Tales From the War (Kinsella Universe Book 5)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “All of them?” the chief’s voice betrayed a hint of emotion.

  “All of them,” Commander Warren agreed with finality. “Wherever situate. Emergency measures are being taken to do something about that, but they are, frankly, going to be palliative, not a cure. It is possible that within four to six weeks one in three, or perhaps one in two of the people alive this time last year will be dead.”

  Rachael felt faint. A third of humanity? Half? A catastrophe unlike anything to ever happen to the human race before; worse than any war, worse than any epidemic or famine.

  “Shenandoah’s particular task is to carry the word along this path.” A blue line sprang up from blue Earth, about a quarter of the way to the frontier, a stop, then two more in rapid succession, then a long gap, and four more systems out near the frontier, about 40 degrees around the circle from where the known attacks had occurred.

  Commander Warren tapped the area towards the edge of the Federation. “What we will meet out there is not knowable. If the aliens have attacked in force there too, it is likely this war will be very short.

  “Admiral Fletcher sent a message to the Fleet; it will be played tomorrow when the captain tells the rest of the crew what we are about. Part of it is individually important to everyone in the Fleet: he tells us that it is the goal of every person to live well. But, we in the Fleet are going to have die better than we lived if humanity is to have any chance of survival. As Turbine Jensen has shown us, the best result of all: make the critters die instead.”

  “My personal estimate is that we have about one chance in six of meeting an enemy force along the course outlined,” Commander Warren continued. “However, the numbers are merely guesses: lotto picks. This,” she said, and the map changed, “is where the numbers go towards unity. Perhaps a 50-50 chance of survival, if we are careful and lucky.”

  Rachael saw the course curved back towards the area of the attacks, but outwards, into the dark gray dots of stars that hadn't been surveyed. There was a solid ring of light gray dots, closer in: worlds already surveyed and not inhabited by humanity. “Our orders are to approach systems, keeping well outside of them and moving closer only on intrinsic. An intrinsic that will probably be about .4 c.” Her eyes held Rachael’s. “Any ship traveling that fast is at great risk, just from the velocity.

  “We will make approaches to within about 20 AU’s, well outside of Pluto’s orbit around the sun. We are looking for gravity waves from ships under fan, or arriving and departing, or electromagnetic radiation from a technological civilization.

  “For what it’s worth, Shenandoah is under stern orders not to engage any enemy vessel unless there is no alternative. Our mission orders are to observe, survive and report. But there is real danger every step of the way.”

  There was silence in the compartment while they digested the information. “You,” Commander Warren smiled at Rachael, “at least have the option of getting off, before we go on the grand tour. Fleet wants the product you are going to produce, almost as much as the intelligence Shenandoah is going to produce, so you have an option the rest of us don’t.”

  Rachael lifted her head and looked the commander square in the eyes, her voice flat and angry. “Commander Warren, sure, I’m just a bimbo newsreader from Sat Com News Service, a dirty-foot from Earth. I’ve been promoted to a rank I do not deserve; a rank I’m absolutely unqualified to hold. All of that is true.

  “Yet, for all of that, they ordered you on this flight. You and every other person on this ship.” The computer supplied a number for her, “All six hundred and eleven of you. I came because I wanted to. I volunteered. Don’t ever mention my leaving this ship again because of fear about what might happen. Don’t!” The cold fury in Rachael’s voice startled the older woman.

  There was a profound silence in the room; interrupted by a Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! of an alarm. “Battle Stations! Battle Stations! Now man your battle stations!”

  In the next few minutes people entered the outer office and sat at consoles down the long walls.

  “Chief, you may report that intelligence is manned and ready,” Commander Warren told her senior chief, her voice very frosty.

  Chief Vargas nodded and Rachael heard a faint echo of the woman’s voice in her head. “I-branch reports manned and ready.”

  A few minutes later there was a beep on the intercom. “This is the Captain. The next time Shenandoah comes to full ready for battle stations in more than two minutes, every single member of this crew will be paste waxing the gym floor for two duty shifts. Stand down.”

  “Stafford!” Commander Warren said into the silence in the room following the captain’s speech. A tall woman turned. She had very long black hair in a disheveled mop down her back; hair that was still dripping water. “You were the last person in by nearly 45 seconds. You made us late.”

  “I was in the shower, Commander,” the woman offered.

  “Next time, pick up your uniform on the fly; air dry on the way, and you can dress here after we report ready.” Commander Warren surveyed the compartment, her eyes cold. “Listen up!” Every one was watching their boss.

  “We’re in a real war with real missiles with gigaton warheads coming our way! Count on it! Consider the relative importance of giving another member of the crew a thrill or getting to your duty station in time to stop that missile! Be you in the shower, on the commode or in an intimate clinch -- you do what it takes to get here in the most expeditious means possible! We have facilities for personal hygiene here; use them if you need to... after we report ready.”

  Commander Warren gestured at junior chief who'd been late. “Commander Ferris is new aboard. You will escort her back to her quarters. You will both run. There, you will both return here. Then you will once again return to her quarters, still running. Five round trips, both of you. Begin.”

  The woman was out of her seat, heading for the door. Rachael was nonplussed, but only for a second. To Rachael’s surprise the junior chief didn’t ask where to go, she just turned and started moving. Everyone else studiously ignored them, as well as the few others also running in the corridors.

  “How did you know?” Rachael asked, coming up next to the other woman, “Where to go?”

  “I asked Shenandoah.”

  In her head Rachael saw a map of Shenandoah, with two blinking X’s, one her quarters, the other the Intelligence section and a line connecting them. Another something to get used to; she’d forgotten the computer already.

  Twenty minutes later the two women pulled up in front of the Intelligence compartment door for the fifth time. “I wish I was in as good shape as you,” the Fleet chief told Rachael.

  “I jog every day at home. Ten klicks.”

  “I’m gonna have to start; I’m too fat and sloppy!” The junior chief said, panting heavily. Rachael raised a mental eyebrow, the other must have massed little more than 45 kilos.

  “Where would one go to jog aboard Shenandoah?” Rachael asked.

  Chief Stafford grinned. “She would go to the gym, the captain’s favorite place for extra duty. It’s a 100 meters in diameter and has a jogging track around the perimeter. Betcha it gets a lot more use than ever before.”

  “Commander Ferris,” Commander Warren said, opening the door. “I thought I heard you out here. You will be able to find your way here, now, is that correct?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Good! Now we need to finish the brief. Stafford, this will be for everyone.”

  The two of them came back inside, and Commander Warren went over the flight plan. She finished up by adding, “I tell you this now for the simple reason that as of now, you are under Class One restrictions. Which means, no shore side leave any place we might stop. We’re not going to stop, but now you know too much to be allowed off ship.

  “In case any of you have forgotten Class One rules, let me remind you. You may tell people you work in I-branch. You may tell people your name and rate. You will not tell anyone anything about your
duty; not so much as your duty schedule, days off, anything. If it should get back to me or the security officer that you’ve been talking, it means a general court-martial, and if you were convicted, you’d spend the next twenty years in the brig.”

  She nodded at Rachael. “We have with us Lieutenant Commander Rachael Ferris. This isn’t her first time out of the atmosphere, but the prior flights were as a paying passenger. She’s the first of a new breed of officer you’re going to see more and more of in the next months: a civilian expert called up as Fleet reserve; she is very good at what she does. You may start practicing with her. Be gentle, but firm. Allow no mistakes, treat her like a new ensign on their virgin cruise.” There were grins around the room. “Remember though, she is a ranking officer. Firm, but gentle.”

  “Commander Ferris is a newsie.”

  That declaration appeared to surprise about 90% of the audience, Rachael thought.

  “However, she has a bachelor’s degree in astrogeology and a master’s in astrophysics. Four years ago she was on the Fourth Pleiades survey mission, and she’d been out once before. She has been granted our usual clearance. She will be considered to have a need to know anything in our department. At least for now, she will serve as my administrative deputy as well.

  “One last thing, one that Commander Ferris reminded me of a few minutes ago. Commander Ferris has only the barest understanding of what it means to be Fleet; that will come in due time.” The commander’s eyes met Rachael’s. “When I met her, in spite of my prejudices against her profession, I liked her. Nonetheless I was condescending, verging on rude. Commander Ferris reminded me, quite correctly, that she is unlike the rest of us aboard Shenandoah. We were ordered aboard -- but she came of her own free will. Ignorance is a condition that can be cured by education; stupidity frequently requires one to be slapped upside the head with a week old trout before the message is received.”

  There was a ripple of laughter around the room. A private joke, Rachael thought.

  “Chief Vargas, I want you and Commander Ferris to start work on a recon plan for the Shenandoah. You coordinate the effort, Ferris. I want to be able to present the captain with a nicely gift-wrapped op plan before we head outwards.”

  Master Chief Vargas, nodded, but asked, “Commander, won't Operations and Navigation be tasked for that?”

  Commander Warner nodded. “Actually, you’ll be the fourth group working up a plan. There is a Joint Planning Committee, I’m on that, headed by the XO; but I know Subotai in Navigation is going to have some of his junior people working on their own. Hsien in Sensors will be doing the same. Commander Ferris will be in charge of I-Branch’s effort.”

  She turned to Rachael. “You may, if you wish, coopt another member of our department, Commander. Be sure to run it by me first, but there won't be a problem.

  Later Rachael was laying atop her bunk in her compartment. There were soft lights, even during the nominal “sleep” cycle. Rachael had wanted them off, couldn’t find the switch and had consulted Shenandoah.

  The ship’s computer had been cheerfully blunt. “There are no compartments on the ship with a living human in it that is dark; not even by request. If you wish darkness you should close your eyes. If that isn’t dark enough you, you will have to adapt.”

  The strange sounds the ship made were completely different from the four times she’d traveled on starships before, as a passenger or an academic.

  At 3:30 AM, 0330 military time, the alarm gongs rang once again, and she sprinted to her battle station, along with a myriad other people. Most, she noted amusedly, had, like her, slept in a shipsuit. Even so, as fast as she was, only two others were later and all of them received the gimlet eye of Commander Warren.

  “One minute and five seconds, people,” the commander told them harshly. “That is barely adequate.” She looked around the compartment. “Remember one important thing: this was a drill! It’s not announced as a drill, and the real thing will be have the magic words, ‘No Drill’ attached, at least for the first time or two. A minute isn’t bad, but the use of the words ‘No Drill’ means someone is shooting at us. Commander Ferris had the furthest to go; 78 meters from her bed to this compartment. Forty five seconds. That’s what it should take; forty seconds, maybe, if your life depends on it. It does.”

  She looked around the room. “The captain has told department heads he intends to fully exercise the ship. So, we’re doing a full battle drill from some HDDs I happened to pick up before we left.” She nodded at the chief, “Chief Vargas, start Exercise One rolling, if you would.”

  Almost instantly Rachael recognized the sensor data being shown on the big repeater as that from Hastings at Gandalf. No hostiles were showing, but she recognized the fuzz on the edge of the screens that represented the city and the surrounding geography of Gandalf. “Commander,” Rachael said quietly, “I’ve seen these tapes. Some of them, anyway.”

  The commander’s expression was blank. “I haven’t seen them yet, I had Chief Vargas edit the exercise. The captain hasn’t seen them either.”

  “Another version was broadcast back home today. I saw that.”

  “Then please assist the chief as an umpire, evaluating our performance. That will be more effective than the chief doing it alone.”

  One of the stations along the wall spoke. “Captain, ship detection.” The voice read off the coordinates.

  In Rachael’s head the captain’s response echoed the words from the speaker. “Roger that.”

  “Multiple ships exiting fans,” the sensor tech reported, “Many ships, too many to count.”

  “Shenandoah, how many ships?” the captain queried.

  The ship replied, “Fifty-eight ships, now sixty one. Emerging at the rate of four or five per second. Now seventy-one. Some of the ships detected are very large. They appear to be non-human ships.”

  “Weapons! Exercise Fire Mission! This is a drill.” The captain rattled off a number of nonsense syllables, fire control authorizations.

  “Missile launch indications now,” the sensor tech reported. “Bogey count is now eighty-five, and it has been three seconds since the last ship emerged. Many missile launches; estimate there are now five hundred plus missiles down bound. Missiles being fired at the rate of 20 per second and the number is rapidly trending upwards.”

  The drill continued and two minutes later Shenandoah was destroyed when she attempted to cut to one side of the enemy formation.

  At the start of the exercise the master chief had handed Rachael a databoard with a time line on it. The timeline was the actual one from Hastings, and the milestones from their own. The exercise continued for a while longer, and then the speakers announced the stand down, immediately followed with “All department heads and deputies, report to the Captain's Ready Room, forthwith.”

  The commander made a come-along gesture to Rachael, and Rachael followed her up a dozen decks to a room larger than any other she’d seen aboard Shenandoah, off the bridge.

  “The coffee, sandwiches and doughnuts are courtesy of the night watch,” the captain announced. “Get something; this going to take a while.”

  Moments later he stood in one end of the long conference table. He was a very tall man, Rachael thought, tall enough to almost certainly have played basketball. Now he was lean and graying, a greyhound of a man. He was full of energy, always moving.

  “I’m going to start with a confession,” the captain told them, speaking in a quiet voice. “I had thought to play the sensor tapes Hastings made at Gandalf, and we could repeat the admirable ship handling there and be encouraged in our own tasks. That was a mistake.”

  He leaned down, with the angriest face Rachael could ever remember seeing on a human being. “Shenandoah blew it! We simply blew it! From the first seconds, right up to the end! We were at battle stations, expecting a battle drill! Hastings was aground, at battle stations, yes, indeed. But not expecting anything, just another drill, dead, dumb, dirty-foot aground on the planet! The warnin
g from Shenandoah’s sensors came three whole seconds after the same alert was given on Hastings! Sensor reports were uniformly three to five seconds later than they should have been!”

  Commander Warren started to speak, and the captain waved for her to remain quiet. “My weapons orders were nearly ten seconds later than they should have been, not counting the sensor delays! Weapons responses added another five or ten seconds of delays.

  “Worse, I ordered most of the missile shots to intercept missiles down bound for Gandalf. Perhaps two thirds of our missiles were expended in that fashion. Following standard Fleet doctrine, we concentrated our remaining fire on one edge of the enemy formation and attempted to cut around them. And we were destroyed.

  “Shenandoah ran a number of scenarios for me; no matter what we did after the initial delays, we were toast. Had we launched as Hastings, as lead in the attack, the ships behind us would have been toast as well.”

  His finger pointed at Commander Warren, “Commander Warren, you will clean house! If your sensor techs can’t do better, get someone else. You can have your pick of the crew! I don’t care if it’s a cook or manure spreader! I will not tolerate sensor delays! If we can’t see ‘em, we can’t avoid them! And we sure as hell can’t shoot them!”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the commander’s reply was subdued.

  “Weapons was late on weapons allocations, engineering was slow on velocity and course changes. Every last thing we did was late! People, if we’d have been at Gandalf instead of Hastings, Hastings would be sitting fat dumb and happy in Maunalua Bay, and a couple of billion more people would be dead than are now -- including all of us.

  “Every last person on this crew, starting with myself, needs to learn a new way of thinking. Perhaps nothing points this up more than the actual weapons allocations of Hastings. They did not fire a single missile at anything that wasn’t down bound in their path. They did not defend one square centimeter of Gandalf except what was in the shadow of their own progress.”