As he nodded in agreement, Paul remembered an uncompleted task, so he followed Kilgary out of the wardroom when the meal was over. "Hey, Coll, I hadn't had a chance to tell you. I asked Jen about the new engineering stuff on the
Maury
. SARS?"
"SEERS. What's she think of it?"
"She said they can't tell, yet. Too much stuff in engineering still didn't work quite right after that yard period. Their Chief Engineer's not letting SEERS do much so far, because the
Maury
's snipes are spending their time trying to manhandle it all back into shape."
Kilgary grinned. "Tweak. In the high-tech, ultra-modern Space Navy we tweak things in engineering. We may use a sledge hammer to do it, but we tweak."
Paul laughed. "Okay. I've seen the electricians tweak a few things by hitting them, so I guess it makes sense for snipes to work the same way. Jen said they'll probably let SEERS handle things this time out because they think they've got the engineering systems about where they should be."
"Well, thanks for asking. I didn't expect she'd have too much to tell me at this point."
"What's the thing do, anyway?"
"Run things." Kilgary rolled her eyes. "The systems on this ship are incredibly complex and because it's pretty much a closed environment anything one sub-system does affects all the other sub-systems. If you let a metal brain try to handle too much of it, it ends up mismanaging power loads because it gets caught in feedback loops."
"You mean it reduces power somewhere, which means it has to do something else somewhere else."
"Which makes it have to go back to the first place and maybe increase power again. Then it reduces more, then it increases more, and soon enough circuit breakers start popping. When a metal head starts over-reacting at the speed of light problems develop real fast. Human brains can spot the patterns developing somehow and even things out. But it's a real pain in the neck to deal with, especially in a critical power situation like combat. It'll be nice to have a metal head capable of handling that part of the job."
Paul grinned. "Maybe we won't need engineers, anymore."
"Suits me. I can change over to one of those easy jobs in Operations Department."
"Now you sound like Jen."
"We just both happen to know what we're talking about. Speaking of female officers, how'd Val Isakov do on watch just now?"
"She seemed okay. Confident. Why?"
Kilgary shrugged. "New officer. I'm just curious."
"Well, she's got the whole ball of wax on the mid-watch. Along with me."
"Lucky guy," Kilgary murmured, then left before Paul could ask what she meant.
The bad part about being on watch on the bridge from midnight to four in the morning was that you weren't sleeping. The good part, the only good part in Paul's opinion, was that just about everybody else was sleeping. The watches tended to be quiet. No senior officers bulling in to raise hell, no scheduled events to add stress, just you and the other watch standers. The bridge, itself darkened not from necessity but to keep human body rhythms happy, sometimes felt to Paul like a cocoon of life traveling independently through the nothingness, the glowing display screens and instrument panels providing nearby artificial counterparts to the cold, distant light of innumerable stars shown on the visual displays.
Paul yawned, then grimaced and grabbed a quick gulp of coffee from the container clipped to his belt. Quiet and dark could be too nice. Too conducive to falling asleep, anyway, and the last thing anybody wanted to do was fall asleep on watch. Or, as Carl Meadows used to advise him, "Falling asleep on watch is like falling off a cliff. It feels fine for a while, until you hit the bottom. Or in the case of sleeping on watch, until somebody finds you sleeping. Then you'll wish you
had
fallen off a cliff instead."
"Paul."
He looked over at Lieutenant Isakov. "Yes, ma'am?"
She laughed. "Ma'am?"
"You didn't tell me I could call you anything else."
"Oh. Right. So, I'm Val. I've got a question for you."
Paul couldn't be certain of her expression in the dim lighting. "What's that?"
Isakov tapped her control console with two fingers for a moment before speaking again. "I wonder . . . it looks like war, don't you think?"
"Maybe. I hope not."
"I've never been in combat."
"Neither have I."
"But you did lead that damage control team. I've heard about it. Pretty nasty fire, right?"
Paul took a deep breath as the memory flooded back. "Yeah. Forward Engineering was an inferno. We couldn't see a thing because of the smoke." He felt his heart speeding up and tried to calm himself.
That happened six months ago. But Chief Asher died in it and Scott Silver got court-martialed because of it. Because I helped chase down the evidence that Silver had been doing a lousy job and might've ordered Chief Asher to do something that started the fire. I wonder if anybody's told Isakov about all that
? "It was pretty intense."
Isakov leaned toward Paul slightly, pitching her voice lower even though the enlisted watchstanders were deep in their own quiet conversation. "Then you know. What it's like to face that kind of danger."
"I . . . guess so."
"It must have been very exciting."
Paul shook his head. "No. I was too scared to be excited."
"Scared?" Isakov laughed again, in way which bothered Paul. "Scared?"
"Yes. I had a lot of things to worry about." He wondered if he sounded defensive, and wondered why he cared.
She leaned closer. "So you don't believe in taking risks?"
"When I need to."
A little closer. He thought he could feel her breath on his face. "Some risks are worth choosing. Just for fun. Don't you think?"
Paul shook his head. "No."
Isakov grinned and leaned away again. "That's not very heroic of you," she noted with another laugh.
Not sure what Isakov was up to, he decided he should blow it off. "I'm not a hero."
She called up the Captain's Standing Orders on her display and made a show of reading them. Paul spent a few more moments wondering what it had all been about, then mentally shrugged and concentrated again on staying awake.
A week later, after standing a lot more watches with Isakov, he still hadn't figured her out. She knew her job, and sometimes talked about her time on the
Isherwood
, or the
Ish-fish
as the ship was nicknamed in the fleet, in a friendly fashion. Other times she treated Paul like they'd just met, and she hadn't been impressed by the experience.
But he had plenty of other things to worry about on this particular watch besides whatever ticked inside Isakov's head.
The
Maury
had left Franklin nearly a full day after the
Michaelson
, cutting a slightly tighter and faster course toward their rendezvous point. Thanks to the moon-bounce updates on
Maury
's course and speed they'd been able to localize her much better than if they'd just been depending on passive detection of what signs of the other ship's presence leaked past her various means of hiding in space. Paul checked the datum outlined on the
Michaelson
's maneuvering displays again.
Commander Garcia swung onto the bridge and scowled equally at Paul and the displays. "Damn stupid idea," he grumbled, then pointed at the estimated position and vector for the
Maury
. "If we were just going to do a firing run, fine. That's great. It'd let us get close enough to precisely fix her and rip her guts out. But we're supposed to be on matching vectors and close to each other. Stupid."
Paul watched Garcia, trying to hide his curiosity. Garcia had a lot of experience, but rarely shared it with the officers in his division, and if he did, usually managed to put them down in the process. Now he was actually explaining something.
I guess that shows how nervous he is. That doesn't exactly calm me down
.
"If we don't hit each other, this'll look really good," Garcia finished, turning to go. Then he glared at Paul. "No collisions, Sinclair."
Isakov stared after Garcia after he'd left the bridge. "Was he kidding? Telling you not to run into any other ships like it was some kind of special instruction?"
"He wasn't kidding."
"I'm glad he's
your
department head."
Paul sweated through the watch, scanning his displays as the
Maury
and
Michaelson
converged on the point where they'd join up. No big deal, except both would be as invisible as modern technology could make them, and both would be traveling through space at velocities measured in kilometers per second and both were large enough that their masses carried plenty of momentum which wouldn't turn on any figurative dimes. As each ship drew closer to each other, the small signs of their presence became easier for the other to detect. A final moon-bounce update on
Maury
's course and speed vector arrived, but it had taken so long to travel to the moon and back that it didn't provide much reassurance.
The estimated position of the
Maury
kept wavering on the
Michaelson
's displays as probabilities shifted. Instead of the single, bright point Paul wanted to see, the estimate resembled a big, fuzzy ball. The
Maury should
be closer to the center of the ball, but it
might
be somewhere on the outer edge.
An hour before Paul's watch ended, the collision alarm sounded, jolting already frayed nerves and generating a volley of curses. "Shut that thing down," Captain Hayes snapped.
Paul slapped some controls, cutting off the computer generated voice of the
Michaelson
's maneuvering systems in mid-warning. "It's some of the probability vectors the
Maury
might be on, Captain. They're falling inside the five kilometer limit we put into the collision warning system."
"Five kilometers." Hayes shook his head. "This idea must've looked great to some genius back on earth. You ever hear of a guy named Wellington, Paul?"
"The Duke of Wellington, sir?"
"Yeah. Him. Before Waterloo he went around inspecting his troops, who were a pretty scruffy bunch, and then said 'I don't know what effect they'll have on the enemy, but by God they scare me.' That's what this maneuver reminds me of. I don't know what effect it'll have on the SASALs, but it's sure scaring me."
"Yes, sir. Maybe they'll try to duplicate it."
Hayes grinned. "That'd serve them right. XO?"
Commander Kwan, watching the final approach from his own seat on the other side of the bridge from the captain, turned at the hail. "Yes, sir?"
"Let's have this watch team relieved half an hour early. That'll give the new people plenty of time to get comfortable with the situation."
"We could just keep this watch team on until both ships have revealed themselves, Captain."
Paul glanced at Isakov. One of the odder things about being on watch was when the CO and XO talked back and forth over your heads as if you weren't there.
Hayes shook his head. "No. I want Paul down in Combat so he can analyze things from there if we need to react fast. And," he looked directly at the watch team, "no disrespect, Val, but you're not as familiar with this ship as the other officers of the deck."
Commander Kwan pursed his mouth. "Should we just bring the ship to general quarters? That might be prudent in any event."
Paul watched Hayes consider the question, then shake his head yet again. "No. But I do want maximum air-tight integrity set. Let's start doing that now."
Great
, Paul thought.
One more thing to worry about during this watch
. The bosun sounded the alert over the ship's general announcing system, then as reports came in from different parts of the ship declaring their status Paul tabulated them and confirmed the reports against the remote read-outs on the bridge. The ship as a whole was always air-tight, of course, but maximum air-tight integrity meant sealing every internal hatch and nonessential opening inside the ship. That way, if anything punched through the ship's hull, the fewest possible compartments would lose air.
Of course, if the
Maury
herself comes through our hull a few closed hatches aren't going to help much
.
Sam Yarrow naturally wasn't thrilled to have to come on watch early, but he couldn't gripe too loudly with both the CO and XO on the bridge. He did managed to drag out the relieving process as long as possible just to aggravate Paul.
Yarrow studied the maneuvering displays again as he strapped into his seat. "Too bad nothing's near us."
"The
Maury
's pretty close, Sam."
"So? It would've been nice to spring out on some fat, dumb and happy SASAL ship that thought it was alone out here. The two of us suddenly there, right on top of the guy. That'd impress them."
"I'm worried enough with just the
Maury
out here."
"What's the matter, Sinclair? No guts, no glory."
I'd prefer to keep my guts inside my body, Sam, glory or not
. But Paul didn't say it out loud, not with Lieutenant Isakov still within earshot, and not after the mocking comments she'd made about his not being a hero.
Combat had more than the usual compliment of watch standers hanging around. Paul's own sailors were obviously curious or concerned, as well. "How's it look, Chief?"
Chief Imari made a face as she studied her own display. "Not as clear as I wished it'd look, sir."
"Yeah. For what it's worth, we're going to be ready to jump out of the way."
"Let's hope we have time to jump if we have to do it."
Paul nodded, then strapped in at his console. He rarely made use of the
Michaelson
's internal video system, since he didn't like to think he was being watched when on duty himself, but now he wanted to have a heads-up to what the captain was thinking. Paul activated a window in his display to show video from the bridge and routed the audio from the bridge to his headphones. It'd be a distraction, but in this case he figured one worth the need to monitor the captain's intentions.