by Peter Rhodan
Her bunk mate was Ensign Katelyn Bordon who was the Communications officer in A Watch. Katelyn was a thin but shapely blonde with blue eyes and Gizel thought she was easily the prettiest amongst the female officers, almost model quality. They rarely interacted being on different shifts and Gizel had found out little about her before they shipped out. Of the other people on A Watch, she had only met Lieutenant Mathers who was the Senior Environmental Technician, Gunnery Chief Parthman who oversaw the actual operation of the ship’s plasma guns, and his assistant Missile Tech Segg, who was second under the Chief and responsible for making sure the missiles worked.
Kimerian ships still carried missiles, unlike most other Navies who had dropped them as being of little use. Which was true to an extent. They were still quite effective against stationary targets like space stations where the defenses could be overwhelmed by a massed missile strike from a whole fleet. The rumor at the Academy was that there was a revolutionary new missile design coming, which was why Kimerian ships had kept their missile capability. Gizel knew from her brother that these rumors had been around for a long time with still no sign of the supposed new missiles. On the other hand, the new Admiral Class battlecruisers, the plans for which she had seen at the Academy, sported an increased number of missile launchers compared to the current Harod II class ships.
Most of the rest of A Watch were just faces she saw occasionally in passing. Of the other crew, she had met the ship’s Bosun who was a grizzled veteran by the name of Arbor Moore. This worthy sported more nautical type tattoos than anyone she had ever met before, he also had two skull and crossbones earrings and his nose was a mess, having been broken so many times the doctors were unable to repair it properly. The Bosun seemed to take particular delight in intimidating the younger members of the crew as far as Gizel could see, herself not excepted.
Accelerating and then decelerating at only sixty gravities meant that it took the best part of five days to cross the system to where the jump point was. There was another period of activity lasting a couple of hours as the ship was brought around to the right heading to join the commercial ship lanes and then aligned on the warp point. As had been planned, they reached the vicinity of the jump point with B Watch on the bridge, but Lieutenant Lars must have signaled her superiors because both the XO and the Captain arrived on the bridge within minutes of each other. The XO was the first to arrive on the command deck.
“Status?” Lieutenant Halfron asked.
He walked up to the command chair which Lars quickly vacated ready to hand control over to the XO, although in practice he made no move to occupy the seat himself, the reason for which become obvious to Gizel when the Captain arrived a few minutes later.
“Attention on deck,” Lars ordered as the Captain entered the command deck.
“At ease.” the Captain ordered and headed for the command chair.
Once settled in the chair he did a quick look around the monitors arrayed above and to his front and then raised an eyebrow at the XO.
Halfron glanced across at Lars. “Lieutenant?”
“We are in the lane and still decelerating sir.” Lars offered calmly.
“Time to Free, Navigation?” the Captain asked, directing the question to Ensign Kilman.
Free was the term used for the process of floating through the warp point with no discernable acceleration or deceleration of the ship.
“Twenty-nine minutes, ten seconds sir.” came the prompt reply.
“Nothing on the scope?” he next queried, turning his head to the Sensor station.
“Just regular commercial traffic in our vicinity, sir,” replied Ensign Griffen.
The Captain leaned back in the chair seemingly happy with the responses he received and after exchanging a nod with the XO, the two watched silently as the crew performed the, to them, routine operation. Gizel had done bridge training at the Academy but she had only been on four actual jumps on the bridge of the training Frigate, Hesperus, during her final year, and they’d had instructors standing at all the stations during the process each time. Simulated jumps didn’t count as experience, she had been told at the Academy.
“Prepare to cut engines.” The Captain ordered, about five minutes out from when they would reach the warp point. Standard Navy procedure was to begin coasting three minutes out, whereas freighters and other commercial traffic tended to start coasting when they were ten minutes or even more out from the jump point.
The rating on the Engineering console responded. “Engineering is prepared to cut engines, sir.”
“Navigation?” Deltron asked.
“We are steady in the lane, sir,” Kilman responded.
The Captain nodded, half to himself, Gizel decided.
“Engineering. Cut engines.”
The Engineering rating said something in his headset and listened to a reply.
“Engines are cut, sir. We are now in free fall, sir.”
“Roger that.” the Captain waited for a moment. “Engineering, is the Warp engine ready?”
“Aye aye, sir.” came the reply from the engineering rating.
Gizel thought it was unlikely the Warp engine would not be ready. It was a rotating gravity field generator that almost created a singularity in the ship’s center. Once a ship was under way it was run continually as the power drain required was actually very small after the initial start-up. A warp engine was not really a perpetual motion machine, but it came damn close, as it fed off the surrounding gravitation field of the system the ship was in once it was up and running.
Activating the Warp engine to make the actual warp jump was an almost automatic process, which simply consisted of inserting the active Warp engine into the middle area of the warp point. The warp eddy energy matrix would cause the Warp engine to spontaneously swap the ship’s position in space to a spot in the matching warp point, in the system the warp point linked to. The position of everything attached to the Warp engine, such as the ship Gizel was riding in, would automatically be moved into the new system with it.
All the warp eddy formations discovered so far linked to an identical point in some other system, apparently on a random selection basis, and no point linked to more than one other. The distribution pattern had been studied for millennia with no apparent pattern emerging, except that older stars tended to connect to other older stars. The average length of the jump was only around seven light-years but there were a couple of extremely rare warp points that spanned a distance of more than fifty light years each.
There had never been a recorded case of a warp point disappearing nor an unambiguous case of one appearing, although there had been unsubstantiated claims of a new warp point appearing in an empty system, but never in one that had been properly surveyed. Star maps showed that a bit under a quarter of all the star systems in any region were not linked to any known warp point, at least not to ones in the rather small area of the galaxy this isolated branch of mankind had explored.
The destroyer drifted down on the warp point from the opposite side to the system’s star, as was the standard approach method. In practice, it didn’t make any difference which side of the warp point one approached from, but you reappeared on the other side of the destination system’s warp point heading in the same direction as when you entered the warp point in the original system. Given the volume of space the warp point occupied, and the relative smallness of any human ship, the chances of a collision with another ship already on the other side were tiny. Even if they exited the warp point at the exact same time another ship was approaching the same point from the other side, the normal movement pattern of the ships meant there was no real chance of a collision at all.
There was a buzz from the sensor station and Ensign Griffen spoke.
“Ship just appeared off our port bow on the far side of the warp point sir. I’m reading a cargo vessel, perhaps a hundred thousand tons.”
“Course?” came the casual query from the Captain who did not seem in the least distressed.
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A hundred thousand-ton cargo ship was on the large side for casual traffic. Fixed route bulk cargo ships could run to millions of tons, but building something that size was only economic if there was regular large volume traffic for it to be used on. Most cargo ships ranged from thirty to sixty thousand tons in terms of cubic cargo capacity at one cubic meter per ton. The Kormorant was about forty thousand, in theory. And just over thirty thousand in practice. Not that she seemed to ever carry a full load.
“Waiting for her to begin accelerating sir. Ah, there they go, pretty slow on the uptake. She’s headed towards the third jump point, sir. She will not pass anywhere near us, sir.”
Sometimes, due to awkward planetary orbital positioning, ships had to skirt around a warp point they had just arrived through to be able to line up on their destination. Even this awkwardness was only really a problem in a system with huge traffic flows like Kimeria itself.
“Good. Keep an eye on her all the same, Ensign.” the Captain ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Griffen replied, and turning his head winked at Gizel before focusing on the task at hand.
A few minutes later Ensign Kilman piped up. “Entering the warp zone now, sir.”
“Roger that Ensign.” the Captain paused, and then must have keyed the shipboard comms channel.
“All crew stand by for Warp.”
“Warp engine is engaging now sir.” Announced the engineering rating.
The whole process was essentially automatic and the whole crew seemed relaxed and casual about the whole thing. The ship shuddered briefly and Gizel felt herself shiver, the old spacers said the feeling was like someone had walked over their grave, a saying that went back to Earth of legend apparently, and, just as quickly as the shuddering started, it stopped and the jump was done.
“Navigation?” the Captain asked.
Ensign Kilman was busy checking her console and the holographic map display in front of her.
“Early readings indicate we appear to be in the right system, sir. I am altering course to the next warp point.”
“Do that Ensign. Sensors?” Which was next on the mental checklist.
“Nothing nearby sir.” Ensign Griffen replied.
“Good.” The captain pressed a few buttons and his voice came over the ship’s comms again.
“All hands secure from Warp jump. Normal watch to be set.” He pressed a button and turned to Lieutenant Lars. “You have the Watch, Lieutenant.”
“Aye aye, sir. I have the watch.” Lieutenant Lars answered.
The Captain stood up out of the command chair and he and the XO left the bridge together. Lars sat in the vacated command chair, scanned the screens, and then turned to navigation.
“Time to next jump?”
There was a short delay before Ensign Kilman answered.
“Six hours, ten minutes, sir” came the reply.
After their Watch would be completed, Gizel calculated. Oh well. She had enjoyed her first operational warp jump even it had been over very quickly.
Her excitement at being in space on her first real Navy cruise quickly dissipated in the face of the routine humdrum of Navy life as the ship traversed the long dark spaces between jump points. In one system, the trip between jump points might only be a couple of hours, but in some, it was two or three days or in one case five days, as their first jump had been. Frequent drills kept them on their toes and the surprise drills disrupted their sleep.
After two weeks Gizel had been grudgingly accepted by most of her crewmates. The Marines were impressed with her willingness to spend her free shift time exercising and training her martial arts with them. They had been quite surprised by her actual martial capabilities, which were not too bad for a Space Sucker as they called the Navy part of the crew.
She still hardly ever saw her cabin mate, but she got to know the others on B Watch quite well despite their wariness. When it was seen that she not only acted like a regular officer but also expected to be treated like one they all gradually relaxed in her company. Even the Imperial Security fellows seemed to relax, apparently deeming the crew of the ship to be reasonably loyal and not harboring any would-be assassins!
The only member of the crew she had any real problems with was Petty Officer Bone, who had charge of the boat bay. As the designated boarding officer, boat drills naturally involved contact between her and Petty Officer Bone regularly. He was never directly disrespectful towards her but he took to querying her orders, respectfully of course, but it was annoying all the same. He was slow about carrying out the tasks she assigned, never quite slow enough to have a formal complaint lodged about though, and he generally seemed intent on making life as difficult for her as possible.
The fellow was a good two meters tall, dark-haired with a tattooed, swarthy complexion and an almost permanent sneer on his face. The way his men reacted to him, she could tell he was, well not a bully perhaps, but definitely someone who when he ordered one of his men to jump the only question they had for him would be how high? She got the impression he liked to big-note himself by chewing out his subordinates, quite loudly at times, but he was careful to never cross the line.
Two weeks after leaving port he made the mistake of making an openly disparaging comment about her presence aboard ship. There had been a maintenance drill carried out and several senior ratings, three petty officers, and the bosun were having a chinwag afterward near the main gangway hatch leading from the shuttle bay to the rest of the ship. As she walked past them, Bone made a snide comment about having a ‘Princess’ for a boarding officer rather than a real officer. The wording was such that he could claim he wasn’t being deliberately insulting; after all, she was a Princess, yet both the tone and the meaning were clear. Gizel had tried hard to not be a snotty Princess, to be just another of the young officers, and by and large, she had succeeded in the short time she had been aboard. But his attitude was getting to her.
She was willing to do any task asked of her without complaint, even the dirty ones, such as cleaning out a faulty plasma mounting where a lot of the wiring had basically melted together into a smelly, sticky mess. This alone had gone a long way to making the bulk of the crew, and most of her fellow officers forget who she was in real life, so to speak. But not Bone. Oh no. He had a chip on his shoulder for some reason and Gizel had had enough of it! She had thought about it frequently over the previous week as his attitude towards her irked her more and more. She had finally decided on a plan of action, well actually several plans of action, depending on the circumstances. Wasting no time Gizel decided she would initiate her plan when she next had the misfortune to be in his company. The Captain and the XO might have kittens, but she had to sort this Bone fellow out, one way or another.
She walked straight over to Bone and got right up into his surprised face. This action alone put him on the back foot because she generally kept her distance from him.
“Petty Officer Bone. My sources tell me that you have been slacking off on your physical exercise program. Now a long-term career sailor such as yourself should be well aware of the need to maintain one’s physical fitness levels on long cruises through space, especially those physical attributes likely to be needed if we engage in combat. I hear you’ve been particularly neglectful in keeping up your hand-to-hand combat training, which could be important if we were ever boarded. So, I think that is one area that will need to be remedied.”
She paused and gazed steadily up into his somewhat astonished face hovering some distance above hers.
“Tomorrow, after your shift. Marine’s gym. Plain clothes. You understand me, mister?”
With the words, plain clothes, Bone’s startled expression changed from one of surprise to something more reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat of story fame. He was big, tough, and mean enough that he rarely had any trouble outpointing any of the other Naval crew in the occasional hand-to-hand combat sessions, although he struggled against the Marines, according to Sergeant Dockson. In most circumstances, his brute
strength provided him with no advantage when faced with skilled and well-trained opponents. Her plain-clothes statement meant that rank held no privilege. From the expression on his face, she could tell he was mentally rubbing his hands in glee at being given the opportunity to beat up on the ‘Imperial Princess’ without any restraints. He had been carrying a grudge against her since she joined the ship, and for no reason that Gizel had ever been able to determine, but it was time she put him in his place.
It was a risky play, as he could very well beat her up legally, and quite badly too, without the threat of any comeback. On the other hand, she knew she was no slouch. Lothar had pointed out to her more than once that men outweighed women, out-muscled them, and were generally tougher all round. Gizel was fast, lean, and well trained, but she was relatively short and slight, especially compared to the bulky Bone. In a fight against a bigger male opponent, she had to avoid getting close and being grappled or getting on the receiving end of a heavy blow directed at a vulnerable part of her anatomy. A good whack to the jaw by a big male could very well stun her, or even knock her out. Therefore her best tactics were to dance then hit hard, dance and hit, dance and hit, and never get too close.
Two hours later First Lieutenant Halfron knocked on the Captain’s door, and upon the command “Enter.” He walked in, gave a quick salute, and plonked himself down in the chair near the desk the Captain was sitting behind. Captain Deltron raised an eyebrow at his Exec.
“We may have a problem,” Halfron stated.
Deltron leaned back in his chair and stared at him for a second.
“Oh?”
Halfron shrugged. “That bit of antagonism between Petty Officer Bone down in the boat bay and the Princess?”
Deltron nodded. It was something Halfron had already observed and he had reported the tension between the two to the Captain due to the potential problems that could evolve. Anything to do with the Princess was important.
“Well, it seems he said something loud enough that she could overhear, and she has ordered him to be in the Marine gym tomorrow for a hand-to-hand refresher session, which would be bad enough in itself, but she specified that the session should be in plain clothes!”
