He turned to Master Chief Kana and said, “Chief, I’ve got some bad news for you. For many years you have managed to avoid responsibility, but I’m afraid you’ve run out of time. As of this moment, you are a warrant officer, and of course, that means you are out of uniform. I have managed to keep Fleet off your back for the entire time we’ve been at war with the bugs, but you are just too well known to avoid promotion. I’ve done what I can for you, but there it is – you are going to have to bite the bullet.”
I looked at Chief Kana but was surprised when he actually smiled. He said, “Thank you sir, I was afraid this was eventually going to happen. I’ll try not to let you down.” Admiral Lee stood and they shook hands again, and he passed over a small box. He said, “Before you leave for the Grant, please get your new uniforms, will you?” The chief saluted and said, “Yes sir.” They sat back down.
We talked a bit more and then the admiral stood, signaling the end of the session. He said, “My aide has a lot of information to pass on to you two. We’ve developed a lot of new intelligence about this species, including the fact that it is one species. I’d appreciate it if you two would read everything and put your heads together. Get back to me in a day or two. Meanwhile, both of you are to report to Captain Speer; you’re assigned as escorts to the Brezhnev. I believe that he has revised his attitude towards you two, but even if he hasn’t, you know what to do. You do know what to do don’t you?”
He looked at us with an expectant smile and Elian came to attention, “Sir, ten pounds, sir!” Admiral Lee nodded his head and said, “Exactly. Not an ounce less.”
His aide, the lovely Lt. Graziano, passed what seemed to be a huge amount of data to our pads and smiled nicely at us. We paused for a moment, answering the inevitable questions about our wives, including WO Kana’s. The now former chief waved to us and departed to be fitted for his new uniforms and we went looking for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, just in case the admiral reneged.
Later, as we walked across an immense fighter bay toward our waiting shuttle, Elian said, “You know, Robert, it seems that women are now asking us more about our wives than well, about, you know.” I grinned and nodded my head, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that as well. Good thing too. Nastya would flat kill me if she ever saw me flirt the way you used to do – all the time.” Elian laughed and looked over at me, “Yeah, and Carolyn would simply ask your lovely wife to kill me if I so much as looked at another woman. This marriage thing is taking me a little time to get used to.”
I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. He said, “Oh hell no! I’m so happy to be married to Carolyn I can’t get to sleep at night, for thinking about her. It’s just, well, that I’ve always liked flirting, and now, every time I start to say something, I feel that ring, and I end up looking like an idjit, like you in fact.” I laughed, nodding in agreement.
We met back up with the newly attired WO Kana – that was going to take a bit of getting used to – and boarded one of four shuttles the Constitution carried. One hour later we were back aboard our respective ships.
As expected, we had orders awaiting us, sent from the Brezhnev. We contacted his ship and reported that we were getting under way to link up with his carrier, which was five million kilometers astern of the Constitution, and near the tail end of our strung-out fleet.
We notched into position, astern of his carrier and as soon as we reported that we were on station we received orders to report to his ship. He failed to provide transportation so the two of us opened up our tiny flight bays and headed to his ship.
After docking we were instructed to report to the captain’s office. He was at his desk, talking to someone in an engine room. It could not have been very pleasant for the female officer he was talking to, as the conversation concerned a problem with one of the engines. We stood at parade rest while he finished barking at his subordinate until he finally terminated the ‘conversation’ with a peremptory dismissal.
He looked up at the two of us for a few moments before speaking. “I am not thrilled to get you two back in my command, but nonetheless you’ve finally shown up, two weeks late, by my estimate. What delayed you?”
I took the answer, “Sir, the Grant took more damage than originally estimated, and it was discovered that the breakdown to our forward missile launcher was due to a defective design. Fleet engineers had to modify our launchers, fabricate replacement parts and install them. Final testing took another two days. We have been told that those modifications will have to be done to all the Dresdens, sir, if they haven’t already.”
Captain Speer looked sharply at me and asked, “I have to be able to depend on your ships to defend the Brezhnev in case of an attack. Have you tested those modifications thoroughly?” I answered, “Yes sir, we cycled a full complement of dummy missiles through the system and it operated flawlessly. Lt. Cdr. Turner and myself oversaw every stage of the work and we are both confident that the design flaw has been eliminated.”
He nodded his head, barely mollified, and asked, “Are there any other problems with your ships?” I thought about mentioning our new stealth technique, but decided not to. Screw him. I said, “No sir. We are fully manned, fully armed and fully operational.”
He looked at me for several moments, before saying, “I know that Admiral Lee trusts you two a great deal, but frankly, I don’t see it. The Grant was nearly destroyed in the final moments of that battle, and you, both of you were lucky to survive. However, I need your ships, and I’m going to use you. Once again, I expect one hundred percent compliance with my orders. That is all.”
We saluted and departed. We had been summoned to stand in front of this petty officer, for nothing more important than to report that we were standing in front of him. His questions were silly, as we would not have been released by Lubya had there been any problems. I did not understand this man, and I did not like having to report to him, but as long as he was reporting to Admiral Lee, I felt reasonably secure. That is not the same thing as being actually secure, unfortunately.
After returning to our ships Elian and I tore into the huge amount of intelligence Fleet had acquired about the sixth fleet. What we read was astonishing.
The planet our scouts had discovered was apparently the original home of the bug species. At some point, many thousands of years in the past, the bugs had moved out into space and eventually it colonized a solar system some ten light years distant. Over time, probably a lot of time, the colony grew and developed to the point where it was self-sufficient.
We still had more questions than answers, but it was believed that the bug culture was very authoritarian, and at some point their one colony tried to become independent. A war broke out between the two systems that eventually led to the near destruction of the colony’s fleet, or fleets. In the final years, that colony developed and built eight mother ships that secretly departed in an effort to escape the total destruction of their planet. The home world finally destroyed the colony world, and all life on it, something unimaginable to me.
However, the home world became aware of the fleeing ships and built two huge fleets that set out to run the colony ships down. After those fleets left the home system, a few remaining colony ships snuck into the home system and kamikazied the planet, causing such immense damage that all intelligent life was wiped out.
Over the succeeding centuries, the fleeing mother ships had remained separated and continued their journey, stopping every five or ten years to replenish and repair. The mother ships had been designed for voyages that lasted for centuries, and while they sailed between stars they were virtually impossible to track.
Unfortunately, at the beginning and end of their passages, they were detectable and it appears that three mother ships had been caught and destroyed.
Nearly two thousand years after the exodus began, the five remaining mother ships came together. We would probably never know exactly why, but it was probably a combination of elements. They must have learned of their pursuit, of the destruction of
three mother ships, and they may have decided to come together in an effort to fight off their pursuers. Additionally, they seemed to be heading toward a system with a sun and planet that matched their original home. It was probable that the four mother ships deliberately remained separated from the fifth, which was not accelerating or doing anything to give itself away, all this in an effort to ensure that at least one colony got through.
Unfortunately, the two pursuers had also come together and had it not been for our intervention, there would have ensued a titanic battle, easily the largest ever known, at least to humans. It would have been an interesting fight; quite possibly the four groups could have either survived or caused enough damage to their pursuers as to permit their one remaining colony to escape unscathed.
However, we had intervened, and destroyed the last five colony ships. We now knew, or believed, that the sole remaining members of the bug species lived on that approaching fleet, and we did not know if those beings were aware of the fact that their own home world was dead. Both home worlds.
The bug response to its discovery of our fleet may have been a mistake. They had been in space for in incredible amount of time, and they may well have assumed that the Essex group was part of their pursuers. We would never know.
Earth government was in an uproar. We had destroyed what was to all intents and purposes a desperate and heroic effort on the part of an intelligent species to survive extinction. We had killed hundreds of thousands of beings, and a large contingent of earth’s elected representatives were in an uproar over Fleet’s buildup, and the possibility that the only remaining bugs in existence could soon be killed.
A larger contingent of our government was just as concerned that these beings would do to us exactly what they did to themselves, which was to cause the extinction of all life on their own home worlds.
These were interesting times.
There was a renewed effort to push for a peaceful meeting between the approaching fleet and our own ships. It was believed by most Fleet experts that our presence was as yet unknown to the immense fleet just now entering the Void, approximately one half a light year away, and decelerating. It was their deceleration that allowed us to find them in the first place, and we had now been scouting them for over three months, hopefully without their knowledge.
Our own ambassador was once again in the news, and once again speaking out for an attempt to communicate with these beings. In the six months since his first, abortive attempt, much had been learned about the bug language and history. We could now communicate with them in their own language, if it was decided that we should. Actually, the language of the colony, which was assumed but not proven to be the same.
I now looked upon that sort of an effort with different eyes. Elian and I discussed this after we had both read through the immense amount of data. He felt as I did, that if there was a chance to prevent a battle, we must take it.
We decided to pass on to our crews a synopsis of what Fleet now knew. Elian and I put it up on our interior nets and over the next several days, it was all that our crews talked about. Eventually, the consensus they arrived at was exactly what Elian and I had decided; we didn’t want to kill any more bugs, but even more, we didn’t want any more human deaths.
Elian and I experienced no more direct contact with Captain Speer, and we managed to keep ourselves out of trouble, not the same thing as being on good terms, but we were happy enough.
Fleet now had twenty Kestrels, and was beginning to receive them in almost significant numbers, such that the Hawks were being allowed to put in for much needed updates to their sensor suites, bringing them up to the level of the Kestrel.
Our fleet was continuing to grow in size and power. We now had seven carriers with a total of nearly two hundred Dash 4’s, forty Hawks, twenty Kestrels and a large contingent of old to very old destroyers and cruisers, all of whom were of dubious value in a fleet engagement. There were six Dresdens now in the fleet, the other four were down for modifications to their launchers. All ten would be back in service within one month.
We also had one battleship. It had been rushed back into service and now that it was here, Admiral Lee didn’t know what to do with it. It was an antique and was noisy as hell. It could take a pounding, but its size and emissions would ensure that it received far more attention than it would ever want. The admiral told Elian after a conference call with the two of us that he thought it wouldn’t last an hour after first contact with the enemy. The only good thing about it was that it would draw attention away from his far more important carriers. That would be of little consolation to the crew of over one thousand men and women who would most probably not survive the experience.
The modification to the Lee and Grant had caused something of a sensation on the part of Fleet engineers, and the admiral told us privately that he thought it was worth a medal, and some detached duty. By now, Elian and I had acquired more medals than most admirals, save for that all-important Good Conduct ribbon that so many higher echelon officers seemed to sport, in the absence of other, more substantial medals. I couldn’t fault the lack of combat awards during a generation of peace, but now that we were in a shooting war, I could fault any officer who continued to behave as if we were on a parade ground rather than a battlefield. I had a few to fault, including Captain Speer, who seemed not to have learned anything.
After over a month of incredibly boring duty sitting in one position looking at the ass end of the Brezhnev, Admiral Lee gave us fresh and very happily received orders. We were to position ourselves near to the enemy fleet and try to get in as close as possible. We knew next to nothing about this new enemy, save that his level of technology was roughly similar to the bugs we were already all too familiar with, and that he had an immense fleet. We were not to use our jump capability unless there was no choice.
Elian and I received our final orders and accelerated through our fleet, heading towards a point in space roughly five weeks distant in normal space. One of the reasons we had been picked was that our two ships could accelerate at a high rate without the likelihood of being detected. Being detected by many hundreds of enemy combatants could lead to our premature demise, something we would not wish to see. We’d changed out our two shuttles for Kestrel’s and we were delighted to find that both crews had served with us in the Hawks.
Our orders were remarkably vague. The admiral gave us a lot of leeway, and mostly told us to observe and gain as much knowledge as possible about the ‘possible’ enemy’s capabilities and operating patterns as could be obtained through passive means.
It took us a relatively long period of time to cross what was a very small piece of the Void. We jumped into a location approximately fifty million kilometers in front of the still decelerating fleet and accelerated towards it, using our newly developed stealth software. It took us four days at high G to approach the huge bug fleet.
Eventually however, we were approximately in position. We were now off to one side, and heading in the same direction, just more slowly, allowing us to drift past their fleet. The Kestrels were still docked inside, as their sensors were no better than our own, and we wanted to save their crews as much as possible.
During our passage toward the sixth fleet we experimented on the Kestrels with the same noise canceling software. We tested it on simulators and it seemed to decrease the Kestrels emissions a small but significant amount. They were already very stealthy, but very stealthy was not the same as being invisible.
One of the things fleet wanted to know was if the communications utilized by the home world fleet we were approaching were the same or similar to the colony mother ships. The latter did not encrypt their communications, and once we had enough examples of their computer systems, we were able to develop code that would run on our own computer and mimic theirs. Our scientists were now able to translate not only our language into theirs, but do it in a manner their systems could understand. We had a very limited vocabulary to work with, but as long as the th
ought or idea was simple, we could convey it.
Their fusion powered drive systems were reasonably understandable, although the quality of their materials and workmanship was abominable, according to the people who had been tearing into them. The destruction of so many bug ships had provided a rich harvest to our engineers and they had been making some astonishing discoveries about these beings.
Apparently, in the area of astronomy they were at least on a par with us. During the period of time a mother ship was in a system, refueling and repairing, they would set up huge arrays with which they performed astronomical searches, presumably looking for their pursuers, the other mother ships and for a suitable solar system.
On the other hand, their fusion drives were primitive and seemingly not terribly reliable. In every hulk we recovered where we were able to find at least the remains of their engineering sections, we discovered multiple, redundant systems. They were not terribly efficient nor were they nearly as reliable as our systems. Their energy weapons were hugely inefficient; although they were extremely powerful.
But it was in their computers that our scientists found the greatest surprise. These beings did not have an analogue to the transistor. Their computers were immense and they were analog. Most engineers, when they were told this, scratched their heads and voiced the opinion that this was impossible. Impossible or not, their computers were similar in nature to the ones used in the early to middle of the twentieth century on earth, before the dawn of the digital era.
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 74