"Well, I visited Palermo in the hospital. She'll recover, but no more shipboard duty. She's either going to take a desk job or disability retirement. Her choice there. She hasn't decided. Oh, and I heard that by lucky chance the fellows who attacked Palermo fell on some misfortune last night."
"Misfortune, Captain?"
"I would call sudden death a misfortune, XO. Wouldn't you?"
"Is everything all right planetside, Captain?" Vice Admiral Xi asked.
"Couldn't be better, Ma'am," Jan answered.
"I was not pleased when I heard Admiral Ludkin called you to his office without notice to me or my being present. Did that go OK?"
"It went very well, Ma'am. We had a little exchange of pleasantries, and then he asked for my advice on increasing the safety and security of off-base personnel."
Ever subtle to nuance, Xi asked, "Pleasantries, Captain?"
"Well, some parts of it were more pleasant than other parts, Ma'am, in both directions. But that's where we left it, at his suggestion."
"Oh, good. I've known Admiral Ludkin a long time, Captain. Serge can initially react poorly to the, um, occasional little mishap in his command area, but he usually comes around. And speaking of mishaps, are your people all back aboard? Senior Chief Chin and his crew?"
So she knew about that. Good.
"All present and accounted for, Ma'am."
"I heard they were sad they missed the party."
"Well, they did get there in time to help with the clean-up, Ma'am, and that was appreciated. But we're all back aboard, and the ship restocked. The Boadicea awaits your orders."
"So we grab a truck from the motor pool, 'cause the chief there is a buddy of Kmiecic's, right? And we go drivin' into town, with no idea what we're gonna find. Chin's drivin', and Montague's ridin' shotgun, and the rest of us are all standin' in the back lookin' out over the cab, lookin' for the captain. And then in the middle of the road, in the headlights, we see the captain standin' there, in a plain shipsuit, none o' her insignia or medals or nothin', just standin' there. And there's four guys on the ground."
Fukuda was in the Goat Locker, telling the story to rapt attention from the other chiefs aboard Boadicea.
"Four guys?"
"Four guys. All of 'em big as me or Montague. All dead. And she's just standin' there in the middle of 'em, kinda dazed, like she don't know what happened. Like they all just fell down dead or somethin'. So we take her back to the truck, and we put her in front between Chin and Montague, and head back to base. About halfway back she gets the adrenaline shakes, like you do, and Montague puts his jacket around her. Here's this little thing, wrapped in this huge jacket, shakin' like a leaf, and she just took down four guys big as any of us."
"Jesus."
"That ain't the half of it. Buddy o' mine works in headquarters, and Ludkin called her in the next day. From what my buddy heard through the wall, he tried to read her the riot act, and she ripped him a new asshole. They came out all smiles and friendly and shit, but it didn't start out that way, I can tell you that."
"Bullshit."
"Naw, truth, I tell ya. You know the captain's background, right? Not one of those Academy types. She's OCS. She looks like a kid, but she got twelve years inna Service. Swore her oath when she turned fourteen, after passin' the Exam so hard she broke the damn machine. Grew up on her own in the slums on Earth and couldn't wait to get outta that shithole. Prob'ly got raped and beaten a bunch o' times herself growin' up. No way she was gonna stand for what they did to Palermo, and Ludkin wasn't gonna get in her way, either.
"But what she did to those four guys don't bear thinkin' about. They all had knives 'n shit, and they never even got a chance to unsheath 'em. Couldn't a taken her more'n a coupla seconds to drop 'em all. Shit, they was dead before they hit the ground.
"No, the captain's one of us. They may give her ranks and medals and all that shit, but she's a below-decks berserker the likes I ain't never seen. And I been around, ya know?"
"OK, let's get started," Vice Admiral Xi said.
It was a video conference in hyperspace, to avoid long time delays, with a flotilla of destroyers standing picket on the northern and southern approaches of Bahay. Attending were all sixteen of Xi's captains and executive officers, as well as the rear admirals, chiefs of staff, captains, and executive officers of the subordinate heavy cruiser squadron and light cruiser squadron in Bahay.
"Bahay is a major target for outer colony raiding, because it is a large trading and commercial center that makes it hard for some of the outer colonies to compete. Mostly because they're not free economies, but that's not our problem. Our issue is these outer colonies seem to think the path to profitability is to do damage to Bahay. No raids have done major damage yet, but there has been more minor damage than we should be willing to tolerate.
"Admiral Cintra had her hands tied because she had no authority to enforce a standard book across squadrons. That period is over. Understand me here. We will use the Fleet Book of Maneuvers in Bahay. No exceptions. It has now been made the standard book by Fleet HQ, so if you don't want to use it, you can resign and go join some other navy. If you have difficulty accomplishing that on your own, I can help you with that, by sacking you from this Navy. And if you think that won't happen, that you're indispensable, know that I already have Admiral Ludkin and Admiral Stepic's authority to do just that. I've known Serge Ludkin a long time, and he's completely behind me. And Admiral Stepic sponsored and pushed the standard book through Fleet HQ. That's one of the reasons he made his fourth star, so I don't think he's gonna back down from it now.
"Am I being a hard-ass? Yup, you betcha. But that's because I've seen it work. We shut down the Pahaadon system with two squadrons of heavy cruisers, and we were running one-in-four rotations. Think about that. We completely closed the system against raids with twelve heavy cruisers. The four light cruisers and two heavy cruisers that thought to test us didn't go home. They were dead once they entered the system. And we didn't get our paint scratched.
"ATS has been completely re-designed to follow the Fleet Book of Maneuvers and the tactics book "The Science of Surprise," written by my flag captain, Senior Captain Childers. Line officers have to come through ATS, so every line officer coming into the fleet from this point on will be trained bone-deep in these methods.
"Now, a lot of you haven't had training in these methods, but we're going to rectify that. Senior Captain Childers and her hand-picked tactical staff will be teaching classes on the standard book here aboard Boadicea. I would start by reading her book "The Science of Surprise" which was distributed to command ranks a couple years back and is available in the restricted section of your ship's library.
"If you need the instruction, take the class. Because once everybody is up to speed, we are going to drill these maneuvers until we can do them with our eyes closed. And then we are going to shut this system down."
Almost everybody signed up for the classes. The only exceptions were people who had rotated out of Pahaadon or Calumet, and had already been trained. It was Xi's mention of ATS that did it. Everybody coming up through the ranks going forward would know these methods, and everybody knew what the phrase 'dead wood' meant in CSF. Jan, Weatherby, and Boadicea's tactical department taught two sections, so either the captain or XO of every ship could remain on ship while the other attended class. The two sections alternated days so there was a day in between for doing homework while simultaneously being in command of an active warship.
It was a grueling schedule for students and teachers alike, but Xi was pushing hard. No one ever knew when the next raid would come, and people's lives were on the line.
Only the book portions of ATS needed to be taught, because the simulations of ATS would be replaced by the live fleet maneuvers. They were taught on a compressed schedule because these were experienced command officers. They didn't need to be taught the elements of maneuvers, only the ways in which those elements had been re-juggled to assemble the book.
Whil
e the class was going on, electronics techs across all three squadrons were updating the navigation computers on the twenty-three vessels. They were upgraded to match Boadicea, whose new navigation computer software calculated the inner and outer system envelopes on the fly from astronomical data and gravitational gradient measurements the ships' computers shared with each other.
When exercises were to begin, Admiral Xi announced Jan would be commanding the op force. This got groans, and one 'Oh, no.' Destroyers would be standing in for raiding vessels in all classes, and limiting their accelerations to match the class they were playing. These would be 'live-fire' exercises, with beam weapons at one-half percent power, which was enough to score the hit.
It was a giant game of flashlight tag, played across a light-hour of space.
There were two sets of exercises going on at once, one on the northern approaches and one on the southern approaches. Exercises were every other day except for Jan and her harried staff, who were running the op force on one approach or the other every day. They ran six exercises a week for four straight weeks, with Jan and her tactics crew under her senior tac officer, Lieutenant Commander Clyde Disho, taking Sundays off. Disho had grown up with the standard book, having been in Jan's tactical department on the Nils Isacsson.
At the end of the month, Jan's team had lost eight exercises in a row, any naysayers had long been converted, and Admiral Xi declared the squadrons 'truly operational.' They deployed in divisions, with one division each of light cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battleships on the northern approaches, and one division of each on the southern approaches. They went to two-in-four rotations, a pretty relaxed operational tempo for a system that had been hot. That put two light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and two battleships on each set of approaches. They settled down into routine patrol operations.
Jan was surprised they had had two entire months without an incursion to get themselves together, but sometimes you drew the lucky straw. And if an actual incursion had occurred in the last two weeks of the exercises, they would have been prepared in any case.
On her first R&R back on the planet, Admiral Ludkin asked if she might pay him a courtesy call. She dropped by his office.
"Captain! Come in, come in. Have a seat."
"Thank you, Sir."
"I thought it might be nice to have a conversation with you that didn't start out so poorly."
"I appreciate that, Sir."
"I also wanted to give you some feedback on your idea. Club Bahay went operational a few days after you and I last talked, to much grumbling both from below-decks spacers and local businesses. But Club Bahay was a big success. We made it 'open' enough the grumbling from our spacers died down a bit, even while that from the local businesses got pretty shrill."
"I had heard something along those lines, Sir."
"The businesses forced the mayor and city council to clean up the situation. They passed an ordinance against hanging about in the warehouse area at night. The police do patrols through the warehouse area now, and pull in anyone hanging about, DNA sample them, and hold them for the night under the ordinance. The local chamber of commerce also started providing shuttle bus service."
"That should work, Sir."
"I thought so, too, Captain, so I put the town back on limits, and closed Club Bahay. In the last six weeks, there have been no incidents. So between those two things, we may have shut down the violence problem. And we're not going to let it come back. I made sure the locals understand Club Bahay remains available for a grand re-opening any time I decide they are slacking on keeping our people safe."
"Excellent. Well done, Sir. If I may say so."
"Of course you may. It was your idea, Captain."
Ludkin grew more serious.
"I also stopped in to see Palermo. Several times, actually. I had slacked off. Treated some things as acceptable I shouldn't have. You rubbed my face in it, Captain, but visiting Palermo in the hospital that first time made me ashamed. I wanted to see you today to tell you I'm sorry I let your people down, and to thank you for calling me on it."
"Apology accepted, Sir."
"I also wanted to tell you I promoted Palermo in hospital, and signed off on combat disability leave. Personnel questioned it, and I dared them to call me on it. They backed down and put it through. Truth be told, she was in the fight of her life."
It was Jan's turn to goggle at Ludkin. Combat disability leave was extremely generous, mostly because CSF didn't have to pay it very often. Ships were normally lost with all hands. Combat disability leave kept Palermo on the payroll for life, with an automatic increase in grade every five years, and full medical care.
"That's, that's very generous, Sir."
"Not at all, Captain. Not half generous enough. But it's what I have."
Ludkin looked out the window, across the bustling base, spoke half to himself.
"You know, I have a daughter her age. Sometimes, in all this" – he waved at the window absently – "you can lose something, some – something. I don't know. Some human thing." He turned back to her. "You gave it back to me, Captain. Thank you for that as well."
"You're welcome, Sir."
He looked down at his desk, drew and released a deep breath, and ran his hand through his hair. After several seconds, he looked back up at her.
"Well, on to more pleasant things, eh? I've read Admiral Xi's reports on the exercises. I think we're actually up to snuff for the first time since I've been here. Great job getting us buttoned up, Captain."
"Thank you, Sir."
"And now I'm sure I've taken up enough of your time, Captain. Dismissed."
"What did the Admiral want this time?" Bill asked.
"To apologize."
"Really."
"Yes, and to thank me for 'rubbing his nose in it,' as he put it.
"Wow."
"I guess he visited Palermo. Several times actually. But the first time he visited her, he was ashamed that he had let her down. He put her on combat disability leave."
"That's impressive."
"He says it's not enough, but it's what he has. I visited her, too, you know, before I went out hunting that night. And again yesterday. It's pretty ghastly what they did to her. But she's coming back."
"And those other guys aren't."
"There's that. Ludkin also told me the Club Bahay ploy got the town to shape up. So maybe some good came out of it all."
There were four incursion attempts in Bahay over the next year. By chance, all of them occurred while Boadicea was in orbit about Bahay or occurred on the southern approaches when Boadicea had northern patrol. In every one of those incursion attempts, the raiding force was completely destroyed.
There were no more raids attempted during Boadicea's two-year deployment to Bahay.
Commanding Officer, Operation Payback
Once back on Sigurdsen, Jan surrendered command of Boadicea to her next captain, and she and Bill moved into a flag townhouse on the base. She requested a meeting with Admiral Birken and Admiral Durand. In a secure room. She had had an idea while on Bahay.
"Captain Childers. Come in, come in. Have a seat," Birken said.
"Thank you, Sir."
"How was Bahay, Captain? All tightened up?"
"Yes, Sir. Pretty much under control now."
"Good. So what can we do for you?"
"Admiral, I want to communicate a sentence or two to an old card club I used to belong to. We had our club meetings here, a couple years back."
"Ah, yes. The card club that met in the basement here. Ten of you, weren't there?"
"Yup. That's the one."
"Well, Captain, I don't know if that club is still meeting or not."
"Understood, Sir. But if it were, and someone could get a hold of them, is there any way to get a message to them?"
"A new game for them to try?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Do you think they'd be interested, Captain?"
"Yes, Sir. It's a very interesting game.
"
"There might be a way. Tell you what. You write your message and I'll see if I can't find out where they moved to."
"That would be great, Sir."
Durand went to a credenza and opened the top drawer. He pulled out a single sheet of paper and a pen and slid them across to Jan. It wasn't normal paper. It felt different, slicker, almost oily. The pen was also different somehow. Not a normal production pen, it looked like a limited production, in-house item.
"You go ahead and write your message on that sheet, Captain, and then fold it in half three times."
Birken and Durand made it a point to be looking elsewhere as she wrote. This is what she wrote, in the block letters every one of her subordinates could recognize as hers from across a room:
SMALL DURABLE H-5 CAPABLE INTERSTELLAR
DRONE AS COURIER SHIP OR AS MISSILE
– CHILDERS
Jan folded the paper in half, then again, and a third time.
"OK. All set."
Durand drew a plastic envelope out of the drawer and held it open to her. She slid the paper in. He then ran the envelope through some sort of fancy sealer on the credenza. She didn't know what it was, but she could guess. If the envelope was opened in normal air, or anything other than some specific environment, the special paper and special ink would come apart and leave nothing but dust in the envelope.
"We'll try to see if we can get your mail through for you, Captain, but I really wouldn't expect any response."
"I don't expect a response, Admiral, but I think my friends in the club would really enjoy that game."
The idea Jan had thought of on Bahay was for a ship capable of traveling in hyperspace-5. They had never seriously discussed such a thing in the project, because they felt it would be impossible to build a manned ship to take the gravitational gradients, much less the sheer forces. Jan's idea was for an unmanned ship. If they could build a message drone capable of hyperspace-5, and structurally robust enough to take the stresses, it could make the run from, say, Sigurdsen to Calumet in half an hour. Which would mean a military response from Sigurdsen with manned ships capable of hyperspace-4 could be only sixteen hours away.
Childers Page 19
