For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  He never imagined that so prosaic a victual as the humble chicken could be covered with such exquisite, light, crispy, flavorful crust that would—with just the right amount of resistance, like an eager but shy virgin on her wedding night—yield to admit the suitor to the sensual delights within. And what delights!

  It was one of the best things he had ever tasted. Bram had marched steadily through a drumstick and a thigh before he even noticed the other dishes on the table: rice with rich cream gravy flavored with crispy pan leavings from the chicken, corn on the cob (previously frozen but still tasty), and a fruit salad made from a variety of canned and frozen fruits.

  Max was washing his dinner down with ship’s beer, a staple on warships. Beer had a limited shelf life, and warships, often operating without resupply for many months, had to either make their own or do without. The quality of the brew varied wildly from ship to ship, ranging from frothy nectar sung into being by luminous angels to foaming swill passed from the bladders of diabetic water buffalos.

  The Cumberland’s beer, like that of most ships, fell somewhere in the broad middle of that scale, perhaps a little better than most, and slowly improving in the opinion of the more discerning beer drinkers in the crew. The current brewer had started with no previous knowledge but was learning rapidly from experience and was even finding that he was blessed with a fair amount of aptitude in the art.

  Since the ship’s previous “brewmaster” had been transferred off the ship after the Battle of Pfelung, and as the replacement draft had not supplied a man who had ever brewed so much as a single barrel, Chief Boudreaux had picked a culinary specialist out of the group of new men, pointed him in the direction of the ship’s compact but capable brewery, and told him that everything he needed to know was in the database. When the man asked why he had been picked for this duty over the other three galley crewmen in that draft, Boudreaux had replied that there was something about his name that inspired confidence. And so far, the men were reasonably satisfied with the work of Ordinary Spacer Second Class Bodo “Bud” Schlitz.

  “As I was saying, you’re not going to just blindly do what you are told under these circumstances. I know you. You’ve come up with some sort of devious way of turning these things around. You and this Captain Kim fellow seem to be cut from the same cloth. I’m sure you and he have an idea or two.”

  “Now, Doctor, are you accusing Captain Kim and me of conspiring to circumvent the orders of a superior officer? I’m shocked. Aghast. Dismayed.”

  “None of which, I hasten to point out, is anything remotely in the way of a denial.”

  Max shrugged. The comm buzzed. “Skipper.”

  “Skipper, this is Marconi on comms.” Chin had gone off watch. Marconi was the number two man in that department, an eager and conscientious recruit spacer first who, in a few weeks, was likely to be minted as an ensign, the Cumberland’s first “homegrown nugget” since Max assumed command. He had chosen to specialize in Communications, notwithstanding that any “Marconi” in the Communications Section was going to be ribbed mercilessly for the rest of his career and, most likely, well into retirement.

  “We just got a signal by lights from the Broadsword. It’s for you and the doctor from Captain Kim. It’s in your box.”

  “Thank you, Marconi. Skipper out.” Max got up from the table, walked over to his workstation, accessed the message, and put it up on the display wall.

  It read: “BE ADVISED THAT WHILE VISITING THIS VESSEL ENVOY SUFFERED OPEN MULTIPLE FRACTURE OF TIBIA AND FIBULA REQUIRING SURGICAL IMMOBILIZATION STOP HE WANTED TO SHOW THAT HE COULD STILL SLIDE DOWN ACCESS LADDER QUOTE JUST LIKE A MID UNQUOTE STOP ON ORDERS OF DOCTOR SINGH AND WITH CONCURRENCE OF CMO ON PENNANT ENVOY IS NOT TO BE MOVED AND WILL REMAIN ON THIS VESSEL FOR REMAINDER OF PASSAGE STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  “I suppose that this is part of your little scheme, right?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m certain that Captain Kim would never make a false communication of that sort. And I’m upset that this would happen to the envoy. He seemed such a decent fellow.”

  “Of course, you are. But why would you and Kim do such a thing?”

  The comm buzzed. It was Marconi, again notifying Max of another signal by lights, this one from the pennant. Max displayed it as he had the other. “AS ENVOY IS ABOARD BROADSWORD THAT VESSEL IS DESIGNATED PIGEON AND PENNANT WILL ASSUME THE LEAD IN FORMATION TO BE ASSUMED AFTER JUMP STOP ALL OTHER ORDERS UNCHANGED STOP DUFLOT SENDS STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  The doctor smiled knowingly. “Aha. It now becomes clearer. You wanted to get the envoy on the Broadsword and get her put in the middle of the formation. Again, I do not understand the reasons, and I know better than to ask you about them because you will only deny that anything is afoot, or if you admit that you are up to something, you won’t tell me, either to keep me out of trouble or to heighten the suspense. One day you will learn that I do not care to be kept out of trouble and that I do care very much about avoiding suspense, but our friendship is not yet sufficiently mature for you to have derived those lessons.”

  “Maybe I will. Or maybe I enjoy hearing your theories and speculation too much to replace them with specific information. In any event, we’re jumping in a few minutes, and I want to be in CIC for some things I plan to do immediately thereafter. Feel free to join me. My steward has told me that there will be Wortham-Biggs Four Planet Coffee in CIC for the next few hours.”

  “That’s all the incentive I need. I’ll meet you there.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  10:02Z Hours, 26 March 2315

  “Initiating standard acceleration profile.” Chief LeBlanc was not entirely successful in eliminating from his voice all signs of his disapproval of following a standard acceleration profile under the current circumstances. The Cumberland had just jumped into the Kalkaz system after the William Gorgas and the Broadsword. The other two ships had begun their acceleration through the system along the mathematically perfect arc prescribed by Commander Duflot’s orders, and the Cumberland fell into its place at the end of the line ahead formation, exactly 250 kilometers behind Broadsword, its sensors nearly blinded by proximity to the other ship’s drive emissions even if “behind” meant offset just enough so that the ship was not actually swimming in the gases emitted from the other destroyer.

  “Sensor efficiency down across the board,” noted Kasparov.

  “Well, we know what to do about that, now, don’t we,” said Max. “Deploy the towed array. Let’s start off with a hundred kilometers.”

  “Deploy the towed array, aye, one hundred kills.” Kasparov activated the sequence, and one of his displays that had been showing an overly noisy output from an EM detector switched over to a screen entitled “TOWED ARRAY STATUS” and immediately began to show a grid of numbers.

  After a few minutes of pulling up various displays on his console, with increasing frustration, Dr. Sahin, who had wandered into CIC with Clouseau at his heels, leaned over toward Max and said confidentially, “Max, I took your advice and was doing some reading on this ship’s systems, and I distinctly remember reading something to the effect that the Khyber class vessels are equipped with the stowage spool and the deployment arm for the towed array as contingency equipage but are not provided with the array itself or the dedicated processor for interpreting the towed array’s output because a ship with a deployed array gives up a great deal of the maneuverability that is one of the class’s assets. Did I read that incorrectly?”

  “No, you got it right,” Max said blandly.

  “What am I missing, then?”

  “Towed array deployed to one hundred kills,” interrupted Kasparov. “Moving it forty kills plus z. Mr. Chin and I have convinced the computers to reroute the data as we discussed. Implementing reroute now.” About ten seconds later, a new display popped up on Kasparov’s console, this one labeled “TOWED AR
RAY CONTACTS OVERVIEW.”

  “Receiving data from the towed array, sir. It looks like we’re getting a clean read too. Only issue is that having to route the data through the laserlink two ways cuts into the refresh rate, but thirty times a minute is plenty for what we’re doing.”

  “Very well, Mr. Kasparov. Have your people keep a close watch on the data stream. They’re not used to the way the data from a tail looks, so it’s probably a good idea to bring in a few extra men from off watch to back up the ones you’ve got, in case they miss something.”

  “Outstanding idea, sir. I’ll do that.” Kasparov spoke into his headset, suppressing a smile while giving orders to Ensign Harbaugh to implement the captain’s suggestion.

  Max turned his attention back to the doctor and spoke softly. “What you’re missing is that it’s not our towed array. We borrowed it.”

  “Borrowed it?”

  “Yep. From the Broadsword. She can’t use it in this formation without creating a risk that the trailing vessel—which is us—might collide with it. So, Kim brought it with him in his launch when he came over yesterday. Actually, he brought his spare. His main is still installed—just not deployed. We’re putting the raw data on the laserlink, running it through his towed array signal processor, and he’s sending us back the processed data for tactical resolution and display on our consoles.”

  “And pray tell, does Commander Duflot know about this?”

  Max stared into his coffee mug. “It’s such a minor matter that we just handled it between the skippers. We saw no need to trouble him with something so unimportant, what with all the weighty things the man has on his mind right now.” While he was talking, Max had pulled up the readouts from the array and was squinting at them with an eye honed by years as a sensor officer. “Mister Kasparov, kindly extend the array to 250 kills, and stabilize the terminus forty kills plus z.”

  While Kasparov was acknowledging and implementing the order, Bram thought about what Max had done, and it made sense. Contrary to Max’s constant snide comments, the doctor had been diligently plowing through the enormous volume of study materials that Max had recommended to him.

  From these studies, he knew that a towed array, an idea borrowed from the saltwater navy, was a heavily stealthed passive sensor antenna towed behind the ship at the end of an almost microscopically thin carbon nanotube filament. A guidance package at the end contained an inertial stabilization system, a fuel supply, and thrusters to keep the cable taut and to allow the operator to control the location of the array relative to the drive stream, usually offset from it by about forty kilometers in one direction or another. The towed array allowed the Cumberland to have clear sensor reception notwithstanding that it was in Broadsword’s wake, particularly given that all three ships were blasting the area with active sensor sweeps, the returns from which were received with exquisite sensitivity by the array’s kilometer-and-a-half-long sensor filaments.

  “Oh, Mr. Kasparov, you did tell your people what I said about those contacts we talked about, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely. It’s all taken care of.”

  “Outstanding.” Max didn’t catch the slight smirk that wriggled its way across many of the faces in CIC at the word “outstanding.”

  “And Mr. Chin, you and the Comms man on the Broadsword…you’ve set up that direct comms override right to the skipper’s console over there?”

  “Affirmative, sir,” Chin answered. “The SUMMON STEWARD—COFFEE button on your console has been reprogrammed to tie you into the override. We thought it best to use a hard key—you know, a physical button instead of a soft key. More positive. Just hit that button and everything you say will come straight out of the comm on the skipper’s console over on the Broadsword.”

  “But what if I want coffee?”

  “The Control Input Logs show that you’ve never touched that button since you’ve come on board, sir. You always have a mid pour you some from the CIC coffeepot.”

  “I guess that is what I do, isn’t it? Outstanding job, Mr. Chin.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Max looked around CIC. Funny, how he had not taken many slow, careful looks around this compartment in the two months and four days he had been in command. It was the same compartment, and mostly the same men, who had greeted him on 21 January, at which time he’d surprised them all by stepping onto the command island wearing his Space Combat Uniform, a sidearm, and a boarding cutlass, when everyone else was in dress blues. It looked pretty much the same. It felt very different.

  Those men in January were losers. Verbally and psychologically abused by a borderline psychotic CO, exhausted and distracted by his obsessions with cleanliness and control, humiliated in encounters with the enemy and in exercises, they hadn’t been fit to do battle with a troop of Junior Wilderness Girls, much less the best the Krag had to throw at them. Now, these men were winners. They had met the enemy in battle, had even taken on multiple vessels of superior force, seen their enemies consumed by nuclear fire, and lived to tell the tale. They were confident. Some of them even had a bit of a swagger to their step.

  They had been through danger and hardship together and emerged, not only still alive but triumphant. Sure, they still had a long way to go in terms of competence and training and teamwork, but they believed in their skipper and themselves. That made all the difference. They had come so far. But they still had so far to go. Max knew that, somehow, he would get them there. He felt deep in his heart that his destiny and the destiny of these men were bound together for some great purpose, two metals hammer-forged into a single weapon stronger and more resilient than either alone. If only they could live through the next several days.

  It was beginning to look like Commander Duflot had been right, and the tactic of crossing through systems with sensor nets and defense forces in place was paying off. At each jump in, the pennant vessel would communicate with jump control, and the tiny “convoy” would wait for whatever forces were available—a few fighters, an SPC or two, one or two superannuated reserve-force destroyers—to rendezvous. They would then move out, crossing the system in the rigorously geometric course Duflot prescribed.

  In this manner, they crossed the Kalkaz system and the Murban system, where they also rendezvoused with a Union Naval Comm relay. Doing so allowed the pennant vessel to establish a laserlink with the buoy and thereby tie directly into the Naval Communications Network without breaking EMCON. The pennant received mail for the entire group, as well as sent and received several messages, including one message that Duflot did not command be sent and that, had he known about it, he would have moved heaven and earth to stop.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  04:18Z Hours, 30 March 2315

  After Murban, it was on to the Madoom system, thence to Schewe 23, and thereafter to Edmonton B. That system had the weakest sensor coverage of any system along the route, there being no planet with a solid surface on which to lay the grids of 146-kilometer-long superconducting cables that are the most efficient means of transmitting the powerful phase- and polarization-modulated pulses of tachyo-gravitons and tachyo-photons that were the best way to scan an entire solar system for hostile ships.

  Sensor coverage in the Edmonton B system was provided by two SWACS-equipped frigates, which was good, in theory, but no matter where one positioned the ships, there would be sensor shadows from the one molten, one ocean-covered, and three gaseous planets the system boasted, as well as interference fringes created by the interaction of the sensor transmissions from the two ships. Taken together, these phenomena created huge blind areas in which ships could hide as well as lots of paths a stealthy ship could take through the system without being detected.

  “Wouldn’t we have seen the Krag jumping into these systems after us? There is that burst of Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation that you tell me is highly distinctive.” Despite the early hour, the
doctor was in CIC. He liked to be there when something interesting was happening. The ship was at Condition Orange, which was one readiness state higher than the Blue where Max kept the ship most of the time. Above that, there was Amber and, finally, Red, or general quarters. There were no identified threats in the system, but this was where Max expected to be hit.

  “No, we wouldn’t because the Krag ships aren’t jumping after us. They would have watched us jump out of that first system, then run to the next system on their compression drives, getting there while we were still crossing from jump in to jump out. It wouldn’t take many jumps for them to figure out what we’re doing and to predict our route. Then they just get a few jumps ahead of us and lie in wait, which is what they’re doing somewhere. I’m betting it’s here. Somewhere.”

  Max turned to DeCosta who was at his station. “XO, put yourself in the shoes, or should I say ‘footwear,’ of the Krag who want to ambush our little convoy.” Max heaped the word with all the scorn that born hunters had for the idea of plodding through space along a predictable path while waiting for the enemy to come to them. It was the contempt that a wolf might have for a ewe.

  “Well, sir,” he answered, making it clear that he had given some thought to the matter, “there are four places I regard as likely.” He gestured toward the tactical projection, which at the moment displayed only a 1 AU radius around the ship. Max nodded. DeCosta touched a few soft keys, and the display changed to an overview of the Cumberland’s trajectory from jump in to jump out.

  The geometrically perfect curve of the group’s projected course, traced in green, gracefully arced through the back cube of the projection. A tiny yellow dot near the top of the display represented the system’s primary, Edmonton B. None of the planets were visible at this scale. DeCosta touched another key, and four short segments of the green curve turned red.