Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  The prince sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. The pose would have looked relaxed in any other man, but Prince Khalid appeared to be anything but relaxed. He met the eyes of every man in the room, measuring their feelings, their thoughts, their wills. He saw an opening to get what he wanted and stepped calmly but directly into the breach. He touched the table in front of him, converting the surface into a terminal keyboard, and entered a short series of commands. The large display wall on one side of the compartment divided into three subdisplays, one of which contained a static table of Max’s combat record: engagements, enemy vessels destroyed, enemy vessels taken, total tonnage taken or destroyed, cargo captured, and so on. The other two displays showed animated diagrams of some engagements in which the Cumberland had fought: the Battle of Pfelung, the Battle of Rashid VB, the battle in which the Cumberland escaped a Lehrer-Lobachevsky Hexagon and sliced through the upper layers of a star to lure another warship to its death, and others. The symbols on the displays, each of which represented real machines filled with real thinking beings, swooped and maneuvered in a ballet without music, telling in abstract how thousands of men and Krag desperately fought and bravely died. Commander Hajjam squinted hard at the wordless narrative, jaw clenching and unclenching, his agile and tactically adept mind rapidly processing everything he saw as he watched the battles play out in accelerated time, occasionally smiling with grudging approbation, shaking his head with stern disapproval, or raising his eyebrows with stark disbelief.

  After a few minutes, the man Max continued to think of as Ellington Wortham-Biggs began to speak again. “Commander Hajjam has asserted command over this task force—that action has already been officially logged. As any navy man—Union, Rashidian, Romanovan, Texian, or Ghiftee—knows, logs are sacred writ. No one may change so much as a single letter of them once entered.

  The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

  Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

  Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

  “English?” It was the first word Max had spoken in several minutes.

  Khalid smiled ironically. “Perhaps.” At Max’s plain but quickly concealed irritation at being given an evasive answer, the prince continued, “It is a more complex issue than one would think. The quote is from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which is styled as a translation into English by the British writer Edward Fitzgerald of a series of poems written circa 1100 CE. It is, however, a question of much debate as to how much of Omar Khayyam is actually Omar Khayyam and how much is Edward Fitzgerald. It is, notwithstanding the rancor of the academic disputation, a beautiful and profound work.” He was about to say more on the subject, but stopped himself. “Alas, my good Robichaux, that is a discussion for another time.

  “Back to the matter at hand. We must remember that an event in the past, no matter how immutable, can take on many different aspects, depending on the light cast upon it by the future. And the future, gentlemen, is ours to shape.” He looked at the faces around the table and continued in an earnest, quiet voice.

  “Indeed, we are shaping it now. Bearing in mind the highly unfortunate consequences I described a few moments ago, I ask that you consider a set of vastly different outcomes that will come to pass if we only nudge the future very slightly in a more favorable direction. Let us suppose that we explain what has already transpired by reminding the king and Admiral Hornmeyer—truthfully, I might add—that Commander Hajjam’s current security clearance does not give him access to Union after-action reports, leaving him to rely on second- and thirdhand reports of reports of the Cumberland’s recent engagements. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, those reports so exaggerated Lieutenant Commander Robichaux’s aggressiveness and pugnaciousness that Commander Hajjam concluded that Robichaux was dangerously reckless to such an extent that putting him in command of the task force would lead to disaster. Accordingly, he sought to take command.

  “Let us suppose further that all of the relevant logs and reports state with firm unanimity that Commander Hajjam—who, like all good officers, is perfectly willing to conform his theories to the evidence—reviewed with interest full and accurate reports of Robichaux’s exploits as captain of the Cumberland. The logs would go on to say that review of those reports, combined with his personal impression of Lieutenant Commander Robichaux’s mature and officer-like demeanor, persuaded the commander that he was in error. At that point he took the inevitable action, again clearly and unanimously described in the logs, of stepping aside in favor of Robichaux.” He looked pointedly at Hajjam. “With apologies.”

  He stood and walked over to the two-meter-long viewport set in the port bulkhead of the compartment that Commander Hajjam had ordered be unshuttered, even though the ship was in enemy space. Because the prince had dimmed the lights to enable the commander to have a better view of the data on the displays, the stars were brilliantly visible—the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy and, beyond it, the lambent swath of the galactic core that, because there had been no reason to align the plane of the ship’s decks with that of the galaxy, cut across the viewport at an acute diagonal. That way lay the Vaaach Sovereignty, the Sarthan Collegium, the Tri-Nin Matriarchy, and untold numbers of other races with whom humankind had not yet made contact. At more than 100,000 light-years across, the galaxy wasn’t infinite, but it was mind-numbingly huge.

  The prince resumed speaking, framed by the galactic vista behind him. “How much more felicitous would be the results of this course of events! Spacers of the Kingdom and of the Union, as well as those of the Pfelung, would fight side by side in the belief that the leaders of the task force are in harmony with one another. Commander Hajjam would make the best possible impression upon both subordinates and superiors—so concerned about his men and the mission that he was willing to stick his neck out when he felt their safety was threatened, yet so unselfish, reasonable, and open to persuasion that he graciously yielded in the face of contrary evidence. Interstellar cooperation is advanced, the Four Power Association is strengthened, and we cheerfully march forward together to kill the Krag in ever-greater numbers. All because Commander Hajjam stepped aside voluntarily rather than after having been ordered to do so.”

  The prince then turned to Hajjam. “So, Commander, what is your decision? You needn’t make it immediately, you know.” He glanced at the chrono on the bulkhead. “Anytime in the next sixty to ninety seconds would be quite sufficient.” He turned to look out the viewport, sipping his coffee.

  It didn’t take ninety seconds. It didn’t even take sixty. Whatever his occasional displays of ambition and stubbornness, Hajjam knew another aggressive and skillful combat leader when he saw one. He also knew that to persist in the course of action he had chosen would bring him in conflict with the prince and the king, which was always a bad idea. His always powerful pride was in conflict with his similarly powerful intellect. Intellect won. Barely.

  He knew what he must do, but that knowledge didn’t make it easy. Hajjam rose. He bowed first to the prince and then to Robichaux, after which he drew his sword and laid it on the table in front of Max. “My sword is at your disposal, sir. What is your command?”

  Dr. Sahin had taught Max well. He rose, bowed to the prince and to Hajjam, and drew his own sword, placing it on top of Hajjam’s with the blades crossing at right angles to one another. “I accept your sword, Commander, and have these three commands for you. First, that you shake my hand and know that you and I are fully reconciled as brothers who have disagreed but who are forever bound together by blood and honor.” The two men shook hands warmly. “Second, that you serve as the group’s deputy commander.” Hajjam nodded his assent. Max picked up his sword and sheathed it. He then picked up Hajjam’s sword, grasping the blade just below the handguard, and handed it to the commander hilt-first.

  “And, third, that you receive your sword and bear it into battle against our enemies. May our blades shine tog
ether in victory!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  6.85 Daytenths, Day 202, 18th Greening, Reign of the 11th Hegemon, 8th Dynasty, Post-Unification Era

  (Union Calendar: 09:52 Zulu Hours, 15 May 2315)

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap. The Warlike Commander of Military Operations for Sector 782-88585 heard two taps of a standard naval-issue steel tail-cap on the steel deck, a pause, and two more taps. The sound meant that a being of inferior rank—a category that included everyone within a radius of approximately forty-three light-years—was requesting his attention as required by ancient military protocol. After waiting for a pair of heartbeats, he slowly rotated the stool on which he was sitting to face the source of the sound: his Fleet Communications Officer, clearly bearing important news.

  “Approach,” he said, the squeaks and chitters of his speech uttered in the low-pitched monotone that signaled the degree of bored condescension appropriate to the disparity in their ranks. In response to the invitation, the officer stepped across the invisible but well-defined boundary that separated the portion of the Command Nest where officers and crew performed their duties from the portion reserved for the Warlike Commander, his private work or contemplations, and the privileged few invited into his august presence. He stopped just over a meter and a half from the commander and bowed until his wet, black nose pressed into a tiny indentation in the deck placed there for exactly that purpose. After a pause of three heartbeats, the commander dropped his own nose just slightly, acknowledging the display of submission and asserting his own dominance. The Communications Officer responded by smartly snapping to the appropriate posture of an inferior reporting to an officer of much higher rank: toes pointed out at forty-five-degree angles, knees slightly bent, palms forward, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes on the floor directly in front of the superior’s feet. “Report,” the commander ordered in the same bored monotone.

  “Warlike Commander, we have just received a signal from Naval Materiel Transport 898-253.”

  The commander quickly pulled up the summary squib on that ship from the database. Naval Materiel Transport 898-253 was a captured Union fast tender, Clarence Birdseye class, currently traversing Sector 7-8-5 of his command’s Outer Defense Perimeter on its way to Repair and Refit Base 446.

  “And, pray tell, what does Transport 898-253 have to say that is of such tail-crimping importance?”

  “Warlike Commander, the transport’s commander reports that his vessel has been stalked by a Pfelung Reconnaissance Fighter for three daytenths. The captain of that vessel is of the opinion that the Recon Fighter would not have followed for that long unless it had summoned a force of Pfelung Combat Fighters and was guiding them to an intercept. He expects to be attacked at any moment and requests assistance.”

  The commander directed his attention to his neural interface, a splendid piece of his race’s superior technology that tied his highly evolved brain directly to the main computer of his battlecruiser, and accessed the detailed record on the transport. Within less than a second, he knew that registry number belonged to a vessel listed as assigned to this theater of operations and that it had recently carried a load of missiles and replacement sensor arrays to Class Five Refit and Repair Laager 53 in Sector 553893, adjacent to the Forward Edge of Battle Area. The database contained no report of the ship departing the Laager and heading back toward the Core Systems, but given the exigencies of wartime, reports of that kind often lagged many days behind the event. Nothing was amiss. With the enormous attrition imposed on transports by enemy destroyers, such a vessel, even empty, was worthy of protection, notwithstanding that doing so would deprive the installation he commanded of most of its fighter defenses.

  No matter. He had enough larger ships to repel anything the feeble humans and their ludicrous allies were likely to be able to throw at him.

  “Dispatch the entire fighter squadron to rendezvous with the transport, but retain for our defense the fighter hand that is currently on combat-area patrol and the hand currently assigned as their reserve. The forty fighters comprising the other eight hands should be sufficient to fend off the one or two Pfelungian fighter hands typically assigned to a single recon vessel.”

  “As ordered, Warlike Commander. I will transmit the message immediately.”

  “See that you do.” With an indolent wave of his left hand, the commander indicated that unless the Communications Officer had anything further, he should initiate the formalities that would end the interview. The young officer briefly touched his nose to the same spot on the floor as before and stood back up while the commander nodded his nose in two quick bobs, indicating the inferior’s dismissal. He left.

  Through the neural interface, the commander monitored the outgoing comm signals by which Fighter Control ordered the fighters to the transport’s aid. After observing with satisfaction how quickly the fighters launched from their mobile hangar; formed into hands; grouped the hands into a large, tight formation; and burned toward the transport on afterfusers, he turned his attention to other matters. It never occurred to him to transmit a message to the fighters complimenting them on their performance. He was a busy being, and his cheek pouches were stuffed full of responsibilities.

  So many responsibilities, in fact, that he had not noticed the passage of more than a daytenth when he once again heard his attention being requested. Turning toward the tapping sound with the same deliberate delay as before, he saw the same Communications Officer, this time in what was obviously a state of some distress. As much as he enjoyed the discomfiture of his subordinate, the commander was also concerned. What had happened?

  “Approach.” The appropriate rituals were completed. “Report.”

  “Warlike Commander, we have lost contact with the fighter squadron.”

  He bared his teeth and lowered his ears, an expression of condescending disbelief, the way a parent looks at a youngling lying about having his snout in the candied seed jar. “You mean you have lost contact with elements of the fighter squadron.”

  “With respects, Commander,” the Communications Officer sputtered, forgetting the “Warlike,” “that is not my intended meaning. We have lost contact with the entire squadron. The squadron commander’s regular report is two hundred standard heartbeats overdue, and we have been unable to establish communications with either him or any of the hand leaders.”

  “Then try to open a channel with one of the nonleader fighters.” The commander affected a tone of elaborate patience. “Try each of them individually. Put your entire section on it, and use every available transmitter instead of waiting for one communications operator to try all of the thirty-two remaining ships in sequence. Do I have to think of everything myself?” He clicked his incisors together in irritation, a holdover from his distant ancestors’ instinct of biting anything that threatened them, akin to a human reflexively clenching a fist in anger. “I expect a report within one segment,” he added, as though speaking to a youngling of roughly six greenings. “One segment. That’s a tenth of a daytenth. Don’t be late.”

  “As ordered, Warlike Commander.” The rituals of dismissal completed, the Communications Officer skittered away to do his commander’s bidding, tail pressed defensively to his left side as he left, a reflex evolved to keep the tail from being bitten off.

  “It is probably nothing,” the commander said to himself. “Just some sort of communications system malfunction.” Engineers were always tinkering and upgrading systems that worked perfectly well in the first place, occasionally with questionable reliability. “Wartime is not the time for experimentation,” he muttered. “It is time to hold to that which is tried-and-true and proven.” Still, something in the commander’s nose wanted to twitch. Instinctively he sensed a cat nearby. A big one. He would take immediate precautions because, as the old saying went, “Better to dart into a hole a hundred times without need than to be eaten once without heed.”

  He used his neural interface to open a voice channel t
o his Fleet Operations Officer, who answered with reassuring promptness. “I am transmitting to you the projected coordinates of a rendezvous that was supposed to take place between the fighter squadron and a transport. Dispatch Destroyers 43-5325 and 43-6872 to that location. Their orders are to conduct a remote reconnaissance, observation protocol five, and report the results directly to me. Specifically remind the captains that protocol five requires that they avoid any engagement and that delivery of complete and accurate tactical information is their only priority. No matter how tempting the target, they are not, repeat NOT, to engage. If the enemy engages them, they are to evade, escape, and report. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, Warlike Commander. I will transmit the orders immediately.”

  “And further direct the captains that I want progress reports from each of them—not just the senior of the two—every thousand standard heartbeats. Tell them that if any report is so much as two heartbeats late, I will have their tails in my soup.” Unlike many officers of his rank, the commander had never actually dined on an errant subordinate’s tail, but the destroyer captains did not need to know that. After all, there was a recipe for Miscreant Tail Soup in the database, and it was reputed to be quite delicious.

  “I will include that in the orders. Is there anything further, Warlike Commander?”

  “Nothing further. Proceed.” He closed the circuit with a mental command.

  The commander was pleased to observe that, within a hundred heartbeats, the pair of destroyers was accelerating hard in the direction in which the fighters had disappeared. Naturally he communicated this pleasure to no one, but returned to the daunting task of completing the setup of the installation under his command, one critical to the conduct of the current war.