Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel (10 page)

“No he won’t.” Wolfe steps over the fallen crewman, puts his hands on the other’s shoulders. “You’re not going to say anything—are you, Rogers?”

Dazed, Rogers shakes his head.

“There, you see. The dumb shit is learning already.” Wolfe goes back to his bunk, throws himself into it.

“Hey, Wolfe,” says the big engineer. “You forgot this.”

“Huh?”

The other throws something small and glittery at him. Wolfe snatches it out of the air. It is his stylus. He starts to scowl in annoyance, lets it become a grin instead. “Yeah,” he says. He drops the pen onto a shelf next to his bunk.

Meanwhile, the engineer, Erlich, is leaning over Wolfe’s victim “Hey, Rogers you all right?”

The youngster is still too dazed to be coherent. He groans.

The man watches him for a moment, becoming more and more concerned. He kneels by the other. “Come on, can you get up? You can’t stay here.”

In reply, Rogers starts coughing. He is bleeding profusely from his nose. Erlich exchanges a glance with the other crewmen “Hey, Mackie, give me a hand—let’s take him down to sick bay.”

“Sick bay! Are you crazy?” cries Wolfe, sitting up. “You can’t do that!”

“Shut up, Wolfe! Haven’t you done enough?”

“Just take him to his bunk—he’ll be all right.”

“You hope!” says Erlich. “And what if he isn’t—what’re you going to say then? What’re you going to say to the doc when he asks how Rogers got creamed?”

“Nothing—and he won’t ask. He’s on our side.”

“Shit if he is,” Wolfe snaps.

The others ignore him. Erlich starts maneuvering Rogers to his feet. “Attaboy, champ. Just hang onto me now. Mackie, get his other arm.” Struggling awkwardly in the cramped bunkroom, the two men heft the bleeding Rogers between them. “Come on. Mackie—”

“Yeah, yeah—the kid’s not gonna die.” To Rogers: “Pick up your feet, dummy. You’re not completely helpless.”

“Lay off him.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They move down the narrow corridor toward the sick bay, leaving a white-faced Wolfe staring after them. The other men in the bunkroom turn back to their own business, pointedly ignoring him.

Holding the still-dazed Rogers between them, Erlich and Mackie continue forward. They pause once to let another crewman—Jonesy—pass them. He has to turn sideways to do so. As he comes abreast of Rogers, he says, “Jeez!” What happened to him?”

“He ran into a bulkhead,” answers Mackie.

“He must have had help.”

“He had a running head start.”

“
Suure
, he did. . . .”

“Move on, will you,” Erlich growls.

Jonesy shrugs and disappears down the corridor.

They move on. “Well, now it’s going to be all over the ship. Jonesy couldn’t keep his mouth shut if he was hoarding diamonds in it.”

“It’s not going to be much of a secret anyway,” Erlich snorts. “If Wolfe doesn’t start talking about it,
this
idiot will.” He indicates Rogers.

“Yeah, well—one look at his face and it won’t be hard to tell. Wait till Korie finds out—”

“I can’t wait,” says the other. “Here’s the sick bay.”

Even Murphy’s Law doesn’t work all the time.

—SOLOMON SHORT

At precisely six hundred hours, First Officer Jonathan Korie steps into the engine room. “Mr. Leen?” His voice is firm, crisp.

“Sir!” Chief Leen snaps to attention. “The engine room is ready for inspection and drill.”

Korie nods slowly, glances around the room with an almost forced casualness. At every monitor console, two men stand at ready attention; their uniforms are shining clean. Above, wearing bright-colored protective suits, the “monkey crew” hangs ready in the nets with an easy grace. Korie looks at Leen. “See, I told you they’d be ready.”

Leen’s mouth tightens, but he says only, “Yes, sir.”

Abruptly, Korie’s manner changes; his casualness is replaced by a brisk military air—his stance, his attitude, the set of his jaw, all become more direct, more business-like. “All right, let’s get on with it.” He steps over to one of the consoles and taps its technician aside. “I’ll monitor from here. I have three men on the auxiliary control deck. They’ll set up each problem there and feed it to your boards. As far as you’re concerned, these are actual battle alerts.”

“Yes, sir.” Leen continues to stand at stiff attention. His whole rigid attitude says, “You bastard, I’ll show you,” which is exactly what the first officer wants to see.

Korie kicks at a pedal beneath the console; behind him a seat unfolds from the floor and he drops into it easily. From his position here at the corner, he can see almost two-thirds of the engine room crew.

He turns his attention to the board in front of him, clears it of its routine monitorings. Leen stands by stiffly. If his crew has been properly trained, they will show it in the drill; if not, that too will be evident. In either case, he can do nothing but watch. From this point on, it is out of his hands.

Korie taps the intercom. “Bridge? Are you ready?”

From the auxiliary control deck—the acting bridge—comes the reply, “Yes, sir.”

“All right. Let’s go with Problem One.”

A klaxon sounds throughout the engine room—the sound of alarm. “Battle stations. All hands, battle stations.” It is an unnecessary command, the engine room crew is already waiting. The lights on Korie’s console snap to green as each station reports.

“Evasive maneuvers,” notes the communicator. “Switch to autocontrol. Thirty seconds, pattern Twelve Alpha; thirty seconds, pattern Six Lambda; thirty seconds, pattern None Theta.”

Panel lights flick to yellow, back to green again, as each station surrenders to computer control of its function. If this were an actual battle alert, the speed and direction of the traveling
warp would now start varying at a rate of anywhere from one to fifty times per second. The patterns are random and preset.

The response of the crew is quick, but Korie’s expression remains fixed. The real drill has not yet begun. The screen in front of him begins tracing a complex three-dimensional pattern, the supposed zigzag course of their warp through the stress field. It is only a simulation; all but the auxiliary monitors in the engine room have been disconnected from the ship’s control system; the battle situations flashing on the screens exist only in the mind of the main computer. In the engine room, there is no way to tell the difference between this simulation and an actual battle.

“Prepare to collapse warp for missile firing,” comes the order. “Neutralize the secondaries.”

Next to Korie, a technician repeats the order; other men echo it.

“Remove the interlocks. Stand by to neutralize.”

“Standing by.”

“Come to new heading,” orders the pseudobridge. “Eighty-three mark fourteen.”

“New heading. Eighty-three mark fourteen.” Quickly, it is punched into the controls. The great spherical framework of the generator mounting begins to move, rotating slowly into a new orientation; the ship is changing its heading within the warp.

On the screen, the warp is still zigzagging through the stress field. The ship’s new orientation in space will not be apparent until the warp is collapsed. In actual battle, a ship in warp is practically untouchable; a warp is so ultramaneuverable that it is difficult to predict where the enemy will be when the missiles are fired, let alone where he will be when the missiles
arrive. The missiles are equipped with warp fields of their own—short-lived units whose main purpose is to home in on an enemy ship and disrupt his warp by overlapping their own warps onto his. If the missile is on target, the enemy’s stasis-field generators will be overloaded; both the warp and the ship within it will be destroyed. Instantly.

But in order to launch its missiles, a ship must drop out of warp. The missile must be jettisoned, activated, and into its own warp a safe distance away before the firing ship can climb back into the comparative safety of stressed space. For those few minutes, while it is firing the missile, it is vulnerable—hence, the compulsion to spend as few moments as possible in the unwarped state.

In battle, the warp’s maneuvers are controlled automatically by the ship’s computer; it is faster and more random than any human being could be. When the ship drops out of warp to fire its missiles, its motion is determined by its previously established inherent velocity. The ship’s heading will be the same as its direction was within the warp—but that direction is always variable. A ship’s velocity is meaningless within warp and can be redirected at will. The orientation of the warp generators remains the same; functioning like a gyroscopic flywheel, the generators remain stable and the ship “rotates” around them.

The direction of the
Burlingame
’s inherent velocity, therefore, is easily controlled by slipping into warp, changing the direction of the ship, then dropping out of warp again. The direction of the warp and the direction of the inherent velocity are independent of each other—in effect, the ship is bodily lifted out of the stress field and reinserted in a different direction, with no loss of kinetic energy. All that has changed is the direction of the vector.

A typical battle maneuver consists of several minutes and hours of complex evasive patterns of the warp in the stress field, interrupted by a sudden unwarping—with the ship bouncing off in a totally unexpected directions and at sublight speed—followed by the almost immediate launching of its missiles and the reestablishment of its warp. More evasive maneuvers follow that.

Such is the nature of the drill that Korie has set up as Problem One. Later, more complex maneuvers will be run, including false starts, false stops, feints, and decoys.

“Still standing by to neutralize secondaries,” reminds a technician.

“Hold your horses,” says the bridge. “Stand by to neutralize evasion patterns and cancel.”

“Standing by.”

“Cancel.”

“Canceled.”

“Neutralize secondaries.”

“Neutralizing now.”

“Cycle set at one-eighty. Begin phasing.”

“Cycle set. Beginning.”

“Inject compensators.”

“Injecting.”

“Cycling—five, four, three—”

“Injection achieved—”

“Cycle complete. Secondaries neutralized. Stationary warp.”

“Unwarp.”

“Right—”

Panel lights flash; on the monitors, the computer has simulated an unwarp. Almost immediately—

“Jettison missiles. Prepare to warp.”

“Standing by.” The engine room is not concerned with the firing of the missiles, but this is still the most important part of the drill. Korie wants to see how long it will take them to clear their boards, set up a new heading, and climb back into warp.

Orders crackle over the intercom.

“Inherent velocity vector, eighty-three mark fourteen.”

“Confirming, eighty-three mark fourteen.”

“Warp control, polarity of secondaries, thirteen degrees—thirteen degrees—thirteen degrees.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. Thirteen degrees—thirteen degrees—thirteen degrees.”

“Confirming; thirteen degrees—thirteen degrees—thirteen degrees.”

“Missiles activated. Stand by.”

“Standing.”

“Initial warp factor, 135.”

“Initial warp factor, 135.”

“Prepare for resumption of evasive maneuvers after warp.”

“Evasive maneuvers. Right.”

“Power inputs matching?”

“Matching—”

“Compensators set?”

“Setting them now.”

“Power inputs matched. Completed and confirmed.”

“Compensators set. Completed and confirmed.”

“Double-check that please.”

“Will do.”

“Frequency modules, one, three, and five on phrase reflex one three.”

“Got it. Angle of adjustment?”

“None.”

“None?”

“Right.”

“Lock in evasive maneuvers. Patterns Seven Gamma, Eight Gamma, Nine Delta; fifty seconds each.”

“Locking in; Seven Gamma, Eight Gamma, Nine Delta; fifty seconds each; to take effect three full seconds after stabilization of warp.”

“Can you cut it finer than that?”

“I’d rather not.”

“All right.”

“Missiles warped and away!”

“Go, baby, go!”

“Hey, man, it’s only a drill—”

“Shut up, you idiot!”

“Prepare to warp.”

“Prepared.”

“All lights green.”

“Go!”

“Go!”

“Go!”

“Going!”

“We have warp!”

“Interlocks in?”

“Interlocks in! Cycles released.”

“Evasive maneuvers resumed.”

“Confirming.”

“Right.”

“All clear on C deck.”

“Report status of missiles please.”

“They’re tracking—”

“Us or them?”

“Them, I hope.”

A voice from the bridge; “Status of missiles—we
missed
.”

“Aw, shit—”

Leen looks at Korie. “You couldn’t even give them that much, could you?”

Korie is sitting before his console with his hands in his lap and a bemused expression on his face. He looks up at Leen. “Actually,” he says, “the program was
written so they would have a fair chance at it.” He takes a breath, loudly, not quite a sight; then taps the intercom button on his console. “Bridge, this is Korie. How much were they off?”

The answer is laconic: “Forty-three per cent off optimum.”

Again Korie looks at Leen. “You see? That’s why they missed. The way I wrote it, you have to get it down to 15 per cent or better to make the kill.”

“You think of everything, don’t you?”

“That’s my job.” Korie straightens in his seat and clears his board. “All right, let’s try it again. Bridge, set up Problem Two. Auxiliary engine control, did you have any trouble keeping up with us on the compensators?”

MEMO

FROM: Base Admiral Farrel

TO:
      
Vice Admiral Harshlie

Joe,

Just as we figured, the enemy has opened up a third front in the GY sector. I don’t have to tell you the bind this puts us in. We can meet the challenge, but it’s going to be tough.

I want to move as many ships into that area as possible. We can pull some of them from GX and GV, but I don’t want to leave those areas underdefended.