For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  The chief got up from his station and stepped over to Greenlee’s console. Looking over the spacer’s shoulder he could see on the Alerts and Messages display a flashing notification stating “Local Compression Detection Algorithm analysis of fluctuations in this vessel’s compressed space to normal space interface indicates the likely presence of another compression field within a three–light year radius.”

  When another ship was using a compression drive within a few light years, residual superluminal distortion propagated through the space–time continuum to exert a minute effect on the Cumberland’s own compression field. Although these effects were not visible on any display given the large amount of random fluctuation that was always present, the computer had an algorithm that could detect whether a systematic component was present in the random noise. In this case, the computer had just made such a detection.

  “Can you localize it?”

  “Negative, Chief. I’ve asked the computer for bearing information and it comes up blank.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, Chief. There’s never been an algorithm detection on my watch that Lieutenant Goldman or Ensign Harbaugh didn’t handle.”

  “Okay, when you don’t have experience to rely on, you fall back on theory. Think about how the system works. How does the algorithm derive bearing information? Under what conditions would it not be able to make that kind of computation?” The chief’s area of expertise was mainly in repairing, maintaining, and calibrating the sensor systems, not in interpreting the readings, but he hadn’t had his fingers stuffed in his ears for the twenty-two years he had been in the Sensors back room of eight different ships.

  “An initial detection is of the distortion only. Bearings are derived from phase shifts in our own field over time. There are distinctive patterns associated with different bearing changes, and the computer uses those changes to do a target motion analysis, first to derive a bearing and then to derive a range.”

  “Right. Now, when would that system not give any useful information?”

  “Oh, I get it—there has to be a bearing change for there to be a bearing detection.”

  “Good. Now think back on your basic tactical geometry. What are the three conditions under which a moving ship will observe no bearing change on a contact?”

  “One, the contact is dead ahead. Two, the contact is dead astern. Three, the contact is on a congruent course with your ship: identical course, identical speed.”

  “Exactly. Now, we need to make a call: notify our officer in CIC what we’ve detected, and provide him with a recommendation. You tell me, Spacer Greenlee, what exactly have we detected?”

  “We have a local compression algorithm detection of a superluminal target under compression drive, no bearing change, indeterminate distance.”

  “Right. What’s the recommendation we make?”

  “Sorry, Chief, I don’t know.”

  “Anyone else know? We’re not talking n-space topological mechanics here, people. You’re the guys who can read the emission lines in a drive spectrum—it’s just a bunch of decorator toothpicks to me. You should be able to figure this out based on the simple geometry of the thing.”

  An ordinary spacer third class raised his hand.

  “We don’t raise our hands in here, Onizuka. Just speak up.”

  “Just speaking up” wasn’t the easiest thing in the worlds for Onizuka, but he cleared his throat and spat it out. “Resolve the ambiguity, sir.”

  Klesh kept himself from smiling and nodding. “How do we do that?”

  “Pick a new course, ninety degrees from our current one on any axis. No matter whether the target is ahead, astern, or on a congruent course, unless he can match our course change immediately, even if by chance we head directly toward him, there will be an immediate bearing change.”

  “Bull’s-eye. Now, Greenlee, you watch your console closely because CIC is going to want to know pretty damn quick what happens when we change course, if that’s what they decide to do back there. Okay, I suppose I’m supposed to make the notification.”

  The chief went back to his console, pulled up the display at which Greenlee was looking, referred it to the Sensors Station in CIC, and then hit a button in a row of three, each of which was over a colored light: one red, one amber, one green. The one he pressed was over the amber.

  On the CIC Sensors console at which Ensign Hobbs had the watch at this moment, the SSR STATUS light went from green, indicating all is well, to amber, indicating that the sensors officer needed to do two things. First, he should look at the SSR ATTN display, which always showed what the back room thought the CIC officer needed to be looking at—at the moment, the LCDA detection screen and some related graphs and information.

  Second, the man in CIC should communicate with his back room. There were lots of ways to do that, but when the amber light went on, the usual method was by voice link. It was up to the man in CIC to initiate the communication, because when the light went on, he could easily have been involved in a discussion with the captain or another CIC officer that the back room would not want to interrupt.

  Hobbs opened the link and spoke quietly into his headset. “SSR Sensors, CIC Sensors.” State who you are calling, then identify yourself. Otherwise, if there were some kind of glitch somewhere or you punched up the wrong channel, you might wind up trying to discuss a sensor contact with the Breads, Rolls, and Biscuits Chef.

  “SSR Sensors, Klesh here.”

  “What’s up, Klesh?”

  “We show a local compression algorithm detection of a superluminal target under compression drive, no bearing change, indeterminate distance. Recommending course change, delta niner-zero degrees on any axis, to resolve ambiguity.”

  “Understood. Why don’t you go ahead and monitor the main CIC voice pickup so you hear what we’re doing. If we change course, you’ll want to watch that detector closely. We’ll want to localize him Alfa Sierra Alfa Papa. We don’t want to run into the guy.”

  “Affirmative. We’ll keep an eye out for you.”

  “Thanks. CIC out.”

  Hobbs then examined the SSR ATTN display, spent a few seconds scanning the raw data, ran a few cross checks and decided that the call checked out. A good CIC officer wasn’t just a parrot for the calls made by his back room. He used his independent judgment and experience to verify the call before he announced it in CIC because, according to the old saying, “Once you say it, you own it.” It would be his responsibility. “Blaming the back room” was not only a cardinal sin and a good way to lose the loyalty of the people whose loyalty you need most, it was also something that skippers frequently criticized in FITREPS.

  “Officer of the Deck,” he said.

  In the middle of the night, with the ship on compression drive, deep in interstellar space and light years from any star system, neither the skipper nor the XO was in CIC. The ship’s nerve center was instead presided over by the “Officer of the Deck,” a duty that rotated among all the ship’s officers save the CO, XO, the chief engineer, the chief medical officer, and the Marine detachment commander (the first three being too busy and the last two lacking the necessary training and experience to con a warship).

  For the duration of this watch, the Officer of the Deck was Ensign Levy. As it happened, this was Levy’s first time performing that duty. Accordingly, when Hobbs asked for his attention, Mr. Levy had exactly forty-one minutes and nineteen seconds of experience in the Big Chair.

  “Yes, Mr. Hobbs.”

  “We have a local compression algorithm detection of a superluminal target under compression drive, no bearing change, indeterminate range. I recommend a ninety-degree course change, any axis, to resolve the ambiguity.”

  “Very well. Intel, have we been notified of any possible superluminal friendlies within a three–light year radius?”

  Intel
was supposed to know what the good guys were doing as well as the bad. In fact, it would be best if Intel knew everything about everyone. No one was holding his breath.

  “Negative, sir. This is supposed to be an empty subsector except for us,” said Petty Officer Second Rhinelander, who was standing watch at that post tonight.

  Crap. The captain had left orders to maintain the current course and speed. But he hadn’t anticipated running into a possible enemy contact. Fortunately, the book covered this one.

  “Maneuvering, reduce speed to 800 c. Alter course, negative z, niner-zero degrees. Make it a sharp delta, but don’t strain anything.”

  Chief Lugatsch at Maneuvering acknowledged the order and then gave the command to his man on Drives to reduce speed and to his man on Pitch to turn the ship sharply “downward” 90 degrees.

  Now for the fun part. He selected a voicecom channel and pushed the comm button. A few seconds later a voice emerged from the comm panel. “Skipper.” Somehow, the captain managed in that one word to convey the additional meaning, “I’m listening, but it had better be good.”

  “Skipper, this is Levy in CIC. We picked up a superluminal target, no bearing change, with the local compression algorithm. Pending further orders from you, I reduced speed to eight hundred c and ordered a negative z of ninety degrees. We’re on the new course now and should have more from Sensors in a few minutes. Orders, sir?”

  “Well done, Levy. Steady as she goes. I’m on my way. Skipper out.”

  Mr. Levy was curious. He noted the time on the Chrono. It took the skipper exactly one minute and forty-seven seconds between saying, “Skipper out” and when he cycled through the CIC security door. As soon as the skipper entered, Levy stood, vacating the Big Chair and moving to the left to stand in the space between the CO’s and the Commodore’s Stations. When Max reached the CO’s station and sat down, he said, “I have CIC.”

  “You have CIC,” Levy repeated. He turned in the direction of the nearest CIC omnisound pickup and announced, “Computer, log that the Officer of the Deck transferred CIC Con to the CO at zero hours, forty-six minutes.”

  “CIC Con transfer to commanding officer logged at zero hours, forty-six minutes,” announced the computer, its voice sounding perversely like a cross between an inhuman mechanism and a nymphomaniac sex kitten. The regulations were clear: only one man was in charge in CIC at any given time, and there was never, ever the slightest doubt as to who that was. Every change was announced and the time logged. After all, the joke went, if anything happened to the ship, and the man who had the con survived, he would be shot. And the Navy wanted to be sure to shoot the right man.

  “Status.”

  “Sir, course is zero-four-three mark two-five-eight, speed 800 c,” Levy reported. “Still awaiting report from Sensors on data acquired from course change. Ship is at Condition Blue. All systems nominal.”

  Condition Blue was the second lowest readiness state. The lowest was Green. Max never set Condition Green unless the ship was in a well-guarded rear area, preferably in the vicinity of at least a carrier and a couple of battleships, and even then only if he really trusted the captains of the carrier and the battleships. When you command a warship, the question is never whether you are being paranoid, but whether you are being paranoid enough.

  “Very well.” Now, Max was in a quandary. Because of his orders regarding the Sweet Seventeen, every department in the ship other than CIC was working without the benefit of its best men. Not only that, under the watch rotation system, Second Watch on Day Two of the cycle was stood by the White Watch, the weakest of the three. Max could solve both problems by going to general quarters, which would bring the Sweet Seventeen out of hibernation and would put everyone at battle stations, meaning that every position would be stood by its best man, usually with the second best right at his elbow.

  But that would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. These men, even the least skilled of them, would have to be brought up to a standard of reasonable proficiency. They would have to start walking without crutches.

  They would have to start walking right now.

  Levy started to move toward his accustomed post at Intel to relieve Rhinelander.

  “And where do you think you are going, Mr. Levy?”

  “Um, the Intel Station, Captain.”

  “Mais, non. I’m not letting you off the hook that easily, young man. You’re the Officer of the Deck, which means for the duration of this watch you are a command level officer for this vessel. Unless and until I summon Mr. DeCosta to CIC, you are my acting XO. Now, take your station, mister.”

  “Aye, sir.” Levy stepped over to the XO’s station, sat down, and fired up the console, which had been left on STANDBY, his hands moving deftly over the controls. Apparently, Mr. Levy had spent some time on the Command console simulator preparing for his big night in the Big Chair. Good man.

  Max cast a glance over at Hobbs at Sensors. He was deep in a discussion with his back room, rapidly pulling up graphs that looked like various computer-generated hypotheses of the target’s motion and the compression readings that would result, trying to find a fit. This was typically done by the computer without much human intervention.

  If Mr. Kasparov were sitting in that chair and Mr. Harbaugh running the back room, Max wouldn’t even think of intervening, but with Kasparov off watch and Harbaugh sequestered with the Sweet Seventeen, anything could happen. Max should have heard some sort of call from Sensors by now—at least a bearing to the target and a recommendation of what to do to localize it. He looked over at Hobbs again. Nothing.

  So, Max did something he had not done since he assumed command of the Cumberland. He eavesdropped. The CO’s station had the capability of monitoring every data and voice channel on the ship. Max’s predecessor apparently spent most of his time doing just that, either from the CO’s station or from the workstation in his day cabin, and had configured both consoles to do it easily and efficiently. Max hated micromanagement, but he had a feeling that that his sensors guys might be stuck on something.

  He pulled up the data channels that the Sensors back room was sharing with Hobbs. He could see that they were digging into the raw data rather than looking at what the computer was doing with it. The raw data, and even the partially processed raw data, were too complex and too full of random variations for human beings to interpret. It took lots of computer processing to tease out the patterns. This made no sense. Then he looked at what the computer was generating and saw why the Sensors people were having trouble.

  The computer was putting out nonsense. Pure garbage. One minute, it was hypothesizing that the target was impossibly wide—272.53 kilometers wide, the size of a not inconsiderable moon—and the next postulating that it was following a zigzag course at unheard-of velocities, making course changes that would tear any ship into ragged shreds, with the points of the zigs on one side and of the zags on the other forming two parallel lines 272.53 kilometers apart that tracked the Cumberland’s former course. This was crap. The computer has gotten confused.

  No. That’s wrong. Computers don’t “get confused.” People confuse them. The oldest adage of computer use, probably articulated about twelve minutes and nineteen seconds after the first computer was turned on, is: GIGO—garbage in, garbage out. Okay. Find the garbage.

  He pulled up some diagnostic screens. The sensors that read the compressed space–normal space boundary tested as nominal. But that data went lots of places before hitting the computer. He quickly ran the signal path and the intermediate processors—no loss in signal strength from one end to the other on the signal path, and the processors all passed a basic diagnostic check. He was missing something.

  The computer’s conclusions were derived from what? There were the data from the sensors. That had to be good. There was the algorithm that processed the data. That had been checked by NAVCOMPSYSCOM half a million times under every conceiva
ble data state. That had to be good as well. That left the comparatively trivial few bits of data and limiting assumptions that sometimes got input by the operator. That had to be it. But what did the operator input? It had been four years since Max had worked in Sensors, and this version of the system was newer than that. He didn’t know.

  Time to ’fess up. “Hobbs. I could see you were having problems, so I was looking over your shoulder. Trying to help out.” He shrugged slightly, to acknowledge that he was admitting a kind of transgression, if even a minor one. Just because the skipper was the closest thing to God on his ship didn’t mean he should be high-handed. Hobbs nodded quickly, as if to admit that he was a bit over his head and was glad to have the help.

  “Look, I see what you guys are doing, but you’re on the wrong track. You’re not going to interpret this contact by looking at the data yourselves. We’ve got to figure out what the issue is in the system, so it will give us meaningful output. Maybe it’s something wrong with an operator input. The operating system has changed since I was last at that console. What gets supplied by the operator?”

  Max read the blank look on the man’s face before he could work up the courage to say that he didn’t know. Max saved him the trouble. At least he knew that the man would never even dream of bullshitting him.

  “Okay. You can’t know everything, Hobbs.” Max punched himself into the circuit to the Sensors back room. “This is the skipper. Who’s on the compression detector?”

  “Greenlee here, sir.”

  “Greenlee? Oh, right. You’re the only one of my three James Smiths who’s not James Edwin Smith—you’re from Greenlee something or other. Okay, Mr. Greenlee, we’ve got to figure this thing out before this target gets out from under us. What are the operator inputs on this thing? That’s got to be where the problem lies.”

  “Sir, I can’t see where,” Greenlee said. “There’s not much to input. The system mainly relies on the data from the sensors. I input the calibration values from the last diagnostic. I triple checked those. Our speed gets read in automatically. I checked it anyway. It was 1960 c; now it’s 800 c. For some reason, it makes me manually input the compression field gradient. I checked that twice and had Chief Klesh verify it. It’s right.