Tales From the War (Kinsella Universe Book 5)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  Tales From the War

  Gina Marie Wylie

  Copyright © 2009, 2013 Gina Marie Wylie

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1483983097

  ISBN-13: 978-1483983097

  CONTENTS

  Golf, Dinner and a Party -- Everyone’s Invited!

  1

  Thunder and Lightning

  23

  Snow Dance

  37

  Konigin

  67

  War Correspondent

  99

  Golf, Dinner and a Party -- Everyone’s Invited!

  I

  Admiral Ito Saito shaded his eyes, looking out towards Gandalf’s ship basin, then back to the golf course that stretched into the near distance. He was a short man with a pencil thin mustache and a shock of black hair untouched by gray. He was thin, clearly fit and had a ramrod up his spine.

  “You have a lovely golf course here, Richard,” the admiral said, turning to the man next to him.

  Rear Admiral Richard Taft, who commanded Fleet Aloft at the Gandalf Fleet Base, grinned. “It is indeed, Saito.” Admiral Taft was taller and more rotund that the others, stemming from spending too much time behind a desk. He had short brown hair that seemed to cling to his skull -- he looked like an ancient Roman Senator.

  The third man of the trio set his clubs down, eyeing the foursome playing ahead of them; a group that was in the process of teeing off at the next hole.

  Captain Ezra Gallegly had served over the years with both of his friends and was not the least bit sorry that he had three broad stripes on his sleeves, one with the wavy stripe of a ship’s captain and not the same with two stars as those his friends sported.

  Captain Gallegly still flew starships, not a desk like the other two. He was the tallest of the trio and the most relaxed. His hair was fading in color and shrinking in scope. His movements were a touch more studied than the other two -- unlike them -- he spent most of his time in space.

  “The golf courses are just as pretty on Agincourt, Saito,” Captain Gallegly reported. “That’s the good news. The gravity here on Gandalf is 1028 centimeters, but only 970 on Agincourt.”

  Admiral Taft laughed. “They adjust the fairway lengths, though.”

  “Pity,” Admiral Saito said, his voice droll. The three old friends traded laughs.

  Over towards the basin there was a bright glint high in the sky and all eyes turned to watch. A silver globe sank towards the water. Even as far away as they were, they could see the tall Fleet Comet on the ship’s side facing them and hear the whine of the ship’s turbines.

  “That would be ship Nihon, commanded by Commander Chin Park,” Admiral Taft spoke.

  Admiral Saito glanced at the speaker in surprise. “Commander Chin Park you say?”

  Admiral Taft nodded. Admiral Saito was curious; there was something oddly reluctant about his friend’s facial expression when he saw that Admiral Saito was interested.

  Captain Gallegly chuckled, “At least, this time he’s not pooching the landing. The last time he tried to simulate a malf during the descent and the ship’s AI aborted the exercise and took command away from him. The AI didn’t approve of that sort of an exercise with a city in the ship’s footprint.”

  Admiral Taft chuckled. “And, needless to say, he got a purple rocket not only from me, but from the Port Admiral as well.”

  Admiral Saito smiled slightly. “I should have spoken more quickly and used less thought. I believe the young man is my nephew.”

  “One thing I just love about the Japanese,” Admiral Taft told his friends with a laugh, “they tell you you’ve screwed up by criticizing themselves.”

  Admiral Saito laughed as well. “If it is the young man I believe him to be, he is from my wife’s side of the family. A family with entirely too much wealth, too long held. That, and combined with an arrogance that can be breath-taking.”

  The three men were silent for the last few seconds until the ship was bobbing in the ocean. Admiral Saito glanced at the tee, where the last of the earlier foursome had driven down the fairway, before he turned back at the newly arrived ship. Already tugs were headed out to bring her into the docking area.

  Admiral Taft saw Admiral Saito’s gaze was still on Nihon. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but I know the navigator; she served with me a few years ago on the Survey Ship Robert Heinlein. She tells me that Commander Park is prone to being arbitrary; he is overly concerned about appearances and is reluctant to deal with anything requiring a timely decision. He is, in short, not popular with his officers and crew and not a very effective commander.”

  “It is always difficult at first for a new captain,” Admiral Saito murmured. “As we all know.”

  “The real problem, Dick,” Captain Gallegly said, “is that we are three ancient fossils -- ask anyone.” He waved towards the basin, where a dozen ships bobbed in the water. “I pulled a whole lot of strings, begged everyone I knew, to get a young engineer, Thomas ‘Turbine’ Jensen, assigned into Hastings. They sent him out special delivery -- I picked him up when we stopped at Rutherford two months ago.

  “Tomorrow he’ll have the mid-watch aboard and you could not get me to bet against him calling a battle stations drill. Everyone on the ship except Jensen and one or two others bitches and moans every time I hold one. They bitch and moan about the time wasted, and the ‘attitude’ it engenders. When Jensen does it, they are ten times more irritated. I’m sure he is far more unpopular than Commander Park.”

  Admiral Saito sighed. “At Tenabra, my executive officer was Thomas Cross, a very fine officer. He is highly capable and extremely dedicated. We did what we had to do and he did his part as superbly as anyone. Yet afterwards, he stood up in the critique and said we would have done much better if we practiced rescues more and war less and if we hadn’t been hauling around a thousand tons of weapons. Two months later, he resigned.”

  “Fossils, like I said,” Captain Gallegly repeated.

  “Perhaps the reason why we have never had to put our warlike skills to use, is that we practice them so often? Everyone knows Fleet ships are armed, and everyone knows how they are armed,” Admiral Taft stated mildly.

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” Captain Gallegly said. “And it’s why Admiral Nagoya and I have been helping Jensen come along. That young man’s going to go far -- very, very far. He took over from Stan Inouye, an exceedingly good chief engineer himself. Stan’s people hated to see him go, but it was time for him to punch out; there was nothing anyone could do. They resented a man half Stan’s age replacing him; they hated Jensen’s gung ho demeanor, and his very active approach to command.

  “Yet, in eight weeks, Jensen’s black gang is working at an efficiency I find incredible. We did a calibration run as the last task as we came off our deployment. For four hours we ran at a hundred percent of max rated power. We burned a percent and a half less fuel than we ever have on that run before and our velocity was three percent higher. There is something about Jensen and fans that passes understanding.

  “And he’s won over the black gang; something I wouldn’t have thought could happen in such a short time. The Propulsion Department stands up for him, even when he calls a battle station drill.”

  “Not many engineers bother with a command deck certification,” Admiral Saito stated.

  “Jensen got his bridge watch-keeping certificate when he was an ensign. And no, he’s not a Rim Runner, either. He was born in Montana, back on Earth. His virgin cruise was as a first classman, back at the Academy; they booted him upstairs as fast as they decently could get him out the door.”

  “It is
nice to know dinosaurs will not be entirely extinct once we old farts pass from the scene,” Admiral Saito opined. The three all laughed, and then started forward. The foursome ahead of them had finished putting and was nearly at the next tee.

  II

  The clink of fine china, the musical chiming of sparkling crystal and soft ring of sterling flatware intruded themselves once again on Rear Admiral Ito Saito.

  Remarkable! Normally such sounds were as pleasant and enjoyable and he savored them with almost as much relish as the meal and drink they served. He looked around Nihon’s wardroom, wearing his most bland face on his sleeve and tried once again to overlook what his eyes told him was a most unfortunate situation.

  The admiral had landed on Gandalf three days before, and he had spent a few days relaxing from the rigors of the journey -- IE, playing golf with friends -- and when Nihon had come in-system, he’d learned that his wife’s sister’s son-in-law was the captain aboard, returning from his first deployment in command.

  A courtesy call to the young commander had resulted in this invitation. It was clear now that accepting the invitation had been an error. Nihon had been off deployment for less than a single day; his nephew should have known that this would be taken into consideration. After six months aloft a ship is not nearly as ready for an admiral’s inspection as when it departs. One doesn’t achieve senior rank without being aware of these things.

  And in any case he’d come to visit his nephew, not inspect his ship.

  The admiral could see that the crew members of Nihon were fatigued; not only in their posture and attitude, but a number of the cleanup tasks dutifully paraded before him that had been marginal at best.

  The dinner itself had been pleasant enough. A number of his nephew’s junior officers had realized that there would be a general stand down afterwards, and that at long last they could get some rest. It made several of them overbold, almost pleasant to talk to.

  The admiral inquired of the young man sitting next to him at the table, who was wearing a weapons black shipsuit. “Lieutenant, what does a weapons control officer find to do aboard a dedicated research vessel?”

  The fellow brightened. “I am the weapons officer, Admiral.”

  “Weapons?” The admiral raised an eyebrow. “I thought Nihon a dedicated research and survey vessel.” The comment was far more a statement than a question.

  His nephew heard the comment and nodded. “Even so, Uncle. However, some years ago the Fleet felt that it would be prudent to develop some internal industrial technology.”

  Admiral Saito had indeed heard of it, but was surprised he was hearing it here. That knowledge was supposed to be closely held.

  “Nihon was selected to be a special research vessel. We were equipped with four, ah, devices,” his nephew continued.

  “Devices?” Saito asked, curious. English was such a wonderful language for odd formulations of words.

  Nihon’s captain laughed lightly. “For lack of better terminology, Uncle. Words fail us when we try to describe them. It was thought that Fleet lasers could, with some small modifications, be useful in mining asteroids. We have four lasers; originally the standard Mark 4 mod November four gigawatt Scarlets. The techs worked on them and now they are Mark 7’s and push one point two terawatts down the beam and we’ve nicknamed them Blues. They are very, very blue.”

  Admiral Saito blinked in astonishment. A laser three hundred fold stronger than the Fleet standard? “How does one use a terawatt laser for mining?” Admiral Saito knew the verbal trap he was offering and waited in delighted anticipation for it to spring.

  The officers at the table laughed politely.

  The weapons officer responded. “A significant fraction of a kilometer-sized rock hit with our laser broadside becomes incandescent gas. Bulk refining of the gas is a relatively straightforward engineering task that has been done for centuries. Actual tonnages produced are classified, Admiral, but I can say that they are large.” From the smiles on the men and women at the table, they were more than large. And a cubic kilometer was indeed a sizable tonnage. Sizable? More like stupendous, actually.

  And of course, if you could make a huge laser ding a rock, you could shoot it at something else, too. They weren’t talking about it, but that had to be another side to the research as well. He was willing to bet that they had some first class tracking software modifications. With a three hundred-fold increase in power you could hit something hard seven or eight times as far away.

  There was a simple chime and a voice spoke over the intercom. “Captain, bridge. We are detecting many ships exiting fans, about a light second from Gandalf. No previous detections.”

  That was odd, Saito thought; they were very close -- actually extraordinarily close to the planet. Ships normally emerged much further out and then only one at a time. Only military ships traveled in company and even that was a difficult maneuver to accomplish except over very short distances.

  Admiral Saito looked at his nephew curiously as the young man wrestled with the unexpected information.

  “Define many. Two, three?” his nephew asked.

  Good question, the admiral thought. It had been his first reaction as well.

  “Captain, more than forty.” There was a mumbled comment from someone further away from the intercom. “Captain, we have missile launch indications. Bogey count is now more than sixty. Many missile indications. Perhaps a hundred. No faults have been detected, but we started diagnostics at once, however, so far, the board is clear.” That is, it didn’t appear to be a mechanical malfunction, but they were checking to be sure.

  “Hastings told us earlier of their exercise, did they not? Obviously they are spoofing the sensors,” the captain’s voice was smug and sarcastic. Saito’s nephew was unduly smug, and entirely too sarcastic.

  The tone of the captain’s voice made Admiral Saito wince.

  “Sir, Port has just put out a raid warning. Hastings is preparing to lift.”

  A wall screen lit it, showing Hastings moored several kilometers distant. Missiles started lifting off from Hastings, and her lasers began to strobe.

  Without further thought Admiral Saito barked, “Sound General Quarters!”

  His nephew was frozen, still trying to think the matter through. The bridge watch officer, though, hadn’t needed any encouragement and the alarm gongs began to ring through the ship.

  The weapons officer was the first to spring to his feet and sprint from the room, but he was only fractional seconds ahead of nearly everyone else. Admiral Saito’s nephew eyed his uncle nervously. “The engines are on line. Should we lift, Uncle?”

  Saito showed no expression. “Unless you wish to die squatting on the ground.” His voice was level, at the same timbre as when he’d been discussing his golf game.

  The captain of the Nihon drew himself up. “Execute emergency lift!”

  The voice from the bridge was calm. “Engineering says, ten seconds to lift! Hastings has lifted and is firing on the incoming ships! Port has issued an attack warning! Captain, there are several hundred in-bound missiles. Say again, many hundreds! More than eighty unknown vessels are launching! Sensors report that most of the launches are against Gandalf.”

  Admiral Saito was arrested as he watched the live camera feed sent into the wardroom. Hastings, a heavy cruiser, was lifting, launching a brilliant fountain of sparks -- counter missiles against the onslaught.

  The admiral had never commanded Hastings, but he had had the honor of commanding Crecy, a sister ship. In three years aboard he had fired two missiles within minutes of each other only once; both of those practice shots had setups that they had worked an hour, each, on. Whoever commanded Hastings had just fired more missiles than any officer of the Fleet could ever reasonably expect to fire in an entire career in training. This though, was not training. And considering the number of inbound tracks, not a tenth enough.

  “Come, nephew,” he said tightly. “You need to stand on your bridge and look brave. It is all
you can do now.” That, and of course, his weapons codes would be useful.

  Without expression he watched his nephew pull himself shakily to his feet and proceed with due care that his quivering knees did not collapse.

  On the bridge the reports were a muted cacophony.

  “Lifting! What course?”

  “Weapons systems ready! We have three missiles on line! Lasers are on line!”

  The admiral waited for his nephew to say something. The silence lengthened until the older man could endure no more. He said softly, “I suggest we parallel Hastings’ course,” he told the man at the helm. The young man nodded, and repeated the order.

  Admiral Saito studied the displays and then turned to the weapons officer. “Your weapons are free?”

  The weapons officer paled; they’d run in weapons free mode for the tests and they should have locked them down before they’d landed. By rights, the captain and the weapons officer were now looking at court-martials. “Yes, sir.”

  The admiral held his eye for a second, and then spoke loudly, knowing that if they survived it would be an official record. “I commend you on your initiative, Weaps.”

  A young woman called from the sensors, returning Admiral Saito’s attention to the work at hand. “Unknown fleet consists of eighty-five vessels; formation is a rough hemisphere, centered on Gandalf. Hastings is heading directly towards the center of the formation. Many weapons detonations now, most in the ten to fifty megaton range. Those are Fleet counter missiles. Unknown missiles are in the gigaton range. Two significant detonations have been detected; one dot six and one dot one gigs. Forward sensors are now 22% of nominal.”

  There was a pause and the sensor officer reported, “The Black Force center consists of two extremely large vessels. One appears to be launching small combatant craft, rated as likely manned. Six heavy Black Force vessels surround the larger ships in a hexagon. Latter vessels appear to be equivalent to our heavy cruisers.”