Chain of Command

by Frank Chadwick

  This was an order, and so there would be a permanent record of their exchange. It would be part of any subsequent investigation, which made Bonaventure’s comment about the souls of admirals particularly interesting. Knowing he spoke on the record, Sam pretended to think for a moment before answering.

  “I’ll need your authorization to access the data files and comm logs on both Oaxaca and Vimy Ridge.

  You have it.

  “I’ll do my best, sir. When do you want a report?”

  An hour ago. Ops is sending over our whole log and data index now and I’ll make sure Rocky does the same. Expedite. Hey, good speech.

  The “investigation” took most of the rest of the morning. He pulled in Chief Adalina Gambara, acting head of the communication division, to help with sorting through the comm logs and interpreting the user tags on them. After three hours of painstaking and mind-dulling work, they had found exactly nothing. Sam had known all along they would not find anything, because they were looking in the wrong place. He did not say that to Gambara, however.

  “Well, I’m stumped, sir,” she said. “As near as I can tell, none of the transmitters on either boat sent a communication of any sort at the time the message packet showed up on the first comsat’s log, nor was either data file copied at any time within days of the leak.”

  Sam looked at the smart surface of his desk and nodded.

  “I don’t see any other possible conclusion from this data, Chief. So how do you think it got sent? A private transmitter?”

  “No way, sir! Both those boats had their full-spectrum passives on. They’d have detected any radiation passing through the hull, going in or out. Maybe we should be looking someplace else.”

  “Orders were only distributed to division commanders and above and those are the only two division leaders left here. No, I think we just bundle this up and submit it to the Commodore along with a report of our findings. You want to draft that? I’ll sign it. At least we cleared him and Captain Rockaway.”

  Gambara looked doubtful, but Sam knew she had other work to do and so she nodded.

  “Aye, aye, sir. I’ll bang out a one-page summary report and send it for your signature.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” he said and triggered the door for her. Once she left he pushed away from his desk and floated to the cabinet where he kept the bottle of bourbon Del Huhn had given him about a week earlier, although it now seemed like a month, maybe longer. The bottle was almost empty, about enough for one more drink. It wasn’t quite lunch time yet but he siphoned the bourbon into a drinking bulb and headed back to his desk.

  There were only two division lead boats surviving in the system, but there was also the wreck of Champion Hill, which had very briefly served as the lead boat of DesDiv Four after the First Battle of K’tok, when Juanita Rivera had been advanced in rank and command. The order was posted to her as a matter of course, since she had been added to the division commander distribution list. Champion Hill was now partially powered up, enough for life-support and control, and that included the communication and data retrieval systems.

  Maybe when this was all over, someone else would be assigned to figure out where the leak came from, but only if the task group managed to hold out here. If they lost, everyone would have far bigger problems to deal with, and the evidence would probably be swept away in the defeat. If they looked hard enough, maybe they would find the record of a brief private (and unrecorded) audio conversation between Captain Bitka of Puebla and Captain Huhn of Champion Hill. And then maybe they would figure it out.

  Maybe. Probably not.

  Sam raised his drink bulb in a toast to his former captain and then drank the last of Del Huhn’s bourbon.

  Every afternoon Larry Goldjune met with several engineers, including Rose Hennessey, to try to solve the riddle of the uBakai jump scrambler. After lunch Sam decided to sit in on the meeting and found Goldjune and the engineers stumped, as they had been from the start.

  “We’ve gone over it and over it,” Goldjune said. “There’s nothing there.”

  “So go over it again for me,” Sam said. “Start with the ship profiles but let’s talk about the drive manufacturers, too. I’ve got a feeling that might be important, but I can’t put my finger on why.”

  Goldjune looked at Sam, his eyes full of defeat and regret. Sam knew he wanted to solve this last problem, get at least one thing right, but he couldn’t. Goldjune shrugged and started.

  “We lost six starships: two US cruisers, one Indian cruiser, one British transport, one Indian auxiliary, one French auxiliary. Eight starships survived the attack: six US, one Indian, one Nigerian. Surviving ship types were two cruisers, one command vessel, two transports, three auxiliaries. There’s no pattern by nationality or ship type.

  “Of the six starships that blew up, four had AZ Kagataan drives. But the British transport had AZ Techtragaan drives and Bully Big Dick had AZ Simki-Traak drives.”

  “Nope.”

  All the members of the working group turned to Moe Rice, drifting past with a clear-wrapped pita sandwich in one hand.

  “We’ve got the tech readouts right here,” Goldjune snapped. “As usual, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Rice grabbed a bracket with his free hand, spun slowly around, and pushed himself back toward the table, his face dark. Goldjune started to unclip his tether but before Sam could say anything, Rice drawled.

  “Sit down, bus driver.”

  Goldjune bristled but Sam put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Settle down, both of you. Moe, what makes you think Bully didn’t have Simki-Traak drives?”

  Without taking his eyes off of Goldjune’s he spoke.

  “‘Cause I was on her when she went in for her final refit before we shipped out. You were too, Cap’n. We both transferred over to Puebla right after.”

  Sam nodded. They had.

  “No offense, Moe, but you’re a supply officer,” Rose Hennessey said. “How would you know a Simki-Traak drive from any other?”

  Moe finally broke eye contact with Goldjune and looked at Hennessey, his expression much less murderous. “Wouldn’t know the difference if one bit me, but I can read a work order. All the work orders passed through my office, and I remember they didn’t have enough Simki-Traak jump actuators at the orbital spacedock to give Bully a full set and backups. They did some quick control system modifications and fitted her with a drive set they had enough modules on hand for.”

  Sam felt a strange prickling sensation in his shoulders and up the back of his neck. He took a quick breath and let it out.

  “AZ Kagataaan?” he said, already knowing the answer.

  “Yup.”

  Sam’s mind raced during the short glide through the central transit tube to his cabin: too much information, too soon, with too many implications to think through, and no time.

  The common link was manufacturer—that much he was almost certain of. But that meant something else entirely. It meant Sam knew how the ECM missiles could remotely access a powered-down jump drive: a manufacturer’s cheat code, just like his company used to open locked-up systems. But that meant something else. At least one jump drive manufacturer actually had cheat codes. If they all did, every jump drive in the Cottohazz was potentially a remotely triggered bomb.

  It also meant that either one of the largest Varoki trading houses in the Cottohazz had decided to pick sides in a war, or its second-most-tightly-guarded secret—its cheat codes—had been compromised. Sam wasn’t sure which was worse.

  But, most tantalizing of all, if AZ Kagataan’s second-most-tightly-guarded secret had been compromised, perhaps its most-tightly-guarded one could be as well: how the jump drive worked.

  He sealed the door on his cabin and pinged the duty commtech.

  Signaler Lincoln, sir.

  “Lincoln, I need a tight beam holocon to the task force smart boss.”

  Very good, sir. Turn-around on that is going to run about three minutes.
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  Sam put his helmet on, opened the channel, and waited. It took almost five minutes before Cassandra appeared. She must have gone to one of Pensacola’s holosuites because he could tell from the way the neck ring of her shipsuit rested on her shoulders that she was not helmeted.

  “Bitka. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Has something happened?”

  Her holoimage froze as a still picture, as it did when long time delays were involved.

  “You said to comm you if I came up with anything useful for fleet intelligence. Well, we figured out something important about how the jump drive scrambler works, or we’re about ninety-five percent certain we did.

  “We were stumped when the drives were from three different manufacturers, but it appears our common ship database is not up to date. I have found out that USS Theodore Roosevelt refitted with AZ Kagataan drives shortly before the deployment, which means every ship we lost had Kagataan drives with the single possible exception of HMS Furious. If our data base was wrong once, it can be wrong a second time. I thought you might be in a better position to track down a last-minute refit on a British vessel than I am.”

  Sam stopped and licked his lips, thinking through his next sentence carefully.

  “Another thing. I know how it works. They’re using the cheat code from the manufacturer, have to be. It’s the only way into a powered-down system. I’ve got a feeling that’s more of a political hot potato than I can handle, but it’s probably right down your alley.”

  Sam triggered the image freeze and waited for the reply. The notion of Kagataan being in on this was too big for Sam to feel comfortable keeping to himself, but now that it was out there, what came next?. There’d be congressional hearings and God only knew what else, and that would just be the start. Cassandra was smart, though. If anyone could manage the information, she could.

  Two minutes went by, then three, then four. After eleven minutes Atwater Jones’s image unfroze, her face glowing with excitement and triumph.

  “Brilliant! Bloody Brilliant, Bitka! Oh, I normally abhor alliteration. Ha! Well, I’ll make an exception just this once. Your suspicion about HMS Furious was correct. Fortunately, none of our remaining cruisers have Kagataan drives, so we can start acting offensively again. I believe this has altered the operational battlescape, perhaps decisively. Oh, well done!

  “And yes, I see what you mean about the cheat codes. It’s the only way to break in, but I shudder to think what this will mean. You will be happy to know that I just sent off a jump courier missile with this intelligence in it, so they will know at fleet headquarters on Bronstein’s World within hours.”

  She looked at his image and did not move, but he realized she had not frozen the image. She was instead simply regarding him. Knowing she couldn’t see him, he smiled at her. Interestingly, she smiled at the same time and then froze the image. He laughed.

  Sam unfroze his image and began transmitting, still smiling. “Understood and much appreciated. Puebla out.”

  He froze it again and waited for her sign-off. This time it came sooner, after no more than three minutes.

  “Do take care of yourself Bitka, and if you have any other flashes of insight, I hope you can again—”

  Sam heard the gong of general quarters in the background at her end and saw Cassandra react to it, eyes open wide in surprise.

  “I don’t . . . ” she started, and then looked back at the holo-image of Sam, her face again composed. She picked up her helmet and made ready to clip it on. “We appear to be under attack. Best of luck to us as well, I suppose. And whatever happens, Bitka, remember: Not one step back.

  “Pensacola out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  10 January 2134

  (the next day) (twentieth day in K’tok orbit)

  “Any news on the task force, sir?”

  His commlink remained silent for a moment.

  Total loss, Bonaventure answered. All ID transponders dark.

  “Pensacola too?” Sam asked after swallowing hard.

  Pensacola too. Looks like the admiral bought it. That puts him in a pretty select group: Callahan, Scott, and now Kayumati, only three US admirals ever killed in ship-to-ship action. There may be some crew survivors, either in escape capsules or an airtight compartment in some of the wrecks, but they won’t last long without a ship there to rescue them. Freeze to death within a day or two.

  There were a lot of people in the main body of the task force, over a thousand in the crews of all those ships. Sam had known a fair number on Hornet, including its skipper, Captain Albright, although none of them well. But when he thought about Cassandra Atwater-Jones—whom he had never actually met face-to-face—he felt a hollow feeling in his chest so sudden and so sharp he took a breath and checked his bio-monitor to make sure he was not having a heart attack. He wasn’t, not in the medical sense.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Enemy losses?”

  uBakai hit them with eight cruisers and it looks like the task force took four down with them. Four jumped away about an hour ago. There are four cold hulks and a debris cloud still on their original course. They must have had more of those missile-packers with them. We’re still going through what log recordings we got before everything went dark, but the task force got hit with mucho missiles.

  “Four enemy cruisers left? I think we can handle four, sir, so they’ll have to wait for reinforcements before they come here. Who’s in charge, with the admiral dead?”

  Some Nigerian rear admiral lower half—they call him a brigadier general—name of Irekanmi, flying his flag in NNS Aradu. Next in line after him is British, Captain Ranjha in HMS Exeter. Irekanmi texted half an hour ago, said he’ll get his cruisers here as soon as he can. They’re outbound, about halfway between here and where the task force was destroyed. Between you and me, they’re not likely to get here within much less than a week.

  “I’m suspicious of navies run by generals,” Sam said.

  Me too, but that’s just between us, amigo.

  Bonaventure broke the connection. Sam raised his helmet visor and turned to his left.

  “Chief Gambara, get me all-boat.”

  “You’re live, sir,” she answered.

  “All hands, this is the Captain. I just spoke with the commodore and I’ve got some bad news. The main body of the task force was hit by eight uBakai cruisers and every vessel was lost, including our sister-boat Tacambaro. Our folks took four cruisers down with them, but we still lost a lot of shipmates today.

  “One thing’s for sure: they’ll be coming here next and looking for a fight. We’re going to give ‘em one. Carry on.”

  “Have you studied the damage assessment from our battle here?” the admiral asked.

  Nuvaash gestured with the data pad in his hand.

  “Yes, Admiral. More friendly losses than we anticipated—two of our cruisers destroyed and two with crippled jump drives—but still an overwhelming victory. Every enemy ship destroyed and we still have our flagship, and three other cruisers fully operational. I am uncertain that is sufficient force to crush the enemy at K’tok, but our object was decapitation, and in that we have succeeded.”

  The admiral nodded.

  “Now we strike and finish this business. I have received word by jump courier that the Forward Striking Force, in transit back from Earth, will join us in two days.

  “We will jump with the remaining ships to the rendezvous point and finish our repairs while we await them. The troop transports will accompany us on this next attack, which will be the final one.

  “Meanwhile, the two cruisers with disabled jump drives will continue on their current course while shrouded. The debris cloud of our two destroyed cruisers will provide them with cover and they will appear to be derelicts from the battle. One additional day of preparation, once the Forward Striking Force joins us, will allow the two damaged cruisers to close on K’tok undetected. We will catch the enemy in a pincer and destroy them.

&nbs
p; “In three days this phase of the campaign will be over, and the Humans will take care of the rest.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  11 January 2134

  (the next day) (twenty-first day in K’tok orbit)

  “Okay, sir, what are we looking at?” Sam asked.

  “That’s the debris cloud of the Varoki task force,” Commodore Bonaventure said, “the wreckage left after their four operational cruisers jumped away.”

  Sam looked across at the other holoconference participant—Captain Sadie Rockaway, commanding USS Vimy Ridge as well as the battered DesDiv Five. This was really a conference between her and the commodore; Sam was here as the N-2 to provide staff support as necessary, although he also had the feeling Bonaventure had started thinking of Sam as his tactical advisor.

  Sam knew Rockaway in the sense that he knew who she was and that she had a reputation as a solid boat skipper and division commander. Bonaventure was right; he’d have remembered her if he’d seen her before. She wasn’t pretty so much as striking, or maybe impressive was the right word—an intelligent face now frowning in intense concentration, her brown hair pulled back severely completing the effect—definitely no nonsense. Her nickname was “Rocky,” and Sam didn’t think it was meant ironically.

  The three sat in a shallow U-shape, the commodore between them. In the middle floated the virtual image of a circular flat sensor display, greatly enlarged to make it easier to study.

  “What are those glowing dots?” Rockaway asked. Sam looked back at the screen display. There were four faintly glowing dots in the midst of the tangle of wreckage.

  “Radiators,” the commodore answered. “Somebody deciding to trickle charge their power rings, probably getting ready for a fight in a couple days. Those derelicts are still coasting on their original course, the one they were on when they hit the task force. Since it was almost an exactly reciprocal to the task force’s course, they’ll end up passing very close to K’tok.”