“With all due respect, Commodore....”
“No, Cook—you get your sorry Isitian ass here, on the double. And bring your damn ship with you.”
Janet couldn’t understand why the Skipper was being so stubborn. The skies in front of them were clear, and most of the action was far to the east. The wing commander’s orders seemed perfectly reasonable to her, and Skipper had already pushed his orders to the limit.
“Commodore— ”
“Now, Commander,” the commodore snarled.
“Commander Cook—activity on portside, Screen Number Two,” came an accented voice from the systems desk. The executive officer turned to face the command seat, panic in his eyes.
“We are under attack,” said François LaRue.
Janet glanced at the screen and gasped. Across the entire sector, hundreds of ships from the Red Fleet had appeared, heading right toward their position.
“Commodore...,” began the Skipper.
“Hold them as best you can,” Jones fumed.“We’ll be along as soon as we disengage here. St. George out!”
“Mr. LaRue, sound battle stations. Helm, come about—heading 770, ten degrees north. Weapons—charge the forward shields and stand by the starboard guns.
“Mr. Cardinale—”
“Sir!” replied the navigator, moving to the edge of his chair; Cook rose from the command chair and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Stand down.”
“Commander!” the young officer protested.
“Helm—take us due north, 250 degrees.”
Without thinking, Janet lifted the ship from its directional plane, taking it well above the Red Fleet’s vector of attack.
“No disrespect intended, Lieutenant,” Cook said, physically ushering his navigator from his station, “and I apologize for any inconvenience. You may remain on the bridge—sit at the command chair, if you like. But things will be a bit dicey for the foreseeable future—we’re going to have to move very quickly—and I won’t have time to be giving you orders.”
“Sir— !”
“Command seat—now!” barked Cook.
As the Skipper plopped into the seat beside her, Janet felt her heart racing. They’d never practiced it this way. And there was no way they were going to be able to stand against all those ships.
“Just follow the plots on your screen,” Cook whispered to her, “and hope for the best.”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing, “ she replied softly. “We never trained for this, you know.” She saw the navigation arc plotted—a tight line that would bring their ship racing along the top of the enemy fleet. She adjusted her instruments and took a deep breath.
“No promises, Missy,” said Cook, his eyes fixed on the monitors, his fingers racing over the navigation controls. “I haven’t trained for it, either. Nobody ever trains for this sort of thing, when it comes right down to it. I’m making this up as we go along.
“Weapons—blank all shields except those on the keel, and charge all forward guns.”
“Aye sir.”
“Helm—slow to C-2.”
“Guns amain, Commander.”
Soon, the Constantine swooped down to confront the advanced line of the Red Fleet, and Janet felt herself becoming one with the ship. Her world was the Skipper’s voice, and she found herself bending along with the effortless arcs he plotted and re-plotted on her screen. Soon, the rest of the crew began bouncing off walls and ceilings as the two of them sent the ship darting and weaving like a whole swarm of bees, bringing the enemy attack wing nearly to a halt as the lone Blue ship scored hit after hit. Before long they had thoroughly disrupted the Red formation, luring two squadrons of Red attackers away from the main body of their fleet to deal with the source of the annoyance, grinding the entire Red attack to a halt.
But the battle didn’t last long. The Constantine couldn’t stand forever against an entire attack wing. Five minutes later, the grading computers scored a kill, relieving the Constantine from further participation in the maneuvers. A minute later the Blue Fleet arrived to begin their counterattack.
Except for the ship’s navigator, and the Skipper, the bridge crew of the Constantine was ecstatic. They’d managed to fend off the entire enemy fleet single-handedly. At least for a time. And, after all, their deaths were only theoretical. It wouldn’t matter that some desk jockey muckety-muck would later disqualify them for consideration for the gold medal for the best performance by a ship of the line, because their ship didn’t survive the engagement. They’d proven themselves—to each other, and to the rest of the fleet.
And none of them would ever look at the Skipper in quite the same way again.
* * *
“Swing that lantern this way, Crewman. We need better light to check the connection.”
Chief Andersen waited as the redshirt clambered over the connector cables. The engine coils were always the trickiest part of a ship to unglitch. Even on a frigate, the coils never worked quite right until the ship had been in space for at least a month, letting the crew figure out what was wrong under conditions of actual use. And the eight-foot high, straighter-than-a-preacher coils on the smaller ships were child’s play, compared to those on a cruiser or starship. Omni-directional steerage may have made Terran warships more maneuverable, but it made their propulsion system hopelessly complex. Instead of beaming the engine’s subspace energy waves forward in single-directioned simplicity, cruiser coils—or their twenty-foot high cousins on the larger starships—circled the ship in arcs of coiled power, spiraling outward from the outer edge of the interior plating to the final abutments of the inner hull, interlaced with multidirectional links to the power release valves of the outer hull. This let the helm send the ship in any direction at full power while maintaining a constant forward view. It was a masterwork of engineering but a technician’s nightmare, and the failure of the lighting system wasn’t making their job any easier.
“Crewman?”
“Here you go, Chief.” Crewman Apprentice Delaney stopped to wipe his brow. Even with the lights out, the inner hull was like a steam bath. The poor ventilation made the work seem harder, and beads of sweat poured from their bodies like steam from a kettle. With a third of the crew split into inspection teams, readying the coils still promised to take forever. It was the single most hated job on a starship. It was also the most important, for only with the system functioning perfectly, with all relays operational, could the ship perform as it should in space. A starship with plugged power valves was like an eagle flying with a sprained wing.
“What’s it look like on the other side?”
“Same as before, Chief,” breathed Delaney. “Ramsey and Esshaki keep double-checking the B-12 relay, but the lattice gauge still shows a blockage. Either the gauge is wrong, or it’s fucked up somewhere along the line. All the same, I’d hate to trudge all the way back to Supply, only to find out that we’ve wasted another day’s work and have to start all over again from 90-starboard-20.”
“I know what you mean, Delaney,” Andersen sighed. He leaned against the cable to rest. “I’m getting sick of this myself. Even single shifts are hard enough to bear out here in the mines, and we’ve been pulling two watches a day for longer than I care to remember. If we don’t get some relief—and soon—I swear I’ll— ”
“Halloo— ” called a voice from the darkness, farther down the coil. Andersen estimated its owner to be about fifty yards away, past the bend in the coil.
“Halloo—anybody down there?”
“Over here,” shouted Andersen. “And I hope you’ve brought something cold to drink. We’re almost sweating away to nothing.”
Footsteps echoes through the coils, as Andersen could see the lantern beam nearing. It seemed to be a solitary visitor, though approaching from an odd direction; as far as he knew, there was nobody working ahead of them on this side of the ship.
“Taking a break?” called the voice.
“You’d best believe it,” Andersen
growled. “It’s the only thing we’ve done right all day.”
The approaching voice was laughing, and soon a bare-chested young man rounded the last turn and finally came into view. Andersen’s jaw dropped to the floor in disbelief; it was the captain, a lantern strapped to his waist and his hands holding opposite ends of the blue T-shirt draped from his neck.
“I know what you mean, Chief,” Cook panted. “Those days seem to occur here with alarming regularity.”
“Captain!”
“As you were, fellows. It’s too hot down here to snap to attention.” Cook leaned on the cable next to Andersen, catching his breath as best he could. “Sorry I don’t have anything to drink with me. But I have a radio phone up ahead. I’ll call when I get back up there.”
“Captain—what in God’s name— ”
“In the meantime, I need one or two men from your crew, Chief.”
“Of course, Skipper, but— ”
“There’s a glitched relay switch up there,” breathed Cook. Sweat dripped from every pore on his body. “Fused itself together like ore station slag. It’s created an electro-magnetic anomaly. I think that’s what caused the lights to fritz out, and it’s probably wreaking havoc on all the electrical equipment you’re using here. I brought a replacement down with me and tried to fix it myself, but the damn thing won’t budge an inch. Well, at least it’s no respecter of rank. If I can borrow a couple of your men for a while, and maybe a cutting torch as well, we may be able to get everyone back on track.”
Slowly, the rest of Andersen’s team gathered to see if the voice was really the captain’s. Ignoring Andersen’s intimidating glower, and in an unsteady voice, Metz asked when they could expect improvement in the food in the galley; Cook replied: “About the time the whales return to Ishtar.” Emboldened, Fishman wondered aloud when they could expect a few more female crewmen to grace the ship, so the enlisted crew could enjoy the same “advantages of home” as the blueshirts; “Probably when we’re all done sweating,” laughed the captain. As the others traded gripes and quips with their Skipper, the exhaustion that had dogged them for the past few days all but vanished. For the moment, and even deep within the mines, the darkness lifted from their spirits. Their double shifts ceased to be an endless purgatory, and seemed instead what they had always been: a minor necessity dictated by their limited numbers and the size of the task that faced them. The captain’s quick wit and saucy irreverence gave them the best refreshment they’d had in weeks—a hearty laugh with someone who understood and shared their troubles.
Ten minutes later, when Cook left with Doyle and Derderian to repair the fused power relay, none of the men even winced when Andersen called for them to resume their duties. They worked with a will they hadn’t shown in days, and as the reams of sweat poured from their brows they felt not weariness or fatigue, but exhilaration.
Chapter 13
THE HOURS TURNED INTO DAYS, the days into weeks.
Slowly things began to take shape, as each small improvement inched the great ship closer to readiness. The progress, too slow for anyone but the captain to notice, gave no lift to the crew’s foundering morale. Yet even the diehard whiners had to admit that the captain pushed himself harder than any of his subordinates, and he was pulling the whole crew along by the sheer force of his example. Though Cook no longer spent time lecturing on philosophy or Old Earth history to his first officer, or helping his chief engineer improve the networking of the ship’s computers, he made rounds each day, spending at least an hour walking the decks, talking to crewman on all decks, laughing along with all ranks and stations and letting them air any complaints or grievances they might have.
Even so, some on the d’Artagnan spent the better part of the day wondering when it all would end; foremost among them was Roscoe Cook himself.
cc: 142-9835.7
FILE: Log
ACCESS: Command.
SECURITY: Standard
OPERATIONAL STATUS: Repairs in Progress
LOCATION: SB 114, Ishtar Command/Dry Dock
Twelve of the fifteen main engine batteries are now operational, and preliminary tests are proceeding on schedule. However, unexpected problems in the engine coils will probably force postponement of full tests for at least a week, making it unlikely that we will meet our target goal of starworthiness by the end of the current cosmic year, or meet the necessary inspection requirements for participation in upcoming maneuvers. Engine coil difficulties seem to stem from design defects in several pieces of new equipment. I have forwarded a full report to Fleet Headquarters, so that the contractors can correct flaws before the prototype begins full production.
Full crew complement of 650 is now on board, although I estimate that we could use at least another 150 hands to help ready the ship, and expect to keep the crew on double shifts for the foreseeable future. Chief Engineer Van Horn anticipates that....
The bell sounded on the communications console next to Cook’s desk. The signal—long, two short, long again—told him he had an incoming call from the base. He pressed the intercom button, impatient at the interruption.
“Yes?”
“Lt. Nkwete calling from Fleet Dispatch.”
Wearily, Cook leaned back in his chair, stricken with guilt. Vera Nkwete was a close friend from his Academy days, but they’d lost touch over the years. He’d been reluctant to call her when the Constantine came into port, but knew she’d feel hurt if he didn’t. Besides, with his promotion he felt the need to celebrate, even if it meant bringing more complications to his life. Now, though, his office was still in chaos, and most days he still couldn’t quite see the top of his desk through the clutter. His shelves still had stacks of info-disks waiting to be filed, and he barely had time to keep up with the minimum amount of paperwork that regulations demanded. However pleasant they might be, he sighed, he had no time for distractions.
“Captain?”
“I’ll take it right here, Yeoman. Thank you.”
Cook sighed as he waited for Vera to appear on the screen, and purged himself of all feelings of irritation. He could imagine the course their conversation would take, and knew that he deserved every syllable of abuse he had coming.
“Hello, Vera,” Cook forced a smile as her image appeared on the screen. With each passing second, as she delayed responding and gazed silently into his eyes, Cook became more and more uncomfortable. Finally, he could stand it no longer.
“Vera— ” he began, only to be cut short.
“Do you realize how long it’s been, Roscoe?”
Cook nodded sheepishly. “It’s been nearly a week, I know....”
“It’s been fifteen days since you last called,” she interrupted haughtily. “Fifteen days of waiting for you to trouble yourself to pick up the vidphone, or have your yeoman do it for you if you couldn’t be bothered to place the call yourself. And do you know how long it was before then?”
“Well— ”
“It was another ten days, Roscoe. You know, it is very difficult for me like this. But the least you could do— ”
“Vera,” Cook said, as she began to cry. “I know I’ve been positively awful, ever since— ”
“Ever since you and your damn ship came into port,” she said sharply. “I don’t understand. For the life of me, I don’t understand how any human being can devote so much time caring for an unfeeling, unhuman—machine.”
“Vera— ”
“No, I’m sorry for troubling you,” she snapped.“I’ll talk to you later. Goodbye.”
Cook stared at the blank screen for several minutes before returning to his console to finish his log entry for the day. Before long, he was on his way to the Molecular Transmitter, to help the Chief Engineer restore some order. Over the past few days, repair crews had all but reduced the regulator to its components, looking for the tiny breach in the wire insulation that was causing the system to short circuit whenever they tried to test it. After that, the corridor hatches needed inspecting and their sick bay neede
d another overhaul to get the medical computers operating again. And he wanted to spend some time wandering around the ship, seeing and being seen by the crew.
As he left, a sliver of light from the hallway door fell across the now-darkened room onto his desk, and beyond it to the wall behind, lingering for a moment on the ancient faces adorning his office until the door closed, and all was dark once more.
"Enemy fire a-port”
“Shields are holding, Mr. Ashton.”
“Helm, hard a-starboard; weapons, commence firing.”
Jeremy’s heart beat heavily as he awaited the outcome. This was their toughest challenge yet—twin frigates, with the computer calibrated to Difficulty Level Two. His mind raced furiously, planning for each contingency, but things seemed to be going well. This was the best they’d ever done on a Level Two simulation. He looked at the side-screen at the captain’s chair and felt a surge of triumph: it showed a direct hit on Enemy Number One, knocking it out of action.
“Second frigate approaching astern,” said the young ensign at the systems station.
“Navigation, “ Jeremy shouted, “plot an arc south of port, heading 750; helm, prepare to swing us around…and, execute.”
As the second frigate came into view on the forward screen, Jeremy started to relax for the first time in this simulation. Facing a single enemy was so much simpler; he could now switch full power to the forward guns and not risk another pass by the enemy ship exposing the d’Artagnan to another enemy broadside.
“Range, two klicks and closing fast.”
“Helm, slow to C-2; weapons, all power to forward guns. Fire when ready.”
From the edge of the captain’s chair, Jeremy watched the ship’s powerful guns blast away at the overmatched enemy frigate, his knuckles turning white as his hands dug into the arm rests. Seconds later, it was all over.
“Sensors show enemy weapons gone, and her shields buckling.”
“Thank you, Ensign Dexter,” Jeremy smiled. “Lt. Underwood, radio the frigates that we are standing by to accept survivors, and sound the all clear; Lt. Palmer, keep shields up and guns amain. Helm, come to 010 and swing us past the enemy, sublight at quarter power.
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