observant Dr. Sahin noticed these behaviors and had little difficulty discerning the underlying reasoning. He, too, requested that Vizulis refill his coffee, and made a show of sipping the brew while studying a set of Pfelung surgical manuals.
This display of nonchalance had the desired effect of calming the men, even though few were fooled into thinking that the skipper, XO, and CMO were actually relaxed under the present circumstances. The officers on the Command Island looked calm and collected. Today, at least, that was enough.
Another twelve minutes crept by. Both the officers and enlisted heads in CIC, located against the starboard bulkhead just forward of the weapons locker, received a higher-than-usual number of visitors. Max used a one-key shortcut he had installed on his console to boost the compartment’s air-refresh rate to dispel the distinct aroma of nervous sweat.
It was one thing for a man to be sweating from tension. But the smell of a few dozen doing so was definitely bad for morale.
The change in airflow was just starting to make a difference when Kasparov changed his posture and said a few words into his headset, then nodded. “Sir,” he said, “we were just painted. High-frequency tachyon radar, 12.29 centimeter band. Signal strength was 15.2 Hannums per square meter. Our estimate for this frequency is that the enemy can get a detectible return off the tender with anything more than about 12 Hannums. And because the Hannum scale for measuring the strength of modulated—”
“I know, Mr. Kasparov,” Max said patiently. “I’ve sat in your chair. It’s logarithmic. A reading of 15.2 Hannums significantly exceeds the detection threshold. The Krag have almost certainly detected the tender.”
“Yes, sir.” Kasparov turned his attention from his skipper to his headset, as indicated by a characteristic tilt of his head. He listened for a moment and clicked his MIC key for “yes,” indicating that he understood what his back room had just told him. “Skipper, my back room is linked to the Sensors team on the tender, and the tender confirms both the paint and the signal intensity.”
“Very well. Next comes the focus scan,” Max said to everyone and no one.
Just over thirty seconds elapsed. “There it is, sir,” Kasparov said. “Ultrahigh-frequency tachyon radar scan, multiple frequency, multiple source, very tight beams. I’ve got four frequencies and three sources so far . . . stand by . . .” He listened to his back room for a few seconds. “Make that seven frequencies from three sources. All continuous—the Krag are locked on and following the target. Signal strength is high enough that the enemy can identify the tender by type and maybe even by class. It’s still far below the detection for the Cumberland so long as we remain in stealth mode. Signal strength is steady. They’re locked in and tracking the tender. Do you want the rundown on the bands and sources?”
“Not necessary, Mr. Kasparov. Just be sure that the information is available on the right data channel so anyone who needs it can tie in.”
Kasparov quickly turned to another display on his console and punched up data channel H, where the Sensors Back Room customarily transmitted information of that kind, confirming that anyone with a properly configured console could access the data. “It’s on channel H, sir.” Since time beyond reckoning, the navy assigned numbers to voice channels and letters to data channels.
Max looked at the chrono. “All right, people. We should be receiving an IFF interrogation in something less than two minutes.”
One hundred and seven seconds later, Bartoli announced, “IFF transmission received. Nicholas Appert sending the response as per the plan. She’s just identified herself as a captured Union tender proceeding to Krag Repair and Refit Base 446, which should cause them to allow us to proceed unhindered.”
“Or if the Krag have changed the codes, she’s just identified herself as a Union vessel attempting to penetrate Krag space using a captured IFF code,” said Mr. Levy, “which should cause them to throw everything they have at us with the goal of blowing us to flaming atoms and capturing the tender.”
“Have you always been such a sparkling fountain of optimism, Mr. Levy?” DeCosta asked.
“Absolutely, Mr. DeCosta,” Levy responded to the XO. “I’m the youngest of five brothers, and I’m by far the most optimistic of the lot. You should hear my oldest brother, Moshe. Now he’s a real Bitching Bettie.”
“Then may God save us from Moshe Levy,” said Max. “Besides, if he’s your oldest brother, he probably outranks me, right?”
“I’m afraid that’s true, sir. He’s a rear admiral with Special Projects in Norfolk. The shit he works on is so secret that our mother has to call him by a code name when she invites him home for dinner.”
“Sir,” Chin interrupted the banter, “receiving a signal from the Krag traffic control center for this area. Standard text protocol. They’re authorizing the tender to proceed at present course and speed to one of their traffic-control points just inside the Sierra, then to reduce speed to 0.15 c and contact the control center for that point for instructions on entry into Krag space. The message provided the coordinates and frequency.”
Sahin sighed heavily with relief. “So, it looks as though the Krag have been fooled by our masquerade.”
Several men, including Max, turned expectantly to Mr. Levy, who shook his head and raised his hands defensively. “Why me? Why do all of you assume I’m going to be the one who says it? I was actually thinking that the skipper would tell him.”
“Mr. Levy,” Max said soothingly, “that kind of remark sounds so much better coming from you instead of me. I think you should have the honors.”
“If you say so, sir.” He adopted a melodramatic, almost lugubrious, voice appropriate for the narrator of a bad trid-vid drama: “Either the Krag have been fooled by wily Captain Robichaux’s deception, or they know full well that the purportedly captured tender is actually under Union control and are luring the daring but tiny Union force deeper into Krag space, all the better to trap and destroy it. Bwahahaha.” Then he added brightly, “There. How was that?”
“It will do, Mr. Levy,” Max said. “But don’t quit your day job. Mr. Bartoli, what’s the enemy up to?”
“Nothing unusual so far, sir,” said Bartoli. “There’s no evidence of any change in the enemy’s tactical dispositions or of any other activity consistent with detection of an incursion into their space. They are, however, tracking the tender very intently. In fact, they’ve just brought two more sensor beams to bear on her—I’m updating the scan information on data channel H right now. That’s pretty normal for them—they get as many sensor sweeps on her on as many frequencies and from as many sources as they can so that they can scope out the ship’s configuration in high resolution to be sure it’s not an escort carrier or something else that size masquerading as a tender.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bartoli,” Max said. “Mr. Bhattacharyya?”
“Nothing on my end either, sir,” Bhattacharyya added. “Most of the Krag combat-vessel encrypts have changed from the ones we got from the data core, so we just have the signal characteristics to go on—we don’t know in real time what the Krag are actually saying to each other anymore. But so far there’s been no change in the volume, type, or sources of signal traffic of the kind we would expect to see if they had detected an enemy incursion.”
“Very well. Let me know if there are any changes.” That these officers would notify their commanding officer of any meaningful changes in the dispositions or transmissions of the enemy went without saying. Max said it anyway. Ship captains say a lot of things that go without saying, and go without saying a lot of things that most people would say. It’s part of the job.
Another part of the job was enduring the intense stress of waiting for the enemy to react, or not react, to his moves. And not just enduring the st
ress, but enduring it right in front of men who had spent years watching officers in combat—men who were little more than an arm’s length away. Close enough to see every drop of sweat. Countless skippers lost the confidence of their crews simply because they couldn’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny.
Max bore up under that scrutiny as well as anyone. It wasn’t that he wasn’t anxious, because he certainly was, but that he had learned to manage that anxiety effectively, mainly by keeping himself busy. On this occasion he spent nearly an hour reviewing and approving the ship’s maintenance and inspection logs for the past month. If there was any human activity guaranteed to have a tranquilizer-like effect, it was reviewing maintenance and inspection logs.
“Coming up on the traffic-control point,” LeBlanc said. Max had already issued orders for this point in the mission, which the chief implemented with his usual skill. “Initiating compression field devolution. Speed is 959 c . . . 884 . . . 605 . . . 411 . . . 108 . . . 48 . . . 15 . . . 6 . . . 2 . . . field collapsing . . . ship is subluminal . . . engaging main sublight drive. Ship is on main sublight and stable on all three axes. Reducing speed to match the tender and taking up station keeping 2560 kilometers away from her at a relative bearing of one-zero-five mark zero-two-seven.” Half a minute or so passed. “Speed is now 0.15 c.”
“Tender is right where she’s supposed to be, Skipper,” added Bartoli. “No threats detected in our immediate vicinity.”
Max took a quick look at the general status display on his console; all the lights were green, indicating that the major systems—propulsion, sensors, stealth, countermeasures, weapons—were all ready to answer his orders. He looked around at the men in CIC. It was for good reason that the ship’s designers had laid out the compartment with every man at every station (save only the four men at Maneuvering and anyone seated on the Command Island) facing their commanding officer. How could a skipper lead his men if all he saw of them were the backs of their heads?
“Sir,” Chin piped up, “the tender just signaled the Krag traffic-control center on the designated frequency and is awaiting routing instructions.”
“Very well.” Anderssen was playing his part according to plan.
When he observed that the CIC crew did not appear meaningfully less tense than before, Dr. Sahin did not have to ask for the explanation the men had come to expect him to need. By now his extensive researches in the ship’s database and his rapidly expanding fund of experience were enough to tell him that, even though the transponder code that the Nicholas Appert sent in response to the Krag’s “ping” hadn’t provoked an obviously hostile response, there were any number of ways that the tender’s most recent transmission might give the enemy a clue that something was amiss. The authentication codes might have changed. There might be a subtle error in how the message was structured or phrased or encrypted. The Krag equivalent of a comma might be in the wrong place. Bram was sure that there were other ways the message could be wrong. Maybe he could burrow into the database and find a few more.
Nothing made Bram forget his problems better than immersing himself in research, even if it was to find even more reasons he might be blown to flaming atoms sometime in the next twenty minutes. He got busy.
Bram had just finished a somewhat abstruse database section about a method the Krag used for making their messages more difficult to counterfeit by inserting carefully constructed time-coding errors in two of the five secondary authentication codes when Bartoli spoke up.
“Change in Krag tracking activity, sir. All the early-warning sensor stations are shifting their focus from the tender back into the Sierra. Right now there’s nothing focused on her—just the standard area-wide traffic-control scanners the Krag use to keep everyone on the right routes so that none of their ships run into one another. Which would be a terrible pity.”
Max chuckled. “I’m certain that any Krag ship collisions would fill you with great sadness, Mr. Bartoli. Would you send flowers to show your sympathy?”
“No, sir. A New Wisconsin gourmet cheese assortment,” he replied.
“Laced with cyanide and 4-hydroxycoumarin,” said Levy, “to enhance the flavor.”
“Skipper, reply from the Krag traffic-control center. It looks like a standard set of traffic directions—they could almost have come from our own people. They direct the tender to a sublight low-priority traffic corridor to cross at .34 c from the Sierra into Krag-controlled space. Then, when she’s about 300 million kilometers from the FEBA, they route her through a set of branching transit corridors, still at .34, until she hits one of their long-distance traffic routes. There, they put her into a slot in the traffic pattern and send her down the line at 875 c to the vicinity of Repair and Refit Base 446. After that she’s picked up by the local traffic-control center in that sector. I’ve routed the message to Navigation.”
“My back room is coordinating with my counterpart on the tender right now, Skipper,” announced Ellison from Navigation. “We’ll have the route plotted and fed to Maneuvering on both ships in just a few seconds.” He returned his attention to his console, where he worked rapidly, making computations, pulling up data, and speaking quietly over his headset. “Course computed and routed to Maneuvering on both ships.”
“Very well. Chin, signal the tender that she is clear to acknowledge the Krag order and proceed as they direct.
“Aye, sir.” Pause. “Tender has acknowledged the order.”
“Very well. LeBlanc, let’s be their shadow.”
“Shadowing the tender, aye,” said LeBlanc.
Max listened to the reports that the tender was coming to the new course and speed that would put it into the Krag traffic corridor, and then the directions from LeBlanc to his men to bring the ship around to its new heading. Later he heard the veteran chief give instructions for the minute changes in course and speed necessary to keep the Cumberland in the correct position relative to the tender—with the tender between it and the source of the most powerful sensor transmissions painting the ships at that particular moment. Both ships were soon on course, traveling at 875 c along the designated traffic corridor leading to the Krag repair and refit base. Bartoli’s contact reports soon showed that the Cumberland wasn’t alone in the corridor. Rather, just as in a similar corridor in Union space, ships were lined up one after the other at a uniform distance, all traveling at the same speed, like ground cars following a vast highway in space. The only difference was that instead of the ships being the standard Union interval of 40 AU apart, they were 33.48 AU apart, a distance that came out to a nice even number of the units that the Krag used in place of the AU.
The exquisitely sensitive sensors on the Cumberland could detect five ships lined up ahead of it. It wasn’t long before Krag traffic control began to slot ships in behind as well. The tender, shadowed by its tiny and virtually invisible escort, was just another boxcar in the light-year-long Krag train chugging down the tracks toward a sector deep in Krag space.
“Mr. Kasparov, Mr. Bhattacharyya, any evidence that the Krag are paying us any special attention?”
“No new contacts or anomalous readings, sir,” Kasparov reported.
“And no unusual changes in Krag comm traffic or scan patterns,” added Mr. Bhattacharyya from the Intel Station.
“Secure from Amber,” Max ordered. “Set Condition Orange throughout the ship.” Whereas Condition Amber, just one step below Condition Red or General Quarters, required that every man be on duty and at, or near, his battle station, Condition Orange allowed men to return to their normal watch schedule. As a result, two-thirds of the crew immediately left their stations, to eat, have a pint of “Bud” Schlitz’s best lager, take a crap, goof off, or sleep. Most headed either for the galley or for their racks. Since the ship was now behind enemy lines, by unspoken agreement with his XO, Max left CIC while DeCosta remained behind. Max would relieve him in four hours so that one of the two was always in CIC keeping an eye on things. The men would get the rest they needed, but there woul
d always be a senior officer in CIC with the experience to know whether the enemy was responding to the presence of an enemy moving ever deeper into his rear.
With each passing moment, not only was there more distance between the Cumberland and the relative safety of the Union lines, there were also more and more enemy ships that she would have to evade in order to escape. There was an old military maxim that Max could not get out of his mind: “When you are in the enemy’s rear, he is also in yours.”
Max headed immediately for his quarters, instructed the computer to wake him in three hours and fifty-five minutes, and stretched out on his rack, still in his Space Combat Uniform (SCU) complete with its oxygen-generator canister, pressure regulator, emergency radio, and zip-on pressure gloves and folding pressure helmet ready to serve as an emergency pressure suit. He was asleep within seconds.
After what seemed like only seconds, he was awake again, wondering what had roused him. Then he heard the Union Space Navy standard wake-up alarm: a chime followed by the purring, synthesized contralto of the computer voice managing, as always, somehow to be both intimately erotic and cybernetically cold, repeating, “It is time to wake up.” The chime and the voice repeated themselves five seconds later, incrementally louder. Allowed to continue, the chime and the voice would continue to repeat, a little louder each time, up to the level at which the sound would bleed through the bulkhead. Then the computer would strobe the lights in the compartment and trigger a deafening Klaxon that would blare from right beside the sleeper’s head. There were rumors that if the Klaxon went on for more than five minutes, the cabin sprinkler system would go off, showering the sleeper with cold water, but no one could ever stand the sound of the Klaxon long enough to test that particular bit of scuttlebutt.
Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3) Page 21