Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (9 page)

"Thank you, Mr. Singh"

"My pleasure, ma'am."

Celesta had walked down with the intention of confronting Singh about Wolfe's disregard for procedure and to ask about what she suspected was a drinking problem severe enough that he'd been borderline unfit for duty on one occasion. However, after initiating the conversation and getting a glimpse at what made Captain Wolfe tick, she'd lost her nerve. She resolved to keep him under close observation, but she didn't feel justified in approaching him just yet.

Chapter 7

The
Blue Jacket
shuddered violently as she transitioned back into real space, much harsher than was normal. Jackson ignored the clatter of coffee mugs on the deck and half-stifled curses from his bridge crew.

"Engineering," he said, pressing the intercom key on his armrest. "What happened?"

"
We're investigating now, Captain
," Daya Singh's voice came back. "
There are no damage reports coming in so I'm clearing the ship for normal flight. I'll get back to you when I know something
."

"Quickly, Lieutenant Commander," Jackson said before closing the intercom channel. "OPS, have all departments check in with non-critical damage or injuries."

"Shall I retract the warp drive emitters, sir?" Ensign Davis asked even as she sent out the query to all the department heads.

"Negative, Ensign," Jackson said. "Let's give the chief engineer a bit before we start changing the drive configuration."

It was two hours of drifting in space near the edge of the Xi'an system, a frontier colony of the Asianic Union, when the com officer finally spoke up. "Captain, I'm getting no transmissions from Xi'an, the com node platform, or any ship traffic."

"So the entire com array is down?" Jackson asked in disbelief.

"All my internal diagnostics are showing a green array," the officer said. "I can perform loop back checks all the way out to the antennas." Jackson climbed out of his seat and walked over to the com station. The officer was a lieutenant J.G. (Junior Grade) that Jackson recognized as the com officer for second watch.

"Show me your diagnostic data, Lieutenant Keller," Jackson said. Keller wordlessly pulled up the logs of the extensive testing he'd been doing since he first suspected that his equipment was malfunctioning. Jackson had to admit that the young officer had been very thorough and logical in his approach. "Good work trying to isolate the problem," he told Keller. "But when there's a systemwide failure like this make sure you at least alert me before you start troubleshooting. Go ahead and pass this down to your section and have them begin inspecting the com array. I refuse to believe we lost all radios, all bands simultaneously."

"Aye, sir."

"Com array failure
and
an inter-warp nagivation malfunction?" Celesta asked once Jackson had sat down again.

"An unlikely and unfortunate scenario," Jackson agreed. His terminal chirped for his attention before he could continue his thought. He read the message from Daya Singh and breathed a sigh of relief. The warp drive had a minor variance between the fore and aft distortion rings that Engineering had managed to isolate and correct. Minor variances were rough; major variances would tear the ship in half. "OPS, retract and stow the warp drive emitters and start the mains. Engineering has fully cleared the ship for normal flight. Tactical ... Tactical!"

"Yes, Captain," a surprised tactical officer, used to having nothing to do on the ship, sat up and nearly fell out of his chair as he tried to turn and face the command dais.

"You don't need to turn around, son, but you do need to listen to what's happening around you," Jackson admonished him. "While OPS is busy reconfiguring the ship I want you to begin active scans of the system and surrounding space. Just use the navigation array for now."

"Aye, sir," the tactical officer said, tentatively manipulating his displays to bring up the appropriate control menu, having to backtrack more than once. Jackson looked at Celesta, who nodded and walked over behind the struggling officer.

"Captain, com section reports no faults detected within the individual systems," Lieutenant Keller reported. "They even went so far as to use each radio to talk to one of the shuttles. All receive and transmit functions appear to be intact."

"Interesting," Jackson said. "Nav, we
are
at Xi'an, are we not?"

"Yes, sir," the spacer at Navigation said instantly. "I took three star shots when we transitioned in and confirmed our position. We're just within the orbit of the ninth planet of the Xi'an system, twenty-eight kilometers from our target jump-in point."

"Very well," Jackson said loudly. "We appear to have a bit of a mystery on our hands. Until Tactical verifies what we have around us we will maintain our position and continue monitoring coms. Lieutenant Keller, please initiate a standard Fleet hail and loop it." He looked over and saw that Celesta was animatedly informing his tactical officer that his underwhelming performance and lack of attentiveness was not appreciated.

Eventually, the returns from the long-range radar scans began to come in and the main display began to populate with objects and identifiers. The data that was being displayed, however, only confused them even more.

"None of this looks right according to our records," Celesta was saying, consulting the scan logs of the last Black Fleet ship to fly through the system. "There's a lot of localized debris, but we can't resolve any of the known constructs or satellites. There appears to be zero ship traffic in orbit over Xi'an as well."

"We know that's not possible," Jackson said. "Do we have another system acting up or are these returns legitimate?"

"They appear to be genuine, Captain," she said.

"Bring the high-res tactical array online," Jackson ordered. "I want the clearest possible picture before we move the ship." The high-res array was a system of high-power radar, lidar, and optical imagers that wasn't used during normal operations. The radar was so powerful it could interfere with other ships so the
Blue Jacket
would normally fly with the comparatively low-power navigation radar.

"Aye, sir," Celesta said, still chastising and directing the hapless tactical officer.

"Commander Wright, relieve your tactical officer and call someone up who is more familiar with the station," Jackson said. He was becoming increasingly uneasy with the situation and Tactical wasn't a station he wanted such an amateur at. He knew the station was normally manned with a "space filler" since the tactical officer was rarely called upon to do anything but assist the other stations, so he had no plans to reprimand his operator. The other spacers in that section would most likely take care of that for him.

While the shamefaced junior officer slunk off the bridge, Celesta slid into the seat and began bringing the tactical array online while they waited for an actual tactical officer from the bullpen. Despite the higher power, physics were physics and they would not have any new data on the system for several hours. The radio waves from the radars would take hours to reach the far side of the system, bounce back to be collected by the receiver, and interpreted by the computer so that it could be displayed on the bridge.

"Let's all take a deep breath and relax, everyone," Jackson said. "We're just going to sit here at the edge of the system and gather as much data as we can before charging in blind. I don't want any rumors or jumping to conclusions. Commander Wright, you have the bridge. Maintain normal watch intervals."

Jackson refilled his coffee mug and then rode the lifts down to the lower decks. Celesta was more than capable of monitoring things on the bridge and he wanted to get a firsthand account from the other departments, specifically Communications and Engineering.

"Captain on deck!" a spacer second class yelled as soon as Jackson entered the hatch to the Com section.

"As you were," he said automatically. "Is Lieutenant Yu in the shop?"

"No, sir," the spacer said. "He's with Specialist Harper in the forward avionics bays. He said he wanted to personally inspect all the transmission lines for the primary com array."

"Good man," Jackson said, looking around the com shop area. It was mildly cluttered, but it seemed to be the result of recent, hectic activity during the recent crisis so he ignored it. "I'll go forward and check in with him myself. Carry on."

The trip forward was slow going. Most of the crew wasn't used to seeing him patrolling the lower decks unattended and unannounced so they were unsure what to do. Some snapped to attention, others froze like prey animals, and more still dove through any open hatch to escape. The
Raptor
-class ship had two main arteries, one port, the other starboard, that gave the crew access fore and aft. The starboard corridor was for moving forward, the port corridor was for moving aft. The need for this distinction became apparent during drills, ports of call in which the crew was allowed to disembark, or when moving heavy equipment around inside the ship.

He could see he needed to have Commander Wright crack down on general cleanliness of the ship, but he had to admit it didn't look as bad as it had in the past when Stevenson would swear he was keeping up on it and the backshops looked like refuse storage. The com shop was located on deck four directly under the superstructure, so it was in the aft half of the ship. Most of the equipment for the primary communications system was located in the forwardmost avionics bay to keep the transmission lines as short as possible. There was so much high-energy equipment towards the prow that most of the forward section of the ship was unmanned due to health hazards.

"Lieutenant Yu," Jackson said as he stepped through the small hatch into the avionics bay. "What can you tell me?"

"The com array is fully functional, Captain," Yu said. He was a short, lean man of obvious Chinese descent. "As far as we've been able to tell, it's never been inactive since we transitioned back to real space. I wish I had a better answer for you."

"It's hardly your fault," Jackson said. "We'll be sitting here for another couple of hours at least. Let me know if anything turns up."

"Of course, Captain," Yu said, turning back to the panel he'd been half inside of when Jackson had walked in.

When he walked out of the avionics bay Jackson nearly collided with a flush-faced master chief petty officer who looked like he'd run the entire length of the access tube.

"Chief Kazenski," Jackson said. "Fancy meeting you here." Kazenski was the senior enlisted spacer on the
Blue Jacket
and was supposed to serve as a conduit between Jackson and the enlisted ranks.

"Captain, I would have appreciated a heads up before you came down and started inspecting the shops," Kazenski said, barely able to hide his dislike for his captain while he still gasped for air.

"I'll bet you would," Jackson said, eyeing the disheveled chief with thinly veiled disgust. "Unfortunately, time was short in our current crisis and I had neither the time nor inclination to hunt you down."

"My comlink is active," Kazenski insisted. "If you're going to be coming down to the lower decks and harassing—"

"This is
my
ship, Kazenski, and I'll damn well go anywhere I please whenever it pleases me," Jackson said, looking around before continuing. "Your connected family has protected you from actually performing your job function up to now, but things are always fluid in Starfleet and they just changed again."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that starting now if I don't see you in a clean uniform, at your post, and clear headed, I will put you in the brig for the remainder of this cruise," Jackson said, his face inching closer to Kazenski's. "You've been useless ballast on this vessel for two years. That stops today." The chief's eyes were slowly widening as the captain dressed him down.

"Have you lost your mind?" he asked incredulously.

"You're wasting time, Chief," Jackson said. "You don't have much time to get yourself cleaned up and on the command deck."

He turned and strode away from the gaping Kazenski, his hands still clenched into fists. Ever since the lazy slug had been dumped on his ship he'd been wanting to do that, but the man's family connections made it impossible. His father, Senator Walter Kazenski, Sr., was a powerful, connected politician who could make life miserable for a lowly starship captain with a single message to CENTCOM. The younger Kazenski had been put in Black Fleet as a long-term storage solution for a son that was mostly an embarrassment to an ambitious father.

But now Jackson had nothing to lose. As long as everything he did was in accordance to Fleet policy and procedure, the slovenly chief could lodge any complaints he wanted and it wouldn't affect his career whatsoever. As he walked along the corridor he realized Admiral Winters had given him a great gift. For at least one cruise, he could run his ship how he saw fit without fear of damaging his career by ruffling the wrong political feathers.

****

"This makes even less sense than the nav radar picture did," Jackson said as he paced in front of the main display. "Xi'an had two heavy construction platforms. I'm not seeing enough debris tonnage to account for even one of them, let alone every other satellite and ship that would have been in orbit."

"Two separate computers have compiled the data, so this is accurate," Celesta said, standing beside him. "Still no response to our hails, automated or otherwise."

"OPS, send the debris field data to Nav," Jackson said, walking back to his seat. "Nav, plot us a safe course down the well and put us in orbit over Xi'an. We need to find out what the hell has happened here."

"Aye, sir," the specialist at the nav station reported. "Course plotted and entered. Helm is clear to engage at will."