Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3)

by H. Paul Honsinger

  “Initial Point,” LeBlanc said, half again as loud as he intended. “Executing.”

  The Cumberland turned hard, directly toward the VIP transport, and kicked its main sublight drive up to Emergency. DeCosta and Bartoli had simulated the attack dozens of times using several different techniques and had come to a surprising conclusion. Tactical orthodoxy held that the highest probability of success was for the attacking destroyer to approach the target stealthily, launch its missiles when detected, and then accelerate away while the missiles found and destroyed their quarry. The simulations predicted that this kind of attack would fail over 80 percent of the time. The excellent sensors on the freighter would detect the Cumberland at a range of more than 75,000 kilometers; the reasonably good and overlapping missile defenses provided by the freighter and the tanker would be able to defeat any missiles fired by the destroyer unless it waited to fire until it closed to within a few thousand kilometers of the transport, while all three ships would be able to keep the Union vessel under fire as it closed to launch its missiles. The Cumberland’s best chances, it turned out, came from making a stealthy approach to a range of about 200,000 kilometers, then accelerating rapidly toward a firing point about 2500 kilometers “below” the target, and continuing in a straight line to accelerate away from the convoy, engage compression drive, and escape. In that way the time during which the destroyer was vulnerable to enemy weapons fire was kept to a minimum. She would be moving at a high enough speed to make her hard to hit, while the ship’s high speed also meant that—even though she would be detected at greater range—the enemy would actually have less warning time.

  At least that’s what the simulations said.

  In perfect conformity to the plan, the destroyer accelerated hard toward its prey. With its drive radiating practically enough light and heat to allow anyone a million kilometers away to read a newspaper and roast marshmallows, any effort at stealth would have been futile. Accordingly, the ship’s stealth systems were shut down, and she had extended her thermal fins to allow her to radiate her stored heat into space.

  “They’ve spotted us, sir,” Bartoli reported. “Hotel two is turning to bring her weapons to bear on us. Hotel four is powering up its amidships pulse-cannon batteries. And, sir,” he added with evident surprise, “Hotel three is staying put, right between the other two ships. There’s no evidence of her throttling up her main sublight. I have no idea why she isn’t running, Skipper.”

  “Maybe the admiral believes the other two ships provide adequate protection,” Max said absently. He was focused on the attack, not on dissecting the reasons his target was doing just what he wanted it to do.

  DeCosta shook his head. “I don’t know, sir . . .”

  “New contact, designating as Hotel five!” Kasparov interrupted. “Tachyon Radar, Tango Band, high intensity, three pulses. Bearing is NOT consistent with other targets. The source is 485 kilometers from Hotel three and appears to be moving toward us.” In his excitement, he forgot to read off the bearing to the contact. Everyone who needed to know could see it on his console anyway.

  Oh, shit.

  “Yankee search, ten-degree spread around bearing to Hotel five.” Max tried to sound calm. “Weapons, pull the Egg Scrambler from tube three and reload with a Talon. Countermeasures, anything you can do to confuse Hotel five would be appreciated. Maneuvering, evasive, your discretion.”

  “Already on it, Skipper,” a very busy Sauvé answered. The others acknowledged their orders. The ship changed course radically, veering away from its course toward the transport.

  “Getting returns on the Yankee search now, Skipper,” Bartoli said. “Bearing and range changing rapidly as both ships maneuver, displaying on the tactical summary screen.” Max punched that screen up on his console. “They know we’ve scanned them, sir. They just dropped their stealth . . . Preliminary ID is Denarius class destroyer, sir.”

  Bartoli totally failed in what Max hoped was an earnest effort to keep the “oh, shit” tone out of his voice. Max didn’t blame him. Denarius was such a new class that N2 wasn’t even sure it was in operational deployment yet. Faster, more powerful, and more maneuverable than the Cumberland, the class also boasted better stealth and even a reasonably effective sensor emulation. The scuttlebutt was that Denarius was the Krag answer to the Khyber class. “She’s trying to get a missile lock,” Bartoli finished.

  “Sauvé,” Max said, “if we stop evading, how long can you keep Mighty Mouse back there from getting a missile lock?”

  “As long as the range is at least 5500 kilometers, I can keep shedding lock for three, maybe four minutes,” he answered. “No more than that, though.”

  “Good enough. Maneuvering, put us alongside the tanker.”

  “How close do you want us?” LeBlanc asked once he had brought about the course change.

  “Like a flea in their fur, Mr. LeBlanc. Between the deuterium tanks.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the chief before muttering, “Couillon.”

  “Sir?” DeCosta said.

  “The chief thinks that I’m either crazy or a fool. Couillon can mean either,” said Max.

  “I was asking about the tactic, not the word, Skipper.”

  “It puts us under the guns, XO,” Max said.

  With the Cumberland making a beeline for the tanker, the Denarius class destroyer came around to an intercept course, accelerating for all she was worth and gaining, particularly as before long, the Union ship was decelerating in order to pull alongside the tanker rather than crash into it at an impressive fraction of the speed of light.

  “Sir,” Bartoli said, “Hotel five has brought his pulse-cannon to Prefire—I guess he’s decided he’s gotten tired of trying to get a missile lock.”

  “Mr. LeBlanc, be sure to keep us directly between Hotel five and Hotel four. I want him to be afraid that any pulse-cannon shots that miss us might hit the tanker.”

  “I’ll try, Skipper,” said the chief.

  The two ships began a serpentine dance, with the Krag destroyer trying to catch the Union ship while also attempting to get far enough away from an alignment with the other two ships so that it could safely fire its pulse-cannon—a task that became progressively more difficult as the Cumberland got closer to the tanker. In the end, the immutable laws of geometry combined with the dazzling skill of Chief LeBlanc prevented Hotel five from getting off a shot.

  Hotel four, on the other hand, got off several, pounding the Union vessel with hit after hit from its low-powered but wickedly accurate point-defense systems, until the Cumberland got so close that the weapons could not traverse far enough to bear on their target. A few seconds later, deft coordination between maneuvering thrusters under LeBlanc’s control and the grappling field under the direction of Mr. Levy pushed, nudged, and pulled the ship into the gap between the third and fourth ring of the tanks, so that the ship was resting on one of the Krag vessel’s tank support members that encircled its central spine like the rings in an old-fashioned hoopskirt.

  “Now, no matter what angle they shoot from, they can’t fire without risking hitting the tanks and severely damaging the tanker,” Max said.

  “That looks like a tight squeeze,” Sahin said.

  “That’s no step for a stepper,” LeBlanc replied. “That gap’s nearly 10.4 meters wide, and we’ve got a beam of right at 9.5 meters. That’s forty-five centimeters on each side.”

  Sahin looked down at his forearm, knowing that the distance from his elbow to the tip of his middle finger, known in the ancient world as the cubit, was almost exactly forty-five centimeters. “Of course. All the room in the world.”

  “Skipper,” DeCosta said, “how much time does this buy us? What are they going to do next?”

  “Well, XO, not very much time at all, but it’s going to be enough. What the Krag do next, as soon as they think of it, is jettison the tanks on either side of us. That will let that Denarius get right in beside us, and since we’re a stationary target, they can hit us at close
range with one of those particle beams they use for point-defense. They keep shooting until it burrows through the deflectors and cuts through the hull right into the fusion reactor. Then it’s au revoir, Cumberland. But that’s not going to happen. I’m not ready to bid this shiny new ship adieu just yet.

  “Mr. Levy, I need you to set the missiles in tubes one and two for close-range targeting. Tube one is to be fired at the fuel tank on our portside, tube two at the one on our starboard. Program the warheads for minimum yield, post-contact detonation. Program the missile in tube three for firing along generated bearing, delayed homing. I’ll tell you just before firing how to set the timing. I want all three missiles ready to fire right after Mr. LeBlanc puts us into motion.”

  As Levy was repeating those orders, a low thud echoed through the ship—the sound of pyrotechnics, transmitted through the members of the Krag ship and then through hull contact into the Cumberland. “Sounds like they’re jettisoning one of the tanks,” Max said. A second thud. “That sounds like the tank on the other side. It’ll take a little while before the tanks drift far enough away for Hotel five to get into position. Now, Mr. LeBlanc, you know what I’m going to want, right?”

  “Babatundé Hop?”

  “Exactly.”

  Propelled by the pyrotechnics that severed them from the tanker and by small onboard thrusters, the two enormous deuterium tanks moved lazily away from the tanker. The enemy destroyer positioned itself to port of the Cumberland on the other side of one of the tanks, ready to slip into place as soon as there was room. As soon as the tank had moved so as to completely block the Denarius from being in line of sight with the Union vessel, Max said, “Mr. LeBlanc, now.”

  Chief LeBlanc touched a flashing key on his console, initiating a set of programmed maneuvers that collectively constituted the Babatundé Hop. First, the forward maneuvering thrusters fired, pushing the ship’s bow away from the tanker. As soon as the bow was pointed directly away from the center of the enemy vessel, the main sublight engine fired, rapidly throttling up to Emergency. The powerful plasma exhaust from the Cumberland’s drive cut through the tanker’s long spine almost instantly and shredded the deuterium tanks on the opposite side. “Mr. Levy, fire tubes one and two.”

  The missiles shot from their tubes and flew past the deuterium tanks, then turned back toward them. Each easily penetrated the relatively thin skin of the tank at which it was targeted. Within a microsecond of entering the tanks, the warheads detonated, their five-kiloton explosive yield sufficient to turn the tanks into shrapnel and the deuterium inside into a cloud of incandescent, ionized gas. Even though the fuel could not burn in the vacuum of space, heated by the nuclear warheads, it was sufficiently destructive to make short work of most of the surviving parts of the tanker as well as to prevent Hotel five’s sensors from being able to track the Cumberland as it made its escape.

  Rapidly accelerating away from the holocaust that now surrounded the whirling, disintegrating remnants of the enemy tanker, the Cumberland said its farewell to the convoy by firing the Talon loaded in tube three at the VIP transport, which was now pulling away from the tanker to make its escape. Without the missile-defense umbrella provided by the other two ships and its own sensors confused by the glowing, highly energized deuterium scattered by the two thermonuclear explosions, the transport was an easy target for the Talon, ending the small vessel’s existence in a sudden flash of brilliant light.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  04:43 Zulu Hours, 22 May 2315

  “Report,” Max said to Bartoli, who was holding down the Big Chair for that watch.

  “Probe two, the one we parked at this system’s Bravo jump point, just picked up a burst of Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation consistent with multiple ships jumping into the system. The probe’s sensors don’t have the resolution ours do, and the effects front hasn’t reached us, but preliminary typing is one bulk ammunition carrier, one VIP transport, and one tanker. We’re still in a parking orbit around the primary at the fifth planet’s L4 point. The mines we emplaced are still fully stealthed and report themselves to be fully operational. All stations report set at Condition Orange, all systems are nominal, and we went into full stealth as per your standing order as soon as we got the notification from the probe. Change of watch is in one hour and fifty-four minutes. And the Tactical Section is officially pissed that we did not kill the admiral.”

  In the manner of Cato the Elder’s ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, Bartoli had been ending all of his reports with that particular expression of displeasure at Admiral Birch’s apparent survival. Max could not dispute the sentiment. When Bhattacharyya had finally cracked the transponder codes, it was clear that the second convoy was made up of a different set of ships than the first. Apparently Admiral Birch’s convoy had taken a more indirect set of jumps from one stop to another, while a decoy convoy, designed to entrap and destroy the Cumberland, had proceeded on the direct route.

  Max had been concerned that the attack on the decoy convoy might have caused Admiral Birch to cancel his plans. Fortunately, several signal intercepts indicated that the admiral’s next stop was eagerly awaiting his arrival on schedule. Accordingly, it appeared that the Cumberland was going to get another shot at the elusive leader.

  “Very well.” Bartoli and Max went through the rituals of the formal transfer of the con to the latter. Max settled into the Big Chair and waited for Bartoli to take his station at Tactical. “Mr. Bartoli, how long until our little rat pack reaches us?”

  “As you recall, sir, the L4 is within 0.6 AU of the direct line between the Bravo and Charlie jump points. The Krag ships will be at their closest approach in three hours and nine minutes, assuming that they maintain the same acceleration profile.”

  “Thank you. Mr. LeBlanc, nudge us out to a position 72.7 percent of the way between our current position and the rat path, but offset us perpendicular to the lubber line by 1.218 million kilometers in any direction of your choosing.”

  “More odd numbers, sir?” the XO asked.

  “Yes, Mr. DeCosta, always odd numbers. And I checked to make sure that they were odd in Krag measurements, as well.”

  LeBlanc and his acolytes at the maneuvering stations “nudged” the Cumberland into motion, and the deadly ship crept, unseen and nearly unseeable, like a black leopard in the darkest jungle, into the path of her prey.

  Through his feet Max felt a change in the amplitude and the frequency of the CIC deck-plate vibrations, telling him that the fusion reactor’s output had stepped up to supply additional plasma to give motion to the ship. He always drew comfort from that feeling. Like anyone long on board the fleet’s smaller fighting ships—patrol vessels, corvettes, destroyers, and frigates—Max didn’t like sitting in one place, and “sitting” included traveling in any kind of known path, like a synchronous orbit or at a Lagrangian point like L4 or L5.

  After drinking in the comfort of the deck-plate vibrations for a few minutes, Max looked pointedly at the Tactical Station, but Bartoli—perhaps feeling his skipper’s eyes—failed to look up. Instead, he kept his head down, seemingly immersed in the displays on his console and occupied by conversations with his back room. Lacking the laser vision he had so often wished was issued to skippers of rated warships, Max said, with affected breeziness, “Mr. Bartoli, things are getting a bit dull here at the command stations, so any scraps of trifling news about the enemy’s dispositions that you might see fit to toss in our direction would be entirely welcome.” Max glanced over at DeCosta and enjoyed seeing how hard DeCosta was working not to smile.

  “Sorry, sir, I was just trying to figure something out, but I’m not having any luck. Here’s what I’ve got. First, types. One large fleet tanker, Tangerine class. One bulk freighter, munitions subtype, Frycook class—much better weapons than the Frostbite the decoy convoy had, but the sensors aren’t nearly as good. One VIP transport, probably a Trapdoor class. Currently the convoy is in line ahead formatio
n, arranged just like the decoy convoy—freighter, transport, tanker. There’s no sign of a stealthy destroyer hanging out with the formation like the last convoy, but then again, we had no sign of that other destroyer, either. They are maintaining an interval of about 355 kilometers. I’m not reading any fighters, drones, or anything else sneaky protecting their flanks. Also, sir, they’re keeping a straight lubber line between the jump points. No zigzag, drunkard’s walk, Spee’s Spiral, Coffey’s Canter, or anything else. Maybe they think we were destroyed in that conflagration two days ago.”

  “They’re certainly acting very confident,” DeCosta said, his voice sounding anything but. “Sir,” DeCosta said at a much lower volume, “if I were these guys, I’d be expecting us to hit them again. The rat-faces would have to be dimmer than a Y class star not to suspect that the admiral is at risk here.”

  “True, XO. But we just picked up a flurry of traffic three sectors over that I suspect stems from the activities of our good friend Commander Hajjam and his group, who, I have a strong hunch, are presently working with another of our good friends, Commander Kim Yong-Soo on the Broadsword. Our not-so-good friends—the ones with the overbite, pink ears, and tails—may be shifting what they’ve got in that direction to deal with that threat. And for all we know, they may be thinking that we are all part of a single force, rather than a bunch of destroyers aided by a force that shifts from one to the other.”

  “Which would be a classic Hornmeyer tactic, because once the Krag have located the larger force, they won’t perceive any threat from the other destroyers,” DeCosta said, the scheme finally dawning on him. “You’re right. That does sound like a page from old Hit ’em Hard’s playbook.”

  “I’d pay real money to get a good look at that book,” said Max.

  “Man, oh, man, so would I,” DeCosta answered. “I’d also like to see what kind of destruction Hajjam and Sue are inflicting on the local rodent population.”