Chain of Command Read online

  “Okay. Um . . . you’re right about lasers cutting the target, but only if the laser is at lower power and has a long burn time, say a second or more. A fire lance, when its warhead blows, pumps its laser rods once, and then they’re vaporized by the detonation within a nanosecond or two. That’s one or two billionths of a second. So the actual pulse of the rod is less than that, but in that instant it delivers about a gigajoule of energy to the target. That’s the equivalent of, what, Chief Burns? Isn’t that about two hundred kilos of explosives?”

  “Two hundred and forty, sir,” he answered.

  “Right, two forty. The thing is, it’s transferred so quickly—a lot quicker than a conventional explosion—it converts a section of the hull to plasma which is trying to expand, but it can’t expand fast enough to just drift away. Instead it whacks the boat about as hard as a quarter-ton explosive shaped charge attached to the hull: same concussion, same shear effects. We’re lucky we only caught a glancing blow.”

  He looked around and saw men and women exchange frightened looks. Somebody should have told them this sooner. Somebody should at least have explained how their damned weapons worked, even if they didn’t need to know it to do their jobs.

  “Any other questions? Okay. Chief Navarro, I want you to keep on top of progress, see where we need some extra help.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Navarro answered, her face expressionless.

  “Well,” Sam said, and thought for a moment about how to send them on their way. “Merry Christmas, or it will be tomorrow. Kwanza starts in two more days, Chanukha in three. The winter solstice was two days ago, Mawlid a month back. Bodhi Day was . . . what? . . . two weeks ago? The day some of you celebrate the enlightenment of the Buddha. Not much enlightenment to celebrate this year. Maybe it seems like there’s not much to celebrate at all, but we’re still alive, and that’s something.

  “We got punched pretty hard today. Next time it’s going to be different. So let’s turn to.”

  As the officers and chiefs cleared out past him, Sam noticed Del Huhn floating at the rear of wardroom, his tether clipped to a wall stanchion. He looked a lot better. He was wearing a standard shipsuit and his face appeared rested, more relaxed. He held a drink bulb in his hand and looked at Sam, an odd knowing smile on his lips as if he and Sam shared a secret no one else knew. As the last of the chiefs left, Huhn cocked his head to the side. Sam kicked off and drifted over to him.

  “So, how do you like being captain so far?” Huhn asked, and the smile became something closer to a smirk.

  “Enjoy your coffee, Lieutenant Commander Huhn, but in the future I want you to clear the wardroom when I’m having a meeting with my officers and chiefs.”

  “I’m still an officer on this boat,” Huhn said.

  “With respect, sir, you are a passenger on this boat. And by the way, since you were already packed for the transfer to Pensacola, we’ll swap cabins in two hours.”

  Sam turned and glided through the wardroom hatch only to find chief Navarro waiting on the other side.

  “Satisfied?” he asked, but from her grim expression he didn’t think so.

  “I got a little girl seven years old, a little boy five,” she said. “I don’t want them growing up sin madre. What do we do when El Almirante pulls everyone out of orbit except our three destroyers?”

  Sam had suspected Admiral Kayumati might do that—pull all the jump drive-equipped ships out of harm’s way—but he wasn’t as certain as Navarro seemed to be.

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m working on it.”‘

  Her face remained rigid for several seconds, and then she nodded.

  “With the captain’s permission, I think it’s time we had a talk.”

  Ten minutes later they tethered themselves to restraint rings in Sam’s stateroom. It didn’t feel like his anymore, now that he’d made the decision to move, and he was glad he had. He was probably going to have a lot of private conferences like this and the captain’s cabin had more room. This had been Del Huhn’s cabin before Sam moved up to XO and he remembered how crowded that first officers’ meeting had felt.

  Sam offered Navarro something to drink and for a change she took him up on it.

  “Orange juice if you’ve got it, sir.”

  After they took a moment to sip from their drink bulbs, Navarro cleared her throat and started.

  “Near as I can tell, you did real good today, sir. With respect, how much of that do you figure was luck?”

  It wasn’t the question Sam was expecting, although he couldn’t have said which one was expected.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe most of it.”

  She shook her head, her mouth a hard line.

  “Captain, if you follow my advice, you will never say anything like that to another living soul on this boat. You can be all modest and stuff for the brass and for the folks back home, but for this crew, since you aren’t a career officer and you aren’t an operations officer, you better be a goddamned tactical genius. Everyone had lots of questions about whether you were up to this job. If we had a nice long peacetime cruise, you’d have time to work into this gradually, but that’s not our situation.”

  “Not being from operations, not being a regular—does the crew really care that much about it?” Sam asked. He’d thought that pecking order was important only to the officers.

  “Sure they care. I care, sir. I came up through maneuvering, promoted from quartermaster first to chief, operations all the way. All my career, most tac-heads I ever saw were just ballast, and some of them weren’t even very good at that. And as for being a reservist, the things you have to figure out, think through, the regular men and women know by instinct. They’ve been doing it every day for years.”

  “That didn’t seem to be a problem for you when I got the XO job,” he said.

  “XO ain’t captain, sir. But you may have noticed I said everyone had questions about you. All those drills everyone thought were a waste of time—seeing how fast we can get to general quarters, how fast we can get missiles out the tube—everyone knew speed and quick reaction time wasn’t important, right?

  “But earlier today when our task force got hammered, we survived, and we were one of the only boats to get missiles fired. Even if the missiles ended up being broke-dick-no-workee, we looked pretty good. Now, the fact everyone but you thought those drills were stupid, makes you look like some kind of mastermind. And that’s good, because over a thousand men and women died in orbit earlier today, and as bad as everyone feels about it, they’d feel a lot worse if they were dead too.

  “Why are those other people dead and we’re alive? The crew thinks it’s because of you. Whether you’re smart or lucky, they don’t much care. In their minds whatever mojo you have going is keeping them alive, and that’s good enough for them.

  “I’m not saying to swagger around this boat as if you were Bull Halsey. I’m just asking you, please, to never let on to anyone that you don’t think you’ve got what it takes. The belief that you’re on top of this—even if it’s a lie—is all that’s holding these kids together.

  “Oh, and by the way, pitching in to help with the repairs was good. Most of the time I wouldn’t encourage a captain to do that, but you’ve got a kind of eccentric genius thing going with the crew that makes it work.”

  She stopped and took a long drink of orange juice. When she finished Sam expected her to resume speaking, but instead she just looked at him and he realized it was his turn to talk.

  “Eccentric genius, huh? Not at all the way I think of myself, but I can live with it.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, sir. I’m not telling you to try to be something you’re not, even though it may sound like it. But that won’t work either. You can’t act like the captain. You’ve got to be the captain.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  26 December 2133

  (two days later) (fifth day in K’tok orbit)

  The four holoconference attendees seemed to float in space, each one surrounde
d by a small sphere of imagery—a cabin, a wardroom, a work station, an empty conference room—the spheres forming the four corners of a small square surrounded by dimensionless gray. Atwater-Jones was holo-conferencing from the unarmed command ship, USS Pensacola, but from a conference room somewhere other than its habitat wheel, so she was in zero gee. Her long red hair was tied back into a ponytail, but a very loose one, so her hair floated around her head in a soft cloud, as if she were under water. It was a little distracting. The three destroyer captains, of course, floated in zero gee as well—they had no other option.

  Sam had balked at another holoconference—he had too much to do as it was without another meeting to attend—but he found himself looking forward to seeing Cassandra Atwater-Jones again. He liked her sense of humor, After five minutes, though, he wasn’t laughing; he found himself staring at the image of the British officer in disbelief.

  “They hit Bronstein’s World? But the BW’s neutral, isn’t it? They don’t even have a military, just a police force.”

  “That is quite correct, Captain Bitka,” Atwater-Jones said. “However, the US Eleventh Fleet Headquarters is located on land leased from the planetary authorities, close by the needle downstation and in the administrative capital. There are also several orbital facilities owned by the United States Navy, as well as one owned jointly by India and Brazil. All of the orbital installations were destroyed and the Eleventh Fleet ground facilities were attacked from orbit, with considerable loss of life both in the facility and the surrounding civilian community.”

  Sam shook his head and for a moment thought about Filipenko—this would hit her hard.

  “Beyond that,” she went on, “the coalition task force assembling near the system gas giant was taken under attack as well and has suffered casualties similar to ours, both in scope and apparent cause.”

  “What does that mean for us getting reinforcements?” Juanita Rivera on Champion Hill asked.

  Rivera was the acting commander of the destroyer division, and Sam had spoken to her several times about readiness and repair progress. She hadn’t been able to tell him what the long-term plan was, because task force hadn’t told her yet. They’d both hoped this briefing might answer that question.

  In sharp contrast to Atwater-Jones, Rivera’s raven-black hair was cut to a uniform length of five centimeters and in zero gee stuck out like a porcupine’s quills. She was big, with big hands and a strong, squared-off jaw. She looked as if she lifted weights normally, but the extended zero-gee was getting to her, rounding her face and body. She probably wasn’t getting as much exercise as she should, but she still looked as if she could kick down doors that got in her way. So far her command style was just about as subtle as that, which was fine with Sam. The time for subtlety had passed, in his opinion.

  Atwater-Jones said nothing for a moment.

  “Our two detached cruisers—Exeter and Aradu—are en route to join us, as are the three destroyers under Commander Bonaventure escorting USS Hornet. They will be here in three days. The admiral has also ordered your four remaining destroyers to leave orbit around the gas giant Mogo and join us. But as to reinforcements from Earth . . . well, that’s off, at least for the immediate future.”

  “Mierda,” Rivera said. “Any more bad news?”

  The British intelligence officer shifted uncomfortably—the first time Sam had seen any hint that anything might put her off balance.

  “I am afraid so. It seems our initial assessment that we destroyed an uBakai cruiser in the battle was incorrect.”

  Sam sat back in his chair.

  “But I’ve seen the wreckage imagery,” he said. “We all have. Now you’re telling us we didn’t kill a single uBakai ship? How is that possible?”

  The other two destroyer captains in the holo-conference made noises of agreement, and Atwater-Jones’s expression didn’t change as she listened. Her briefing had already made clear that the task force still had no idea how the uBakai had turned their jump drives on remotely. Now this.

  “Yes, I know it’s a bitter pill to swallow,” she said. “Believe me, the cruiser captains were even more distressed. They had thought to have been responsible for the one uBakai ship destroyed. But careful study of the sensor records indicates that the single enemy craft lost was destroyed well before any ordnance was launched by any of our vessels.”

  “You mean the uBakai blew up one of their own ships?” Rivera said. “Bullshit! They aren’t that loco.”

  “Blew up their own ship? Not deliberately,” Atwater-Jones answered, ignoring the implied challenge. “It appears to have been an accident. They were able to arrive seemingly out of nowhere because that is in fact precisely what they did. You see, they exited jump space well within the plane of the ecliptic, under ten thousand kilometers from K’tok. Our sensor records clearly show the energy signature of a jump emergence at the point we first detected them.”

  “And no one in the task force saw it coming?” Rivera said, her voice taking on more of an angry edge.

  “Sane people like us never do that sort of thing,” Atwater-Jones said quietly, “because the plane of the ecliptic is full of debris, dust, asteroids—widely spaced to be sure, but chance emergence in the same space as even a fairly modest-sized piece of rock can be catastrophic, as you all know very well. That appears to have been what happened: one of their ships exploded immediately upon exiting jump space.” She glanced briefly at Sam and raised one eyebrow.

  “Sane people like us listen carefully to what our astrogators say, and follow all the rules, even after the rules cease making sense.”

  “So their admirals are smarter than ours, is what you’re telling us,” Rivera said.

  “I’d say they gambled and won,” Atwater-Jones replied.

  “I’d say they just revolutionized interplanetary warfare,” Sam said. The others turned to look at him. “Think about it. All of our tactics are built around the assumption jump drives get us from star system to star system but Newton thrusters move us around in the system. It makes perfect sense in peacetime, but these in-system jumps are the way tactical surprise returns to the battlescape. Sure, there’s a risk, but there’s a hell of a payoff if it works.”

  Sam did not add that in a single stroke the uBakai had also rendered the destroyer rider concept obsolete, or at least a great deal less useful. The others sat silently for several long seconds.

  “So we didn’t even get a piece of them?” Captain Mike Wu of Petersburg, finally said. Wu looked as if he was well over the fleet mass limit for his height. He frowned and rubbed the top of his shaved head with his small but fat-fingered hand—or at least seemed to, but the hand moved back and forth several centimeters above his head, rubbing the top of his invisible helmet.

  “I’ve looked through the data dump on the attack. There are heat spikes, additional debris, even some outgassing.”

  “Yeah, how do you explain that?” Rivera demanded.

  “Oh, they did not escape entirely unscathed. One of USS Theodore Roosevelt’s missiles certainly hit an uBakai cruiser. We cannot tell how serious the damage was—not enough to disable it—but a fire lance hit can cause quite a lot of mischief short of that. And Captain Rivera, you may find this particularly heartening. USS Shiloh, one of your destroyers, was effectively overrun by the uBakai squadron as it passed behind K’tok, and as you know was destroyed with considerable loss of life. But in recovering survivors we also recovered its intact bridge data log.

  “The late Captain Rothstein of Shiloh fired six missiles at the oncoming uBakai, and although they caused no hits their close-in detonation provided her with an interference barrier against the uBakai sensors. That kept them from hitting her boat until they were quite close. Rothstein redirected her point defense lasers to engage ship-sized targets instead of missiles, and appears to have done considerable damage to several of the four remaining uBakai cruisers.”

  “Someone better put Miriam in for a decoration,” Rivera said. “It’s not much, but
it might mean something to her husband and kids.”

  “I quite agree,” Atwater-Jones replied.

  Sam cleared this throat.

  “I’ve got one more question. Why is this war so important?”

  Atwater-Jones shifted in her chair and gave him a look partly quizzical, partly mocking.

  “Important? I thought the admiral’s address made that clear. The salient point is the biocompatibility of—”

  “No,” Sam said, cutting her off. “I understand why it’s important to us. But we didn’t start the war, they did. And now they’ve escalated it by hitting Bronstein’s World. K’tok is just one of more than a dozen Varoki colony worlds, and some of them are Varoki biocompatible. So why is this one so important to them?”

  “Well . . . ” Atwater-Jones began but then stopped. She frowned for a moment and looked away, perhaps to gather her thoughts, and then her face cleared.

  “Damned if I know,” she said. “I really had better find out, hadn’t I?”

  “Let me just make sure I got all of this squared away,” Rivera said. “The uBakai are cranking up the heat in the war, from everything I read in the intel brief they can double or triple their available ships here, our cruisers blow up when they look cross-eyed at them, and the missiles on our destroyer don’t work.”

  “Yes, that last bit’s something of a challenge. I’d get on fixing those missiles right away,” Atwater-Jones said.

  “We’re screwed,” Rivera said, barely containing her anger, or was it fear?

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the intelligence officer replied.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because I am paid not to. Come to think of it, so are you. I believe what you are paid for is producing good results under trying conditions. I doubt you will ever in your career get a better opportunity to demonstrate that aptitude than you have right now.”

  For a moment all Sam heard was the faint whisper of the air circulation system in his cabin.