Oceans of Space (v1.0), page 22
Those inside the environment knew something was wrong. The almost constant sounds of grinding and drilling were missing. The men, veterans with years of space time, watched as the young officer tried to look unruffled as he hurried past them. From the expression on the chiefs face as he entered the communication’s center, this was going to be one of the days he regretted being here.
The communications room and the waste center were the only areas separated from the large, open cylinder that served as barracks and workshop for the construction crew. Normally there would be a man on duty and two or three more waiting to speak with family on the surface. Today the chief, a twenty-year veteran of space service, was alone, manning the radio and radar himself, and the curtain across the entrance was closed. Harry had long understood that part of the jumpsuit-clad man’s job was to continue training the baby officer, him, or reporting to some admiral that Harry was hopeless, but today the occasionally solicitious air the veteran often took around Lieutenant Coronet was replaced by apparent concern.
“I got an alert from the Mauprinthe older man began without even turning from the screen in front of him. “They think they spotted something that tracked as if it was heading our way. No way to be sure.”
Lieutenant Coronet understood the ambiguity. Space was empty, except for a few thousand satellites…but that didn’t mean a warship was easy to find. Electronic Counter Measures and radar absorbing hulls gave “fog of war” an extra relevance to orbital warfare. If a ship from the Confederation of Republics had snuck past the low orbit picket line, they were lucky to have gotten any warning at all.
“How likely is this to be real?” he asked the older man.
“I served under Captain Aubrey on the Mauprin. He doesn’t tend to panic,” the chief assured his young commander, “nor would he report a wisp just to cover his rear.”
“Which means?”
The master chief turned and faced Harry for the first time. “That there is a very good chance that we will have some unwanted company in the next few minutes.”
“Have you sent out a call for assistance. Is the Mauprin nearby?”
“Nothing is getting out. Maybe it’s solar storms, maybe we are being jammed. Mauprin was on her way down. No help there. Hard to tell.” The chief turned back to the console. “Nothin’ here. They would have to be pretty close before this unit would crack their ECM.
Coronet watched the radar screen over the older non-commisioned officer’s shoulder. It seemed to be a very long time. Should he call in the men working outside? What good would that do? They were a sitting duck if a Connie ship appeared.
As if on cue the screen suddenly came alive with a rapidly growing shape.
“Shit,” the chief muttered.
Harry said nothing, just staring as the blip slowly grew and grew until it filled the local range radar’s screen. They were matching the DDS ll’s orbit. No IFF signal. It was a Connie and a large one.
What they wanted was obvious.
This station, once armed, would be a tough nut to crack, but until then they were defenseless. The only question was whether the Connies wanted prisoners or would just blow them apart.
Time passed, and slowly the two men began to breathe again. The Connie ship continued to approach. It appeared they wanted prisoners.
“We had better alert the men,” the chief reminded Harry. “That ship is getting so close it will soon be visible to the work crews outside.”
“Call everyone in,” the lieutenant agreed. “We’ll need to talk once they make contact.” He tried not to sound as flat as he felt. His first command—his career was about to end.
“This is the Confederation ship Spirit of Deng’
‘ the speaker said in heavily accented English. “This is Captain Lee Bo Tho. Who is the senior officer there?”
Before opening the channel to reply, Harry’s mind raced. “Chief, trigger the destruct on the codebooks now,” he ordered. Within seconds, the chief had thrown every paper in the room and one particularly sensitive board from the radio into a thin-walled aluminum case, triggering the attached magnesium flare. Only after he opened the now painfully hot case and they could see nothing remained but ashes, did the young officer reply.
“This is Lieutenant Coronet of the Alliance Navy, Captain Lee.”
“Your station is unarmed and unguarded,” the Connie began by stating the obvious. “There is no loss of face in your surrender. Another ship will arrive in two hours. All of you will embark on that ship into the hospitality of the Confederation.”
He didn’t even ask for our surrender, confident bastard, Harry noted…but then Lee was sitting inside a destroyer armed with half a dozen nuclear missiles. The Confederation hospitality he promised was notorious and occasionally fatal. The Connies had a policy of never freeing trained spacemen. Men such as Harry were simply too valuable a tool in the undeclared shooting war over who would control space to return to the enemy.
“Captain Lee, you leave me no choice,” was all that he could respond in a very flat voice. They were unarmed and defenseless. Knowing this didn’t make the fact he had to surrender without even a gesture palatable. Even in Nelson’s day, a ship’s officers were allowed to retain their pride with a single broadside aimed wide. The total armament available was the .45 automatic sitting unloaded in the lieutenant’s locker (not that he could even fire the side arm without the near certainty of breaching the environment’s hull).
“If there is any problem, I will not hesitate to stand off and send a missile into the station you were building,” came back the threat.
The next hour was spent in near silence by all of the men aboard the incomplete DDS 11. Some wrote letters that might not get delivered and others simply sat staring at the metal walls. Twice Lee Bo Tho radioed, seemingly to do no more than to remind Harry how helpless he was. When the second call ended, the young officer simply sat alone in the radio room and stared for long minutes. Finally, rising from his funk, Harry listened for what sounds the men were making.
The silence was ominous.
All knew that they were going into a captivity none were like to escape from. Many of the men had families and worked in space because of the massive bonuses offered for hazardous duty. Harry also began to realize he was the officer in charge and the men were waiting for him to take the lead, to do something. But what could forty men on an unarmed and incomplete station do against a Connie destroyer?
The young officer considered and rejected half a dozen plans, each more ludicrous than the last. If they tried to attack the destroyer, Lee needed only start his engines for a short burst and the ship would move safely away from the station, and be far enough away to then allow the Connie commander to blow them all to hell. Finally, simply out of habit, Harry reached for his reader and activated the Horatio Homblower novel he had been rereading. It was tempting to just pass his last hour of freedom ignoring an unfair world. He stared at the reader without seeing the words on it. He was the one in command of DDS 11, unfinished or not, and he had to do something. Homblower never accepted defeat, no matter what the odds—but life was simpler in those days; you could improvise a broadside and then storm over the enemy’s gunwales cutlass in hand. The only way to get out of this mess was to be as resourceful as C. S. Forrester’s character, somehow reversing the odds by doing the unexpected. For a moment the image of smoke and fire spraying from the end of thick iron guns soothed Harry and filled him with regret…
Then Lieutenant Harrison Coronet snapped out of his personal fog of defeat, and his mind raced. It was a chance, a thin one, but a chance. He opened the curtain and looked across the large room they worked and slept in. Harry’s eyes strayed to the pouch of explosive bolts still attached to his suit and the cases of similar small explosive charges carefully stacked against one wall. All around the room were sections of the tubing used for the station’s frame, and even some scrap metal in two large bins.
Like Homblower, indeed, tike him for sure.
The men in the environment were surprised to hear his sharp, short laugh. Eyes turned and watched him as the young officer glided into the middle of the cloud of hovering men.
Then he set to work saving the day in the same way as his favorite hero would.
The first thing, Harry realized, was to get Lee on the Deng to cooperate, if unknowingly. Then he had to ask the men. The whole thing was crazy, but even if they failed, it would be glorious.
It only took seconds for the Connie radio operator to summon his captain.
“Captain Lee, this is Lieutenant Coronet. We were in the middle of structural changes when you, um, arrived. If we do not complete the reinforcements, there is a good chance this station will collapse at any time,” Harry explained. Now if they only wanted the station, not just to destroy it…
“You have my permission to complete the reinforcements on the Confederation’s newest station, but any sabotage will be severely punished.” Connie Captain’s tone was harsh. “You have one hour and eight minutes left. Can this be completed in that time?”
“We can try,” the young officer replied, trying to keep the triumph from his voice. “I like to leave things neat,” he finished, offering some explanation as to why they would repair a station about to fall into enemy hands.
“Very well, begin,” Lee conceded, “but I will be watching closely.”
When Harry explained his plan to the men, they were at first filled with skepticism. For what seemed a long time Harry hung in zero gravity in front of them, explaining just how his plan would work. As he went into details, he could see the smile on the chief’s face grow. Then the chief spoke up, pointing out what the alternatives were and agreeing that the crazy scheme might just work. As the young lieutenant began giving them details and assignments as if they had already accepted his idea, enthusiasm grew. At least the morale would be good for the next hour, he reassured himself. Soon the room was busy with men and machines screaming as they rushed to complete their preparations in the hour that remained.
Trying to look useful, the lieutenant moved along their thrown together assembly line. Near the start the chief was welding closed one end of a three-foot length of hollow titanium strut he was being given by the two men who were cutting them. He walked carefully past the men who were wiring the explosive bolts into the bottom of the half-sealed cylinders, giving each a word of gentle encouragement that they probably didn’t need. Still it made him feel, well, officerly. Eventually Harry pitched in, helping the men who were creating round blobs from the scrap in the bins. Zero gravity made that job surprisingly easy. In one comer the sound of the grinder putting an edge on some of the longer pieces of metal was reassuring.
When the first of the outside crew went into vacuum to install the struts, he joined them. It was soon apparent that there wasn’t much he could do there, but this was where things would go wrong, if they did. Listening for Lee’s voice with fearful anticipation, Harry clung to the hull and watched as the men welded and strung wires with frantic urgency. Eventually, he simply floated along with a strut facing the Confederation destroyer. The ship itself had settled into a stationary position less than fifty meters from the larger DDS 11, its hull paralleling the station. That had taken a good piece of flying, Harry realized. It also allowed Lee to watch them closely, but would the Connie understand what he was seeing?
It was a beautiful ship, he had to admit, designed only for use in space. Not streamlined, but elegant with its angular, radar negative hull and bulging missile launcher. That hull was mostly ceramic and plastic like their station’s own living quarters with only a thin lining of the same alloy as in the struts, put there to absorb micro-meteor hits. With every ounce of weight being allocated to fuel or missiles, the men from both sides who ventured into space these days did so protected only by their stealth electronics. He was counting on the Confederation ship staying just where it sat. If it moved even a few meters, their efforts would have been wasted.
“Ten minutes,” the sudden sound of the chiefs voice over the radio almost caused the young officer to lose his grip-
“Have all of the men get into space suits…to prepare for the transfer,” Lieutenant Coronet radioed back.
“An intelligent preparation,” agreed the haughty voice of Captain Lee Bo Tho. He had, as Harry had expected, been monitoring their transmissions. Then, in a less demanding tone, the Confederation officer asked, “Have you finished the repairs?”
Looking toward the men, Harry realized he no longer could see the glare of welding. Everything must be in place.
“It appears so,” he answered in a noncommittal tone while watching the rest of the men under his command, except the chief who remained inside, pouring out of the environment’s main lock. Best they act now, before Lee realized what was in most of the men’s heavily gloved hands. When he gave the command, it felt good.
“Chief, fire!” Lieutenant Harry Coronet of the Alliance Space Navy ordered.
Suddenly the two dozen cylinders attached to the hull were filled with gas and energy as the shaped charges inside them were triggered. With one end open, there was only one place for all this energy and exhaust gas to go, out to where they were pointed and ahead of that gas was pushed the carefully fitted balls and foot-long bolts. In all, they were a fair, if higher technology, version of the cannon, well—more like cannonades, used by Nelson to defeat Napoleon’s navy.
In a matter of seconds the metal balls propelled out of Harry’s cannon slammed into the destroyer’s side. While the curved hull deflected a few off into space, most smashed their way through the ceramic hull and created satisfying, jagged holes all through the engine compartment of the enemy ship. Almost instantly fuel and bits of metal emerged from the meter-wide gaps the “cannonballs” had made.
That did it! Several of the metal balls had broken through into the engine compartment. Sensitive equipment would be smashed. The Deng was crippled. Now they had to complete their attack. Firearms might be too dangerous to use in space, but that didn’t mean they would be attacking unarmed.
From beside his suit, where he had been hiding it along a hull strut, Harry raised his cutlass, a carefully shaped section of straight steel with the tip and one edge ground sharp. Against a space suited, or unsuited man, it would be deadly. Each of the construction crew carried a similar weapon. He wondered if the Connies had anything like them on board their destroyer. He doubted it. If their admirals were as stodgy as his, like him they would have a few pistols they were forbidden to fire. He was going to enjoy this. So Lieutenant Coronet gave the one command he had always wanted to, but never expected, to give.
“Boarders away!”
THE ADMIRAL’S RECKONING by J. Robert King
As he watched his gunboat drift in stately majesty across the dat screen, Admiral Davies had only one thought: I’ve got a bunch of good boys and girls.
Davies snorted. He’d always hated it when a ranking officer called him a boy. Now, at thirty-five, Davies outranked everybody, and he committed the same offense. He shrugged. It was true. With these good girls and boys, he’d won the Vangosian War.
Davies took a long draw from his maduro cigar. Tobacco was outlawed in space, of course, but war heroes were allowed their excesses, especially here in the admirals’ room. The Scotch, too, was an excess—single malt and deep, here eight hundred million miles from any pool of peat. Even the chamber’s artificial gravity was needlessly grave, adding weight to the overstuffed chairs and helping velvet drapes properly pool across mahogany floors. Such luxuries repaid Davies for his sacrifice, and he appreciated the cigar and the Scotch, if not the extra gravity. The last was only a reminder of legs that could no longer stand.
Davies wheeled closer to the wide window. It was in fact a dat screen, pixilated so tightly that its images seemed more real than real. Just now, Saturn dominated the view, its surface draped in bunting of purple and pink. The gas giant reached out icy arms as if to grasp Space Station Roosevelt and the Solar Armada. A thousand ships had gathered to celebrate the annual Saturnine Regatta, and this year’s regatta was special, commemorating the end of a bloody war by reenacting it in bloodless panoply.
Gunboats paraded past the dat screen. Every last blast point had been patched, every fire-blackened crystal replaced. Even the laminar scoring of space dust had been polished away. No longer war craft, the gunboats were now showpieces. They sported ancillary fins and false bridges. Five-man fighters had been refitted to look like thousand-man cruisers. Each crew member represented twenty of his or her fellows. In miniature, they would reenact the glorious victory of the Solar Armada over the Vangosians. It would be a glad regatta…
Especially for Admiral Davies. At last, he would get the recognition he deserved. Though he’d won the Battle of Delgoth and the Vangosian War, only he and his folk knew it. Admiral Belius had taken the credit. Davies had led his squadron on a suicide attack of the enemy base, had destroyed it, had forced an unconditional surrender, and in the bargain had sacrificed the use of his legs. He would have willingly sacrificed his life. No one seemed to care. Belius wore the medals. He hadn’t even flown at Delgoth. He hadn’t fought. His legs worked just fine, though his breathing was a little labored under all those medals—Admiral Belius, the Hero of Delgoth.
That title would not last long once the other admirals saw what happened today. Davies’ boys and girls would make sure the whole fleet knew how the battle had truly gone, and who was the real hero of Delgoth.
“Hello, Davies,” said the old bastard himself, appearing out of the crowd of admirals who filled the room. Belius carried a file folder next to his chest—paperwork was his shield—and he slapped his supposed protege between the shoulder blades. “Damned glorious day, what?” The man was the quintessential old guard admiral—white mustachioed and pompous. His generation and their imperialism had begun the Vangosian War. Davies’ generation—clean-shaven and black-haired—had had to put an end to it. Still, Belius and his cronies took credit for the whole damned thing.
