For Honor We Stand

by Harvey G. Phillips

  Max had taken the almost unheard of step (prohibited by a least three distinct naval regulations and strongly discouraged by seven others) of using a superluminal drive for subluminal propulsion, dashing outside of the Krag firing solution far faster than otherwise possible, avoiding the time dilation effect that occurs when traveling near the speed of light in normal space, and getting “behind” the Krag warships, forcing them either to divide their attention or to both turn their more vulnerable sterns toward one of the two Union ships. “Now,” Max said, grinning, “time to turn and attack. Mister LeBlanc, make for the closest Krag ship. Ahead Flank.” As LeBlanc acknowledged and carried out the order, Max turned to Kasparov and threw him a questioning look.

  “Just getting an ID now, sir, Hotel One is posident as Krag Cruiser, Crayfish Class. Hotel Two . . . .” he was listening to his Back Room and looking at something on a display to which Goldman was pointing and saying over his headset, “yea, OK, same type, we’re go.” Then to Max, “Both contacts are Crayfish class. Bearing two-four-two mark one-six-seven for Hotel one and two-three-nine mark one-six-three for Hotel two. Hotel one is continuing to accelerate, altering course from heading toward our former position to heading for the Frigate. Hotel two is turning, likely to engage us, range to both targets three-point-two-seven million kills. Distance between Hotel one and Hotel two is opening up.” A few seconds. “OK, Hotel two is at constant bearing decreasing range. Right for us, sir.”

  “That’s Crawfish. I keep telling those idiots at Intel. They ought to listen to a Cajun on this stuff, or at least a Southerner. Right, LeBlanc?”

  “Mais, oui, mon capitain,” said Leblanc.

  “Right, Bartoli?”

  “Damn straight, sir.” Bartoli hit the Alabama extra hard, making sure it came out “day umm straight.”

  “It’s unanimous. Bartoli, what’s the Frigate doing?” The question was both a request for information and a reminder to Bartoli that it was his responsibility to see that the main tactical display in CIC presented a usable tactical picture of the situation. When the Destroyer had run about three million kilometers from the Cruisers, the other three ships in the engagement had vanished off the edge of the display. Bartoli needed to change the scale so that all four ships showed up. He did so.

  “Sir, the Frigate has gone to Flank. He’s presenting his starboard beam to Hotel One, while angling away, trying to stay outside missile range. Why hasn’t he . . . OK, there he goes, he’s finally got his pulse cannon into action. He’s got his starboard batteries plus his ventral and dorsal turrets laying down barrage fire. There, he got off a salvo of missiles, too . . . at least two got through, two hits with Talons. I can’t tell at this range what kind of damage he did.” Duflot was implementing standard fleet doctrine for a convoy frigate under attack with no pigeon to protect: crack on as much speed as you can to complicate interception and missile targeting, maneuver for a better tactical position, present your beam to the enemy so you can use your amidships pulse cannon plus your ventral and dorsal turrets to lay down a barrage of pulse cannon fire to reduce the effectiveness of any missile attack, and try to do some damage of your own with missile fire. Not terribly imaginative, but a very long way from the worst thing he could do. He might be a tactically obtuse, condescending asshole, but it did look as though Duflot had some grit in his gizzard.

  “Weapons, abbreviated missile firing procedure. Make missiles in tubes one and two ready for firing in all respects, target on Hotel two, set warheads for maximum yield, open missile doors.”

  “Sir,” Bartoli said, “Frigate just fired an egg scrambler.” No FTL comms or compression drive use in the vicinity for a while, then. Would have been nice to have been warned.

  “Saves us the trouble, then. Weapons, pull the scrambler from tube three. Reload with a Talon.” Max glanced at a timer on his console, a timer that had been counting up from when the Broadsword had started maneuvering. It was at 00:01:27.

  “Aye, sir, pulling egg scrambler from tube three, reloading with Talon. Sir, tubes one and two are loaded with Talons.” Levy carried out the order with his usual hyperactive efficiency. “I’m sure you know, sir, two Talons aren’t going to scratch that Crawfish if he’s ready for them.”

  “I know that, Mister Levy. Max glanced at the timer again. It was now at 00:01:35. “Our two Talons aren’t going to be the only guests at the party.”

  As the timer hit 00:01:40, Mister Chin sang out, “Skipper, receiving encrypted text on one of the JOINTOPS channels. The encrypt is MUDBATH. The decrypt is coming up now. I’m putting it on the Commandcoms channel.”

  Max hit the bright orange hard key over one of the main displays on his console that punched up the Command Officer’s Incoming Communications or “Commandcoms” data channel. The screen displayed “GREETINGS DRY CRUSTY HUMANS STOP THIS IS BRAKMOR-ENT 198 COMMANDING THE 16TH ELEMENT 332ND FIGHTER GROUP PFELUNGIAN SPACE DEFENSE FORCE REPORTING IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR REQUEST STOP IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO BATTLE WITH THE KRAG AND MAKE OF THEM A MEAL FOR THE LESSER FISH WE WOULD EAGERLY JOIN YOU STOP QUERY MAY WE JOIN THE FUN STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  “Mister Chin, please send, “We welcome your assistance and believe there is enough fun for everyone. Form up on me and await instructions.”

  DeCosta looked puzzled. “That doesn’t sound like the Pfelung communications I’ve read. Why are they here, anyway?”

  “That’s because, XO, what you’ve seen are communications from the enormous, lumbering adults, who are halfway between a grown alligator and a hippo in size and about as nimble as an elephant with arthritis. They don’t fly fighters. The fighters are flown by their Pfelung in the adolescent stage of their life cycle. They’re a lot like dolphins with the personality to match. Very fast, very nimble, genetically designed to defend the baby Pfelung in the water, braver than a lion on stims, with brains specifically evolved for rapid life and death combat in three dimensions. Reflexes that make lightning look slow. Best fighter pilots in the galaxy, bar none. This is one of the groups I was training. I signaled them back before we went on EMCON and told them to meet us in this system, wait for us to jump in, and track us at three and a half million kills on this bearing. And, here they are. Now that we’ve got that nailed down, XO, don’t you have something to do?”

  Max jerked his head in the direction of the Fighter Coordination Console. The console that Petty Officer Carlson was firing up. The one that the XO was supposed to run when a Khyber class or other SWACS ship too small to have a separate Air Coordination Officer (generally known as a “Bird Herder”) was working with fighters. “Yes, sir. I’m on it.” DeCosta stepped over to the console. Carlson had already pulled up the protocols for JOINTOPS with the Pfelung and had plugged in the transponder frequencies and encrypts, the comm procedures, all the crypto information, and the standard Pfelung fighter maneuvers. By the time DeCosta sat down at the station, everything was ready for him. He turned to the Petty Officer, “Thanks, Carlson. Good job.” Carlson sat down at his station nearby, and the two got to work.

  DeCosta put on his headset and looked at the displays that, with the aid of the fighter’s transponders, showed him their exact location and what they were doing. The fighters were in two groups of seven, each in a formation that was essentially a three-dimensional version of the classic “finger four” formation, the three additional ships stacked in the same arrangement as the other flankers but perpendicular to them, the seven ships making the shape of a cross when viewed from the front or behind. Both groups were approaching the Cumberland rapidly from aft, both on the port side.

  With human-pilots, DeCosta would simply speak to the leader. Things were a little more complicated when the language barrier was as high as it was between Humans and the Pfelung, whose spoken language sounded like (and was, in fact, derived from) bubbles being blown in soupy mud. The system was set up so that DeCosta could speak orders into the headset which the computer would translate into Pfelungian text and transmit to the fighter group leader. The
leader, in turn, could speak to his system, have his speech translated by his computer into Standard text, and transmitted to DeCosta’s console. The system, combined with the advanced sensor capabilities with which the Destroyer was equipped, enabled Cumberland to control the Pfelungian fighters in combat, vectoring them to targets and coordinating their tactics.

  DeCosta had even put in a few sessions on the console directing simulated fighters, both Union and Pfelung, in simulated battles. So, he knew the protocol which, first of all, required that he verify communication between his console and the group leader. He pulled up the screen that provided the automatically-generated ID protocols for this engagement. He was Starfish. The first element was Halibut, the second was Tuna. Max was Starfish Actual. Who thinks up this stuff? Each element had a leader, to be called Halibut One or Tuna One. Halibut One was the overall commander. “Halibut One, this is Starfish, comm test.”

  A second and a half later, text appeared on the FTRCOM MAIN display: “STARFISH THIS IS HALIBUT ONE STOP COMMUNICATION RECEIVED SIGNAL STRENGTH AND CLARITY WITHIN NORMS STOP QUERY HOW LONG UNTIL WE GET TO START SHOOTING AT THE KRAG STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  “Skipper, comms with the Pfelung fighters verified. They seem a little impatient, sir.”

  “They’re like that, XO. Intellectually brilliant, fantastic sense of humor, very fun-loving. Occasionally a little immature, though, emotionally. Nothing like the stodgy, lugubrious, but studiously mature adults. Tell them to form up on this vessel, one group finbone star formation Port, the other finbone star formation Starboard.”

  “Finbone star, sir?”

  “That’s what they call that crossed finger four that they use. The angles are like the bones in their fins, just like our fingers, and ‘star’ is because the drives of the two crossed lines look like a bright star when viewed from a distance. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Roger, sir.” DeCosta confirmed the order and passed it on to the Pfelung who promptly took up station to the left and right of the Destroyer which, itself, was rapidly accelerating toward one of the Cruisers which, in turn, was rapidly accelerating toward the Destroyer and the fighters. They would be within missile range of each other in seconds.

  DeCosta’s console beeped. New message from the Pfelung: “STARFISH THIS IS HALIBUT ONE STOP QUERY ARE WE THERE YET STOP MESSAGE ENDS.” DeCosta relayed the message to Max.

  “I told you they were a bit immature,” Max said. “Tell them Wing Attack Plan Romeo. Execute on two red.”

  “That sounds an awful lot like ‘Wing Attack Plan R,’ sir.”

  “Not an accident, XO.”

  DeCosta confirmed and passed on the order. “The Pfelung acknowledge the order, skipper.”

  “Very well.” Max watched the range tick down. This had better work, because a Khyber class Destroyer wasn’t even a good first course for a Crayfish class Cruiser. More of an appetizer, like a nice shrimp cocktail with lots of horseradish in the cocktail sauce. A few more seconds. Right. About. Now. “Mister Chin, blink two red on the port and starboard signal lamps, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir. Two red. Port and Starboard.”

  Before Chin could confirm that the signal had been sent, DeCosta saw the two Pfelung formations spring faster than any Union fighter could, their fusion-based sublight drives augmented by a gravity polarizing technology that was the first step on the long, steep, difficult road to a pure reactionless drive. As they neared the Krag Cruiser, it appeared to DeCosta that the Pfelung adolescents had abandoned their formation in favor of clumping together in some sort of random, swirling, chaotic aggregation. On closer examination, however, he saw that the fighters’ movements were not random at all, but resembled those of a school of fish. While the individual craft were always in motion relative to one another and fighters kept changing places creating a visual impression of constant movement and absence of structure, at any given moment in time the formation was the same “finbone star” formation the fighters originally adopted. But, with all the shifts, and the continual rotation of the formation itself, its structure was not apparent. It would certainly be difficult for an enemy to select one fighter, engage it, and target it with weapons.

  Both groups approached the Cruiser, from roughly amidships, continuing to accelerate. As soon as they got near the range at which the Krag point defense systems would engage them, each formation adopted an evasive pattern that again resembled the movements of a fast-moving school of fish, deviating from its base course by darting unexpectedly in one direction and then another at seemingly random intervals, each individual fighter flying perfectly in formation with the rest as they made their abrupt jigs and jags, too fast for any weapons battery to follow. The combination of the swirling movements within the group and the evasive darting of the formations as a whole seemed to be doing an excellent job of confusing or staying ahead of the Cruiser’s defensive weapons, as the pulse cannon blasts all seemed to be missing. At the last moment, both formations dispersed and the fighters veered away from the Krag ship, fanning out in all directions more or less at right angles to their original bearing, like a stream of water spreading out when it strikes the pavement, until they surrounded the Cruiser. They then swerved violently to point their noses at the flank of the vessel, perfectly aligned for an attack that would launch their missiles at the ship’s “waistline” to go for a classic simultaneous circumferential detonation. The computer that controlled the Krag defensive systems recognized the maneuver and threw itself into reorienting pulse cannons, transferring deflector power, and focusing the ship’s point defensive systems to respond to such an attack. Following twisting, elusive, corkscrewing, erratic paths, the Pfelung fighters bored in toward the Cruiser’s midline in their uniquely evasive, fish-like way.

  Just as the Krag systems fully committed to defending against this tactic, the Pfelung fighters, as though controlled by a single mind, veered again, catching the Krag systems flat-footed. Still tracing elusive, impossible to follow, weaving, dodging, corkscrewing paths, they all made for one target, an unimportant looking bulbous protrusion at the nose of the Cruiser. But, notwithstanding all of the other wild variations in their course, all of the Pfelung fighters maintained almost exactly the same range from the Cruiser—between 4.885 and 5.033 kilometers, a narrow seam between the ship’s area defense perimeter defended by pulse cannon and the point defense perimeter defended by rail guns, short range particle beams, and interceptor missiles. In theory, there was no gap, but extensive testing of captured Krag ships showed that, in practice, the Krag computers’ efforts to avoid the duplication of defending any particular zone of space with more than one system created a thin layer where, under the computational challenges posed by actual combat, neither defense layer would energetically engage the attacking fighters.

  As the Pfelung fighters were mounting their attack, the Cumberland had continued to accelerate, her main sublight drive firewalled. Knowing that the Cruiser was busy dealing with fourteen dazzlingly evasive fighters, Max ordered that the Destroyer eschew any evasive maneuvers in favor of getting as close to the Cruiser as possible as fast as possible. Ordinarily, the Destroyer would be firing its pulse cannons, helping to confuse the targeting scanners for the Cruiser’s pulse cannons. As it was, Krag weapons were attempting to engage the Pfelung fighters skimming between the Cruiser’s primary defense zones. It would only be a matter of a few more seconds, though, before some smart Krag figured out that the Destroyer was a major threat and manually redirected the fire of at least one of the pulse cannon batteries from futile efforts to keep up with the fighters to firing on the far less elusive destroyer.

  “Threat receiver just started going wild, skipper,” Bartoli declared. “Looks like pulse cannon and missile targeting scanners trying to get a lock.” So much for a few seconds.

  “Countermeasures?” Max probed turning his head in the direction of that console.

  That officer was already furiously working with his Back Room to defeat the Krag scanners and buy
a little more time for his shipmates. Sauvé said, “I can give you ten seconds, maybe twelve, then they’ll get burn through and have us like a bug on a pin.”

  “Carry on, then, that’s all I’m going to need. Weapons, set missiles in tubes one and two for simultaneous detonation, nostril attack.”

  “Simultaneous detonation, nostril profile, aye.”

  Meanwhile, having so far evaded the Krag defense systems, all fourteen Pfelung fighters fired two missiles each. Their minutely staggered firing intervals were chosen, in conjunction with the slightly differing ranges of the fighters, to result in all twenty-eight missiles arriving and detonating within microseconds of each other.