Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 (17 page)

"Now Mr. McAdams, release the mines, maximum dispersion." The finger flies one last time, so forcefully I'm surprised it didn't break the glass.
No engines or power sources of their own other than the detonators, the mines release toward the enemy in free fall at the velocity the missile gave them, forming a widening conical shape.
Suncoast
's turning, desperately trying to bring her guns to bear, and to narrow her profile.
If the systems were active, the computer would already have spoiled the outcome, told us what would happen, we'd know, this time no computers to help. But I know. A couple of them are going to miss high and low, but the rest, the rest....
Three little splashes of white nuclear light erupt from the keel, then the body of the mines hit, and there is nothing but white light everywhere, filling our screens, cleansing our little piece of the universe. Everyone on the bridge is cheering this time, even the captain.
"All stations, prepare for radiation and debris impact." Shelby taking care of her business.
"Mr. Garcia, engines to standby." Me taking care of mine. "Nice work folks. Stay sharp. Let's not let one of those little pointy ships get by this time. RISTA, all sensors you've got, active and passive, survey the explosion site, advise if you find something."
But I know there's not going to be anything. No significant pieces of debris heading our way, the radiation will have dissipated by the time it gets to us, and if those pointy ships can survive that, humanity is done anyway. I wait 10 minutes just to be sure.
"Mr. Garcia, coordinate with RISTA, get us close." I get an aye in return. There's a two minute delay.
"Skipper," Garcia at the ready, "information on your screen."
I spend as little time as possible, I know the two of them won't screw it up.
"Approved, you may fire when ready, Gridley." There's a note of puzzlement in her return aye.
Yorktown
pivots while the acceleration horns are sounding, then a very brief acceleration/decel program gets us back to 50,000 kilometers off the contact point, which is moving very quickly toward Gamma Omicron 1. An aircraft crashes and 50 years later they still find pieces of debris on the side of the same hill. Space craft blow and 50 years later the debris is half a light year gone. I go back to the ship-wide intercom.
"Mr. Palmer, get your survey team on the move, have your damage control team report to the First Officer."
"OohRah Captain," a very Marine reply.
Shelby doesn't ask, and I don't tell, but I'm not going with them this time. My butt, though it's been wrong once recently, doesn't think there's anything interesting out there. She picks up her hand held and establishes radio contact with Sergeant Flanagan whose unit has DC duty. Sergeant McGregor is running backup, using the LS today rather than the sloop.
Palmer must have known what was coming and moved his teams under the three gee acceleration, reminding me how crazy you have to be to be a Marine. It's only a minute since he got the order, and he's calling for launch clearance.
"
Yorktown
, Marine Expeditionary Force requesting clearance to depart."
"Copy, cleared to go, be careful out there, keep comm open at all times." I hope I don't sound as tired as I feel, Palmer gives me a crisp reply.
We can feel the collar retract and the ZR push off from the hull, slight downward movement since it was parked on top of the ship. I have the external camera and the nav screen rotating on my left display to watch him, and I let the rotating status screens keep rotating on the right. Nobody else can view anything other than their base display, I'm the lucky one with all the extra wiring.
Shelby exits the bridge to meet the damage control team, the hull breach being priority number one. I send Ayala down to Engineering to get a status report that won't have to play across the entire ship. Morale might suffer a bit if the jump engines are permanently out of commission. The screens I'm seeing look decent, but sometimes there's a nasty surprise at the center of the lollipop.
Ayala gets back before Palmer gets to the debris, reports that engine one is good to go, the others are days away from operable, but there's nothing they can't repair. We'll need to prioritize systems, since recycling and parts of the environmental systems are out too. He took some initiative and visited Shelby, they both think the hole in
Yorktown
isn't life threatening, and the Marines can patch it up reasonably well. Six of our 18 cannons, though, are likely beyond fixing.
Palmer took 20 minutes to get to the center of the debris field, but he finally reports back in. I take his camera feed onto my left screen and float though the ZR's main hatch and outside with him. No piece of the ship left that's big enough to see.
"No large pieces of debris visible," comes the report.
"Copy that," I come back. They search for a half hour before I call it off, nothing larger than an inch diameter in their collection plates. Two hours after they separated, we feel them reconnect and the collar engage.
"Mr. Garcia, I want us into a stable solar orbit far enough away that anyone who comes looking for them won't find us. Report as soon as you know parameters."
"Aye, Skipper, give me a couple minutes."
She's back in one, and four hours later we've slowed enough that we'll circle the sun just outside of Gamma Omicron 2's orbit for thousands of years unless we do something about it.
For the most part, we've been awake for 24 hours, but I make everyone finish their double check for latent damage, then I put the D.C. parties and second shift to bed, and tell them we'll wake them in eight hours. Then settle into the couch, not even bothering to watch the screens. If there's another shark coming for us we're not up for the fight, the ship nearly dead and its crew played out.
We lost Sergeant Sullivan, and we lost Petty Officer Carver. He sealed the inner hull breach. She was out of her couch on her own initiative trying to get the last three jump engines on line by hand when the blast hit.
After both shifts have had the chance to sleep, I assemble the crew, 53 now including the crews of the LS and ZR, in the Marines' open space on deck 2. Half of them are crying, the other half too numb. We have pictures of our two lost comrades on the projector, black background. I float to the far end of the room, trying once again to look like a captain. I am terrible at this, but they were my responsibility, and so is saying goodbye. I don't even try to keep the emotion out of my voice.
"I wish there were words that could actually express how we feel right now, this minute. Two of our shipmates, our family, are lost to us today. Two friends gone. I stand here and tell you there is no good day to die. When we sign up for the service, Marine or Navy, we know it might happen, but in truth most of us live to old age without seeing that moment where death stares at us, daring us to pass by."
"There is only one reason to give one's life. It is not king or country, it is not honor or glory, it is to save those we love, our family, our crew. I know that Sergeant Ethan Sullivan and Petty Officer Shae Carver did what they did for the love of the people in this room. Without their sacrifice, we would not be floating here today. We will never forget that, or them." My voice cracked a couple times, I give it a pause, gather myself for one strong command.
"Company. Attention." We play the Marine Hymn and Navy Anthem over a stupid little pad speaker because that's all we have. I know they wouldn't have minded. Strangely symbolic that the Marine anthem mentions the US Navy's first frigates and the Navy anthem doesn't.
"Company. Dismissed."
Yorktown
is a very quiet ship for the next two days as we get back to the business of repairs. The D.C. crew takes a pod out and patches the outer hull breaches, then we take off Sullivan's emergency inner hull patch and replace it with something more battle ready. I take Maria Garcia with me to recharge all of the pads that are glued to our walls, using the time to talk to her about duty and making sure she understands what I think she can become, and what paths lead away from that goal.
Engineering is a jungle of floating engine parts, I still stop in to boost spirits. Recycling is up within 12 hours, so at least we won't have to go on water rationing. The Marines make sure every gun that isn't in a million pieces is ready to return fire.
I perform another duty for the first time the second night. Palmer has to fill out his chain of command, and he's chosen to promote Corporal Christina Henson of 3rd squad to sergeant and put her over 1st squad, Sullivan's post, and make a battle field (i.e., temporary) promotion of PFC Zack Bronson to Corporal of 3rd squad. By the regs I have to approve the permanent promotion, so I use the chance to have another, happier, ceremony on board.
Third day in orbit I'm on the bridge helping Garcia run a test of the temporary navigation server that's just gone live in the instrument room when my station beeps at me. I float over, hit the comm switch and find a message from Summerlin, in system, 18 hours out, with his two little buddies and all the spares we'll ever need. I let the crew know.
We literally tether the LS to the ship and push it out into space so that all three of the arriving corvettes can dock on
Yorktown
. They've got fresh fruit and vegetables, and for the first time in a while there's a sense of normalcy on board, a big buffet on the Marine deck, everyone not talking about the last time we were up here together.
Summerlin outdid himself. He's got a full set of 60 blades for our servers and brand new racks. Plus he brought a stunningly gorgeous woman who turns out to be a Chief Petty Officer and supposedly part of the group that designed the software for our servers. I'm sure the fact that he was stuck in a confined space with her for five days had nothing to do with his invitation.
After we're fed and relaxed, I gather Shelby, Ayala, and the three corvette captains in my ready room. I serve them iced tea, we make small talk for a while, and thank the captains for their help. Then it's down to business.
"My assumption is that we do a quick survey of this system, then jump to Theta to clean it out. I think we're keeping our little battle group together for now, no sending you off to fend for yourselves."
"I suspect we have no choice other than to destroy the remaining ships, but I want to board one of them first if we can do it with a reasonable chance of success."
That leads to 20 minutes of discussions about possible courses of action, and some argument about where to go after Theta.
I have their attention, yet I pause, look down the line of them. I want to tell them what I know, but I don't. There are regs on first contact which include minimizing the number of people who know, and what the people who do know know. But that's not it, exactly. We know, but we can't prove it. Courtney's probabilities and my butt won't be enough until we find something beyond the five second recording. I move on.
"Mr. Perez, how long until we're battle ready?"
"Eighty hours, give or take." Shelby has the advantage of already being part of the secret.
"Then let's get back to work."

Chapter 12

It turns out that Summerlin's lady friend is good to her word, and we have the entire 60 server instrument complex back up in less than three days from disk images she brought with her. I never would have believed it, and we couldn't have done it without her. She even makes a temporary patch for the problem we had with the jump engine controls on manual, though I have no plans in which have to do things manually again.
I don't want to leave until tests are completed on everything, particularly the software that controls the missile launchers and jump engines, so it's five days total orbiting the Gamma Omicron star before I deem us fit for combat.
We send a combination of drones and corvettes out on short exploration missions during the down time until I'm sure that the mining ops on planet one, planet two, station Beta and planet six have not been visited recently, and no one is in orbit.
Or, as best we can tell, no one is in orbit. Those ships are far too invisible for my taste.
When Chief Petty Officer Gomez reports the servers are good to go, I hand her a pad. Darlington's pad.
"The data on this pad have been erased. I need them unerased. My staff is available to help any way they can, but I get the feeling you can do this better and faster. Let me know what you find."
She takes it and heads off toward the wardroom, Summerlin not smiling as much as he was when she was saying her work was done. He'll get over it.
The next morning I am barely out of my shower when the door beeps.
"Come." I don't bother to tie the hair down, it can only be Shelby.
Except it's Chief Gomez. She takes one look at a half dressed captain with hair nearly touching the walls and turns around, a difficult proposition in zero gee. During the 180, there's a mumbled something like "I'm sorry." She's got the second longest hair on
Yorktown
, and it makes a move I am highly familiar with as she spins.
Before she gets her spin under control enough to move to the door, I manage to not laugh and call her back.
"You have something for me?"
Her 180 becomes a 360. Possibly she has some ballet experience.
"I got the data, sir. I had to look at files, I didn't mean to, but I had to know if I had them, and I saw, well I'm sorry sir, I didn't mean to...." Her head has obviously done a couple more 360's while she's talking.
"You're in the Union Navy," I put my captainly voice on, "and for now part of my crew. I didn't give you anything you couldn't handle or see."
She relaxes a little. Brushes her hand through her hair, the brown eyes looking at the monitor behind me.
"There are six coded messages, look like snowflakes. I can try to decode them if you'd like. And...." She pauses, I bet I know why.
"You saw something that concerns you."
"I...." She's a desk jockey, already had to live through her first near death experience, now she knows something, or thinks she does. She can't get it out.
"A photo? Something written?"
"No photos, the cameras are both disabled. Diary."
"Have you read Naval Regulation 222?" First Contact protocol. Not sure why they picked 222 and not 666.
"Yes sir, a few minutes ago." The hand goes back into that hair. Her eyes still avoid mine.
"Then you know what to do. Don't tell anyone what you read. Understood?"
"Yes, sir. Sir, why don't we go home and get help?" Another brush through the hair.
"Do you know enough to make a report under the regs?" The answer does not come quickly, she's thinking about the implications I suspect, both hands at one point in her hair.
"No sir, I understand, sir." I'm usually good at reading people, but I have no idea what she's thinking right now. The regs are pretty clear too: if you suspect, you have to find hard evidence at all costs, but no reporting of potentially false trails that might start a panic.
"Petty Officer, Ensign McAdams knows everything, more than I do. Would you like to assist her in interpreting the contents of this pad?"
Her eyes light and finally meet mine, her hands fall to her sides. "Yes sir!"
I touch the button on my collar. "Ensign McAdams to the Captain's Ready Room."
Courtney's here in 30 seconds. I make introductions, explain, have to stop her from spinning across the room as she reaches for the pad a little too quickly. The two of them float off to get to work on their conspiracy, with orders to report back in two hours. I message Shelby to keep an eye out for them, and come with them when they return.
I spend those two hours finishing paperwork, mostly my logs, which to date are entirely clear of any reference to aliens, and writing out a couple of plans to board an enemy vessel. About 10 minutes of paperwork that takes me 100, given my sudden inability to concentrate.
I'm thinking about calling them when the beep saves me the trouble.
"Come."
It's the three of them, Gomez and McAdams half smiling and half not, Shelby just looking like Shelby.
"What did you find?"
Gomez backs off, gives the floor to McAdams.
"Not as much as I hoped for, skipper, just lots of clues. He refers to them as Libor, Ell, Eye, Bee, Oh, Are. Says he can understand a few noises that they make when they talk slowly, thinks they are words. They understand him fine, not the grammar, but individual words." Courtney pauses, runs a hand through her hair just as Gomez does the same.
"He doesn't say anything about motivations other than they want to go home, but can't for some reason. Home seems to be a large section of space neighboring on ours. There are some other human names mentioned who may be spies or procurers, no idea why they are helping them except for money." She stops again.
I butt in. "Courtney, people have betrayed their civilizations before for nothing more than gold. And he was walking around free, not strapped into a couch playing zombie, that's a considerable motivation to start."
"Roger that, skipper. I'd like to test the hypothesis that their speech isn't beyond us, it's just really fast. If you'll loan me Olivia for a few hours more, we can run some experiments. We won't be able to translate anything, but we might be able to start a database that will eventually let us once we accumulate more data."
I nod and look at Gomez. "Chief, consider yourself assigned to
Yorktown
, and part of Ensign McAdams' team." I turn back to Courtney. "Anything else?"
"No sir. The messages all are mostly old news, sabotage information on
Yorktown
, and requests for quantities of chemicals that match some of what was found in the coating mixtures and assorted electronic components."
It's my turn to run a hand through hair. Then I end the meeting.
"Go run your experiments, let me know the results. Make a list of any words you think they would know if we ran into them. Don't be afraid to try anything else, or run ideas past me, just don't do anything to disturb the original contents of the pad."
I get two ayes, and they float back out to the bridge, leaving me and Shelby alone. I look her way.
"Thoughts?"
"Nothing useful in there."
"Agreed. Though eventually might be to our advantage if we can translate their language and they don't realize it."
She nods. "I hope we never reach that point."
"We ready to get going?"
"Aye. We're as combat ready as we're going to be."
"Then let's get to work."
We float out to the bridge, I relieve Ayala, and spend a half hour going through every status screen I have. Then we fire up and run some battle sims. We're basing everything on some assumptions about the planetary system we're targeting.
The Gamma Theta star is a normal brown dwarf with only one planet in its orbit and lots of little rocks. Pirates don't normally live there, it's too obvious where they have to be. Nu and Upsilon are the opposite, not a single planetary sized body in either one, but lots of moon sized objects that make incredibly difficult to detect bases if the pirates have any brains at all.
That means if either
Defino
or
Opportunity
is in Theta we know where she will be. The planet is a mining treasure trove, the rocks really are just rocks.
So we're going to jump in above the main system plane and right where the planet should be, kinda like coming out of the sun in old school fighter tactics. Unless they've upgraded the sensors aboard the cargo ships, they won't see us until the missiles are flying.
We send a pod out to grab the LS and reattach it to
Yorktown
, the three corvette jumping into position to take care of any bad guy waiting in unexpected spots or little pointy ships thinking of escaping. Given what happened the last time we jumped, I'd want to be anywhere but attached to
Yorktown
too.
Our little battle group is going through another series of checks when McAdams makes us all jump (that's out of our couches, not move instantaneously from our current location).
"New target bearing 110 mark 000 solar, inbound planet 2."
I knew we'd been too lucky. My finger reaches out for the alarm panel to sound battlestations when I discover we are luckier than I ever dreamed.
"Skipper, it's
Santa Cruz
." Just as McAdams says it my comm panel lights, and there's a recorded message from Commander Julio Mendoza of the destroyer USS
Santa Cruz
, one of my former running mates from the
Sherman
's battle group. It's short and to the point, just like Mendoza, giving us the timing of his rendevous.
Sixteen hours later, he and I are exchanging hugs outside the boat deck hatch,
Santa Cruz
parked a couple hundred meters off our starboard side. We used the time to get all three corvette skippers back aboard, and we have what is beginning to feel like an authentic battle group conference in my ready room.
Mendoza is shorter than me, no hair above the neck but way too much below, rock hard, smart enough, as he puts it, to be the finest escort commander in the fleet, but not smart enough to take the next step up. His name means "cold mountain" which fits him to a tee. Exactly the guy you want guarding your flank.
"Admiral Showalter," he starts up as soon as we're all collected in my ready room (me, Shelby, Summerlin, Maxwell, Rivera), "was ordered to send a corvette to deliver a message to you. Unfortunately, none were available, so he sent us. I'm under orders to spend up to three weeks searching you out." In other words, my old boss is bending the rules to help out his favorite frigate captain. I owe him a case of Scotch.
"I am instructed to inform you that Mark Darlington was aboard CSS
Opportunity
when it went missing two and a half years ago. Intelligence assumes that means he was spying for the pirates that took the ship, and sabotaged
Yorktown
to protect their interests. Beyond that, they have nothing, so far unable to trace back the money to identify who paid him. They did give me crew rosters for all the missing ships."
I'd tell him what's really going on, but regs are regs, and I'm still not sure that any of them would believe me.
"We were about to jump to Gamma Theta," I flip the hair around a little, "but I just had the beginnings of a new crazy plan I want to pass by everyone." When I finish, Julio looks as though he wished he stayed home.
I think we have an advantage now because
Santa Cruz
looks exactly like
Yorktown
from the outside, on top of the increase in our firepower from adding the destroyer to our group. And I dearly want to be on board one of those ships to get the proof I need.
I put Shelby in charge of coordinating the plan, everyone looking desperately for something I'm overlooking beyond my psychosis, then float off for my daily run in the ship's gym. For the first time in quite a while, I am feeling like we just might be able to take the initiative. Or, as my team keeps pointing out, we could all be dead in 48 hours.
It takes us the rest of the afternoon and evening to program everything we need the ships to do into the flight computers and all the next day to run simulations of various scenarios based on the most probabilistic outcomes of what we will find when we jump into Theta. Every piece of equipment we need to work gets checked three times.
Santa Cruz
goes wheels up at 2000 hours, driving inbound toward the Omicron star. It'll take her about 16 hours to get to the jump point, then she'll have maybe 12 hours on scene to find who or whatever is there. Our plan depends on them being in orbit around Theta 1. If they are, Julio can find them visually despite their coating.
We get to spend the next 24 hours bored and nervous, rerunning every simulation and every weapons drill to exhaustion, and everybody seems to be spending extra time in the gym. Shelby doesn't say anything to me the entire time other than acknowledge orders. I find it almost a blessing when we strap into our couches, line up with our three little buddies, and rocket together toward the jump point and our destiny at four gees.
Six hours in my comm lights go off, indicating an inbound transmission from
Santa Cruz
's communications drone. It lets us know that one ship, identity unknown but the correct class with the impossible coating, is in orbit around Theta 1. There's a data file for RISTA that will let them plot the jump. The plan is a go. We also used our last comm drone, no way now to call for help if we need it.
Two hours out from the jump point we reach go/no go. I'm go. We've been on auto pilot jointly with the three corvettes keeping our formation perfect. Exactly as the clock hits zero, the engines cut out.
I keep it short. "Confirm formation status."
Garcia answers, almost no pause. "Formation perfect down the line, skipper."
I start unbuckling my harness, the clips suddenly seem to take too long to unfasten. Finally it's done and I am free.
"Commander Perez, the ship is yours." She gives me a cursory "aye" in return.
I meet Yeager down on the boat deck. He's still speaking to me, in fact, he seems excited to go. I told him this was a volunteer mission, and I know Palmer took him aside more than once trying to persuade the Master Sergeant to let the Lieutenant go in his place. Palmer took Yeager to practice assaulting the mockup of the ship with his detachment when we were back on Earth, he might be regretting that choice now.
We go inch by inch over my gig, which is now covered in an ablative coating usually reserved for re-entry into heavy atmosphere planets. Then its centimeter by centimeter over our space suits, their tanks and electronics. The boat crew and Palmer's Marines have done this at least a half dozen times each since yesterday, but it's something you don't trust unless you do it yourself no matter how much you trust the person who did it for you.