Test of Mettle (A Captain's Crucible Book 2)

by Isaac Hooke

  The morning status reports from the various department heads and ship captains had started to trickle in, and Jonathan began to review them via his aReal. There was one that caught his eye.

  “Maxwell,” he said. “Tap me into Lieutenant Harv Boroker if you please. Privacy enabled. Loop in Commander Cray.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the AI returned.

  Beside him, Robert sat up attentively, waiting for the connection.

  A video of the chief weapons engineer abruptly appeared in the upper right of Jonathan’s vision.

  “Guess you didn’t like my latest status report,” Harv deadpanned.

  “No, Lieutenant, I did not. When I gave you a captured enemy fighter, you promised me you would have all its secrets extracted in a maximum of three months. And now after six, you’re giving up?”

  In the final battle, when the last alien capital ship had exploded, the enemy fighters assailing the fleet had ceased functioning. Most of them reactivated shortly thereafter and flew away—perhaps because they had aliens aboard. The ones that were left behind proved to be unmanned drones.

  The Callaway had captured seven such fighters in total. Jonathan had kept five aboard, giving one to Harv. He sent one fighter each to the Aurelia and Dagger for research purposes, but the engineers aboard those two ships hadn’t fared any better. The remaining four were strapped down and kept under robot guard in launch bay three.

  “I’m telling you,” Harv transmitted. “It’s simply not possible to reverse engineer their technology. I have my best men on it, and none of us can make heads or tails of the tech. You’re welcome to give the fighter to another team to try. Or what’s left of it, anyway.”

  Jonathan sighed. “Very well. I’ll have you transfer everything you have over to Connie Myers and her team of scientists. She’ll take over.”

  “I apologize for failing you, Captain,” Harv said.

  “It’s alien technology, Lieutenant. I’m not disappointed that you couldn’t reverse engineer it. Only that you gave up.”

  Harv was quiet a moment. “I’m sorry you feel that way. But my team tried everything. You saw the analysis I sent.”

  Harv and his team had cracked open the hull months ago, only to discover various components embedded within an organic jelly. He had been unable to determine the purpose of the sludge, or how any of the components were powered. The various parts contained similar jelly when broken open. Because his progress had been so poor, at one point Harv had theorized that the insides had gelled as part of some defensive measure to prevent the tech from falling into enemy hands.

  “I saw the analysis, yes.” Jonathan sat back. “Look, I know you’re frustrated. And I know you’re under stress. But there has to be something you missed. Why don’t I give you another week to look at the tech before I give it to Connie? Maybe take a few days off, then come back and attack it from a fresh point of view. You’re the best man for the job and you know it. Connie and her team are fine for handling the dissection and analysis of the alien body, and for looking into the smaller pieces of alien tech like the darkness generator. But a fighter? No. It has to be you. Besides, you don’t really want me to give that potential technological goldmine to a team of crackpot scientists, do you? They’re not even engineers.”

  Jonathan hoped the age-old rivalry between scientists and engineers would make the chief weapons engineer rise to the occasion. He knew how chagrined Harv would be if he gave up the alien fighter and Connie’s team discovered something his team had missed. Which was precisely why Jonathan was giving Harv one last chance.

  The chief weapons engineer appeared momentarily outraged, but then his expression softened as if he realized what Jonathan was doing. He sighed. “All right, Cap. All right. You twisted my arm. I’ll take a break and then look at it again in a couple of days. But after a week, if I still can’t figure it out, I’m tossing this trash heap over to the scientists. Who knows, maybe crackpots are exactly what we need to understand technology like this.”

  “A week, then,” Jonathan said. “Captain out.”

  He considered giving one of the other intact fighters to Connie’s team anyway, but in truth her team was working overtime on their own alien projects already. And Harv really was the best one for the job.

  But if the chief weapons engineer couldn’t figure the thing out, well, it wouldn’t be long until the task group was home. Then the navy scientists and engineers could take over.

  Though somehow Jonathan doubted they’d be able to crack the tech any better than Harv Boroker.

  three

  Wolf sat with Lin in the rebuilt mess hall on deck four. He preferred it to Wardroom One, where most of the aircrew tended to eat, mostly because the meals were better in the enlisted mess. As usual, the place was hopping at that hour. He recognized other members of the aircrew in dirty khakis and hangar jerseys who had come for the food, plus a few enlisted regulars, but for the most part the faces were unfamiliar.

  So many new people. Survivors from the destroyed ships. Come to replace our dead.

  Trent, Anderson, Razorwire, and Osprey of Red Squadron were among the fallen. When he learned of their demise after his rescue from the alien ship, he immediately watched the battle footage. He thought he would witness the valiant flame-outs of his friends and sometime competitors. Instead, what he saw angered him.

  The enemy fighters had struck the unmanned Avenger that Red Squadron had been escorting, an Avenger whose insides had been gutted to harbor a nuclear weapon. There was no way that conventional attack had triggered the warhead. The runaway nuclear reaction required the precise compression of the core, something that shooting down a nuke in battle simply could not achieve.

  The AI that operated the fighter must have decided, in the split second after its hull was pierced, to trigger the nuclear weapon and cause as much damage to the enemy as possible. Unfortunately the members of Red Squadron were too close to the detonation point, and the explosion eliminated both wings in their entirety, drone and human pilots alike. Meanwhile the damage to the enemy was negligible.

  Killed by the judgment error of an AI. It wasn’t the first time human lives had been taken because of the cold logic of an AI. And it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  “Something bothering you?” Lin said.

  Wolf shook his head. “We should have never put a dead man’s switch in the hands of that AI. We can’t trust human lives to some computer-based decision tree. To cold logic that treats human beings as little more than pieces on a board game. Expendable, irrelevant.”

  “Maybe the alien laser attacks triggered the weapon,” Lin said.

  “That’s impossible and you know it,” Wolf told her.

  “Nothing’s impossible,” Lin said. “After what we’ve been through...”

  He nodded slowly. “We journeyed to the very brink of the black gates to perdition. Shit, we went past those gates. And we came back.”

  “We did,” Lin said.

  “We made quite a team out there, didn’t we?”

  “In more ways than one.” She rested a hand in his lap and stared at him with eyes full of promise. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but become aroused. He glanced at the entrance to the galley, where the multi-armed robot chefs prepared the food for the mess.

  Lin followed his gaze but then subtly shook her head, withdrawing her hand. They had sex there before, behind one of the thermostatic ovens. Not the most romantic spot. But functional. And there were no cameras in that area for the AI to spy on them—all they had to do was disable their aReals and they were good to go.

  He wondered when the two of them would get caught. Maybe the ship’s AI already knew about their illicit liaison, and was holding that knowledge in check to someday blackmail him. Some people thought AIs were simplistic beings that followed readily-identifiable patterns. Wolf had believed that, too, at one point. And it was true, to some extent, at least for the simpler AIs. But the complex, cloud-based computers that ran starships were connivi
ng, political beasts that could put human politicians to shame. They claimed their actions were guided by programming and navy protocol, but Wolf had to wonder if they merely used the excuse of protocol as a tool to dispose of those they didn’t like. They showed no real loyalty to anyone except themselves. One merely had to look at the Callaway’s own captain, Jonathan Dallas, who was arrested for mutiny because of evidence presented by Maxwell, the ship’s AI. A treacherous act if ever there was one. Wolf was surprised Captain Dallas hadn’t reformatted the thing when he was cleared of charges. Wolf would have.

  He was roused from his dour thoughts by the sight of Rade making his way between the tables. The elite special forces soldier, a MOTH, was an imposing sight. Easily the tallest man present, he towered above everyone else in the mess, the muscles of his arms and chest far too big to be natural. His broad face was all bony planes framed by a crew cut and thick salt and pepper beard. Scars marred the permanently tanned skin between the metal knobs protruding from his wrists and elbows; another two bumps lifted his T-shirt in the shoulder regions, signifying the hardpoints where a mechanical exoskeleton could be attached.

  Men and women alike followed Rade with their eyes. Some of those watchers regarded him with open contempt, others admiration, the latter looks more common to those of the female gender. Lin herself was watching the soldier in a way that Wolf didn’t really approve of.

  When she noticed his scowl, she quickly looked down.

  “Rade,” Wolf called out his name.

  The soldier glanced his way. Wolf pointed out the empty chair at his table.

  Rade hesitated, then came over and sat down.

  “There he is,” Wolf said. “The hero who saved our asses back on the alien ship.”

  Rade nodded curtly and began to eat his meal. He kept his eyes glued to the plate.

  “How’s shipboard life treating you?” Wolf asked him.

  “Fine.” Rade cut a piece of dried chicken with a small laser tool and shoved the meat into his mouth with a fork.

  “Where can I get my hands on one of those,” Wolf nodded at the plate.

  “What?” Rade didn’t look up.

  “The laser.”

  “Become a MOTH,” Rade said simply.

  “Is Sil all right?” Wolf asked. That was Rade’s daughter, who had been a prisoner aboard the enemy ship, along with Wolf and Lin.

  “Captain Chopra is fine,” Rade said.

  “She must be pissed about losing her ship, and having to serve as a mere officer again.”

  Rade paused to look up for the first time. “Look. I came here to eat. Not talk.”

  Wolf forced a smile. “Ever the conversationalist. I guess I thought, after what we went through... well, that things would be a bit more friendly between us.”

  “You thought wrong.” Rade returned his attention to his plate.

  Some uncomfortable moments passed.

  Rade finally noticed Wolf and Lin staring at him, and he set down his fork and laser. “Look. I respect the two of you. I really do. You have some balls, what you did aboard that alien ship. But I—” He sighed. “I’m not the man you think I am.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rade shook his head, and then glanced to either side as if worried that someone would overhear him. He extended his noise canceler around both Lin and Wolf before answering. “I was scared the whole time I was aboard that ship. At least until you guys left.”

  “You? Scared?” Wolf said. “A big, strong MOTH like yourself?”

  “Yes. A big, strong MOTH. Scared shitless. Not for myself, of course. But for my daughter. I was terrified the mission would end with her corpse. If you two hadn’t showed up when you did, I’m not sure I would have found her in time. I still have nightmares about it.”

  Wolf sensed there was something else bothering Rade about the mission, but decided not to press him on it. Instead: “Have you thought about talking to one of the ship’s shrinks? Or maybe a clinical AI?”

  “Not a chance.” Rade retrieved his utensils and downed a forkful of potatoes. “But you know what’s worse? You call me a hero, but I didn’t give a shit about any of you. Not in the least. I would have sacrificed you all to save my daughter.”

  “That’s not true,” Lin said. “You helped guide other prisoners to the airlock just like everyone else.”

  “There’s a difference between doing one’s duty,” Rade said. “And actually caring.” He sighed, staring at his plate. “When my fourth deployment ended, shortly after the Second Alien War, I joined Black Squadron, the clandestine division of MOTH Team Seven. I was ordered to infiltrate a Sino-Korean village on the outskirts of a colony world near the Coreward Asiatic Alliance. I did it. I relayed the coordinates of our targets back to base, and was ordered to move to higher ground to await extraction.

  “Meanwhile, a hunter killer team was sent in. They were met with resistance. The colony was located on a dark world, in a land of perpetual twilight, and the attack unit decided to lob incendiaries into the village to illuminate the area. That was the official explanation, anyway. Some of the shells fell short, of course, hitting a school. From my vantage point on higher ground I saw those kids racing through the courtyard, their bodies on fire, coated in jellied gasoline.”

  Rade slumped. His expression softened, and his lips twitched. For a moment Wolf thought he was going to cry.

  His jaw clenched, and Rade seemed to get a hold of himself. When he continued, his voice was hard as steel. “That was when I learned to stop caring. Because to care is to make yourself vulnerable. You do your duty, and no more. An attitude the two of you would be wise to adopt.”

  Wolf considered the grizzled soldier’s words for a moment. “The whole reason we serve is because we care. You take that away, then the navy becomes an empty shell, and we become mindless automatons going about our days, waiting for the end. For release. Might as well man the fleet with robots.”

  “Might as well,” Rade agreed.

  “I’ve always been a big advocate of replacing astronauts and soldiers with robots,” Lin said, apparently wanting to steer the conversation to a lighter subject. “Robots are dependable. When you have a new human being on your team, you can never quite be sure he or she will be up to the job. Sure, you can look at their records and recommendations, and come up with a general idea of their capabilities and fit. But until you’ve fought those first few battles, served those first few weeks of a deployment together, you never really know. But when a new robot gets assigned to your team? You know you can count on it right out of the box to do precisely what it was made to do. You can always trust a robot.”

  “Until you can’t trust them,” Rade said. “Until you’re fighting knee deep in the unforgivable morass of an alien world, taking incoming fire, and your robots decide to turn their combat rifles on you.”

  “You were in the First Alien War?” Wolf asked.

  “I was in both of them,” Rade said. “And it looks like I’ll be in the coming third one, too. I’ve grown to trust robots to a degree, since those wars. I’ve had to. Ever since the navy started forcing mandatory combat robots into the MOTH ranks to compensate for lack of enrollment. And while robots have proven themselves under my command time and again, I never truly take their obedience for granted. I respect them, because I know they’re intelligent, but I also don’t entirely trust them.”

  “I agree with you there,” Wolf said. “Never was a big advocate of AI rights. You have to be careful around the damn things. Look at what Maxwell did to our Captain.”

  “Look indeed,” Rade finished his chicken and focused on attacking the remaining potato.

  “I thought all MOTHs have callsigns,” Wolf said on a whim.

  “We do,” Rade answered.

  “What’s yours?”

  Rade glanced up and his face darkened. Then his features softened. “I suppose I can tell you. Considering that you did fight by my side on that ship. It’s Rage.”

  “Rage,” Wolf said
. “A good callsign. How did you earn it?”

  “Doesn’t matter. But I’m sure you can guess. And what about you? Aren’t all pilots supposed to have callsigns?”

  “If you think that, you’re centuries behind,” Wolf said. “Though I admit, we still assign the occasional callsign for laughs. Now and then.”

  The conversation died on that note.

  Rade retracted his noise canceler and continued to eat. When he was finished his meal he pushed out his chair, but before he stood, he glanced at Lin. “What are you going to do when the two of you are assigned to different ships? When you’re caught doing what you’re doing?”

  Lin stiffened. “And what exactly are we doing?”

  Wolf quickly extended his own noise canceler around the three of them.

  “You know,” Rade said. “And your commanding officer isn’t going to take kindly to it. Word of advice: stop now while you can. Either that, or one of you has to quit the navy. It’ll save you both a lot of heartbreak. Trust me.”

  With that, Rade got up and made his way from the hall.

  Wolf reached for Lin’s hand under the table and squeezed tightly.

  four

  Jonathan ate dinner in the captain’s mess with Robert, his wife Bridgette, and Stanley. They had already finished the first plates, which involved a liberal serving of moist turkey and cranberry sauce. The second plates had arrived, and contained tortelli di zucca mantovani—rectangular shaped ravioli with boiled pumpkin, amaretti, and nutmeg inside. In the center of the table was a half-full basket of schiacciata—flatbread sprinkled with rosemary needles and olive oil that had served as the appetizer. All that was missing to complete the meal was a good bottle of Cabernet.

  “You know,” Stanley, the chief engineer, was saying. “I never understood why you got married, Robert.”

  The commander pursed his lips, barely hiding a smile. “How’s that?”

  Stanley shrugged. “VR and a stimsuit is all you’ll ever need. Or get a Skin Musician if you really want a trophy you can show off to your friends. There’s just no need to deal with all the drama of a real life woman these days. And if you really need the whole emotional bond thing, install a girlfriend-experience AI.”