For Honor We Stand

by Harvey G. Phillips

  “Thank you, Nurse Chapel,” said Max. Chapel reached for the topical disinfectant applicator to prep the injection site.

  “Nurse, that won’t be necessary,” said Kim. “I don’t need the injection. It was just an excuse to get me over here to see Captain Robichaux for an informal conference. Now, I’d be grateful if you’d excuse us, but remain in a non-monitored area so it won’t look as though you left us alone.” Chapel looked at Max to see if the request was to be honored. Max nodded his approval and Chapel left.

  “Sorry for all the cloak and dagger bullshit, Max. May I call you Max?” Max nodded. “Great. My friends call me Sue.” In response to Max’s questioning expression he added. “Long story. Involves a very old American Country-Western song. Anyway, my friends do call me Sue and I’d be grateful if you would, as well”

  “It would be my pleasure, Sue.” The two shook hands. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  Despite what was apparently a highly direct nature, Kim seemed to be having a hard time getting started. Apparently, he was uncomfortable with what he came here to say. So, he attacked the subject from the flank. “Thank you for the honors when I came aboard. Not every skipper has shown me that level of courtesy.”

  “As in when you went on board the pennant?”

  “You might say that,” said Kim.

  “Let me guess, you came aboard on the port side, through the servants’ entrance, and found yourself saluting the auxiliary shit pump?”

  “Exactly. We watched him do the same thing to you, although we couldn’t see what happened when you went aboard.”

  “And when you met with him, I suppose he treated you like deck grunge from one of the Enlisted Head Areas he just scraped off the sole of his shoe, right?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Kim agreed. “I couldn’t believe it. He and I are the same rank. Of course, he’s still my senior by virtue of time in grade and being appointed commander of the group, but that just means I have to follow his orders, not that he can treat me like an inferior. I wouldn’t even talk to a Mid the way he talked to me. It was beyond outrageous. Of course, I know why.”

  “I wish you’d clue me in.”

  “Jealousy. Pure, bitter jealousy. The man has been stuck on convoy duty almost his entire career, hasn’t been within ten AU of a Krag, and feels that he’s been unfairly robbed of his opportunity for glory, honor, and promotion. He resents officers like us with combat records who are on the promotion ladder. He knows that, unless something very improbable happens, he’ll die a Commander at the con of a Frigate or behind a desk, either at the grade he holds today or with a courtesy promotion to Captain on the eve of retirement so he can draw a higher pension and spend the rest of his life being introduced as ‘Captain Duflot’ at cocktail parties. Between you and me, having him con a Compaq-MAC class work station would be a favor to everyone because the man’s a menace in a CIC. What he doesn’t get is that it’s not lack of combat experience that is giving the brass the false sense that he can’t cut it in battle; it’s the absolute certainty on the part of the brass that he can’t cut it in battle that has prevented him from accumulating combat experience. I was in his CIC when he was working a contact. Took him and his people more than half an hour to get it localized and classified. Turns out it was a merchie with a malfunctioning squawk box. No big deal. Thing is, though, she was at intermediate range, no stealth, no tricks, following a lubber line course. Your people or mine would have had her localized and classified with a firing solution computed, have run the registration, and known the size of her skipper’s pecker to millimeter precision in six or seven minutes.”

  Well, on the Cumberland, maybe twelve or thirteen. Max nodded slowly. Based on what he had seen and on what he knew about human nature, it made sense. He understood it. He had even seen it before. But he had no clue what could be done about it. He met Kim’s eyes. Kim shook his head.

  “Nope. Knowing why doesn’t help, except to let you know that you, personally, didn’t do anything to earn all the crap the man is shoving in your direction.”

  “That is good to know, but getting shit on by Commander Duflot is the least of my worries.”

  “I know,” said Kim. “We’ve got some big ones. One you know about. One you don’t. The one you don’t know about is that Duflot doesn’t believe that the flag stops at the hull.”

  Max looked at Kim incredulously. “Where does the flag stop, then?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  This was an important revelation. While the formal authority of an officer in overall command of a group of ships (a “flag”) was as complete as the authority of a Captain over his own ship, tradition and custom imposed substantial limitations on that power. One of the most important of these was the long-standing practice that the flag’s actual authority over other skippers’ ships under his command extended only to their deployment and tactics but not to how they were administered. The flag would tell the Captains in more or less detail depending on the circumstances where to go, what formations to assume, when to attack or withdraw, what weapons to fire, and when to fire them. What custom and tradition said they must not do is to tell a Captain how to run his ship: setting procedures, decreeing the Uniform of the Day, imposing discipline on anyone but the Captain, managing personnel, and making maintenance and repair decisions.

  After giving Max a moment to process the news, Kim continued. “We caught him trying to pull a dump of all our internal surveillance data, logs, my personal logs, internal text messages, basically everything that you and I regard as sacrosanct.”

  “How did you catch him? You shouldn’t have been able to detect it since his command of the group gives him the necessary clearances. He’s just not supposed to use them absent a good reason.”

  “Normally, it would have gone undetected. I don’t suppose I’m revealing any dark secret if I tell you that some of us, I mean ships of the Longbow class, especially my ship and the Rapier, have been on some rather stimulating intel gathering missions. After all, until you guys came along in the Khyber class, we were the stealthiest thing going. We’ve got a blacker than black dedicated processor and gateway infrastructure that’s specifically designed to ‘hack, nutcrack, and sack,’ that is, worm our way into the Krag data networks, break their encryption protocols, and pull dumps on their data. One time when the Rapier tried it, the Krag network was set up to reverse hack any intruder and they almost lost the ship—had to pull the plug on the main computer core and come home in the auxiliary. So we’ve got all sorts of reverse firewalls that other ships don’t have, including a really robust set that locks out all non-public files from any external access of any kind, including access by an authorized user who has all the right passwords, without specific biometrically verified approval of a command-level officer physically located on my ship. As soon as he got into our system the firewalls shut him out of all the data and alerted us. Other than the public files he would have access to anyway, he got bupkis. We’ve been pretending that nothing happened and so has he, but I wanted you to know.”

  He reached into a pocket of his tunic and pulled out a data chip. “Here’s the firewall software. We know it will run on your hardware because it was written to run Khybers as well as Longbows. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s already on your system somewhere, hidden behind a password that the brass will give you if they ever decide you need it. By the way, that processor and gateway infrastructure we use to break into the Krag computers—you’ve got the hardware on board right now. Check your Spares Bay for a crate marked ‘ATAD HUNTING GEAR.’ Very clever. ‘ATAD’ is ‘DATA’ spelled backwards. You don’t need the hardware to keep Duflot out, but you’ll want to install the software right away. That way it will have time to propagate through all your gateways and distributed processor architecture. Then when we laserlink after the jump, he’ll be locked out of all the high level stuff. Duflot will just assume that, since Khyber is basically an updated Longbow with a few more sacrifices made in the name of s
tealth, you’ve got the same sort of software protections as we do. He won’t suspect that I gave this to you on the sly.”

  Installing software on the ship’s main computer without the explicit direction or approval of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Processing and Electronic Dominance violated half a dozen regulations. Further, installing a modification to the ship’s operating system without review by his own data processing department on the word of a Destroyer Captain he met less than an hour ago was both a great leap of faith and an enormous declaration of trust. Both men knew these things. Nevertheless, Max immediately took the chip and walked over to the mini work station in the exam room that the doctor typically used to input his exam notes. Kim continued, “I was worried you wouldn’t want to install it. That’s why I went to all these pains not to be recorded telling you this. I don’t mind what I say going into your system, but I do mind this asshole Duflot being able to find out about it just because he feels like it. He’d probably bring me up on charges.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Max pushed a button that caused a dust cover to slide out of place revealing a socket for the data chip. He inserted it and hit the READ button and then walked through all the steps necessary to convince the computer that he was a user authorized to make changes to the firewall and operating system. He then flagged the changes for the attention of his Ensign Bales, along with a short note explaining the reason. “OK, that’s done. We can say what we want without being eavesdropped on by Commander Duflot. What a sad and sorry state of affairs that is. Now, what do we do about our bigger problem? I’ve got a few ideas.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’ve got one or two of my own as well,” said Kim in a businesslike manner. “Max, Commander Duflot’s orders for the Group are very specific. It’s going to be impossible to do anything that will do any good without violating them, at least to some degree. What I have in mind certainly does.”

  “Same here. All other things being equal, I’d rather not have to go through a Court Martial. But, if that’s what it takes to keep Commander Duflot’s stupidity from getting the Envoy killed, not to mention ourselves and our men . . . we do what we have to do. If they Court Martial us for it, we can freeze our asses off on Europa or dig tunnels in asteroids with a clean conscience.”

  “I thought you’d see it that way. Between you and me, let’s see if we can cook up a few surprises for the rat faces. To that end, I’ve brought you a small present in my Launch.”

  ***

  “What is so bad about traveling in formation? It seems a perfectly reasonable expedient to me.”

  The doctor asked his question over dinner in the skipper’s Day Cabin. Max and Bram had gotten into the habit of having dinner together two or three times a week depending on demands of duty. Max had also gotten in the habit of notifying Chief Boudreaux in the galley when he would be dining with the doctor. The Chief tended to rise above his generally high level of culinary achievement in the preparation of those meals, knowing that they were not likely, as was sometimes the case with other dinners, to be allowed to get cold and be nibbled on half-heartedly later because the person for whom they were prepared was absorbed in untangling some shipboard administrative problem or in treating some crewman’s accidental injury.

  Tonight the men were dining on a dish that Doctor Sahin had never eaten previously, Southern Fried Chicken. Not that he hadn’t been offered it before, but he had an aversion to the concept of frying chicken. Chicken is fatty to start with, and the idea of cooking it by immersion in hot oil seemed a procedure guaranteed to produce a dish that was inedibly greasy. The actual dish proved to be utterly at variance from his expectations. He never imagined that so prosaic a victual as the humble chicken could be covered with such exquisite, light, crispy, flavorful crust that would--with just the right amount of resistance, like an eager but shy virgin on her wedding night--yield to admit the suitor to the sensual delights within. And what delights! The meat cheerfully enticed the tongue with an invitation of abundant natural juices before it melted in the mouth, filling it to near overflowing with subtle chicken flavor touched ever so lightly by a combination of spices carefully honed by generation after generation of discerning Southerners for nearly four hundred years. It was one of the best things he had ever tasted. Bram had marched steadily through a drumstick and a thigh before he even noticed the other dishes on the table: rice with rich cream gravy flavored with crispy pan leavings from the chicken, corn on the cob (frozen but still tasty), and a fruit salad made from a variety of canned and frozen fruits.

  Max was washing his dinner down with ship’s beer, a staple on warships. Beer has a limited shelf life and warships, often operating without resupply for many months, must either make their own or do without. The quality of the brew varied wildly from ship to ship, ranging from frothy nectar sung into being by luminous angels to foaming swill passed from the bladders of diabetic water buffalos.

  The Cumberland’s beer, like that of most ships, fell somewhere in the broad middle of that scale, perhaps a little better than most, and slowly improving in the opinion of the more discerning beer drinkers in the crew. The current brewer had started with no previous knowledge but was learning rapidly from experience and was even finding that he was blessed with a fair amount of aptitude in the art. Since the ship’s previous “brewmaster” had been transferred off the ship, and as the replacement draft had not supplied a man who had ever brewed so much as a single barrel, Chief Boudreaux had picked a culinary specialist out of the group of new men, pointed him in the direction of the ship’s small but capable brewery, and told him that everything he needed to know was in the database. When the man asked why he had been picked for this duty over the other three galley crewmen in that draft, Boudreaux had replied that there was something about his name that inspired confidence. And, so far, the men were reasonably satisfied with the work of Ordinary Spacer 2nd Class Bodo “Bud” Schlitz.

  “What’s so bad about traveling in formation?” Max pondered how to provide an answer to this complex question in terms that a man with little tactical training and even less of a tactical mind set could understand. “Sometimes, nothing at all. Fighter groups, large battle groups, logistics convoys, all adopt some kind of formation if, for no other reason, than to keep ships from blundering into each other’s drive trails and burning off their sensor arrays and broadcast antennas or even holes in their hull. That will ruin your whole day. But, when you’re doing the sort of thing we’re doing, the last thing you want is to be locked into a rigid formation. Remember what I told you aboard the Clover when that Rashidian fighter went after those two fighters the Emir sent to shoot us down?”

  “Certainly. You said, ‘The greatest tactical advantage known to man is for you to be aware of your enemy while he is not aware of you.’”

  “Absolutely. Now, the Khyber Class Destroyers are the stealthiest rated warships ever launched by the Union. And the Longbow Class ships aren’t any slouches in the stealth department, either. By sticking close to the Frigate and blasting away with active sensors, we are giving away a great part of our advantage. The enemy knows exactly where we are and exactly what we’re doing. If we’re stuck with the tactic of plowing through these systems from jump in to jump out, it would be far better for us to be in stealth mode, ‘running silent’ as the old submariners used to say, lurking in the shadows while Frigate used its active sensors. We could remain undetected while searching for enemies with passive sensors and by getting sensor returns off of the Frigate’s active sensor emissions. We would stalk the stalkers. The old Salt Water Navy Carrier Battle Groups used to do just that—the surface ships blasting away with their active sound detection gear while a quiet nuclear submarine or two prowled on the fringes of the group listening for other submarines.”

  “I think I begin to see your point,” the doctor said.

  “At the very least, the attackers wouldn’t know where we are and would have a harder time setting up
their attack run. It’s just plain stupid to have two highly stealthy platforms in your group and to use them in a manner that gives away all of the advantages that stealth conveys, turning ourselves into a huge target like a great thundering Battlecruiser but without the armor and firepower to back it up. It’s like being the Invisible Man and then walking around carrying a hand torch.” Max let out a heavy sigh of frustration and resignation. “Duflot has never skippered a stealthy platform or worked with ships of that kind, so he just doesn’t get the advantages that stealth gives you. As it is, our ability to detect a stalking Krag warship is going to be significantly reduced, and the capacity to defend will be even more seriously hampered since we’re tied to a static position in a formation that is, itself, moving in an entirely predictable manner. In warfare, one of the biggest mistakes you can ever make is to be predictable. It’s a really outstanding way to get yourself killed all the way around.”