by David Drake
Roj was too well mannered to ask aloud which reason had precedence in Minerva’s mind. The brain’s voder had a selection of voice tones that could cut like razors–he knew from experience–and Roj had no desire to provoke them again. For all that Minerva’s preferred tones were those of an elderly maiden lady, she could slip into the coarsest Marine slang at a moment’s notice. It worked particularly well on staff wallahs, the sort of people who hadn’t heard a sharp word come their way since the day they put on their fancy red-and-gold tabs. They could jump very nicely when prodded the right way.
As, he hoped, could students.
“You all heard the colonel,” he said to the repeater screen just an instant before rotating the command chair so that he could glare at his students from the proper angle. “Battle stations, the man said. So why are you all sitting here?”
The effect was something like dropping a firecracker into an ants’ nest, or a long-delay sub-kiloton munition into a Weasel emplacement. There was an instant of disbelief, and then everybody was running every which way. At least on the valhalla-class hull shell that was Minerva’s present incarnation, there was room to run about. Roj imagined the confusion that would have ensued had he issued the same order aboard the old olympus scout, and hid a smile behind his hand. “Intimate” was the kindest way to describe those ships, and he had heard several other descriptions that hadn’t been kind at all.
“And what about us?” asked Minerva. She sounded eager, dubious, and testy all at once. “We’re not supposed to involve ourselves in active duty.”
“According to Rear-Admiral Agato. We’re not to go looking for trouble. That doesn’t mean we have to sit still if trouble comes looking for us . . .”
“And us with a shipful of cack-handed dunsels? We’ve got trouble enough, Roj.”
“I know, I know. There isn’t a service chief in history cretinous enough to send a vessel crewed by a boatload of children out on a mission of any importance, and I doubt that Agato means us to start the practice now.” He slapped the bulkhead beside him and grinned full into the lens pickup. “But don’t forget the firepower this thing has at its disposal. We can make quite a nuisance of ourselves before we get to hell out of harm’s way.”
The main screen flickered as Minerva speedscanned her fire-control data, and then she chuckled. “Everything short of a forty-centimeter bacterial cannon,” she said. “And the way things have been going, they’ll install that sometime next week.”
“Just to see how it works?”
“Why else. After all, Roj dear, old vets like us won’t be going back into combat again, now will we?”
“That’s what they think. Take us out.”
Running on full autonomous control, Minerva slipped from her holding bay with the sort of ease that the students would have given their eyeteeth to achieve. Roj wasted no time in watching; he was already studying the trajectory projections on the big secondary screen, and wondering, Who the hell are they ... ?
That was the problem. The Big D and her task force were supposed to be guarding–of all places–Khalia and Target against intrusions by elements of the huge battlefleet that Roj and Minerva had almost run into during their last active mission. The Alliance had toyed briefly with reactivating Plan Poseidon and blowing both planets apart to deny their rich resources and convenient locations to the enemy, but wiser heads had prevailed. Instead of a scorched-earth strategic withdrawal, there was likely to be–or for all Roj and Minerva knew, had already been–a full-scale fleet-level battle somewhere out in the depths of Khalian space. The incoming blips might be nothing more than message torps reporting on progress or lack of it; but equally, they might be a few Khalian freelance raiders like the Delta corvette Roj and Minerva had chased last time–or an opportunity attack by a lightweight flotilla while the bulk of the fleet was pinned down elsewhere.
Whatever they were, they hadn’t counted on the presence of a valhalla-class cruiser, or they would have been a lot more circumspect in their approach.
“ECM is up and running,” said Minerva briskly. “If they’re scanning, I wish them joy at the attempt.” A telltale on the primary console flipped from amber to green with a small, decorous chiming sound. “And the main drive is on line for one hundred percent thrust at your discretion.”
“Or yours,” said Roj. “Plot us an intercept course.”
“Plotted.”
“Then let the students know. Full alarm klaxons for Red Alert, Condition One, and then full military power. Let’s go make trouble ... !”
* * *
Roj promised himself that he wouldn’t look into the student quarters for a while ... at least for long enough to let the inevitable reaction wear off. He busied himself looking over the manual fire-control station, which Minerva obligingly popped out for him, and making sure of what they had handy. Bacterial cannons seemed unnecessary, in retrospect. Besides her plasma cannons, Minerva was carrying more than enough smart nuclear missiles in her rotating launchers to make things at least interesting.
“ETA to the base force’s rendezvous with the blips is ten minutes,” Minerva said. She had a slightly abstracted sound to her voice.
Roj glanced over at the closest of her sensor consoles. “Hmm?”
For a moment she was silent. “A lot of chatter back there,” she said. “They’re rattled.”
“I’m not surprised. Not much like a simulator run, is it?”
“In that they’ve realized that they might accidentally get dead,” Minerva said a little more sharply, “no.”
Roj shrugged. “They’re going to have to deal with the idea sooner or later,” he said. “Better to do it with a valhalla-class craft wrapped around them. They have that much better a chance of getting home safe.”
Minerva synthesized a sigh. “True. Still ... they’re so young.”
“Seems I remember you wishing in the middle of the simulations that some of them shouldn’t get any older,” Roj said, teasing. “The way you were being crashed about.”
“Ahem.” Minerva said, sharp-voiced. Then, “Ah: better signal from the blips now,” she said. And added, “Hmm.”
Roj looked up from the fire-control board in alarm. “I wish you wouldn’t say ‘hmm’ like that,” he said. “It’s like hearing someone go ‘oops’ in the control room of a fusion reactor. What is it?”
Her voice was flat. “Look at these.”
The screen nearest him came alive with the blips that Fotherington-Thomas had mentioned. Minerva’s packet-synched scanning was possibly better than even the base had–which now made Roj worry a bit as he saw the six blips heading for them, in open formation, at the vortices of a tetrahedron. “What’s the scale on this?” Roj said, doubtful.
“The usual. Screen diameter equals a hundred and sixty klicks.”
But on that screen the blips had appreciable size and shape. They were long, narrow lozenge-shaped double-headed arrows. “Minerva,” Roj said. “they can’t be that big. Can they?”
“I rarely pray for equipment malfunctions,” Minerva said, sounding rather unhappy, “but this time I might make exceptions. The mass readings on those things are what you look to see from small moons. Leaving their accelerations entirely out of the discussion for the moment.”
Roj shook his head. “Suggestions?”
“Shoot first and ask questions later,” Minerva said. Her voice sounded tight. Lights began to flicker green on the arms-control console. “If I were you, I’d sit yourself down there and strap yourself in.”
Roj did.
“All right, children,” Minerva said, and her grim voice echoed through the hull, “pressure suits all. Then sit down and stop scrambling around as if you were being chased by Weasels with fleas! Increased acceleration in sixty seconds.”
Roj wondered again what was going on back there, but the sight of the trajectories suddenly beginning to trace themselves out on the screen near him gave him something to be much more concerned about. The curves that the six ships we
re tracing were much too acute: they were flowering out from their original trajectory in tight hyperbolas that were almost curve-expressions of right angles. “Minerva . . .” he said.
“Not manned,” she said, sounding grimmer than ever. “They’re telerobotically controlled.”
“Holy shit,” Roj said softly. Such ships could carry oversize power plants whose unshielded radiations would fry any normal crew–because there was no crew to worry about frying. They could maneuver in ways that would kill anything made of flesh and blood. Their pilots–if that was the right word for them–were sitting somewhere comfortable, perhaps even somewhere planet-based, working the ship remotely, as if it were a gigantic toy.
Whereas brainships, and almost every other kind of ship the Fleet flew, had people (or at least Weasels) inside them. Compared to the telerobotic ships, Fleet vessels were fragile, overshielded, delicate contraptions, as full of breakables as a china shop, and as vulnerable as one when the bull came calling.
Roj felt the acceleration begin to push him back in his seat as Minerva poured the power on. “I take it,” he said, “that Agato’s little scruples about us not getting involved go out the window about now.”
“You take it right, sonny boy. This is a time for doing as you would rather not be done by. Have you counted those ships? Have you counted the other blips on that screen? And did you compare their sizes? We have a problem here, and if we don’t stand up on our tailfins and do something, all these kids’ parents are going to be receiving condolence letters sometime next week. The mails being what they are.”
Roj swallowed. There were only four other ships responding to the incursion at the moment. He had no idea of what else might be handy or getting ready to scramble. But the truth of it was that none of the other ships were likely to be as well armed, or as heavily engined, as Minerva was. Neither sitting the encounter out nor turning tail was likely to save them.
He watched the Syndicate ships continue flowering out of their original tetrahedral formation. Shortly they would pause in their hyperbolas and curve in again to catch Minerva, or whatever other ship was in range from all sides: at least, if they had, any grasp of tactics they would.
“Looks as if your maths coprocessor is going to get a workout.” he said.
“Mmm,” said Minerva, sounding momentarily abstracted again. “Dammit. Roj, those kids back there are beginning to sound like mice at the cat show. They haven’t been adequately prepared for combat yet, and there’s no way they’re going to get used to it in the next twenty minutes or so.”
Roj hit one of the controls on his panel and shifted the screen to a view of the ready room. Their students had obediently strapped themselves in and were trying to pass the time chatting, but they were looking at the screens too, and reading them correctly, and several of them, Peason in particular, were almost frozen with fear.
Roj chewed his lip. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.
There was a longish pause. “Depends.”
“Can you do Fotherington-Thomas’s voice? Silly question. Of course you can. Your voder can do any sound you’ve ever heard.”
There was a long silence. “Roj, you scoundrel,” Minerva said. “I’m not sure this is ethical.”
“Screw ethics! If it works, they’ll never know. If it doesn’t work, they’ll die confused instead of terrified, and God can explain it to them.”
That camera iris blinked at him thoughtfully. “And what about after we take the heat off, so to speak?”
“Then we play it by ear as usual, lady.”
Silence again. Then Minerva said, “You are a reprehensible and dishonest creature, Roj Malin, and it’s a pleasure knowing you. But if I had fingers, I’d count them after shaking hands with you.”
Roj snorted and started making adjustments to the fire-control board, keeping his eye on the screen that showed the back room.
“Now hear this,” Minerva bellowed. Except that it was Fotherington-Thomas’s fussy accent to the last consonant, and Roj almost jumped at the sound of it again. “This has been a drill. I repeat. This has been a drill. All vessels stand down from alert and return to assigned courses. Response time for this drill showed only fifty-three percent of optimum. We will expect much better next time. Commanders will assemble in four standard hours for debriefing and evaluations. Out.”
On the screen, the faces in the back room went through more expressions in the matter of a few seconds than Roj could ever remember having seen from them. “All right,” Minerva said. “I’ll cut accel for about two minutes–that’s all l can spare you: I’m trying to work up maneuvering speed. You get on back there and bawl them out, and make it about half an hour’s worth, because you won’t be able to go back there again until afterward.”
Assuming there is an afterward–
Roj headed back to the ready room and paused, framed in the doorway as its heavy blast shielding retracted in front of him. He braced clenched fists on his hips and swept a slow, simmering gaze across the students, back and forth until every one of them had tried to meet his glare and failed. “Fifty-three percent,” he said. “Is that the best you can do? Is that as fast as you can move? I doubt it, because I’ve watched you clear the room at the end of my classes. Would you move faster if I clapped a laser cutter to your well-upholstered little backsides? Because if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it!”
The entire student contingent jumped at his roar, but Roj was just getting warmed up. “Mr. Peason! Wipe that smile off! This isn’t any bloody laughing matter, because what you lot have shown me is that as combat personnel you’re crap! Yes, Gillibrand, Mr. Flying Fingers, that means you too! And what the hell are you all doing sitting down? You’re on board my ship and that means when I come in you stand up! Get those straps released! Squaaad. ... Wait for it, Grabber, wait for it. Squad, ten-shun! Oh, Jesus ever-lovin’ Christ, Mr. Grabber, what do you call that? Standing for the ladies? I don’t care if you are wearing a pressure suit, I want to hear those heels smack! You lot are officer cadets, not a bunch of old women! Again–squad, atten-shun!” Roj stalked along the ranks, glowering and breathing audibly through his nose.
“That’s more bloody well like it. But fifty-three percent,” he said again. “And who do you think gets to explain that shitty performance to the colonel? Minerva? No way! Me! I’Il get the flak–unless I can come up with something that shows I’m commanding something more than this shower! I’ve got four hours before I make my report, and in that four hours you lot are going to put in some work, and you are going to do it well, or by God somebody’s going to be walking home and it won’t be me! You can’t handle a cruiser any better than my old granny and you can’t respond to an alert at any speed worth shit, but we’ll see how you can deal with target practice at combat level! That’s right, Mr. Peason. I said combat speed, and l fucking mean it! Stations!”
He slapped the com installation beside the door without taking his fiery stare from the students. “Minerva, release those drones. Wide dispersion. Then unlock the number two gunnery rigs. Let’s see if this lot can save my hide.”
“You mean, save their own,” said Minerva’s own voice.
“Something like that. Guns to active status.” The multiple firing yokes popped from their recesses along either side of the ready room, and without needing another word from the appalling martinet their tutor had become, the students strapped themselves back into their seats. Even the scary speed of the blips displayed on each installation’s targeting screen was better than the expression on Captain Malin’s face.
“Good,” he said as the blast door slid open behind him. “Just remember, it’s not my ass anymore. It’s yours!”
The door closed and locked–and Roj sprinted for the bridge.
He was aware of the cool mechanical eye on him as he strapped himself in again.
“Appalling,” Minerva said softly.
Roj breathed out, breathed in, tried to answer–and coughed for about ten seconds withou
t stopping. “I hate shouting,” he said at last, when he was able to speak again.
“You could have fooled me,” Minerva said. “Three minutes till we’re within firing range. All missiles arming.”
“All of them?”
“Nuke ‘em till they glow,” Minerva said, “that’s the best policy. Especially when they have us outnumbered, and I have a slightly-worse-than-three-body problem to solve for every missile.”
“Here’s where SIGISMUND proves what he’s got,” Roj said, tapping at the gunnery console to bring up a more detailed view of the attacking vessels.
“Coprocessor’s running,” Minerva said. There had been much noise about the SIGISMUND system; Fleet’s computer specialists had made extravagant claims for its usefulness as a navigational aid, one that could work out the most complex courses in milliseconds rather than minutes. It was the equivalent of a whole supercomputer system on one component board, meant to lock into synch with Minerva’s extant nav and weapons systems, and do their math for them a thousand times faster than they could by themselves. But Roj thought nervously of the ten million lines of code that Fleet boasted had been burnt into the SIGISMUND system’s structure. A lot can go wrong in ten million lines of code–
“Better projection of trajectories now,” Minerva said.
“Our friends have course changes imminent.” The screen changed, showing the inward-arcing parabolas twisting into new shapes. The ships were splitting up, three and three. Three were heading for Minerva: three, for one of the other ships arching out toward them.
The hull shuddered a little, once, twice, three times, as Minerva fired missiles. “Nukes away,” she said.