by B. V. Larson
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BATTLE CRUISER
by
B. V. Larson
Copyright © 2015 by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
-1-
My first command bore the warlike name of Cutlass. To other people she wasn’t much to look at, but to me she was my fair one, my belle.
From bow to stern the ship was less than a hundred meters in length. Her pressurized zone occupied no more than ten percent of the enclosed space within the thin hull, but outside the main cabin we rarely trusted her seals enough to try to catch a breath. Only a madman would dare crawl through her guts without a helmet on.
“Captain Sparhawk? We’ve got a contact,” Rumbold informed me sixteen hours into our patrol around Earth. He was my bosun’s mate, my Chief of the boat. He peered at his instruments with large, bloodshot eyes. “Something small…it’s incoming from below the Plane of the Ecliptic—possibly with a load of contraband.”
“I see it, Chief,” I said, eyeing a cracked screen that was dark in one corner. The photosensitive nanites in that region had long since given up on self-repairing the display unit. “Report the sighting to Altair and maintain our course. Plot an intercept, just in case.”
Cutlass was the third pinnace in a squadron of escorts attached to the destroyer Altair. The boat was beyond old, but she was still nimble enough to outperform most ships when it came to chasing smugglers.
My crew was made up primarily of gray-beards like Rumbold. They were spacers who didn’t want to retire to Earth. Fortunately, their long experience had turned them into wizards when it came to repairing the ship’s systems. All of Cutlass’ components had been patched a thousand times.
Earth’s navy as a whole had been the victim of endless slashed budgets and deferred maintenance plans. Cutlass was just one more boat at the end of a very long line of hungry vessels.
Despite her problems, I’d fallen instantly in love with the ship when she’d become my first command six years ago.
“Well?” I asked Rumbold about a minute later. “What’s the word from Altair?”
“They haven’t managed to identify the contact—but they say it’s probably a piece of junk from the rocks, sir. Maybe even a chunk of ice from out-system.”
I eyed Rumbold for a moment. He was a stout man with burly arms, a hard circular face and eyes that always looked like he needed more sleep. His nose had the shape of a potato and there was more fat on his belly than regulations allowed, but I liked him nonetheless.
He’d been a guardsman for a century, maybe longer. I’d never asked his exact age. It was considered rude to question a man concerning how long he’d extended his lifespan with cheap treatments. He still managed to perform his duties—that was good enough for the Guard and good enough for me.
My gaze returned to my cracked screen. We had several foggy triangles of ballistic glass that passed for windows, but looking for a spacecraft visually with bare eyes was pointless unless you were trying to dock with it.
“They’ve got no positive ID, but Altair’s sensor operators presume it’s a piece of junk?” I asked. “I don’t understand their reasoning.”
The Chief shrugged in a noncommittal response. That wasn’t the norm for him. He was technically the second in command of my tiny crew and he was never slow to offer an opinion. He was usually excitable by nature.
Looking back at my scopes, I thought I could see a flare of radiation from the distant target.
“What’s that, then?” I demanded.
Rumbold shrugged again. “Could be a pocket of gas. The contact registers as quite cold. Must have come from out-system. Maybe the venting is a melting effect.”
“I don’t think it’s natural,” I said.
Rumbold looked at me for a moment, narrowing his eyes. “Altair’s sensors are much better than ours, sir. They’ve reported there’s nothing to be alarmed about.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Have you plotted that intercept course?” I asked.
“I have, sir.”
“Send it to my screen.”
He did so with a flick of his thumb. I tapped on it and brought up the details.
“We’ve only got a small window,” I said. “I’m going to pursue this one, Rumbold. It’s been a slow patrol.”
“They almost always are, sir,” he replied, giving me a wheezing laugh.
I touched the course file he’d sent me and slid the icon to the engines. The ship did the rest automatically.
Straps snaked out of our seats to grip our bodies. The pinnace slewed around, and the amount of thrust applied was surprising.
The Solar System was difficult to patrol. There was too much void between the relatively small spots of mass called planets that we all held so dear. There was so much nothingness, in fact, that the task of policing any star system was damned near impossible.
Undaunted, the aging ships of Earth’s Star Guard were still vigilant, and as one of the younger officers in the service I was determined to do what could be done.
“A query is incoming from Altair, sir,” Rumbold said a few short minutes later.
“I see that, Rumbold,” I said, ignoring the request as it blinked on my screen.
The other crewmen aboard weren’t on the bridge proper, but as the ship was built with only two long decks, they weren’t far away. They couldn’t help but overhear us. They exchanged concerned glances, but none of them commented.
The low ceilings in the main cabin were festooned with equipment. The interior space was reminiscent of a bomber aircraft from centuries past. It wasn’t as loud as a plane in the atmosphere—not unless we were doing a prolonged engine burn. Because of the quiet, my crew often overheard my command decisions.
The com light continued blinking. I didn’t even look at it. I knew that if I answered too quickly Captain Singh might well order me to abort my plans. If I waited until we were up to speed for the intercept, however, there wouldn’t be much point. We’d already be halfway there.
“Is your screen malfunctioning, sir?” Rumbold asked politely.
“No.”
“Should I answer for you and inform Singh of key evidence supporting our action...?”
It was a generous offer, and I was sure he’d come up with a believable dodge. But I wasn’t going to dishonor either of us over something so trivial.
Aboard my boat I was the captain, but my rank in the fleet overall was only that of a lieutenant commander. Despite the fact Singh outranked me, how I executed my mission on my boat was up to me.
The com light blinked as we continued to accelerate in a long burn toward our target. Rumbold watched me closely, but he said nothing.
He’d always impressed me that way. Nothing about this job, or the minimal size of our vessel, had ever seemed to both
er Rumbold. He’d served on my tiny pinnace with his well-rounded, hunched body working tirelessly through shifts that were beyond regulation in length. He was an old man, well past the age which might have suggested retirement in happier days, but he refused to retire. With longevity treatments being what they were, the modern rule was that if a man was competent to do his job, he was to be allowed to continue doing so. There were countless fossils like Rumbold in the service.
One reason they hung on, I knew, was the sure knowledge that the government would most likely refuse to replace them when they finally did leave the navy.
Death by attrition, I thought to myself. Such a fate had to be the most inglorious way a fleet could expire.
Looking over my instruments, I noted we’d stopped accelerating. We were up to speed and the intercept was imminent.
Sucking in a breath of stale air, I tapped the screen and answered Singh’s call at last.
“What are you doing, Sparhawk?” he demanded. “That contact was classified as harmless. I don’t care whose son you are, you’re operating outside regulations.”
That remark stung. Yes, I was the son of a Public Servant, a man of great political power in Earth’s government. I never brought up this fact, but others constantly used it to malign me and my motives.
The struggle to overcome the reality of my birth had been a long and difficult one for me. Always, no matter how I’d performed at the Academy, or in placement tests pitting me against my peers, there was the underlying suspicion that I’d achieved my rank through influence. The mere mention of this prejudice put me in a bad mood—but I didn’t let it show on my face.
“Not so, sir,” I said calmly. “We spotted venting. On that basis, I decided to take action because the window for doing so was about to close. And now—yes, we have confirmation. The bogey has changed course by point four-four degrees. That’s a significant course correction at these velocities, sir.”
I waited after making my response. Altair was over two hundred thousand kilometers behind us, on the other side of Earth, in fact. There was a delay in communications as my signal was bounced off a couple of stationary satellites and relayed to Singh’s ship, then there was a further wait while Singh’s answer returned to me.
“It seems you’re correct,” Singh said with poor grace. “Very well, track the anomaly and report its impact point to CENTCOM. We’re projecting it will come down hard in the Antarctic—but I suppose it might change course again.”
His words made me recheck my target’s trajectory. I saw he was right; the new course had it heading directly for Earth. A small angular variation in spaceflight often became magnified when the effects of gravity played in. Singh disconnected at last, leaving me in peace.
“The target is on a curve now, Rumbold,” I said.
“I see that, Skipper. What now?”
“Speed up. Full thrust.”
Rumbold hesitated. His tongue darted out, then vanished again. “Full thrust, sir? This ship—sir, Cutlass’ rated specs are more than she can handle in reality.”
“I’m well aware. Full thrust, Rumbold.”
He tapped in the change, and our running lights turned amber and began to spin. The crew who’d left their seats when we’d reached cruising velocity now scrambled back to their chairs and urged the straps to cinch up tightly. Moments later, we were pressed back into our seats. The Gs mounted quickly and speech became difficult.
“Captain,” Rumbold grunted out, “I recommend we ease off now.”
“Surely we can survive a few extra gravities of thrust, Chief.”
“It’s not that,” he said, straining to reach out and flick a report from his screen to mine. “Take a look at this.”
I stared at the report from the AI and cursed. “Overheating? We’ve only been at full burn for ninety seconds.”
“We’re overdue for a rebuild, sir. The seals—they won’t take this for long. They’ll burn clean through.”
I knew what that meant, at least in theory. Our engines were essentially contained fusion reactions, explosions that were bottled up within a field generated by the explosion itself. If any part of that delicate balance was thrown out of synch, the entire vessel would transform from matter into energy within a fraction of a second. During that singular moment, Cutlass would outdo the brilliance of old Sol herself.
“Dial back, ease down.”
His fingers were on the controls before I completed the order. The roaring sound droned downward in pitch, and my crew began to breathe evenly again.
“What’s our range to the target?” I demanded.
“Less than ten thousand kilometers—we can’t catch him before he hits the atmosphere—and sir, he’s braking hard now. It’s a ship, by damn, just as you suspected.”
“He’s going to get away,” I said between clenched teeth.
An acrid smell filled my lungs, and I quickly closed my visor, trying not to cough. Damn it, there were more systems failing on Cutlass than her engines.
Working numbers and curving projections on my screen, I came up with an option.
“Hail the target,” I ordered. “Order them to heave-to.”
“Did that, sir…no response.”
“Repeat the signal in a loop. Leave the channel open for any response.”
“Done…nothing.”
A growling sound stirred in my throat. They were running from us.
No one fled from a Guard ship without good cause. They had to know we’d spotted them, and we’d be watching them closely. How could they expect to get away with whatever they were up to?
I could only surmise they were smugglers, probably from the farthest rocks of the belt, where men were often lawless. Perhaps they had ground transportation waiting for them down on Earth—I just didn’t know, but I didn’t want this ship to slip away from me now.
“Open the forward gun port,” I ordered.
Rumbold’s bloodshot gaze swept to meet mine. “Sir—that’s not what we were ordered to do.”
“The target is taking active evasive action. The situation has therefore changed. According to regs, in this scenario I’m within my rights to force the target to submit to search and seizure.”
“But sir, in this universe there are regulations, and then there’s pissing on your commander’s shoes…if you know what I mean.”
“Open the gun port or I’ll do it myself.”
Rumbold did as he was ordered.
I suspected it must be hard on a man of his years to take orders from someone who might be as much as a century younger. But he did it, just the same. I valued his service more in that moment than I ever had, and if this ended well I vowed to reward him if I could.
“Firing solution completed,” he said. “We’re locked on target.”
“Retarget the cannon. Fire two kilometers off his bow.”
Rumbold did as I asked with a sigh of relief. I was surprised he’d thought I was mad enough to direct lethal fire at a ship without authorization. I wondered, too, if he’d have done it if I’d given the order—it was my belief that he would have.
“Ready,” he said.
“Fire on my mark…mark!”
Rumbold fired the forward cannon, and it sent a spray of invisible radiation toward the target.
Cutlass’ primary armament was a single particle-beam weapon. A pulse of neutrons were released, an optional function of the same continuous reaction in the ship’s core that drove the engines. The pencil-thin beam wasn’t quite as accurate as a laser might have been, but it was more deadly at this range.
We waited several seconds while our threat was perceived. I was gratified when the channel opened at last and an irate man with an odd accent appeared on my cracked screen. He sounded as though he might have been European.
“Are you crazy?” he demanded. “Fuck you, you goat!”
The man’s face was red and veins stood out on his neck.
“This is Captain William Sparhawk of the Guard,” I said calmly. “Yo
u’re hereby ordered to heave-to or suffer the consequences.”
“William Sparhawk,” the man said slowly, as if memorizing my name. “This will be the end of you.”
I made a show of lifting my arm above the camera pickup on my board. I allowed my hand to hover out of view. “Obey me, or I will be the end of you right now.”
The screen went dark. The operating system automatically returned to projecting our course visually.
Still expecting some kind of response, I said nothing until Rumbold spun the ship around and began braking hard to slow us down.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“The smuggler is slowing down, sir. We have to brake now, or we’ll plunge right into Earth ourselves.”
I blinked at the controls. Rumbold was right.
I dared to grin. The smuggler had believed my bluff. He was slowing down, and he was going to allow us to board.
While the two ships matched speeds, I had time to wonder about my threat. Had it been a bluff? Would I have fired upon the smuggler’s ship?
It was the first time I’d been in such a situation, and I felt untested. I’d searched dozens of small vessels, some innocent and others packed with contraband. But I’d never shot one down before.
Technically, I’d be within my rights to do it—but that’s not always how these things worked out. There would have been an investigation afterward, and if some prosecutor could argue successfully that the smuggler had been performing an innocent emergency landing due to a systems failure, I’d have been in trouble. I might not have been court-martialed, but my career would have been at an end.
So, I asked myself as we slid through space and prepared to search the floating vessel in low orbit—would I have done it?
Yes, I admitted to myself, I might have fired in an attempt to disable her engines. That could have resulted in the destruction of the spacecraft.
Why fire? Because I was a Sparhawk. My House had been famous for producing stern leaders with harsh tempers for centuries.
-2-
Most people think of space as being infinite, and I suppose that in the abstract, it is. But when one is hunched inside a cramped ship with engines that strain and shudder whenever thrust is applied, space seems finite indeed.
