Part 5 (1/2)

Just as the s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed through the invisible and unmarked point in s.p.a.ce where the lines of metas.p.a.cial flux created by the gravitational field of the nearest star combined with the lines of metas.p.a.cial flux spun off by the superstring vibrations of the galaxy's dark matter such that both sets resonated in exactly the right metagravametric harmonic, the s.h.i.+p's jump drive bored a hole in the fabric of s.p.a.ce-time. This opened a window into metas.p.a.ce and jumped the s.h.i.+p in a quantum instant from its location to that of its resonance twin, which was, in this case, just over eleven light years away. The c.u.mberland simply vanished from the s.p.a.ce it had occupied, reappearing about 30 AU from the cla.s.s F main-sequence star locally known as Markeb B and officially known by a Union s.p.a.ce Navy Galactic Survey number that not even astrocartographers ever managed to remember.

Human beings experience the jump in different ways. It is, inherently, a strange event for them: the near-instantaneous transfer of their material selves across light years while pa.s.sing through an n-dimensional realm in which the very nature of matter, energy, and existence is fundamentally different from those in our universe; a realm that, although the size of a single geometric point, is somehow in contact with every point in our own universe. Some people became violently nauseated. Some got dizzy or became disoriented. Some experienced profound visions of a transcendental nature. Max Rob.i.+.c.haux typically experienced a deep yearning for drink and food, this time a steaming mug of dark-roast coffee and a chicken-salad sandwich. With sliced pickles.

”Jump complete, restoring systems,” Stevenson announced, neither nauseated nor dizzy, nor disoriented, nor graced with a transcendental vision, nor craving coffee and poultry on bread. One watch stander at a secondary navigation console was quietly retching into a jumpsick bag. A greenie and a mids.h.i.+pman looked as though they might pa.s.s out, but seemed to be recovering quickly.

Screens and displays started to come back to life, a process that took a few minutes as computers reinitialized, sensors powered back up, and other systems reestablished their normal function. Max always hated that interval: even though it was wildly unlikely that there would be another s.h.i.+p out there in an uninhabited system selected as a destination-selected because of how little s.h.i.+p traffic went through it-there was always a chance. He suppressed an urge to fidget. It was all right to be tense, but he must not ever look tense.

”Collision lights are on, and forward lookouts report nothing visible in our path, sir,” Kasparov, the sensor officer said. The Mark One eyeball, belonging to men picked for good low-light and distance vision while looking out Lumat.i.te viewports in the bow and a.s.sisted in some cases by anachronistically named night vision goggles, was always the first system available. Next, there usually came the report about engines.

”Sir, report from Engineering,” said Heinzelmann, the petty officer third cla.s.s a.s.signed to CIC from Engineering, mainly to report and coordinate information from one to the other. ”Lieutenant Brown signals that the main sublight drive is available at up to 80 percent. He expects full availability in one minute. Jump drive is available now. Compression drive in thirty minutes.”

”Very well. Maneuvering, let's cautiously clear the datum. Ahead on main sublight at 2 percent. Use s.h.i.+p's current att.i.tude as our heading.” Maneuvering acknowledged the order. Various other officers at Comms, Environmental Control, Weapons, and all around the horn were now reporting that the systems under their respective observation or control were coming back to life. Max acknowledged them all, but the man he really wanted to hear from was Kasparov, again. He was taking a little longer than he should.

”Captain,” it was Kasparov. Finally. ”I have EM, grav, ma.s.s, and neutrino pa.s.sive scans out to about two million kills. All clear.”

”Very well. Thank you, Mr. Kasparov.” Max could relax a little. No enemy in his immediate vicinity was bearing down on him and his new command. ”Maneuvering, shape course for this system's Bravo jump point, main sublight at standard acceleration to zero point five c. Give me a rough ETA as soon as you can work one out.”

Max still needed to hear more from Mr. Kasparov, and it was very slow in coming. Max knew that there were Union forces in this system that his people should be detecting by now. That department needed a lot of work. The seconds ticked by. ”Captain, contact.” Kasparov's voice was both louder and higher than Max liked to hear. ”Four contacts-designating as Uniform One, Two, Three, and Four. Apparent fighters, bearing two-seven-eight mark zero-two-eight, closing at point one seven c.” Max noted silently that Kasparov did not mention the range to the contacts, but he could see that information on his own display. The ball was now in Tactical's court.

Bartoli returned the ball, albeit a little more slowly than Max would have liked. ”s.h.i.+ps are fighters, sir, in finger-four formation; they are Charlie Bravo Delta Romeo.” Tactical read that the fighters were arrayed in the cla.s.sic fighter formation invented by the Luftwaffe over France and Poland centuries ago, with the s.h.i.+ps arrayed like the tips of the fingers of an outstretched hand: one in front, one on each side of and a little behind the leader, and a fourth trailing a little behind one of the flankers. And they were at CBDR, which stood for ”constant bearing, decreasing range,” meaning that they were headed straight for the c.u.mberland.

”IFF?” Identification, friend or foe. Max was asking the question of the day: Were the s.h.i.+ps transmitting the correct electronic recognition signal?

”Not yet, sir.” Then the sound of a relieved breath. ”IFF received. Fighters are confirmed friendlies. Banshee B fighters, squadron CFS two-six-three-two a.s.signed to the escort carrier Lake Baikal. I think their nickname is 'The Krag Baggers.'”

Max snorted derisively. Garcia turned to him. ”Heard of these guys, Skipper?”

Kasparov interrupted. ”Changing designation of targets to Charlie one through four.” He shrugged apologetically. He was supposed to say that. As soon as the targets were identified as friendly, they ceased to be Uniforms, which stood for ”Unidentified,” and became Charlies, which stood for ”chicks,” meaning ”friendlies.”

”Everyone in this theater has heard of them,” Max responded. ”They're famous, in a way. They used to be hot sticks a.s.signed to the Constellation in the Forward Battle Area. About nine or ten months ago, the whole Task Force was conducting a huge exercise-three carriers, seven battlewagons, twenty-five cruisers-you know, a really big deal-under EMCON, with s.h.i.+ps dispersed over half a sector, no IFF, no voice comms, no nav beacons-just like a real attack. Well, the Krag Baggers were coming back from a simulated sortie, and somehow the squadron leader got a few digits transposed in the rendezvous coordinates. Squadron XO with the check set had turned back with engine trouble, so there was no backup record of the coordinates and no carrier even close to where they thought it should be. Huge, huge FUBAR: the whole fighter squadron in the middle of nowhere on comm silence, near the end of their fuel and wondering if they were going to have to call for help and totally tank the whole exercise. Then, some sharp-eyed stud fighter jock saves the day when he spots a carrier with the Mark One Eyeball, pretty as you please, all lit up and about twenty-seven hundred kills away. He does a 'follow me' signal with his running lights and leads them home. Everybody relaxes because their bacon has just been saved, right? Squadron lines itself up in a perfect approach formation, does the standard visual recognition pa.s.s, and then blinkers in their request to land. Then, every signal light on the carrier starts flas.h.i.+ng like a Christmas tree on stims, frantically giving them the wave-off and telling them to a.s.sume a holding formation, null their drives, and put their thrusters on station keeping.”

”Why the wave-off?”

”Because, XO, these fighters from the Constellation were trying to land on the Eugene F. Kranz. They did a visual recognition pa.s.s and didn't even notice it wasn't their own carrier. The Kranz had to launch two tankers to refuel the fighters and then feed them the correct rendezvous coordinates by blinker. And you can just bet that along with those coordinates, Admiral Turgenov put in a few choice words in his inimitable way. Now, our friends the Krag Baggers are relegated to flying combat-area patrol off a third-rate escort carrier back here in the Tertiary Defensive Perimeter until they can convince Admiral Turgenov that they can find their b.u.t.ts with both hands tied behind their backs.”

”Shouldn't we activate our IFF transponder?” Bartoli interrupted, concerned about being fired upon by the Krag Baggers. Just because they couldn't navigate didn't mean that they couldn't shoot.

”Negative. Maintain EMCON. They're expecting us. Kasparov, have someone in your support room put the Krag Baggers on visual and route it to Comms for a recognition signal by lights.”

”By lights, sir?” Everyone knew the protocols for visual recognition by flas.h.i.+ng lights, but they were rarely used. It was like something out of the Battle of Jutland.

”Yes, Mr. Kasparov, by lights. It's in our orders. The Krag have all these systems seeded with stealthed EM probes. The idea is for us to come through here without being heard or heard of. Those fighters have orders not to hail us or talk about us by radio, and if we keep our transmitters shut down, no one will ever know we were in the neighborhood. So, have your man on the optical scanners train one on the fighters and send the feed to Comms.”

”Aye, sir.” Kasparov was no dummy. He understood the logic behind the procedure and started speaking softly over his headset, giving instructions to the correct man in the Sensor Station's staff support room. Like most watch standers in CIC, Kasparov was backed up by a team of men in a compartment nearby, called a staff support room or back room; there was one for each major CIC station, in a system that went back to NASA's Mission Control in the earliest days of s.p.a.ce flight. As the man in CIC could watch only a few displays at a time, there were several-sometimes as many as two dozen-other men in another compartment looking at all the relevant displays with voice, text, video, and data links to the man in CIC. Each of those men, in turn, could pull up additional displays, access computer databases, make inquiries by voice or data link to anyone, anywhere in the s.h.i.+p, and otherwise do whatever was necessary to provide the man in CIC with the information he needed.

That system made the CIC the center of a web of information whose strands extended to every corner of the s.h.i.+p. It had worked well for the people who ran the moon landings, and it had worked very well for the Navy. Apollo Mission Control's legacy of achievement and excellence lived on, three and half centuries later, in the fighting CICs of the Union s.p.a.ce Navy.

Max noted that one of the screens at the Comms Station changed from a transceiver array status grid to a camera feed from outside the s.h.i.+p. Four of the tiny lights against the black background were moving slowly relative to the background of stars. One of the lights blinked blue twice, red twice, green three times, and white once. Comms was already punching up today's visual recognition codes. ”Captain, the fighter element has transmitted the correct recognition code for today's date. Shall I transmit the response?”

”Affirmative, Mr. Chin.”

Chin then pulled up the little-used touch screen that allowed him to control the s.h.i.+p's running lights, now extinguished except for the collision lamps, directly from his station. He keyed in the sequence, checked it against the code displayed on another screen, and hit EXECUTE. The c.u.mberland's running lights then flashed one green, one red, four blue, and one white, and the tiny dot on the screen flashed two red. ”Recognition code response transmitted and accepted,” said Chin. The Krag Baggers recognized the c.u.mberland as a friendly and would not fire on her. Then the spot started flas.h.i.+ng again, a series of rapid white flashes, some short, some longer. Nearly five hundred years after its invention, Morse code was just too useful to die. Chin watched the flashes carefully and typed letters into the keyboard at his station. He grunted, then pasted a smile on his face and turned to Max.

”Skipper,” Chin said, ”signal by Morse from the fighter element. Basically, they wish us luck.” Something in Chin's voice told Max that he had not said everything. At that moment the red ”MESSAGE” light on Max's console, cleverly set behind a set of bevels that made it impossible for anyone but him to see, started blinking. Max hit DISPLAY, causing one of his screens to read: ”To CO from COMMS-actual text of message: 'GOOD LUCK STOP YOU WILL NEED IT c.u.mBERLAND GAP STOP MESSAGE ENDS.'”

That insulting name. Max had never liked it, even when he was serving on the Emeka Moro, but it especially rubbed him the wrong way now that those fighter jocks were applying it to his s.h.i.+p when he was in the Big Chair. Well, two can play that game. Max started typing: ”CO to COMMS-send this by lights: THANKS FOR SINCERE GOOD WISHES STOP GOOD LUCK ON RETURNING TO CARRIER STOP THERE IS ONLY ONE IN THIS SECTOR SO YOU ARE CERTAIN TO GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME STOP CO SENDS PERSONALLY STOP MESSAGE ENDS.” There. That'll throttle back their thrusters for a little while. He hit SEND.

Max turned to Chin. ”Comms, I've prepared a suitable reply to our friends. Kindly send it by lights.” When the text came up on Chin's console, a short yip escaped him, quickly cut off. He input and sent the message with a barely visible smile.

Bartoli turned to Max, doing his best not to smile broadly. Max remembered that the Tactical console could monitor most message traffic. His little put-down to the fighters would be known to every man and boy on board, by change of watch-one small blow struck for morale on the c.u.mberland. ”Skipper, those fighters have come about and are running back to their normal patrol station. I don't think they want to talk to us any more.”

”I can't imagine why, Mr. Bartoli.” He turned to his sensor man and inquired amiably, ”Mr. Kasparov, have we located their carrier yet? She is, after all, the size of a small planet. If she's been in system long enough, maybe she's got some captured asteroids...o...b..ting her as natural satellites that you can use to help localize her.” Kasparov smiled and a few people chuckled, while others stared at their feet, not knowing what to make of the remarks. Having a skipper with a sense of humor took a little getting used to. Max's comments were, after all, slight exaggerations. The s.h.i.+p in question was a Lake Victoria cla.s.s escort carrier, one of the smaller ones. If Max remembered correctly, she was only 1295 meters long and ma.s.sed something over a hundred thousand tons, which would have made for a very, very small planet.

”Affirmative, sir.” His people had detected the carrier a few moments before, and it was being plotted now, a fact that everyone in CIC could see from the tactical plot. ”USS Lake Baikal is at the L4 for the fourth planet, a gas giant with about one and a half Jupiter ma.s.ses. Just sitting there for now. She's got four elements of Banshees out flying combat area patrol and three Mongoose SWACS s.h.i.+ps out there pounding the system with sensor sweeps. Our projected course takes us nowhere near any of them.”

It was hard to hide something that big, but the Lake Baikal's captain was doing his best not to stick out like a sore thumb. The L4 and L5 Lagrange points, also called Trojan points, were nice little gravity wells, one of which was sixty degrees ahead of the planet in its...o...b..t and one sixty degrees behind, that tended to collect small bodies and debris, known as Trojan Asteroids. A s.h.i.+p at L4 or L5 not only conserves fuel by staying in a stable orbit, but it is difficult for enemy sensors to pick it out from all the other objects put there already by Mother Nature. Or Isaac Newton. Or Joseph Lagrange.

”Maneuvering, do you have my ETA to the Bravo jump point yet?”

”Affirmative, sir, coming up now. Jump point Bravo is just over sixty-four AU from our current position. If we top out at our highest stealthy speed of point-five-four c, with standard acceleration and deceleration at each end, our transit time is eighteen hours, fifty-seven minutes.”

Even at half the speed of light, a star system covered a lot of real estate. ”CIC to Engineering.”

”Engineering. Brown here.”

”Wernher, I've got a question for you.”

”Allow me to hazard a guess. You want to know whether I trust the compression drive on this s.h.i.+p at low c factors.”

Max was floored. ”I didn't know mind reading was one of your many abilities.”

”It is not. But down here in Engineering we do keep a weather eye on the tactical repeater and the status monitors. It's an obvious question, really. A typical skipper on a typical mission would cross each of these systems at about half lightspeed and get to our destination in a few weeks. That same typical skipper would not consider crossing these systems on the compression drive because superluminal travel is illegal in most systems and dangerous at low c multiples because of compression shear. How am I doing so far?”

”Obviously, you're doing pretty d.a.m.n well, Wernher. But you also know that these particular systems are uninhabited and unclaimed, so there's no law for us to break. And you know that this s.h.i.+p's got an additional set of compression phase modulators to increase control at lower multiples just so it can do this kind of thing. That lets us zip around at low superluminal velocities inside a star system, a capability that no one in Known s.p.a.ce has except for maybe the Vaaach.” And getting there faster would give Max and the doctor more time to figure out what the Krag were buying, where they were buying it, and where their s.h.i.+ps were, not to mention more time on station before he ran out of food and fuel. ”That makes it a realistic option for us. So, what's your answer?”

”Captain, I have every confidence in the stability and safety of this drive at anything over six c. My recommendation, though, is that you do this at ten c. Ten will give you a good compromise between minimizing shear and not packing on so much velocity that it would be easy to overrun the jump point. And even with the extra phase modulators, you need to understand that although velocity is going to be stable, there will be some unpredictability about the precise equilibrium point. Ten c might turn out to be anywhere between nine point three and ten point five.”

”Not a problem. Make whatever preparations you need, and notify the XO when you're ready.”

”Aye, Captain,” Brown replied. Max closed the circuit.

”XO, make preparations to traverse this system using the compression drive at ten c.”

”Aye, sir,” responded the XO. ”Preparing to make intrasystem traverse from present location to jump point Bravo at one-zero-point-zero c.” The XO started giving orders to Maneuvering, the CIC engineering officer, and Deflector Control.

Max turned to the sensor officer. ”Mr. Kasparov, you're authorized to break EMCON to the extent, and only to the extent, of conducting a narrow beam active scan at high power along our path to the jump point. We want to make d.a.m.n sure nothing's in our way.” Kasparov acknowledged the order and started talking into his headset. He was going to let his back room set up and execute the scan, rather than trying to do it from the more limited set of controls on his console. Smart move.

It took about a minute. ”Captain, scan along our route to the Bravo jump point is clear. No s.h.i.+ps or obstructions.”

”Very well. XO, you may take the s.h.i.+p superluminal when ready.”