Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “If you understand that you’re a navigator, here to see that Willow is taken to the right place at the right time to do business -- you just might do.

  “Even aboard Warlock, the rest of us are here to support her. Nothing else.”

  “I don’t care how they die, Commodore, just so long as they do.”

  “0800, Lieutenant.”

  The captain returned Johnny to the lock and Johnny spoke to the lock commander. “Commodore Travers has offered me a posting aboard. I have to return to the replacement depot; I’ll be back in sixty to ninety minutes.”

  This was a different lieutenant than before; only this one was wearing sensor browns instead of engineer blue for a shipsuit. He simply nodded gravely and told Johnny, “I’ll leave a note in my watch log, Lieutenant. Ship tight is 1000 tomorrow morning, lift is as 1200 hours.”

  “Roger that!”

  * * *

  To Johnny’s surprise, evidently officers regularly checked out of the BOQ and replacement depot in the middle of the night. Orders were already on file for him, and he simply packed, checked out with the abbreviated path they’d described for him, and at 2300 hours was welcomed into the ship.

  The welcoming was as bizarre as everything else aboard Warlock. The BuPers petty officer on duty was a Master Chief -- someone you’d usually never expect to see on duty in the middle of the night.

  Still with his help, Johnny was expertly led through the sign-in procedures. The master chief finally told Johnny that he had to report to sick bay for “a ship’s medical evaluation.” Johnny had never seen a medical bay that was open for anything other than emergencies at 2345 at night. Not only was it open, but the ship’s chief medical officer and chief of security were there to greet him.

  The medical exam that followed could best be described as “cursory.” Less cursory was the chief of security handing him a security oath and making him sign it, under threat of imprisonment if he failed to sign and death if he broke the oath.

  The next thing Johnny knew he was on his stomach, with the ship’s medical officer doing something behind his right ear.

  When the medical officer finished, he vanished, yawning. The security chief was more thorough.

  “Warlock is the third ship of her class,” Johnny was told. “We call it ‘wired.’ You have no need to know the names of the other such ships.

  “You have been given a communicator that allows you to talk, person-to-person, with the AI that runs Warlock and to any and all of her crew. Further, everything that you see, hear or think is known by Warlock.”

  “Everything I think?” Johnny asked cautiously.

  “That’s correct. There are limits on Warlock, on what the ship can do with the information. I am authorized to tell you that should you actually contemplate hostile action against any member of this crew, the ship’s mission or injury in any form to the Federation, Warlock will report you to me or someone like me.”

  “Suppose I decide to massacre someone at Scrabble?” Johnny asked.

  “Be serious, Lieutenant. Physical harm, impeding their duty; things like that.”

  “What range does it have?”

  “In the solar system, the question is meaningless. In any system with latch frame communications, the question is meaningless. Otherwise, it’s limited to light speed.”

  Latch frame was how humanity spoke faster than light on the radio. It couldn’t reach out more than a few light hours into space, but inside that volume, you could talk as if you were next to the person you were talking to.

  He asked a question in his mind, and heard a clear female voice give him the answer. “Lieutenant, you suffer from the same misapprehension all humans seem to suffer. You have the idea that your thoughts are special and unique and that a machine such as myself would focus on you. That is not true, sir.

  “Lieutenant, I have been programmed to be able to report only actions that I think an individual has planned against the Federation, this vessel, a fellow crew member or the individual himself. I am not allowed to report more than that there is a risk of such an act directed at whatever target I believed to be the case. I can only report any actions that I see you undertake if they are in a non-private space -- that is, a public or duty space. All I can tell anyone about you, outside the ship’s captain, is data publicly available in your records.”

  Johnny was considerably quieter when he returned to BuPers. “I’ll show you your quarters, Lieutenant. You’ll report before 0800 to Commander Tshombe, the navigator, on the bridge,” the master chief told him.

  The chief led Johnny to a small state room.

  Johnny thanked him and the master chief grinned. “Do you understand, Lieutenant, why I have the duty?”

  Johnny didn’t want to suggest that someone had asked the man to, so he shook his head.

  “Lieutenant, Commodore Travers his been aboard Warlock since 0600 this morning, and since then we’ve had four BuPers officers relieved and a master chief. All you have to do to be relieved is tell Commodore Travers to his face, ‘Sir, you can’t do that.’ Your next act is clearing out your locker.

  “I got the word early, so I opted for this shift, because I figured the commodore would be asleep now.”

  “This morning, I took the Bridge watchkeeping certificate exam with Lieutenant Commander Wolf. She got the same grade as I did; yet, she’s a lieutenant commander now,” Johnny told him.

  “Sir, that’s not a subject you should pursue. The first BuPers department head was relived when Commodore Travers wanted Lieutenant Wolf promoted to lieutenant commander. The commodore is correct, Lieutenant. He has the authority to promote anyone to a rank two grades beneath him. Thus, he could promote Willow Wolf a senior lieutenant before he arrived at Earth. Now that he’s arrived at Earth, he has the promotion authority to make her a lieutenant commander.

  “The next two BuPers officers refused to sign the paperwork promoting Commander Wolf to full commander the instant Commodore Travers is made a rear admiral, which will come in a month or so.”

  “And you?” Johnny asked, “how did you survive?”

  “I told the commodore I’d do the paper to promote Mary Elizabeth Grant a full commander, if he ordered it -- once he was an admiral. Mostly I stayed out of the way until the second shift -- he was gone most of the afternoon, which has helped as well.”

  Mary Elizabeth Grant was a rather famous HDD actress who usually appeared in minimal clothes -- except for the times when she didn’t bother with clothes at all.

  The master chief disappeared and Johnny sat down on the bed. He looked around the compartment; it was for two people and there was obviously someone else assigned to the compartment, even if they weren’t present. Duty hours? he thought.

  The same clear voice that now resided in his mind responded. “Your compartment mate is junior lieutenant Annette Graves, communications. She is currently on mid-watch.”

  Johnny swallowed. Wonderful! As a lieutenant on passenger liners and a survey ship, he’d had quarters to himself. He seriously doubted if his mother would have accepted that in the Fleet you roomed with whoever was available, and gender didn’t figure into it. True, once he’d been aboard a while and made some friends he could swap, if he wished -- but that was a ways off.

  He stretched out on the bed, closed his eyes and slept. He was up early the next morning and his roommate still hadn’t put in an appearance, which wasn’t surprising because she would be going off watch at the time he was going on watch. He sighed. It would be too much to hope for that she was old or ugly. He’d rather she’d been a navigator like himself; shipboard romances were okay, so long as you weren’t in the same chain-of-command. But he didn’t want any distractions.

  He presented himself to Commander Tshombe on the bridge a good half hour early. The commander was one of the darker-skinned officers Johnny had met, but there was nothing dark about the commander’s cheery, “Good morning, Lieutenant! Welcome to Warlock!” The commander laughed jovially as he shook Joh
nny’s hand. “Did you know that two days ago that we were nameless wanderers? The original name for this ship was disallowed by South Africa at the last minute. Rourke’s Drift.”

  Commander Tshombe briefed Johnny on the other members of the navigation department, and then started in on others on the bridge. Finally, still as bubbly cheerful as ever, he told Johnny that they were to be towed out of the Fleet Basin at 1030 hours for lift at 1200. The commander pointed to a terminal at the navigation desk. “That’s your station for now, plus your battle station.

  “It is my understanding that you have served, albeit briefly, with the Commodore and Commander Wolf before?”

  “No, sir. You must have me confused with someone else.”

  “Ah! Drat! I was hoping for a hint! Well, we here on the bridge are getting a pool together about what the likely time for when the first battle stations drill will be. There are a few good times left, if you’ve a fiver or two to spare. Just search on ‘First GQ Drill’ on your comp at your position. Oh, and I’d appreciate you doing a recalc of our course.”

  “I haven’t had a mission briefing, Commander.”

  “So you haven’t. We’re for a number of local stars in the general direction of Tau Ceti. Our first order of business is to inspect BL Ceti, then YZ Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, and then back home.”

  Johnny smiled. Not quite nine light years out to their first stop, a pair of M-class dwarves. Not quite three light years more to YZ Ceti, a couple of light years jog to Epsilon Eridani, and then a dozen light years back home. Piece of cake! Part of humanity’s back yard!

  He sat down and asked the voice in his head for the mission briefing. While he was listening to that, confirming what Commander Tshombe had told Johnny, he pulled up the pool. He was mildly amused that Commander Tshombe had the first time past launch -- 1300 hours.

  While his most recent captain and his buddy, the navigator, had been fools, the captain had twice called alerts when no one rational would. For instance, he’d told his bridge crew that his favorite time to call an alert was in the hour or so they’d sit waiting for their launch slot to open. It wasn’t, he’d told them, like they were doing anything important. A little break, a way to liven up the routine.

  Now there was a war on. This was as serious as it got. What had the Marine captain told him? Two people had been shot yesterday for interfering with Willow Wolf’s duty and more than a dozen forcibly enlisted? The alert could come, literally, at any time. A commander who’d killed four alien ships wasn’t going to have his crew unprepared to do what had to be done. So, while the alert could come at any time; before they were tugged out to the launch area people would be securing the ship, checking equipment and data. There were too many important tasks underway to interrupt without the possibility of missing the lift.

  But that last hour... Johnny smiled to himself and put his name and 1100 hours today as his guess. Then he got to work on calculating the course. They were set to visit three red dwarfs, two spectral classes both smaller and cooler than the sun and one K-class star, also smaller and cooler than the sun -- just not as much.

  Humanity had found planets or debris around every star they’d looked at. Planets, however, had problems. Low mass stars had trouble forming stable systems. G-class stars ran about ninety percent stars with solar-system like arrangements of planets. With K-class stars, the percentage dropped to barely half. M-class stars, so far as Johnny knew, had never been found with a habitable planet.

  Humanity called the systems with screwed up angular momentum “Crazy Ivans.” Giant planets that had moved closer to their primary, instead of gradually, very gradually, pulling away. Some of the Crazy Ivan systems had been initially tempting -- some of them had earth-sized bodies within the habitable zone. Except they were moons of Jovian-type gas giants. To put it mildly, living on a moon of a gas giant planet was like living on a perpetual bombing range target. Planets multiple times larger than Jupiter had huge gravity wells and system debris was attracted to them readily.

  Worse, most of those Jovian-type planets had active magnetic fields and those magnetic fields wrapped charged particles around the planet. They were, in short, radiological nightmares as well. Mankind had established unmanned research outposts on a few Crazy Ivans, but no one lived on or near one.

  F-class stars, the next larger stellar size up from the sun’s G-class, had about the same number of good systems as the G-class stars did, about two-thirds. M-class almost never had a good solar system, they were all Crazy Ivans, and stars larger still than F-class tended to be too hot, and a lot of the proto-planetary disks of such stars evaporated before it could go into planet formation

  Johnny stopped wool-gathering and did the basic orbit computations. The mission briefing had included how fast Commodore Travers was willing to travel, so it wasn’t too difficult. The one thing he didn’t have was a discussion of how to approach the system. He got up and went across the bridge to where Willow Wolf was sitting, reading material from her comp at her position.

  “Commander Wolf, do you have a moment?”

  “Of course, Lieutenant Montezuma.”

  “I reviewed the mission briefing but I didn’t hear anything about how we were going to approach systems, nor was there any information about how long we’d delay in each system.”

  “We’re going to stop a light year out from Earth and have a final meeting about that. We’re not sure yet how long we’re going to remain in each system.” She smiled slightly. “We are lucky that we have already decided on how to place outposts in each system -- the matter was a matter of hot debate for a half day.”

  “I would recommend that we stop a distance that wasn’t a simple multiple of a light year, Commander.”

  “That wouldn’t hurt,” she agreed. “I tell the Commodore, Lieutenant, thanks.”

  “How are we going to place outposts?”

  “We’ve resurrected some old cargo tugs that haven’t been too badly salvaged for parts. We’re going to string a half dozen life support modules on the boom, a couple of honey-bucket modules. The biggest debate was whether or not to arm them. They aren’t there to fight.”

  “Do they have any legs?” Johnny asked and she shook her head.

  “Armed, then,” he said confidently, hoping that was what had been decided. “If I’m going to be killed if discovered I’d at least like a chance of getting one of them first.”

  “Aye, that’s what the Commodore and I wanted. BuShips had other ideas, feeling that there is too much chance that some of the blues might be captured. Blues seem to be our one significant weapons advantage; it wouldn’t be good to lose that.”

  Johnny pursed his lips; he hadn’t thought of that! “Surely they have to have some laser technology of their own?”

  “None that anyone’s seen. It was decided that we would supply the crews with a few dozen regular missiles. Soon the aliens will realize that the weapon effects of blues are propagated at light speed, and that the beam time is short. They will start varying their velocity and it will become much harder to hit them, even with a blue. At that point, we would indeed stand a very good chance of losing a blue. So, we leave them one missile warhead to fall back on, if all else fails.”

  Johnny grimaced; yeah, but it sucked. Odds were though, they wouldn’t have to use it -- the aliens would obligingly park one of their gigaton bombs in close proximity to the outpost and that would be, most definitively, that.

  Someone cleared their throat next to where Johnny was standing next to Willow. He turned and saw it was Commodore Travers, and next to him was a woman who was a full commander. “Lieutenant John Montezuma, this is Commander Naomi Travers -- my wife and our Exec.”

  Johnny tried to keep his face expressionless wondering which of the BuPers officers had stumbled on the wrong formulation to speak to Commodore Travers on this subject: “Sir, you can’t do that!” It was supposed to be a big no-no to have a personal relationship with someone in your chain-of-command.

  “Command
er,” Johnny said, acknowledging her.

  “Lieutenant Montezuma, a word if you please,” the commodore said, gesturing towards the captain’s conference room a few feet away.

  Willow lifted an eyebrow and the Exec shrugged and nodded.

  The four of them went in the conference room. “You demonstrated yesterday evening at dinner, Lieutenant, that you had indeed researched the new awards. Did your research happen to extend to any personal details about myself or Starfarer’s Dream?” the commodore asked.

  “About your ship, yes, sir. I read all of the action reports. Personal details? Sir, I wanted to be on time for dinner. After dinner I was checking out of the replacement depot and getting myself aboard Warlock and checking in. Imagine my surprise at finding myself promptly in sickbay undergoing surgery.”

  “Minor surgery,” the Exec corrected him.

  “Surgery,” Johnny repeated his original comment. “When someone is messing around with my skull and I don’t know what it is they’re doing, it’s major to me.”

  “It’s odd is all, Lieutenant. There are five hundred and seventy-five souls aboard Warlock at the moment, and that will be our complement when we lift in two and a half hours. Of all of those people, including, I might add, our esteemed weapons officer, only one picked a time before lift for the pool. You, Lieutenant.”

  “By the time I was shown to my quarters it was late last night and I promptly fell asleep. Commodore, is it possible to have the ship reveal a personal detail about myself if I request it?”

  The voice in his head spoke. “It is like telling a friend to tell others something. Yes.”

  “Yes,” the commodore confirmed.

  “Warlock, please tell the commodore that my guess was based on personal experience with my previous captain.”