The Legacy of Earth (Mandate Book 2) (7 page)

Space combat maneuvering had so few hours logged that no tactics had been developed yet. The fighter complement of four would be expanded in the future as well. The Lexington could handle a dozen fighters, but methodologies had not been developed. The aviation deck crew could only handle four birds, anyway. They would have to log hours and develop processes before they could handle any more. Until then, the squadron had to share—no pilot names were etched.

Captain Long was concerned primarily with ship systems and efficiency—getting birds and troopers safely to their mission hardpoints and back out again. He was not concerned with managing them directly. A space cruiser was nothing like a carrier, he kept reminding himself, but the new procedures weren’t proven yet.

The brass had to start somewhere, so they merged existing procedures for tactical subs and carriers and revised from there. The Lexington was a multirole cruiser-class warship with a small fighter wing, but she was more like a tactical sub with divers and mini-submersibles. Airlock procedures were
very
similar to those on a sub. When she surfaced, so to speak, carrier procedures took over.

The admiralty knew that aircraft alone could not protect a carrier, but space was a new frontier. Back on Earth, there were mines, stealth subs, and missile cruisers that could take out a carrier in ways that aircraft could not prevent. But, what kind of armaments would freighters have out here? The Lexington operated without escort—just her armaments and contingent of fighters. The captain was expected to improvise the strategic situation when necessary.

“We’re going to need escorts out here. We’re too big of a target. Too sluggish to respond to a mid-sized threat, and our fighters are short-range.”

“Sooner or later, it’ll happen,” Plaas said. “Tip of the sword, cap’n!”

The helmsman nodded to Cmdr. Plaas, who then turned to the captain, “Course plotted and laid in, sir.”

“Range and time?” Long asked.

“Distance to target, one hundred eighteen thousand six hundred klicks,” the navigation officer said.

“American crew, Williamson. We are more efficient with miles, more often than not,” the captain said.

“Uh, y—yes sir. About . . . seventy-three thousand miles, sir,” the navigator said. “Nine hours at present speed, sir.”

“Really? That’s a damned wide orbit,” Plaas observed. “The term we need to be using, Williamson, is
vicinity
, not
orbit
.”

“Aye, sir,” Williamson said.

“Very well,” the captain said. “Take us in, full thrust. We’ll use the upcoming shift to drill. You have the honors, commander.”

“Yes, sir!” the XO replied. He punched a button on his desk screen and said, “General quarters!” A subdued alert began to repeat, beginning with a very slow vibration that hummed through every deck, rising slowly in pitch.

An automated voice said, “Alert. General quarters. All crew to their assigned battle stations.”

After thirty seconds, the alert claxon dropped to a loud whisper while the upper wall panels continued to pulse bright red as a not-so-subtle reminder.

Marjorie stepped through the door onto the bridge. “Captain, I haven’t certified the new fighter craft for combat.”

“Oh, sir, I have a situation here!” said one of the four junior bridge officers.

Cmdr. Plaas stepped off his chair and walked to the left rear station configured as an engineering console. The forty-inch screen showed a diagram of the four fusion reactors and four engines and all of the associated systems. “What is it, Owen?”

Senior Petty Officer Owen pointed to one of the four large reactors highlighted in red. When she touched it, the problem system filled the screen to show the status of its subsystems. “Reactor four had a sudden loss of efficiency, sir,” the junior officer said.

“How much?”

Owen tapped a readout and reviewed the data. “Loss of about thirty percent, sir. That would be a first-stage automated cooldown of power output.”

The captain appeared next to Plaas, who glanced at him and gave a curt nod. “Status?”

“Reactor four, stage one automated reduction,” the XO said.

“Probable cause?” the captain asked.

“Sir,” Owen said after zooming the screen back out to the higher-level engineering display, “engineering is responding to the incident and will report as soon as they’ve got something.”

“Very well, carry on,” the captain said, then returned to stand near the helmsman. “Rox, you’re with me.”

Marjorie nodded and joined the captain near the helm station.

After the captain stepped away, the XO said, “Owen, this is bad timing. Will it affect engine performance?”

“Uh, let me check, sir,” Owen said, quickly going through sub-screens of data, which took a long minute. “Sir, this shouldn’t affect the engines even at full thrust. If necessary, we can siphon power from non-critical systems.”

“Non-tactical systems, you mean?”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I meant,” Owen said.

“Very well. Notify me as soon as the chief reports,” Plaas said.

“Yes, sir.”

Long frowned at his wing commander, though not due to lack of respect. “Commander, we have a situation.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Frankly, none of the ship’s systems are combat ready after that damned orbital crew greased her up!”

Marjorie caught her tongue and stood at attention. “I understand, sir.”

The captain leaned closer to hear and said, “Very likely the freighter will be either an empty hulk or orbital debris by the time we get there. You’ll launch your birds anyway and we’ll see what we can see. Log some hours, run multiple sorties, get every one of your pilots some flight time.”

This brightened her mood and her eyes but she remained at attention. “Thank you, sir.”

“Back to it then, commander,” Captain Long said. “And, be reminded—brass door, third shift.”

She snapped a salute and left the bridge. It was a very short walk to the space wing tactical office a few paces down the hall. Her pilots were filing into the room from the aft hallway. She followed them through the door. As she took the front, the space wing of eighteen men and six women stood at salute attention. She returned the honor and said, “At ease. We’ll be logging some combat hours today, ladies and gents.”

Chapter 6
Silent Hunter

The senior crew crowded
around the conference table for the brass door meeting, so-named because enlisted were rarely invited to a meeting with the executive officers of the ship. Senior chiefs and master chiefs of each department stood at attention along the wall around half of the table, while the captain stood at the head. They all stood at attention.

“At ease,” Captain Long said.

The group lowered their hands and leaned against the wall while their department heads leaned back in their chairs.

“I’ve been calling these meetings for two years, and I think they’re productive. Some of you served with me on the George Washington, and you’re here today for a reason: you were damned fine seamen and I expect you’ll be damned fine spacers—though I’ll admit, I’m not fond of the new term.”

“Hear, hear!”

The XO cleared his throat and the room went silent.

The captain resumed. “For the past nine months, we’ve spent more time in drydock than out here on patrol. Every system change requires new procedures. We need to be combat ready. We can’t blame new systems for failure. We have to be aware of limitations and work around them.”

“Let’s start with engineering,” Plaas said.

Each officer around the table declared the successes and failures of the department during the prior week, with the captain and XO hearing input from the two senior crew members of each department. This gave the non-commissioned crew members a voice, which improved morale. That was Captain Long’s belief, at any rate. Propulsion, Navigation, Intelligence, Ship Operations, Combat Systems, Spacecraft Maintenance, Space Wing Operations, Trooper Operations, Supply, Safety, Training, Religious Ministries, and Medical.

After the final report was made, the XO said, “Dismissed.”

The captain stood and the officers and crew shuffled out of the room. Marjorie remained seated while nodding to her two subordinates to leave. She stood.

“Commander?” the captain said.

“Yes, sir,” she said, not making eye contact, leaning her palms on the back of the chair.

“Well, come on, what’s eating you?”

She stood straight up. “Sir, the birds aren’t ready for combat. This is
not
the US Navy. I’m sick of the goddamn UN protocols and their shit for standards!”

“By all means, commander, do tell me how you really feel about it!”

Marjorie averted his gaze, fearing that she had angered the captain. Did he really feel so much pride for this UN ship, untested in combat? “I’m sorry, sir.”

“The hell you are! She might not be the G-W, but she’s a new class in a new environment, and
we
are expected to develop combat methodologies out here!” He walked to the large square window which offered a view of the ship’s stern. There was no engine glow, she noted.

“I miss the wake as she cuts through the sea. From the bridge, I could tell you how many knots we were doing just by the cut of the bow or the trailing churn. Here,” he said, pointing at one of the reactors blocking his view of the stern, “I can’t even tell if we’re moving, let alone which direction. It’s all one hundred percent instrumentation in the dark. That’s why Plaas is my XO.”

He turned to face her. “She’s more of a submarine than a carrier or cruiser.”

Marjorie stood beside him to look out the window. She could see the telltale signs of the carbon grid embedded in the window, which was not glass nor acrylic plastic. She struck the window with her fist, putting strength behind the blow, which hurt. “Look at that, sir. Didn’t even rebound, like four-inch thick acrylic. That’s just a window, and it’s not even made of glass. Do you know what’s going on in that reactor out there?”

“No idea, but I didn’t understand nuclear fission on the G-W, either. Doesn’t matter. She’s full of high-tech equipment and low-tech humans. This is an experiment. To see if we are ready, if we can handle being out here.”

Marjorie stomped a foot on the deck plate. “At least there’s gravity.”

“Another piece of tech I can’t begin to fathom!” the captain said jovially. “You’ll do your best, commander. Failure of the spacecraft under your command is a problem for maintenance, not for my wing commander. Do this by the book. Don’t take it personally, and don’t let failure affect your will to command. And, by all means, whip those birds into shape!”

She looked into his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“Eight hours to target, captain. Get to it.”

Captain Long splashed water on his face and patted it with a soft white towel. It had been a quick nap, no more than a half hour. The refresher in his cabin was fully equipped with toilet and shower—a mirror of the XO’s cabin, the only two so equipped on the ship.

He stared into the mirror and frowned at his wrinkled face.
Too white
, he said to himself,
need to get some ultraviolet
. He rubbed the stubble on his chin, thought to ignore it, then reluctantly got out his kit.
Who knows how long the next shift will last with that freighter coming up
.

He shaved quickly. Doing it without a nick had become an art form over the years. He knew his face—the lines, the angles, the trouble spots. Then he pulled off shorts and t-shirt and stepped under the hot spray for three minutes. Five minutes later, he exited his cabin.

A spacer stopped mid-jog to snap a salute. The captain returned the salute absently and the man continued on his way, bucket and mop in his hands. One lesson of command he had learned on the G-W was, while on duty, speak to the crew only when giving orders. No small talk, no chatting them up, no shooting the breeze. That just made seamen—
spacers—
squirm, afraid of saying the wrong thing to an officer.

These were just boys, some of them, eighteen, nineteen, snatched from their mothers into the Navy. Many of them had no life skills yet. Those who grew up hardest had an easier time on ship, but those who were pampered—well, their parents had not done them any favors. One grew up fast in the Navy, but it could be brutal to the soft. An aircraft carrier—
no, space cruiser
, he reminded himself again—was a floating city of steel that did not care about human feelings. You either got tough or washed out.

Fortunately, there were no newbies on the Lexington. The bottom rung was occupied by second-year spacers. Easy detail to forget.

Spacer. Face it, I’m never going to get used to that damned word
, Long said to himself.

The stairs to the deck above—the
bridge
deck—were at the end of the hall.

The XO had a much longer hike from his cabin to the bridge, being located amidships. Officer quarters were distributed into four sections around the ship to avoid catastrophic loss of command from a single event, but the captain’s quarters were just beneath the bridge. While junior officers had a tiny cabin, the enlisted crew slept in triple bunks along several halls. Each pilot was a senior officer with a cabin, while troopers had their own hall of bunks near the troop commander’s cabin.

The captain was comfortable with the familiar layout of the ship, but he thought it was inefficient to follow the old sea vessel designs internally. On a spacecraft,
space
was meaningless.
Mass
is what counts.

Long emerged onto the strap-shaped “handle” hall connecting the bridge to the upper spine hall. It was still divided into decks with hatches every fifty feet but it was the closest thing they had to a long stretch of open space this far from a flattop. Since the hatches were flush with the floor and ceiling, they could be opened all at once for an eighth-mile run, and used for the weekly 5k and sprint races.

Good for morale.

Long made his way around the curved hall to the bridge. Two troopers stationed at the door nodded and saluted smartly.

“Benson, Marks, good morning, gentlemen,” the captain said, returning their salute as he walked past. He made an exception to the small talk rule with bridge crew and guards.

“Captain on the bridge!”

“As you were,” he said. Despite hearing it several times per day, he did not tire of the tradition. It was important, not for his ego but for discipline, to remind officers who they reported to and where both the captain and XO were throughout the day. He often didn’t see his XO since they usually took alternating shifts. During any interdiction, they would both be on the bridge. Like today.

Having just left an hour ago, the captain skipped his usual ritual and said, “What’s the status?”

Plaas pointed to the center screen. “Captain, we’re an hour from the ship’s last known position. Nothing on RADAR.”

“Debris?” Long suggested.

“Negative, and neither ship is coming up. We
did
ping a freighter, half hour ago, but her situation was normal, heading toward Luna City without incident.”

“Gone over the horizon?” Long asked.

“That would be my best guess as well,” Plaas said.

“Call Luna City.”

“Devlin, hail the colony,” Plaas ordered.

“Hailing, sir,” Senior Petty Officer Anton Devlin said. “
Lunar colony, this is the UNS Lexington. Come in, please
.”

A half minute later, he said, “I have them, sir.”

“On speaker,” the captain said.

Devlin nodded.

“This is Captain Long of the UNS Lexington.”

“Hello . . .
captain
. What can I do for you?” an older male voice said, full of sarcasm.

“You can start by giving me your name, sir,” Captain Long snapped.

“Uh, sure, sure. You can call me
Bob
. So, like I said, what can I do for you?”

The captain and XO exchanged a frown from across the bridge while every other bridge officer tensed.

“Very well,
Bob
. We’re responding to a distress call from a freighter, the. . . .”

“Redondo,” the XO whispered.

“. . .
Redondo
,” Long finished. “Surely Luna City picked up the distress call as well?”

“Can’t say as we did, cap’n,” Bob said. “Possible she was on the other side?”

“You have comm satellites in orbit,
Bob
,” the captain said, trying to cut the sarcasm from his voice, “equipped with RADAR.”

“Oh, we
do
?”

The XO laughed. “Sorry, captain, but—”

Long gestured to his comm officer with a swiping thumb at his neck.

Jones said, “Speaker off.”

“What the
hell
is going on down there?” Long said, his tone furious.

“It’s not military, captain. We have no jurisdiction, and Luna City knows it.”

“Oh, sure they do,” Long said, “until they
need
the military to step in and save their asses. I don’t buy it.”

“Devlin?”

“Speaker?” Devlin asked.

“No, son, not yet. Listen, I want you to hack into their system and pull the comm and RADAR data for the past nine hours. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely, sir. That will take . . . just a minute. . . .”

“In the meantime,” Long said, “bring
Bob
back online.”

“. . . what the military wants with us here, but like I said, we—”

“Luna City, are you claiming to have no record of the Redondo on your sensors, and no comm traffic from a certain Captain . . . Merrick Lucas?”

“Look,” Bob said, his voice thick with condescension, “there has been no
Redondo
in or out of port today. Last I seen her was about . . . six months ago. Can’t help you, captain.”

Jones shut off the audio and said, “He’s
lying
, sir.”

Plaas swiftly walked to the comm station, “Are you
sure
, Devlin?”

“Absolutely, sir. Right here in their comm log
and
RADAR log.”

“Speaker,” the captain ordered.

“Luna City has terminated the connection,” Jones said. “Network also severed!”

“Battle stations,” the captain ordered.

The alert claxon sounded and cycled. “Alert. General quarters. All crew to their assigned battle stations. This is
not
a drill.”

“Get Rox and Buck up here on the double,” Long ordered.

The XO nodded to Jones, who hit the intra-ship button, then Plaas said, “Commander Baldwin-Garner, Commander Pierce, report to the bridge.”

“Reporting,” Marjorie said from the left rear door.

To his credit, Pierce came jogging through the door ten seconds later, despite coming from the troop barracks. “Pierce here.”

Long waved them over to the right front screen in front of the XO’s station. “Something is going on at Luna City,” Long said. “We’re going to investigate. I want fighters prepped and troops ready to hit the dirt, just in case.”