For Honor We Stand (58 page)

But, he followed them anyway.  In this case, his orders, sent
FLASH Z
priority, directed him to take his ship, at the highest speed consistent with the importance of the cargo, to a set of coordinates located in deep space 3.72 light years from the nearest star system, to rendezvous with some Union naval vessel (TBD—to be determined) which he was to identify by sending the challenge code “Glorious Sixth of June” and receiving the response “Trafalgar” in addition to the standard IFF recognition protocols.  Someone, somewhere, was really into Admiral Nelson. 

What perplexed Max was that the capture of the Main Data Core from a Krag warship was a contingency for which every Union warship and, indeed, people with ranks running up to Task Force commander, had titanium-clad standing orders from none other than the most high and exalted Chief of Naval Operations in Norfolk.  The vessel obtaining the core was to transmit the code word “ENIGMA” and then race at top speed to rendezvous with the nearest Comprehensive Technical Intelligence Unit which, in Max’s case, was on board the
Halsey
.  This business of rendezvousing in deep space with an undisclosed vessel was a deviation from the standard protocol.  When Max himself broke the rules in order to win a battle it was one thing, but when flag officers started violating rules pertaining to super high priority intelligence objectives, Max started to get an unsettled feeling in his stomach and an annoying tingling sensation between his shoulder blades.  They told him something odd was afoot.  Very, very odd.  Or, at least, something very, very different.

Max didn’t like different.

The
Cumberland
was at the designated coordinates, literally in the middle of nowhere, with her passive sensors tuned to the highest pitch of alertness.

And detecting nothing.

Three hours had passed, the watch had changed, and still
Cumberland
’s exquisitely sensitive sensors were detecting nothing but the distant stars and the vanishingly tenuous gases of interstellar space.  The senior officers had long ago left CIC to the attentions of the regular watch standers and the Officer of the Deck.  It was Ensign Menachem Levy’s second turn in the Big Chair, and his first with the ship at Condition Amber, a heightened state of alertness in which missiles rode in launch tubes with fully energized launch coils, their drives enabled and their warheads armed, the pulse cannons stood on Ready, and half of the crew was either at stations or awake and dressed, ready to dash to stations at a moment’s notice.  When the ship was at Amber, there were reports to CIC every half hour confirming the readiness of every battle station, which reports it was Levy’s responsibility to log, there being no XO in CIC at the moment.  Accordingly, he regarded himself as pleasantly busy for the first two hours and nineteen minutes he sat in the genuinely comfortable seat provided to the Destroyer’s CO, drank coffee fetched for him by Ensign George, and was pondering the notion of considering OOD to be a pleasant duty. 

The twentieth minute of the hour changed his mind.  He noticed Hobbs, who was once again at Sensors, turn quickly to look to the ATTN SSR display, punch up a few different displays, and exchange a few terse words with his Back Room.  The process took all of three seconds before he announced, “Contact!  Unidentified contact approaching under compression drive, gravity wave detection only at this time, approximate bearing two-five-two mark one-one-eight.  No bearing change, no target motion analysis possible.  Designating contact as Uniform one.”  Levy thought to himself irrelevantly that he didn’t know when they had started the target numbering over again.  In his time in CIC he had noticed that the numbers would go up for a few days sometimes and, on other occasions, the Sensor people would start at Zero after only a few hours.  One of these days he needed to remember to ask.  “Strength of reading increasing, no change in bearing detected.  Contact is likely at constant bearing decreasing range.”

No command decision here.  The book was clear on that one.  “Mister Laputa, sound General Quarters.” The klaxons were still braying klaxonically when, less than a minute later, the skipper cycled through the hatch along with the XO and Kasparov.  After the con had been transferred, Max decided, instead of uttering the seemingly obligatory “status” or “report” inquiry, to throw Levy a curve ball.  The place to train combat officers was in combat, or at least under the reasonable threat of possible combat, and they don’t learn anything by always being confronted with the expected.  “Well, Mister Levy,” the skipper said breezily, “what formal justification for sounding General Quarters do you intend to enter in the log?”

It took Levy no more than a second and a half, two at the outside, to realize he was getting a curve instead of the fast ball he had been expecting.  He swung.  “Sir, Sensors reported a gravity wave detection of a likely compression drive source evaluated to be at a constant bearing and decreasing range.  An unidentified intercepting contact is a mandatory GC condition for any unescorted Destroyer.” 

Line drive deep into right field, a stand up triple.  “Outstanding, Mister Levy.  Exactly correct.  You may take your station.”  Max pretended not to notice the young man’s sigh of relief when he stepped off the command island in the direction of the Intel station.

“All stations report secure at General Quarters,” reported Petty Officer Laputa at Alerts. 

“Very well.  Maneuvering, turn to face the contact, both axes.  Attitude change only.  Do not translate the ship.”  Max was ordering that the
Cumberland
re-orient herself so that her most powerful weapons and her most acute sensors were pointing at the target, without changing the ship’s location.  Max was turning the ship in the direction best calculated to learn about the target or to fight it. 

“Target has gone subluminal,” said Kasparov.  “I have mass detection of a subluminal target, congruent with the prior compression detection, bearing is two-five-five mark one-one-seven.  Range forty-eight thousand kills.  Speed, very slow sir, five thousand meters per second.  Mass is  . . . it’s big, sir, eighty-seven thousand nine hundred tons.  We’ve got an optical scanner on it and my people say it looks . . . looks like one of our fleet tankers, one of the big ones,
Sevastopol
Class maybe.  That would be consistent with the mass reading.”

Max turned to Chin.  “IFF?”

“None yet, sir.  Our box has sent the interrogation pulse.  Nothing back, yet.”

“Re-interrogate.”

“But, sir, if we receive no response, the box will automatically . . . .”

“I’m aware of that, Mister Chin, but I don’t want to wait another sixty five seconds.”

“Aye, sir.  Manual instruction for re-interrogation sent.”

“Those tankers are fifty or sixty years old.  Their old IFF boxes can be a bit balky.  I think some of them work on
transistors.
”  Max wondered how many people on board actually knew what a transistor was.

“IFF received, identity checks out.  Union Naval Deuterium Tanker, USS
Singapore
, Registry TMG zero-zero-eight-eight.”

“Target posident as friendly and redesignated as Charlie one,” said Kasparov who had relieved Hobbs at Sensors.

“Something tells me we’re not here to Rendezvous with that.”

“Pretty safe bet, XO,” said Max.  “But you never know.  We’ll follow the protocol.  Mister Chin, signal the tanker by lights.  Send “Glorious Sixth of June.”

“Aye, sir.  ‘Glorious Sixth of June.’”  He ordered the computer to slew the forward signal lamp to point at the tanker, checked its aim manually, input the message, and instructed the computer to send the string of short and long flashes using Morse code, the set of dots and dashes derived from the system invented by Samuel Finley Breese Morse and the mostly forgotten Alfred Vail around 1844.  By the time he had sent the message, his Back Room had already slewed an optical pickup around to focus on the Tanker’s signal lights and routed its feed to Chin’s SSR ATTN display.  A few seconds later, one of the Tanker’s lights began to flash.  Chin took down the message the old fashioned way with pen and paper, in case it was something longer than a sentence or two that he could easily remember.  It wasn’t. 

“Skipper, the Tanker sends, ‘NEGATIVE.’” 

“That would mean they are not who we are here to meet.”  Max said.  “I expect they’ll be along shortly.”

“Skipper?”  Chin was clearly uncomfortable.  “Sir, what about the tanker,   Shouldn’t we be hailing her, establishing a laserlink, signaling with lights, or something?”

“Negative, Chin.”  Max said.  “We have orders from Admiral Hornmeyer to come here and execute a specific recognition protocol.  We are neither ordered nor authorized to engage in any other communications, so we are not going to engage in any other communications with any other vessel.  With what we have on board, we don’t need to be passing the time of day with every deuterium tanker we run into.  We’re going to sit here and wait, if not patiently, than with best facsimile thereof that we can manage.”

It actually took no small measure of patience.  Another incoming contact presented itself three and a half hours later as a gravity wave detection that soon thereafter went subluminal 75,000 kilometers from the Destroyer.

“It’s small, sir,” Kasparov announced, “mass is approximately eight thousand, five hundred tons.  We’ve got optical on it but can’t distinguish anything at this range.”

Before Max could ask about the IFF, Chin spoke up, “IFF confirms as friendly, skipper.  A Fast Courier-Scout assigned to the Task Force, registry number CSR eight-six-five-five.”

“Sir,” it was Bhattacharyya, not a man from whom one would typically be hearing at this point.

“Yes, Bhattacharyya?”

“That particular ship is the one Admiral Hornmeyer uses when he needs to leave the
Halsey.
Just a registry number—no official name for something that small, but they call themselves the ‘Yellow Cab Company.’”  In theory, a truly capable Intel Officer developed “assets and resources” that allowed him to keep his skipper a few steps ahead of what the good guys were doing as well as the bad, but few men who held that billet on a mere Destroyer took that part of their job seriously.  Apparently, Bhattacharyya had a different outlook.

“Thank you, Intel, that’s good to know.  Mister Chin, as soon as the Yellow Cab Company is within
hailing distance
,” he leaned on the words to be sure no one missed the joke, “give them the same recognition signal.”  The smaller vessel quickly closed most of the gap that separated the ships and, in short order, was replying with the counter-sign, “TRAFALGAR.” 

A few seconds after that Chin announced, “Incoming signal from the Courier by blinker.  It’ll be on Commandcom as soon as it finishes and I get it input.”  It took a few minutes before coming up on Max’ console:  “COMING ABOARD YOUR VESSEL ASAP TO VIEW PACKAGE STOP IF YOU MAKE ME WADE THROUGH ALL THAT FIFE DRUM AND HONOR GUARD CEREMONIAL HAPPY HORSESHIT WHEN I BOARD I WILL HAVE YOUR HIDE STOP PREPARE YOUR VESSEL FOR HIGH SPEED RUN BACK TO PFELUNG STOP TANKER IS HERE TO TOP YOU OFF AND TO REFUEL OTHER VESSEL THAT WILL ARRIVE PRESENTLY STOP HORNMEYER SENDS MESSAGE ENDS.”

“I thought you said that there was never a redundant word in any communication received from the Admiral,” said Bram, who had come into CIC a few moments earlier.

“I did.  I don’t see any redundancy,” Max replied.

“There most certainly is a redundancy:  ‘Hornmeyer sends.’  It is evident from the remainder of the signal who wrote it.  Who other than he would call the piping aboard, the presentation of arms, the playing of whatever the name of that piece is with the lyrics ‘Rule the Union, the Union Rules in Space,’ and the ritual inspection of the men at arms ‘ceremonial happy horseshit’?” 

Max was impressed that the doctor was able to accurately recite the ceremony prescribed by custom and naval regulations when a Flag Officer came aboard a rated warship, even though he did not know the title “Rule the Union,” sung to the old tune “Rule Britannia.”  Apparently, he had been studying the database after all.  Of course, Sahin would never learn that from him.  “Redundancy or not, I am glad to be shed of the ‘happy horseshit.’  Apparently the Admiral wants to conclude his business with us and send us in a great big tearing hurry back to Pfelung for some reason.  I suppose that’s what’s behind all of this meeting in deep space double naught spy stuff.  He wants to get his hands on the package ASAP and then send us on this errand, whatever it is.  It’s probably another VIP escort or some such nonsense since we helped save the last one from unmitigated catastrophe.”

The Admiral came aboard, as ordered, without the usual ceremonies, much to the disappointment of many of the crew who delighted in such things.  As soon as the Admiral was aboard, salutes exchanged, and introductions made, he said, “All right, Robichaux, enough of this Naval Auxiliary Garden Party crap.  Let’s see the package.”

“Yes, sir.  Right this way.”  Max led the Admiral from the Hangar Deck wondering if Admiral Hornmeyer had ever so much as showed his face at a Naval Auxiliary Garden Party.  He doubted it.

“You should know,” the Admiral said as they were making their way through the ship, “that I’ve squared the situation with Duflot for you.  I issued orders confirming your failure to rendezvous with the
William Gorgas
, so you won’t have to jump through all those hoops to satisfy him that you were acting with the scope of Article 15, paragraph 5.”

“Thank you, Admiral.  That saves me a great deal of paperwork.”