Chain of Command Page 10

  “Yeah, well . . . all due respect to your operations people, Commander, but they think like astrogators, not Tac-heads.”

  Then Sam explained in detail why the astrogation standard practices of arriving Earth forces had made it possible to detect them, the same as he had explained to Huhn and the others the day of the attack. Commander Atwater-Jones listened carefully, nodding her understanding, her face eventually creasing with anger.

  “Knobbers!” she finally said when he was done, then she shook her head. “Oh, not you Bitka. Excellent piece of tactical reasoning.”

  She stared ahead for a moment, her eyes not on him, so she must have been studying information projected by her viewer glasses. Her focus returned to him.

  “You’re a reservist,” she said, surprise in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. Is that a problem?”

  “Heavens, no! Why, some of my best chums are Royal Navy Reserve.” She gave him a lopsided grin. “We just don’t expect them to be prodigies, that’s all. What’s your secret?”

  Prodigy? Sam felt his face warm a bit but he took a breath and made his mind work this through. He was on dangerous ground: he didn’t want to say anything a British officer might interpret as criticism of the US Navy, and who knew what her agenda was? He did suspect that flattery from a naval intelligence officer was more likely a prelude to trouble than to good news.

  “I’m no prodigy, Commander, and there’s no secret, just excellent training at Pearl River—the Deep Space Tactical Warfare School. Fundamentals of interplanetary astrogation, sensor performance at light-second range, combat tactics on a high-closing-rate vector—they made it all seem easy and fun.”

  She laughed.

  “Easy and fun? They must have changed some of the faculty since I read tactics there six years ago. An exchange assignment, you know. Beastly in the summer, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not really the heat,” Sam said with a smile, “it’s the humidity.”

  “I rather thought it was both,” she answered and she nodded thoughtfully, but Sam didn’t think her mind was on the climate of southwestern Mississippi. After a moment her eyebrows danced up just for an instant and then settled back, as if shrugging.

  “Right. Well, thank you Leftenant Bitka, you have been most helpful.”

  And the connection went dead.

  Sam took off his helmet and clipped it to his workstation, then stretched his back and locked his fingers behind his head.

  What was his secret? Did he even have a secret?

  After college and his mandatory term of active duty service with the Navy, he’d spent seven years in the private sector, working his way up to assistant vice president for West Coast Product Support in the large-capacity fabricator division of Dynamic Paradigms. Had anything from his work helped him as a tactical officer? It had taught him how to figure out what his bosses wanted and give it to them, which got him through Pearl River with great marks. Then it got him strong fitness reports and glowing recommendations from the captains he served under before coming to USS Puebla.

  The training really had been good, and something about it had appealed to him. It was easy and fun, but probably less because of the instructors and more because Sam had taken to it. It was a good mental fit, the way you sometimes meet a stranger but your minds are organized so similarly that within no time you feel like you’ve know her for years. But others took to the training as well. That wasn’t his secret.

  He started to sip coffee from the drink bulb tethered to his desk but it had gone cold. He flushed it in his drink dispensor’s liquid recycler and switched to mango juice. He had enough caffeine in his system but a little sugar wouldn’t hurt.

  What was his secret? It wasn’t his secret at all; it was the Navy’s, and he didn’t think they even knew they had one. A hundred years of peaceful space travel had left the Navy paying lip service to the violent part of its mission, and you could see it in something as simple as where officers sat at the wardroom table. Promising regulars, the ones with good marks and better connections, went into operations—astrogation and communication—not tactics. They had to do rotations in tactical departments, but when they did they usually opted for the sensor slots rather than weapons. Weapons were things you maintained and polished and practiced shooting, but never actually used. Sensors at least were useful for astrogation.

  Sam didn’t fault that. It wasn’t for him to judge, and in any case it made sense. What the Navy did was move people and ships around, and to do that they needed astrogators, communicators, and engineers. The tactical people had been dead weight for a hundred years, they were the bottom rung on the social ladder, and as soon as a bunch of bright-eyed reservists started coming into uniform, as many of the old tactical officers as could manage it had switched over to operations, leaving their seats for reservists to fill.

  But what Sam had said to the British commander was true as far as it went: operations people just didn’t think tactically; they thought like astrogators. What he hadn’t told her was that, as far as he could tell, right now the United States Navy was run, top to bottom, by astrogators.

  He couldn’t just come out and say that to some Limey.

  Had he just gotten a number of astrogators in trouble? He hoped so. Those would be the same ones who got Jules and six more of his shipmates killed by cutting corners to make their jobs easier. If Sam survived this, they’d find out what real trouble was.

  Speaking of trouble . . .

  Sam keyed his embedded commlink and squinted up the connection to the duty communications petty officer.

  Sig-One Kramer.

  “Kramer, this is the XO. Notify the captain that the task force smart boss just called for a face-to-face with me by name, and send the captain the recording of the conference.”

  Aye, aye, sir.

  “Oh, and Kramer . . . make sure you let him know I told you to send him the recording.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  7 December 2133

  (ten hours later) (fourteen days from K’tok orbit)

  Sam’s relationship with Captain Huhn had proved as constant and predictable as the energy output of an eruptive variable star.

  The day after the attack, and after the first promising conversation, Huhn had ignored Sam when in the same room and sent a series of increasingly brusque orders by commlink.

  The next day Chief Navarro had given Sam a badly needed education in his duties.

  The day after that Huhn had called Sam to his cabin during the afternoon watch, delivered his rambling monologue about his trust in Larry Goldjune having vanished, and sent Sam away with the admonition that the two of them needed to stick together in the face of their “enemies.”

  For the entire next day and the following one, Huhn remained in his cabin with orders not to be disturbed except for contact with the enemy or incoming communications addressed to him. Sam should handle everything else. Those were the two days before the scheduled rendezvous with Combined Task Force One. Sam knew that Huhn and Goldjune had been close and Goldjune turning on him must have shaken the captain up badly. He hadn’t know the cause of the break then, but he now suspected that Ensign Lee’s take on Huhn freezing on the auxiliary bridge the day of the attack was at the core of it. Lee had shared her thoughts with Marina Filipenko; wouldn’t she do the same with her department head and lover?

  Six hours after Sam’s conference with Commander Atwater-Jones in the afternoon of the rendezvous, Puebla and the other boats of their division—Destroyer Division Three—received a tight-beam burst transmission to be ready for a holobriefing by senior staff of the task force in two hours. The briefing would include the command teams of all four DDRs of DesDiv Three: USS Oaxaca, Tacambaro, Queretaro, and Puebla, all patched into the same virtual conference space. Each DDR’s command team was limited to three officers: captain, executive officer, and Tac Boss.

  Perhaps Huhn would settle down after the briefing—it had only been five days since the attack, only five days of war. T
hey knew the barest outline of a plan but no details, few specifics of what they were expected to do beyond hang back with Hornet and act as a reserve. Maybe this briefing would do the trick, give Huhn something to focus on. Sam hoped so.

  Whatever animosity he had felt toward Delmar Huhn had faded, although he could not say why. He felt no affection for the captain, not even sympathy. Instead it was as if Sam drove an aged ground car across the desert and Del Huhn was its engine—sputtering, overheating, losing power. He felt no emotions for the engine except anxiety and desperation to keep it running until he reached safety.

  Perhaps it would have been different if Huhn had stalked the boat, finding fault with officers and crew, delivering harangues, but Sam had not seen him in almost three days. As far as he knew no one had, except probably the mess attendants who delivered his meals. The captain communicated occasionally by voice commlink, more often simply by text memos. Perhaps Sam’s animosity had faded because Del Huhn seemed to have faded.

  Twenty minutes later, Sam’s commlink vibrated and he squinted up the ID tag of Yeoman Fischer.

  “What’s up, Fischer?”

  Sir, the captain said to ping you and say you won’t need to show for the holobriefing. Lieutenant Goldjune will take your slot.

  “Understood. Thanks, Fischer.”

  Now that was odd. As far as Sam knew, the task force staff’s instructions had been specific. Huhn must have gotten permission to change the lineup. And had he patched things up with Larry Goldjune? Possibly. Or maybe he’d rather be surrounded by fellow regulars, not a reservist like Sam.

  He tasted something sour, felt his face flush as resentment bubbled up within him. He should be in that briefing, goddamnit —either as executive officer or as Tac Boss. Huhn turning the tactical department over to Filipenko was asking for trouble. She was smart enough, but so far she hadn’t shown the fire in her to own the job rather than just go through the motions. What was Huhn thinking? What was that coward, that pathetic emotional cripple, ever thinking about but his own sense of aggrieved entitlement?

  Sam leaned back and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Damn! Get a grip.

  Right, it wasn’t about Del Huhn’s grievances or disappointments, and it wasn’t about his either. It was just about the boat.

  So suck it up, Bitka.

  Sam looked at his desk display. He had been in the middle of finishing the certifications for promotion of seven petty officers. Two of them, including Joyce Menzies, were to fill chief slots they badly needed to fill—actually were just formal confirmation of the acting promotions they’d already made. He already had his hands full with work that needed doing, right?

  He looked around at the walls of the office, set to mimic the view from a small island in the Pacific, kilometers of slowly rolling ocean stretching all the way to a horizon made indistinct by low scattered clouds.

  “This job stinks.” he told the ocean.

  He shook his head, pushed the mass of contradictory thoughts and emotions aside, and got back to work.

  An hour and forty minutes later, when the holoconference was to start, Sam’s commlink vibrated and he heard the ID tone of Captain Huhn.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Bitka, I know you think your paperwork should take precedence but I need you to helmet up for the briefing.

  “Aye, aye, sir, if that’s what you want.”

  Of course it’s what I want. Why else would I say it?

  “Well, Yeoman Fischer told me you wanted Lieutenant Goldjune to take my place, sir, but I’m happy to sit in.”

  Sam snapped on his helmet and immediately found himself in the holoconference, flanked by Huhn’s virtual self to his left and Filipenko’s to his right. Both of them looked embarrassed and he saw a variety of grins and scowls on the other faces, which made him realize he had been live to the conference during his exchange with Huhn. What had the captain said earlier that made Sam’s words so embarrassing?

  “I’ll have to speak with Yeoman Fischer,” Huhn said with anger in his voice. “There was apparently a misunderstanding.”

  Ah! Huhn must not have gotten permission to alter the conference attendee list, then when he’d been called on it had lied, and then had his lie exposed.

  “I may have misunderstood, sir,” Sam said. Whoever was at fault, it sure as hell wasn’t Yeoman Fischer. Better for Sam to take the heat.

  “Very well,” Huhn said without looking at him.

  Commander Bonaventure—Captain Tall, Dark, and Greasy, as Jules had once described him—captain of Oaxaca and commander of the Third Destroyer Division (ComDesDiv Three in Navy parlance), sat with his team to Huhn’s left. The virtual images of the command teams of Tacambaro and Queretaro sat to Filipenko’s right, all of them forming a shallow crescent.

  The images of three senior officers faced them, floating slightly below their level and looking up. Two wore the white shipsuits of US Navy officers. The man on the right was vaguely familiar but Sam did not recognize the short, stocky, and formidable-looking woman in the center, who was clearly in charge. She wore the four stripes of a full captain—not the job, but the rank, one step short of an admiral. Her hair was gray, her expression ferocious, and her build reminiscent of a fireplug.

  The third briefer wore dark blue: Commander Cassandra Atwater-Jones, Royal Navy. She seemed quite amused by whatever had gone before.

  “So you’re the famous Lieutenant Bitka,” the gray-haired staff captain said, making famous sound like an epithet. Her mouth seemed sculpted into a permanent frown, accentuated by her heavy jowls and deep-set eyes. “I better let you know neither I nor Commander Boynton thinks much of your theory of the uBakai attack profile. Commander Atwater-Jones disagrees with us, but I do not believe either she or you appreciate how tricky the astrogation setup for that attack must have been.”

  Boynton. That name was familiar. Where did he know him from?

  She glowered at him and after a second or two he realized she expected a reply.

  “Understood, ma’am.”

  “I still believe the problem must have been an intelligence leak.” She turned her glare on Atwater-Jones, who returned a cheerful smile. “Do you have anything to add to that, Commander?”

  “If I had,” Atwater-Jones said, still smiling, “and as it would involve an ongoing intelligence investigation of a most sensitive nature, it would of course be for your ears only, mum.”

  So apparently Sam was not the only one who occasionally felt the urge to bait the bear.

  The formal briefing got going after that. The formidable gray-haired captain running the show turned out to be Marietta Kleindienst, chief of staff to Admiral Kayumati, the commander of the task force. Atwater-Jones was obviously there as the N2—smart boss. Sam still couldn’t place the other officer.

  The plan was essentially as outlined before: a direct descent on K’tok, two cohorts of mike troops landed to seize the needle, another cohort in reserve, the fleet to engage and destroy any uBakai warships in the area of operations, then provide orbital bombardment support and secure the orbital space from interference by any arriving uBakai forces.

  Sam was unfamiliar with the terminology of the planetary assault itself, never having served in assault transports or in exercises involving deployment of ground troops. He kept squinting up glossaries to guide him through the maze of jargon. “Mike” stood for Meteoric Insertion Capable—soldiers dropped from orbit in individual re-entry capsules and accompanied by clouds of decoys to confuse missile interceptors.

  The five heavy cruisers would hold Low Planetary Orbit (LPO), positioned to bombard the area around the Landing site. The four destroyers of DesDiv Four would form the outer screen in much higher Planetary Synchronous Orbit (PSO). The transports and logistical support vessels, along with USS Pensacola, the task force flagship would take station as needed.

  Captain Kleindienst also told them a Nigerian and a British cruiser—NNS Aradu and HMS Exeter—had been detached to secure the system
gas giant, Mogo. The four destroyers of DesDiv Five had been dispatched to Mogo; they would arrive later than the cruisers but relieve them on station there so the heavier ships could rejoin the task force.

  “Any questions?” Captain Kleindienst asked and looked at the twelve men and women in the crescent.

  To his surprise, Sam heard Filipenko clear her throat.

  “I have one, ma’am.”

  Kleindienst’s frown deepened and took on an added layer of impatience.

  “Very well, but make it fast.”

  “I’m a communications officer by training and principle experience. Usually communication back to Earth takes weeks, because there is no communication except by data transfer by jump craft. This is only our fifth day of war.

  “I know our emergency procedure calls for an automated comm packet dispatched by jump missile to Bronstein’s World, where it will be received, transferred to a similar jump missile to Earth, where it will be received, acted on, and the procedure then repeated in reverse. But even the emergency process takes days, usually many days.”

  “Yes, what’s your question?” Kleindienst snapped.

  Filipenko took a breath, perhaps to steady herself, and then spoke.

  “This plan was given to us in outline the day of the attack. I don’t see how consultation with superior authority was possible. Is this attack authorized?”

  That was a hell of a question. What Filipenko said was true, obviously true, but Sam hadn’t thought to wonder about it. He faulted the astrogators for not thinking tactically, but Filipenko just showed him what it meant to think as a signaler.

  Opposite them, Kleindienst paused, apparently to let her glare grow even more fiery.

  “Given the very problems you enumerate,” she said carefully and slowly, “and given the volatile nature of the situation here, Admiral Kayumati sailed with sealed orders covering a variety of anticipated contingencies. Yes, Lieutenant, this attack was authorized at the highest level. Admirals don’t go around starting wars.”