“Outstanding, Mr. Bartoli.”
The doctor could see from the tactical display that the icon for the Krag ship was now almost on top of the little green x.
“Maneuvering,” Max said in a quiet voice, obviously reining in his excitement. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,
sir.
” LeBlanc sounded eager.
“Then . . . fifth maneuver . . .
execute.
”
Pitch and Yaw steered the ship through a “flapjack,” the maneuver which rapidly flipped the ship bow for stern after which Drives decisively shoved his main sublight controller all the way forward. In just under five seconds the Destroyer had gone from coasting with her bow pointed in the direction of travel to thrusting at emergency power against its forward velocity with her bow pointed at the enemy Cruiser. While the sublight drive would not stop the ship any time soon, thrusting against the direction of travel would increase greatly, and unexpectedly from the Krag point of view, the closure rate between the two ships.
The doctor could see that the Krag ship was now almost right on top of the little green x on the tactical display. “Weapons,” Max called out, “abbreviated firing procedure. Make weapons in tubes one and two ready for firing in all respects and open missile doors. Set both warheads for maximum yield and program guidance for custom attack pattern zero one. Set launch tubes for minimum speed.”
With the efficiency that Max had already come to expect from him, Levy at Weapons had anticipated this development and had his hands resting near the appropriate controls. Now, as he acknowledged the order, they flew into action. It took only a few seconds for the appropriate lights to change from blue to green and for Levy to look closely at the two relevant optical feeds. “Missiles in tubes one and two ready for firing in all respects. Doors for tubes one and two are open and visually verified to be free of obstructions. Warheads set for yield of one-five-zero kilo tango. Custom attack pattern zero one loaded and selected. Launch tube acceleration at lowest setting.”
“Very well.”
“Lowest setting? I thought that missiles needed to travel as fast as possible to get through the enemy point defense systems.” The doctor sounded genuinely concerned. “That was the point of bolting the missiles onto the cutter when we destroyed the Krag Battlecruiser a few weeks ago.”
“Relax, doctor. Today, we’re firing Talons. The missiles we fired at the Battlecruiser were Ravens. Ravens have a much bigger warhead but are a lot less nimble and with a less effective countermeasures suite. The Talons are sly and fast. They’ll get through.”
“But why not use the high speed, anyway? I remember more than one occasion on which you told me that faster is better in these cases.”
“It usually is, but at this range, faster is
not
better. As close as the Krag ship is to us, if we launched at 61% of the speed of light, the missiles would be past the Krag ship before their targeting systems could lock on.” During this discussion, Max’s eyes had never left the tactical display. “And, now doctor, speaking of firing . . . .” He watched the display carefully. Just as the Cruiser was superimposed precisely on the green “x,” “Tubes one and two . . . fire.”
The ship shuddered as it spat the two missiles out of the launch tubes, applying just enough acceleration to eject the weapons. Their drive systems kicked in immediately and steered them on oblique trajectories away from the straight line between the two ships so they could strike the Cruiser from its belly and its flanks where it was more vulnerable. As soon as the missiles cleared the tubes, Max spoke, “Maneuvering, sixth maneuver,
execute.
”
Under Chief LeBlanc’s direction, the ship veered violently once more, this time heading straight for the nearest edge of the ionized particle stream and accelerating as hard as could be managed by her damaged propulsion systems. “Captain,” announced Kasparov from Sensors a few seconds later, “we have cleared the particle stream.”
“Very well. Sometimes the darn things act like a pipeline for the warheads’ EMP. Don’t want to be in there when they go off if we can help it,” said Max. As soon as the Destroyer cleared the particle stream, the doctor saw two ^ symbols appear on his tactical overview display, moving rapidly and converging on the Krag cruiser from slightly different vectors. The symbols seemed identical to those representing the two missiles fired by the
Cumberland
just a moment before. “Sir, may I ask, what exactly are these?”
Max glanced down at the display as a grin spread across his face. “Those are our other missiles.”
“Other missiles?”
The doctor had barely articulated his question when Levy at Weapons interrupted. “Receiving telemetry from all four missiles. All show successful target acquisition. Handshaking protocol completed. They have switched from Independent Attack to Cooperative Interactive Logic Mode. Maneuvering for simultaneous circumferential detonation. The CILM upgrade in the new Talons is functioning nominally.”
The doctor could see the ^ symbols moving quickly to encircle the enemy vessel and approach it from four different directions, preventing the Cruiser from being able to concentrate its defenses against a single attack vector. “Missile impact in three, two, one, now.”
Somewhere between Mr. Levy’s “n” and his “w,” each of the thirteen or so displays in CIC tied into the optical feeds that were following the Krag Cruiser burst into unwatchable brilliance, their protective circuitry kicking in to limit the brightness to levels that would not damage human retinas or overdrive the video outputs on the panels. Slowly the flat white of the screens dimmed to show a four-lobed fireball in the shape of a grotesquely obese “x,” marking the spot where the Krag Cruiser died, expanding and fading, rapidly becoming dimmer and more diffuse as it merged with and disappeared into the cold, tenuous gases of space.
The iron band that had been compressing the chest of every man in CIC vanished. As one, they drew in the
Cumberland
’s
processed, recycled, conditioned, bottled, artificial, metal and lubricant and stale-man tasting air. This stale mélange was, to them, sweeter than the purest breeze from a virgin beach and more bracing than the cleanest, icy blast from a wind-swept glacier. It was the taste of life. These men knew they would not die.
Not today.
Having shared in the collective breath of thanksgiving, Max turned to Chief LeBlanc. “Maneuvering, reduce speed to zero-point-one c, standard deceleration. Make your course for Jump Point Charlie. Good job, everyone. This one will make a good story to tell your kids.” A few of the more exuberant enlisted men slapped each other on the back. The Chief had hardly finished acknowledging the order before the doctor, who had been almost beside himself with frustration stemming from unsatisfied curiosity, interjected.
“But, Captain, who fired those other two missiles?” the doctor asked, his face a veritable study in confusion and perplexity. He stood, too frustrated to remain sitting.
Max shrugged. “We did. Who else was there?”
“But I saw us fire only two. I remember. I was sitting right here.” He pointed to his seat in indignation, as though its mere presence helped prove the truth of what he was saying.
“And you were sitting right there when we fired the other two,” Max said placidly.
“Certainly not. I can state most emphatically that I recall no such missiles being fired. In fact, the only other missiles were the one that hit the first Cruiser. Except for those other two that went . . . .” He trailed off and started to nod appreciatively. “Ohhh. I think I begin to see. ‘All warfare is based on deception.’ You are a sly fox. I think old Sun Tzu would be proud. What did you do, then?”
“Well, all along my problem was how to take out these Cruisers when we really didn’t have enough firepower to do it. We can fire only two missiles at a forward target at a time. But, it takes four missiles to throw enough counter-countermeasures at them and to make their systems divide their attention four ways instead of only two so they can get through. So, I had to get one of them with a sucker punch—you saw how we did that by appearing right in front of the first cruiser where he least expected us. With the second ship, the trick was how to launch four missiles without him knowing in enough time to evade them. So, I fired two when the second cruiser’s view of us was blocked by that moon and made it look like a miss and a misfire in case he had any sensor drones in the system. Levy and I programmed those two missiles to drop down to their slowest speed, take fuel efficient trajectories around that moon, and then attack from the flank. That’s what that business about the supposed engine failure was about.
“We just had to be very careful about the timing and the velocities to put the enemy Cruiser in just the right spot at just the right time so that the missiles could find it. The faked malfunction also made sure that he arrived expecting wounded and panicked prey, not a circumferential missile attack. We had very little margin for error. So, we followed Sun Tzu’s advice by appearing to do exactly what the Krag expected. They responded just like Sun Tzu said they would. They were predictable.”
“You say ‘predictable’ as though it left a bad taste in your mouth.”
“It does. In this business, predictability is a cardinal sin. When you become predictable in combat, there is only one outcome.”
“And that is?”
“You die.”
18:02Z Hours, 15 March 2315
There is a thing in the science of leadership called “command style.” The experts in this field agree that Commanders vary from one another primarily in the degree to which they do, or do not do, certain things, such as take advice from subordinates, exercise independence and initiative, devote time and energy to teaching command skills to their XOs, get to know the abilities and personalities of the men under their command, prefer attack or defense, engage the enemy by maneuver or direct assault, etc. Having earned his Space Warfare Qualification Badge (known as “Angel Wings” because its spiral galaxy with wings design looks on first glance to be a winged halo), Max was familiar with this body of learning, but had commanded his own ship for too short a time, too little of which was under even remotely normal conditions, to have developed a good understanding of what his own command style was.
He did know, however, that he was most decidedly not a micromanager, unlike his predecessor in command of the USS
Cumberland
, the unlamented Commander Allen K. Oscar. The man was so maniacally, pathologically fastidious, and so invested in personally and minutely controlling every man and every thing on board, that he had issued more than a
thousand
standing orders requiring the crew to drive themselves to exhaustion. He required that they report every detail of ship’s operations to him in writing daily and maintain a standard of spit and polish on board that made an Admiral’s Yacht look like a refugee ship. So, it was with some reluctance that Max walked through the hatch into the Jump Drive Power Junction Compartment to get a feel for how the repair efforts were going on there. The thing he most dreaded was that someone would announce “Captain on deck,” interrupting the men in their critical work, after which he would say, “as you were,” an order which in the real world can never be carried out because, under the eye of the skipper, the men become self-conscious. Although they may, in fact, return to their previous tasks, so long as their commander is present they can never be
as they were
.
Max needn’t have worried. The space was large and lines of sight were short, blocked by racks holding equipment or bundles of cables. It was easy to enter the compartment through the small hatch that led from the cable patch bay without being seen and even to watch the work through the gaps between the cables without being observed. Max recoiled for a moment from observing the men working because he knew what to expect—barely controlled chaos, parts everywhere, some men up to their armpits in equipment, others standing around uselessly, and some of the few people who were doing productive work being forced to wait for parts or tools or an answer to a question, and all with the Chief Engineer running around like a chicken with his head cut off from one spot where men are working to another answering questions, solving problems, and correcting mistakes. Max had seen it dozens of times before and he just hated it. Every part of his being abhorred even the slightest hint of disorganization on board a warship particularly, as he was finding, one which he commanded. He took a deep breath and looked through the gap.
And let it out.
It was like expecting to see a bomb crater and finding, instead, a beautifully tended ornamental garden. In the general vicinity of the now sturdily but roughly patched three meter section of hull that had been blasted out of existence by a Krag plasma cannon, there were six locations at which work was being performed, with two men installing parts and one man with a padcomp providing instructions and relaying requests for additional parts through Midshipmen who were fetching the parts from stores. Other Midshipmen were fetching tools for the workers as needed, with a few burley Spacers and a man with a small hoist available to do heavy lifting as needed. The Chief Engineer stood by, ready to answer questions and solve problems.