Solomon Family Warriors II

by Robert H. Cherny

  The courier missile returned with the simple message, “Space Force Combat Exercise Rules Level A. Loser buys the winner’s command staff first round at the Officer’s club. Winner buys second round. Linda.”

  Rachel explained to the gathered crew what the cryptic message meant. “Combat Rules Level A is the least restrictive level of combat exercise. We are about to engage in the space equivalent of a paint ball war. The missiles they will use are made of pressed paper that is consumed as it flies. The payload is a bag of white powder. Other than making a loud thump and spreading a huge white splotch on the side of the ship, it will not harm the ship or its occupants. You do know when you get hit. We should feel it even on a ship as big as this one. On a smaller ship like the destroyers, you really know it. Unfortunately, we have no such missiles. We can’t exactly be throwing real missiles at our friends so we are restricted to using targeting lasers. There is no surrendering. The game continues until every ship in one side’s fleet has taken enough critical hits to be considered destroyed. At that point one side admits defeat and we all go to the bar.”

  “Do we even have a chance against a fixed base installation?” One of the passengers asked.

  “No, the goal is to see how long we last. I am prepared to buy drinks for Admiral Dankese’s staff. The training will be good for of us. Folks, it’s that time. Let’s go.”

  The two destroyers arrived first at opposite sides of the system doing everything in their power to spoof the sensors into thinking that they were stealthed battleships and drawing fire away from the real battleship. They lasted six hours. Given the weight of the force thrown against them and the fact that they had none of the paper missiles, six hours in the type of combat they were fighting is a very long time. Wendy piloted one of the destroyers and Raphael Rivera, who had flown with Rachel on the mission that they had moved the Saturn Industries shipyard, piloted the other. Both were skilled pilots with experienced crews but eventually they were overwhelmed.

  Rachel plowed straight towards the spaceport at New St. Louis. Large numbers of picket ships attacked the battleship head on against its armored battle face.

  “Faye Anne, do you recognize this strategy?” Rachel asked.

  “Is this the one you got court marshaled over?” Faye Anne asked.

  “Yup.”

  “The one you said was no good?”

  “Yup! Look at this. Like lemmings going over the cliff. How many have we hit?”

  “Twenty.”

  “And we’ve only taken one serious hit.”

  She had deployed medical and damage control teams to one of the weapons bays to deal with the “casualties” from the hit.

  “I think she’s playing with us. These are pickets. We haven’t seen a P I or a destroyer. With our destroyers gone, if she threw hers into the battle, there’s not a lot we can do.”

  “Next time you’ll keep your destroyers close.”

  “I had hoped for the diversion.”

  “That’s your father’s game. You need a different one.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  Reuben, Rashi and the rest of the engineers had developed the software necessary to allow the laser arrays mounted on the cargo ship to be operated in conjunction with the lasers on the battleship. The combined force of the targeting lasers had quickly “dispatched” several of the attackers who had tried to attack the ship’s flanks. The one avenue of attack that was not adequately covered was the same one that Rachel had exploited herself as far back as her first battle. The “up the pipes” shot into the arrayed propulsion system was the big ship’s greatest vulnerability. They had sensors that would warn them of an intruder on their tail. Their planned defense was to fire the engines to full throttle and burn the attacker with the wash. A second plan was to rotate the ship quickly to bring the broadside of lasers to bear on the attackers.

  Rachel compared this later strategy to the one the early Boeing B-17 pilots had used in Indochina at the beginning of World War II. Lacking the tail gun position that would be incorporated into the B-17 shortly thereafter, the pilots endeavored to swing the tail of the aircraft back and forth allowing the two side gunners to bring their weapons to bear on an attacker from the rear, the “six o’clock” position. Unfortunately, Rachel also knew that the technique generally only delayed the inevitable. Enemy pilots knew the B-17’s were vulnerable to attack from the tail and routinely made their attacks from that direction. Few of the B-17’s involved in those early battles survived beyond the first year of the war. Rachel hoped that the tactic would work better for her than it did for them.

  When it finally came, the attack on the propulsion system was fast and accurate. A single destroyer dropped out of hyperspace directly astern of the hospital ship / battleship. The technique was the same one that Rachel and her father had used on a Swordsman battleship in her first battle when she was sixteen years old. It was the same technique that one of her closest friends, Lt. Myra Myrakova, had used in the same battle. While Myra had destroyed the attacking battleship, her ship was engulfed in the debris thrown from the battleship’s explosion and had not survived.

  The destroyer was too close for the lasers mounted on the cargo ship to hit it without hitting the arrayed propulsion systems and too far for the propulsion systems themselves to “burn” it. Destroyers carry five forward missile tubes. Four are standard tubes. The fifth tube carries a multiple warhead device. The destroyer dropped out of hyperspace, fired all five tubes in rapid sequence and hypered out again. The individual evenly spaced thumps from the missile payloads of white powder impacting the ship’s aft section could be felt the length of the ship. Five direct hits on the propulsion system effectively took the ship out of action. There was no time for defensive action.

  “Damn! I think we need a stinger in our butt!” Rachel grumbled.

  “Roger that!” A chorus of voices agreed from around the bridge.

  “Game over!” Rachel called to the system’s defense command center. “First round is on me.”

  The defense system computerized voice replied, “Federation Space Force Hospital Ship 28 Albert Schweitzer, welcome to New St. Louis! The Federation Space Force Interstellar Traffic Control System welcomes you to the gateway to the galaxy. While you are here please take the time to visit our many shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. Visitors are always welcome at New St. Louis. We hope your time here is pleasant and profitable. Please proceed to docking area eleven and wait for further instructions.”

  New St. Louis was not located on a habitable planet, but rather on a moon of a gas giant in orbit around a G type star. Initially established as a mining colony, it had once been a pirate base. Greg and Avi Solomon had raided it for supplies and come away with a shipload of refugees abandoned by their pirate captors. The pirates who had built the installation left on a raid and never returned. Swordsmen held the installation briefly until a Federation task force took it over. The Federation established a permanent freight marshaling facility and frontier outpost to service traffic outbound to the fringes of the galaxy in much the same manner as St. Louis had served as the “gateway” to the American West.

  The facility hosted a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant specifically designed to handle spacecraft reactor requirements. The fuel facility drove the station’s robust economy. The moon’s lower gravity and lack of atmosphere allowed space-going ships to dock on its surface instead of having to tender personnel and materials through an atmosphere to the planet’s surface.

  The freight yard’s docking cradles were designed to handle a wide variety of ships. In fact each of the components of the current assembly had docked here in its time of independent duty. However, the cradle could only accommodate one of the sections of the current ship. Military protocol suggested that the battleship component should be attached to the cradle leaving the rest of the ship tethered, but not connected. Passenger and civilian convenience suggested that either the hospital component or the passenger component be attac
hed to the cradle. Rachel decided that since the plan was to fill their now empty cargo holds with material to outfit the ship, they would dock with the cargo ship in the cradle to facilitate the movement of large objects into the hold.

  Rachel did not know exactly what to expect for a reception, but she certainly did not expect the reception that awaited her. In keeping with protocol, the ship’s captain and executive officer descended the debarkation ramp first followed by those senior officers who were not on watch. Rachel and Isaac descended the ramp together. Captain Curra followed at a respectful distance. Wendy and Joshua came next followed by Faye Anne and Lt. Dale Hammersmith.

  According to standard protocol, a wide range of officers could greet the incoming ship. The lieutenant on watch greeted most ships. At the bottom of the ramp, a very pregnant Admiral Dankese stood arm in arm with the man who had once been Admiral Davidson’s aide. Rumors about their relationship had circulated for years. Rachel was glad to see that they were now out in the open.

  A man dressed in the uniform of a British seaman of the era of the great sailing ships of the late nineteenth century blew the bo’sun pipes to bring the assembled party to attention. Formal salutes were exchanged. “Captain Rachel Solomon of the Federation Space Force Hospital Ship 28 Albert Schweitzer requests permission to come aboard.”

  Admiral Dankese smiled, “Captain Solomon, you have permission to come aboard.”

  “Request permission to bring the crew, staff and passengers of the Federation Space Force Hospital Ship 28 Albert Schweitzer aboard.”

  “Permission granted. Your officers are requested to assemble with a companion at the Officer’s Club in one hour. I believe a similar reception has been arranged at the NCO Club for your enlisted personnel. Your civilians, I am afraid, are on their own unless they go as someone’s guest.”

  “Admiral, it would be our honor to join you as you requested.”

  “Please allow us to escort you to the visiting officers’ quarters.”

  “Thank you.”

  Once out of earshot, Rachel could not stand the suspense a moment longer, “Admiral, if I may be so bold, when did you, I mean it’s none of my business, but...”

  “When did we get married?” She grinned.

  “Yes, I apologize for being rude.”

  “Not at all. Admiral Davidson was ill and knew he was not going to live much longer. He made us promise we would marry before he died or he would come back and haunt us. Two days later we made him perform the ceremony from his hospital bed. We were married when we came to send you off to the Academy. We kept it a secret until recently.”

  “I guess congratulations are in order.”

  “Thank you. At 1300 hours tomorrow, I would like you and your senior staff to meet with me and my staff in Briefing Room Two. We need to discuss what support you need from us and I need to brief you on updates that have arrived from Earth while you were traveling.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “Here are your quarters. See you at the club.”

  The party at the officer’s club started on schedule. Some of the guests were into their third round of drinks when a tall, dark impossibly good looking man wearing a flight suit and carrying his helmet on one arm entered the club. He was followed by a tall woman that could only be described as a blond bombshell. Well tanned, her hair flowed down her back. She was also in her flight suit and carried her helmet. A man half a head shorter than her followed her. He was swarthy with broad shoulders and a swagger in his walk. His helmet dangled from its strap in his hand. The fourth member of the party was a petite woman with close cropped dark hair and a wide grin that could be seen across the room. They were walking tall and proud.

  When the station’s command staff in attendance at the party spotted the new arrivals they broke into spontaneous applause. The four lined up shoulder to shoulder and smoothly took a bow together. Their grins were wide and their bows theatrical. When the applause ended they reported to Admiral Dankese. She pointed them in Rachel’s direction.

  “Captain?” The impossibly good looking lieutenant greeted her.

  “Lieutenant, you look familiar, but I don’t place you.”

  “I was in your tactics class when you took Van Hoff apart.”

  “Whitman? Dean Whitman?”

  “See, I told you she would remember me.”

  “After you reminded her,” the blond teased. “Now you can tell her you had a crush on her the whole time you were at the Academy.” She chuckled at his embarrassment.

  “It’s true,” he admitted.

  “Why did I not know this?” Rachel asked. “It’s not like a Space Force officer to fail to approach a single woman he’s interested in. I certainly got hit on often enough at the Academy to know. I would have remembered you.”

  “I promised my father I would stay out of trouble at the Academy and devote all my energies to studying. I had problems in high school for not studying because I was partying. I almost didn’t get accepted. I think if my father hadn’t been a decorated Space Force veteran, I wouldn’t have.”

  The blond punched him in the shoulder and said, “Now that you’re done with the bleeding heart stuff, tell her the real reason we’re here. I’m Lt. Beatrice Harrington. It is a pleasure to meet you. You are something of a legend around here. He doesn’t look like he’s going to get over his adolescent hormone attack. We’re the ship that shot you down in the exercise. We also shot your sister’s ship. Where is she by the way? She flies like a crazy person.”

  They spotted Wendy on the opposite side of the room in animated conversation.

  Lt. Harrington continued. “She made her ship do things I didn’t know those ships could do!”

  Rachel smiled. “We keep forgetting that every ship we’re in isn’t a P I.”

  The others laughed.

  “Captain, I thought you would like to know that we are sending the official sensor data from our exercise to the Academy to verify your contention that the tactic that almost got you thrown out of the Academy is as bad as you said it is. Admiral Dankese had me plan the exercise as soon as she received your courier. She thought I might enjoy the exercise more than some of her more senior officers. I think she was right.”

  Rachel smiled. “Is it a case of misattribution of arousal or did you really enjoy shooting at me?”

  Lt. Whitman blushed. “Some of both. I guess the toughest part was trying to decide how to deploy the few ships Admiral Dankese decided to let me use.”

  “Looks like you did fine.”

  “I had to guess whether you would come in wide like your father often did in his simulations or close like the current practice.”

  “How old were you when you played the games?”

  “I picked them up about the time Planetoid Defenders came out. I think I have every scenario ever published for the suite of games including most of the illegal knock-offs. They’re the reason I’m in the Space Force.”

  “You seemed to have learned well. That was the point.”

  “No, the real point was to trick the Swordsmen into falling into your trap. What blows me away is how well it worked. They really thought that decoy asteroid was a battleship.” Rachel blushed.

  Lt. Whitman continued “I was on a tracking station during the Saturn Industries operation. I watched your every move. I hoped that some day I would be as good as you.”

  “Well, now that you shot me down, you can say you are.”

  Isaac showed up with refills for their drinks and some finger food. After introducing himself and the rest of the destroyer’s crew to Isaac, Lt. Whitman turned back to Rachel and said, “Captain, you need to keep your support ships closer. Flitting around in a P I is not the same as lumbering through space in kind of monster you’re flying now. You were entirely too easy to shoot down once I stopped playing around. Think about it. I knew what you would do because your tactics are well known. I knew you would not shoot first and you didn’t. I thought you would come in wide and you did. I suspe
cted you would hold your course and you did. I would like to see you back here as a regular visitor. You are becoming predictable. You are unconventional, but predictable. Being too predicable will get you killed. You may have to revisit your tactics. Promise me you will think about it?”

  “I promise.”

  “Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going to bother your sister and get her to tell us about the acrobatics she pulled with that ship.”

  Rachel smiled as they walked away.

  Isaac looked into his wife’s eyes and gently asked, “Do they have a point?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then, we have work to do, don’t we?”

  “Yes.” She picked up his hands. “That’s what friends are for. They nicely tell you when you have a problem.”

  The party went well into the night. Admiral Dankese was drinking a non-alcoholic citrus concoction that she insisted everyone try at least once. There were no fights although a few of the ship’s crew did need to be escorted back to their quarters after passing out in their seats. “War stories” and “fish tales” kept the club’s patrons amused long after the scheduled entertainment had packed up and gone home. One of the advantages of living in a facility in which “day” and “night” are abstractions observed only to keep human circadian rhythms operating normally is that entertainment and food service establishments never close. Were it otherwise, they would have closed this one.

  DEPLOYMENT - CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE FIRST TWO HOURS of the meeting were devoted to Rachel and her crew briefing Admiral Dankese’s staff on their status. They started by covering the engineering challenges they had discovered, then they moved to the weaponry issues. They discussed the medical facility problems and wrapped up with personnel shortages.

  Admiral Dankese briefed them on the developments back home. Courier missiles were now making the trip that had taken them three months in as many days. The political situation was looking especially grim. The newly formed Conservative Party was not happy that the Swordsmen had been allowed to secede and were attempting to block the passage of the final agreement. The Federation’s coalition government appeared to be under continuous assault. The Greek System Party and the Roman System Party which had dominated Federation politics for over a century both suffered wholesale defections to the new Conservative Party. Since the delegates were elected as individuals and not as members of a party, they could and often did, change affiliations over their position on a single issue. Perhaps as a result of the influx of new members with their own agendas, the party’s primary effect had been to create chaos in the Federation Legislature. It appeared as if the only thing the new Conservatives could agree on was bringing the Swordsmen back into the Federation by force.