Commander

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Even if they all band up against Sintar?”

  “Even so. This Emperor is bound and determined to protect his people, and he will hesitate at nothing to do just that. Never trouble a bear with cubs, Michael. And, with the bureaucrats gone, the Imperial Navy is promoting the people who should have been promoted, and getting the ass-kissers out of the way. They’re much more powerful than the numbers suggest.”

  “Well, I’m certainly aware of what the Sintaran Emperor is capable of.”

  “So how did you leave it with the DP ambassador?”

  “I told him I would take his suggestion of reviewing my security posture with an eye toward buying some of their warships. We’re to meet every month or two.”

  “Smart. Allows you to keep up to date on what they’re peddling. And costs you nothing.”

  “That’s what I figure. I don’t know what else to do, though, if anything.”

  “I have a suggestion, Michael. You may not like it though.”

  “Go ahead, Howard.”

  “Talk to the Sintaran Emperor. Tell him about your meeting. You may find ways to work together, plus he’ll owe you one. I think that counts a lot with him. And you never know when you might need a favor from a guy with a Navy like his.”

  King Michael shook his head.

  “I wasn’t on my best behavior the only time we spoke, Howard. I had, as I only appreciated later, misread him badly. I was so used to dealing with those snakes in the Sintaran bureaucracy who ran the Empire, before he so thoroughly removed them, I thought he was just more of the same. I doubt he would meet with me.”

  “I don’t. I’ve done quite a bit of research on him since I’ve had access to Imperial records. And there are some fascinating stories running around about him as well. For myself, I meet with him twice a month, and he always wants to know how people are doing, if there’s anything I need, if there’s something else he can do to help. It’s all about the people, and he’s most concerned about the least advantaged. He says it’s a waste of human potential, but it’s more than that to him.

  “I don’t know how much you’ve been able to find out about him, Michael, but he’s not the product of privilege. He grew up on a backwater planet of the Empire, and faced a future of grinding poverty before the Empire rolled out their new educational system. They didn’t even have electricity. Can you imagine? So nobody has to tell him how hard life can be. He knows. He’s been there, and he knows.

  “And he’s twice oath-sworn to the Empire, to the Throne fifteen years ago when he joined the military, and to the people of Sintar when he himself took the Throne. He idolized his sister, the previous Empress, and she sacrificed herself to save the Empire from the bureaucracy. Put the Empire above her own life. And he’s made of the same stuff.

  “He almost died once in service to the Empire already. He was seriously wounded in that little fracas you were engineering on Wollaston. He stayed in the fight, though, and turned the battle around, though it almost killed him. In hindsight, now that I know more about his background, I could have predicted how Wollaston was going to turn out once he took the Throne.”

  King Michael listened attentively, nodding at times.

  “Yes, Howard. As I’ve said, I initially misread him badly. Wollaston was all about the bureaucracy. Those bastards were tweaking us, hard, whenever they could, to keep up some sort of hostilities so their weapons manufacturers would profit and keep paying them bribes. Wollaston was all about keeping those hostilities on the Empire’s territory and off mine. I didn’t expect him to be any different.”

  King Michael looked down at the floor between them for several seconds, then looked back up at Walthers.

  “All right, Howard. If you think it would be helpful for me to meet with the Emperor, I will. Could you set up the meeting, please? And pass on my apologies for our last meeting if you would.”

  First Testing

  Sailors – still so called though there hadn’t been sails on any warship in over a thousand years – were ‘reporting aboard’ the HMS Raptor, a new building on the grounds of the Imperial Fleet Base on Osaka, capital planet of the Honshu sector.

  It was taking some getting used to.

  “Hey, Chief. I get that we do all the monitoring in VR, but what do we do if something breaks?”

  “Then the ship is outta luck, Kowalski, but we’re not, ‘cause we’re not really aboard. It’s out there, and we’re in here.”

  “Chief, we gotta stay in the building all the time?”

  “You ever go outside when the ship was in space, Norton?”

  “No, but –“

  “Then you don’t go outside now either. Got it? Look at it this way. When we get liberty, you can go home and bang the old lady for free instead of bein’ on some strange planet and payin’ for it with somebody else. Otherwise it’s just like you’re on a ship in space. Same-same.”

  “Why we gotta bunk up six to a compartment, Chief? This is a huge base. They coulda built this building so we could spread out a little.”

  “You think this is gonna be your last posting, Clark? We need to keep people hard and disciplined enough to go back into space. We can’t afford you guys get all soft and shit. I guess we could prob’ly paint your compartment pink if you really want, but you’re still gonna be six up in there.

  “Any other questions?”

  The six converted Imperial Fleet battleships lined up on one of the Osaka hypergates. One by one they passed through the hypergate and into hyperspace. They were bound for Nagoya, just three days’ spacing – one hundred and sixty light-years – away.

  The only thing unusual about this fleet movement is there wasn’t anyone aboard any of the ships.

  In the building labeled HMS Raptor on Imperial Fleet Base Osaka, the general quarters alarm sounded. People dropped what they were doing and ran for their bunks, strapping themselves in. Of course, there was no need to strap themselves in, as the building wasn’t going anywhere – would not shake or tremble with the forces pushing and shoving at the ship – but it was a reflex action nobody wanted to lose lest they forget in some future manned-ship deployment.

  Crewmen climbed the upward-bound ladders and slid down the downward-bound ones, just as on ship.

  They had been getting into the routine of ‘shipboard,’ just as they would have on a new manned ship, settling down into shipboard life once again. Now, after three days, the physical ship would be coming out of hyperspace, and once again in contact via QE radio link to the Imperial Navy’s operations network.

  The crew waited in their bunks, logged into VR and with contact requests outstanding, when the ship re-established communications.

  “All right, bring up the sensor arrays,” Chief Sanborn said.

  “Sensor arrays initiating.”

  The sensor arrays came up and they could see the space around them. The five other ships of the squadron were there, and the planet Nagoya and its star floated in the display. As the display continued to gather information, the display deepened and gained detail. Soon, the other ships of the local traffic began appearing, complete with ship types, velocity, and maneuvering cones – the volume of space in front of them which they could occupy in the future based on their current velocity and their ability to add side vector.

  And there in front of them was their destination. The Nagoya hypergate, for the entry into hyperspace for the second leg of their tour.

  “Captain, HMS Falcon reports their point-defense system failed to initiate. All other systems operational, but they have no point defense.”

  “Do they have any idea what the problem is, Mr. Olsen? Just curious,” said Captain Oleg Volkov.

  “They report a hard failure of the point-defense targeting computer, Sir.”

  “Is that normally a unit that is carried in spares?”

  “Yes, Sir. Usually a fifteen-minute swap-out.”

  “And now we begin to see the problem of not having the crew actually on ship.”

  “Yes
, Sir.”

  The six ships made for the hypergate, lined up for transition, and disappeared once again.

  Two days spacing, for which the crew was out of contact with the ship, and the general quarters alarm sounded again. The crew rushed to stations, which in VR was their bunks. They logged into VR and waited for contact with their ship. When contact came, they logged into their operator’s stations.

  “All right, bring up the sensor arrays,” Chief Sanborn said.

  “Sensor arrays initiating.”

  The sensor arrays came up and they could see the space around them. The five other ships of the squadron were there, and the planet Niigata and its star floated in the display.

  But this time the display did not deepen and clarify.

  “Chief, the tactical sensor array is not initiating. It looks to be the remodulator.”

  “Power down the remodulator unit, and reinitiate.

  “Powered down. Power applied. Reinitiating.

  “No good, Chief. It’s a hard fail.”

  “Ain’t that peachy.”

  Without the tactical sensors on line, HMS Raptor was half-blind, or at least very near-sighted. They had the big impeller, of course, but it was unusable without targeting data. The navigational array had initiated, and sensor data from it was enough to navigate by, just as any commercial ship would, but without the big tactical arrays, there was no capability for offensive action. In any combat, they would simply be along for the ride.

  “If we were there, I would just swap the units, Chief. But from here I can’t do anything.”

  “Yeah, I know, Norton. I’ll report it. That’s what this whole trip is about, right? Learnin’ shit. Well, we just learned somethin’.”

  The ships made for the hypergate and their last leg, the trip back to Osaka.

  The third time general quarters sounded, two days later, it was getting to be sort of the usual thing.

  Contact with the ship was established, and the sensor arrays were brought up. The remodulator unit was once again a hard fail, but they still had the navigational arrays.

  “Hey, Chief. One of the ships is missing.”

  “What?”

  “HMS Peregrine, Chief. She’s not there.”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeah. It’s kinda weird. I’m in contact with her crew, but there’s no ship. They have no clue where she is. Do you think she blew up?”

  “Maybe. At least she didn’t take her crew with her.”

  “All right, Captain Whiting, what’s the summary?” Vice Admiral Cory Dillon asked.

  “Well, it was pretty much a disaster, Sir. At the third stop, back on Osaka, only three of the six ships of the formation arrived combat-capable. Two others had minor engineering failures which rendered them incapable of being effective. One was in the fire-control detection array, and the other was a computer failure in the point-defense system.”

  “So one couldn’t shoot at anybody and the other couldn’t defend itself against missile attack.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “What about the sixth ship, Captain?”

  “We don’t know much about that one, Sir. It never arrived. It may still have survived, and simply not dropped out of hyperspace as scheduled.”

  “So what’s going to happen to it?”

  “We assume it’s going to run out of reaction mass eventually, Sir, and then drop out of hyperspace whenever the engines shut down. Wherever that is, Sir.”

  “Do we have any clue where that’s going to be, Captain?”

  “It had enough reaction mass aboard for several thousand light-years, Sir. On that vector, it will probably drop out of hyperspace somewhere in the Carolina Sector.”

  “All the way on the other side of the Empire.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well, at least it isn’t going to make its unscheduled stop in Estvia or the DP or something.”

  “No, Sir.”

  Dillon shook his head.

  “All right, Captain. You sure you don’t want to make my report to the Naval Operations Board for me? I wouldn’t even have to feign an illness. This is pretty sickening, right here.”

  “That wouldn’t be my first choice, Sir.”

  Dillon snorted.

  “You’ve pushed me your full report, Captain?”

  “Yes, Sir.

  “All right. Thank you, Captain. Dismissed.”

  “Admiral, we have orders from Fleet HQ.”

  “Push them to me, Mr. Wilmer.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Admiral Natalia Shvets, commanding Imperial Fleet 76 in the Carolina Sector, opened her orders. No change to operational status, just a curious extra assignment.

  IF76 was to keep on the lookout for a missing drone battleship. It had failed to drop out of hyperspace on schedule. It could have been destroyed, or it could have continued spacing along the same vector. When it ran out of reaction mass, its acceleration would drop below .35g and drop out of hyperspace. Given the amount of reaction mass aboard, it would probably drop out in her command area.

  The assumption was the lost ship would still have power and be able to establish contact. She was to send a tug out to pick it up and take it to the nearest Imperial Fleet Base for diagnostics and repair.

  Shvets shook her head. Drone ships. What kind of navy was that?

  The kind that gets lost in hyperspace, apparently.

  Fred Dunlop read Captain Whiting’s report with interest. The two engineering failures experienced during the testing of the converted battleships were just the sort of thing Mr. Denny’s HARPER system should be able to handle. Replacement from spares of failed modules.

  The ship that failed to exit hyperspace was another matter. One of the redundant systems aboard ship was the presence of the crew. Clearly, a drone ship in hyperspace, out of contact with its crew, had one level of redundancy too few to ensure the ship performed as desired.

  He assigned one of his better standards evaluation teams to the project. They would have to wait to see if the ship showed up and what the diagnostics told them to be able to come up with solid recommendations, but they could start looking at the existing system.

  Then he placed a call to Vice Admiral Cory Dillon.

  “Dillon here.”

  “Admiral Dillon, this is Fred Dunlop. I’m the head of the ship acquisition department.”

  Dillon recognized the name from the copy list on Captain Whiting’s report.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dunlop. What can I do for you?”

  “Admiral, I think it may be more what I can do for you. I have additional information for you that may be useful for your presentation to the Naval Operations Board on the recent testing of the converted drone battleships.”

  “Ameliorating information, I hope, Mr. Dunlop.”

  “Yes, Admiral. I think so. It’s been rather closely held here because we weren’t sure how it was going to work out, but we’re getting results back now that look very promising.”

  “I’m all ears, Mr. Dunlop.”

  “Yes, Admiral. The gist of it is remotely controlled repair units that can make component-level and module-level repairs aboard ship. It’s called the HARPER system. High Availability Remotely Piloted Evaluation and Repair. It’s basically robots, but not autonomous. They are controlled by the ship’s crew in VR.”

  HARPER got Dillon’s attention. He had been in the Imperial Navy a long time, and he remembered the story of the Bosun First who had saved his ship – and an Imperial system – by tamping a satchel charge with his own body. That’s the sort of story that stays with you, and he had never forgotten the name of that heroic sailor.

  “Would this system have been able to repair the failures we saw on this test run, Mr. Dunlop?”

  “The two engineering failures, yes, Admiral. Those were simple module-level replacements from spares, as was proven when they were back in Osaka spacedock and repair crews went aboard. The HARPER units are being designed for that.

  “The
case of the HMS Peregrine is different. The crew has always been one level of redundancy in our systems. With no crew aboard, we were missing one level of redundancy. We are looking into that now – we’ll know more once the Peregrine is recovered – and we’ll be building that extra level into the specifications. As long as the ship can exit hyperspace successfully and reestablish contact with its crew, HARPER units can then be used to effectuate repairs.”

  “How far along is this system, Mr. Dunlop? Can you send me a specifications package on the system?”

  “Not yet, Admiral. This system is not going through the normal design process, where the specification package is put together first and then requests for proposal are sent out. The vendor in this case – the design shop that came up with the new ship designs, actually – proposed the system and has been working it up on its own. They’ve been free to innovate on the system, and they’ve made great progress.”

  “That doesn’t sound that good to me, Mr. Dunlop. An independent design shop working up a system with no performance specifications or process controls. Sounds iffy to me.”

  “I understand, Admiral. It is an exceptional situation because it is a completely new system. We have no prior experience with such systems to build a specification around. I might mention, though, they have Ilia Sobol and Robert Stewart working with them.”

  “Ilia Sobol and Robert Stewart? Both? On this HARPER project?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Dillon was an engineer. That’s why he was in command of the testing of the converted battleships in the first place. He knew very well who Ilia Sobol and Robert Stewart were. He had several of their books in the quick-access stack in his VR.

  “That makes a big difference, Mr. Dunlop. A very big difference.”

  “I thought you’d think so, Admiral.”

  “All right, Mr. Dunlop. Send me what you can on the HARPER system. It may just be our way out of this mess.”

  “Will do, Admiral.”

  “And thanks for the call, Mr. Dunlop. I really appreciate it.”