by Grant, Peter
“Can do. Call me Steve.”
“OK. I’m John. We’re preparing to get under way. Care to come to the OpCen with me? There’s an observer’s chair behind my console.”
“Lead on.”
Steve watched the Operations Center activities with interest. The compartment was minuscule compared to the destroyer OpCen he’d worked in during his previous assignment. It had only four small consoles – Plot, Communications, Weapons and Command – but Ashby and the NCO’s manning them clearly knew what they were about. Orders and information flowed smoothly back and forth.
“Where’s the Executive Officer stationed?” Steve asked during a lull in proceedings.
“Normally Senior Lieutenant Tarja is in here, but our Engineering Head of Department is on emergency leave to deal with a family problem. We borrowed a temporary replacement from the maintenance division, but we don’t know him except by reputation, so she’s keeping an eye on that department while we get under way, just in case.”
“Makes sense.”
After the ship had settled into cruising formation with the other three patrol craft of her division, Ashby called the XO to take charge of the OpCen and took Steve on a tour of the vessel. He was clearly very proud of her. Steve commented, “I haven’t seen many Fleet warships this neat and clean. Your crew must work hard to keep her like this.”
“Thanks for saying so. Yes, we put a lot of effort into her, but it’s not just for outward show. We won the Patrol Service’s Operational Effectiveness Award earlier this year.”
“Congratulations! That’s quite an achievement.” He hesitated a moment. “There’s something that’s been bugging me. Back at Rolla, retired Admiral Methuen told us that the Fleet didn’t use Songbird class patrol craft anymore, because of what he called ‘changes in the Fleet’s operating doctrine and structure’. I served aboard a Songbird during the United Planets mission to Radetski, before I was commissioned – I was her cutter pilot. She seemed perfectly capable to me. Why don’t they suit the Fleet any longer?”
Ashby smiled. “It’s no reflection on the Songbirds. The Fleet used to operate corvettes and frigates as its smallest interstellar warships. They were okay for low-level defensive missions and showing the flag, but weren’t powerful enough to take the offensive when necessary. The Songbird class was designed to work with them on local patrols, carrying the same type of missiles and maneuvering at the same speed – up to a quarter of light speed in emergency.
“About fifty years ago, the Commonwealth grew too large for the Fleet to economically handle the defense of all its planets, plus maintain credible Sector sub-fleets and a deterrent Home Fleet. The Senate had a choice: massively increase the size of the Fleet – which would have meant additional Sectors, and many more ships and people, and a huge increase in Commonwealth defense spending – or have member planets look after their own local defense. They voted overwhelmingly for the second option. The Fleet was reduced in size and its budget cut, but it no longer had to do as much. The smaller ships and personnel it let go were mostly transferred to the expanded System Patrol Services of member planets. Their Commonwealth membership levies were reduced, but they now had to fund their own local defense.”
Steve nodded. “I think that’s when most of our bigger planets got their corvettes and frigates, right? They took them over from the Fleet.”
“Yes, that’s right. The Fleet standardized on destroyers as its basic interstellar warship. They’re much larger than corvettes and frigates, armed with longer-range missiles, and accelerate faster and reach a higher top speed. The Songbirds couldn’t operate effectively alongside them at max effort. They were slower, and their shorter-range missiles couldn’t augment the larger ships’ fire over long distances. The Serpent class was designed to replace them. We’re twenty-five per cent larger than a Songbird, with enough hull capacity to carry destroyer-size missiles. We also have a more powerful drive, to match a destroyer’s acceleration and top speed. Still, apart from those things a Songbird can do almost everything we can, and its systems and weapons can accept the latest software upgrades.”
“I get it. I see what Admiral Methuen meant now. OK, what’s the plan for today?”
“We’re going to exercise towing and recovery operations. Each of us in turn will simulate a merchant freighter with drive failure. The others will try to take us in tow using tractor beams, first singly, then in formation. It’s a tricky maneuver. You’re guaranteed to run into it on the Crusher.”
“I’ve already seen it on a smaller scale,” Steve acknowledged. “I learned to tow other small craft with cutters and assault shuttles during my pilot training, but I’ve never had to do it for real.”
“Our tows work the same way – just on a larger scale. They’re a bit nerve-wracking in a spaceship. Our tractor beams have no physical anchorage on the towed vessel. If too much drive power is applied, they’ll simply ‘let go’ and we’ll waltz off into space, leaving the towed ship languishing in splendid isolation. That tends to make our Divisional Commanding Officer… testy.” He beetled his brows, and Steve nodded sympathetically. He went on, “If we reduce power on the ship’s drive, the tractor beams are quite capable of pulling us backward into the towed ship. That means we have to deploy pressor beams to maintain a safe distance – but not so powerfully that they’ll negate the pull of our tractor beams and push us away.”
Steve grinned. “Sounds like trying to ride a unicycle on a tightrope while juggling eggs.”
“You said it! Computer support helps, of course – our artificial intelligence systems can work out the correct power levels fairly easily. Trouble is, during training the boss sometimes instructs us to simulate computer failure, calculating everything manually. That makes things a lot hairier. Even so, towing each other isn’t as bad as trying to tow a full-size merchant freighter. They’re much bigger than we are – even the smallest are twenty to thirty times our mass. They just sit there like bumps on a log. I’m sure you’ll have to tow one during the Crusher.”
Steve made a mental note. “How do you overcome so much inertia?” he asked.
“If they’re already under way we can keep them going and gradually change their heading, although we need assistance to stop them. If they’re at rest, we use their reaction thrusters to augment our gravitic drive and get them under way. If their reaction thrusters are unserviceable, we set up a triangular or diamond formation in the vertical plane with three to four patrol craft, cross-link to each other with secondary tractor and pressor beams to maintain our spacing, then use our combined primary tractor beams on the towed vessel to exert a shared pull. With several of us tugging together, we can usually get them moving. We’ll be exercising that later today.”
“OK. Speaking of the Crusher, what’s the most difficult thing about the course? What’s the hardest to master?”
“Situational awareness,” Ashby answered at once. “You’ve got to be able to keep a three-dimensional picture of your surroundings in your head at all times, no matter what distractions are thrown at you. If you focus on any one element to the exclusion of all the others that also require attention, you’re going to fail. Remember, you’ll have an Operations Center to support you. Use it! Make sure the Plot updates the tactical picture with every scrap of relevant information. Expect the instructors to try to distract you with new problems all the time – after all, it’s their job to find out whether you can keep your head under pressure. Refresh your situational awareness from the Plot as often as you can. It’s your balance point, the fulcrum that supports everything else.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Ashby thought for a moment. “I’ll give you two more pointers. Second only to situational awareness, and almost as important, remember the old saying: ‘When you’re up to your ass in crocodiles, it’s difficult to stay focused on draining the swamp’. When everything’s going smoothly, try to think of anything that might go wrong, and plan ahead to deal with it. That’ll help you
cope when the crocodiles rear their ugly heads – and they will, depend on it! The instructors will see to that. You’ve got to accomplish your mission despite all obstacles and distractions.”
“It was like that during Officer Candidate School,” Steve acknowledged. “They tried to keep us on edge the whole time, to test us under conditions of stress.”
His host nodded. “The Crusher works on the same principle. The last point is, get enough rest. You’ve got to stay mentally alert, and you can’t do that if you’re exhausted. It’s very tempting to force yourself to stay awake and do everything, rather than delegate it or trust others’ judgment. On my Crusher, one guy got only two hours rest during a twenty-four-hour duty cycle. When he came off duty, he’d no sooner gone to sleep than Teacher rousted him out of his bunk to handle a simulated emergency, just as a real Commanding Officer might have to do. He was completely exhausted. He should have taken a stim-tab, but he forgot to do so, and Teacher wasn’t about to remind him. He made too many mistakes, and failed the course.”
“Poor guy. Thanks again. I’m going to have to make lots of notes about all this.”
“Good idea. I took notes during exercises every day on the Crusher, and revised them every night until I’d absorbed them. In particular, note what the other candidates are doing. Some of them are sure to come up with solutions that aren’t standard Fleet practice, but which work very well. One of the best things about the Crusher is the ability to learn from officers of several different planets’ armed forces. I think that’s one area where the Crusher’s actually superior to the Perisher, where most of its candidates are Fleet officers.”
Ashby hesitated, looking at him curiously. “As a matter of interest, what made you ask to come out with Lancaster’s SPS for these exercises? We’re holding them to provide pre-Crusher training to our own candidates for command – there are two of them on the other ships – but I’ve never heard of a Fleet officer coming along. They usually go out with their own patrol craft.”
Steve shrugged. “You guys do a lot more than our squadrons. You’re more like an old-time Coast Guard, policing an entire star system. Rolla will operate its patrol craft in much the same way. Since I’ll have to help train its crews for those sorts of missions, I figured I’d be able to learn more about them from you.”
Ashby’s face cleared. “When you put it like that, it makes sense. It’s still an uncommon attitude – not that I’m complaining, mind you! It’s nice to be appreciated as professionals. We don’t often get that from the Home Fleet.”
~ ~ ~
The Crusher was based aboard a training vessel, an old depot ship in a parking orbit near the Fleet Dockyard. Four Serpent class patrol craft were assigned as training ships, with their crews and the Prospective Commanding Officers accommodated on the depot ship.
Dining-in on the first evening was an interesting experience. The usual formalities were observed, but underlying them was a sense of nervous anticipation of what lay ahead. Twenty-one of the twenty-four candidates came from the System Patrol Services of Commonwealth planets, including one from Rolla, while Steve and two others were from the Fleet’s Spacer Corps. Two of the candidates were Lieutenant-Commanders, slated to take over divisions of multiple patrol craft for their home planets. The others were Senior Lieutenants. They faced each other down either side of a long table, wearing Mess Dress with miniature medals. Their four instructors, each a Lieutenant-Commander who would be in charge of a group of six candidates and be referred to as ‘Teacher’, sat above them. Commander de la Penne, Commanding Officer of the course, sat at the head of the table.
The meal proceeded according to the protocol laid down for such occasions. All the candidates were on their best behavior, clearly trying to make a good impression on the staff and each other. Steve was amused to find that the toasts at the end of the meal – drunk in grape juice, because alcohol was not served aboard a Fleet spaceship except under very restricted circumstances – were far more numerous than usual. They began with the President of the Senate, the titular head of the Lancastrian Commonwealth, and proceeded through the Heads of State of every member planet represented on the course, in order of the date on which each had joined the Commonwealth. When they were over, Steve muttered softly to the candidate next to him, “After all those toasts, I hope the heads aren’t too far away!”
His neighbor grinned. “If they are, we might all fail the Crusher on the first night due to conduct unbecoming an officer, by stampeding out of the wardroom in search of them!”
Commander de la Penne addressed the new class after the toasts. He made no bones about the challenges they would face, but emphasized the positive aspects of the course rather than the negative. “Above all,” he urged them, “remember that while both the Crusher and the Perisher have only seventy per cent pass rates, officers who’ve graduated from the Crusher have historically gone on to achieve a ninety-eight per cent pass rate on the Perisher. Not everyone goes on to the more advanced course, but those who do will find that hard work now virtually guarantees success later.
“Always bear in mind the constant, never-ending tension we face between two different aspects of our job. The first is administrative. Our services demand of us adherence to procedures, regulations and instructions. If we don’t do so we’ll be penalized, perhaps to such an extent that our careers will suffer. However, administrative requirements can’t possibly prepare us for the second aspect, which is operational. Waving a stores requisition form at an armed enemy won’t do anything to make him go away!” His audience laughed, a little nervously, Steve thought.
“We try to adhere to our operational and tactical doctrines, but events seldom unfold according to our protocols. In particular, opponents have their own way of doing things that may not conform to our expectations, and may completely disrupt a step-by-step, by-the-book approach. It takes flexibility and initiative to deal with such situations – but flexibility and initiative are anathema to the bureaucratic mind, which prefers everything to be neat, tidy and orderly. The conflict between these two aspects of military service has been going on since the first armies were formed way back in prehistory, and it’ll continue until entropy finally destroys the universe.
“As Commanding Officers you’ll have to integrate adherence to policies and procedures with the vagaries of operational conditions and necessities. Sometimes you’ll succeed. At other times the latter will derail the former, so you’ll have no alternative but to, as Theodore Roosevelt put it, ‘do what you can, with what you have, where you are’. Such situations are the acid test of what makes a good Commanding Officer. The Crusher is designed to find out whether you can handle them – before you’re called upon to do so the hard way.”
~ ~ ~
Steve was pleased to find that Senior Lieutenant Frances Grunion from Rolla’s System Patrol Service was part of his division of six candidates. He took her aside on the first day of the course and asked, “Fran, how did you manage to get onto the Crusher this quickly? I thought Rolla’s candidates would have to wait until next year to attend the course.”
Grunion smiled, showing brilliant white teeth against the milk-chocolate-brown hue of her skin. “I got lucky, I guess. I was in the process of upgrading our training standards and procedures. We don’t use a Boot Camp system like the Fleet, but we want to meet your technical norms for the various enlisted ranks, so I went through our old course materials and updated them where necessary. I was just finishing that job when you hammered de Bouff. We heard about our new patrol craft a couple of days later. I was sitting at my terminal at the time, and within five minutes I’d applied to be assigned to one of them. Mine was the first request received, so for my sins, Commodore O’Fallon decided I’d be the next Rolla student on the Crusher.”
Steve laughed. “Who was it said something about being four times blessed if you get your blow in first?”
She grinned. “I’ve heard the saying. It’s a bit archaic - must have been a pre-Space-Age humorist.
Anyway, if all goes well, I’ll go back to Rolla to help you train our first crews for the Songbirds. I’ll oversee their coursework, and you’ll handle their on-the-job training aboard ship. When the rest of our ships arrive, I’ll command one of them.”
“Sounds good to me. You’ll have to come out on a training mission with me from time to time, and take command during exercises. It’ll help you keep your hand in until you get your own ship.”
“Great! Thanks very much.”
“You can thank me by helping me during the course, and I’ll do the same for you. The Crusher’s a big hurdle to cross. We’ll help each other over the steep bits, as far as we’re allowed to.”
“It’s a deal.”
~ ~ ~
Right from the start, Steve found himself pushed beyond – sometimes far beyond – the limits of his knowledge and experience as he struggled to master the many challenges thrown at him by the Crusher. If it hadn’t been for his six-month tour of duty as an enlisted small craft pilot aboard LCS Grasswren on the Radetski mission several years before, plus the brief refresher course he’d arranged on his own initiative aboard LSPS Whipsnake, he knew he’d have been completely out of his depth. He had to work harder and smarter than he’d ever done before to keep abreast of the course requirements. His only consolation was that there were several other students – including Fran Grunion – who’d never served aboard patrol craft at all, let alone as officers. They, too, found their lack of relevant experience a severe handicap, and had to work very hard to overcome it.
The first three weeks of the course took place in a tactical simulator, and focused on ship-handling, internal emergencies and non-combat exercises, with a heavy emphasis on safety. Almost all the duties and tasks commonly assigned to patrol craft were exercised: escorting vessels to and from an assembly point; forming, escorting and dispersing convoys; setting up and maintaining satellites and navigation beacons; patrolling everywhere from the planet’s crowded orbitals, to the wide open reaches of the outer system, to mining operations in the asteroid belt; assisting vessels in difficulty, including fire-fighting, rescue, evacuation and recovery operations; towing disabled ships, alone and with other patrol craft and in cooperation with civilian tugs; and boarding and search operations. Armed encounters with enemy ships were left for a later stage of the course.
