Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  Instead of getting an officer, the watch officer called the ship’s provost, a marine master gunnery sergeant. The master gunny listened to the watch commander’s voluble explanation, read David’s orders and then looked back at the watch commander.

  The woman grinned. “I’ve logged this, Gunny! This one will get the chop! Trying to sneak aboard a Fleet ship!”

  “You logged this?”

  The Marine seemed a bit surprised, David thought. Well, he was too.

  “I’ll take custody of the subject, sir,” the gunny told the lieutenant. “You be sure to get your full report about this up topside as fast as possible.”

  It was impossible for David not to notice every Marine in the lock roll their eyes, and most of the Fleet crew members as well.

  The gunny gestured and each of the two Marine enlisted men with the gunny took one of David’s arms and escorted him through the inner lock.

  Inside the ship, the gunny was apologetic. “I’m sorry about this, Lieutenant, but she’s logged it. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Gunny, we do our duty as we must.”

  The gunny wheezed laughter. “I’m not reporting you, sir. The idiot Portie lieutenant in the lock!”

  The gunny waved and the Marines dropped their hands. “Get lost!” they were told, and then the gunny told David to follow him.

  A few moments later, ten decks higher, in senior officer country, the gunny knocked on a door, and pushed it open. “Commodore, your lieutenant has washed ashore. Lieutenant Jackson logged him for God knows what.”

  “She logged him?”

  “Aye, aye, Commodore.”

  “Well, better to get rid of her now, rather than later. That’ll be all, Gunny, and thanks.”

  The commodore turned to David and gestured at a chair. “Lieutenant Zinder, take a seat.”

  David did so.

  “I’m going to say a few words,” the commodore told him. “You will never utter one of them outside this room; you will never let them be privy to anyone else. Memoirs after the war excepted of course!”

  David nodded.

  “Lieutenant, I have received several communications from Admiral Evan Carlson about you. The admiral was my tactical officer at Maunalua, and later he was my captain when I was a first lieutenant on Stalingrad. In addition, I have a communication from Vice Admiral Booth, who has a very nice resume for someone who has never served a day in the Fleet before the war started. I have received a communication from a Captain William Travers, who, I’m assured, is the best of the best -- he certainly has the gongs to back up his boasts.

  “Frankly, the last two missives would have seen you stuck at a desk in the bowels of this ship, sorting paperclips. Evan Carlson, however, as I said, I know. His idea of high praise is a thumbs up. On the other hand, you don’t ever want to get him upset with you.

  “When Evan’s arm was struck by an assassin’s bullet, he drew a pistol, left-handed, from one of the dead guards and promptly killed the four attackers of the President of Rheims, sparing that man’s life. If Evan told me to go to hell, I’d ask him what sort of flavor of barbeque I should bring him back.

  “Thus, I have given full consideration to what Evan and those others have said.

  “Lieutenant, we are commanded by a man who knows enough to be dangerous -- to us -- but not to our enemies.” The commodore reached into a drawer and took out a message flimsy and handed it to David to read.

  It was a terse military report. On such and such date, five alien ships attacked Grenada, defended by three ships under Admiral Diego Jornaga. Instead of defending the system, the admiral maneuvered to avoid engagement, over the increasingly vehement objections of his officers. When Grenada was destroyed, the executive officer of Admiral Jornaga’s ship, one Tin Tin Roeser, did mutiny and supplant his commanding officer and did subsequently destroy three of the five attackers before they could withdraw from the field. A Special Board met on such and such a date and adjudged Admiral Jornaga guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy and failure to engage. They ordered him shot at noon the next day.

  Then, as a deliberate slap in the face of the convicted man, the Board had him executed ten minutes early -- the time that, if it had been used, might have saved Grenada and the hundred and fifty million souls who had once lived there.

  David looked up. “I know Tin Tin Roeser -- he taught dynamics aboard the City of Manhattan before we came into New Texas.”

  “A good man?” the Commodore asked.

  “Yes, sir. He had the legal right to assume command of City of Manhattan as the senior line officer present. He told Captain Malforce that he only looked stupid.”

  “Well, here Rear Admiral Josef Stepanowski commands. He is under the impression that I am here to do to him what Commander Roeser did to his admiral -- supplant him in the heat of the battle and get all the glory for myself.”

  David lofted the message. “I don’t think this is anyone’s rational idea of glory, Commodore. I have an acquaintance from my last ship who was involved in a Special Board back on Earth. Even though she was the one attacked, they tried and judged her actions as well. Scary.”

  “No doubt.” He paused. “You realize that Captain Travers’ message included information for me of a personal nature? I have also received a similar message from my pig-headedly stupid little brother. You refer to the incident at The Peak School where sundry individuals did assault Admiral Saito and a number of other Fleet personnel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They also tried Admiral Ito Saito before that very same Special Board. Did you know that?”

  “No, sir, I didn't.”

  “Do you understand that the Special Boards are to examine a particular event or short series of events? And that everyone involved is judged. Admiral Saito got an ‘acceptable’ rating from the Special Board. My niece, as unlike her brain-dead father, received the accolade ‘she did more than her duty,’ as did your friend.”

  David nodded. “She told us about it, but she was a little short on details. She was shipping out the next day and I had a transport to board the same day I passed my watchkeeping certificate exam.”

  “And you shipped out hours after you took your watchkeeping exam?”

  “Yes, sir. I left Starfarer’s Dream and boarded the transport for here that same day.”

  “How well do you know Bethany Booth?”

  That surprised David. “I know her father thinks I’m chasing her, sir, but that’s not true. It would be like trying to make time with a porcupine.”

  “Sit very still, Lieutenant. Take several deep breaths; think calm and peaceful thoughts. Fleet sent us a special courier at a much higher percentage of max power than most of us would be comfortable with. They had an urgent tech bulletin for the Fleet.”

  “Why, should I think calm and peaceful thoughts, sir? Did Bethany Booth get in trouble?”

  “Well, it might have something to do with a commodore ordering you to do it, Lieutenant.”

  David grimaced. He cleared his mind, took a breath and held it. He did it again. He contemplated the view he remembered of Earth, just before he boarded City of Manhattan...

  “Bethany Booth realized that we’ve always been able to detect ships on High Fan,” the admiral told him without warning.

  David stopped thinking of Earth and thought about the topic. “I think we would have noticed,” he said evenly.

  “More deep breaths, Lieutenant, more deep breaths. Think waterfalls, think waves rolling up on a golden beach.”

  “Aye, sir,” David said, even though he did nothing of the sort.

  “The very first manned Benko-Chang vehicle used two fans. Stephanie Kinsella noticed that they needed to be tuned to work best.

  “Of course,” David said, a trifle too smugly.

  “Lieutenant, fans detect fans -- that’s why they need to be tuned. Get them far enough apart and all you get are meter ticks. Put some serious amplification on those ticks and we’ve found that we
can detect ships from about six light hours away, although we’ve had to do a lot of experimentation to reach that point. It’s not like anything else has a priority at the moment.”

  David opened his eyes, unaware he’d shut them. “Oh.”

  “We are officially instructed that this is just a tragedy like what happens all of the time in war -- we have to pick ourselves up and get over it. Nonetheless, this has been a little hard for propulsion engineers and sensor officers to adjust to -- they feel like they’ve let everyone down. Benko-Chang physics labs around the Federation have introduced padded walls to keep their researchers alive. About ten percent of the Benko-Chang propulsion engineers have required some degree of sedation; the number of more severe casualties is classified, but it wasn’t good.”

  “And Bethany Booth figured it out?”

  “Indeed. Later, I will copy your comp with her report, submitted a bit after you left, on other interesting tidbits.

  “We here, Lieutenant, are tasked to defend the New Cairo system. There are a billion inhabitants here; while it’s not the richest off-world colony it’s not poor in the single most important currency in the Federation -- people. It must be protected.

  “Up until now, I have been tasked as the staff officer for operations and intelligence. As of this moment, Lieutenant Zinder, you are Lieutenant Commander Zinder and you are my deputy for operations.”

  David swallowed. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The commodore grinned. “I’m not doing you a favor, Commander. Admiral Stepanowski thinks I mean to kill him if there’s a battle. Now, clearly, even though your orders are signed by Admiral Nagoya and Admiral Fletcher, he’s going to be sure that you’re here to backstop me. You are caught between the hard rock that is our enemies and the implacable hatred of a small mind.

  “Admiral Stepanowski will not likely listen to any of your operational plans, no matter how brilliant they are. He fancies himself the smartest operational planner in the universe. Adjust and adapt to the fact that you are going to be talking to a brick wall.

  “Tell me, Commander Zinder. We can now detect alien ships approaching under High Fan up to six light hours distant. How much warning would we have of their approach?”

  David did the math in his head; it wasn’t his forte and he did it twice. “Less than a minute, sir.”

  “And if a ship wasn’t at actions stations, how long would it take them to clear away and be ready?”

  “It would depend on the crew and their training level, Commodore. More than minute and a half, probably less than five minutes.”

  David looked at the commodore bleakly. The message was clear. Still, his brain went into instant overdrive and he spoke what was on his mind. “Our ships should be outside the fan limit, not under fan, doggo is the word I’ve heard used. That way, once they are ready, they can jump against individual targets.”

  “Admiral Stepanowski wants to hold most of the ships back, inside the fan limit to provide counter battery to defend the planet.”

  David nearly spoke, but thought better of it. “More than half, sir? Of twenty-four?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not enough, Commodore, even if they were armed with blues.”

  “Nope, and most of them aren’t armed with blues. It is my considered opinion that we need to intercept the aliens as far away from the planet as we can, destroy the missile platforms and then take out the missiles.”

  “They can jump close to the planet,” David told him.

  “And if we’re outside the limit, we can jump down a half minute later to do what we can. Then we’re all inside the fan limit, and on something like equal footing. If they start shooting in the outer system like they did at Fleet World, we’re toast. Each of their ships fired thirty-six groups of eighteen missiles. If Hastings hadn’t started knocking down alien ships, Fleet World would have had to deal nearly sixty-five thousand missiles.

  “Fleet World has two ballistic catapults on their moon and had ten thousand missile packs to launch. Fleet World dealt with the downbound missiles while Jensen and the Fleet cleared out the alien ships.

  “New Cairo has no ballistic catapults and no missile packs.” He snorted. “I doubt if there are many planets that could withstand a hundred ship attack.”

  David remembered his sim and wanted to shrink into a dust mote. The odds that Commodore Cross didn’t know about that exercise were remote. He hadn’t needed a hundred ships to bust a defense slightly stronger than New Cairo boasted.

  “Did I mention that we have three ships armed with blues, and are adding one a week?”

  “One a week, sir?” That was extraordinarily slow!

  “Yes, one. Admiral Stepanowski has been installing ninety percent of the blue production on the planet surface as point defense.”

  David was aghast. “They’re blues, Commodore! Inside the atmosphere? They can’t reach out a half light second! And what they’d do in the atmosphere...”

  “Exactly. However, he has a tame expert who has told him that, and I quote, ‘the weapons' effects won’t be too severe.’”

  David closed his eyes. If you were looking in the direction of a blue firing in the atmosphere, an instant later you’d be blind. If you were within a dozen kilometers, you’d suffer severe burns on all exposed skin. How could people even fire them? They’d have to be in thermally secure bunkers! A blue in the atmosphere would be the equivalent of a medium nuclear weapon detonation.

  David shook himself. “Sir, I can do an indisputable analysis of weapons effects on the surface. How many blues have been installed?”

  “Two hundred and six. Like I said, we have twenty-four with the Fleet here.”

  David thought for a second. The obvious factors of two hundred and six were two and a hundred and three, four and fifty two and a half, eight and twenty-six and a quarter...

  “Are there twenty-six cargo ships that we can federalize?”

  Commodore Cross laughed. “Commander, every last FTL capable ship in the Federation has been federalized. Yes, we have about thirty still doing local work.”

  “Pull them. Shucks, pull them all. We start installing eight blues on each -- quadruple fusion generators and enough hydrogen to lift a cruiser. We put them in a shell around the planet. Each of them, right there, is a times sixteen force multiplier, compared to firing a blue in the atmosphere, no matter how ‘not too bad’ the effects would be.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. The admiral should put them in Fleet ships, in that case.”

  “Except, he’s afraid of you and the Fleet. Those are, more or less, civilian ships with federalized crews.”

  “That they are,” Commodore Cross told David. “You know, I think he’s dim enough to think two hundred and fifty Rim Runners don’t know which side the butter is on.”

  “I don’t understand, Commodore.”

  The commodore laughed. “You and I can never claim we’re Rim Runners, Commander. But when you can understand that joke you’re entitled to say that you have a dim understanding of how Rim Runners think.”

  “You want half the ships here out of the fan well at a time?” David asked.

  “Yes. At least that many.”

  “I don’t think I can deliver that full time, but how about half of the time?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sir, during duty hours, exercises are encouraged, at random times. You can order a number of ships into the outer system, have them go to High Fan and start down towards the planet at preset times. One at a time. Tracking exercises, Commodore, with the new equipment. It’ll take a while to get ships out of the fan limit and into position. Then they’d have to lie quiet until it was their turn, so that the passive detectors don’t give them away.”

  The commodore reached into his desk and pulled out a card with two silver diamonds on it. “These are for you, Commander. By God! There might be hope for us after all!”

  Two hours later, David met Admiral Stepanowski. He was a large man, running s
lightly to fat, but underlying that were large, raw bones. He listened to Commodore Cross’s introduction and looked at David suspiciously. “You seem a little young, Commander.”

  “Yes, sir; I hear that a lot.” The statement wasn’t a lie, and was, almost, defensible.

  “Admiral, Commodore Cross was telling me about the concept of basing blues on the surface. I think weapons platforms in low orbits would work better, sir. Not dedicated warships, just something like a cargo hauler, engines, space for extra power modules, extra fuel modules -- eight blues, sir! Eight blues in low orbit would be sixteen times as effective as they would be on the surface.”

  “I’m assured that the effects inside the atmosphere would be minimal.”

  “Indeed! But, Admiral, there is no getting around the absorption and dispersal factors of air. A couple of dozen freighters configured as weapons platforms, Admiral! That’s the ticket!”

  David could see it in the man’s eyes. He was looking for a straw, any straw, to hang his hat on, knowing he was crippling the planetary defenses.

  Commodore Cross spoke up. “Admiral Stepanowski, we’ve had a little time to digest the news sent us about detection of ships under High Fan. Now our own techs have improved on the original designs by more than three hundred and fifty times! We need, sir, to exercise the ships with some simple exercises. We should send some ships out into the outer system and have them go doggo for a while, and then, on a pre-arranged schedule, head down. It would give everyone some much needed practice with the technology, Admiral. We have only a very short window for target acquisition and tracking.”

  Admiral Stepanowski nodded soberly. “Yes, that’s certainly true, Commodore. It’s my understanding that you have responsibility not only for operations and intelligence, but training as well. I’d like to second Commodore Alan Shipley to be your deputy for training. He could run these exercises for you -- and relieve you of some of the scut work of your duties. Commander Zinder is quite capable as well; this will save you a great deal of work -- you can concentrate on intelligence.”