To Honor You Call Us (Man of War)

by Honsinger, H. Paul

  The Cumberland began firing its own, somewhat less powerful pulse cannon, on the off chance of doing some damage or at least helping confuse the enemy targeting systems. It was impossible to miss a nonevading target of that size at that range, so every shot scored a hit on the battlecruiser, but her deflectors and immensely thick, armored hull prevented any major damage. The fifth shot did, however, actually manage to destroy one of the battlecruiser’s two aft targeting scanners. With only one targeting scanner operating, the chances of getting a lock decreased significantly.

  Concealed by the Cumberland’s attack, the accelerating cutter came up behind her mother ship, matching its speed at .60 c. The two ships exchanged quick digital signals verifying that each was prepared for the next step, starting a five-second countdown clock on each vessel. When his clock reached zero, Mori nudged his drive controller forward and pulled around the Cumberland on its port side. Just as the cutter drew even with the Cumberland’s missile tubes and reached a speed of .61c, the Cumberland fired a Raven heavy antiship missile from each of its two forward missile tubes.

  At that same moment, four explosive bolts on the port side of the cutter and four on the starboard detonated, each set releasing a hastily fashioned bracket that had held a Raven to the hull of the Cutter. Following their recently altered flight software, these two Ravens yawed away from the cutter for two seconds at low power before their drives went to full stage and rapidly accelerated the missiles to attack speed, matching that of their two brethren just fired from the Cumberland.

  “Maneuvering, break away,” Max nearly shouted. “Missile rooms, reload with Talons.”

  LeBlanc gave the preplanned orders to his men, veering the destroyer ninety degrees away from its previous course while continuing to accelerate at Emergency so that the Krag gunners would have to try to follow the fastest possible change in bearing. As the range opened up and the Cumberland continued to accelerate, the pulse cannon bolts trailed hopelessly behind.

  The four Raven missiles streaked toward their target. Communicating with one another in microsecond-long coded bursts, their sophisticated onboard computers coordinated their attack second by second, working together like a pack of wolves to confuse and destroy their prey.

  After flying together in a rough box formation for a few seconds, the missiles separated from one another, each approaching the huge vessel from amidships as though each were approaching from a different cardinal point of the compass. Within its designated target zone, each missile scanned its quarry, selecting a particularly vulnerable point—a hatch, a junction between two hull plates, a cluster of waste gas vents. Three missiles slowed slightly and one speeded up so that they would impact and detonate at exactly the same microsecond, placing the maximum stress on the structure, shielding, integrity fields, and blast suppression systems of the Krag vessel. Finally, at 99.28 percent of the speed of light, all four streaked past the Krag defenses and detonated as one.

  Four 1.5-megaton fusion warheads exploded—four suns born around the Krag’s hull, growing and merging into a gigantic four-lobed fireball consuming the battlecruiser in less than a second. The orb of destruction assimilated metal and plastic, bone and flesh alike, taking atoms forged by nucleosynthesis billions of years ago in the cores of now long-dead supernovae and hurling them back into the void.

  Max watched the expanding globe of light as it filled his screen. He had never seen four of the big warheads used on a target all at once, and he was awed by the enormous destruction that could be unleashed at his order. And by how powerful the bombs were in comparison to the puny men who made them.

  The fireball faded. There was still work to do. “Tactical, what are our remaining friends doing?

  “The ore carrier’s course and speed are unchanged—he’s still headed for the jump point, ETA six hours, thirty-seven minutes. A reasonable hypothesis is that the vessel is automated. And the corvettes are running for it—drives are redlined. Heading is two-two-five mark zero-one-five. That’s a course for the nearest edge of the zone messed up by the Egg Scrambler”

  “Can we get within pulse cannon range before they get there?”

  Someone in Tactical’s back room who was paying close enough attention, either watching the overall situation or listening to the conversation in CIC or both, decided that just such a calculation would be needed and had put it up on one of Tactical’s screens. “Affirmative, sir. With the main sublight at ‘Full,’ we can still catch them with about six minutes to spare. And even if they get there, sir, Corpuscles have a top speed on compression of only about twelve hundred c. We could overtake them pretty quickly.”

  “That’s good to know, Tactical, but I prefer not to engage a superluminal target if I can help it. Maneuvering, reduce to full and shape course to intercept the corvettes.”

  “Ahead full, course to intercept corvettes, aye.” LeBlanc implemented the drive setting change, spent a few moments with his console, calculating the new course, and then gave the course change orders.

  The Cumberland overtook the two smaller ships, rapidly drawing within pulse cannon range of the fleeing vessels.

  “Weapons, bring pulse cannon one and pulse cannon three to Prefire. Target cannon one on Hotel Two and cannon three on Hotel Three. Hold pulse cannon two on Standby.”

  “Aye, sir, pulse one and three to Prefire, two remaining on Standby.” Weapons acknowledged. Eleven seconds passed as the systems that diverted plasma from the ship’s main reactor and routed it through shielded conduits into the cannons’ firing chambers were energized, their cooling systems powered up and engaged, and the cannon aiming systems enabled. Two green lights on the Weapons console came on.

  “Pulse one and pulse three at Prefire. Targeting now.” The huge magnetic coils that guided the pulse blasts came to life, drew aiming data from the targeting computer, and synched with the targeting scanner, which had already locked onto the targets. Two more green lights came on. Each cannon’s target appeared on one of Tactical’s screens, along with the target’s ID, course, speed, and range.

  “Pulse one locked on Hotel Two. Pulse three locked on Hotel Three.”

  “Pulse one and pulse three to ready.”

  Weapons stabbed two orange buttons, one for each cannon to be fired, which caused plasma to flow from the reactor into the firing chambers, building up sufficient quantity to fire the weapons. This took four seconds, after which two more green lights at Tactical winked on. “Pulse one and pulse three ready.”

  “Set for maximum power, synchronized firing.”

  “Max power, synch firing, aye.”

  “Range to targets?”

  “We are 9,355 kills to Hotel Two, 9,357 kills to Hotel Three.” Maximum effective range was 10,500 kilometers.

  “Confirm targets.”

  “Pulse one is targeted on Krag corvette designated Hotel Two off our bow, range 9,355 kills. Pulse two is targeted on Krag corvette designated Hotel Three off our bow, range 9,357 kills.”

  “Captain, I think we are missing something important here,” Garcia interjected.

  “Like what?” Max was not entirely successful in concealing his irritation at being interrupted just as he was about to kill these two targets.

  “Why aren’t they evading? Corvettes are very maneuverable. I mean, as soon as we got in range these guys should have started jinking all over the place, right?”

  Good question. Why the hell not? What could they possibly have to gain by not zigzagging? Max could think of only one thing: if the corvettes maintained a constant course, then the Cumberland was more likely to maintain a constant course as well. Therefore, the Krag must want his ship to stay in a constant position relative to theirs. Why would they want that? Oh. Crap.

  “Forward deflectors to maximum—tune for metallic object about two meters in diameter with extremely low relative velocity. Point defense batteries, zone firing. Blanket thirty-degree cone forward. Spaceframe reinforcement to maximum. All hands brace for impact.”

 
CIC held its breath for two and a half seconds, at which point the console screens showing output from the forward optical scanners flared white and then went dark, their receptors burned out. A split second later, the ship trembled mildly as the shock wave from the explosion, almost vanishingly tenuous in the vacuum of outer space, struck the hull.

  “All right, now that we’ve got that settled, let’s fry the bastards. Weapons, fire pulse one and two.”

  Weapons pressed both fire controls and two glowing balls of compressed plasma about two meters in diameter streaked through space, each striking its target dead center and exploding as its containment field—generated by a tiny liquid helium–cooled emitter inserted in the plasma pulse as it left the gun tube—shattered with the explosive force of about half a kiloton.

  It wasn’t much compared to a missile, but the blast equivalent of five hundred tons of TNT, not to mention the thermal and structural stress of being struck at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed by a ball of compressed, ionized gas as hot as the interior of the sun, was enough to spell the end of two superannuated corvettes. Both ships tore themselves apart in twin orgies of glaring explosions and shredding metal.

  A few moments later, as normalcy returned to CIC and the destroyer shaped course to intercept the now defenseless ore carrier, the XO turned to his skipper.

  “Sir, do you mind telling me what the hell just happened.”

  “Oh, that.” Max managed to sound almost nonchalant. “New weapon. One of our spy ships witnessed a test of it inside Krag space a few months ago, but we didn’t know that it was deployed yet: code name ‘Remora’ or something like that. Nasty little fucker. It’s a stealthed, remote-controlled fusion bomb designed to kill an overtaking ship. The bastards launch it cold, and it comes at you slowly and undetectably just as you think you are boring in at them on their six. The stealth is so good that the point defense grid doesn’t pick it up, and the speed relative to the chasing ship is so low that the deflectors don’t even budge it. They just let it crawl back until they’ve got it snuggled right up against the hull and then BLAM. You never see it coming.”

  He turned toward Tactical. “That looked like—what?—a one-fifty or one-sixty kiloton burst?”

  “Our reading is one-five-two kilo tango, Skipper,” Bartoli answered.

  “Okay, a hundred-and-fifty-two kt thermonuclear burst. Inside the deflectors. Right up against the hull. That’s a 100 percent kill for anything from a medium cruiser on down. Who knows how many times they’ve used it without us being the wiser? No warning. No survivors. Just another ship ‘missing, presumed lost.’ If it hadn’t been for your question, XO, they would have gotten us too.”

  Max shook his head ruefully. Already he could think of five lost Union ships that had left debris patterns perfectly explained by what he had observed about this weapon.

  “Anyway, tuning the deflector for an object of the right size and relative velocity pushed it away from the ship where the point defense batteries were able to get a lock once the deflectors had it. The computer on board the weapon determined that it was going to be destroyed, so it detonated before we could hit it. We lived. They died.” This time. “That’s the name of the game.

  “Chin, raise the cutter.” Chin clicked a few keys.

  “Cutter, Mori here.”

  “Mori, this is the skipper. Didn’t want you to think you’d slipped our minds. What’s your status?”

  “The cutter lost some external antennae when that second Raven lit off, but other than that, no damage. I’ll be at the rendezvous point in thirteen minutes.”

  “Excellent. See you there. Keep on piloting like that and I might just let you take the cutter out again some time. Skipper out.”

  The ore carrier, which was the real target all along, continued to plow toward the jump point with dogged, robotic determination. Because Krag remote navigation software is almost totally immune to tampering and because robot vessels are usually heavily booby-trapped, there was little chance that the ore carrier could be diverted or boarded. There was only one thing to do with it, then—blow it to flaming atoms.

  The vessel’s destruction was anticlimactic—a straightforward approach from the starboard beam, two shots from pulse cannon number two, and the half-million-ton freighter and its bulky but strategically valuable cargo became a cloud of debris. None of that ore would ever be refined into metal to make Krag guns, Krag swords, and Krag ships. A small but measurable blow to enemy war production had been struck by the USS Cumberland.

  For the first time since its commissioning, the Cumberland had met the enemy in battle and had defeated him. Victory. It really did taste sweet.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  14:38Z Hours, 26 January 2315

  Max had been writing his After Action Report detailing the destruction of the Krag battlecruiser, two corvettes, and ore carrier for a little over an hour, trying to find the right balance between bland, bureaucratic description and tooting his own horn and that of his crew in vigorous prose. Such things were best done when the engagement was fresh in one’s mind. After two hours doing single combat with the Standard language, Navy style, Max completed the report and hit the key that made it a part of the ship’s log before marking it for transmission to the Task Force and to the Admiralty as soon as the ship came off EMCON.

  Because he was at his workstation, he decided to check his messages. The screen helpfully informed him, “Your in box contains 247 new items.” That’s a lot. Particularly as he had cleared out the box less than eighteen hours ago. He selected the command to “Rank Items According to Priority.” The computer algorithm balanced the priority assigned by the sender to the message; the identity of the sender; and its assessment, based on content, of how important the message would be to the recipient.

  The result of that analysis was that a communication from Dr. Sahin landed at the top of the heap. It said that the doctor had found out from Goldman that one of the sources of stress on the officers and senior NCOs was that they had to prepare too many reports to comply with a thicket of inane standing orders imposed by Captain Oscar. He recommended that Max review the reports required by the ship’s standing orders and eliminate the unnecessary ones.

  Max scrolled through the list of other incoming emails and could not help but concur. A daily Sensor Contact Report from Harbaugh. Three separate reports from Chief Jinnah: one indicating that he had issued the coffee pots, one indicating he had issued the beverage chillers, and one indicating he had issued the cups and glasses. A report from the galley indicating how many kilograms of various foodstuffs and how many liters of various beverages were consumed by the men. Yesterday. Another report from the galley listing total consumption of liquor, beer, stout, and wine. Yesterday. One set of numbers for officers and one set for enlisted. And the other 242 were of the same ilk.

  Dreading what he expected to find, Max pulled up the file that contained all of the ship’s standing orders. “There are 1,232 standing orders on file.” Damn, damn, damn. Max was kicking himself, hard. Why had he not checked the SSO file sooner? Stupid mistake. Correction: another stupid mistake. He knew he couldn’t afford many more of those.

  “Display in list form, summary form, or as full text in order issued?” Max chose “list” and spent about a minute scrolling down looking at the reference lines: “Organization of Cookware and Utensils in Galley According to Principles of Time and Motion Science; Eating in Quarters Prohibited Save for Personnel Confined Thereto; Use of the Phrase ‘The Fact That’ in Any Correspondence Addressed to the Captain or Being Sent to Higher Authority Prohibited…”

  Sweet baby Jesus! He had never seen such a load of crap. He kicked himself again. He really should have checked the standing orders. This crew didn’t need to take drugs to addle its brains—they were already dizzy from chasing their own tails.

  The doctor had suggested that he go through the standing orders and eliminate those that imposed an undue burden on th
e crew—careful use of the scalpel. This problem didn’t need a scalpel. It needed a bone saw. No—a battle-ax.

  He pulled up the computer form for a standing order and checked the list of previous orders for the correct number (only eleven so far this year, as Captain Oscar had been relieved on January 4th). He began to type:

  USS Cumberland DPA-0004: Ship’s Standing Order #15–12

  Effective immediately:

  1. All previous ship’s standing orders (SSOs) are revoked. “All” means all.

  2. Until further notice, this vessel will be governed by the Union Space Navy Model Standing Orders for vessels of this type.

  He hit ENTER. There. That should put a stop to some of that insanity. He shook his head—what else had he missed? When and how would it rear up and bite him in the ass?

  Max gulped down the last of the cold coffee at the bottom of his mug and looked at his bunk. God, he was tired. Maybe a short nap. Just an hour or two. He had just about talked himself into it when his comm buzzed. “Skipper.”

  “Captain, this is the chief medical officer. I am in C-24,” Sahin announced formally. “I regret to report that we have a fatality.”

  “On my way.”

  Max’s quarters were on B Deck just forward of amidships, whereas C-24 was one deck below, and aft. Still, Max was there in less than two minutes, making a point not to look as though he were in any particular hurry or that anything was wrong. When he emerged from the corridor alcove containing the access ladder he had used to change decks into the main corridor on C Deck, he saw that he need not have bothered. There were at least twenty people in the corridor, milling about and talking, blocking his way to Compartment C-24.

  When he was about ten meters away from the crowd he stopped and, using his best parade-ground voice (one of the loudest in the fleet, truth be told), barked, “AH-TENNN-HUT!”