For Honor We Stand (23 page)

Doctor Sahin, who had been paying close attention to the discussion, happened to look at the tactical display on his console and almost fainted.  “Captain,” he managed to sputter, “those objects on my display . . . those
dozens
of objects, fifty-four of them . . . the computer has attached a label to them that I don’t understand.  What are they?”

“Something we don’t want to hit.  Chief LeBlanc?”

“Right on track, sir.  No worries here.”

“Outstanding.”

What the doctor saw on his display was that the icon representing the
Cumberland
was a short distance from a large array of blue icons, each of which was labeled PROV RSHD TF and a numeral, starting with 1 and going up to 54.  Between the Destroyer and the blue icons was a blinking yellow dot labeled EXEC PNT, which the Destroyer was rapidly approaching.  Before Doctor Sahin could ask what “PROV RSHD TF” and EXEC PNT meant, the
Cumberland
’s
icon reached the yellow dot and Mr. Bartoli sang out, Execution Point!  Firing tube three!”  Bartoli’s console showed a status change.  “Tube three just fired.”

At that same moment, the Doctor saw a profusion of tiny dots appear in front of the blue icons that had so alarmed him earlier.  There were seventy-four of them, moving very quickly.  There were too many for the computer to label, so it placed an asterisk next to each one, with a note at the bottom of the screen explaining what they were.  Doctor Sahin, quite naturally, noticed neither the asterisk nor the footnote.

The next step belonged to Countermeasures.  Sauvé announced, “Jamming shut down in five, four, three, two, one, NOW.”

Immediately thereafter, LeBlanc patted Fleischman twice sharply on the shoulder.  The young Spacer immediately pushed the controller for the main sublight drive all the way to the stop, kicking the
Cumberland
into the most rapid acceleration she could accomplish in normal space.

“Egg scrambler just detonated,” announced Levy.

Max smiled, turned to the Doctor and the Minister and said, using his ‘quoting’ tone of voice, “Nicephorus, thou dog of a Roman, son of an infidel mother, my reply shall not be for thine ears to hear, but for thine eyes to see.”  Both men nodded their recognition of Max’s reasonably accurately paraphrase of the famous letter written in the year 802 by the namesake of both this star system and of its capital city, the brilliant strategist, Caliph Harun al-Rashid.  The famous letter that al-Rashid sent to Nicephorus--just ahead of his avenging army.

A few seconds later, in the Command Nest of the Krag Hegemonic Warship 96-11589, the commander of that vessel, and of what was left of the attack force sent to destroy the Rashidian fleet, chuckled to himself (or the Krag equivalent thereof) when he was told by his sensors specialist that the sensor jamming being transmitted by the humans’ Destroyer had just ceased.  Doubtless, he thought, another failure of their ill-conceived and poorly-engineered technology.  With a sweeping motion of his left arm, he instructed his central command display to clear itself of the myriad sub displays arranged on it in a complex matrix of tactical plots, ship performance graphs, and course projections.  Touching a few controls on the input pad, he instructed the large, now-blank panel to devote itself to showing him, at the largest possible scale, the location and arrangement of the inert, moored enemy fleet and of the pitiful tail stump of the enemy force remaining to wage a futile, dying effort to prevent its destruction.  He wanted to be able to give, quickly and accurately, the orders that would bring his Destroyers in position to deliver the killing blow. 

It took a few seconds for his ships’ sensor beams to leave their emitters, travel through space, reach the humans’ ships, be reflected, transit the same space in the opposite direction, be picked up by the receiver arrays of each vessel, and routed to the ships’ computers, there to undergo interpretation, coordination, and sharing between ships.  Finally, when the data was processed, exchanged, reconciled, and reprocessed, it was ready to be presented on the commander’s display for view and—truth be told—a moment of self-congratulation, even gloating.  Once these steps took place, it took less than a second for the symbols representing the tactical situation to pop in to existence on the display, and only another two seconds or so for the brilliant Krag commander to take it in. 

His tail, which had been extending from his rump almost perfectly parallel to the deck and whipping excitedly from side to side, suddenly dropped like a piece of limp rope.  He had been had.  At least, however, he would not have to spend painful years burdened by regret for his errors.  Instead, he knew he would regret them for the rest of his life—just over five seconds. 

It was so simple, now that he saw the end game.  The Rashidian fleet was not waiting helplessly to be destroyed at its moorings.  Rather, the vessels had crawled out on their auxiliary fission reactors and maneuvering thrusters, arraying themselves like a wall across the Destroyers’ path:  five rows of roughly ten ships each.  Fifty-four Rashidian vessels head on.  And each of those ships had somehow managed to fire at least one missile, for a total of seventy-four missiles, using firing coordinates provided by the humans’ Destroyer.  That same Destroyer had run ahead and jammed the Krag sensors, not to keep from being fired upon, but to keep the Krag from sensing the trap into which they were being led. 

The Krag commander could only watch impotently as the
Cumberland
streaked under full acceleration through a 500 meter by 500 meter gap in the oncoming formation of 74 C57-D and assorted other nuclear-tipped homing missiles and then through the middle of the Rashidian ships before sweeping around in a great arc to orient its most sensitive sensors, as well as its forward firing weapons, back in the direction of the Krag.  The Krag commander then began to issue futile orders, all the while watching in stupefied horror as approximately
fifteen
missiles per target started bending their courses to surround his formation. 

Given the abundance of nuclear ordinance at their disposal, the Rashidians gave their missiles an attack profile that made the advanced Krag defenses irrelevant.  Set for simultaneous circumferential detonation, they converged from all directions on the space containing the five enemy ships and detonated at the same instant just outside the range of the Krag point defense systems, dozens of points of light merging into a blinding but short-lived newborn sun, producing a zone of blindingly bright destruction over forty kilometers across in which solid matter simply ceased to be, then fading into blackness.  The Krag were gone.

Since July 16, 1945, when mankind first unleashed the immense energies that, since the beginnings of the universe, had lain tightly coiled in the atomic nucleus, never had human beings simultaneously detonated so many nuclear weapons in one place, nor released so much explosive power in a single instant.  Though the men in CIC were combatants in a three decade long interstellar war between two advanced, star faring civilizations waged with thermonuclear weapons, what they saw on their displays stunned them to silence. 

The doctor finally spoke.  “Captain,” he said softly.  “That biblical citation that you sent to the Admiral.  What was it?”

“One hundred and sixth Psalm, verse 18.  ‘Fire blazed among their followers; flame consumed the wicked.’”

“Amin,” said the doctor, Mecca in accord with Jerusalem.

“Amen,” said Finnegan and Hatzidakis together, Rome and Constantinople adding their concurrence. 

Back to business.  “Comms, contact the Rashidian flagship.  Extend our most respectful compliments to Vice Admiral Jassir and inform him that, with his leave, we wish to come alongside.  Request traffic control instructions.  Maneuvering, follow exactly the instructions Chin relays to you.  We don’t want to piss off our new friends by dinging one of their ships.”

“Why are we putting ourselves so close to the Rashidian flagship?” asked the doctor.  “Isn’t the battle over?”

Max answered quietly.  Over the background noise in CIC, his voice did not carry beyond the command island.  “I seriously need to talk to the Admiral.  We’re not out of the woods yet.  Not even close.  We’ve still got almost nine hours until this fleet’s main reactors are running.  That’s nine long hours until they can maneuver and fight.  Three full Rashidian fighter squadrons have been wiped out to the last man:  that’s nearly a third of their total fighter force, half of their Navy’s active duty fighter pilots, and nearly all of the really good ones.  It will be at least forty-eight hours before the Union can get any kind of a defensive force in here, probably closer to seventy-two, and for all we know there is a second wave of attacking Krag on its way right now.  In fact, I’d bet on it.  I had a few irons in the fire that might have solved this problem, but it doesn’t look as though they’re going to amount to anything.  We may have just delayed the disaster by a few hours.  I would seriously like to avoid bringing Rashid into the war and having their Navy blown to flaming atoms in the same day.  Not exactly the sort of thing that would look good on my service record.”

“Particularly as we would be likely to be vaporized right along with them,” added Bram. 

“Right.  Shame, too.  It would totally ruin any chance I might have for promotion.  And, there’s one more thing.  Think of the message it would send to prospective allies if the Krag can destroy the Rashidian fleet and take over the Rashid system on the very day they join the fight.”

“That had not occurred to me,” the doctor said, shaking his head.  “It would certainly work to discourage other powers from joining our cause.”

“You got it, my friend.  It would discourage them powerfully.  That could lose the war for us right there.  And I don’t have the first idea of what to do about it.  Not one.”  Returning to his CIC voice, “Chin, when you’re done with getting traffic control directions from the Rashidians, ask if there is any way they can cross deck the scans from their early warning system to us—I’d like to see what’s out there and analyze the raw data with our own computers rather than having to rely on reports from the Rashidians.”

As soon as Chin repeated the order, Kasparov broke in.  “Sir, as you might expect, sensors are a complete mess from all those nukes and won’t be very useful for several more minutes, but I’m pretty sure I just picked up a burst of Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation from this system’s Charlie jump point.”

“Well, the Rashidians have that covered with a very serious battle station.  If it’s bad guys jumping in, we’ll be picking up the fusion flash of their demise any second now,” said Max.

“Sir,” this time it was Chin.  “I’m getting heavily encrypted traffic originating in and around that jump point.  It’s on a Rashidian channel, sir.  Transmitter profiles phase discriminate out as two signal sources:  some kind of warship and the Rashidian Military High Command transmitter.  I’ve got nutcrackers for almost all of the Rashidian military encrypts, sir.  We could probably listen in if you wanted to.”

“Mr. Chin, I’m shocked.  Absolutely shocked.  The Rashidians are an Associated Power with the Union.  You know that gentlemen don’t intercept each other’s encrypted military transmissions.  I’m appalled that you would even make that suggestion.”

“So am I sir.  Absolutely.  In fact, I’m surprised I can live with the shame.  And, sir, are you going to want to listen to that transmission on your console or on headset?”

“Console, please.  Put it on an open channel.”

Doctor Sahin merely shook his head.  It could have been disapproval.  It could have been resignation.  It could have been both. 

Chin said a few words to his Back Room, the denizens of which quickly determined which decryption algorithm or “nutcracker” made headway against the Rashidian encryption and notified him that it was running on the transmission now.  Chin then hit a few keys that put the transmission on the audio output on the Captain’s console and made it available to anyone on the ship whose duties allowed them to listen.  In less than thirty seconds, a crackle came over the transducer as the computer’s application of the nutcracker to the data stream caught up in real time, locked in the interpretation matrix, and then, “—firm your clearance as requested.  Set your transponder to squawk Kilo Tango Alfa Galaxy.  Proceed to holding point three, at standard acceleration but do not exceed point two, then go to station-keeping and monitor this channel for further instructions.  After a short delay, you can . . . Stand by . . . Um . . . Just a moment.”  The man suddenly sounded a little flustered.  “Please prepare to receive a direct transmission from his Serene and Celestial Majesty, Khalil the First, King of the United Kingdom of Rashid, Allied Emirates, and Protected Islamic Worlds. . . . Erm . . . . Your Majesty, you may proceed.”  A brief silence.

“Khalil here.  Identify yourself.”  No bullshit.  Pure business.

“Your Majesty, I am Rear Admiral Marcus Quintus Catalus, commanding the Imperial Romanovan Battleship
Ravenna
.”  His voice was proud.  Determined.  This man was ready to fight.  “We received a back channel communication from a Union naval officer named something like Maximian Romus Cato—I apologize but I believe the name was garbled somewhat in transmission—that you were under attack by the Krag.  Emperor Adiuvatus dispatched us immediately upon receipt of the message and, before we jumped out, we received confirmation that the Senate just voted a contingent Declaration of War.  Your Majesty, it is the will of the Senate and of the People of Romanova that if Rashid is at war with the Krag, then Romanova is at war with the Krag.  The rest of the force under my command will be coming through the jump point as fast as they are able and should all be in system within the hour.  Our battle group consists of the
Ravenna
as well as a Carrier, another Battleship, two Battlecruisers, and six Heavy Cruisers.  Our orders, from the Emperor himself, direct us to render any assistance you may require.  He also directs that I convey a personal message to the King.”