For Honor We Stand (49 page)
Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw Goldman stiffen, then point to one of the waterfall displays. Kasparov shifted his gaze to where Goldman was pointing. In the half second or so that these two actions took, Max turned back to face his console and was reaching for the reconfigured “SUMMON STEWARD--COFFEE” button when Kasparov called out, “Contact! Likely Krag missile targeting scanners, two sources close together, bearing one-zero-seven mark one-eight-five. Signal strength indicates close range.”
The rats came from underneath and a little behind, right for the monkey’s genitals.
Max felt every inch of skin on his body shrink as a torrent of adrenalin poured into him. The hand that he had shifted to be near the coffee button slammed down with unintended force, shattering the plastic and impressing its shape on Max’s palm in a bruise that he would carry for more than a month. Over the now-open voice channel that connected him directly to the CO’s console on the
Broadsword
, he nearly shouted: “Dynamo! Dynamo! Dynamo!”
For a while, Max needed to give no more orders. Knowing that seconds, even fractions of seconds, would count when the Krag attack was detected, he and Captain Kim had worked out a complex series of orders to be implemented instantly as soon as he gave the “Dynamo!” call. First and most important, Max and Kim had agreed that they had to achieve the mission’s objective--getting the Envoy alive to the conference—even if it meant violating Captain Duflot’s idiotic orders and even if it meant a Court Martial for both of them.
On board the
Broadsword
, even
before the second “Dynamo!” came over the speaker, Captain Kim snapped out, “Go, McDaniel, go!” Able Spacer 1
st
Class Jackson McDaniel, Drives on the
Broadsword
, shoved the sublight drive controller all the way to the stop as Pitch and Yaw executed the well planned course change, steering the Destroyer through a violent evasive maneuver designed to throw the Krag firing solutions into whatever their species used for wastebaskets and get her as far away from the formation as fast as possible. Once
Broadsword
had pulled far enough away from the other Union ships, she kicked her compression drive to the maximum setting, cracked through Einstein’s Wall, and vanished from sight. Bearing the envoy to safety at more than 2000 times the speed of light, the USS
Broadsword
, her Captain suppressing millions of years of primate instinct and a strong personal affinity for combat, ran like a scalded dog.
Prompted by the same call, this time broadcast over standard radio, the four fighters of the 3242
nd
Reserve Fighter Squadron assigned to escort the group reversed course and pointed their threat receivers back in the general direction of the
Cumberland
. Now that the Krag had activated their missile targeting scanners, the fighters had no problem detecting them. All four went to afterfusers, accelerating rapidly in the direction of the Krag vessels. It would, however, be minutes before they were in missile range.
Meanwhile, Chin keyed a preprogrammed command to notify the
William Gorgas
on the Emergency Alert Channel via laserlink of what the
Cumberland
had detected and what it was going to do. The only immediate response from the pennant was Duflot angrily demanding that Max tell him where the
Broadsword
went. No help there.
Max knew that the Krag would immediately conclude from the rapid disappearance of one ship that the Envoy had gotten away from them. They could never catch, much less successfully engage, a
Longbow
class Destroyer running at high compression across interstellar space. With the Envoy gone, Krag doctrine dictated that the two Cruisers (it had to be two Cruisers at this range on this kind of mission) would take advantage of a bad situation by engaging and destroying the remaining, inferior force. He also knew that, when two Cruisers are engaging a Frigate and a Destroyer, Krag doctrine said both ships are jointly to take out the more nimble Destroyer first, then turn their attention to dealing with the more powerful but less elusive Frigate.
That meant that the two Krag ships would now turn from their original target, close on his position and, as soon as they could generate a firing solution for their Foxhound missiles, they would each launch a full salvo.
Adieu
Cumberland.
Pas aujourd'hui.
Time to act like a primate. Max looked over at Chief Leblanc, who was watching a timer. Nine seconds had to elapse from the
Broadsword’s
departure for the fabric of space-time to restore itself to its previous shape. It had been seven. Eight. Nine. Chief LeBlanc simply said to his men, “Go, boys.” Drives ran the sublight drive to Emergency while the men on the Yaw and Pitch controls suddenly put the ship through a radical turn away from its previous course and out of line with the
William Gorgas
, a maneuver which would delay the Krag from getting missile firing solutions for another four or five seconds. After two seconds, when the range between the two Union ships had opened up sufficiently, LeBlanc slapped Spacer Fleishman on the shoulder adding, “Switch ‘em, son.” Fleishman pulled the main sublight drive controller to zero and flipped the drive actuator to Standby, then flipped the compression drive actuator to Engage and gave its controller the barest nudge, the smallest movement that could be applied to it and still push it out of the zero detent. “Main sublight nulled and on Standby. Compression drive engaged. Compression field forming,” announced LeBlanc. “Field going propulsive.” The ship started to accelerate as the space behind it expanded and that in front of it contracted, carrying the ship forward. “Speed is point six, point seven, point eight, point nine, point nine-eight-five. Holding at point nine-eight-five.” LeBlanc said the last sentence in a tone that clearly conveyed that “holding at point nine-eight-five” was not a common state of affairs. Eleven seconds elapsed, the shortest period of time that the compression drive could be engaged and then disengaged without triggering an uncontrolled field collapse which would destroy the ship and also a period too short for deadly compression shear to arise even at a fractional c multiple. LeBlanc slapped Fleischman on the shoulder once more. “Kill it.” Fleischman pulled the controller back to zero, triggering a computer controlled dissipation of the compression field, a process that took another second.
Max had taken the almost unheard of step (prohibited by a least three distinct naval regulations and strongly discouraged by seven others) of using a superluminal drive for subluminal propulsion, dashing outside of the Krag firing solution far faster than otherwise possible, avoiding the time dilation effect that occurs when traveling near the speed of light in normal space, and getting “behind” the Krag warships, forcing them either to divide their attention or to both turn their more vulnerable sterns toward one of the two Union ships. “Now,” Max said, grinning, “time to turn and attack. Mister LeBlanc, make for the closest Krag ship. Ahead Flank.” As LeBlanc acknowledged and carried out the order, Max turned to Kasparov and threw him a questioning look.
“Just getting an ID now, sir, Hotel One is posident as Krag Cruiser, Crayfish Class. Hotel Two . . . .” he was listening to his Back Room and looking at something on a display to which Goldman was pointing and saying over his headset, “yea, OK, same type, we’re go.” Then to Max, “Both contacts are Crayfish class. Bearing two-four-two mark one-six-seven for Hotel one and two-three-nine mark one-six-three for Hotel two. Hotel one is continuing to accelerate, altering course from heading toward our former position to heading for the Frigate. Hotel two is turning, likely to engage us, range to both targets three-point-two-seven million kills. Distance between Hotel one and Hotel two is opening up.” A few seconds. “OK, Hotel two is at constant bearing decreasing range. Right for us, sir.”
“That’s
Craw
fish. I keep telling those idiots at Intel. They ought to listen to a Cajun on this stuff, or at least a Southerner. Right, LeBlanc?”
“
Mais, oui, mon capitain
,” said Leblanc.
“Right, Bartoli?”
“Damn straight, sir.” Bartoli hit the Alabama extra hard, making sure it came out “
day umm
straight.”
“It’s unanimous. Bartoli, what’s the Frigate doing?” The question was both a request for information and a reminder to Bartoli that it was his responsibility to see that the main tactical display in CIC presented a usable tactical picture of the situation. When the Destroyer had run about three million kilometers from the Cruisers, the other three ships in the engagement had vanished off the edge of the display. Bartoli needed to change the scale so that all four ships showed up. He did so.
“Sir, the Frigate has gone to Flank. He’s presenting his starboard beam to Hotel One, while angling away, trying to stay outside missile range. Why hasn’t he . . . OK, there he goes, he’s finally got his pulse cannon into action. He’s got his starboard batteries plus his ventral and dorsal turrets laying down barrage fire. There, he got off a salvo of missiles, too . . . at least two got through, two hits with Talons. I can’t tell at this range what kind of damage he did.” Duflot was implementing standard fleet doctrine for a convoy frigate under attack with no pigeon to protect: crack on as much speed as you can to complicate interception and missile targeting, maneuver for a better tactical position, present your beam to the enemy so you can use your amidships pulse cannon plus your ventral and dorsal turrets to lay down a barrage of pulse cannon fire to reduce the effectiveness of any missile attack, and try to do some damage of your own with missile fire. Not terribly imaginative, but a very long way from the worst thing he could do. He might be a tactically obtuse, condescending asshole, but it did look as though Duflot had some grit in his gizzard.
“Weapons, abbreviated missile firing procedure. Make missiles in tubes one and two ready for firing in all respects, target on Hotel two, set warheads for maximum yield, open missile doors.”
“Sir,” Bartoli said, “Frigate just fired an egg scrambler.” No FTL comms or compression drive use in the vicinity for a while, then. Would have been nice to have been warned.
“Saves us the trouble, then. Weapons, pull the scrambler from tube three. Reload with a Talon.” Max glanced at a timer on his console, a timer that had been counting up from when the
Broadsword
had started maneuvering. It was at 00:01:27.
“Aye, sir, pulling egg scrambler from tube three, reloading with Talon. Sir, tubes one and two are loaded with Talons.” Levy carried out the order with his usual hyperactive efficiency. “I’m sure you know, sir, two Talons aren’t going to scratch that
Crawfish
if he’s ready for them.”
“I know that, Mister Levy. Max glanced at the timer again. It was now at 00:01:35. “Our two Talons aren’t going to be the only guests at the party.”
As the timer hit 00:01:40, Mister Chin sang out, “Skipper, receiving encrypted text on one of the JOINTOPS channels. The encrypt is MUDBATH. The decrypt is coming up now. I’m putting it on the Commandcoms channel.”
Max hit the bright orange hard key over one of the main displays on his console that punched up the Command Officer’s Incoming Communications or “Commandcoms” data channel. The screen displayed “GREETINGS DRY CRUSTY HUMANS STOP THIS IS BRAKMOR-ENT 198 COMMANDING THE 16
TH
ELEMENT 332
ND
FIGHTER GROUP PFELUNGIAN SPACE DEFENSE FORCE REPORTING IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR REQUEST STOP IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO BATTLE WITH THE KRAG AND MAKE OF THEM A MEAL FOR THE LESSER FISH WE WOULD EAGERLY JOIN YOU STOP QUERY MAY WE JOIN THE FUN STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”
“Mister Chin, please send, “We welcome your assistance and believe there is enough fun for everyone. Form up on me and await instructions.”
DeCosta looked puzzled. “That doesn’t sound like the Pfelung communications I’ve read. Why are they here, anyway?”
“That’s because, XO, what you’ve seen are communications from the enormous, lumbering adults, who are halfway between a grown alligator and a hippo in size and about as nimble as an elephant with arthritis. They don’t fly fighters. The fighters are flown by their Pfelung in the adolescent stage of their life cycle. They’re a lot like dolphins with the personality to match. Very fast, very nimble, genetically designed to defend the baby Pfelung in the water, braver than a lion on stims, with brains specifically evolved for rapid life and death combat in three dimensions. Reflexes that make lightning look slow. Best fighter pilots in the galaxy, bar none. This is one of the groups I was training. I signaled them back before we went on EMCON and told them to meet us in this system, wait for us to jump in, and track us at three and a half million kills on this bearing. And, here they are. Now that we’ve got that nailed down, XO, don’t you have something to do?”
Max jerked his head in the direction of the Fighter Coordination Console. The console that Petty Officer Carlson was firing up. The one that the XO was supposed to run when a
Khyber
class or other SWACS ship too small to have a separate Air Coordination Officer (generally known as a “Bird Herder”) was working with fighters. “Yes, sir. I’m on it.” DeCosta stepped over to the console. Carlson had already pulled up the protocols for JOINTOPS with the Pfelung and had plugged in the transponder frequencies and encrypts, the comm procedures, all the crypto information, and the standard Pfelung fighter maneuvers. By the time DeCosta sat down at the station, everything was ready for him. He turned to the Petty Officer, “Thanks, Carlson. Good job.” Carlson sat down at his station nearby, and the two got to work.