Part 13 (1/2)

10:42Z Hours, 24 January 2315 Breakfast was still sitting heavily in Max's stomach when he made his way to the first of the s.h.i.+p's cla.s.srooms (counting from the bow), all of which were located on A Deck, amids.h.i.+ps, on the port side. This was where the older mids, mostly between fifteen and seventeen Standard years, took their instruction. By the time they got to this age, mids.h.i.+pmen were not little boys any more, instead forming into young men, s.p.a.cers and officers in the making. They had all been in s.p.a.ce for several years, and most of them had been on board a s.h.i.+p that had been in some kind of engagement with the enemy. A few of these boys had an even closer acquaintance with the enemy, having been involved in boarding actions. One boy by the name of Shepard had shot a Krag with a shotgun. Eight times. When asked by an officer why he had shot the enemy warrior eight times, his response was: ”Sir, that's all the sh.e.l.ls I had in the weapon.”

That's the spirit.

When Max stepped into the cla.s.sroom, the instructor, Lieutenant JG Alexei Siluanov, was covering a unit in tactics. If Max had come at a different time, it might have been spherical geometry, calculus, astronomy, navigation, physics, history, government, or one of the other subjects covered in the mids.h.i.+pmen's curriculum.

At this moment, however, the cla.s.s was discussing defense against boarders. From the ill.u.s.trations on the graphics projector, Max could tell they were talking about Mobile Defense in Depth, which had been at the center of Union boarder defense doctrine since the third year of the war. Siluanov's back was to the door and he was so engrossed in talking about the crux of the concept, creating killing zones and enticing the enemy to enter them, that he did not see Max enter. One of the mids did, however, and snapped out a fairly s.p.a.cer-like ”Captain on deck.”

All seven of the mids.h.i.+pmen in the room came immediately to attention while Siluanov gave Max a textbook salute. ”Lieutenant JG Siluanov, reporting seven senior mids.h.i.+pmen receiving instruction in Advanced Tactics for Mids.h.i.+pmen, Unit Nineteen, Module Twenty-Nine.”

Max returned the salute just as briskly. ”As you were, gentlemen. Please carry on, Lieutenant. Don't mind me. I am merely observing.”

The boys all sat down. Max knew that the ”don't mind me” was a complete waste of oxygen, as neither a lieutenant JG nor a room full of mids were capable of ignoring the borderline divine presence of their commanding officer.

”Actually, Captain, one of these gentlemen raised a question a few minutes that I imagine you might be better able to answer than I.” It seemed that the lieutenant, as well, wanted to take the measure of his new CO.

”Go ahead.”

The lieutenant gestured to one of the mids, who came to rigid attention, facing Max. He seemed to be scared stiff. Captain Oscar must have been some piece of work to have inspired this kind of fear. Based on what Max had seen so far, he certainly terrorized the mids.h.i.+pmen as much as he had the officers and men. Sorry b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

”What's your name, son?”

”Shepard, sir.” Aha, it's Mr. Shoot-the-Krag-Eight-Times-with-a-Shotgun-to-Make-d.a.m.n-Sure-He's-Dead Shepard. And now he's the one with a question that the instructor wants the captain to answer. Even though he is paralyzed with terror right now, this kid might bear watching.

”Wait just a minute. There's seven of you, you're in s.p.a.ce, and the one named Shepard went first.” He chuckled and, pointing in turn to each of the other six, Max said, ”Then I suppose you're Grissom, you're Glenn, you're Carpenter, you're Schirra, you're Cooper, and you're Slayton. Don't worry about being last, Slayton, you get to boss the other guys around for years.” Only the teacher smiled. ”Never mind. A little humor. Anyway, ask your question, son.”

”Captain, sir, uh, I was, uh, just, like, you know-”

”All right, Shepard, I'm going to stop you right there. Stand at ease.” The boy changed his stance to parade rest, again done with perfect correctness.

”And relax a little. I've never sent anyone to the brig for asking a question.” That seemed to blunt the sharp edge of fear somewhat.

”Now, son, you're in training not just to be a recruit s.p.a.cer in a year or two, but as the years go by after that, to be a leader on a wars.h.i.+p in combat. It may be as a commissioned officer and it may be as an NCO, but in either case, your objective is one day to be a man to whom others look for leaders.h.i.+p and guidance, as an example. That means you have to communicate with them. And in the service, a big part of communicating is just talking-giving orders and asking questions. No one's going to follow you or believe you know polecats from pulsars unless you sound like you know what you're talking about.

”That means you compose your thoughts, put them in complete sentences, and organize those sentences into a complete sequence of ideas in your own mind before you open your mouth. So, Shepard, I want you to take a moment and form your question in your mind, word for word, organize the words into a sentence, and then ask the question, without saying 'um' or 'you know' or 'like' or anything of that sort. Can you do that?”

”Yes, sir.” He almost had Max convinced.

”All right, then. You may fire when ready.”

Shepard stood silent for about five seconds, his face a mask of concentration. Then, his face relaxed, and he spoke. ”Sir, I was wondering why the Navy puts so much emphasis on defending against boarders to keep the Krag from taking our s.h.i.+ps but does not take the obvious step of installing self-destruct mechanisms so that none of our s.h.i.+ps could ever fall into Krag hands.”

The boy didn't do half bad. But Max felt as though he had just been dropped through a trap door. His stomach took a sickening lurch, and his bowels contorted themselves uncomfortably. He hoped that the color wasn't leaving his face or that, if it was, none of these boys would notice. Still, there was nothing to do but put a brave face on it and go forward.

Max smiled broadly, resolved to give the boy the praise he deserved no matter how bad the question made him feel. ”Shepard, not only is that a truly excellent and intelligent question, but you presented it well. Union wars.h.i.+ps, and the wars.h.i.+ps of our predecessor navies going back almost to the beginnings of s.p.a.ce forces, have had destruct mechanisms to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. So, at the outset of this war all of our s.h.i.+ps were equipped both with a stand-alone nuclear self-destruct mechanism, known as the Self-Destruct Mechanism (Fusion), and also with a command sequence built into the main reactor control software that could be used to blow the reactor if the SDMF failed. All of that changed after the Battle of Han VII. Does anyone here know the brief on that engagement?” Shepard shook his head.

Another boy raised his hand, a painfully skinny young man with reddish hair and an almost comically prominent Adam's apple. Max pointed to him and he came to attention, prompting Shepard, quite correctly, to sit. The students in this cla.s.s appeared to be very proficient in naval courtesy, at least.

”At ease, son.” The boy changed his stance to parade rest. ”Your name?”

”McConnell, sir.”

”Go ahead, Mr. McConnell.”

”Sir, the Battle of Han VII was a major fleet action that took place on 18 October 2298, between Union Task Force Bravo Victor, under the command of Rear Admiral Ian McConnell and Krag Task Force Iota Sigma, believed to be under the command of Admiral Grouper.”

Union Task Forces were designated by letters of the Union Forces Voicecom Alphabet, so they had names like Delta Sierra or Echo X-Ray. Navy Intelligence designated Krag task forces by letters of the Greek alphabet, so they always sounded like evil college fraternities like Sigma Tau or Omega Lambda; Krag flag officers, when Intel thought it had identified them from their tactics or other clues, were designated by code names specifically selected to sound nonintimidating. At the time of the Battle of Han VII, Intel was naming them after fish.

”Was Admiral McConnell a relative of yours?”

”He was my grandfather's youngest brother, sir.” Max nodded solemnly. So many losses. No family was untouched by this hideous, b.l.o.o.d.y war.

”Continue, Mr. McConnell.”

”Han VII was a strategic target because of the large deuterium separation complex on one of its moons, designated as Han VII D, which has an ice-covered ocean similar to that on Europa, critical to fleet operations in that sector. Intel believed that the Krag were planning to destroy the complex by means of a direct attack across open s.p.a.ce by a force consisting of corvettes, destroyers, and frigates. This force was to be met by Task Force Bravo Victor, consisting of four cruisers and several frigates and destroyers.”

”Taking into account the firepower of the battlecruiser and four cruisers alone, the force was thought more than sufficient to repel however many s.h.i.+ps the Krag were capable of sending. Admiral McConnell detected the attackers at a range of about a hundred AU and deployed his force in a properly structured Zhou Matrix in precisely the right location and correctly oriented to the threat axis.

”But then-and here's what I don't understand, sir; somehow, the curriculum database is silent on this point-all but one frigate and two destroyers of Task Force Bravo Victor were destroyed, and the three surviving s.h.i.+ps had to withdraw, leaving the complex and the system to the Krag.”

”Be seated, Mr. McConnell. Good recitation. Gentlemen, as you rise through the ranks, you will be learning many things along the way that someone has decided should not be widely known. What happened to Task Force Bravo Victor is one of those things.” He paused and took a deep breath. ”Task Force Bravo Victor blew itself up.”

Seven young faces regarded Max in stunned silence for several seconds. They just couldn't wrap their brains around it. Max felt an echo of their shock within himself. He didn't like talking about Han VII. He didn't like thinking about Han VII. He preferred to keep Han VII locked in a lead-lined, triple-reinforced vault, just as the Admiralty did. But it was time that these young men learned this particular truth, and it was best that they learned it from him.

”That is not to say,” Max continued, ”that they self-destructed voluntarily. Our best evidence is that the Krag figured out some way to remote trigger the SDMFs in the s.h.i.+ps. Fortunately, whatever they used to do it, they could use it on only one s.h.i.+p at a time. So, when they saw the other s.h.i.+ps in the Task Force exploding one after the other without being hit by weapons fire, three s.h.i.+ps out of the whole Task Force managed to guess what was happening fast enough and jettison their SDMFs. Being outnumbered and outgunned about fifteen to one, they made a hasty exit from the system, leaving everything behind. And everyone.”

He paused for a moment, putting his stomach back where it belonged by sheer force of will. ”They had no choice but to run. At least one of them had to survive to warn the fleet that their SDMFs were vulnerable. Otherwise, the Krag could pull the same stunt again at another battle. The Admiralty proved that it is capable of moving quickly every now and then, and wasted no time pulling all the destruct mechanisms and software from every s.h.i.+p in the Navy. Then, just to make sure that the Krag couldn't exploit some weakness in our reactor systems, they redesigned the reactor control software and the hardware itself to make it virtually impossible to induce the main reactor to explode, except by weapons fire.

”Despite our best efforts, we still don't know how the Krag did it. The best theory is that the Krag found a way to alter the relative strength of the nuclear force and the Coulomb force over a small area, causing the deuterium and tritium fuel in the warheads to fuse without having to detonate the fission trigger. G.o.d knows how. So, to this day we have no destructs on our s.h.i.+ps. And the Krag don't put them on their s.h.i.+ps, presumably because they're afraid we'll discover whatever it is they used and turn it against them.

”Therefore, it is possible for each of us to board and take the s.h.i.+ps of the other, as both have done many times in this war. As near as we can tell, the Krag have nearly a hundred of our vessels in their navy and we have fifty-six of theirs. And that's why the tactics of boarding and repelling boarders are critical-not only to save you and your s.h.i.+pmates from being defeated by the enemy in face-to-face combat but also to keep them from getting their furry little paws on our wars.h.i.+ps and using them to kill our people. And now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have a s.h.i.+p to run. Carry on.”

He left the compartment and went straight back to his cabin. Every step of the way, he thought about the survivors in life pods and the hundreds of men at the deuterium complex on Han VII D. He thought about how those men begged the cruiser Adrianople and the destroyers Capetown and Colombo not to leave them to the mercy of the Krag, and how those s.h.i.+ps ran like scalded dogs, fleeing the system as fast as their compression drives could propel them.

He thought about how those men sounded to the mids.h.i.+pman a.s.signed to the Comms back room on the Capetown, who dutifully logged each of those incoming desperate signals by frequency, source, duration, and content, and about how that young man did his duty with a stern warrior face, without shedding a tear, while his heart turned to ashes in his chest. He thought about how that young man had nightmares to this very day in which he heard those men's pleading voices. Most of all, he wondered if that young man, a man named Rob.i.+.c.haux, would ever stop hearing them.

Probably not.

After spending a few hours in his bunk, taking two of the pills that the doctor on the Halsey had given him for nausea, and eating some soup and crackers, Max was back at work, making some changes to the duty roster, when his comm buzzed. ”Skipper here.”

”Captain, this is Major Kraft. I have a present for you in the brig.”

”On my way.”

Max had determined that he could get from any point in the c.u.mberland to any other in two minutes, forty-nine seconds or less. From his quarters to the brig took just over a minute and a half, and would probably take less if he were willing to slide down the access ladders, as most of the younger crewmen did, rather than take them rung by rung. But Commodore Middleton had told him a long time ago that once one became a commissioned officer, people expected one to act with a certain degree of dignity, and that included not sliding down access ladders like a mid-third playing Marines and rat-faces.

Max entered Major Kraft's domain and was greeted by the major and Lieutenant Brown, triumphant smiles on both their faces.

”We've got him, sir,” Kraft announced. ”We nabbed our drug dealer red-handed, synthesizing a batch of the Chill. We broke in on him just as the drugs were coming out of the machine.”