Loyalty to the Cause (TCOTU, Book 4) (This Corner of the Universe)

by Britt Ringel

  The dining on board the passenger liner was fantastic. The short duration of its usual route ensured the ship was always well-stocked with the freshest of food. Heskan placed his new, Hollaran datapad on the table as he sat down and greeted his companions.

  Vernay and Selvaggio nodded with full mouths while Truesworth said, “Evening, Captain. You’ve got to try this fish. I have no idea how to pronounce it but it’s better than Titan’s alvacour.”

  Heskan quickly entered his dining request and looked around the table. He nodded as he acknowledged Selvaggio and Truesworth with “Lieutenants” and then grinned unabashedly at Vernay while greeting, “Commander.”

  During the creation of their new identities and subsequent “buy-up” in The Foster Fifteen, Heskan had arranged increases in rank for his crew. Additionally, Heskan surprised his first officer with an additional jump in rank to full commander. Not only did she deserve it, he rationalized her higher rank guaranteed that she would remain his first officer. Finally, his three enlisted men had stepped up in rank, with Chief Brown being elevated from E-8 to E-9 only after his blanket refusal to accept a commission.

  Next to Heskan, Vernay blushed at the mention of her new rank. “It’s ridiculous,” she said.

  “Ridiculously awesome, you mean,” Truesworth corrected. “I’m a full lieutenant after only two and a half years! At this rate, I’ll be an admiral before I’m thirty,” he joked. “The only problem is that our files just state our rank and not our date of rank.” He glanced playfully at Selvaggio. “Now we’ll never know if I out-rank you.”

  “—I’ll always out-rank you.”

  “—She’ll always out-rank you.”

  Selvaggio, Vernay and Heskan burst out laughing and Truesworth good-naturedly shrugged in resignation. After the laughter died down, Truesworth said, “Commander-Stacy-ma’am, I’ve been reading a lot about the battles fought in and around the Seshafi system and this privateer gig may not be so bad.”

  “What do you mean, Jack?” Vernay asked.

  “Well, AmyraCorp has been involved in three supposedly major conflicts in the last ten years. Each of the battles has curiously short casualty lists. In the latest skirmishes with IaCom, only three ships were lost in total, none with all hands on board.”

  “AmyraCorp lost only three ships the entire battle?” Heskan asked suspiciously.

  Truesworth shook his head. “No, Captain, that’s three ships total, for both sides, that were lost. Many more were damaged but none of the damaged ships were scrapped. All of the mercen—, uh, privateer ships made it through with only moderate or minor damage.”

  “I think AmyraCorp has to pay for the repair of any ships they lease so it makes sense they’d be careful,” Selvaggio said. “But only three ships lost for a whole battle? How is that possible? What does that mean?”

  Truesworth smiled brightly. “I think it means these corporate admirals know their stuff.”

  “Or,” Vernay suggested, “these corporate navies just play at war.”

  * * *

  Heskan arrived at the docking tube to AV Elathra and all the familiar anxious feelings associated with assuming a new command returned. Adding to his concerns were the unique circumstances of his acquisition of the vessel. However, if there was anything unusual about the partial crew exchange inside Elathra, it went unnoticed by the Hollaran civilians hired to sail the vessel to Seshafi. Instead of asking for an explanation of why Heskan and his crew were taking over the ship in the Vica Pota system, the civilian captain merely ran Heskan through a comprehensive checklist confirming the status of the snow and sought his signature.

  Sitting comfortably in the captain’s chair on Elathra’s bridge, Heskan experimentally turned the chair left and right, noting its silence to his satisfaction. The snow’s bridge conformed to expectations for any bridge on a small vessel. Stations for Navigation and Sensors were front and center. Weapons and Engineering resided along the bridge’s sides, while Operations, to be manned by Lieutenant, junior grade, Gables, occupied the bulkhead behind Heskan’s chair and to his left. Vernay’s first officer station was immediately to Heskan’s left, the standard location on most bridges. The compartment was similar to Anelace’s bridge but certainly felt different. In the rush to civilianize the ship, any Hollaran naval emblem had simply been painted over, with little effort to conceal what the fresh paint was hiding. The color scheme inside the entire ship was familiar but “off,” and although Heskan was on a fast ship, little details such as lighting and the position of wall panels reminded him the ship was not Anelace.

  These minute differences were augmented by the age of the ship. While Elathra held most of the modern conveniences standard for more contemporary vessels, her propulsion and armament divulged her age.

  In her previous life, AV Elathra had been known as CHES-231, HCS Elathra. The Commonwealth high endurance ship was slightly longer and wider with a greater draft than Anelace, but displaced only 3,480 tonnes due to her odd, “winged” split hull. The snow was meant to be crewed similarly to the Brevic corvette, with eight officers and fifty-seven enlisted. Upon Elathra’s decommission, she lost her “HCS” designation for the more general “AV” prefix. The “armed vessel” title was given to nearly every armed ship for hire in accordance to Hollaran and Federation customs and treaty. The Brevic Republic, which did not abide mercenaries and only allowed government-approved, privately owned convoy defense ships, saw no such distinction between armed vessels and pirate ships.

  Powered with a single Kuritan-910 power plant, Elathra pushed herself forward on the backs of four Junkkers-Damler-213A1 drives and a Gibson-12 tunnel drive. The venerable conventional drives combined to give the snow a top speed of .26c, slow for the present era but respectable in past generations. Her Blue-Suns sensor suite and twin Argus VSP-14 Fisheyes gave her strong detection and tracking capabilities. The twin eyes of the Argus array worked in tandem to yield an optical picture nearly as good as Anelace’s had been. Similar to Dagger-class corvettes, the Colossus-class snows relied on an Endrix Advanced Integrated Projection Screen (AIPS) for protection and the ubiquitous duralloy armor that had become industry standard long before Elathra’s keel had been laid.

  The snow’s armament was designed at a time of constant, minor border skirmishes with the Brevic Republic. Two dual Lyle GP laser turrets at the fore of her starboard and port “wings” provided the mainstay of her armament. Supplementing these weapons were a quartet of Blackings laser carronades mounted in pairs along each side of her wings. Such lasers were now antiquated due to their unacceptably short, 3ls range. The teeth of Elathra’s armament, and the principal reason for her graceful, outstretched wing design, were two Bredalin neutron particle cannons. Rarely used on contemporary vessels, particle beam weapons operated on the principle of accelerating neutrons linearly into a beam. The length of the accelerator required to scale the particles into a weapons-grade beam was problematically long, resulting in Elathra’s outswept “wings” that housed the enormous 107-meter linear accelerators. Each cannon’s “barrel” ran nearly the entire length of each wing. Smooth structures flowing outward like feathers along the wings contained radiators that, in conjunction with Elathra’s ventral radiator, dissipated the incredible heat generated by the wildly inefficient particle weapons. The extraordinary amount of waste heat generated when firing a neutron cannon that contained enough energy to offset thermal bloom doomed the weapon’s popularity. Further, the actual thermal bloom of the Bredalin beams reduced the accuracy of the weapon to between four and six light-seconds, depending on the gunner’s abilities. As a result of these failings, particle beam weapons had fallen out of favor over the last fifty years.

  The day Heskan took command, he, Vernay and Brown walked through the entire ship. No corner or crevice escaped notice during their five-hour tour. The inspection left Heskan with the distinct feeling that while old, Elathra was still capable. As he got to know his command, Elathra and her three companions, Rindr, Anakim, and Ravana
, sailed to the tunnel point that would begin their journey toward a new life.

  “We’re next for the dive, Captain,” Selvaggio informed from her navigation station. She absentmindedly played with several of the panel’s controls.

  “How’s she handle, Diane?” Heskan asked.

  “Different,” Selvaggio admitted. “Her center of thrust makes her seem a bit skittish but once I get used to it, I bet I can spin this ship like a top with her thrusters.”

  “That sounds unpleasant,” Truesworth muttered next to her.

  Selvaggio ignored him and continued, “I was a little disappointed with the Junkkers drives but I do like having four little drives better than one or two big ones.”

  Heskan looked to his left. The first officer’s seat was empty as Vernay temporarily occupied the weapons station. “Enjoying your new toys, Commander?” he asked with a smile.

  “The GPs are what I expected. There isn’t a navy out there that doesn’t use them. I only wish there were more.” She shook her head slightly. “These carronades... I like that they recycle faster but other than point defense, when would we ever be close enough to use them?” She poked at the weapons console and brought up the firing schematics of the particle beams. “Love how hard these Bredalins will hit. Hate how slow they fire.” Due to the excessive heat generation and the possibility that rapid fire could cause the weapon to spew non-neutral particles, which would build up a dangerous opposite charge along Elathra’s hull, Bredalin hardcoded a ten-second recycle delay into the software. It was yet another deficiency of particle beam weapons that helped usher the technology into obscurity.

  “Your final verdict?” Heskan asked.

  “I want my mass driver back,” Vernay confessed. “However, I pity the ships that stay within three light-seconds of us.”

  “Does that kind of close combat normally occur in corporate battles, Captain?” Selvaggio asked.

  Heskan considered the question. During his review of recent battles between corporate rivals, Heskan discovered the reason behind the low casualties. Corporate warfare was merely an extension of corporate negotiations. When mediation, espionage and outright theft failed, corporations would settle their disputes using one of two methods. The first was a labyrinth of argumentation in front of an over-arching council referred to as “The Courts.” Representatives from every corporate system sat upon the bench as judges to hear the complaints corporations lodged against each other. The political maneuvering and legal doublespeak in this approach boggled Heskan’s mind enough to understand the preferred, and far more efficient, method was corporate warfare through the issuance of a casus bellum.

  When two corporations disputed over rights to a technology, sales territories or anything else, the aggrieved corporation would issue a “cause for war” outlining the reasons why its claim was stronger than its opponent’s. Normally, the casus bellum was answered and negotiations were entered to resolve the dispute. Other times, the casus bellum was rejected and hostilities decided what could not be solved peacefully.

  The actual skirmishes were unlike anything in Heskan’s experience. The Brevic Republic essentially had but one enemy, and the wars fought were to preserve its way of life. Unlike the unrestricted warfare between the Republic and Commonwealth, corporate warfare seemed highly stylized for reasons of both necessity and tradition.

  Under the Independence Agreements signed by the Federation and the newly formed corporate systems over a century ago, no corporate system could operate, lease or hire a military ship greater than 10,000 tonnes. When Heskan reflected that Kite, merely an escort destroyer, grossed 254,000 tonnes, he understood why ships even as small as Elathra were highly valued in corporate warfare. Given the expense of building and operating even brig-sized ships, most corporations, especially single-system ones, required assistance from privateer groups when going to war. A quick search for the composition of Seshafi’s native defense fleet revealed only a handful of patrol craft and cutters along with three corvettes, two snows and two brigs. AmyraCorp also possessed two capital ships, schooner-sized vessels designated as ships of the line, with a third vessel under construction. Capital ships were divided by size and armament from the smallest fourth-rates massing roughly 6,000 tonnes to the largest first-rates permissible by treaty at 10,000 tonnes. Seshafi boasted both a fourth-rate and a third-rate vessel.

  The necessity to abide by the Independence Agreements skewed corporate warfare toward small-scale engagements. The tradition that drew upon nearly a century of corporate conflicts had refined the ritual of those engagements to something less resembling open warfare and more to an intricate dance riddled with rubrics and customs. The culmination of these principles resulted in engagements that yielded fewer casualties and less destruction while providing decisive conflict resolution. Each corporate region had their own bylaws and mores on how such warfare was conducted, but all of Heskan’s readings distilled the combat down to a single word: gentlemanly.

  “Um, Captain?” Selvaggio prodded. “Hello?”

  Heskan shook himself. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I asked if close combat in the corporate battles was common.”

  “That’s difficult to answer,” Heskan said. “Combatants do graze the five light-second range quite often but it doesn’t end up as the massacre you’d think it would. From what I’ve read, combat is a lot more….”

  “Orderly, Captain?” Vernay offered.

  “Yeah. That’s a good word. I still really don’t quite understand it,” he confessed.

  Vernay’s expression grew concerned. “Then I guess it’s a good thing that we have a whole thirteen days before we reach Seshafi.”

  * * *

  Elathra had a final standata sync before her dive from Vica Pota. After Heskan was sure the snow safely entered tunnel space, he passed command to Vernay and retired to his cabin. A blinking notification was silently waiting on his desk’s computer screen.

  Heskan nearly tripped as he casually glanced at the tagline on the message while walking by the screen on his way to the bathroom. The message was from the personal account of Komandor Podporucznik Isabella Lombardi. Heart thundering, he immediately sat down and read the single line waiting for him. “I knew your father would be proud.” Heskan stared uncomprehendingly at the vague message until he realized the dispatch held an attachment. It was labeled, DCID Clearance Only, Intel – Jacob G. Heskan, #BR3113-4327TT-3236AC-3134, Commander, Brevic Navy, Deceased.

  An hour later, after having read every word of the Hollaran file, a tearful Heskan sat back with a heartfelt smile and solemnly thought, I’m just like my father after all.

  Chapter 24

  Elathra had been sailing for nine uneventful days with her new crew when the Gibson drive once again expelled her from tunnel space. Ahead of Heskan, Lieutenant Selvaggio worked to confirm their destination while Truesworth announced a green beacon on the buoy nearest them.

  “We have arrived in the Lagrin system, Captain. All four ships have emerged. We’re cleared to sail through the tunnel exit pattern and follow the snows ahead of us.” She squinted at her console before shouting, “Jack, confirm that snow’s identity!”

  The uncharacteristic command from Selvaggio muted the activity on the bridge. Heskan stared at the system plot, trying to decipher the navigation beacons of the ships ahead of his squadron.

  As he read the words to himself, Truesworth exclaimed, “That snow is registered as CDS Sultan, Diane. I don’t know what the brig and other snows she’s with are, but…” He spun to face Heskan. “Captain, that’s a Saden snow! She’s the enemy!”

  “Battle stations, Stacy,” Heskan ordered instantly. My God, we’ve tunneled out right behind an enemy formation and my entire squadron is crewed by civilian transport sailors. “Jack, tell our squadron mates to come about and execute an immediate dive back to t-space. Diane, get some distance from them and try to lure Sultan into a pursuit.”

  “Incoming message from Sultan, sir,” Truesworth dec
lared.

  I’m not surrendering without a fight, Heskan promised himself. “Stacy, have Pruette and Thomas crew the particle beams. We’ll run in close and slam them hard, then make a break for the tunnel point.” He gestured to Truesworth for the message.

  A young man, perhaps twenty-five, appeared on a side screen. His elaborate uniform emulated that of a Federation officer while exchanging the blue and white for red and gold. “Sade’s armed snow, Sultan, sends her highest regards to AV Elathra. Lieutenant Franklin D. Dexter commanding.” The man dipped his head slightly. “We were informed that AmyraCorp secured only three Hollaran snows, Komandor. Has there been a change in the order of battle?”

  Heskan looked around the bridge in slight confusion. His officers were frozen in half-compliance with his recent orders. After a beat, he countermanded himself, “Belay all that.” To the screen, he responded, “I’m Captain Garrett Heskan of Elathra. Lieutenant Dexter, can you confirm that Sultan is an IaCom-controlled ship?”

  Dexter’s eyebrows arched up in confusion. “Of course it is. Haven’t you bothered to read…” The man trailed off briefly before nodding. “I understand your confusion. You’ve come directly from the Commonwealth and don’t have the latest information. Captain, once we have synced our standata you’ll see the updated order of battle regarding our impending dispute. Terribly sorry for the misunderstanding.” His smile reappeared. “Well, let me be the first to welcome you to our slice of the galaxy, unless, of course, your travels have taken you here before. In which case, a hearty welcome back.”

  Heskan glanced at the system plot. Sultan and her companions were still sailing blissfully away from Elathra. “Uh, Lieutenant,” Heskan stammered, “I’m not disappointed but why have we not exchanged fire?”

  Dexter’s expression soured. “Why would we possibly do that, Captain? Is that a jest? My apologies, sir, us corporate types really don’t understand the privateer sense of humor. A failing of ours, I’m sure.” He shrugged amicably. “Well, see you at the ball, Captain. Safe journey.” The screen faded to black leaving Heskan with more questions than answers.