For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  Max was briefly dumbfounded. Why didn’t anyone think of that before? He’d have to talk to Wernher about that one. There might be a way to build that modification into the Cumberland with spares already on board or parts they could fabricate.

  Not recognizing that he had just made a suggestion that might significantly affect the design of stealth vessels for decades to come, the doctor plowed on. “But how did we get in this precarious predicament? I had no idea anything was amiss until we were hit by enemy fire and my patient rolled off the examining table. He was heavily sedated at the time and made a most unsettling thud.”

  “That’s why your treatment beds all have restraint loops,” Max said. “Or didn’t you know that?”

  “I do now, and I plan to make scrupulous use of them hereafter. I hasten to add, however, that they wouldn’t be necessary if we were not hit unexpectedly by enemy weapons fire, an event for which you have yet to provide a satisfactory explanation.”

  “Simple ambush. There’s a convoy due through here in about sixteen hours. The admiral sent us here to sanitize the system and make sure it was clear for the convoy. When we jumped into the system, these two cruisers were already here, probably tasked to lie in wait for the same convoy.”

  “How did we escape? I seem to recall your having told me on more than one occasion that cruisers are much mightier ships than destroyers.”

  Max restrained himself from rolling his eyes at the doctor’s apparent inability to assimilate even the most rudimentary naval knowledge, notwithstanding that he was the most conspicuously brilliant man Max had ever known.

  “Much more powerful than we are, Doctor. Each of those ships packs about eight times our firepower. How did we get away? First, they weren’t expecting us. Usually, the picket or scout destroyer jumps in six or seven hours before the convoy comes through. But Admiral Hornmeyer sent us in early because, well, that’s just the sort of thing that he does. That crafty old bastard’s got unpredictability down to a science. If a task force has a habit of dividing itself into two groups to attack, when he attacks it will be with three groups this time, with five the next, with four the next, and then he’ll throw everything he’s got at the enemy in one huge formation. Krag prisoners tell us that they’ve got a whole department, staffed by hundreds of officers, with no function other than to try to predict what Hornmeyer is going to do next, and three times out of four they get it wrong.” He chuckled in admiration.

  “Anyway, when we jumped in and surprised them, neither of us was ready for a fight, but they were closer to being ready than we were. All our critical systems were safed for the jump, whereas all the Krag had to do was to arm their weapons and start shooting. We were a little bit better off than if they had been expecting us at that moment, but not enough for us to be able to get away unscathed.” He shook his head, remembering the shock of being hit by enemy weapons fire less than a minute after coming out of jump, before he was even aware the enemy ships were present.

  “You said ‘first.’ Is there a ‘second’?”

  “Oh, yes. Remember Midshipman Goldman? The lieutenant I demoted temporarily for verbally abusing an enlisted man?”

  “I remember him well.” He dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “You may recall that I treated him for a stims addiction.”

  “Right. Well, it turns out he knows the ins and outs of Krag sensors better than anyone imagined. Apparently, when he was serving on the Themistocles, he made the mistake of smarting off to Captain Tobias. You know, ‘Temper Tantrum’ Tobias? Well, Captain Tobias decided to teach Goldman a lesson and assigned him to spend five months doing nothing but disassembling, reassembling, and testing to destruction hundreds of Krag sensor multiplex relay assemblies he had just taken off a captured Krag tender.

  “After that experience, Goldman knew just how to configure our active sensors to emit a pulse precisely tailored to fry the multiplexers. The trick is no good as a standard battle tactic because the emitter isn’t built to transmit a tight coherent beam, so unless you’re within ten thousand meters or so, the beam spreads out too much and you aren’t hitting the multiplexer with enough power to do the job. But since all our weapons were offline, the rat-faced bastards had closed to about eighty-five hundred meters to finish us off.

  “We hit both ships with it, effectively blinding them, and ran like scalded dogs. We’re not in their sights any more, but in a few hours they’ll catch up with us again and have significant advantages in numbers, firepower, and tactical position.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Have you ever read Sun Tzu?”

  “Sun Tzu?” He shook his head. “I thought that was a particularly ridiculous breed of dog. The ones that look like tiny, animated dust mops.”

  “No, that’s Shih Tzu. Very lovable pets, I hear. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general and philosopher of war. Sixth century bce. Brilliant. Commodore Middleton made me practically memorize his book, The Art of War. Old Sun Tzu is the one who said, ‘All warfare is based on deception.’ ”

  “A principle by which you live scrupulously.”

  “Of course. My most cherished military maxim. But he said something else that is particularly relevant here—this is a paraphrase, of course—but he said basically that when you engage your enemy, it should appear to him that you are doing exactly what he expects you to do.”

  “What conceivable good does that do?”

  “A great deal, actually. Knowing what he expects, you appear to do exactly that. Give him one or two clues that point to what he has been thinking you’re going to do and that’s what he’s going to see, even if the clues could point to a hundred other things as well. After all, we all love being right, don’t we? The rub is that you are not doing what he expects, but rather something completely different.

  “You do something that looks like you are doing A. He jumps to the conclusion that you are doing A and launches his planned response for A, but you are doing B. And not only are you doing B—which he didn’t expect—but when you made your plans for B, you took into account your exact knowledge of what he would do when he thinks you are doing A. So, he is not ready for you, but you are ready for him.”

  “Very clever, indeed. Use his preconceptions against him. That goes along with modern cognitive theory that says people tend to perceive reality in light of preexisting expectations and will ignore large amounts of contrary data before finally changing their minds.”

  “Right. That’s just what I’m counting on.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Exactly what the Krag expect. And no, I won’t tell you what that is. You’ll just have to be surprised.” His face took on a predatory look as he tapped his finger on the icon for one of the Krag cruisers. “Just like our friends with the tails.”

  Two hours and eleven minutes passed. During that time, Max had ordered the entire crew by turns to go to the mess or the wardroom, as appropriate, for a hot breakfast. Just as her captain would not send the Cumberland into battle unfueled, so he saw that the men who served her went into battle with a hot meal in their bellies.

  “Coming into position,” announced Bartoli. The Cumberland had not been maintaining a constant position in the atmosphere; rather, as the moon that was the source of the particle stream had moved in its orbit, causing the stream to shift along with it, the ship had followed the erratic movement of the stream’s terminus in the atmosphere. The doctor could sense the tension in CIC gradually increasing as the time to implement the skipper’s plan approached. He noticed several of the watch standers covertly wiping sweaty palms on their pants or shifting nervously in their seats. There also seemed to be unusually heavy traffic in and out of the CIC’s “head,” or lavatory. Obviously, whatever Captain Robichaux had in mind, the crew perceived it to be difficult, risky, or both.

  When the ship was in the correct position, and at about the time when the Krag would be
surmising that the Cumberland’s heat sink was reaching capacity, Bartoli called out, “Now, Skipper.”

  Max’s adrenalin got the better of him. He came to his feet. “Execute,” he said, a little too loudly. He did his best not to cringe at how his powerful voice boomed in the CIC’s confined space.

  LeBlanc gave two sharp pats to the shoulder of Able Spacer First Class Fleishman, the man on Drives, who pushed his control all the way to the stop. “Main sublight ahead at Emergency,” said LeBlanc.

  Like a rabbit darting out from under a bush, the Cumberland shot out from the clouds, her acceleration just over 95 percent of nominal, thanks to hasty repairs by Lieutenant Brown and his band of improvisational engineers. In a few seconds, the destroyer cleared the atmosphere of Mengis VI, accelerating away from the planet and making straight for its closest moon, known prosaically as Mengis VI A, an unremarkable rock just over 3000 kilometers in diameter, orbiting the planet at an altitude of 56,423 kilometers.

  “Mr. Nelson,” Max said to the man at the Stealth console. “Now that we’re out of the atmosphere, let’s dump some heat, shall we?”

  “Aye, sir. Extending radiator fins seventeen through twenty-three.” On the sides of the ship blocked from the enemy vessels’ view, radiator fins extended themselves and turned cherry red, radiating into space the heat that Cumberland had stored in her heat sink. With no atmosphere around the hull to be heated, the ship could shed its thermal energy without giving away its position, so long as the fins were not in a direct line of sight with either enemy ship.

  “Would you please tell me at least the first part of what we are doing, Captain?” asked Sahin in a tone bordering on whining, his almost pathological curiosity getting the better of him.

  “Actually, I think I’ll yield that honor to Lieutenant DeCosta. XO?”

  The executive officer smiled self-deprecatingly and waved the doctor over to his own console, which had more and larger displays tied into more data channels than the doctor’s.

  “Here we are, Doctor.” He pointed to the icon representing the Cumberland. “The enemy expected us to keep station in the planet’s upper atmosphere until our heat sink reached its capacity, and then, having no other options, make a run for it. Even with stealth systems engaged, at this range and accelerating this hard, we can’t completely mask our drive signature, so they can detect us well enough to follow. Now, we are doing exactly what they thought we would do, running right when they expected us to run, falling right into the trap they have prepared for us.” The doctor grimaced. This wasn’t comforting at all.

  DeCosta continued. “Here is the cruiser that was in low orbit,” he pointed to an icon moving away from the planet to fall in behind the destroyer. “This one is the ‘chase man.’ He has gone to flank speed and is doing his best to follow us. He’s falling behind right now, but he can already tell from our acceleration curve that, even with our repairs, he has a higher top speed and will eventually overtake us. Right now, we’re ducking into the stream of ionized matter from the volcanic moon. Here is the path of the stream,” his finger traced a long curve from the moon to the planet.

  “Notice that the planet’s inner moon is just about to enter it. He thinks we’re using the stream to help us lose him or prevent him from getting a missile lock, so he isn’t concerned. We’re doing just what he expects fleeing prey to do. Run and hide.

  “Here is the cruiser that was in high orbit.” The XO pointed to another icon on the display. “If the low cruiser is the ‘chase man,’ then the high cruiser is the ‘cutoff man.’ The cutoff man’s job is to station himself athwart our line of escape, forcing us, he thinks, to do one of three things: One, attack him head on, in which case we will be destroyed by his superior firepower. Two, try to go around him, in which case we are cut off using his superior speed and advantageous starting position and then destroyed by his superior firepower. Three, try to hide in the space between the chase and the cutoff man, the high cruiser serving as the anvil to the low cruiser’s hammer. In that case, they use their excellent active sensor capability to locate us and their superior speed to hem us in between them, at which point we are then…”

  “Destroyed by their superior firepower,” the doctor completed. “It looks gloomy, but you do not seem in the least weighed down by it.”

  “Here’s where reality first starts to diverge from their expectations. See the computer’s projection of the cutoff man’s most likely intercept course right here?”

  “I do, but it is blinking red and seems to go right through this moon.”

  “Right. That’s because we timed our escape maneuver and aimed the direction of our exit so that this moon, Mengis VI A, blocks the cutoff man’s direct intercept vector. Unless he wants his current speed to carry him thousands of kills out of his way, he needs to drop a lot of velocity and go around it, following the limb of this moon like this.” The XO’s finger traced along the curvature of the moon on the side facing away from the planet.

  “How do you know he’s going on that side rather than on the one nearer the planet?”

  “Good question. Because, when the Krag go around a moon or planet, they do it posigrade, that is, along with the direction of the body’s rotation, if they can possibly manage it. That’s so if they need to make an emergency landing, they have to dump a lot less velocity in order to set down safely. Now, here’s his play. He’s only going to follow the curvature of Mengis VI A until the shortest distance between him and his estimate of our course projection doesn’t go through that moon. At that point, he pulls out of his curve and heads straight toward the line of our course. As soon as he clears the limb of the moon, he turns on his active sensors and starts sweeping the area where he calculates we will be.

  “The tail man will do the same thing, sweeping the area ahead of him, with the idea that if we’re being painted by the full sensor output from two cruisers roughly ninety degrees apart, we’ll show up despite the ionized particles and the maser radiation.”

  “Won’t we show up?” asked the doctor.

  “We probably would. But it’ll never get that far.”

  “Weapons,” Max interrupted. “Are we clear on the firing procedure and timing for those missiles?”

  “Affirmative, Skipper. Talons loaded in all three tubes. Missiles are armed, drives enabled, safeties disengaged, targeting data entered—they’re ready for firing in all respects, excepting only that the missile doors are closed. The missiles will be fired by computer when the programmed launch criteria are met, with Chief Wendt in the Weapons back room on the manual firing controller just in case.”

  “Very well.”

  “Why Wendt?” DeCosta asked the skipper. “He’s got to be in his fifties.”

  “He may be one of the oldest men on the ship, but he still tests out as having the fastest trigger pull. He beats the young guys every time. Plus, every man on board trusts his judgment—he is the Chief of the Boat. No one’s going to be distracted worrying about whether he’ll make the fire/no fire call correctly.”

  Sahin could see on the XO’s tactical overview display that the icons for the enemy high cruiser and the Cumberland were now coming very near to the circle that designated Mengis VI’s inner moon, the Cumberland inside the particle stream on a course that would take it past the moon on the right-hand side as viewed on the display, and the Krag cruiser on a course straight at the moon from the left, each screened from the other by the moon. Even on the scale shown by the console display, the icons representing the ships seemed to be moving very, very fast.

  Max sat down again, the better to see the displays at his console. “Weapons, open missile doors on tubes one, two, and three. Stealth, engage all stealth systems.”

  “Opening doors.” Short pause. Three lights on the Weapons Console changed from blue to green, and Weapons checked three optical feeds. “Visual verification: tubes one, two, and three are open and are clear of
obstructions.”

  “Stealth systems engaged,” said Nelson.

  “Very well. Prepare to execute first maneuver on my mark.” Max stood watching the tactical plot for nearly half a minute, the icons on the screen moving in a slow motion ballet along geometrically perfect arcs. Several of the men in CIC were shifting or fidgeting nervously at their stations. Max noticed.

  “Steady, boys, steady,” he said evenly, the words from the Union Space Navy’s official song. He felt the men take a collective breath, steady themselves, and steel their nerves for what they were about to do, and go through, together.

  “First maneuver. Ready…ready…execute.” Maneuvering pulled a hard turn, demonstrating the nimbleness for which this class of ship had already become legendary. Within only a few seconds, the destroyer turned through a 94-degree course change, pointing the ship straight at Mengis VI A. As soon as the turn was executed, LeBlanc had his Drives man engage the braking drive at maximum. This maneuver went unobserved by the high cruiser because its line of sight was blocked by the bulk of the nearby moon. The low cruiser likewise did not detect the maneuver because of the Cumberland’s highly effective stealth systems, interference from the charged particle stream, and because by doing something unexpected, the ship had in only 1.84 seconds traveled laterally out of the zone covered by the cruiser’s most sensitive passive sensors, which had an accumulate and refresh cycle of just over two seconds.

  When the destroyer dropped off their sensors, it never occurred to the Krag in the low cruiser that the monkey-blasphemer humans were doing anything but continuing on the same course to fly from their better-armed attackers.

  “Are we committing suicide? I see that we are headed directly for the surface of that moon.” There was discernable alarm in the doctor’s voice.

  “No, Doctor, we are not going to hit the surface. We are just going to get very, very close to it.”