Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  "We spend trillions on intelligence corporations, more trillions on weapons corporations, many trillions on a fleet,... and we are in the dark. We will each do our own job, as best as we can, with whatever equipment the Senates have given us. We must hope that it will be enough. We've had a half-century to do more and better. We've chosen how to lay out our fleet. Now we must use it to fight. Go and have breakfast. You've given me things to consider," Kalinin said. As Trinh turned her back to leave, Kalinin frowned. Things to consider, thought Kalinin: Have we spent our time replacing ironclads with dreadnaughts, or did we spend our time polishing our swords and ensuring that the best brandy is ready for the officers to sip while watching the battleships die, even as the Russian Imperial Admiral did at Tsushima?

  Kalinin saw his Squadron Officers by ship class. The Armored Cruiser Squadron Commanders: Senior Captain Herbert Parlegrecco, Hattin Squadron. Senior Captain Jane Duty Henderson, Second Kabul Squadron. Captain David Adamski, Mogadishu Squadron. Senior Captain Vincent Alden St. James, Manzikert Squadron. Each had commanded a ship pre-mobilization. Each was now commanding a newly formed squadron of eight ships, while still captaining their own ship. Kalinin had tried without success to convince the Joint War Committee that a Captain would be too busy fighting his own ship to lead the vessels around him. Henderson, thought Kalinin, had made her Squadron the best in the fleet. If political maneuvering worked, Parlegrecco would be a Commodore; fortunately, he was also a good officer. Adamski's people were always slightly late getting things done, but did it very well when they did. Kalinin suspected that Adamski needed to grow into his new position. St. James had carefully retained his rank with the State of Antietam Space Guard, allowing him to wear the well-tapered and extremely flashy Antietam uniform. Each was aware of the ship plans fiasco. Adamski was still working on a process plan for finding the variances. Kalinin told himself it might take a while, but it would in the end be done very carefully, matched against maintenance records and logs,... and be a wonderful tool for dealing with the Fleet Reserve Yards. He sent them on their way, wondering as he did if keelhauling could be replaced with flogging around the fleet.

  The New York squadron's commanding officer was Junior Commodore Gail Kelly, a perky, short, slightly built woman perpetually bubbling with enthusiasm. New York was large enough to have maintained customs from the old wet-water navy, customs suited for a ship with a crew of hundreds or thousands that might spend months out of home port. Dress uniform with sword was someplace in the regs for very large ships; Kelly's sword gave her an excuse to have her uniform tailored. Kalinin told himself that while he could tell Wolverson to wear a sword Wolverson was likely to ask why a conventional barbecue skewer was inadequate for the ship's next pig roast. "I was most distressed by the errors in ship CAD/CAM files," she agreed. "New York had no errors. But New York has always been on active duty. Yakutsk -- it was never on active duty -- has so many variances it's almost a new ship class," she reported. "We're not sure Yakutsk can maneuver safely at max specs. We're doing sims, but half the changes make no sense. It's hard to tell if something works when you don't know why it's there." Kalinin told himself to do a historical search for antique naval traditions that he could revive, notably those involving crucifixion, flaying alive, and boiling in oil, preferably simultaneously, and sent Kelly to breakfast with his other officers.

  "Hatch is not dogged," he called. Four more officers, his remaining squadron commanders, entered, saluted, and accepted his offer of seats. Junior Captain Abigail Hyde had developed the George Washington Parke Custis class of missile barges, persuaded Kalinin that they were militarily effective, and supervised both the hardware development and the corresponding training doctrine. Captains Jeffrey Warren, May Zhou, and Grace Kim commanded the monitors of the Lake Superior, Sparrow Lake, and Lake Chelan squadrons. Monitors were an older ship type, simpler and more heavily armored than armored cruisers, with a somewhat limited offensive punch.

  "I've read your reports," he said. "I understand discomforts about crew preparedness. These are recently-mobilized reserve forces. We get to fight with what we've got. With two exceptions, Bass Lake and Trout Lake, the ships we have on hand actually match their plans. Am I up to date on that?" He got nods of agreement. He did not remind his officers that Bass Lake and Trout Lake had been mothballed at the Lincoln Reserve Fleet Yards. The other ships had been stored in aluminum bubbles in Versailles High orbit. That was one more piece to hold against the Reserve Yards Commander. "Are there other issues?"

  "Chain of command to reconnaissance cruisers?" Warren asked. "If I try to change their formation, I sometimes get told my requests are inconsistent with fleet mission."

  Kalinin looked at the ceiling. His flotilla's Reconnaissance Cruisers were nominally attached to the Monitor squadrons. The attachment was complex; most of the Reconnaissance Cruisers were units in individual State Space Fleets. Their chain of command ran back through state capitols, so they might or might not respond to SLPSDF orders. Fortunately, any information they obtained was immediately available to all parties. Kalinin allowed that the difficulty that they might not conform to movement orders was less serious for reconnaissance cruisers than for warships. The role of a reconnaissance cruiser was to wait and watch, preferably without being noticed. How it did so was generally up to the ship's captain.

  "Politics is wonderful. That's why we have so much of it," Kalinin said. "Have the rest of you had this problem?"

  Grace Kim nodded. May Zhou rolled her head slightly to the side. "I've found that if I focus on mission issues, explain what sort of information I'm worried about getting, the Rec Cruiser captains can do a better job of managing technical issues than I can."

  "I will address the Rec Cruiser captains," Kalinin said. "But given our command structure, perhaps focusing your remarks to them on `I worry about getting this piece of data' may be most effective. I note, however, that it is ten minutes to the hour, and I should let us get a little breakfast before the magic moment."

  LARGE WARSHIP BELLEROPHON

  MAIN BRIEFING ROOM

  CLARKSBURG WARP POINT

  October 18, 2174, 10:00 AM FNT

  Kalinin picked up a small, silvered gavel. In a ceremony as old as the States of Lincoln Planetary Self-Defense Fleet, he struck the bell at his position thrice. The assembled officers came to silence. "This meeting of the Command Officers and Staff, Task Force Clarksburg, is called to order." Even breathing stilled. Not since the Charon Crisis has the SLPSDF fielded a formation larger than a flotilla. "The Joint Defense Committee directed this morning that our formation be upgraded. Word came to me just before I arrived. We are now a Task Force." He gave himself a dramatic pause. Until a few months ago, there was some doubt whether the Fleet would ever see combat. Now all had changed. "I note for the record that per JWC Regulations Vice Commodore Dorothy Agrawal is virtually present here but is physically on board the New York. As is my option per JWC Regulations, we have on board a civilian observer, Miss Sandra Miller, who is a MinuteGirl-Intern to Professor Morbius."

  "As Fleet Tactical has updated to you, 10 days ago we recovered a bitransit torpedo through the Clarksburg warp point. Prior to its return, it had tracked an FEU formation approaching the warp point -- a formation of seven Corvus-class FEU destroyers. Other torpedoes on station beyond the point have not returned. Torpedoes sent through the point since then do not return. Torpedoes sent through other warp points return with expected losses; we're not seeing a bad batch of torpedoes. We must assume our torpedoes are being destroyed.

  "Discussions through the Azores site have failed. The FEU denies it has ships on their side of the warp point. The FEU ships seen in April are said to have been an exploratory venture now withdrawn. The FEU asserts that after mid-June it had no ships beyond the Clarksburg warp point. Of course, we cannot offer contradictory data, because that data would show we can send messages to earth in under six months. The obvious conclusion from FEU intransigence and prevarication is that the FEU is prep
aring an attack through the Clarksburg warp point at Lincoln. Our plans have been critiqued, gamed, analyzed. Today is the final review session. I'll welcome your comments as we go. But first: They will attack! Soon!

  "We are here to stop that attack," Kalinin declared. "I don't want it stopped! I want it crushed! Destroyed! Annihilated! Slain without salt! Down to the last FEU ship! So our diplomats can immediately answer FEU inquiries with 'Attack? What attack?', and leave them no wiser about their fate. And that's exactly what we are going to do!" he announced, pointing his finger across the room. "It is now 10:05 AM, so by Order of the Joint Senates War Committee we are now Task Force Clarksburg. If we must fight, please be sure that it is our opponents who go home on their shields."

  CUTTER FLASHMAN

  CLARKSBURG-LINCOLN INTERORBITAL

  October 18, 2174, 1:04 PM FNT

  The Flashman passenger space included a small lounge with tables and galley. Grand Commodore Kalinin and fellow passenger faced each other across the smaller table. Sandra Miller’s conversation remained vigorous and cheery, but shadows lined her eyes. Lincoln had been her last stop, not her first, with hundreds of light years of travel in between.

  "I think you will find the mobilization reports most interesting," Kalinin said. "Lincoln uses very nearly the same Senate Committee structure and management schemes that the United States does, albeit on a modestly smaller scale, so the features we have encountered in our mobilization may also appear in the American Solar Navy’s, should they ever choose to mobilize. All of this information is, of course, publicly available under the Suppression of Secrecy Act. Indeed each document has the associated URL and guestbook location." Sandra winked. “We also have the same custom of recalling fleet commanders for interrogation by their civilian superiors, so I am now here.”

  "I’m most grateful," Sandra answered. "The segments I read were a bit disappointing, relative to expectations in the original mobilization plans."

  "On that I cannot comment, lest someone propose that I am criticizing my civilian superiors or the Joint Senates. However, we do have a timeline comparing what was to be mobilized by which date, with what was actually mobilized, as well as the deficiencies revealed as ships were taken out of ordinary. I expect I will be questioned in detail about that line," Kalinin said. "Though again I cannot comment further."

  "Perhaps, if you cannot comment further, we need to move off that topic," Sandra said, smiling brightly.

  "Wisely said. If it is not a private secret, what did you find on your tour of the remote reaches of the Republic?" Kalinin asked.

  "Sand. Moss. Sea oats. Loosestrife, rolling plains in full purple flower. Lakes and oceans filling with plants, fish, and now sea otters. The remote parts of America are doing agronomy on a huge scale. But FEU visitors? That’s less clear."

  "Unclear? How good is their data?" Kalinin asked.

  "I have a list of systems that have never charted their warp gates accurately, let alone determined what is on their far side. The Governor of Chastity doesn’t believe that warp travel exists. I gather he thinks that the President of Europe is the AntiChrist, and that European star fleets are borne from star to star on the backs of devils. Fortunately, his Party and its opponents have reservations about Pontefract tubes being in accord with his faith, so the tube nexi for his system are all on Dante, not in his jurisdiction. Zeta Reticuli is too broke to have planetary defenses," Sandra said. "Beta Hydrii may have four eminently habitable planets, but their populations are all small, and the apparent number of warp gates is unreasonably large, perhaps over one hundred. The Delta Pavonis Settlement Cooperative did go broke, the creditors settled for the Sol system assets-all of them-and their exports from a world settled in the last decade barely raise the dollars to pay for Warp gate maintenance with no surplus for ships or guns."

  "I am aware that the Solar Navy’s position is that surveys are astronomy, and hence not under their jurisdiction," Kalinin said. "They prefer not to remember what the former Vice-Presidential residence in Old Washington was. The Federal Senate takes a very precise view of appropriate activities for government agencies. They didn’t even support intrasystem mapping until the ASN managed to lose an Armored Cruiser to collision in the Kuiper Belt."

  "The Chung Institute might be persuaded to become interested in mapping warp gates, though it would take a while," Sandra said. "Mapping won’t detect anything that has already passed through. Fortunately, there are a certain number of people interested in that question, though with most of them you have to sort out the wheat from the chaff."

  "And when you sort?" Kalinin asked. "What sort of people?"

  Sandra momentarily pressed her hands in a triangle, thumbs touching below. Kalinin nodded. "Lots of chaff. Very little wheat," she answered. "But you can generally find a few good people who have sorted. All the older systems are doing vigorous searches beyond their gates, and vigorous searches in system for uncharted objects that might also be hazards to planetary settlement. And what do we find? The Anomalous Airships and Fortean Fliers reports, whose quality you can judge from their reports on Lincoln and Markoff. Various outer-system radar and lidar reports, sometimes both at once, but always with poor signal to noise ratios. The Snowmass incident." Snowmass had been the one Sloop of the Beta Coma Berenices Sky Guard. While searching for a missing Helium mining craft that should have been in a safe orbit around Beta’s gas giant, its fragmentary broadcasts suggested it had encountered an unidentifiable spaceship. Remote observations were consistent with a combat event. The sloop had inexplicably vaporized. The Solar Navy now maintained a detachment in the system, but systematic and careful searches never found any trace of what the Snowmass might or might not have seen. Informed speculation now inclined to the possibility that the Snowmass had encountered a freak electromagnetic event in the outer planetary atmosphere. "And the Clear Sphere," she concluded.

  "Clear Sphere?" Kalinin asked. "That one I don't know."

  "I’ve handled it," Sandra said. "Its case, anyhow, it being sealed carefully away. The Xi Bootis System Cooperative concluded that with seven more or less habitable worlds and complicated resonance orbits that they had a significant likelihood of largish objects in highly elliptical orbits. So they built a pair of ultralarge diffuse ether screens, so weak they would need stellar lifetimes to perturb orbits of traversing objects significantly, to function as mass detectors. Anything detected gets hit up with a large lidar/radar array."

  "I read about that," Kalinin said. "The precision on orbital measurements was remarkable."

  "And one fine day they got a solid positive target in each screen," Sandra said. "And lidar saw absolutely nothing. So they waited for the pass out of the system, saw it right on schedule, and tried a stack of detectors. Still nothing. A little math said the orbit was short, very stable, and any credible object of the apparent mass ought long before to have been swept up by the Jarkovsky effect. In any event, someone got up the curiosity to do the expensive tricks needed, a few years later, to measure the orbit extremely accurately, and put a ship within a quarter-mile--a tenth of a league--of the unknown. They spent a week searching, finally set out a huge mylar sheet, and netted the Clear Sphere. 'Clear’ is not a misnomer; it’s extremely transparent on almost all wavelengths. The owner has it on exhibit in his living room on Ishtar. Atomic deconstruction, not to great depth, says that its atomic structure is extremely complexly patterned. As a photonic bandgap structure, it’s completely unique."

  Kalinin touched fingers and thumbs together. "I gather that the owner views this object as a stray meteroid?"

  "He views it as the Republic’s most unique table ornament. It has no apparent practical value, so it is a curiosity to impress his friends." Sandra said. "The one astrogeologist in the system is firmly convinced that the object is impossible, that therefore it must be artificial-an Anomalous Airship. The owner is not about to let anyone damage his truly unique paperweight, all foot diameter of it, for which he spent a great deal of money, and
as he mined or salvaged it at his expense, there the matter rests. He was a very nice man, and I tried the most persuasive methods I reasonably could, but I couldn’t change his mind to permit a dissection."

  "Is Xi Bootis noted for other anomalies?" Kalinin asked.

  "Extremely normal," Sandra said. "Their Anomalous Airship people have never had a mystery radar track, their Fortean Flier people have a blank ledger. It’s dull. The system doesn’t even have any warp gates. Someone spent a lot of money to look carefully. Ishtar and Aphrodite each have a large unpopulable area. The geology produces local pockets of extremely high-pressure gas, rock shadows defeating seismic probes, large caverns not visible until diggers tunnel straight into them with catastrophic results. In short, they have areas where you cannot cheaply mine an effective road system. The areas have been converted into game preserves, though the timetable for releasing snow tigers into the Mountains of the Moons is delayed.

  "I see," Kalinin said. He was personally convinced that the Snowmass’s Captain and crew had been at best marginally sober, their ship was a piece of scrap that would have endangered a wrecker, and the suspicious event was that at the start of its final voyage the Snowmass left the ground other than in all directions at once. "Of course, you at least can write a report on hotel facilities on all the worlds of the Republic. So there’s something positive."

  "Can’t even do that," Sandra said sheepishly. "Morbius lent me his private rail car. Bed room, guest space, work space, galley, incredible shower-bath-hot tub, all in classical 19th century polished wood and brass, even a humaniform waitron. It flies, albeit subsonically, so I spent only two days sleeping elsewhere. And while I am most grateful to the Bellerophon’s steward for his attention, for which I owe him and your Captain profound letters of thanks, he had other things to do, and Bellerophon is not a hotel."

  Chapter 17