Beginnings-eARC

by David Weber

  Though of course the Volsungs themselves might not see it that way.

  Fortunately, none of that was McConnovitch's concern. His job was simply to deliver the data to the rendezvous system where the mercenary task force was assembling. That snide little man Llyn was the one who would have to make the actual go/no-go decision.

  “We're clear of the lane, Sir,” the helmsman announced. “Course laid in.”

  “Good,” McConnovitch said, and meant it. He was more than ready to show his kilt to this grubby, backwater little system. “Make some gees, Hermie. We wouldn't want to keep Mr. Llyn waiting.”

  * * *

  Travis had finished unsealing one of his boots and was starting on the other one when the young man lolling on the top bunk of their tiny cabin finally emerged far enough from the depths of his tablet to notice he was no longer alone. “There you are,” Brad Fornier commented as he peered over the edge of the bunk. “Bajek have you on extra duty today? Or were you just starting the celebration early?”

  “What are we celebrating?” Travis asked.

  “Our upcoming R and R, of course,” Fornier said. “Don't tell me you're not looking forward to a couple of weeks groundside.”

  Travis shrugged. “Depends on if the Number Two autocannon tracking sensor is slated for replacement. If so, yes. If not, not really.”

  “Mm,” Fornier said. “At least you're not blaming Locatelli for that anymore.”

  Travis winced. No, he wasn't blaming the young ensign for the sensors' foul-up. At least not directly. “He still should have spotted the problem and either fixed it or reported it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Fornier said, an annoyingly knowing tone to his voice. “How many people in your section, Travis?”

  “Nine, including me.”

  “And how many of them are useless political appointees like Locatelli?”

  Travis made a face. It wasn't hard to see where Fornier was going with this. “Maybe two.”

  “Maybe two,” Fornier repeated. “So let's call it one and a half. One and a half out of eight—make it nine, since you're not political and I assume you consider yourself nonuseless. That comes to about seventeen percent. All things considered, that's really not all that bad.”

  “I suppose not,” Travis conceded. Though Fornier was conveniently ignoring the fact that the political problem seemed to get worse the higher up the food chain you traveled. With one side of Parliament still pushing to defund and dismantle the Navy, all of those political animals—the ones who'd joined for the honor and glory—were scrambling to claw their way up the ladder to the coveted command ranks before the rug was pulled out from under them.

  Maybe King Edward would turn that around. Certainly his “refit and recruit” program was showing progress.

  But Travis had seen other such efforts fizzle out over the years. He wasn't really expecting this one to do any better.

  And in the meantime, there were way more earls and barons in the command structure than anyone needed.

  Maybe that was the end vector of all armed forces during protracted peacetime. Maybe the trend always drifted toward the political appointees, and the people who couldn't figure out what else to do, and the coasters who figured such service would be an easy and comfortable way to wander their way through life. Maybe the only way that ever turned around was if there was a war.

  Still, much as it might be interesting to see how those three groups handled a sudden bout of real combat, Travis certainly didn't wish a war on the Star Kingdom. Or on anyone else, for that matter.

  “Trust me, it's not bad,” Fornier said dryly. “Certainly isn't a travesty or anything.”

  Travis glared up at him. “Not you, too,” he growled.

  “Sorry,” Fornier said, not quite suppressing a grin. “It just suits you so well, that's all. How in the world did you pick up a signature phrase like that, anyway?”

  “It's a long story,” Travis said shortly, returning his attention to his boots.

  “Okay, fine—don't tell me,” Fornier said equably. “But seriously, take it from someone who did two years in retail before joining up. You keep track of every vendor, tradesman, bureaucrat, and official you meet during your two weeks groundside. I'll bet you a hundred that you'll find way more than seventeen percent who are jerks—”

  Abruptly, the heart-stopping wail of the ship's klaxons erupted all around them. There were two seconds of full volume, and then the cacophony abruptly dropped to a relative whisper. “Battle stations!” the voice of Commander Vance Sladek, Phoenix's executive officer, came sharply over the alarm. “Battle stations! Battle stations! All hands man battle stations!”

  There was a thud as Fornier hopped off his bunk and landed on the deck. Travis was already at the emergency locker; pulling out the vac suits, he tossed Fornier's to him and started climbing into his own. “Hell of a time for a drill,” Fornier said with a grunt.

  “If it is a drill,” Travis warned.

  “Sladek didn't say it wasn't.”

  “He also didn't say it was,” Travis countered. “Either way, he'll skin us alive if we're late, so move it.”

  Four of Travis's eight men and women were ready at their combat stations when he arrived. Ensign Locatelli, he noted darkly, wasn't one of them. “Diagnostics?” he asked, floating over to them in the zero-gee of the ship's bow.

  “In progress,” Ensign Tomasello confirmed. “Number Two's trackers are still coming up twitchy—”

  “Long!” Bajek's voice boomed through the cramped space. “Lieutenant Long?”

  “Here, Ma'am,” Travis said, moving out from the partial concealment of a thick coolant pipe.

  “Captain wants you on the bridge,” Bajek said shortly. “I'm taking over here. Go.”

  “Yes, Ma'am.” Maneuvering past her, Travis floated his way down the corridor toward the bridge, pulling himself hand over hand along the wall grips, a sinking feeling joining the resident tension already in his stomach. He had no idea what he'd done now, but for Castillo to be bothering with him at a time like this it must have been something big.

  Like the other officers aboard Phoenix, Travis had been part of the bridge watch rotation ever since the early days of his assignment. But he'd never seen it during combat conditions, and the first thing that struck him as he maneuvered through the door was how calm everyone seemed to be. The voices giving orders and reports were terse, but they were clear and well controlled. Captain Castillo was strapped into his station, his eyes moving methodically between the various displays, while Commander Sladek held position at his side, the two of them occasionally murmuring comments back and forth. All of the monitors were live, showing the ship's position, vector, and acceleration, as well as the status of the two forward missile launchers, the spinal laser, and the three autocannon defense systems.

  In the center of the main tactical display was the approaching enemy.

  It was a warship, all right. The signature of the wedge made that clear right from the outset. It was pulling a hundred twenty gees, which didn't tell Travis much—virtually any warship could handle that kind of acceleration, and most could do considerably better. The range marker put it just under four hundred thousand kilometers out, a little over twelve minutes away on their current closing vector.

  His first reaction was one of relief. There was no way a warship could sneak up that close without Phoenix's sensors picking it up. Fornier had been right: this was indeed a drill.

  But what kind of drill required Travis to be hauled away from his station onto the bridge? Was Castillo testing Bajek's ability to run the autocannon? That seemed ridiculous.

  “Analysis, Mr. Long?”

  Travis snapped his attention back. Castillo and Sladek had finished their quiet conversation, and both men were gazing straight across the bridge at him.

  Travis swallowed hard. What were they asking him for? “It's definitely a warship, Sir,” he said, trying frantically to unfreeze his brain as he looked around the multitude of disp
lays. The sensor analysis should have spit out a data compilation and probably even an identification by now, but the screen was still showing nothing except the preliminary collection run-through. Probably another of Phoenix's chronic sensor glitches. “But it's not being overly aggressive,” he continued, trying to buy himself some time. “The hundred twenty gees it's pulling is probably around seventy percent of its standard acceleration capability.”

  “So far, there's been no response to our hail,” Sladek said. “How would you proceed?”

  And then, to Travis's relief, the sensor ID screen finally came to life. The approaching ship was indeed one of theirs, a Triumph-class battlecruiser. Specifically, it was HMS Invincible, flagship of the Green One task force.

  He had a fraction of a second of fresh relief at the confirmation that this was, indeed, just a drill. An instant later, a violent wave of fresh tension flooded in on him.

  Green One was commanded by Admiral Carlton Locatelli. Uncle of Ensign Fenton Locatelli. The junior officer Travis was continually having to write up.

  And here Travis was on Phoenix's bridge, being asked advice by his captain while Locatelli charged into simulated battle.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Mr. Long?” Castillo prompted.

  With a supreme effort, Travis forced his brain back to the situation. “Do we know if she's alone?” he asked, again looking around the bridge. Everything he could see indicated Invincible was the only vessel out there, but he wasn't quite ready to trust his reading of the relevant displays.

  “Confirmed,” Sladek said. “There's nothing else within range—”

  “Missile trace!” someone barked.

  Travis snapped his gaze around to the tactical. A new wedge had appeared, the smaller, more compact wedge of a missile tracking straight toward Phoenix. “Acceleration thirty-five-hundred gees; estimated impact, two minutes forty seconds,” the tactical officer added.

  “Stand by autocannon,” Castillo ordered calmly. “Fire will commence fifteen seconds before estimated impact.”

  Travis drew a hissing breath. That was, he knew, the prescribed response to a missile attack. With an effective range of a hundred fifty kilometers, the autocannon's self-guided shells were designed to detonate in the path of an incoming missile, throwing up a wall of shrapnel that could take out anything that drove through its midst, especially something traveling at the five thousand kilometers per second that a missile carried at the end of its run.

  At least, that was the hoped-for outcome. Given that the missile would be entering the shrapnel zone barely two hundredths of a second before reaching its target, it was a tactic that either worked perfectly or failed catastrophically. Still, more often than not, it worked.

  Only in this case, with Phoenix's Number Two autocannon not tracking properly . . .

  “You have an objection, Mr. Long?” Castillo asked.

  Travis started. He hadn't realized he'd said anything out loud. “We've been having trouble with the autocannon, Sir,” he said. “I'm thinking . . .” He stopped, suddenly aware of the utter presumption of this situation. He, a lowly senior lieutenant, was trying to tell a ship's captain how to do his job?

  But if Castillo was offended, he didn't show it. “Continue,” he merely said.

  Travis squared his shoulders. He had been asked, after all. “I'm thinking it might be better to interpose wedge,” he said, the words coming out in a rush lest he lose his nerve completely. “If the missile comes in ventral, there may not be enough autocannon coverage to stop it.”

  Castillo's lip might have twitched. It was hard to tell at that distance. But his nod was firm enough. “Helm, pitch twenty-six-degrees positive,” he ordered.

  “Pitch twenty-six degrees positive, aye, aye, Sir,” the helmsman acknowledged. “Pitching twenty-six degrees positive, aye.”

  On the tactical, Phoenix's angle began to shift, agonizingly slowly, as the ship's nose pivoted upward. Travis watched the display tensely as the incoming missile closed the distance at ever-increasing speed, wondering if his proposed countermove had been too late.

  To his relief, it hadn't. The missile was still nearly twenty seconds out when the leading edge of Phoenix's floor rose high enough to cut across its vector.

  “Continue countdown to missile impact,” Castillo ordered. “Jink port one klick.”

  Travis frowned as the helmsman repeated the order. A ship had a certain range of motion within the wedge, particularly at the zero acceleration Phoenix was holding right now.

  But moving the ship that way was tricky and cost maneuverability. What was Castillo up to?

  “Missile has impacted the wedge,” the tactical officer announced. “Orders?”

  Castillo looked at Travis and raised his eyebrows. “Suggestions, Mr. Long?”

  Travis stared at the tac display, where Invincible was now rimmed in flashing red to show that its position was based on the foggy gravitic data Phoenix was able to glean through the disruptive effects of its own wedge. For the moment, at least, the two ships were at a standoff. Phoenix couldn't fire at something it couldn't see well enough to target, and with its wedge floor interposed between them the destroyer was likewise completely protected from any weapon Invincible cared to throw at them.

  But Phoenix was a ship of the Royal Manticoran Navy. Its job wasn't to be safe. Its job was to protect the Star Kingdom's people. However Locatelli was grading them on this exercise, that grade wouldn't be very high if Phoenix continued to hide behind its wedge.

  “Recommend we reverse pitch and reestablish full sensor contact, Sir,” he said. “I'd also recommend we stand by to launch missiles.” He hesitated, wondering if he needed to add that they would want the practice missiles, not the ones with full-bore warheads. Surely they already knew that.

  “Agreed,” the captain said. “Anything else?”

  Travis frowned. From the tone of Castillo's question, he guessed there was indeed something else they should be doing. Wedge, sensor contact, missiles—

  Of course. “I'd also suggest the autocannon begin laying down fire as we approach reacquisition.”

  “Good.” Castillo gestured. “Pitch twenty-six degrees negative; prepare missiles and autocannon.”

  “Pitch twenty-six degrees negative, aye, aye, Sir.”

  “Prepare missiles and autocannon, aye, aye, Sir.”

  Once again, the tac display began to shift. Travis watched, his thumbs pressed hard against the sides of his forefingers. From somewhere forward came a muted rumble as the autocannon began firing. The flashing red rim around Invincible vanished as the sensors reacquired contact—

  “Missile!” the tac officer snapped.

  Travis blinked. The whole thing had happened way too fast for him to see, but the vector line on the tac display showed that the incoming missile had come in right along the edge of fire from the misaimed Number Two autocannon, shot past the wedge floor as it pitched back down, skimmed past Phoenix at a distance of eleven kilometers, then continued on to disintegrate against the wedge roof.

  He was staring at the line in confusion, wondering how in the world a second missile had sneaked past the sensors, when the com display opened up and Admiral Locatelli himself appeared. “Well, Captain,” Locatelli's voice boomed from the speaker, “I believe that gives me the kill.”

  “Very nearly, Admiral,” Castillo said calmly. “But I think you'll find your missile didn't quite make it into full kill range.”

  The admiral frowned, his eyes shifting off camera. His smile soured a little, and he gave a small grunt. “Clever,” he said reluctantly. “You're still blind, though—your whole tracking radar system would have been destroyed. Telemetry system, too.”

  “I can still launch missiles,” Castillo pointed out.

  “Only if there was another ship nearby you could hand them off to,” Locatelli countered. “In this case, there isn't.” He shook his head. “All in all, Captain, your response was a bit on the sloppy side. I suggest you
consider upgrading your tactical officer's training and drill schedule.”

  “This wasn't my usual tac team, Sir,” Castillo said. “One of my other officers was handling the action.”

  Locatelli sniffed audibly. “Your other officer has a lot to learn.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Deliberately, it seemed to Travis, Castillo turned a studiously neutral look in his direction. “I believe he knows that.”

  Travis felt a swirl of disbelief corkscrew through his gut. He'd been prepared—almost—to believe that an admiral of the RMN might actually go out of his way to slap down a junior officer who had crossed him.

  But for Travis's own captain to join in on the humiliation was beyond even Travis's usual level of reflexive paranoia. For Castillo to single him out this way, in front of the entire Phoenix bridge . . .

  Travis swallowed, forcing back the stinging sense of betrayal. Castillo was still his commanding officer, and the captain was clearly expecting a response. “Yes, Sir,” he managed.

  “Perfection is a noble goal,” Castillo continued, his eyes still on Travis. “We sometimes forget it's a journey, not a destination.”

  I never claimed to be perfect. Travis left the automatic protest unsaid. Clearly, this was his payback for insisting that Ensign Locatelli do his job, and neither Castillo or the admiral would be interested in hearing logical arguments.

  Or pathetic excuses, which was what any comment would be taken as anyway. “I understand, Sir,” he said instead. “I'll make it a point to remember today's lessons.”

  “I'm certain you will.” Castillo turned back to the com display. “Any farther orders, Admiral?”

  “Not at this time,” Locatelli said, a quiet but definite note of satisfaction in his voice. Whether this had been his idea or Castillo's, the admiral was obviously aware of the currents running quietly beneath the surface. “Resume your course for Manticore. I'll want a full analysis of your crew's response to this unscheduled exercise a.s.a.p.”