Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga) (22 page)

“A complicating factor during the final week is that we’ll be one of the most junior warships on the exercise. Senior ships with whom we serve – almost every other warship out there, with the exception of our sister ships of the training squadron – are entitled to give us orders and expect to be obeyed. You’ll have to strike a balance between obeying their orders, and carrying out the training missions assigned to you. Sometimes there’ll be a conflict between them. In such cases, ask me at once how to resolve it. I won’t hold it against you – that’s what I’m here for. I’ll ask you for your proposals, and if necessary provide guidance as to possible alternatives.”

They soon learned he wasn’t joking about the complexities of this final phase of the course. Time and time again they were placed in situations where a strict, by-the-book adherence to safety principles would prevent them completing their assigned mission in the all-too-brief period allocated for it. Sometimes Teacher would authorize them to take longer, in order to operate more safely. At other times he’d allow them to take short-cuts, balancing risk against reward and making a decision on the balance of probabilities.

Steve’s biggest challenge came during the second week, when he found himself acting as Duty Commanding Officer on a mission to make a stealth approach to an ‘enemy battleship’ (represented by a depot ship) defended by a screen of four Sector Fleet destroyers. He was to deploy recon drones to observe it. His initial approach was clean, at minimum power and deploying all active and passive stealth systems, penetrating the screen of defenders. However, just as he was about to turn inward to pass closer to the ‘enemy battleship’, Teacher threw a curve at him.

“Lieutenant Maxwell, your gravitic drive has just failed.” In echo of Teacher’s words, Steve felt the hum of the drive, audible through the fabric of the ship, die away. “Continue with the exercise.”

Steve wracked his brains. Would reaction thrusters deliver enough power to allow him to change course sharply enough to deploy the drones? He ran some rapid calculations through his command console, and shook his head. He needed about ten per cent more power than they could provide. He thought for a moment,
then pressed the intercom toggle switch to broadcast throughout the ship.

“Cutter pilot to the OpCen on the double!
Cutter pilot to the OpCen on the double!”

Teacher frowned, opened his mouth as if to speak,
then visibly restrained himself.
This is going to be interesting,
Steve thought to himself with a grin.
I bet he doesn’t have the faintest idea what I’m going to do. I’m sure he expected me to abandon the exercise and try to extricate myself through the outer screen again.

While Steve waited for the pilot to arrive, he called up a three-dimensional schematic of
Blacksnake
and made calculations about her center of mass and center of gravity. By the time a puffing, panting Petty Officer Second Class came in, he was ready.

“Thanks for getting here so quickly, PO.
Come over here and look at this schematic.” The NCO did so, still panting. Steve put his finger on the ship’s spine, just forward of her missile cell.

“I want you to undock and move your cutter to this position using your gravitic drive – ours isn’t operational right now, so you won’t have interference issues. Extend your undercarriage and set her down as gently as possible, right on this point, facing towards the bow. Once you’re down, lock yourself in place using tractor beams,
then tell me you’re ready via tight-beam – no broadcast transmissions, please. I’m going to use the ship’s reaction thrusters to change her course, but I need a little more power than they can deliver. That’s where you come in. I’ll have you use your drive to help push her around. As soon as we’ve stabilized on our new heading, I’ll call you back in. Got it?”

“Er… I guess so, Sir, but I’ve never heard of anything like this before
. Will the ship’s spine take the pressure I’ll exert on it? And will my tiny gravitic drive make enough of a difference?”

“Your gel-filled tires will absorb any stresses as you land, PO, and your small gravitic drive can’t possibly exert more pressure on the ship’s spine than full-power acceleration or
missile launches. It’ll give us just sufficient additional turning impetus. I’m a qualified pilot and instructor on small craft, so I know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh! I didn’t know that, Sir. In that case, sure, I’ll give it a go. When do you want me to launch?”

“Yesterday!”

The Petty Officer grinned. “I’m on my way, Sir!”

He rushed out, and Steve heard his running footsteps receding down the main passageway as he headed for the docking bay. Behind him, Teacher coughed meaningfully. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Lieutenant Maxwell?”

“Yes, Sir, I am. The cutter’s drive, small though it is, will add just enough power to let us change course in time to deploy the drones and complete this mission.”

There was silence for a moment, then, “Very well, let’s see what happens.”

Events proceeded as Steve had foreseen. The cutter
’s gravitic drive and the ship’s reaction thrusters together provided enough power to add the required vector to the ship’s trajectory. As soon as she’d stabilized on the desired course, Steve called the cutter back to the docking bay. As they passed stealthily within ten thousand kilometers of the ‘enemy battleship’, he used the patrol craft’s passive sensors to build up as complete a picture as possible of their ‘adversary’ while launching three recon drones. They moved away slowly and silently to establish a triangular observation formation around the ‘enemy vessel’.

Steve maintained emissions silence and let the ship’s momentum take them clear of the scene. As the depot ship receded behind them, he turned to Teacher. “Exercise completed, Sir.”

The Lieutenant-Commander looked at him quizzically. “Lieutenant, this is my third time as Teacher on the Crusher, and I’ve read the reports of many of those who came before me. I thought nothing on the course would surprise me, but you certainly did today! I anticipated you’d abandon the exercise and extricate your ship as best you could. That’s what almost every other candidate has done during previous Crushers. Frankly, it’s what we expect of them. What made you think of using a cutter as a makeshift tug?”

“It’s as I told the pilot, Sir. I’m a
qualified small craft pilot and instructor. It seemed logical to use the cutter’s small gravitic drive to augment the ship’s thrusters. It might not have worked on a bigger ship with a much greater mass, but a patrol craft’s small enough to make it practicable.”

“Well, that’s
certainly an original solution, but if this were a real mission, what would happen to your cutter and its pilot if the enemy detected your approach? You’d probably have to abandon him in order to evade incoming missiles. He certainly couldn’t remain attached to your hull during high-stress maneuvers.”

“That’s right, Sir. In a true combat situation, this would be very risky. On the other hand, we’re paid to take risks. If we
avoid it, we’d never accomplish anything. I respectfully submit that if this is a critical mission, as the exercise instructions stated, then that justifies the additional risk involved.”

Another candidate spoke up. “It seems awfully cold-blooded to speak of condemning your cutter pilot to death or capture in order to make your escape like that. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t be feeling very happy about it.”

Steve frowned. “I wouldn’t be ecstatic about it, either, if I were him; but that sort of thing goes with the territory. We’re all volunteers. We know military service involves danger. Our training reinforces that. If we suddenly decide we aren’t willing to face that when the proverbial brown substance hits the rotary air impeller, we’re basically admitting that we’ve lied to ourselves and the Fleet all along. That’s why cowardice in the face of the enemy is a court-martial offense.”

Teacher frowned. “You’re asking your cutter pilot to accept a more severe risk in order to lessen the danger
you’re
facing,” he pointed out.

“No, Sir, with respect, I’m not. I’m
asking him – well, in fact, I’m ordering him – to accept a severe risk in order to allow the ship to accomplish a critical mission.”

The Lieutenant-Commander looked at him for a long moment. “It’s a fine distinction, but I daresay you have a point; and you’re right – this
was
designated as a critical mission in the exercise instructions.” He looked around at all the candidates. “This highlights the importance of personal leadership. Your crew won’t willingly risk their lives or give of their best for a martinet who uses his rank to push them around. It’s only if they have faith in you as an individual, faith that you won’t waste their lives or ask them to do something you wouldn’t do yourself or that isn’t absolutely necessary, that they’ll put all they’ve got into such missions.” The candidates nodded soberly.

“There’s another aspect to this,” he continued. “
Your orders will very seldom tell you how to do something. They’ll usually tell you what to do, but leave you to figure out the ‘how’ for yourself. If you succeed, you’ll have a certain leeway in justifying your actions; if you fail, not so much – but whether you succeed or fail, you
will
have to justify to your superiors any damage or casualties incurred. Were they essential to the mission? Could they have been avoided or minimized? Remember, that’s all on your shoulders as Commanding Officer. At the dawn of the Space Age a politician named Harry Truman coined the phrase, ‘If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen’. As CO you’re
always
in the kitchen, whether you like it or not. The heat goes with the job. You’re responsible for the consequences of every order you issue.”

At the end of the
second week of exercises the four patrol craft returned to the training ship for a twenty-four hour rest period, allowing the candidates and crews to shower, wash their laundry, and catch up on some sleep before the final, hectic round of battle exercises. Two more students had been removed from the course, so the divisions were again reshuffled into three with four candidates, and one with five. Steve was pleased to once again have Fran Grunion in his division.

A message
from Abha was waiting for him. It was too soon for her to have replied to his proposal – indeed, she’d probably only just received it – but she sent news that made him very happy. Brooks had arranged to release her a week ahead of the rest of the instructor unit, as a gift to both of them. She asked him to meet her at the Elevator Terminus planetside, a week after the Crusher finished. She added mischievously that she’d be arriving in civilian clothing, so that she could kiss him as soon as she saw him without breaking regulations concerning behavior in uniform. Grinning with pleasure at the thought, he made a note of the date and time.

The final week of exercises was brutally tough. Everyone lost sleep and had to rely on stim-tabs as the patrol craft raced to and fro, setting up and maintaining screening formations for the convoys they escorted from the planet to a point on the system boundary, then back to the planet again. Threats from marauding destroyers of the Sector Fleet had to be met by interposing themselves between the ‘intruders’ and the convoy, complete with setting up electronic warfare decoy programs and launching computer-generated ‘missile strikes’. The larger warships’ much denser missile barrages theoretically ‘killed’ patrol craft on several occasions, swamping their defenses
. They simply didn’t have enough missiles and laser cannon to intercept all of the simulated ‘incoming fire’. Some of it was bound to get through, and did.

Nevertheless, they did the best they could, and sometimes their best was very good indeed. On two occasions individual patrol craft succeeded in sneaking up on a Sector Fleet destroyer and ‘knocking it out’ with a simulated ripple-fired barrage of missiles from very close range, before the larger ship’s defenses had
sufficient time to react. The indignant victims complained to the exercise umpires, but in each case the latter made their rulings with aloof impartiality. As punishment for their defeat, both destroyers had to suffer the indignity of spending twelve hours in the convoy, imitating defenseless merchant freighters, before they were permitted to rejoin the exercise. This drew down upon their heads a gleeful barrage of taunts from the merchant ships’ crews – all naturally broadcast at full power on every exercise frequency.

Fran Grunion was Duty Commanding Officer on the last afternoon of the exercise. To add to her responsibilities, she was acting as Senior Officer of a convoy escort of four patrol craft
, as had each of the candidates that week in turn. Steve was manning the Weapons console, with the remaining candidates at the other stations. They watched the Plot as the action moved away from their position, culminating in a launch about a hundred million kilometers away of multiple actual missiles by two destroyers at a target. The Plot Officer switched the display to max range, and they observed with interest as the spray of dots representing the missiles’ gravitic drives spread out, then converged on the target.

Steve’s eyes narrowed as the missiles reached the target, detonating about ten thousand kilometers from it. Their bomb-pumped laser warheads each sent a cone-shaped pattern of thirty laser beams at it, spread to cover the length of a destroyer at that range. He snapped, “Weapons to Command. Ma’am, forty missiles
were launched, but only thirty-nine have detonated. The fortieth has moved past the target and is heading this way. It – no, now the drive’s shut down, and its exercise tracking transponder too. It’s on a ballistic trajectory, heading in our direction.”