For Honor We Stand (41 page)

The boy’s embarrassment became slightly tinged with anger.  “Chief Farnell practiced upon my credulous simplicity.”  Max and the doctor shared a surprised glance at the last phrase but said nothing.

“That’s exactly right, son.  No one has had to worry about gimbal lock in a space vehicle with people on it since the last Apollo Command Module flew in 1975.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”  Hewlett came to attention.  “Requesting to be dismissed, sir.”

“Negative, Midshipman.  Not quite yet.”  Hewlett suddenly looked apprehensive.  “No, son, nothing to be afraid of.”  Max picked up one of the teaspoons on the coffee service tray and handed it to Hewlett.  “Here.  You bring this back to Chief Farnell and tell him that the Captain has presented him with his very own ‘gimbal alignment tool’ so that he need not embarrass any more Midshipmen or interrupt any more important meetings.  Kindly tell Chief Farnell that I wish to see him in my Day Cabin at the end of watch.  Oh, and Hewlett, just a few words to the wise.”

“Yes, sir.”

“With the demands being made on the
Cumberland
at this time I need my Midshipmen learning how to operate, maintain, and fight this ship rather than running their legs off being pranked by crewmen.  So, here are some lessons for you to remember and pass on to your bunkies.  Listen carefully.  There is no such thing as a length of asteroid mooring line or a three-dimensional space sextant or a left-handed dome wrench for tightening missile nose cones in their racks.  It is impossible to bail out the atmosphere condenser sump--the water you take from the sump and dump into the humidifier module is immediately evaporated and recondensed and runs right back in so you could bail for a year and never run out of water.”  He looked at the other men present.  “Gentlemen, what are some of the others?”

“An RT is a reactor technician, you see?” said Brown.  “So, if someone sends you to Engineering with instructions to ask one of the men at the reactor for an ‘RT punch,’ one of the RTs will punch you in the arm, usually hard enough to hurt.  Or someone might send you to the spares bay for a ‘long weight.’  The spares clerk will then get up from his station and say he’s going to go get it for you.  He comes back in fifteen or twenty minutes or maybe even half an hour, empty handed.  When you ask where your part is, he’ll say something like ‘I guess the
wait
wasn’t
long
enough.’”

 The XO started speaking.  He was a few years younger than the other men, so his recollection was fresher.  “There is no such thing as a ‘star hook,’ ‘relative bearing lubricant,’ a tube of ‘docking port sealant,’ a ‘pair of twenty megawatt hydrogen fuses,’ or a ‘micrometeoroid dust filter.’  There is never any need to find naval jelly for the Captain’s biscuits or a ‘centrifuge motor for the zero G coffee pot.’  In case you’re wondering, if we are at zero G for long,” added DeCosta, who knew where and how to get coffee under any and all conceivable circumstances, “the zero G coffee pot uses hydrostatic pressure to force water through the coffee grounds and pumps the brewed coffee into sealed containers from which it is decanted into insulated squeeze bulbs for drinking.  No centrifuges are involved.” 

The men all had a good laugh, with their bass and baritone and tenor guffaws joined by Hewlett’s soprano/alto giggles.  Max slapped the boy on the back.  “So, Hewlett, bring that ‘gimbal alignment tool’ to Chief Farnell with my compliments and don’t forget that I want to see him in my Day Cabin at the end of watch.  You are dismissed.”  The boy came to attention and saluted.  Max returned the salute, and Hewlett left. 

“To be his age again!  Warship service an unending wonder, nothing but adventure and the prospect of more adventure stretched out in front of you as far as the eye can see.”  Kraft was gazing after the boy wistfully.  DeCosta and Brown smiled, too, happy memories that had been deeply submerged in an ocean of present cares buoyed to the surface by the irresistible convection of nostalgia.  The smile on the doctor’s face showed that, although he spent his boyhood someplace other than a warship, childhood had been a happy time for him, as well.  Max, however, did his best to keep the others from seeing that the only emotion he experienced at the thought of being Hewlett’s age again was undiluted horror. 

Max shook it off.  Or tried to.  Out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught Doctor Sahin catching him in the act of being appalled before he managed to hide it.

“I do hope, Captain, that you are not too hard on Chief Farnell,” Brown said.  “While he is remarkably inept in his dealings with subordinates, he is one of my best men at diagnosing quirks in the guidance and attitude control systems.  I would hate to see him take such a verbal drubbing that he ceased to be effective.”

“Don’t worry, Werner,” Max responded.  “I am well aware of his contributions to the ship.  I wasn’t planning on doing anything more than telling him that I want him to lay off the mids for a while and to pass the word that I don’t want them being pranked for the next month or so.  We’ve got too many other things to do.”  The engineer nodded his assent.  “Ok, folks, now that we’ve solved the problems of the Junior Midshipmen’s Berth, we’ve got our own problems to solve.  Tougher problems.”  He gestured to the red blinking star in the projection he had started to talk about earlier.  “Once we jump to this system—no name, just a catalog number—and get out from under observation and any chance of our movements being spied out and leaked to the Krag, you’d think that, since we’re a light, fast Frigate/Destroyer Group, we’d take off under compression drives at high c multiples and head across interstellar space for Rashid.  Maybe not following the lubber line, you know, put a few zigs and zags in to make us hard to find in all that immensity, but otherwise we’d just strike out for our destination.”

The illumination element went on over DeCosta’s head first.  “You mean, sir, we’re not?”

“No, XO.  Not even close.”

“Bloody hell,” said Brown, his aristocratic Avalon accent giving the imprecation an impressive ring.

“You got that right, mate,” Kraft replied in a rather feeble imitation Cockney, imperfectly picked up from watching tridvid dramatizations of Dickens novels. 

“You see, our exalted group commander is of the view that, since our little assemblage of vessels consists of a valuable pigeon to be protected, i.e., the Frigate, in the company of two protecting Destroyers, i.e., escorts, it is—listen carefully, gentlemen—a
convoy
.  And, my friends, if Commander Gerard Duflot knows about only one thing in this big bright galaxy, that one thing is convoys.  You know, if the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem you see is a nail, right?  And, since we are a convoy, standard tactical doctrine tells us that the safest and most orthodox procedure is certainly not to strike out across open space where we have no protection but ourselves.  Oh, no.  We do what a gigantic, pokey, lumbering, impossible to hide logistics convoy does:  minimize our exposure to attack by sticking to areas kept clear of the enemy by planet and station based sensor coverage and forces in place.”  The looks of stunned incredulity around the room were impressive in their unanimity.  Except for the doctor, who was too aghast at how aghast everyone else was to let his own aghastness show.

Max continued.  “Accordingly, we will cross this unnamed system at point-four-five c to its Alpha jump point.  From there we jump to Kalkaz.”  Max hit another key and another star started blinking.  “And from there to Murban, thence to Madoom, then Schewe 23,” each named star blinked in succession, “and so on through nine, that’s right folks, a total of
nine
systems until we jump into the Rashid system.  Each of those systems has some kind of established sensor coverage and some kind of defense in place and, according to the official Assessment of Condition, is ‘cleared of enemy forces.’  The entire route is, therefore,
by definition--
apparently a favorite phrase of his--safe for our ‘convoy.’  As if a goddamn definition is going to matter to the Krag.  On the other hand, the wise and exalted Convoy Commander says that, if we just picked a route between the stars, we could be attacked at any time.”

“That’s insane!”  DeCosta wasn’t pounding his fist on the table, but he was about as close to that as he could come in a senior officer’s meeting.  “Out there in all those light years, the enemy would require the most improbable stroke of wild-assed luck to get close enough just to detect us, much less get in firing position, much less be able to do all of the difficult things you have to do in able to hit a superluminal target with subluminal weapons.  You don’t need planet-based sensor coverage and in-system forces to defend the group when you have light years to hide in and your speed to defend you.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, XO,” said Max.  “And, I made my point of view abundantly clear to our new group commander.  So clear, in fact, that he threatened to charge me with insubordination, then threw me out of his office, and had me escorted to my Launch under Marine guard.  He also made clear that he had recorded the entire interview to use at my Court Martial if I so much as made a single transmission to Admiral Hornmeyer to try to get his tactical decision overruled.  He specifically ordered me to ‘send no signal to anyone up the chain of command.’”

“Recorded it, did he?”  The Engineer smiled knowingly.

“So he said.  Told me he had not deactivated the monitoring system in his Day Cabin as is customary when you are meeting with a brother captain.  Not that it matters.  Recording or not, he’s got us on EMCON so I couldn’t send a signal to anyone.  In-group comms are by lights and lasercom.  External comms are restricted to the pennant ship.  Oh, and we will be setting up three-way lasercom as soon as we get into formation after going through jump, so we’ll be networked with the pennant ship and the
Broadsword
.”

“Formation?”  DeCosta didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

“That’s right, XO, formation.”  Max didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm.  “We will be in line ahead formation, two hundred and fifty kill interval, with the
Broadsword
on point and us as Tail End Charlie.  And, yes, I know that with that interval our passive sensor coverage is going to be in the shitter.  Commander Duflot has, however, devised a
brilliant
solution to that problem.”

“You don’t mean . . . .”

“Indeed I do, XO.  Active sensors.  Yankee search omni the whole way.”

“Queen Bess’s Bleeding Bottom!”  It was Brown’s turn and he was moved to employ an oath he rarely used.  The old nation-states still mattered, even if they had long been subordinated first to the United Earth and then to the various political associations that had united humans across the stars.  The ancient throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and British Worlds was sat upon by the much-beloved (and splendidly beautiful) Queen Elizabeth VIII, affectionately known to her billions of subjects as “Queen Bess.”  “Why not just turn on the ID transponder to the main Krag squawk frequency and broadcast in the clear in the Krag language, ‘here we bleeding are, now come blow us to flaming atoms’?  It’s basic inverse square law physics—given equally sensitive sensors they can detect our active sensor transmissions and get a bearing on us at more than double the range at which we can even begin to get a detectable sensor return.”

“You know, Werner, you’re actually not that far off.  With what we’re going to do, a transponder signal couldn’t do a much better job of letting Mister Krag know where we are.  Because, you see, gentlemen, the route from jump in to jump out in each system is going to be a
pure circumferential trajectory
, three hundred AU radius, oriented exactly ninety degrees negative z to the system ecliptic.”

“OK,” said DeCosta, not getting it.  “That’s the base course.  What kind of zig zag or drunkard’s walk or randomized spiral or other variation is he going to use?”

“None.  The only reason it’s an arc instead of a line is to get us out of the civilian traffic pattern.”

That one took a moment to sink in.  “None?  Zero?”  DeCosta was flabbergasted.  “You mean that we are just going to be following a perfect geometric arc—part of a circle with a three hundred AU radius oriented exactly ninety degrees ‘below’ each system’s ecliptic—from beginning to end: a course that any Mid could plot with a compass, a protractor, a ruler, and a sheet of graph paper?  Please tell me we’re going to vary our acceleration at least.”

“Nope.  AC/DC profile Bravo.  “We’ll use the standard acceleration for the slowest vessel in the group, which is the Frigate, until we get to point-four-five-five c, and then standard deceleration as we near the jump point.  The only deviation from perfect predictability is going to be in the Murban system.  Duflot wants to rendezvous with NAVCOMNET relay buoy 8677.  He wants to do a laserlink with the buoy so he can transmit and receive messages on the fleet network without breaking EMCON.”

“But, but, but,” DeCosta began, stunned into inarticulacy.  “The First Law of Destroyer and Frigate Combat is . . . .”

Max nodded and made a mollifying gesture with his hand, something like a patting motion, palm facing DeCosta.  “The First Law of Destroyer and Frigate Combat is ‘Stealth is Life.’  If the enemy can’t find you, he can’t kill you.  I feel your pain, XO.”

“But, that means that anyone who wants to intercept and attack us need only plot us for an hour or two and can then extrapolate our position for the whole system crossing, get ahead of us, lie in wait, and already have a nearly perfect firing solution.”  The XO was really starting to get agitated.  “He doesn’t have to detect us on sensors.  He just keeps an eye on the clock to know when to shoot.  We are conceding to the enemy almost every possible advantage.  Is this man on the Krag payroll?”