For Honor We Stand

by Harvey G. Phillips

  Max turned to the Cumberland’s Marine Detachment Commander, Major Gustav Albrecht Kraft who, despite the seriousness of the situation, seemed as always to bring an enthusiasm bordering on mirth to the performance of his duties. “My Marines and I are always ready to do whatever is necessary for the good of the ship. Think nothing of it,” he said to the young XO. Then, to Max, “It was a simple matter, really. Some of the tender’s crew members on board needed some, shall we say, ‘encouragement’ from my Marines to find their way off the ship.”

  “What kind of encouragement?” Max was wary. He could just see the Formal Complaint from the Tender Captain about assaults on his crewmen, trouble which he most decidedly did not need. As it was, he was trying not to think about the Admiral’s reaction to what was essentially a violation of a direct, written order by pulling his ship away from the tender in the middle of a refit. The timing, however, was lucky. When DeCosta received the order Max sent from the microfreighter as soon as his sensors spotted the first group of escort fighters, the repair crews had already finished their work on the reactor cooling system and jump drive. Their remaining work (interior bulkhead and fixture repair as well as a fair amount of instrumentation work) could wait.

  Kraft smiled and waved his left hand in a dismissive motion. “Not that we weren’t prepared to frog march them or even carry them off the ship, but it never came to that. Most left immediately upon a polite request from one of my Marines.” Of course, those Marines had their weapons with them. Always. Even the most polite request from one of Kraft’s heavily armed, highly trained killing machines would feel like an order from a Fleet Admiral. “If anyone was particularly reluctant, I just sent Zamora and Ulmer to have a conversation with them, and we never had to lay a finger on anyone. Of course, they did just happen to be carrying battle axes at the time.”

  Max almost laughed out loud. The Marines on naval vessels tended to run big, and Zamora and Ulmer were big even for Marines. They had to be 210 centimeters tall, easily massed 125 kilos each, had necks the diameter of tree trunks, and looked like grizzly bears with crew cuts. No, come to think of it, Max didn’t think that there were many warship repair and refit technicians who would want to argue with Zamora and Ulmer. Their customary disarming grins and boisterous laughs would have been put away in favor of their Marine War Faces, which would have given pause to Chesty Puller himself.

  “The only other problem was that, since our departure was contrary to the Admiral’s orders, the Tender Captain refused to withdraw his accommodation tubes and equipment transfer ramps. We couldn’t get underway without causing severe damage to both ships. Lieutenant Brown helped me with that,” said DeCosta.

  “Werner, what did you do?” Max wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.

  “It’s not what you think, Captain. We didn’t hack their systems, shut down their computers, override the ramp controls, or anything of the sort that might constitute ‘damage or interference with the operation of a naval vessel in a war zone.’ They shoot people for that, I hear. Instead, I just had Tomkins make up a few small packages with tiny antennas protruding from them and then attach them to the tubes and ramps.”

  “Packages? Like packages of Plasti-Blast with antennas for the remote detonators?” Max’s voice carried more than a hint of alarm.

  “What an astonishing coincidence, Captain! Now that you mention it, the packages did—by pure coincidence mind you—bear a striking resemblance to that very thing. As it is, they were nothing of the kind.” Brown practically oozed innocence.

  “What, exactly, were they?”

  “Ham sandwiches.”

  “Ham sandwiches?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brown answered in a matter of fact tone. “Ham sandwiches. On white bread. With spicy mustard and kosher pickle slices. Chief Boudreaux in the galley made them up just the way you like them. We wrapped each sandwich in brown, opaque flexawrap, attached an antenna with ordinance tape, and then stuck them with adhesive putty right where they would go if they had been explosives and if we were going to blow the tubes and ramps. And, of course, when he was attaching them, Tomkins conspicuously and obviously handled the packages with great delicacy. After all, we didn’t want to damage the Captain’s lunch, did we? Then, we gave them all a once-over with a hand scanner, just to verify that the ham was fresh, you understand. And, you never know, the more I think about it, the more I believe that those scans will come in very handy if we ever have need—for whatever reason—to prove that those packages contained ham sandwiches instead of something else. In any event, somehow, the presence of these innocuous offerings of delicious food changed the Tender Captain’s mind. When he agreed to retract his tubes and ramps, we removed the sandwiches, closed the airlocks, powered up the main sublight, and we were on our way. In case you’re wondering, sir, the sandwiches are in your Day Cabin cooler. You’ll want to eat them in the next day or so, or the bread will get soggy.”

  “I’ll be sure they don’t go to waste, Lieutenant.” Max shook his head appreciatively. “Thank you, gentlemen. For your ingenuity, for your loyalty . . . well done. Very well done.”

  This conversation was taking place in the Cumberland’s CIC, Max sitting at the CO’s station and DeCosta sitting at the XO’s station, with Kraft and Brown standing on the command island at their sides. The doctor was sitting in his accustomed seat at the Commodore’s Station. Clouseau, rather than lying beside him as usual, was curled up on top of the projector for the 3D Tactical Display, which was just the right size for a cat of his rather considerable size and was always warm. In a seat near Chin at Comms, sometimes used by a second Comms Officer, sat the man whom Max and the Doctor still thought of as Mr. Wortham-Biggs, who had talked his way aboard the Clover on its redlined journey to return Max and the doctor to their ship in time, Max hoped, to prevent the impending destruction of the bulk of the Rashidian fleet at its moorings around Rashid V B.

  “Approaching rendezvous point in thirty seconds. Preparing to go subluminal,” announced Chief LeBlanc from Maneuvering. The Cumberland had been making the cross-system journey from Rashid IV to the vicinity of Rashid V on compression drive at 10 c. The two planets at the time happened to be at nearly opposite points in their orbits, a nearly 4 AU trip taking just over three minutes. ‘Disengaging compression drive in three, two, one, now.” At the “now,” Spacer Fleishman moved the compression drive controller from the .02 setting to the NULL setting. “Ship is subluminal and coasting, sir,” announced LeBlanc.

  “Very well,” said Max. “Lay us alongside the Rashidian carrier, 50 kills off her port beam. Speed and course at your discretion.”

  After the Chief acknowledged the order, Max turned to DeCosta. “So, XO, we have a few hours until twenty-five Krag Dervish class Destroyers arrive. To combat them, we have one Khyber class Union Destroyer, that Rashidian Carrier over there and its three fighter squadrons, plus a mixed bag of superannuated Rashidian Destroyers, Frigates, and Corvettes. Can we stop them?”

  DeCosta didn’t need even a second to provide the answer. “No, sir. Not with conventional tactics, anyway. The Dervish is the Krag’s latest generation of Destroyer. Very tough. They’ll just brush off those Rashidian Destroyers, Frigates, and Corvettes like gnats. They’ve got those dinky little 35 gigawatt Bofors-Plasma Dynamics Corporation pulse cannons. Good units, but the Krag’s new deflectors just laugh at them. Actually, they’re not even worth a laugh. More like a snicker. And, because of their antiquated fire control systems, those older Rashidian ships are limited to firing an outdated old missile that’s based on our Wolfhound. It’s just not fast enough and smart enough to get through the Krag countermeasure and point defense. Their new missile—I forget the designation, it’s just a string of letters and numbers, would do all right—not great but all right. But those old ships can’t fire it.”

  “The old missile, does it have the same two and a half megaton warhead as the Wolfhound?”

  “No, skipper. They don’t have to pay for as many warheads as w
e do so they pack a little bit more lithium deuteride into the warhead and get a bigger yield. They get three-point-two-seven megatons out of theirs.”

  “That’s not a Wolfhound,” said Max. “That’s a Mastiff. Extra big warhead. I think that might be useful. OK, what about the Rashidian fighters—how are they going to stand up against those Destroyers?”

  DeCosta had already worked out the answer. “They’ll whittle the rat-faces down. But, they won’t get them all. No way. Dervish is both very fast and very hard to kill. What they’re going to do is pack those little fu . . . um . . . devils into a really tight formation and just punch their way through the fighters. Instead of the fighters having a speed advantage, which is the norm, these Destroyers are actually faster than the Rashidian fighters. So, the fighters won’t be able to stay with the targets and make successive attacks, which is how they’re most effective. Instead, they get a single attack run and have to fire all their missiles at once. Result is at least a thirty-five percent decrease in their effectiveness, and probably closer to fifty. So, when the fighters are done, applying standard analytical techniques and assuming that they use conventional tactics, it’s looking like half, maybe even two thirds, of the Krag force will survive. That’s more than enough to accomplish their objective despite anything we do before, during, or after. If only we had a few of those moored ships or a fraction of their firepower, that could turn the balance, but those ships won’t even be able to do anything but creep around on maneuvering thrusters until ten hours after the Krag have already destroyed them. And that makes them totally useless.”

  “Totally useless? Maybe not totally.”

  Max’s “crafty grin” made an appearance, quickly noticed by most of the CIC crew, some of whom gently elbowed nearby watch-standers. “Mad Max is about to do it again,” said Petty Officer Ardoin in an undertone to Spacer Sanders.

  “Mad Max?” said Sanders just as quietly.

  “Yep. Mad Max. That’s what I call him. As good a name as any. Man like that’s got to have a nickname,” Ardoin said emphatically. “I’m telling you, he’s a genuine, certified, tactical genius. He’s going to be famous, and he’s got to have a nickname.”

  “Well, you’ll have to do better than that one, mate. I can’t see that name ever catching on as a nickname for a Destroyer Captain or, for that matter, anywhere else, either.”

  “It’ll catch on, you’ll see,” said Ardoin.

  “You’re right about one thing,” agreed Sanders. “He’s got to have a nickname, but you ain’t found it yet.”

  “It’s better than anything I’ve heard from the likes of you.” The two men let the subject drop, though they were no means done with the topic.

  “Minister,” said Max to Wortham-Biggs, “who’s in command of the Rashidian forces in this engagement?”

  “That would be Admiral Jassir. On the Battleship Saif, one of the moored ships. A very fine officer. One of his most exceptional qualities is that he is wise enough to know that he does not know everything.”

  “An uncommon trait in Admirals, that’s for sure. Chin, do you have all the comm protocols from Equilateral ready to go?”

  “Affirmative, skipper. Frequencies, encrypts, data transfer handshaking, everything.”

  “Outstanding. Please signal Admiral Jassir. Give the Admiral my most respectful compliments and inform him that I urgently request the privilege of voice communications with him at the earliest opportunity.”

  Chin acknowledged the order, entered a few commands, and said a few sentences quietly into his headset. Not thirty seconds later, Chin announced, “Sir, Vice Admiral Jassir is standing by on your primary voice channel.”

  “I’ll take it here.” Chin hit a button and flipped a switch. The red “AUDIO P/U LIVE” light on his Max’s console came on. Showtime. “This is Lieutenant Commander Maxime Robichaux, Union Space Navy, Commanding the Destroyer Cumberland. Do I have the honor of addressing Vice Admiral Jassir?”

  “This is Admiral Jassir. It is a pleasure to speak with you, Captain Robichaux.

  “And a pleasure to speak with you, as well, Admiral. You are the first flag officer of your Navy I have ever had the honor of addressing.”

  “I am sure that we are little different from the flag officer’s of your Navy. I must say that I have been eager to make your acquaintance after having so enjoyed the tale of your arrival at the Ministry of Trade. Thanks to you, that facility’s grounds keepers need not be concerned with their job security for some time. In any event, how you managed the Ambassador’s transport will make an interesting tale to add to our Navy’s rich body of lore.” Long silence. “Provided there is any Navy after today.”

  “Then, for the sake of my own status as a legendary figure, we’ll just have to make sure that there is.”

  “Indeed.” He didn’t sound convinced. He sighed. “Captain, we have projected the likely outcomes of a conventionally fought encounter. They are not favorable. We can expect to impose, at most, losses of sixty-five percent upon the enemy force.”

  “Our projections are similar. If anything, they are more pessimistic.”

  “We have some unconventional tactics in mind that may even the odds somewhat, but our projections show that they are not enough. Given the likely outcome, any suggestions you might have, even if they are the kind of unorthodox methods which we hear you tend to employ, would be well-received.”

  “Unorthodox suggestions are the only kind I make, Admiral. But first, I need a bit of information. May I ask a few questions?”

  “Proceed.”

  “Your ship and the other moored ships . . . they are on internal power, not on power supplied from the mooring facility, aren’t they?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What’s the power source?”

  “The same as on your vessels, standard auxiliary nuclear power units. They all have G.E.-Westinghouse compact, pressurized, water cooled fission reactors, built on license by our naval reactor fabrication plant on Rashid V A. I believe that every human power uses the old Rickover-type fission units to provide auxiliary power when the fusion reactors are offline.”

  “Will the Rickovers run inertial guidance, attitude control, maneuvering thrusters, and navigation scanners?”

  “Certainly. We like to be able to move the ships around the yard, get them in and out of repair hangars, and so on without having to start the main reactor. But, they can creep about at twenty or thirty meters a second at most.”

  “That’s all we’ll need. Can they fire missiles?”

  “No. As on your ships, the missiles are targeted using the main sensor array, which requires more power than the fission power plant can provide. Further, the missile tubes’ acceleration coils are not configured to receive power from the Rickover.”

  “What about fire control?

  “Fire control runs off of the ship’s main power grid which is tied to the Rickover, so one can operate the console, but it is useless without the sensor array to generate the data to compute a firing solution.”

  “Unless it receives the data from some other source,” Max said to himself as much as to the Admiral. “OK. Can power be routed to the launch coils from the main grid? Just enough to get the missiles out of their tubes?”

  “What good would that do? They would never get past the Krag point defense batteries without the acceleration from the coils.”

  “Don’t worry about that for now. Sir. Can the power be rerouted?”

  “Let me ask one of my engineers.” There was a brief discussion in the background. “Affirmative. I am informed that it is a simple matter of operating a manual power shunt.”

  “One more question. Your fleet’s in a Clarke orbit. Are they over the deuterium separation plant?”

  “As a matter of fact, they are.”

  “Then you might want to warn the people in the plant to get to their radiation shelters. In about four and a half hours, things are going to get a little hot.”

  ***

&
nbsp; It had been a busy four hours, but everything that could be done had been done and the pieces were in place. As usual, Max made sure that everyone on board had the opportunity to eat before going into combat. This included the Captain himself, who ate two of the ham sandwiches in his cooler, sandwiches which were already enshrined in the Cumberland’s developing oral tradition as the “exploding” ham sandwiches. The doctor had left CIC to be certain that the Casualty Station was ready to receive battle casualties, if any. As a result, he had been absent when the plan for the coming battle had been formulated. Upon his return to the Commodore’s Station, he found himself surrounded by people who refused to enlighten him as to what was in store.

  “Tactical data link with all vessels is stable. Refresh rate is six cycles per second, and every ship in the provisional task force has confirmed that it is receiving and compiling data from every other ship.” Chin announced.

  Max looked around the CIC. No surprises. Every man at his station, doing his job. Maybe a bit nervously, but doing it nonetheless. And, maybe not with the confident professionalism and calm proficiency that Max had become used to on the Emeka Moro and some of the other taut ships on which he had served, but head and shoulders above the brow-beaten, drug-addicted, down-hearted group of misfits who had greeted him when his feet had first touched the Cumberland’s deck two months ago almost to the day. Admiral Hornmeyer was right when he said that these men have come a long way. And, if they could just live through the next hour or two, Max was resolved to take them even further.

  “All right, people,” Max announced to the CIC at large, “we’re the relief pitcher. We spend most of the game in the dugout but, come the bottom of the seventh, the manager puts us in and it’s up to us to save the game.” Baseball wasn’t popular on every world in the Union, but it was well known enough and had contributed so many expressions to the language that his people would get the analogy. “Until then, let’s stay alert and pay attention to what all the players are doing. We just might learn something.”