“Now, think of all the remotest side effects of all those different medications reported in all the medical literature ever published. Is there any way you could watch for and take precautions against all of them, or would doing so take up such an enormous amount of time and effort that you could not properly care for the patients who are right in front of you, with immediate medical needs that you can see and verify? You don’t need to answer that. Even a scientifically illiterate Destroyer skipper knows the answer. No. Of course not. Trust me on this. Doctor, Bram, you did not do this.”
Doctor Sahin pondered that. After a few moments, some, but by no means all, of the weight he seemed to be carrying appeared to lift from his shoulders. “I will consider what you have said, Captain, and I will go on with my work.”
“Good. Very good. In the final analysis, you didn’t kill this man. The Krag did. If they hadn’t invaded, this man would be sitting at home going about his civilian life, eating dinner with his wife and children. Now, I think there’s no need for you to stay here. You should go back to the Casualty Station. We’ll let you know if we need you.”
He left. Max walked over to Kraft. “You mentioned something about a suicide note.”
“Yes. I have located it but have not yet read it.” He opened up his percom to reveal the larger inside touch screen and entered some commands. Some text appeared on one wall of the compartment, a roughly one by two meter area of which doubled as a secondary computer display or entertainment viewing screen. It was obviously the text of the suicide letter. Both men stood together and read it. They finished at about the same time.
“Same old,” said Max. “Who would have imagined that with all the varieties of human experience, with men in the Navy coming from every kind of economic circumstance and religion and culture on hundreds of worlds, almost every suicide note would say almost exactly the same thing. Are civilian suicide notes like this?”
“No, they are not,” Kraft answered. “This is the eighth suicide I’ve investigated. I got curious about them one time and did some research. The civilians all seem to talk about how much pain they are in, how no one understands them or cares about them, and how they cannot bear to live any longer. The military ones seem to be about how they have failed their shipmates and the Union and the Navy, how they are consumed with guilt for their failures, and how they do not deserve to live any longer. This one clearly follows the military pattern.”
Max looked at the remains of Dayani Ranatunga. “Damnit, man, you were not a failure. We could have used a man like you. I could have used a man like you.” Then, to Kraft, “I suppose that wraps it up, then. Man blows his brains out in a locked room and leaves a suicide note. Mark it a suicide and go on.”
“I just have a few things to finish in here for my report. I need to find the slug, if anything is left of it, locate the shell casing; it must have rolled under some furniture or be sitting in a flower pot or a coffee cup somewhere because it has not turned up yet, take a few measurements, that sort of thing. I will be in here another hour or two. Then I will notify the Casualty station to remove the body and we can get maintenance in here to clean things up. I will send you my report when complete.”
They stood together in silence for a few seconds, their eyes running over Chief Ranatunga’s last words still displayed on the wall. Kraft blanked the wall with a touch to his percom. “The doctor is taking it pretty hard.”
“Yes, he is,” answered Max. “But, I don’t think a man like him could take this sort of thing any other way. He just hasn’t seen the things we’ve seen.”
“Right. I’ve investigated about one of these a year since I became an officer.”
“And there have been dozens on the ships I’ve served on over the years,” said Max. “I hate it. I hate it more than anything.”
Max walked over to the viewport. It was just smaller than a meter square, but it still gave a good view of the stars. He fixed his gaze on one star that drew his attention because of its distinct reddish hue. It reminded him of Antares, once pointed out to him by a lovely young woman on an Earth beach years ago. “Rival of Ares,” is what the star’s name meant, because its red hue reminded the Greeks of the red planet named for their God of War, whom the Romans called Mars. Antares, too, was supposed to be associated with war, perhaps because it was always high overhead in the night sky during the late spring and summer, the season of war when ancient armies took to the field to spill each other’s blood with bronze, iron, and steel. Bronze-clad Spartan Hoplites and Persian Immortals alike must have gazed at it, a red beacon in the darkness, as they sat around their campfires anticipating the killing that would come at dawn.
When humans attached their myths to the planets and the stars in the night sky so long ago, they had no idea that their distant grandchildren would venture among those stars, only to find there a deadly enemy who would force them to fight for mankind’s very survival. In 2315, the descendants of the Spartans and the Persians and the Romans and the Chinese and all the rest no longer ventured into this region of space for peaceful exploration, scientific inquiry, or to open up new avenues of commerce. Instead, they came only for one reason. To wage war. “Rival of Ares?” Max thought derisively. “Out here, Ares has no rival. Men serve no god but him.”
“It’s this Goddamn war, Kraft,” he said, out loud. “Month after month, year after year, you serve and you fight. No one can see an end to it. That’s why these poor bastards eat their guns. It’s not some medical side effect. These men kill themselves because they have lost hope. Hope in war is like fuel or oxygen in space, and when your supply runs out you have nothing to sustain you. You die.” A long, silent minute passed, the two men together, yet alone with their thoughts. “Sometimes I think that there will never be an end. Do you ever feel that way?”
“Naturlich. On the days when the clouds hang low over my head. But, most days, when the clouds are elsewhere, I believe and hope that there is an end, and I even pray and hold out hope that I may live to see it. Hope keeps me going, keeps us going.”
“That, and one more thing.”
“Ja?”
“The will to survive.” Max turned away from the star he had been watching and looked at Kraft. “What is it that tough old bastard Churchill said? Something like: Our aim is victory—victory at all costs—victory, no matter how long or how hard the road may be, because without victory, there is no survival. Mankind has got to survive, Kraft, we’ve got to. And to do that, we’ve got to win. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to defeat the Krag.”
“Sieg über alles, then.”
“Ja wohl, my friend, Victory above all. Victory at all costs.”
They both looked at Chief Ranatunga for a long moment, after which Max turned and took a few steps toward the door, but stopped and looked back at Kraft. “At all costs. It’s easy to say, isn’t it?” He pointed to the dead man. “But when we pay, that’s the currency we use. How much more, Kraft? How much more will we have to pay?” He left.
Chapter 15
05:44Z Hours 28 January 2315
“This plan of yours strikes me as being excessively complex and prone to failure at several discrete junctures,” Doctor Sahin said to Max, his voice pitched so as to be inaudible beyond the Command Island in CIC.
Garcia nodded his agreement. “Sir, I have to agree.” He was just as quiet as the doctor. “There is a lot to be said for just charging in, blowing that little freighter to flaming atoms, and getting out before anyone even knows we’ve been there.”
“Gentlemen,” Max said amiably, “I’m just as fond of getting in and getting out as the next man, but there are other factors you’re failing to consider. While the cartographic data we received from the Vaaach says that this is a Krag ship with a Krag cargo, she’s broadcasting a Ghifthee transponder ID. That means that there is a strong possibility that she has a legitimate Ghifthee registry and is, therefore, officially classified under Interstellar Law as a Neutral Vessel. And, gentlemen, I can’t just g
o gallivanting around the galaxy blowing Neutral Vessels to hell and gone because,” he counted off the points on his fingers, “one, they’ll Court Martial my happy ass and throw me in the brig until I’m about a hundred and twenty-seven years old. Two, I will be held liable in damages by an Admiralty Court for the value of the ship and its cargo, which is more money than any of us will ever see in our lifetimes. And, three, the Union Foreign Ministry is doing everything in its power to get the Ghiftee—not to mention the Romanovans, the Rashidians, Pfelung, the Texians, and just about every other human and non-human neutral power in this end of the swamp—to come into the war with us against the Krag. Now don’t you think that it is just possible that a Union warship launching an unprovoked attack on an innocent neutral freighter merrily navigating through unclaimed space, not to mention the deaths of its innocent, neutral crew, just might undermine those efforts? Does the name Lusitania mean anything to you?”
Both men silently conceded the point. “But,” the doctor pressed on, “if the Ghifthee are neutral, how can we interfere with their ship at all, much less do what you’re planning.”
“It’s the law. By their repeated unprovoked attacks against neutral shipping, the Krag forfeited their right under customary interstellar law to have themselves and their goods carried in neutral shipping. There is occasionally some fairness in law, you know. It’s a natural consequence of their actions: since they did not respect neutral rights they do not get to avail themselves of neutral rights. So, the Krag, both their rat-faced selves and their cargo, are legally Contraband, and can be seized wherever they are found. But, we have to have evidence that the contraband is on the ship, and to do that, we have to board her.”
“Then why not just board her without all the elaborate, and apparently gratuitous, playacting and deception that your plan entails?” the doctor asked.
“Because, the instant this little freighter suspects us as a Union Warship, she’ll run.”
“What of it? If she runs, we know she is guilty, so then we catch her. My understanding is that our vessel is a very speedy one,” the doctor said, smiling in his belief that he had just demonstrated a wealth of space faring knowledge.
“It is, but this freighter is faster. This particular design is built for and marketed to smugglers and blockade runners. Her top speed is a hair faster than ours, and since she’s lighter, she accelerates like a rabbit. We need to convince her to heave to and permit us to lock on a grappling field or we’ll never get on board.”
“But, won’t she still flee the moment she sees us?”
“There, Doctor, is where you are showing yourself to still have dirt on your feet.”
“Dirt?” He looked at his boots.
“Not literally. It’s an old spacer expression. To have dirt on your feet means that you think like a planet dweller rather than someone who lives and works in space. You’ve been on ship for so short a time that you still have planetary soil on your footwear. Your question shows that you approach vessel identification like someone who has seen it on Trid Vid dramas but never done it in real life.”
Max continued, warming to his subject. “Telling friend from foe out here is no easy matter. From a million kills away, even if a ship were painted bright white and lit up like the Galactic Princess on New Year’s Eve, a high resolution optical scanner would pick it up as just a bright speck, so we mostly rely on transponder ID signals and IFF codes exchanged electronically. Those can be faked, so, at closer range, we try to verify visually what the electronics tell us, but most of the time you still can’t see a damn thing unless you light the other ship up with half a dozen of your own high power collision lights, which is a good way to get shot at because lots of folks interpret that as a distinctly unfriendly act.
“This isn’t an episode of ‘Krag Wars’ where brave Captain Tiberius can look up at some improbably large view screen right there in front of CIC and see perfectly lit starships in sharp focus, complete with registry numbers and hull markings. Where do they think all that light would come from, anyway? We’re in deep space, nearly forty AU from this system’s sun. It’s dark out here. Really dark. Darker than your cabin with the lights turned off. And, no one, I mean no one, paints warships anything but black. Not just black, but with layers of coatings that absorb visible light and lots of other forms of energy. Compared to the Cumberland, a lump of the blackest coal looks like a sugar-coated snowball in a spotlight. Even at close range, if you can see the ship at all, it’s just a void where you can’t see any stars, sporadically filled in with an occasional running light, collision light, or viewport, but little or nothing of the shape of the hull itself.”
“So, that is why you have taken, I hear, every crew member not strictly needed to operate the ship and put them to work installing false running lights, self illuminating panels that look like viewports, and making various dummy antenna and fixtures to attach to the hull.”
“Exactly, Doctor, we’re going to be a Romanovan Revenue and Inspection Cutter, a vessel that’s very roughly the same size and shape as we are—not surprising since the Romanovans habitually copy Union design principles, at least generally. In the dark, it will be close enough. People see what they expect to see. And that’s where you and your linguistic talents come in.”
Max’s comm panel buzzed. He hit the button. “Skipper here.”
“Brown here, Captain. We may need a postponement.”
He suppressed a sigh of exasperation. “I don’t think we can do that, Werner. What’s the problem?”
“Sir, in order to mimic the profile of the Romanovan ship, I’m having to make a very large number of fittings, fairings, dummy antennae and other attachments to the hull. I’ve got all three metal shops working full tilt but they are falling behind.”
“What about putting additional men to work with hand tools?”
“We’ve got the extra tools, but all the people skilled in metal working are already at work in the existing shops. There just aren’t that many people on board who have the necessary skill—we’re up to our chins in electronics wizards, sensor analysts, computer programmers, budding tactical geniuses, and software systems integration experts, but short of metal workers. I know, I’ve already determined that I need to train more men in metal working skills, but that won’t solve my problem in the next few hours.”
Max thought for a minute, then it hit him. The Engineer’s thinking was stuck in a box. A metal box. “What about all that damage control wood we keep on board to shore up bulkheads and build temporary compartments and fixtures?”
“What about it?”
“Can’t we use that? I know we’ve got eight or ten men with reasonably good carpentry skills.”
The comm line was silent, but for the engineer’s inarticulate sputtering. After about ten seconds, he was able to form words. Barely. “Surely. Sir. You aren’t . . . you can’t be . . . suggesting that I place . . . wood on the hull?” His tone sounded as though Max were suggesting that he replace one of the gleaming white Verrakian Marble pillars at the Temple of Universal Justice with rude columns made from mud bricks mortared with musk ox shit.
“Werner, think about it. These things are nothing but frauds and dummies. They don’t have to carry any structural loads. They don’t have to withstand weapon fire or atmospheric friction. They just have to sit on the hull and look like what they are supposed to look like for about thirty minutes. They could be made of papier-mâché or PlayKlay for all the difference that it would make. I’ll tell you what. If it makes you feel any better, we will remove them at the earliest convenient moment.”
“Well, sir, it still feels improper, somehow . . . .”
“Great. I knew you were too good an Engineer not to follow the data, Werner. Now fire up the wood shops and let’s get these frauds fashioned and fitted. CIC out.” He closed the connection. “And now, Doctor, speaking of frauds, let’s get you to the Quartermaster for a fitting.”
* * *
“Approaching jump point Alf
a,” announced LeBlanc. “Coming to full stop. Thirty seconds or so passed. “There. Skipper, we are at full stop, right on top of this system’s Alfa.”
“Very well. OK, people. Operation Mcgruder One: Execute.”
The first step belonged to the Stealth Officer. “Emitting a burst of Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation. Switching from Stealth Mode to Emulation Mode—electronic and drive signatures now mimic a Romanovan Revenue and Inspection Cutter, Flavius Class.” One of the missions for which the Khyber Class destroyers were built was penetrating into enemy space and destroying his shipping to cripple his war production, much as United States submarines had penetrated Japan’s Pacific defense perimeter to destroy her merchant marine during Earth’s Second World War. To enable them to perform that mission, in addition to a highly effective stealth suite to hide the ship’s own emissions, each also had a sophisticated “emulation” suite consisting of emitters designed to mimic the electronic signatures radiated by the drives, weapons, sensors, and other systems of a variety of other ships. She could not change her color or her shape, but in terms of her electronic, graviton, and other emissions, the Cumberland was the space faring equivalent of a chameleon.
“Ahead at zero point zero five c steering the first leg of standard Romanovan search grid. Prepared to increase speed according to Romanovan jump recovery procedures.” This from LeBlanc.
“Broadcasting transponder ID code copied by Naval Intelligence from the R.R.I.C. Caracalia,” announced Comms.
“Visual inspection confirms that all our shutters are closed, all dummy viewport panels are illuminated, and all false running lights are activated and operating.” Midshipman Kurtz made the announcement in a steady, if still treble, voice. Max had put the Midshipmen in charge of much of the visual deception scheme and, as the Midshipman in CIC, Kurtz was their liaison with Command.
“Beginning active sensor sweeps. All sensor types, frequencies, polarization schemes, modulations, and phase variances calibrated to mimic Romanovan sensor protocols,” said Kasparov.
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