Ship of Destiny

by Frank Chadwick

  That had been the pattern of the simulations: first the long ship killed the Bay, and then it killed whatever missiles they’d thrown at it. They’d tried firing a missile ahead of them and detonating its thermonuclear warhead to jam the Guardian sensors. That worked for a while, but they only had so many warheads and even if they expended most of them staying alive themselves, nothing killed the long ship. When they ran out of warheads to cloak their position, the long ship still killed them.

  “May I ask a layman’s question, Captain Bitka?” the Varoki diplomat said.

  Shit, Sam thought, here it comes. There’d been so much anti-Varoki sentiment on the ship since finding out about the jump drive, Sam wanted Haykuz to know he and his officers didn’t share that sentiment. That didn’t mean he wanted to be pals, though, and it sure didn’t mean he wanted the guy wasting their time. He’d never struck Sam as being very bright. Well, he’d let Haykuz attend, so nothing to do now but live with it.

  “Very well, go ahead.”

  “Why do you assume a closing velocity of eighteen kilometers per second?”

  “It represents the velocity resulting from one hour of acceleration at one half of a gee. A half gee is all Cam Ranh Bay can manage at full thrust, and I wouldn’t want to count on more than an hour warning before an engagement.”

  “I see,” Haykuz answered. “But you would be able to increase that closing rate if you had ample warning of an engagement?”

  “That’s a very big if,” Sam said. “Besides, that acceleration would take ten per cent of our total reaction mass, and then another ten percent to decelerate afterwards. That’s a very big investment. Not sure how much more we can afford.”

  Haykuz shifted in his chair and flushed, his ears starting to quiver back against his skull, but he spoke again. “Yes, as you say. These are probably very stupid questions and I apologize if I am wasting everyone’s time with them, but what if you were to initiate the engagement? Could you not then choose a higher closing velocity?”

  But he didn’t want to pick a fight, Sam thought. He wanted to avoid one as long as he could, right up until the Guardians forced it on him. But the lower acceleration of those long ships meant there were only three ways they could force a fight: park themselves right where the Bay had to go next, or hem them in between several converging ships, or do an in-system jump to come out right in front of them. Of those, the only one Sam was really afraid of was an in-system jump. The other two he could see well in advance and then he could pick the time of the engagement, and the closing velocity, couldn’t he?

  But what if the Guardians did an in-system jump? Well, that would depend on how conservative they were. If they kept a good initial distance between them he could still get up a good head of speed, and with those long-range meson guns why wouldn’t they try to keep their distance?

  In the last war, he’d learned to start the engagement by closing as fast as he could. It made sense given the weapon arrays in that fight. They were completely different here, but son of a bitch if it didn’t still make sense!

  “Huh,” he said. “That’s actually worth looking at. Okay, let’s run the problem assuming we pick the time of engagement and we get our closing rate up as high as we can. Our limitation is HRM: how much hydrogen reaction mass can we burn and still decelerate to make orbital entry at Destie-Seven-Echo?”

  “Maybe . . . ” Bohannon said with a pause and glance at Sam as if for permission to continue. He nodded. “If we do pick the time of the engagement, we can decouple the main hull from the habitat wheel. That gives us more acceleration, or we use less reaction mass for the same acceleration.”

  “And leave the passengers and Marines behind?” Brook demanded. “You’ll have a riot on your hands.”

  “They’ll be as safe in the wheel as we will in the main hull, safer really,” Alexander said. “The captain better do some more town hall meetings to explain it, but it’s not a stupid idea. It’s part of our core design.”

  “And what does all that get us?” Brook asked. “They still kill the missile.”

  “It gets us shorter transit time through their kill zone,” Bohannon shot back.

  “They still kill the missile. It only takes one shot,” Brook said.

  “If we cut the transit time down to something like ten minutes,” Alexander said, “we may be able to confuse their firing solution that long. We can’t do it for twenty-nine minutes, but maybe ten or fifteen?”

  “How?” Brook demanded.

  “Well, we can’t do much more with jamming,” Alexander admitted, “but maybe decoys. We’re using the on-board decoys built into the Mark Fives so far, which are just radar reflectors. The missile itself has almost no thermal signature because it comes out of the coil gun cold. Those radar reflectors . . . what if we fabricate a swarm of them?”

  “Pack them with the Mark Five and you’ll slow it down,” Brook said. “More mass to push out the tube.”

  “Yeah, but we could fabricate a separate missile that was nothing but decoys. Fire it first and then the real missile with its own decoys.”

  “Then they just kill all the decoys, too,” Brook said. “Or half of them. If they kill half the decoys, they’re starting to get a pretty good chance of taking out the missile by luck. What stops them from just killing everything they see?”

  The table fell silent. Acho went back to her data pad. Alexander leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, and studied the ceiling. Bohannon shifted uncomfortably in her chair, while Haykuz sat absolutely motionless at the end of the table.

  “Cycle time,” Ma answered after a few seconds, speaking for the first time. “Our prisoner says there’s a cool-down and reset cycle between discharges of somewhere between ten seconds and half a minute, she’s not sure beyond that.”

  “Ten seconds gives them sixty shots in ten minutes,” Brooks said, “and that’s assuming we can actually get the closing rate down that low.”

  “Hell,” Alexander answered, “we can give them a lot more targets than that. And in with all those decoys, we don’t count on just one missile getting the job done. Drop three or four on them. If we add one of the old Mark Fours from our original missile packs, it’ll run hot and they may think that’s the main threat.”

  Sam could sense the mood beginning to change until Brook spoke again.

  “But will we still be alive to enjoy the victory?” he asked. “Remember, in almost every drill the long ship kills us, and does it long before the missile can get there. We can make decoys of the missile because it doesn’t have much of a thermal signature, but we can’t make dummies of the Bay that will fool anyone.”

  The table again fell silent.

  “Excuse me if this is an obvious point,” Acho finally said, looking up from her data pad, “but how fast can they rotate that ship?”

  “What difference does that make?” Ma snapped. Sam opened his mouth to rein him in but Alexander beat him to it.

  “Back off, Lieutenant Ma. She’s got as much right to ask a question as anyone. We wouldn’t have any chance at all without these Mark Fives she found in cargo. You and I were both assholes about it and look how it’s turned out. So why don’t you discharge that ballast and just answer her question?”

  Discharge that ballast? The only person on the ship Sam could remember using that expression was Running-Deer. She’d probably stood up for Acho, tried to hammer some sense into Ma and Alexander. It apparently had an effect on one of them.

  Ma looked around, saw a couple of hard faces, and colored slightly.

  “Right. Sorry, LOG. I don’t know how fast they can turn it. I’m just curious how that bears on the problem. I might be able to get with our prisoner and run some numbers.”

  “Well,” Acho said, “those ships are a kilometer long and they can only shoot straight ahead, right? Even with magnetic beam benders at the end of the pipe, how much deflection can they get without screwing up the meson stream?”

  “Their arc of fire has got to be les
s than one degree,” Alexander said. “That’s about all a beam bender can give them. For more than that they’d have to rotate the ship.”

  “Yes,” Acho said. “See, I’ve been running some numbers, and given its nominal range of 43,000 kilometers a one-degree arc of fire is only 750 kilometers wide at its extreme range. The closer we get, the smaller that arc becomes.”

  And then they were all engaged in the debate, all but Sam and Haykuz, and for the first time in the last five days Sam thought they might have a chance against one of the long ships, maybe even a couple of them. He looked over at Haykuz and the Varoki met his eyes. Sam nodded his thanks. Haykuz cocked his head to the side, the Varoki equivalent of a shrug.

  PART III:

  In the Highest Tradition of the

  United States Navy

  Cassandra

  Four months later, on board USS Puebla, in the K’tok System

  15 August 2134 (eight days after docking with the drive module)

  All morning Cassandra had been unable to get through to Dr. Wu, the physicist on K’tok heading up the analysis of the jump drive module. “He’s in conference,” was all she could get from the communication ratings at K’tok Base. Then when she tried to meet with Captain Goldjune on USS Puebla, she found him to be incommunicado as well. When she found Moe Rice in Puebla’s tiny wardroom, she clipped her tether beside his at the only table in the room.

  “Something smells fishy here, Mister Rice,” she said

  “Probably this here crab cake,” he said pointing at his half-eaten lunch with his fork. “Tastes like three-day-old channel catfish.”

  “I meant I find it suspicious that both Dr. Wu on K’tok and Captain Goldjune here on Puebla are unavailable to meet or communicate with me.”

  “Count your blessings when it comes to this boat’s skipper.”

  Cassandra looked around to make sure no one else was in the wardroom and she moved closer to Moe.

  “Mister Rice,” she said softly, “there is something I haven’t told you. When Rear Admiral Goldjune gave me this assignment on K’tok, his remarks suggested he knew more than he was willing to say about this jump drive we were to examine, but that we might find a more deeply embedded operating code which was—and I use his word here—alien.”

  Rice wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed the food tray to the side.

  “All that stuff Wu was talking about, those proteins and whatnot, kinda lines up with that, don’t it?” he said.

  “Yes. But what I wonder is how Rear Admiral Goldjune knew, or at least suspected, that it might.”

  “Huh,” he said and looked away, brow furrowed in thought.

  Cassandra’s commlink vibrated and she saw the ID tag for Captain Goldjune.

  “At last,” she said to Rice. “Perhaps now we’ll see what’s going on.” She squinted open the channel. “Hello, Captain. Good of you to return my comm.”

  Oh, I assure you, Commander, it is entirely my pleasure. You’ll be interested to know I’ve just been speaking with Admiral Goldjune. He has asked me to tell you that the Incident Seventeen working group is disbanded, effective immediately. You and your officers will return to their previous duty, which means Lieutenant Rice can move back to his old cabin and start work here next watch. He was on detached duty to you, but he is still my supply officer. Transportation will be arranged for you and Heidegger.

  “Disbanded? What do you mean? What about our final report? Who is to continue the examination of the wreckage?”

  It means, Commander, that you are finished snooping around and wasting time. I think those were his exact words. He has told your working group personnel on K’tok to complete a final report, with all of your findings, in two days, and submit it to him. That report, I understand, will find that the only credible explanation for Cam Ranh Bay’s loss is hostile covert action by the uBakai Star Navy. As to the examination, Puebla will remain on station here with the wreckage pending further orders. I don’t believe you’re cleared to know what happens after that.

  Had all of this been an elaborate ruse by the admiral to get her off-planet? No, that made no sense. The jump drive was here! They were actually looking at it, recording data files full of information for analysis later, potentially world-changing information. This made no sense.

  “That does not sound at all like Rear Admiral Goldjune,” she said.

  Oh, I’m sorry, did I lead you to believe I had spoken with my father, the rear admiral? No, I just finished talking with my uncle, Admiral Cedric Goldjune, the Outworld Coalition chief of naval operations. He arrived at K’tok twelve hours ago, on an unannounced fact-finding tour. I don’t think he liked some of the facts he found.

  And then the nasty little shit laughed.

  An hour later, Cassandra heard the tone for her doorway, turned the wall transparent, and saw Moe Rice floating in the corridor. She triggered the hatch.

  “Leftenant Rice, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “Way you stormed off . . . as a good friend of mine once said, you look like I could use a drink. It happens I got a bottle right here.” Rice held it up for her inspection.

  Cassandra made a face. “Not some of that awful bourbon, I hope. Please come in.”

  Rice coasted through the hatch into the tiny cabin Cassandra had to herself, nearly filling it up in the process. Rice and Heidegger shared one about this size. She understood U.S. destroyers were small, and their accommodations Spartan, but this bordered on the surreal. Rice passed the bottle to her and rummaged in her sanitary cubicle for zero-gee drink bulbs.

  “Rye?” she said, examining the label. “It looks like bourbon to me.”

  “Bourbon is at least 51% distilled from corn,” Rice said. “That’s why it’s so sweet. Rye is at least 51% distilled from rye. Trust me, they ain’t the same. Pass that bottle back and I’ll fill these bulbs.” He did so and then left the bottle to float in the air between them.

  She shuddered after her first swallow. “Oh! It’s dreadful!”

  “You got shitty manners,” he said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

  She sighed. “Almost everyone seems to, sooner or later. Tell me, Mister Rice, how is it no one on this ship—I beg your pardon, boat—has murdered that sodding little wanker Larry Goldjune?”

  Rice laughed and clipped his tether to a stanchion on her wall. “You know how much paperwork that would generate?”

  “That is what airlocks are for,” she replied.

  He sipped from his own bulb and smiled in appreciation, his eyes half-closed. Then he looked directly at her. “So, not that it’s any of my business, but what did that low-down no-good skunk Sam Bitka do to screw things up between you two?”

  She added more whiskey to her drink bulb before answering.

  “He was . . . very quick to fall in love.”

  “Well, that can scare some folks, I guess. What’d you do about it?”

  “We had a good physical relationship. I went along. I thought his ardor might wane.”

  Rice laughed again.

  “Ma’am, I don’t know how things work in England, but where I come from if you want to cool a man’s ardor, good sex and plenty of it ain’t the best way to get the job done.”

  Cassandra considered that. Was he right? Had she really wanted Bitka’s feelings to cool? Or had she just told herself that? No, she knew what she had been about.

  “In my experience,” she said, “a good many men are more interested in the chase than its dénouement. Once they’ve achieved their elusive goal, they rapidly lose interest and begin preparing for the next chase.” She took a drink of whiskey. “Not our Bitka, though, damn him. And . . . there is the matter of my daughter, Penny. She’s seven years old—just turned while we were out here.”

  “That the little girl in the hologram on your desk? Looks like you some, with all them freckles. Good age, seven. Tough things to miss, those birthdays.”

  “War is hell,” she said, lifting her drink bulb in a mock toast.
/>   “Yup. You with Bitka by any chance on her birthday?”

  “Ah. Very clever, Mister Rice. Perhaps you should be in military intelligence.” She took another drink.

  “Better go easy on that unless you’re used to boozin’ in zero gee. Goes right to your head.”

  “That’s rather the point, isn’t it?” she said, but her mind was elsewhere. How long, she wondered, before he probed deeper into her feelings about Bitka? And what would she say then?

  She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, deeply, feeling the effects of the whiskey, her insides tingling with fire, her skin numb, as if she were reduced to her inner essence, her shell forgotten. No, not forgotten. Although she could not feel it, she knew every centimeter of her skin, knew it from the memory of his intimate lingering caresses, tracing the line of her neck, the curve of her breasts. Sometime when she was alone, not just alone in the world, but alone inside, she touched herself in mimic of those caresses, imagining the hands were his, having him back just for a short while.

  She breathed in sharply and opened her eyes. Moe was looking away discreetly, always the gentleman, perhaps the best man she knew, but relentless in his pursuit of the truth, including from her.

  “Do you know what I could use tonight, Mister Rice? I could use a damned good shagging.”

  He grinned, a good smile, but shook his head. “Sorry, Ma’am, but my heart belongs to Miss Marjorie Morgenstern of Del Rio, Texas. A bottle and a sympathetic ear are all I can offer.”

  “What happens at K’tok stays at K’tok,” she said lightly.

  He settled back and his smile faded. “With respect, Ma’am, that’s bullshit and you know it. What happens here we’ll carry around with us forever. And I’ll tell you something else, I’m no prude but it’s a might insulting to get propositioned when I know all you really want is to change the goddamned subject. Now why don’t you stop stallin’ and tell me what Bitka did when he found out you had a little girl?”