“So, you don’t think it’s anything sinister like making it easier for us to track the convoy to lure us into a trap, because it kind of feels like one,” said DeCosta with evident relief.
“Probably not. But don’t stop trusting your hunches. Remember Rule 12 from Commodore Middleton’s book?”
“I’m afraid not. I never learned the rules by number,” DeCosta replied with obvious embarrassment.
“You should learn the numbers. Makes for good shorthand talk, as in: Sir, aren’t you forgetting Rule 7? and so on. Rule 12 states as follows.” Max quoted as though he were reciting Holy Scripture, which as far as he was concerned, he was: “Anything that feels like a trap probably is. But don’t forget Rule 13.”
“Which is?”
Max shook his head and “tsk”ed in mock disapproval. “You’ve got a lot of studying to do, XO, in your copious free time, of course. Rule 13: While it is usually best to evade the traps by the enemy, it is sometimes necessary to walk into them.”
The Cumberland had spent most of the last day and a half station-keeping relative to Steigenberger V A, a geologically active moon, which, as its name indicated, was the first moon of the fifth planet in the Steigenberger system. The planet, Steigenberger V, was a gas giant 2.2 times the mass of Jupiter, possessing a powerful gravitational field that continually stretched and compressed its nearmost satellite, heating the moon’s interior and keeping its crust and upper mantle in a constant state of furious volcanism such that the tiny world had a surface comprised mostly of molten rock. The destroyer had been using the moon’s heat to mask its own, allowing it to remain stealthy while radiating its accumulated thermal energy into space, so long as the ship maintained a position directly between the convoy and the moon. In that way, the Krag infrared detectors (which, the Union now knew, had poor angular resolution) would not spot the comparatively hot ship silhouetted against the cold of space, but would detect only the searing magma of the planet’s surface behind.
As the convoy approached the point along its course closest to the moon, a distance of just over 4 AU, the Cumberland had engaged its stealth systems, slipped away from the gas giant and its moon, and was now quietly creeping into the convoy’s path, where it would lie in wait to pounce on the enemy.
“I’ve got enough data points for a rough course and speed, sir,” Bartoli said. “Our target motion analysis is giving us one-two-zero mark two-four-zero and a speed of .5 c—that’s with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 degrees on each axis and plus or minus .07 c in speed. They’re moving into a position where the probe we launched yesterday will be able to give us good cross bearings like we planned, so we’ll be able to generate a precise solution a lot faster. I’ll have something a lot better for you in another ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Is the new heading consistent with their base course?”
“Affirmative, Skipper. It’s a plausible zigzag around a base course toward their expected destination, the battle station at the second planet’s L5.”
“Very well. Mr. Kasparov, do we have a Posident on those ships yet?”
“Negative, Skipper. We have the confirmed flag traffic that Batty’s intercepted and decrypted from the last system showing that Admiral Birch was definitely in one of those ships. But we didn’t get close enough last time to get enough data for an ID on the ships themselves or to figure out which one the admiral is on. Given our rate of closure, though, I expect we’ll have enough data for a good ID within the next hour or less.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Mr. Bhattacharyya, do we have any results from your work on the transponder codes?”
“No answer yet, sir, but I expect something soon,” he answered from the Intel Console. Even before the doctor could ask, Max jerked his head in Sahin’s direction. The young intelligence officer continued, addressing his remarks to the doctor, “With the captured Krag data, we were able to cobble together a version of one of the enemy’s IFF interrogation signals close enough to trick the ships in the convoy into sending a response.”
“What good is that going to do? I thought transponder responses to IFF interrogations were too heavily encrypted for us to be able to get anything from them,” the doctor said, setting his coffee mug down. Several highly astonished heads containing deeply surprised minds swiveled rapidly in Sahin’s direction. He pretended not to notice, all the while smiling the beatific smile of a man who knows that others have underestimated him.
“Well, Doctor, that’s not entirely true.” Sahin tilted his head as an invitation for him to continue. “The transponder codes are highly encrypted, and the encryption changes each time the transponder receives an IFF signal, so all of the keys we captured have expired. But the captured data core does give us a huge library of expired keys, allowing us to know what the parameters are, which cuts the number of permutations down from something like 4.5 x 1045 to 7.2 x 1028. That first number is impossible for any computer to plow through in less than a year, but Mrs. Denny can get through the second—”
“Excuse me,” the doctor interrupted. “Mrs. Denny?”
“It’s customary for the crew to give a woman’s name to the ship’s computer. Our crew didn’t come up with this one until a few weeks ago,” DeCosta said. In response to Sahin’s look of total incomprehension, the XO continued, “Mrs. Denny is the heroine of Vera B. Scott’s series of Mrs. Denny murder mysteries. You know, from the thirties and forties of the last century . . . Murder in an Airlock, Murder in Zero G, Murder at the Ringview Resort, The Hideous Tachyo-Graviton Murders . . . she must have written forty or fifty of them.”
“Mrs. Denny was the smartest woman that Bales could think of,” Bhattacharyya said, “besides his mother, who had some Welsh name that not even I could pronounce. Anyway, without compromising her ability to tend to other business, Mrs. Denny can make it all the way through 7.2 x 1028 permutations in about fifty hours, meaning that on average she can crack a transponder code in about a day. That’s not fast enough to tell us anything during an engagement, but within a few hours from now we should be able to ID those ships right down to the registry numbers.”
“Thank you for that outstanding explanation, Mr. Bhattacharyya,” Sahin said.
The ensign acknowledged the thanks with a nod, smiling at the joke that Max showed no sign of noticing.
Midshipman Hewlett, who had drawn CIC duty for this watch, took advantage of the lull to put on another pot of coffee and refill a dozen or so mugs of a dozen or so watch standers who wanted to fortify themselves for what they expected to be the action to come.
“I’ve got a better plot for you on that convoy,” Bartoli said. Max raised his eyebrows as a signal for the tactical officer to proceed. “We’ve derived a firm course of one-one-seven mark two-four-two. Speed is .52. We haven’t gotten solid IDs, but we’re starting to be able to tease out the separate mass and other characteristics of the individual ships, rather than just getting one blur of data.” He made a few entries from his console that caused three “Hotel” icons and associated labels showing range, bearing, heading, and speed, plus a distance scale, to appear in one of the secondary tactical displays on the Command Island. “As you can see, we believe them to be in a line ahead formation with an interval of approximately 7900 kilometers. Hotel two, which is on point, is shaping up as an intermediate-size vessel, something in the 75,000-ton range. Hotel three, next in line, looks like a small vessel, something around 6500 tons. Hotel four, tail-end Charlie, is very large, at least a million tons, maybe even a million and a half.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bartoli,” Max said. “I know you just said you don’t have solid IDs yet, but I’m sure you have some pretty reasonable conjecture about what these vessels are, based on their mass, their mission, the convoy intervals, and so on.”
“Well, yes, sir, I reckon I do.” Several men in CIC smiled at Bartoli’s idiomatic Southern reckon. “My best guess is that Hotel three is one of those armed freighters that the Krag have been favoring lately for their convoys t
hrough low- to moderate-threat zones, maybe a Fragmenter or Frostbite class. And, sir, that would not be good news at all. Those guys have excellent sensors: not only up to warship standards but as good as most Krag escort types have got. Plus, while they’ve got typically weak freighter hulls and nothing like a warship’s deflector power, their pulse-cannon batteries and missile capabilities are equivalent to what we’ve got.”
“They can dish it out, but they can’t take it,” Max commented.
“Exactly, sir. Next, Hotel four would likely be the admiral’s transport, probably one of their military VIP transport vessels—informally we call them ‘admirals’ yachts.’ Because near the FEBA, VIPs are usually on board warships, we’ve never gotten good scans of any of the current generation of that type, and the captured Krag computer core had little more on them than vessel recognition data—so we’ve assigned class reporting names but don’t have any useful intel about their speed, maneuverability, armament, defenses, or resistance to damage. In the past, in general, admirals’ yachts have been reasonably fast, with no offensive capability to speak of. I could give you a few guesses as to which class we’re looking at, but I don’t see the point because the name wouldn’t convey any kind of meaningful information.”
“Makes sense to me,” DeCosta said quietly to Max.
“I concur, XO,” Max said loudly enough for the whole CIC to hear. It never hurt for the men to see the skipper backing the XO. “Tell me about the third ship.”
“Skipper, the immense target at the end has got to be a tanker, likely a Tangerine, Tannhauser, Tangipahoa, or related class. Not that the class really matters for this type. Modular tanker. There’s basically one overall design, even for most of the alien races we know.”
Convergent evolution had brought several diverse cultures to build almost identical tankers for the same reason every known technological culture had invented the pump-action shotgun and Velcro: it worked. Forward, there was a command, control, and habitation module containing the control stations, sensors, computer core, crew quarters, and galley. Then came a long metal spine, to which the modular fuel tanks were easily attached or removed and also containing control cables, life-support conduits, power and comm lines, and an access tunnel. This led to a reactor and engineering module for the fusion reactors, the fission auxiliary reactor, power distribution, engineering control stations, and the hold containing consumables for the crew and ship’s systems. Finally, there was the main sublight drive module, with the thrust chambers, the plasma accelerator annuli, and the exhaust nozzles.
“Very well, Mr. Bartoli,” Max said. “What does this new course do to our intercept solution?”
“The solution is still good, Skipper. Unless they stay on this leg far longer than they have on any other, or unless they make some other radical deviation from what we expect, this change still puts them well within the predicted zone. Our current heading will put us directly along their mean course two hours and fourteen minutes from now, with the targets coming into attack position one hour and twenty-seven minutes after that.”
“Very well,” Max said. “Mr. DeCosta, please see that everyone on watch has food brought to them over the next two hours and that the rest of the men cycle through the mess during that time. We’ll be going to General Quarters in two hours and twenty minutes.”
The time passed quickly. Two hours and twenty-two minutes later, Mr. DeCosta had seen that the men had eaten, and the chiefs had seen that all of the men under their charge were at their stations, ready for action. All compartments were at their full airtight integrity, the missile tubes were loaded, and all systems were ready to respond to Max’s orders. The Main Tactical Display, as well as variously configured tactical displays on other consoles located throughout CIC, reflected the knowledge gained over the past few hours—mainly the class identifications and precise masses of the three ships—and that information, along with bearing, speed, range, and heading, appeared near the icon representing each vessel.
The Cumberland was at station keeping, her stealth systems fully engaged, like a leopard hiding in the underbrush, waiting to spring on its prey. Max expected the convoy to make another course change shortly before reaching the destroyer’s position, at which point the destroyer would slip into silent motion, needing only to cross a comparatively short distance to make the intercept at an angle of roughly sixty degrees from dead ahead. Intercepting the convoy immediately after a course change made it less likely that the enemy would change course during the destroyer’s approach, throwing off its intercept and targeting solutions and possibly even resulting in detection.
Indeed, less than twenty minutes after the destroyer went to General Quarters, the convoy zigged. Bartoli, of course, immediately reported the course change. Only a few minutes later, he had more information—the laws of geometry dictate that when using measured changes in bearing to deduce a moving object’s course and speed, decreasing range to the target results in increasing precision. “Skipper, I’ve got a firm course plot on the convoy. New heading is one-four-one mark two-one-one. They have accelerated slightly to .57 c, which is pretty fast for this kind of convoy—I suppose they think that it will prevent any interception.” Most of the men chuckled to themselves. The Cumberland was built for speed, and from any reasonable starting position could intercept a convoy at .57 c, or for that matter, at .75 c.
“Anything further on the convoy’s makeup or capabilities?” Max asked.
“Negative, sir. As you know, Hotel two has turned out to be a Frostbite class armed freighter, Hotel three is a Treadmill class VIP transport, and Hotel four is a Tanzanite class tanker. You’ve got what we know about each class on your enemy capabilities display, which isn’t very much.” Bartoli sighed. He liked having more data. “We’ve had no new signal intercepts or other data to shed light on the situation. There’s no data to contradict our earlier conclusion that Admiral Birch is on the Treadmill.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bartoli. Maybe Admiral Birch is on the Treadmill because he needs to lose a few pounds.” When that feeble joke died, Max continued, “Maneuvering, give us course and speed for our planned intercept.”
“Aye, sir,” replied LeBlanc, “course and speed for planned intercept. New course is zero-seven-nine mark one-five-three, speed .13 c. ETA at the IP in forty-seven minutes.” Under Chief LeBlanc’s direction, the three young spacers at the Maneuvering stations put the ship into motion and pointed it toward the IP or Initial Point, from which the Cumberland would begin its rendezvous with the enemy.
Max busied himself paging through status reports—both human- and machine-generated—from various stations around the ship. As usual he discovered a few instances in which the computer was reporting results with which the designated human had not dealt correctly. These instances, much to Max’s satisfaction, were fewer and less severe with each passing week, usually involving a subtle issue that only an old space dog would spot. Max was able to address them all with a few short conversations over the voice channels. When that was done, Max paid a quick visit to the head, washed his face, peeled off his SCU and undergarment to hit the sweatiest spots with some absorbent powder, zipped back up, and returned to CIC.
He was just in time to hear LeBlanc announce, “IP in three minutes.”
At that moment the hatch cycled. Without turning his head, Max called out, “Welcome to CIC, Doctor. Things are about to heat up, so I’d advise sitting in your usual place and securing your station harness. Lately you’ve been pretty lax about clipping on, and I don’t want my Chief Medical Officer bouncing all over CIC in case we lose artificial gravity or inertial compensators.” The newcomer was, indeed, Dr. Sahin, with the ship’s cat at his heels. Max had noticed Clouseau shadowing Bram with increasing frequency and wondered whether the cat slept in the doctor’s quarters. “I see you brought your friend.”
“If you are referring to this morbidly obese feline,” the doctor replied as he took his accustomed seat at the Commodore’s Station, “he is mos
t certainly not my friend. As I have told you repeatedly, I am not in the least bit fond of cats, and I particularly dislike this egregiously rotund specimen.” As soon as Sahin sat down, Clouseau leaped into the seat beside him. The doctor was stroking the cat’s well-tended sable fur even as he uttered the protestations about not liking cats. Max could hear quiet laughter from around the compartment.
Smiling, Max turned to DeCosta. “XO?”
“All stations report ready to execute the attack in all respects. We’ve got Talons in tubes one and two, targeted on Hotel three and ready for firing in all respects, save that the missile doors are closed.” DeCosta would have the missile doors open as well if doing so didn’t greatly compromise stealth. “We’ve got an Egg Scrambler in tube three, ready for firing in all respects, missile door closed. Pulse-cannons are at PREFIRE. I’ve conferred with Chief Engineer Brown: he told me something about being ready to answer bells. I looked it up and saw . . .”
“I know what it means, Lieutenant. I’m the one who taught him the expression back when we served together on the Emeka Moro. Very good, XO. Now, let’s see if we can bag ourselves a Krag admiral.”
“IP in thirty seconds,” said LeBlanc.
“Mr. Bartoli,” Max said, “any change in enemy dispositions?”
“Negative, sir. No change.”
“Very well.”
“IP in fifteen seconds,” LeBlanc announced.
“Remember, gentlemen,” Max said, “you are to execute the attack plan without further orders when we reach the IP.”
Around CIC, heads nodded. Almost as one, practically every man, Max included, wiped sweaty palms on the leg of his SCU.
Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3) Page 29
