The Stones of Silence_Cochrane's Company_Book One

by Peter Grant

  “It’s hard to argue with that, sir, even if corvettes are more expensive.”

  “Yes. Now, I’ve got a critical job for you before you transfer to the Mycenae system. We need crews for the fast freighter at Kang Industries, for the next two corvettes, for my Neue Helvetica courier ship, and as relief crews for the patrol craft and depot ship in Mycenae. We still don’t have enough personnel for all those commitments. I want you to ask our existing crews to recommend us to their spacer friends. Offer cash bonuses for everyone they refer whom we hire. Make it clear we want quality over quantity. If they bring us people who don’t work out, they won’t get a bonus. Tell them it’ll be paid after six months’ satisfactory service by the new hires, or something like that.”

  “Got it, sir. What about officers?”

  “Keep looking for good ones. I’ve sent to Lancaster to hire two or three former Commonwealth Fleet Warrant and Limited Duty officers, people who can help us select and train candidates for those slots from within our ranks. If we’re lucky, they’ll start work within the next few months. I’m going to push those avenues of promotion as hard as I can. There are plenty of spacers in the New Orkney Cluster who couldn’t get ahead because they weren’t First Families, or they’d pissed off someone in the First Families. If we can offer them a path upward and outward, at least some of them will take it – particularly now that we can show them a modern corvette, not just an outdated, obsolete patrol craft.”

  “Yes, sir. By the way, I think you’ll be amazed by Amanita’s level of automation. I’ve been out on a couple of her training runs. Her artificial intelligence systems take a big load off her operators. I don’t know how well they’ll work in combat, but for routine operations, they do better than I’d ever have believed possible. That also means she can cope with fewer officers, because the AI substitutes for them to some extent.”

  “I’ll look forward to seeing that for myself soon.”

  The voyage to the Mycenae system aboard HCS Amanita – the brand-new initials standing for ‘Hawkwood Corporation Ship’, as Lieutenant-Commander Darroch proudly informed them – was as interesting as Cousins had promised. The automation of the ship’s systems had progressed far beyond anything Cochrane had experienced during his previous fleet service.

  “It certainly means we’ll have an easier time finding crews for our ships,” he said to Hui during an evening conversation with Darroch. “She needs a lot fewer spacers than the older corvettes I’m used to. Trouble is, that imposes limits on what she can do. We’ve already discussed the damage control issue; then, there are boarding parties and prize crews. She can spare at most half a dozen spacers to board a ship to inspect it, or take its crew into custody. That may not be enough if its crew resists, but a corvette doesn’t have spare berths to carry extra personnel for that role. As for prize crews, to get a spaceship from where she was captured to our base, that’s out of the question. A corvette like this can’t spare that many of her crew for an extended period.”

  Darroch observed, “That’s true, sir, but then, it’s also true of our patrol craft.”

  “You’re right. We’re probably going to have to operate mixed task forces to patrol a system, if we want to cover it properly. Four corvettes and one or two frigates should be able to cope with most threats, provided we can deploy system surveillance satellites – and that’s going to be another big expense, I can see that already! The frigates have enough accommodation for boarding parties and prize crews. We’ve designed it into them. A corvette can stop a ship, then call a frigate to put a prize crew aboard if necessary.”

  “That ought to work,” Hui agreed. “It may take a while for the frigate to get there, of course.”

  “Hmm. Yes. If there’s more enemy action going on, it might take too long.”

  Darroch excused himself to answer a call from the OpCen as Cochrane went on, “If worse comes to worst, the corvette can put a laser beam through part of the ship’s gravitic drive. That’ll stop her going anywhere. She’ll have to be towed back to our base after all the shouting and tumult has died down. It’ll take time and money to repair her, of course. If she’s not worth that, the corvette will just have to destroy her in place, after telling the crew to abandon ship.”

  She frowned, and lowered her voice. “That’s a very ruthless attitude, isn’t it?”

  “Surely it’s no more ruthless than any Fleet officer’s, when faced with a decision like that?”

  “No, it isn’t, but you’re aren’t a Fleet officer any longer. Despite that, you haven’t changed your approach. If you act like a military officer, but without that authority backing you up, and if a court thinks you went too far, you might face years in prison. The same goes for your crews.”

  He pondered that for a while in silence. “I don’t want to admit you may be right, but I guess you are,” he said at last, his voice chagrined. “I doubt it’ll be a factor in Mycenae, at least until it’s fully exploited, but it probably will be in other systems as we expand our operations. We may need to change our operational doctrine and training, and perhaps our customer contracts, to give us more legal protection in those situations.”

  “Amending contracts and doctrines is all very well, but look at your own attitudes too,” she said quietly. “I think you’ve become calloused when it comes to criminals. I know you’ve had to deal with a lot of very bad characters, including killing some of them. Don’t let that harden your soul. I like the person you are, but if you go too far down that road, you won’t be that person any longer.”

  “How did you deal with the problem?” he asked. “After all, you’re a professional officer too.”

  “I’ve never had to deal with it. I haven’t been in combat.”

  “Well, I’m here to tell you, combat does change you, and dealing with hardened criminals even more so. Put the two together, and I suppose one can grow a hard shell around oneself without being aware of it. I… I’ll try to think about that. Trouble is, I may need help to deal with it; but I can’t turn to you for that, because it would be… difficult… for both of us.”

  She nodded helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. You were right to raise the issue. I’ll work on it as best I can.”

  MYCENAE SYSTEM

  Amanita’s arrival in Mycenae Primus Four orbit aroused intense interest among the patrol craft crews, all of whom wanted to tour her. Cochrane made sure they got the opportunity. “We’ve got more of them coming,” he assured them. “Within a couple of years, the old patrol craft will be retired. You’ll all be aboard one of these instead.”

  “Can’t happen too soon for me, sir,” a grizzled Senior Chief Petty Officer informed him with a grin. “Our ships are just too small and cramped. It’s a good thing they can only carry enough stores for a week’s patrol at a time. Any longer, and the crew would mutiny!”

  Cochrane recognized him as one of the NCO’s who’d served under him in the past. “What do you think of the corvette’s berthing spaces?”

  “They’re the lap of luxury compared to our old tub. I reckon they’re comfortable enough that we won’t need berths aboard the depot ship.”

  The monthly freighter arrived shortly afterwards. Two relief crews took over Arapaima and Bicuda, and their former crews assembled aboard the depot ship. Stores for the next month were transferred, and accumulated garbage and waste products loaded aboard the freighter for disposal at Constanta.

  Meanwhile, Commander Cousins took the opportunity for a brief reunion with Dr. Masters. Cochrane gave them a night of peace and quiet before summoning his second-in-command. He arrived with his fiancée on his arm. She was now wearing an engagement ring, and looked very happy, if exhausted. Grinning to himself, Cochrane refrained from heavy-handed comments about the couple’s obvious lack of sleep.

  “How’s the recruiting coming?” he asked.

  “It’s improving, sir. I interviewed seven officers at Rousay, and my team spoke to about three dozen NCO’s and spacers. More
of them are approaching us, now that they’re getting word from their friends that we’re a good outfit to work for, and we pay double what the System Patrol Service does. I’ve told those that looked most likely to come to Constanta for final interviews and initial training, and given them travel funds.”

  “Good. I think –”

  He was cut short by the blare of an alarm, followed by a crisp announcement over the speakers. “Captain Cochrane to the OpCen on the double!”

  He sprinted down the corridor to the depot ship’s bridge. Lunging through the door, he found the duty watch staring into the three-dimensional Plot display. More than two billion kilometers away, in the asteroid belt of Mycenae Secundus, a red flashing icon denoted an incident.

  “What’s up?” he demanded.

  “Sir, we detected a nuclear explosion in the second asteroid belt,” the Officer of the Watch informed him. “There were no gravitic drive signatures or other emissions beforehand.”

  Cochrane instantly knew what must have happened. One of the mines Cousins had sown, in the part of the asteroid belt being prospected by the Albanian robots, had found a target.

  “Signal Amanita to come to departure stations and stand by for me to board her. Anyone aboard her from other ships is to disembark at once. Signal the duty patrol craft to head for the explosion at full speed. We’ll overtake her on the way.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  As Cochrane ran toward the docking bay, Hui came out from a side passage. “What is it?” she asked as she joined him.

  “Explosion in the second asteroid belt. We’re going to investigate. Want to come?”

  “Of course!”

  The duty cutter took them across to Amanita, where they found Lieutenant-Commander Darroch already in the Operations Center. “Head for the explosion,” Cochrane told him tersely. “Use all your sensors as we get closer, and be careful. There may be another ship out there.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  Darroch got the corvette under way, then ran some quick calculations on the command console. “It’ll take us about twelve hours to get there, sir, including deceleration.”

  Cochrane nodded, knowing that Amanita’s maximum speed was one-third Cee. She couldn’t go faster than that without overstressing the gravitic shield protecting her from the impact of minor space debris. In the background he could hear the rising whine of the inertial compensator, absorbing the brutal acceleration imparted by the gravitic drive and dumping it safely into the gravity well of space’s dark matter. Without it, Amanita’s crew would long since have been smeared to bloody paste against the bulkheads under the massive g-forces unleashed by the drive.

  They passed the much slower Trairao before long, plugging along at her maximum safe speed of one-fifth Cee. She’d arrive at the scene much later than Amanita, but no-one complained. She was doing her best.

  As they drew closer, the tension aboard Amanita rose ever higher. Darroch slowed the ship, recalled the crew to general quarters, and set the radar and lidar systems, and the ship’s defenses, to automatic mode. They had demonstrated their reliability and effectiveness as the ship worked up. This would be an excellent opportunity to test them under real-world conditions.

  “Remember to broadcast our identification code,” Cochrane reminded him. “There are still mines out there, waiting for snoopers. Also, please confirm that we’re using gravitic drive frequency modulation, and that all our other ships in the system are doing the same.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Command to Navigation, confirm that our beacon is active.”

  “Navigation to Command, beacon active, correct code confirmed, sir.”

  “Command to Navigation, thank you.” He turned to Cochrane. “Before we arrived, I set our electronic warfare systems to monitor every gravitic drive signature in the Mycenae system, sir. I wanted to build up a database for comparison. Every ship we’ve recorded so far has been modulated, so they can’t be identified from the signature alone. It’s too heavily disguised. The system will warn us if it encounters a non-modulated signature, but so far it hasn’t, sir.”

  “Good. We’ll have to watch that like hawks. If our enemies can identify ships here from their signatures, they can use that to identify them in other systems as well. Sooner or later, one way or another, that’s going to happen, but we want to delay it for as long as possible.”

  A chime sounded, and an icon appeared in the Plot display. “Contact bearing 003:007, range one zero two thousand kilometers,” the operator announced. “No emissions.”

  “That’s odd,” Hui said from her place next to Cochrane. “Radar should have picked up a ship-sized target much further away than that, unless it was stealthy, like this ship; but then it wouldn’t pick it up until it was much closer than that.”

  “Then this probably isn’t a normal ship-sized target,” he replied, his eyes on the Plot. He noticed a speckle of tiny echoes around the icon. “I think that’s a piece of a ship destroyed by a mine. Those speckles are smaller pieces of wreckage, reflecting radar energy. I’ve seen that before.”

  “I think you’re right, sir,” Darroch confirmed. “Command to Helm, steer for the echo. Gravitic shield to full power. Reverse drive to halt one thousand kilometers from it.”

  “Helm to Command, head for the echo, max shield, halt one thousand clicks away, aye aye, sir.”

  Darroch turned to Cochrane. “Sir, with your permission, I’ll send out an interrogative signal on the standard emergency frequency. If there are any survivors in spacesuits or lifeboats, that should trigger their beacons, so we can locate and recover them.”

  “Make it so.”

  Almost as soon as the signal went out, three icons flashed to life in the short-range Plot display. “I make that two lifeboats and one spacesuit, sir,” the Plot operator said as he gave their bearings and ranges.

  Darroch activated the intercom. “Cutter pilot, report to the cutter. Chief of the Ship, assign two spacers to help him. They’re to get into spacesuits and prepare to recover survivors.”

  As footsteps began to run along the corridor ouside the OpCen, Cochrane leaned over. “Issue weapons to the cutter crew, and tell them to be on their guard. If this ship belonged to that Albanian crime syndicate, the survivors may not come quietly.”

  Darroch looked surprised, but nodded, and sent his Executive Officer to the ship’s small armory to issue carbines to the cutter crew.

  The pilot took the cutter out toward the first icon, the smallest. As they drew nearer, he called the ship. “It’s a spacesuit, sir. There’s someone inside, but he’s not moving. I think he may be hurt, or even dead.”

  “Get him aboard, and bring him back here before you go to the next icon,” Darroch ordered. “We’ll see if the medic can do anything for him.”

  The space-suited figure was brought through the airlock into the docking bay foyer. The monitoring panel on the front of the suit was green, indicating that he was still alive. Willing hands stripped off the spacesuit and carried him on a stretcher to the sick bay, where the Petty Officer medic examined him carefully.

  “I don’t know, sir,” he confessed, turning to Cochrane where he stood in the doorway. “I can’t see any visible signs of wounds, but there may be internal injuries. I can put him in the Medicomp and have it check him out, but we only have one of them, sir. If anyone else is out there, they may need it more than he does.”

  “Let’s wait and see what the cutter finds,” Cochrane advised.

  It found an empty lifeboat, drifting in space, and then another, this one with a light on its airlock door indicating that someone was inside. The cutter turned around and backed up to the airlock, mating its rear ramp with the entrance aperture. As soon as pressures were equalized, the pilot lowered the ramp.

  Those listening on board Amanita heard a sudden, confused babble of voices. The transmission was cut off for a moment. When the pilot came back on the circuit, he was breathing heavily, as if either frightened or very angry. “The bastards rushed
us! There were three of them. One had a knife, another had a big wrench. When the airlock door opened, they charged into the cutter and went for us. We shot the two with the weapons. One’s dead, the other’s badly hurt. The third one, in the rear, gave up when he saw our carbines. We’re securing him now.”

  “Understood,” Darroch said crisply. “Well done for stopping them. Load all three aboard the cutter, then get clear of the lifeboats. We’ll destroy them while you return to the ship.”

  A couple of shots from one of Amanita’s laser cannon took care of the drifting lifeboats. The massive energy release at what was, in space combat terms, point-blank range, reduced them to molecular particles, removing any hazard they posed to space traffic. More carbines were issued to spacers, who met the survivors in the docking bay.

  The uninjured man refused to answer questions – in fact, he wouldn’t say a word. He was searched, then his ankles and wrists were secured with flex-ties, and he was placed on a bunk in a berthing unit. His wounded comrade was hurried to the sick bay, where he was inserted into the Medicomp unit.

  “How long before it gives us a prognosis?” Cochrane asked as he watched the man’s body vanish inside the robotic treatment center.

  “It shouldn’t be more than half an hour, sir.”

  “Very well. I’ll be with Commander Darroch. Keep us informed.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Captain Hu came back to the OpCen just after he reached it. “I checked out that spacesuit,” she told them. “All its labels are in Albanian. The one who won’t talk may not understand Galactic Standard English. Do you have a translation unit aboard?”