Walter Williams - Conventions of War

“This is the captain!” he said. “Open the door!”

“Stand by,” came Mersenne’s voice.

Stand by?Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think he was, some snotty cadet?

“Let me into Command!” Martinez barked.

“Stand by.” The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain’s orders.

Well, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.

But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?

Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knuckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn’s nose, some of them catching on his little mustache, and there was a cut on his lip.

There hadn’t been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee-or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn’t been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Dr. Xi was coping with.

After Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute, the hatch slid open with a soft hiss. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.

“I have command!” he shouted.

“Captain Martinez has command!” Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.

Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.

“Missile attack, my lord,” Mersenne said as Martinez caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. “At least thirty. I’m sorry I didn’t let you into Command, but I didn’t want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with-didn’t want to irradiate the entire command crew if there were a near miss.”

It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.

“Any losses?” he asked.

“No, my lord.” Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. “We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities, there was an engine trip.”

Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.“Engine trip?” he said.

“Engine number one. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I’ll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one.”

So now he knew why he’d suddenly found himself floating. The engines had quit, apparently on their own, and in the middle of a battle.

He pulled his displays down from over his head, heard them lock, began a study of the brief fight.

The Naxids hadn’t attacked in the Osser system, as Chandra’s war game had predicted. They’d waited for Chenforce to proceed to the next system, Arkhan-Dohg, where the hot, humid world of Arkhan supported a population of half a billion, mostly heat-loving Naxids, and cold, glacier-ridden Dohg supported a billion more, for the most part furry Torminel.

Chenforce hadn’t found anything to shoot at in Osser, and there was very little traffic in Arkhan-Dohg. The Naxids knew they were coming, and every ship that could move was being routed away from them.

Even though Chenforce was finding few targets at present, they were still creating a massive disruption in the rebel economy. The hundreds of ships fleeing Chenforce weren’t carrying cargoes to the appropriate destination. Not only were cargoes being routed well out of their way, many cargoes were stalled waiting for transport, and elsewhere industries were failing for want of supply.

The Naxid attempt to swat them from the sky had occurred when the squadron was two days into the Arkhan-Dohg system. Chenforce was suddenly painted with tracking lasers. Mersenne had immediately gone to general quarters and orderedIllustrious to accelerate as rapidly as possible away from the other ships. BeforeIllustrious was on its new heading, the sensor operators were reporting brief flares that showed incoming missiles making last-instant course corrections.

Most of the missiles targeted the swarm of decoys cruising ahead of Chenforce, but a few got through the screen to target the squadron itself, all to be destroyed by point-defense weapons. By that time the number one engine onIllustrious had tripped off and the cruiser was drifting, its captain floating bruised and unconscious in the corridor outside his office.

The Battle of Arkhan-Dohg, from the first alarm to the destruction of the last incoming missile, had taken a little less than three minutes.

“One failure in the point-defense array,” Husayn reported from the weapons station. “Antiproton gun three failed after one shot.”

“Just like Harzapid,” muttered Mersenne.

“How many decoys do we have in the tubes?” Martinez asked Husayn.

“Three, my lord.”

“Fire them immediately. We want to get decoys ahead of the squadron in case the Naxids have a follow-up attack.”

The Command crew looked a little hollow-eyed at this possibility.

“Decoys fired, my lord. Tubes cleared. Decoys proceeding normally under chemical rockets to safety point.”

“Replace them in the tubes with another set of decoys,” Martinez added.

Primary command crew were drifting through the hatch and quietly taking up their stations. Alikhan arrived lugging Martinez’s vac suit by a strap. Martinez told him to report to the weapons bays after putting the suit in one of the vac suit lockers: he didn’t have time to put it on right now.

“I’ve commenced a countdown on engines two and three,” Mersenne reported. “We’re at five minutes twenty-one.”

“Proceed.”

“My lord,” Husayn said, “decoys’ antimatter engines have ignited. All decoys maneuvering normally.”

“My lord,” said Signaler Roh, “Judge Arslanqueries our status.”

“Tell them we experienced a premature engine shutdown,” Martinez said. “Tell them we expect no long-term problem.”

“Yes, Lord Captain. Ah…Squadcom Chen wants to speak with you.”

“Put her on my board.”

“Yes, Lord Captain.”

Martinez hadn’t strapped on the close-fitting cap that held his earphones, virtual array, and medical sensors, so Michi’s voice came out of the speaker on his display, and was audible to everyone in command.

“Captain Martinez,” she said, “what thehell just happened?”

Martinez reported in as few words as possible. Michi listened with an intent, inward look on her face. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll order the rest of the squadron to take defensive positions around us until we’re maneuverable again.”

Martinez nodded. “May I recommend that you order more decoy launches?”

“Lieutenant Prasad’s already taken care of that.” Michi’s head tilted as she looked into her display. “Captain,” she said, “you look like you got run over by a herd of bison.”

“Acceleration threw me down a companion.”

“Are you all right? Shall I page Dr. Xi to Command?”

“I’m sure he’s busy enough where he is.”

She nodded. “Find out who painted us with that laser,” she said, “and blow him the fuck up.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And take out the wormhole stations as well. I’m not having them spotting for the enemy.”

It’s uncivilized,Michi had said when she’d first raised the possibility of destroying wormhole stations. She’d occasionally done it in the past, when it was necessary to preserve secrecy concerning Chenforce’s movements, but for the most part she’d left them alone.