In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V

by David Weber

  “Thank—thank you, Sir.”

  To her horror, Honor’s voice came out husky, almost cracked, and her eyes burned with the unshed tears the loss of her career had been unable to shake free. At least the admiral knew. At least he understood, and she hugged that knowledge to her.

  “I hope that under similar circumstances, someone would have informed me of that, as well, Commander Harrington.”

  There was frank compassion in Webster’s voice this time, and Honor looked at him. Silence stretched out between them, and then, finally, Webster let his chair come fully upright at last.

  “There’s one last thing, Commander,” he said.

  “Sir?” Honor asked when he paused again.

  “As I say, I spoke personally to Admiral Courvoisier about your case. In fact, I’m afraid that when I screened him, I interrupted him. He was in conference with the senior instructors at the ATC facility.”

  Honor nodded. She’d been delighted when Courvoisier finally received his long overdue promotion to flag rank and was given the Advanced Tactical Course—otherwise known as “the Crusher.” ATC was the final step towards senior starship command. A handful of officers might have received light hyper-capable commands without surviving the Crusher, as Honor herself had with Hawkwing, but no one who hadn’t passed ATC could ever hope to command anything heavier or more prestigious than that outdated destroyer. She could think of no one in the entire Navy better suited than Courvoisier to run the Crusher, and the fact that the Navy at large had finally recognized that had filled her with deep pleasure.

  “As I’ve also already mentioned,” Webster continued, “the admiral was extremely distressed when I informed him that I saw no option but to relieve you of your command. He protested quite strongly, although, in the end, I believe he came to the view that it was the best decision all around.”

  Honor flinched. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes darted in disbelief to Webster’s face, but to her mingled horror and disbelief, he was actually smiling at her!

  “I believe that the reason he came to that view, Commander,” the First Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Navy continued, “is that ATC is beginning a new training cycle next month. If we hadn’t expedited the paperwork to get you out of command of Hawkwing, it would have been impossible for us to fit you into that cycle, and you would have had to wait another six T-months before you could attend it.”

  For a moment, it simply didn’t register. And then, suddenly, it did, and Honor’s eyes went huge.

  “Don’t think for a minute that we’re not all dead serious about the extraordinarily dim view we take of officers who blithely disregard their orders,” Webster said, his voice momentarily grim once again. “And don’t even begin to think about getting into the habit of doing so! But this time, Commander—just this once—the Service is prepared to overlook this little faux pas on your part. Of course,” he smiled nastily, “if we can satisfy Sector Governor Charnowska and her allies by relieving you of command, so much the better. By the time they figure out what we’ve really done, the moment for them to press for something more . . . significant will have passed. But one of the reasons I just spent the last ten minutes scaring the hell out of you, Commander Harrington, is because you are not going to get away with something like this the next time. And you’d better be aware that you’ve just finished making yourself some significant enemies in places like Saginaw and Mesa. I doubt they’d even noticed you before, but, trust me—they’ll be keeping an eye on you from now on.”

  “Yes, Sir. I understand.”

  “Good . . . even if I find it difficult to believe you really do, given the smile you can’t quite keep off your face,” Webster said dryly. “Now go.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  * * *

  “So, dear, are you ready to talk about it now?” Allison Harrington asked calmly as she and Honor helped Alfred Harrington load supper’s dishes into the dishwasher.

  “About what?” Honor asked.

  “About whatever it is you haven’t been talking about for the last month,” her mother explained with exaggerated patience. Nimitz bleeked in amusement from his high chair at the table, and Allison glared at him. “You stay out of this, you furry little monster!”

  Nimitz only bleeked louder, and Allison chuckled, then sobered—a bit, at least—as she turned back to her daughter.

  “I’m serious. Are you ready to talk about it?”

  “Alley—” Alfred Harrington said warningly, and she made a face at him.

  “Oh, pooh, Alfred!” she said. “I’ve put up with you and Honor and all of that ‘do the right thing’ Navy crap ever since she came dragging home with her tail between her legs. Now I just want to know what it’s all been about.”

  “Mother, I’m sorry,” Honor said, “but I still can’t tell you. They told me not to talk about it, and no one’s told me that’s changed. But, if it’ll make you happier, I think I can honestly say my meeting with Admiral Webster went enormously better than I ever expected. In fact, everything is going to be just fine.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Allison Harrington studied her daughter’s expression with unusual intensity, her own eyes far more anxious than she would normally ever have allowed them to be.

  “Positive,” Honor said firmly, and her mother’s taut shoulders relaxed.

  “Good,” she said softly, reaching up to pat her far taller daughter’s shoulder gently. “Good.”

  “Yes,” Honor replied, putting her arm around her and hugging her gently. “Yes, I think it really is—good, I mean.”

  The two of them stood that way for several seconds, and then Allison gave herself a shake and looked up at Honor with something much more like her normal grin.

  “Now that you’ve told me that much, though,” she said, “I suppose I should ask you if all of that stuff you’re not supposed to talk to me about has anything to do with that little unauthorized attack you made on the Casimir System in company with the Ballroom?”

  Honor blinked in astonishment, and Allison snorted.

  “Honor, Beowulf is just on the other side of the Wormhole. Where do you think all those liberated slaves went? And what makes you think a ‘merchantship’ crewed almost exclusively by people with last names like ‘X’ could land a thousand liberated slaves on Beowulf without my family knowing about it? I got Jacques’ first letter less than a week after you got home from Silesia! But since it was obvious to your father”—she glowered at Alfred—“that you’d been ordered not to talk about it, I didn’t press you for any details. Now that you’ve been to talk to the Admiralty, though, I’m not feeling quite so charitable. So, tell me. Did Jacques get the details right?”

  “Since I don’t know exactly what he told you, I can’t say,” Honor said. Although, she reflected, her mother’s older brother almost certainly had gotten “the details right.” In fact, given his role in the Anti-Slavery League, she strongly suspected that he’d gotten the “details” directly from Samson X and Henri Christophe. “I’d say it’s likely he did, though,” she added out loud.

  “And did you really come as close as he thinks you did to throwing your career away to do it?” Allison asked much more quietly.

  “I don’t know—” Honor began, but then she met her mother’s gaze and knew it wasn’t a time for brushing things aside.

  “Yes, Mother,” she said instead, her own voice quiet. “I did.”

  “Oh, Honor!” Allison half whispered, reaching up to take her daughter’s face between her hands. She held her there, looking deep into Honor’s eyes, and her own brimmed with tears.

  “Jacques told me what you did,” she said. “He told me he didn’t think there was another officer anywhere—even in the Manticoran Navy—who would’ve done what you did with the Ballroom, of all people. He was so proud of you, Honor! But all I could think was to wonder why you’d done it. Was it my fault? I know how much the Navy means to you, love—did you come that close to throwing it all away because you know how I
feel about genetic slavery?”

  Honor looked back at her, knowing her mother wanted the truth, even if, until this very moment, Honor hadn’t known exactly what that truth was, herself. And then, finally, she shook her head slightly.

  “Mother, it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Oh, I do know how you feel about Manpower, and Mesa, and genetic slavery. I won’t pretend that how I feel about them isn’t of reflection of what you—and Daddy—taught me to feel, either. But when the Ballroom came to me about this, I didn’t decide because of you, or because of Daddy. I decided because of me—because of who I am, and what I believe, and what my conscience demands of me. I couldn’t just walk away, knowing what I knew. That was the bottom line, Mother—not sitting on your lap when I was a kid and listening to you and Uncle Jacques talking about the ASL and the Ballroom. It was knowing that if I did something I might actually save at least a few lives from that sort of living hell . . . and that if I didn’t do something, no one else could.”

  She looked down into her mother’s eyes.

  “I couldn’t let that happen. I just . . . couldn’t.”

  Allison Harrington looked up at her towering daughter for endless seconds, and then, slowly, she shook her own head.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” she said softly, “it is my fault—mine and your father’s. After all,” she smiled hugely through a haze of tears, “we’re the ones who named you Honor.”

  An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design

  Mr. Hegel DiLutorio, CAPT, RMN, ret. HMSS Hephaestus, 1906 PD

  Author’s Note: The author developed a healthy respect for and interest in armor systems during thirty odd years spent cursing the stuff while trying to get at some component or other. He is greatly indebted to friends at BuShips and various design yards across the Manticore System and beyond for their patience and willingness to provide (always strictly unclassified) information. They are too numerous to name here but their contributions made this article possible. All his dates are Post Diaspora (PD), and all his errors are his own.

  The last century of dramatic development in naval weaponry has driven constant co-evolution in starship passive protection systems. A starship’s main defenses might consist of electronic countermeasures, countermissiles, point defense laser clusters, and powerful gravitic sidewalls, but all too often the last line of defense between the spacer and vacuum is armor. Modern armor designs are able to protect vital components from beam attacks carrying energy enough to convert solid matter into plasma very much like that at the heart of a sun. How is this possible? The present work begins with a history of weapon threats to starships, goes on to examine the laser head armed impeller drive missile threat now emerging as a significant factor in armor design, and concludes with a description of the design process. The Star Knight-class heavy cruiser’s armor system is used as a practical example.

  Deep Space Warfare from 1246 to the Present: A Short History of the Threat

  The threats to starships are often classified by origin—natural or artificial. Spacers have been familiar with many of these threats since the first primitive chemical flights left Earth in the centuries before the Diaspora. The natural threats are meteorites of various kinds and radiation from various sources. The artificial ones that come most readily to mind are weapons but also include debris from human activity—a constant concern even after two thousand years of spaceflight and made more serious by the high relative velocities generated by impeller drives. A collision with even small debris at today’s relative velocities can produce catastrophic results quite as deadly as weapons fire unless proper safeguards are in place. Indeed, it was protection from the natural threats of micrometeorite impact, debris, and radiation that drove initial research into early spacecraft armors. Every threat has unique aspects and a proper treatment of armor design would examine their influence in detail. Bandwidth and the patience of editors constrain us here to pick just one threat whose influence has been growing in modern armor design.

  It can safely be said that the impeller drive missile armed with laser heads is emerging as a significant anti-ship threat as the twentieth century of the Diaspora begins. The last few decades have certainly borne this out, though the ship-mounted graser and laser still reign supreme in short range combat. No single weapon type has ever been the central object of a longer arms race than the impeller missile. The laser head is merely the latest in a long line of developments. The thrusts and parries of the offensive and defensive schools within starship design circles are intimately connected with this amazing and terrible engine of destruction.

  The impeller drive missile dates back to shortly after the introduction of the impeller drive itself in 1246 PD. The first small automated impeller test spacecraft were essentially missiles in all but intent. A single impeller ring, a short lived power supply, a guidance package, and a telemetry system were all mounted in a sturdy spaceframe which could withstand the notoriously unpredictable accelerations of these first generation drives. These early prototypes, massing thousands of tons, were uneconomical as weapons, but their test results spurred investment in the new technology. Widespread experimentation by several groups, notably Beowulf in the still young Solarian League, soon produced smaller more practical drives. The galaxy’s militaries were quick to recognize the possibilities of weaponization. The age of the impeller drive missile had begun.

  The early missiles were large and expensive. Only a few could be carried on the largest ships, but a hit was essentially guaranteed to completely destroy the target. These weapons had no warhead. Rather, the missile sought to slip between the planes of the target’s wedge and ram its own wedge into the target directly. Then as now, no known spacecraft building material could survive contact with an impeller wedge. This lasted for roughly a decade and spurred several star nations research programs into producing the first generation gravitic sidewall generators. These were artificial gravity waves powerful enough to burn out an attacking missile’s drives, vaporize the debris, and prevent damage to a ship.

  The defense was not perfect. It was soon learned that only the side aspects of the wedge could be closed with sidewalls. The bow and stern aspects remained undefended, permitting the oft mentioned “down-the-throat” and “up-the-kilt” shots. Nevertheless the sidewall inspired missile designers to find alternate means of damaging a target. The reappearance of large multimegaton nuclear warheads on missiles dates from this period. These first attempts tried to use the missile to move a payload close to an enemy starship rather than killing the ship with the missile’s wedge. These early impeller drive space-to-space nuclear weapons were mostly ineffective. The open ends of the wedge presented too small a target to incoming missiles, and the weapons were not maneuverable enough to drive around an imposed wedge or sidewall and detonate inside the perimeter. Tacticians also tried precisely timing the detonation of the weapon some distance ahead of the target in such a way that the ship flew into the radiation and debris from the explosion. The target’s own wedge would then act something like a funnel to direct the blast onto the ship. These early nuclear “standoff” weapons were hindered by their low yield fission-fusion warheads, but did provide valuable lessons on precision timing in high crossing velocity missile engagements.

  The gods that govern arms races abhor imbalance, and the sidewall’s impenetrability did not last long. In 1298, research yielded the first practical sidewall penetrator. The term actually describes a bewildering array of different methods and technologies of getting an attack through a sidewall. Early devices took many forms and it is not entirely clear even today which type came first. Research has uncovered at least seven unique “inventors” of the sidewall penetrator. Whoever invented it, the consensus among historians is that the first widely employed devices used a precisely timed reshaping of the missile’s own impeller wedge in the fraction of a second before contact to temporarily “flicker” the target’s sidewall and allow the weapon to pass through unimpeded. This approach had the downs
ide of destroying the attacking missile’s own drive (and much of its afterbody) rendering it both unable to maneuver inside the target’s wedge and removing its primary means of killing the target. The answer was to merge the standoff nuclear weapon with the sidewall penetrator and use the inert missile front end to carry a nuclear charge into the sidewall perimeter. Careful control of the missile’s impeller power curve, proper construction of the afterbody, and a powerful pressor field which threw the payload clear prior to the impeller ring’s vaporization allowed the warhead portion to survive long enough to detonate within the target’s sidewall. Aside from the obvious improvements in understanding of gravitics, considerable advances in computing were also required to ensure that the nuclear explosive would properly detonate after the warhead was through the first sidewall and before the inert missile body was shredded by the intact opposite sidewall. It was not uncommon in this period for these “sidewall contacting nuclear weapons” or “contact nukes” (as they came to be known) to detonate on the opposite side of the target from the sidewall that they pierced.1 Weapons that detonated prematurely outside the sidewall still had a chance to overload the generators by the sheer amount of energy dumped into the sidewall by the explosion. This had the happy effect (for the attacker) of weakening the sidewall for follow on attacks. The invulnerability of the sidewall had lasted less than fifty years and was ended forever.

  Spacecraft designers responded with vigorous innovation in defensive measures. Early research in electromagnetic and gravitic deception and countermeasures renewed the importance of the ancient and archaically named art of “electronic” countermeasures. Navies turned to mass driver technology for point defense. The point defense autocannon found in some third rate navies today, and even on truly ancient reserve Battle Fleet vessels in the Solarian Navy, are direct descendents of weapons developed in this period as a response to the early contact nuke.