Chain of Command Read online

  Line officers to the captain’s right took precedence over support branch officers to his left. Engineering and Operations sat closer to the head of the table than did Supply and Tactical, showing another subhierarchy. And then there were the regular officers versus the reservists. They only had eleven officers remaining of their original fourteen, eight of them floated at the table waiting for the captain to join them, and they were as thoroughly sifted and labeled and divided by rank, job, specialty, and service status as exhibits in a museum.

  Sam had always accepted this hierarchy, never questioned it. He was just one of the cogs, focused on doing his job and making his boss happy—usually. Now it was different. Now he was executive officer and his job was to make all these cogs mesh into one efficient machine. The carefully regimented hierarchy was supposed to make it easier to understand the extent and limits of every other officer’s authority and responsibility. It was supposed to make it easier for everyone to work together, but Sam wondered.

  “Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Captain Huhn said as he coasted through the hatchway to the wardroom and then kicked off the compartment wall toward the table. “As you were. No standing on ceremony here. Let’s enjoy our supper, but cover some business while we’re eating, okay? Go ahead and order. I hear the curried chicken’s good tonight.”

  Sam couldn’t imagine why the machine-reconstituted and cooked curried soy-chicken would be different tonight than it was any other night but he ordered it to be agreeable, punching the order into the smart table surface. Huhn seemed awfully cheerful one day into the war, nothing like on the auxiliary bridge or in his cabin. Maybe he’d recovered his balance, his self-confidence.

  The mess attendant handed Sam his dinner tray with the sealed food packages held to it by fibre pads. Sam peeled back the cover of the entrée container, unclipped the fork from the tray, and started eating curried chicken. Not bad, but nothing special. Food eaten in zero gee never tasted all that great. For one thing, the aroma never rose from the food, so unless he brought it right up to his nose he couldn’t smell it, and that cut a lot of the enjoyment. Even when he did lift it up, Sam couldn’t smell it all that well. Along with everyone else after the first couple days in zero gee, the fluid accumulation in his head meant a permanent stuffy nose.

  “Well, it’s customary for a new captain to call a wardroom meeting like this to get acquainted,” Huhn said once the orders were in and the mess attendant began bringing out the food and beverage containers. “But we already know each other, don’t we? What’s really changed everything is this war. Some of us saw it coming, and Captain Rehnquist and I were among them. Nobody upstairs would listen to us, of course. Staff officers have a hard time listening to the people who can see what’s what, and so here we are.”

  That was surprising. As far as Sam could tell, Captain Rehnquist and Delmar Huhn had been singularly unconcerned about looming hostilities. It was possible they had logged warnings to their superiors and had not said anything to the crew to avoid worrying them. Anything was possible, he supposed.

  “Well, that’s all water under the bridge,” Huhn went on. “The important thing is we’re in a war and we have a job to do. The task force coming behind us has seven heavy cruisers from four different navies: the WestEuros, India, Nigeria, and us. Transports, too, carrying three cohorts of troops—two of them Mike Troopers, and one conventional infantry. The grunts were going to land and reinforce the local security forces in the Human colony while the Mikes would be an orbital reserve and quick reaction force. Now the plan is to drop the whole expeditionary brigade right on T’tokl-Heem, the Varoki colonial capital, and grab the needle. The brass thinks that should be enough to force them back to the bargaining table.”

  “They gotta be kidding!” Rose Hennessey said and Huhn looked over at her, eyes suddenly wide with surprise.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She shook her head, her cheeks and neck turning a splotchy red, either embarrassment or anger, Sam couldn’t tell which. “Jesus, grab the needle? An elevator from planet surface to orbit is just about the most delicate and complicated piece of engineering anyone in known space has ever built, and it costs a fortune. One wrong move, one stray shot, and we’re gonna have a hell of a mess on our hands.”

  “You mean they will,” Larry Goldjune said from across the table. “They started this fight, they attacked us by surprise, killed our shipmates. If we break their needle, I say too goddamned bad. Fuck ‘em.”

  Several officers nodded and growled their agreement.

  “But our people gotta live down there too, Goldjune,” Hennessey said. “Hell, they broke the needle on Nishtaaka twelve, thirteen years ago and still haven’t got it working right.”

  “Okay, okay,” Huhn said. “Settle down, you two. I’m inclined to agree with Larry on this one, but let’s not worry about that stuff until they tell us to pin stars on our collars. Alright? Okay.”

  Huhn was right, this was way above their pay grades, but Hennessey had a point, too. Whatever commercial viability a world had was tied to it having a functioning needle. Boosting payloads to orbit by rocket was absurdly expensive, not remotely economical. Star drives were fine for exploring the galaxy and all that, but the reality of interplanetary and interstellar commerce was that almost all the cost of moving something from one planet to another—regardless of which star it orbited—was paid once you got it into low orbit. A needle cut the cost per kilo of lifting cargo and people to orbit by two orders of magnitude.

  Sam had read about needles his whole life, and lived with the images of them, but the first one he actually saw was the Central Pacific Needle, shortly before he rode it to orbit his second summer of NROTC training. It shone bright gold in the Pacific sunlight, and stretched up into the haze, an impossibly long, impossibly thin column, plated in gold only molecules thick to prevent oxygen erosion of the carbon nanotubes that formed the core of the structure.

  It was really a bundle of nanotubes, a big vertical cable in permanent Synchronous Planetary Orbit—SPO—over one spot in the equator, but reaching past the SPO orbit track and tethered to a massive captive asteroid, far enough out it moved at escape velocity and would depart orbit if it weren’t for the mass of the Needle holding it back; the centrifugal force of the asteroid trying to escape orbit held the Needle up and balanced the centripetal force of gravity trying to pull the whole thing down. It all made sense mathematically, but that never changed the chill Sam felt whenever he stepped into the passenger compartment of the elevator and realized he was already in orbit, even though he was still at sea level. The whole structure and everything on it was in orbit.

  But needles were huge investments: difficult to build and almost impossible to restore to their original condition once they suffered major damage. Fighting anywhere near one was a hell of a gamble.

  Huhn was talking again and Sam shook the vision of a shattered needle from his mind to listen.

  “Now, because of the damage we took,” Huhn went on, “they are modifying our job. The task force has accelerated and is overtaking us. The other eight boats in the squadron will accelerate as well and form the forward screen, but our four-boat division will hold back to escort Hornet, at least until they can get power up. Then we’ll be the task force reserve.

  “I know this is probably a disappointment to everyone. I’m sure all of us want to be in on the first strike back at these people, to avenge our shipmates and because . . . well, just because, that’s why. But in the Navy we follow orders, no matter how unpleasant they may be, and we do it without bellyaching.”

  As Sam looked around the table, a few officers showed looks of genuine disappointment but Delmar Huhn wasn’t one of them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  4 December 2133

  (one day later) (seventeen days from K’tok orbit)

  “Coupling, arm, servo-mechanical, one-point-seven-four-meter, type alpha seven dash seven one,” Sam read.

  “Um . . . right here
,” Ensign Robinette answered and pointed to the twisted piece of metal, one of several hundred items floating tethered in long swaying lines in the storage bay.

  Sam clicked the “verified” box by the part on his data pad. “Gain conduit, electro-thermal, twelve-kiloamp.”

  “Over here. Ow!”

  Sam looked up and saw Robinette sucking the tip his right index finger.

  “Sharp edge. Cut myself,” the ensign explained.

  Sam clicked the correct box.

  “Plasma flux regulator, serial whiskey romeo one niner four niner.”

  “Yeah, here it is.”

  “Okay, Robinette, what the hell is a plasma flux regulator?”

  The young engineering ensign looked up from his own data pad.

  “Um, it says here it’s part of the Magneto-PlasmaDynamic thruster’s magnetic containment system, sir. I think it keeps the plasma jet from touching the ignition walls, so the exhaust nozzle doesn’t heat up. That’s why the MPD thruster is low signature.”

  Sam thought it was a little strange an engineering officer had to look that up, but Robinette was pretty young and new to the job—he was the only officer on Puebla who had arrived after Sam and Moe Rice had transferred over from USS Theodore Roosevelt. Being skinny made him look younger than his years, and his thin, weedy moustache younger still. His large ears stuck almost straight out from his head, like jug handles. If Robinette hadn’t been an officer and gentleman by act of Congress, Sam was pretty sure his nickname among the crew would be The Jughead. Maybe it was and they were just careful not to let it slip near anyone in a white shipsuit.

  “What’s your specialty, Robinette?”

  “Oh. Well, electronic warfare, I guess,” he said and looked back down at his data pad. Sam was pretty sure he was blushing, but had no idea why asking about his specialty would be embarrassing.

  “I thought we didn’t take any damage to the drives.”

  Robinette’s head rose and he looked relieved at the change of subject. “No, sir, but one of the slugs went through a storage bay and damaged some of our replacement components.”

  Sam nodded and stretched his neck. They had been at this component damage survey for nearly an hour and hadn’t made as much progress as they needed to. Engineering work parties were pulling damaged components and replacing them at a heroic rate, but every damaged item would have to be replaced, and that meant every single one had to be surveyed and inventoried by engineering, and then verified by the executive officer—Sam—before a requisition could be sent on to squadron support on USS Hornet. The fact that Hornet was in worse shape than Puebla and was in no position to get them the replacement parts at any time in the foreseeable future was—as Captain Huhn had pointed out to Sam earlier—not germane.

  What bothered him most was the utter stupidity of the entire arrangement. There was no good reason for storing and stockpiling parts when the fabricators on Puebla and every other ship in the fleet could manufacture any part required. All they needed, other than the fabricators themselves, were electricity, the correct raw materials, and the part generation software. The software was the sticking point, and for a change it wasn’t Navy bureaucracy standing in the way. The suppliers wouldn’t release the proprietary software codes, so Navy ships (and boats) like Puebla had to haul around parts bays that looked like old-time hardware stores. Absurd.

  Yes, having the parts on hand meant they could make urgent repairs more quickly. Yes, that was a possible advantage in battle. But the parts were vulnerable to damage themselves, as this plasma flux regulator thing showed, and if now the main one broke, then what?

  His imbedded commlink vibrated and he heard the accompanying ID tone of the captain’s own commlink. Great. Now what?

  “Yes, sir.”

  How’s that damage survey coming?

  “Finishing up the first part of it with Ensign Robinette from engineering now, sir.”

  Well get it squared away. I’m looking at your revised watch-standing list. Some of this just won’t fly. I’m making a list of modifications

  “Modifications. Yes, sir.”

  I also need tomorrow’s plan of the day ASAP. I want to check the schedule of drills.

  “Plan of the day. I’ll do it as soon as Robinette and I finish the damage survey.”

  Okay, but don’t dawdle over it. One more thing. I decided I’m going to have Filipenko take over the tactical department from you. You’ve got your hands full with all the administrative stuff.

  Sam didn’t answer for a moment.

  “Filipenko? The communications officer? Sir, I don’t recall that Lieutenant Filipenko has any background in either sensors or weaponry.”

  It’s covered in the line officer basic course we all took post-academy, and she’s a fast study.

  “Yes, sir, but . . . if you want to move someone into that position, why not Lieutenant Goldjune? He did a deployment as leading sensor officer on USS Reagan.”

  I need Larry in Ops. Filipenko can handle TAC.

  And then Huhn cut the connection. So much, apparently, for their brief honeymoon as captain and XO.

  “Trouble, sir?” Robinette asked.

  Sam was still unused to ensigns calling him “sir,” even though he had two pay grades and about ten years on Robinette.

  “Captain’s just giving me a hard time, that’s all. We don’t always see eye-to-eye. Look, I’m going to go out on a limb here and just check all the rest of these parts as verified.”

  “Is that kosher, sir?”

  “Based on my assessment of the efficiency of the engineering department and the chief engineer, I feel confident the list as submitted is a complete and accurate report of our damage situation—at least so far. I’ll append an explanatory note to that effect. These peacetime procedures don’t really take into account the kind of situation we’re facing here, so they’ll understand upstairs.”

  Robinette looked doubtful.

  “Or they won’t,” Sam added with a shrug, “in which case they can fire me and send me home. You’ll probably have another couple hundred parts to survey by the next watch change.”

  “Yes, sir. I bet we will.”

  “Okay, Ensign, get back to it and tell the repair parties I appreciate the job they’re doing. Oh, and uh . . . if you should run into him, no need to let the captain know how we’re expediting the survey, okay?”

  Robinette glided out the storage bay hatch and Sam turned back to his data pad and the reports queued up for his attention. The first one was from Moe Rice: an inventory of destroyed consumables—mostly rations. They had lost one of the water recycling units and several atmosphere scrubbers, but Moe had appended an estimate of how long they could safely put off repairs.

  Sam also had a list of next-of-kins waiting for holograms. That was the captain’s job but he had delegated it to Sam. What was he going to say to Jules’s folks?

  Thankfully, he brought up the blank form for the Plan of the Day instead and began filling in the entries.

  “Mister Bitka, have a minute?”

  Sam looked up and saw the broad face and thick shoulders of Senior Chief Petty Officer Constancia Navarro, the Chief of the Boat, hovering in the storage bay’s hatchway. As the senior noncommissioned officer on Puebla, Navarro occupied a special, almost exalted, place in the boat’s hierarchy. In theory, every officer outranked her. In practice she had the ear of the captain and XO in ways few if any of the officers did. No junior officer, with the possible exception of the least experienced and most stupid of newly minted ensigns, would think to give her an order. Sam had spoken with her before and she had always been respectful, but she had never taken much notice of him beyond that, so her appearance took him off guard.

  “Absolutely, COB, come on in.”

  Her features showed her American Indian lineage without much evidence of either Spanish or Anglo genes. She was only a few years older than he but already had fifteen years in uniform, and gray streaks softened the stark black of her short,
coarse hair.

  “Thank you, sir.” She locked her feet through a handhold on one wall, looked around the cluttered storage bay and nodded. “Quite a job to have to tackle without much warning.”

  Sam almost said he could handle it but stopped himself. Navarro was here for a reason but he wasn’t sure what it was.

  “This is my first deployment out of the Solar System,” Sam said instead, “my first introduction to shipboard administration—and my first war. Any advice you have would be very welcome.”

  Navarro continued to look around the bay, nodding slightly to herself, perhaps collecting her thoughts. She cleared her throat.

  “I’ve seen some pretty good execs in my time,” she said, “and some . . . not so good. To be good, you have to understand that for most of the crew, you speak for the captain. So you need to understand the captain.”

  “Easier said than done,” Sam said and he smiled, but Navarro didn’t return the smile. She didn’t look offended, just thoughtful to the point of preoccupation. She nodded slightly, in acknowledgement of the truth of what Sam said, if not exactly in agreement with it.

  “The way the Navy uses the word captain,” Navarro continued, “. . . well, it’s funny, isn’t it? Captain’s a rank, O-6, but no matter what their rank, whoever’s senior line officer on a vessel, they’re the captain.”

  “Sure,” Sam said, “the job, not the rank.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Navarro said and nodded for emphasis. “The job. A ship captain is . . . well, as far as the crew’s concerned a ship’s captain is the navy. Admirals can tell captains where to take their ships, and what to do with them once they get there, but not how to run them. Captains are monarchs on their own ships, absolute dictators.”

  “Subject to Navy regulations,” Sam added.

  “Yes sir, subject to Navy regulations. But with that one limit, captains are always right. They’re infallible, and it’s official—you know, like the pope.”