For Honor We Stand (61 page)

“The problem might have been minor for those who were not actually involved in solving it,” Brown said.  “But I’ve got to tell you it was, as you like to say, ‘a cast iron bitch.’  We had to design and built a console consistent with what the Pfelung officer was accustomed to using and that could be used with our systems and that could be fully immersed in salt water and that could be operated by fins and prehensile mouth part appendages.  The task was anything but straightforward.”

“In any event, going into battle with the capabilities of a
Khyber
class Destroyer along with the things those Pfelung fighter squadrons can do is going to be one of the most exciting things I’ve had the chance to do in the service.”  Max’s excitement showed in his eyes and his voice.  “Kim’s unit and our unit are prototypes for what might turn out to be dozens, even hundreds of similar units, but Kim and I are going to be the ones who develop the tactics and work out the bugs in combat.  We’re going to do things to the enemy that he has never imagined.” 

“And, it doesn’t hurt that our own performance is starting to look more like it’s supposed to,” added DeCosta.  “As the Training Officer, I can report that when I perform a crew proficiency evaluation excluding the Sweet Seventeen from the computation, the numbers are improving across the board.  Even excluding our best men, we still come in only eight percent below the task force average.  With them, we’re just over one percent above the average.  So, skipper, it looks as though your ‘special training’
gambit
is working.  Once we get the weak men up to a reasonable level, we can then resume the more challenging training to move everyone up together.  It’s going to take a while, but we’re getting there.”

“Outstanding.  How about our REFSTAMAT?”  Max asked, looking at Brown.

“We still have a bit of clean up to do but most systems are at least five balls now with a few six packs thrown in.  We’re now to the point of correcting the numbers on non critical systems and inert components.  It will take another week to catch all of those, and then we will have all the erroneous entries corrected.  On a related note, have you seen the little covered wagon stickers that have been cropping up around the ship?”

Max said that he had not.  Brown went on to explain the “Mark of Excellence” stickers and the results of his testing the marked equipment.   

“Outstanding.  That’s exactly the kind of change in institutional culture that I was trying to bring about.  Keep an eye on it.  As you see fit, deal out some minor rewards to the men responsible—commendations in their jackets, you know.  And, maybe . . . I’ve got it.  An unofficial award.  Something like a little pin in the shape of the wagon that the men have put on those stickers.  They came up with the symbol, so it has special meaning for them.  Run them off on the FabriFax and hand them out every now and then when someone does a particularly good job of maintaining or repairing something.  I’ll issue a standing order creating an on-ship partial waiver of the uniform regulations to allow them to wear the pin on duty.  They’ve made a big change in how they do things.  Now, it’s up to us to show that we’ve noticed and to reward it.  We can’t just accept these things as our due, you know.  We owe these men more than that.”  Heads around the table nodded.

“I should also let you know that Admiral Hornmeyer and I talked about the gundecked SINs and worked out a solution,” Max said.  “We’ve already done our part under the regulations:  completing and filing the requisite reports and reference to a Court Martial.  Now, he’ll make sure that nothing comes of it.  Either the documentation will get ‘misdirected,’ or there will be an affirmative decision on the part of the JAG office not to prosecute.  He was satisfied with the penance solution, especially given the manpower problems we are having these days.”

“That’s all well and good,” said the doctor, “but I’m worried about this rendezvous.  The Vaaach asking for you, Max, by name, and wanting to get together out in the Great Inner Gap for an unspecified reason.  Why the Great Inner Gap?  No one goes out there.”  The region of the Milky Way galaxy known to humanity and the races with which humans had commercial and cultural relations, called Known Space, lay in the Orion-Cygnus arm of the galaxy.  Coreward and rimward of this area are two relatively star poor areas separating it from the adjacent galactic arms:  the Great Inner Gap, between it and the Sagittarius Arm, and the Great Outer Gap separating it from the Perseus Arm.  The star systems in the gaps were too few and far between, not to mention too poor in jump points that connected together in a useful network, to make them attractive targets for colonization and conquest; accordingly, military operations in the Gaps were very rare.  “And why ask for you by name, anyway?”

“Elementary, my dear doctor,” said Brown.  “They know him.  And, what’s more, he is now a ‘peer hunter.’  They can deal with him as a low-ranking one of their own rather than as an inferior with whom they are not supposed to have anything but the most cursory contact.”

“At any rate, we’ll know very shortly,” said Max.  “To stations.”

They left, everyone but Brown going to CIC.  Brown, of course, took his station in Engineering. 

After the transfer of the con from Hobbs to Max, Max sat in the Big Chair and eyed the navigational display.  “Maneuvering, alter course to take us to a point in a line extended from galactic center through the RP, two AU rimward of the RP.   Then approach the RP from the rimward direction at point five c, standard decel at the end.” 

Chief Leblanc acknowledged and began to implement the order.  After twenty-eight minutes, as the ship was decelerating near the end of the subluminal run, Max turned to Chin and said, “Chin, One MC.”

“One MC, aye.”

The light went on.  Max’s calm, confident voice reached out from every speaker in the ship to every heart and mind on board.  “Shipmates, this is the skipper.  You know where we are and as much about what we are doing as I do.  We know the Vaaach asked for us by name and we know that the Vaaach are not ones for frivolities.  We would not be here if there wasn’t something important for us to do.  Everyone be sharp, keep your eyes, as well as your mind and your attention, focused where they are supposed to be.  You, gentlemen, are my eyes and ears.  My arms, hands, fingers and legs.  I make the decisions, but only with the information you give me.  Those decisions have meaning only because you carry them out.  We’re all mountain climbers, roped together on the rock face—dependent on each other.  You do your part.  I’ll do mine.  We’ll come through this together.  Skipper out.”

Max was always of two minds about these little pep talks.  He knew he wasn’t a great orator, or even a good one, and that a lot of modern commanders thought these kinds of speeches silly or pointless.  He always felt a bit foolish giving them.  On the other hand, Max remembered being an Ensign on the
Margaret Jackie
as she was racing to get to the Battle of Dupuy III in time to stop the rout and maybe turn the tide.  Max was scared stiff when Commodore Middleton came over on One MC and delivered five or six sentences that left him feeling calm and centered and able to do his job.  Max understood from that experience that many of the men needed to hear from their skipper, not just the words, but the tone of voice and manner of delivery to tell them that the skipper is confident.  A commander must be confident and he must communicate that confidence to his men.  People always talk about how the men support the leader.  They forget that, on the precipice of danger or during the fearful prelude to battle, it is the leader who supports the men.  He must have enough courage, not only for himself, but to give an infusion of it to everyone under his command.  

“Station keeping at the rendezvous point,” LeBlanc announced a few minutes later.

“We’re still three minutes early,” Max observed.

Two minutes and fifty seconds passed.  Five people managed to get in and out of the two CIC heads, an event marked by Midshipman Hewlett as a new ship’s record.  At the stroke of the appointed time, Kasparov called out, “Contact, designating as Uniform one, bearing triple nipple by triple nipple.”  One of the cruder bits of Navy jargon, it meant zero-zero-zero mark zero-zero-zero.  The target was directly between the ship and the center of the galaxy.  “Range, ten kills.  Exactly ten kills.  I mean to the tenth of a millimeter.  No drift, either.  Perfectly stationary.  God knows where he came from.  He just appeared.  Maybe he was stealthed brilliantly and he turned it off.”  He paused to listen to someone in his Back Room.  “OK.  OK.  Now classifying as Vaaach:  mass, and EM emissions are all consistent with the last vessel we encountered.”

Chin spoke.  “Visual carrier, sir.  Channel 7.”

“Let’s see it.” 

A moment later, the now familiar ferocious Koala face filled several CIC screens followed by the now familiar roaring and snarling.  This time, however, there was something about the ferocious lions tearing at their meat sounds that struck Max as hinting almost of friendliness.  It did not take long for the translation to appear.  “This is Forest Commander Chrrrlgrf.  I greet you Forest Peer Swamp Fox.  I have no doubt that your tiny primate brain is filled with the question of why you were asked to meet with me at this time and place.”

“And I greet you Forest Commander Chrrrlgrf.  It did occur to me, yes.”

“As well it should.  The Vaaach have been asked to summon you to this meeting and to guarantee safe conduct.  The meeting is not with me but with the vessel that will arrive in slightly more than two minutes.  It is a Krag vessel.  The Krag will arrive and advance to within ten kilometers of your vessel and mine.  They will transmit a message for delivery to the leadership of your people.  You will confirm receipt of their message.  The Krag will depart on a direct path to their space.  You will depart on a direct path to your space.  This will be a peaceful encounter, on pain of death.  If you fire on the Krag vessel, you will be destroyed instantly.  If the Krag vessel fires on you, it will be destroyed instantly.  Is this acceptable?”

 “It is.”

“Very well.  Prepare to receive the Krag.”

At the promised moment, the Krag vessel appeared on gravity wave sensors, then went subluminal and approached the rendezvous point stopping exactly at the prescribed point.  Not as exactly as the Vaaach; the Krag positioned themselves with the precision of about half a meter. 

“Carrier wave from the Krag,” said Chin.  “Now, an attention signal.  Sir, they’re using the old Krag-Human comm protocols we worked out with them back when we were in contact.  They’re telling us to prepare to copy text, Language is Standard, encoding is Formatted Text B.  In thirty seconds.”

“Send, ‘Acknowledged.’”  Max’s voice was even, quiet, grim.  He had a bad feeling about what the Krag were sending.  He had an even worse feeling about the eventual reply.

Chin quickly called up the old transmission protocols and punched them into the ship’s ENcoder/DECoder.  “Receiving transmission.”  A few seconds later, “I’m getting readable text from the ENDEC.”  About twenty seconds later, almost under his breath, “Holy fucking shit.”

“Mister Chin,” Max rebuked him in a low but even voice.  “No profane editorializing on the contents of comms.”  Then, to calm the twitches he was getting from his hypocrisy detector, he added, “That’s my job.”

Chastened, Chin responded, “Yes, sir.  But, you’ve got to see this.”

The transmission ended.  Max read it.

Holy.  Fucking.  Shit. 

***

“What do you think the President and the Senate will do?”  Doctor Sahin took a deep drink of his ‘fruit punch potpourri,’ made from a mixture of undisclosed and various fruits, the kind of mixture generally served by the galley when it was trying to get rid of the tail ends of several different varieties of frozen fruit juice at the same time to clear out one freezer unit, allowing the unit to be broken down making more space in the cramped Galley for the culinary specialists to work. 

Max was a bit deeper into his precious supply of Kentucky Bourbon than he usually allowed himself to get, and was more loquacious than usual.  “How the fuck do I know.  I don’t trust those greasy, double talking bastards as far as I could throw Hornmeyer’s new flagship.  No, that’s not true.  I trust President Lee.  He’s one of us.  Retired Cruiser Commander.  I even met him once.  Of course, that was the first time I was Court Martialed.  He was a member of the panel that tried me.  He voted to acquit.  They all did.”

“For what could you have been Court Martialed?”

“Insubordination.  It was that time when I commanded a PC-4 and Commodore Barber, that was before he was the famous throughout the fleet Admiral Barber, ordered me to disengage and withdraw when . . . .”

Max was cut off when the comm buzzed.  “Skipper.”

“This is Lee in the Intel SSR.”

“OK, Lee Hwang-sik, right?  Philologist and LingAn Expert.  Got something?”

“As a matter of fact, sir, I think I do.  How do you want it?”

“Face to face, with the bark still on, as always.  Come to my Day Cabin.”

“On my way.  Lee out.”

Max drained his glass but did not pour another.  He took a few sips of the coffee that had also been poured for him.  Lee arrived a moment later.  They exchanged salutes.  Lee’s was adequate, but was not what one would call exemplary.  The young man always got stratospherically high FITREPS on how he performed the analytical functions that went with his billet, but mediocre ones in those categories that measured the shininess of his boots, the sharpness of creases, and the snappiness of his salutes.  Max liked a man who had shiny boots, sharp creases, and snappy salutes, but he positively loved a man who was good at his job.  Lee was another one of the officers handpicked for this ship by Admiral Hornmeyer.