Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (6 page)

Chapter 5

"Navigation, confirm our position and time until transition," Jackson said as he settled himself into his seat, securing his coffee mug carefully.

"Position is confirmed. We're ten minutes away from transition into real space," the spacer second class reported from the Nav station. He looked a little too old to still be a second class, but the telltale silhouette on his sleeve indicated that he'd been busted down in rank recently. Two stripes by the looks of it. Jackson made a mental note to ask Commander Wright why someone with such a disciplinary record was manning a station on First Watch during sensitive operations like a transition.

"OPS?" he asked.

"Confirmed, Captain," Ensign Davis said crisply. As a courtesy she began putting up the countdown timer and relative position of the ship on the main display. "Nav data has passed redundancy checks. We should come out where we're supposed to."

The bridge remained silent as everyone tensed up for the coming transition. Even Aston Lynch, secured in an observation seat, kept his mouth shut, though he looked at the display pensively.

"Five seconds!" Ensign Davis called out loudly and a sharp klaxon sounded twice throughout the entire ship. A few seconds later the ship shuddered violently and there was a slight dip in power on non-essential systems that caused the ambient lighting to dim slightly.

As soon as the shuddering subsided the main display cleared and became a window once again, allowing the crew to see that beyond the glowing warp drive emitters there was a clear star field, letting them know that they had reemerged safely into real space.

"All departments have checked in," Davis reported. "Waiting for confirmation of position." Jackson waited patiently as the spacer at the Nav station determined their position by taking star captures and measuring local gravitational anomalies.

"We're fifteen thousand kilometers from our expected transition point," he reported. "I'm sending the data to OPS and Engineering."

Jackson frowned. Even though this was still within the limits for the length of the previous flight, he'd hoped to emerge much closer to their target. When the ship was in warp it was literally flying blind, relying on internal instruments to make sure they emerged where they were supposed to. The
Blue Jacket's
crew routinely hit targets of less than five thousand kilometers on longer flights so he was inclined to believe it was something that Jericho Station had done to his equipment rather than an error on his crew's part.

"I expect that to be tightened up on the next jump," he said, giving fair warning to everyone that they needed to find out why the internal navigation systems were off by so much. "Plot a course to our rendezvous coordinates and send them to the helm. OPS, retract the warp drive emitters and close the external hatches. Once they're stowed, start the main engines and let me know when we're clear to begin maneuvering."

"Aye, sir," Ensign Davis said, the emitters beginning to slowly retract into the hull even before Jackson had finished issuing orders. He watched as the delicate devices were carefully nestled back into their storage nooks and the heavy external hatches were swung over and locked into place, protecting them from debris hits or potential enemy weapons-fire. Early generations of Terran starships had two enormous rings, one fore and one aft, that made up the warp drive and were permanently affixed around the hull. Jackson had always been idly curious how many of those ships were lost because they became stranded between jumps due to a micrometeor impact damaging an emitter ring.

"I don't like the fact we're not permitted to take an active scan of the area," Jackson said quietly to Celesta. "I'd like to you to go down to the CIC and begin a passive scan of surrounding space, full spectrum."

"Aye, Captain," she said, popping the latches on her restraints and hustling off the bridge.

The Combat Operations Center was the heart and soul of the ship when it came to flying, tracking, and shooting. It was a room located near the middle of the main hull and was crewed by fifteen specialists at all times manning every instrument on the
Blue Jacket
, ready to feed information to the bridge whenever needed. There was even a command station in the room where the captain could run the ship from there if needed. The Operations Center used to be referred to as the Combat Information Center back before human vessels were capable of travelling between the stars, but the term "CIC" was an anachronism that had survived to the modern age of starships. Jackson was semi-certain it was because the acronym COC led to a phonetic pronunciation that Fleet deemed to be inappropriate.

The passive scan wasn't the only reason he wanted Commander Wright in the CIC. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on with regards to his orders and having her in the ship's nerve center was one more direct channel of information. So far Lynch seemed calm and unconcerned and he wasn't sure if he took that as a good sign or not.

****

Commander Wright quickly made her way to the CIC and relayed Captain Wolfe's orders. As luck would have it, the second watch OPS officer, Lieutenant Peters, was in charge of the CIC during the transition back to real space. Having served on the
Blue Jacket
for three full cruises, he immediately understood what the captain wanted without Celesta having to spell it out for him.

He offered her the command seat and quickly went to each station and got the operators moving in the right direction. A lot of the task would simply be data processing since the ship's passive sensors were recording at all times. The operators would need to go back from the time the ship emerged into real space and look for any anomalies. While the computers were good at picking out patterns and sudden shifts, they often overlooked subtle changes that a human was able to intuitively pick up on.

As Celesta sat patiently waiting for them to sift through the data she felt a deep rumble resonate through the ship. The main engines starting up caused quite a bit more vibration down in the CIC than they did on the bridge. She felt the change in intensity and pitch and surmised that Captain Wolfe was moving the ship to the rendezvous coordinates listed in their orders. She assumed they were simply delivering their political operative to a ship in Fourth Fleet so that he could discreetly make contact with the New American government on behalf of Senator Wellington without raising any flags, and she really didn't understand Jackson Wolfe's increasing paranoia about the mission. While she would be glad to be rid of Aston Lynch, especially given the number of unwelcome advances he'd made since coming aboard, she had to admit to herself she was more than a little concerned about some perceived erratic behavior from her new commanding officer.

"We have something, Commander," Lieutenant Peters reported. "Thermal anomaly, two hundred thousand kilometers off the port bow, twenty-two degrees elevation."

"Show me," Celesta said, rising from her chair and walking over to the sensor station.

"These two points of light, completely in the IR band, exactly seventy-three meters away from each other," Peters said. "They were there when our sensors came back up after transition and disappeared shortly afterwards."

"You have an idea what they were?" Celesta asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Those are the reverse thrust nozzles of a
Descendant-
class destroyer, flown exclusively by Fourth Fleet. That newer class only has two main engines instead of our four," Peters answered. "If you'll give us a moment we can tell you which ship it is."

"The contact was that strong?" Celesta asked, surprised.

"It was enough for us to get an engine profile for the ship, ma'am," the sensor operator spoke up. He was a young specialist first class and had a scar running down the length of his left cheek. Celesta read the name on the front of his utility top.

"Get me that ship name as quickly as you can, Specialist Jacobs," she said. "The captain will want this information immediately." She waited patiently behind the operator while he ran the brief thermal flash against the ship's database of engine profiles for that class of ship.

"Got it," Jacobs said. "She's the
Oscar Marks
, registry DS-8101."

"Good work, Specialist," Celesta said. "Begin scanning real time data again and see if you can reacquire her."

"Aye, ma'am."

"They must have been out there, waiting for us, and closed off their reverse nozzles as soon as we transitioned in," Peters said.

"That's what I'm thinking," Celesta said. "Since they were also using passive sensors, by the time they received the data of our arrival we were already recording their engine heat." She moved to the command seat, pulled the terminal over to her, and began to type a message that would go directly to Captain Wolfe.

****

"
Fourth Fleet destroyer Oscar Marks standing off our port bow at a range of two hundred thousand KM when Blue Jacket transitioned in. She's gone dark. CIC working to reacquire. Will advise. Cmdr. Wright
."

Jackson read the message twice before replying to Celesta to keep at it. He looked over at Lynch and tried to get a read on the man's demeanor. He still just sat there with the same bored, slightly irritated look that he seemed to always have.

"Mr. Lynch," he said loudly. "So here we are. What happens next?"

"You'll know soon enough, Captain," Lynch said, looking at ship's time again. "In the meantime, maintain emission security protocols."

"The thermal bloom from our engines will be visible to anyone looking," Jackson reminded him. "We're not completely dark out here."

"By the time anyone will be in a position to investigate we'll all be long gone," Lynch said, giving Jackson an annoyed glare. "The mission is to wait until we're contacted. Until that time—"

"Contact," Ensign Davis said. "Tight beam com laser has just been detected on the forward array, running decryption routines now."

"See, Captain?" Lynch said. "Nothing to worry about."

"Do not mistake impatience to resume our actual mission with worry," Jackson said, growing weary of the other man's smugness.

"Encryption codes on their side were valid, Captain," Davis said, cutting off Lynch's response. "Receiving the message in its entirety."

"Send it to me."

“Aye, sir."

Jackson watched as the text began scrolling across his display. The message was short and to the point:

Civilian passenger Aston Lynch to be brought by shuttle to pre-arranged coordinates. Will receive in one hour from receipt of this message. Send no reply.

Regards,

Capt. Asiri, CO, TCS Oscar Marks

"I assume you have yet another set of secret coordinates in your possession, Mr. Lynch," Jackson said.

"I do."

"Then follow the bridge sentry down to the shuttle hangar and prepare to depart. Ensign Davis, alert Commander Juarez that a shuttle will need to be prepped and a pilot ready to take our passenger over to another ship," Jackson said, still not happy with how he seemed to have little control over the events taking place on his ship.

"Aye, sir," Davis said. "Alerting Commander Juarez now."

"It looks like we may be here for a while," Jackson remarked to the crew once Lynch had left the bridge. "Go ahead and return gravity to normal and stand down from Transition Alert; normal watches until further notice."

"Aye, sir," came a chorus of confirmations as the crew sent his orders to all the departments in the ship.

****

"You still think this is just some political wrangling between Haven and New America?" Jackson asked Celesta when she walked into the wardroom to find him in front of the coffee machine.

"I've already admitted that this is a bit unusual," she conceded as she grabbed a clean mug. "But I'm not ready to call it anything more nefarious yet. Besides, we should be underway soon enough."

"Have you ever had any clandestine operations like this in your time in First Fleet, Commander?" Ensign Davis spoke up from a table where she was reading from an oversized comlink the younger officers tended to prefer and eating a pastry.

"Nothing this dramatic," Celesta said, turning to the younger officer. While the bridge was a formal place, officers tended to be a bit more relaxed and approachable in the wardroom. "We had our fair share of secret passengers and bizarre orders, but I've never transitioned this far outside a star system. I'll admit that it is a bit unnerving."

"I sometimes think the politicians miss the old days when nation states were constantly fighting with each other," Jackson said with a snort. "We haven't had so much as a mild cold war in centuries."

"Why do you think that is, Captain?" Davis asked. Celesta noticed that the young ensign, while respectful, wasn't nearly as aloof around Captain Wolfe as the majority of the crew she'd observed.

"Distance coupled with nobody wanting for anything," Jackson said, leaning back against the counter and sipping his coffee. "All the major enclaves have more resources and space than their populations could consume in a millennia, and despite the newest generation of warp drive from Tsuyo Corporation, the idea of trying to invade seems ludicrous."