Loyalty to the Cause (TCOTU, Book 4) (This Corner of the Universe) (33 page)

Truesworth
shook his head.  “No, Captain, that’s three ships
total
, for both sides,
that were lost.  Many more were damaged but none of the damaged ships were
scrapped.  All of the mercen—, uh, privateer ships made it through with only
moderate or minor damage.”

“I
think AmyraCorp has to pay for the repair of any ships they lease so it makes
sense they’d be careful,” Selvaggio said.  “But only three ships lost for a
whole battle?  How is that possible?  What does that mean?”

Truesworth
smiled brightly.  “I think it means these corporate admirals know their stuff.”

“Or,” Vernay suggested,
“these corporate navies just play at war.”

*  *  *

Heskan
arrived at the docking tube to
AV Elathra
and all the familiar anxious
feelings associated with assuming a new command returned.  Adding to his
concerns were the unique circumstances of his acquisition of the vessel. 
However, if there was anything unusual about the partial crew exchange inside
Elathra
,
it went unnoticed by the Hollaran civilians hired to sail the vessel to
Seshafi.  Instead of asking for an explanation of why Heskan and his crew were
taking over the ship in the Vica Pota system, the civilian captain merely ran
Heskan through a comprehensive checklist confirming the status of the snow and
sought his signature.

Sitting
comfortably in the captain’s chair on
Elathra’s
bridge, Heskan experimentally
turned the chair left and right, noting its silence to his satisfaction.  The
snow’s bridge conformed to expectations for any bridge on a small vessel.  Stations
for Navigation and Sensors were front and center.  Weapons and Engineering
resided along the bridge’s sides, while Operations, to be manned by Lieutenant,
junior grade, Gables, occupied the bulkhead behind Heskan’s chair and to his left. 
Vernay’s first officer station was immediately to Heskan’s left, the standard
location on most bridges.  The compartment was similar to
Anelace’s
bridge but certainly felt different.  In the rush to civilianize the ship, any
Hollaran naval emblem had simply been painted over, with little effort to
conceal what the fresh paint was hiding.  The color scheme inside the entire
ship was familiar but “off,” and although Heskan was on a fast ship, little details
such as lighting and the position of wall panels reminded him the ship was not
Anelace
.

These
minute differences were augmented by the age of the ship.  While
Elathra
held most of the modern conveniences standard for more contemporary vessels,
her propulsion and armament divulged her age.

In
her previous life,
AV Elathra
had been known as CHES-231,
HCS Elathra
. 
The Commonwealth high endurance ship was slightly longer and wider with a
greater draft than
Anelace
, but displaced only 3,480 tonnes due to her
odd, “winged” split hull.  The snow was meant to be crewed similarly to the
Brevic corvette, with eight officers and fifty-seven enlisted.  Upon
Elathra’s
decommission, she lost her “HCS” designation for the more general “AV” prefix. 
The “armed vessel” title was given to nearly every armed ship for hire in
accordance to Hollaran and Federation customs and treaty.  The Brevic Republic,
which did not abide mercenaries and only allowed government-approved, privately
owned convoy defense ships, saw no such distinction between armed vessels and
pirate ships.

Powered
with a single Kuritan-910 power plant,
Elathra
pushed herself forward on
the backs of four Junkkers-Damler-213A1 drives and a Gibson-12 tunnel drive. 
The venerable conventional drives combined to give the snow a top speed of .26
c
,
slow for the present era but respectable in past generations.  Her Blue-Suns
sensor suite and twin Argus VSP-14 Fisheyes gave her strong detection and
tracking capabilities.  The twin eyes of the Argus array worked in tandem to
yield an optical picture nearly as good as
Anelace’s
had been.  Similar
to Dagger-class corvettes, the Colossus-class snows relied on an Endrix
Advanced Integrated Projection Screen (AIPS) for protection and the ubiquitous duralloy
armor that had become industry standard long before
Elathra’s
keel had
been laid.

The snow’s
armament was designed at a time of constant, minor border skirmishes with the
Brevic Republic.  Two dual Lyle GP laser turrets at the fore of her starboard
and port “wings” provided the mainstay of her armament.  Supplementing these
weapons were a quartet of Blackings laser carronades mounted in pairs along
each side of her wings.  Such lasers were now antiquated due to their
unacceptably short, 3
ls
range.  The teeth of
Elathra’s
armament,
and the principal reason for her graceful, outstretched wing design, were two
Bredalin neutron particle cannons.  Rarely used on contemporary vessels,
particle beam weapons operated on the principle of accelerating neutrons
linearly into a beam.  The length of the accelerator required to scale the
particles into a weapons-grade beam was problematically long, resulting in
Elathra’s
outswept “wings” that housed the enormous 107-meter linear accelerators.  Each cannon’s
“barrel” ran nearly the entire length of each wing.  Smooth structures flowing outward
like feathers along the wings contained radiators that, in conjunction with
Elathra’s
ventral radiator, dissipated the incredible heat generated by the wildly
inefficient particle weapons.  The extraordinary amount of waste heat generated
when firing a neutron cannon that contained enough energy to offset thermal
bloom doomed the weapon’s popularity.  Further, the actual thermal bloom of the
Bredalin beams reduced the accuracy of the weapon to between four and six
light-seconds, depending on the gunner’s abilities.  As a result of these
failings, particle beam weapons had fallen out of favor over the last fifty
years.

The
day Heskan took command, he, Vernay and Brown walked through the entire ship. 
No corner or crevice escaped notice during their five-hour tour.  The
inspection left Heskan with the distinct feeling that while old,
Elathra
was still capable.  As he got to know his command,
Elathra
and her three
companions,
Rindr
,
Anakim
, and
Ravana
, sailed to the
tunnel point that would begin their journey toward a new life.

“We’re
next for the dive, Captain,” Selvaggio informed from her navigation station. 
She absentmindedly played with several of the panel’s controls.

“How’s
she handle, Diane?” Heskan asked.

“Different,”
Selvaggio admitted.  “Her center of thrust makes her seem a bit skittish but
once I get used to it, I bet I can spin this ship like a top with her
thrusters.”

“That
sounds unpleasant,” Truesworth muttered next to her.

Selvaggio
ignored him and continued, “I was a little disappointed with the Junkkers
drives but I do like having four little drives better than one or two big
ones.”

Heskan
looked to his left.  The first officer’s seat was empty as Vernay temporarily occupied
the weapons station.  “Enjoying your new toys, Commander?” he asked with a
smile.

“The
GPs are what I expected.  There isn’t a navy out there that doesn’t use them. 
I only wish there were more.”  She shook her head slightly.  “These carronades...
I like that they recycle faster but other than point defense, when would we
ever be close enough to use them?”  She poked at the weapons console and
brought up the firing schematics of the particle beams.  “
Love
how hard
these Bredalins will hit. 
Hate
how slow they fire.”  Due to the
excessive heat generation and the possibility that rapid fire could cause the
weapon to spew non-neutral particles, which would build up a dangerous opposite
charge along
Elathra’s
hull, Bredalin hardcoded a ten-second recycle
delay into the software.  It was yet another deficiency of particle beam
weapons that helped usher the technology into obscurity.

“Your
final verdict?” Heskan asked.

“I
want my mass driver back,” Vernay confessed.  “However, I pity the ships that
stay within three light-seconds of us.”

“Does
that kind of close combat normally occur in corporate battles, Captain?” 
Selvaggio asked.

Heskan
considered the question.  During his review of recent battles between corporate
rivals, Heskan discovered the reason behind the low casualties.  Corporate
warfare was merely an extension of corporate negotiations.  When mediation,
espionage and outright theft failed, corporations would settle their disputes
using one of two methods.  The first was a labyrinth of argumentation in front
of an over-arching council referred to as “The Courts.”  Representatives from every
corporate system sat upon the bench as judges to hear the complaints corporations
lodged against each other.  The political maneuvering and legal doublespeak in
this approach boggled Heskan’s mind enough to understand the preferred, and far
more efficient, method was corporate warfare through the issuance of a
casus
bellum
.

When
two corporations disputed over rights to a technology, sales territories or
anything else, the aggrieved corporation would issue a “cause for war”
outlining the reasons why its claim was stronger than its opponent’s. 
Normally, the
casus bellum
was answered and negotiations were entered to
resolve the dispute.  Other times, the
casus bellum
was rejected and
hostilities decided what could not be solved peacefully.

The
actual skirmishes were unlike anything in Heskan’s experience.  The Brevic
Republic essentially had but one enemy, and the wars fought were to preserve its
way of life.  Unlike the unrestricted warfare between the Republic and
Commonwealth, corporate warfare seemed highly stylized for reasons of both necessity
and tradition.

Under
the Independence Agreements signed by the Federation and the newly formed
corporate systems over a century ago, no corporate system could operate, lease
or hire a military ship greater than 10,000 tonnes.  When Heskan reflected that
Kite
, merely an escort destroyer, grossed 254,000 tonnes, he understood
why ships even as small as
Elathra
were highly valued in corporate
warfare.  Given the expense of building and operating even brig-sized ships,
most corporations, especially single-system ones, required assistance from
privateer groups when going to war.  A quick search for the composition of Seshafi’s
native defense fleet revealed only a handful of patrol craft and cutters along
with three corvettes, two snows and two brigs.  AmyraCorp also possessed two
capital ships, schooner-sized vessels designated as ships of the line, with a
third vessel under construction.  Capital ships were divided by size and armament
from the smallest fourth-rates massing roughly 6,000 tonnes to the largest first-rates
permissible by treaty at 10,000 tonnes.  Seshafi boasted both a fourth-rate and
a third-rate vessel.

The
necessity to abide by the Independence Agreements skewed corporate warfare toward
small-scale engagements.  The tradition that drew upon nearly a century of
corporate conflicts had refined the ritual of those engagements to something
less resembling open warfare and more to an intricate dance riddled with
rubrics and customs.  The culmination of these principles resulted in
engagements that yielded fewer casualties and less destruction while providing
decisive conflict resolution.  Each corporate region had their own bylaws and mores
on how such warfare was conducted, but all of Heskan’s readings distilled the
combat down to a single word: gentlemanly.

“Um,
Captain?” Selvaggio prodded.  “Hello?”

Heskan
shook himself.  “I’m sorry, what?”

“I
asked if close combat in the corporate battles was common.”

“That’s
difficult to answer,” Heskan said.  “Combatants do graze the five light-second
range quite often but it doesn’t end up as the massacre you’d think it would. 
From what I’ve read, combat is a lot more….”

“Orderly,
Captain?” Vernay offered.

“Yeah. 
That’s a good word.  I still really don’t quite understand it,” he confessed.

Vernay’s expression
grew concerned.  “Then I guess it’s a good thing that we have a whole thirteen
days before we reach Seshafi.”

*  *  *

Elathra
had a final standata sync before
her dive from Vica Pota.  After Heskan was sure the snow safely entered tunnel
space, he passed command to Vernay and retired to his cabin.  A blinking
notification was silently waiting on his desk’s computer screen.

Heskan
nearly tripped as he casually glanced at the tagline on the message while
walking by the screen on his way to the bathroom.  The message was from the
personal account of Komandor Podporucznik Isabella Lombardi.  Heart thundering,
he immediately sat down and read the single line waiting for him.  “I knew your
father would be proud.”  Heskan stared uncomprehendingly at the vague message
until he realized the dispatch held an attachment.  It was labeled, DCID
Clearance Only, Intel – Jacob G. Heskan, #BR3113-4327TT-3236AC-3134, Commander,
Brevic Navy, Deceased.

An hour later, after
having read every word of the Hollaran file, a tearful Heskan sat back with a
heartfelt smile and solemnly thought,
I’m just like my father after all.