To Honor You Call Us

by Harvey G. Phillips

  That was all fine and dandy, but what Max really needed right now was for his sensor people to give him a precise location and an accurate identification of that contact. Rapidly. Until he knew who it was and what they were up to, he needed to do something. Mainly, that something involved not dying.

  “Maneuvering, let’s clear the datum. Give me twenty seconds at flank on the sublight and hard delta V in X and Y and a thirteen hundred meters per second kick from the maneuvering thrusters minus Z, then reduce drive to one quarter, engage Stealth, and from whatever course that puts us on give me minus fifty degrees in X, plus thirty degrees in Y, and give me an additional seven hundred MPS push from the thrusters minus Z.” The idea was to impart some speed to the ship quickly while making rapid changes in course in all three dimensions to throw off any firing solution the other ship might be working up, then basically drop off their sensors while making another series of course changes, again in all three dimensions, so the Cumberland could not be targeted or found simply by extrapolating from her prior course. In space combat, two thirds of the battle was crossing the staggering distances that separated everything just to get to where the enemy was, and ninety percent of the rest was finding him when you got there. Max planned to use his ship’s excellent stealth capabilities to avoid being found.

  Max heard the engines going to peak output, saw the men at the maneuvering stations pushing the ship through the course changes, and felt it twisting and turning through space.

  “Weapons, give me a firing solution on the contact ASAP but do not arm warheads, do not open missile doors, and do not engage any targeting scanners. On the off chance they can read what we are doing, I don’t want to escalate this until we know who is out there and what they want.”

  “Roger, skipper.”

  Kasparov was busy, talking and listening over his headset as he started to get useful information from his improved but still not proficient Back Room. Max bet that demoting Lieutenant Goldman and getting coffee in there boosted performance fifteen percent. “Bearing on Uniform One is firming up. Now three-five-one mark one-zero-three, range approximately two-five-zero-triple-zero kills. Change of aspect on target—target is changing course to intercept our former track before we engaged Stealth. He may not see us now. We are certainly not seeing him: between his low albedo hull coating and how far away we are from this system’s star, he’s totally dark—no visual detection at all. We are reading him on mass, graviton flux, and very faint EM only.” Short pause, as he listened to his Back Room. “Starting to get some size parameters from occultations, though.” Every now and then the other ship would come between the Cumberland’s visual scanners and a star or other light source, causing it to wink out. Complex calculations of the relative movements of the two ships, their ranges, and the exact apparent location of each occulted object, plus which objects were not occulted, allowed the computer to make some inferences about the other ship’s size and shape. The Cumberland, however, was so small that she created very few occultations and was very hard to spot in that manner, or in any manner for that matter.

  “And?”

  “Just coming up now, sir.” Ten seconds went by. Finally, Kasparov said, “Bogie is very long and very narrow, somewhere between one-eight-zero-zero and two-three-zero-zero meters in length with a fifty-two to seventy-five meter beam. He’s got reactionless drive, so we don’t have a drive spectrum to work with on identification. On the other hand, there aren’t many races with that technology, so that narrows down the possibilities.”

  Reactionless drive was an exotic technology that gave its possessor sublight propulsion without having to shoot hot gases out the back end of the ship. Because a hot sublight drive emitting brilliant plasma flying out a thruster nozzle at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light tended to stand out against dark, cold background of interstellar space, everyone wanted reactionless drive, but only a handful of the most advanced civilizations had it. In fact, there were only three known races with ships that combined large size, long and narrow shapes, and reactionless drive: the Sarthan, who would randomly decide either to ignore you or vaporize you in a heartbeat with their obscenely advanced weaponry, no one could ever predict which; the Lakirr, who were not dangerous at all unless you let them try to sell you something; and the Vaaach, a very powerful but highly insular species who did not get involved in anyone else’s business but who dealt swiftly and severely with anyone who got involved in theirs.

  In any event, Max was not going to let pass an opportunity to gather intelligence and train his crew at the same time. Precious little was known about all three of these races, and anything learned from close observation of their vessels would be very valuable to Naval Intelligence. Plus, his people needed practice tracking, identifying, and closing on ships unobserved—that was the best way to kill the enemy: sneak up on him and stab him in the back before he even knows you are there. And, the deciding factor, his crew needed confidence pronto and the only way for them to get it was to do something difficult and live to tell about it. This was the chance to do just that.

  “People, we are going to work up this target. Let’s see how close we can get and how much we can observe without being observed ourselves. Maneuvering, reduce drive to ten percent, and allow the target to get ahead of us, and then let’s slip in on his six o’clock. Maintain range of at least eighteen thousand kills until I tell you to close.” Max pulled up the Sensor’s best estimate of the contact’s course plot, increased the scale to maximum, and squinted at it for a moment.

  “Aye, sir. Reduce drive to ten percent, slip in on his six, keep range in excess of one eight triple zero kills until ordered otherwise.”

  “Skipper?” said Garcia, softly, his voice carrying no further than edge of the command island occupied by only him and the Captain.

  “Yes, XO?” Max matched his volume.

  “Ballsy move, sir. Risky, too. What if they take offense at being tailed?”

  “This crew needs to practice these skills under conditions of risk and they need to succeed at something. Anything. If we’re spotted, we apologize, or we evade and escape, depending on who it turns out to be.”

  “They might not give us that chance, sir. If it’s the Sarthan, and they woke up on the wrong side of the mossy rock this morning, they could hit us with their Anti-Proton beam and we’d evaporate in about three-eighths of a second.”

  “Between you and me, XO, it’s not the Sarthan.”

  “How do you know, sir? We’ve got no drive spectrum, no comm traffic, no markings, and no read on configuration except that the ship is something of an alien phallic symbol.”

  “I can tell from their ship handling. If you watch the plot of their trajectory at large scale, you can see they’re not moving in a smooth path.” He pointed to a screen on his display, showing an almost imperceptible serpentine motion in three dimensions. “They slew their bow around ever so slightly to change the angle of their sensor beams relative to any target in their path. It reminds me of an animal following a scent by moving its nose back and forth. It’s the Vaaach. I’ve seen them do that before.”

  “It’s not in the recognition protocols.”

  “I sent it up the line, but Intel never included it in any of the official protocols, saying that ‘the purported observation was not supported by sufficiently variegated phenomenologies to be regarded as an authoritative indicium of vessel origin’ which I think is IntelSpeak for ‘we didn’t think of it so we’re not going to sign off on it.’”

  Garcia chuckled. “Been there. Done that. Bought the memory wipe.”

  “Anyway, trust me on this one. It’s the Vaaach. I want to see how long it takes the children to figure it out and how they do it. And no prompting from the studio audience.”

  “My lips are sealed.” Whatever a studio audience was.

  Max could see the senior Chief who was directing the activities of the three spacers at the Maneuvering stations—he had looked up the name on his console between the
first and second jump, Chief Petty Officer First Class Claude LeBlanc—giving drive and course change orders. The tactical display showed that the Bogie was slowly pulling ahead and the Cumberland was tip toeing around to get behind it. Within a few minutes, the Bogie was dead ahead with the Cumberland following in its wake.

  “Captain, I think we have an ID on the bogie,” said Kasparov. “But it’s not by the book. We have only a single phenomenology and the one we’ve got isn’t even an Accepted Recognition Protocol but, well, I think it’s pretty solid, sir.”

  “Mr. Kasparov, when I was in Sensors, I made an identification or two that wasn’t in the ARPs, so tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Now that we’re nearly on her six, we’re getting some good images of a few viewports the contact is showing aft. God only knows why they aren’t shuttered, but there they are—maybe they think that no one would ever be back here or maybe it’s an oversight.”

  “And, maybe they want us to see them so that we can do whatever it is you just did,” Max suggested. “I hear there are some species out there that are very much into the sport of tracking and being tracked.”

  “Who knows,” Kasparov said. “Anyway, the guys in the back room brainstormed that if we aggregated the light from all of those viewports, we might have enough photons to do a reasonably good spectral analysis.”

  This was pretty damn smart. Max and Garcia felt themselves smiling with approval as they worked through the concept. “So, you’re thinking that the people who design lights for a ship are going to give the crew light that closely approximates the spectral balance of their sun as seen from the surface of their home world, right?”

  “Exactly, sir, because that’s what we do on our ships.”

  “And did you get a match?”

  “Yes, sir. The spectral curve from those viewports is a nearly perfect fit with what you would see at local noon on a partly cloudy day on the surface of Grrlrrmgkruhgror.”

  It sounded like he had something caught in his throat. “Growl . . . what?

  “It’s the name of the Vaaach home world, sir. Sigint finally decrypted it from a civilian traffic routing message a few days ago.”

  “Oh. Good job. Never seen that one before. Write it up and I’ll kick it up the line. Maybe in a month or two folks around the fleet will be taking spectra on viewports to do a ‘Kasparov ID.’”

  Kasparov was beaming. Max knew he could be counted on to pass that information on to his back room and that the confidence problem in that department might well be solved for good.

  “And, Kasparov.”

  “Sir.”

  “Unless I’m missing something, you just identified this target, so . . . .”

  “Oh. Sorry, sir.” He changed to his CIC Announcement Voice. “Target tentatively identified as originating from a Neutral Power, the Vaaach Sovereignty. Redesignating Uniform One as Nebula One.”

  “Intel, now that we know we’re dealing with the Vaaach, what does that tell us?”

  The Ensign at the Intel console, whom Max knew to be on his first war cruise after being promoted out of the twenty-seven man Intel back room on a Battlecruiser, could only manage to stare like a Volem Woodsgrazer caught in the vehicle guidebeams.

  Once again, the wisdom of Commodore Middleton came to the forefront of Max’s mind. The Commodore often said “a warship Captain is a lot like a teacher, with a life and death grading scale.” School was in session today and CIC was the classroom. “Mr. Bhattacharyya, you’re one of the most intelligent people on this ship, not including myself and the XO, of course. I’m sure you could stand there and talk to me for ten or fifteen minutes summarizing for me everything known to Naval Intelligence about the Vaaach. That doesn’t help me. You explaining to me about what their lawmaking process is like or whether their poetry rhymes doesn’t help me do my job today.”

  Max stepped off the Command Island, crossed over to the Intel console, put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, and looked him straight in the eye. “What I need you to do, and what a capable Intelligence Officer does, is take all that wonderful information you have in your head about the Vaaach, and apply it to our current situation, distilling from that vast body of data in your skull the few sentences of facts, conclusions, and informed conjecture that will assist me in making the decisions I’m going to make over the next few minutes. The ability to do that is what distinguishes a mere database from an Intelligence Officer. Now, Ensign, what do you have to tell me that I can use?”

  Max could see the wheels turning in the young man’s head. According to his records, he really was quite brilliant. “Well, sir, first, the Vaaach’s are an arboreal species, and the trees on their home world are more than a kilometer tall with the Vaaach living in multiple levels in the forest canopy. Accordingly, one would expect them to be skilled at three-dimensional thinking. Their tactics would probably not be subject to the two-dimensional bias that humans and others descended from surface dwelling species have to struggle with. Second, previous interactions with humans show them to be very deliberate. Our experience is that they tend to act slowly, after careful consideration, but are very sure and resolute about decisions once they are made and change their minds very seldom.” Intel paused for a moment to collect his thoughts further. He went on, “third, it is known that they have an elaborate code of honor and that, unlike some species who are honorable only in their internal dealings, the Vaaach conduct their dealings with other races under their code. So, you can expect them to be very honorable, that their word will be their bond, and that they will not lie to you or manipulate the truth to obtain advantage.” He stopped, considering how he needed to qualify the previous statement. “On the other hand, they are tough negotiators and skilled bargainers, in part because they are very patient and are not afraid to walk away from a deal and come back many years later when the situation has turned to their advantage.

  “Fourth, in combat, they are tenacious, skilful, and extremely courageous. As best we can tell from rumor, secondary sources, and hearsay reports, they have never lost a war. If they are fighting, I would very much want to be on their side and I would very much not want to be their enemy. Fifth, although we have had little contact with them, what little information we have suggests their technology to be significantly more advanced than ours, a fact suggested by their possession of Reactionless Drive technology.” He stopped, apparently searching his mind for other relevant data. He turned up nothing further. “Does that help, sir?”

  “Very much. Thank you, Ensign.” Max walked slowly over to the Chief at maneuvering. “Chief LeBlanc, you wouldn’t happen to be a Coonass, would you?”

  Max used the slang term for a Cajun, one that, while it sounded insulting, was generally used in a friendly fashion, especially from one Cajun to another. The older man smiled, revealing a mouth full of large, only slightly crooked teeth. “Only if there is gumbo to be eaten, crawfish to be boiled, two steps to be danced, or beer to be drunk. Um. Sir.”

  “Sounds good to me. You from Nouvelle Acadiana?” The Chief nodded. “Moi, aussi. Maybe we’ll both see it again, someday.” Max did, after all, still have some cousins there he got along with pretty well, and his grandfather was still alive. “When we win this war and get back home, let’s round up a yard-full of friends and family and boil us up a big pot of crawfish, with corn and potatoes, and a cooler full of beer on the side.”

  “And pecan pie for dessert,” added the Chief.

  “You got it.” Max got back down to business. “Chief, you ever crawl a duck pond?”

  “Mais, yeah.”

  “That’s what we’re going to do today. Let’s see if we can start closing that range up a little, Chief, lentement, like we’re crawling a duck pond to jump us some Pintails. Increase our speed relative to the target by one hundred meters a second until the range is sixteen thousand kills. Then match the target and stay on his tail.”

  “Aye, sir, crawlin’ dem ducks. Increasing relative speed one hundred feet per sec
ond, then matching speed with target when range is one six triple zero kills.”

  Max had keyed his display so that the range to the target was constantly displayed on one of his screens. He watched warily as the number slowly dropped. A quick look around CIC showed that the same set of numbers was on a lot of displays beside his. As the numbers got smaller, the tension got higher.

  “Kasparov, any sign the target has spotted us?”

  “Negative, sir. He is sweeping his path with his sensors but because of our angle any returns he might get from our hull are far below any possible detection threshold. There have been some aft scans, but between me and Chief LeBlanc, we’ve been able to dodge them so far.” Apparently, Kasparov had been getting readings on where the aft scans were going and was feeding them directly to the Chief who was making minor “discretionary” course changes—slipping the ship a few hundred meters in one direction or another—to avoid them, changes deemed too small to require orders from the Captain. Standard procedure, but a little bit more than Max thought Kasparov was capable of.

  “Watch for an aspect change,” said Max. “He may alter course suddenly, and we need to stay on his tail no matter what he does.” Most ships, even those with reactionless drives, had a major blind spot immediately astern. When a space vessel reaches an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, say ten percent or so, it needs to clear the space in front of it of all matter, even the rarefied hydrogen and helium that fill interstellar space, because at those speeds the atoms pierce the ship’s hull like bullets and shoot through the crew like particles of high energy radiation. Accordingly, starships use a kind of interstellar “cow catcher” called a deflector, an integrated electromagnetic-graviton system that moves the interstellar medium aside to make a path for the ship. In doing so, the ship creates a “wake” of disturbed, ionized gas and particles behind it that confuse and block sensor readings in an approximate ten degree arc behind the ship. There were ways to counter this problem—high power active sensor scans directed dead aft, towed sensor arrays, autonomous probes, launching a smaller ship into the wake, all of which presented various disadvantages. Mostly, though, warship captains dealt with the problem by making radical and unexpected course changes, suddenly bringing their sensors to bear on the area, and causing the following ship to overshoot the wake and travel into clear space where it could be scanned.