"Chief Bond has a lot of sense. Thank G.o.d none of you is from Zubin Eschamali IX. Or even worse, Fuhkher II." That one got a few laughs. The mood in the room was starting to lighten a bit. Maybe these people can start to function now.

"Okay, then, Greenlee. I want you to sit down right here and spend the next hour teaching Onizuka everything you can about specidents. Since he's had the course, he must know most of what he needs, so give him the practical tips you learned on the job that weren't in the training, and then run a few exercises. I've got some you haven't seen. Access the menu under 'Captain's Training Files.'"

Just then, Harbaugh came in, out of breath, pillow creases on the right side of his face, eyes bleary. The man obviously needed coffee. Max looked around for the pot. He couldn't spot it. A cola would do. Then he noticed that there were no coffee cups or mugs, nor any beverages of any kind anywhere in the compartment. Max looked at the CPO first with all the stripes. If anyone here knew what the h.e.l.l was going on, it would be this man. "Chief, what's your name?"

"Kleszczynska, sir." When he got a blank stare from the captain, he spelled it.

Max looked imploringly at the ceiling for a second. "And what do the people who have not practiced Polish tongue twisters from birth call you, Chief?"

"Klesh, sir," he answered, smiling.

"Chief Klesh, where is the coffee pot for this compartment? And the drinks chiller?"

In a voice that did not entirely conceal his disapproval, the chief responded, "Both removed at Captain Oscar's orders, sir."

That figures. Men who stand rotating four hour watches around the clock are expected to stare at sensor readouts, in a darkened room, for two hundred and forty minutes, and not fall asleep at their stations without coffee or drinks to sustain them? Riiiiiiight.

Max went to the nearest comm panel. He stabbed the b.u.t.ton savagely. "Quartermaster."

"Quartermaster's office, Chief Jinnah here."

"Chief, this is the skipper. Does this s.h.i.+p have the standard issue of coffee pots and drink chillers for a vessel of this cla.s.s?"

"Absolutely, sir."

"Mugs and cups too?"

"The regulation number, sir."

"And Chief Jinnah, if I wanted coffee pots to be used to actually make coffee and chillers to be used to chill drinks, and some cups and mugs to be available to hold beverages rather than collecting dust somewhere, how would I go about finding them?"

"They are all in the spares bay. I can get you the grid numbers if you want them."

"All there at Captain Oscar's order, I suppose."

A resigned sigh came over the comm. "Affirmative, sir."

"Chief Jinnah. Make this your priority. I want those coffee pots and those chillers issued and stocked by fourteen hundred hours. Issue the cups and mugs too."

"Yes, sir!" Something told Max that the chief liked his coffee.

Max punched another key.

"Enlisted mess, Chief Lao here."

"Chief, this is the skipper. I need coffee and beverage service in the Sensor SSR ASAP. Are you the man who can make that happen?"

"Affirmative, sir. Just have the men key in what they want on the Tray Request menu, and the senior man in there key in an authorization, and I'll have it in there in under ten minutes." Most of the senior NCOs on this s.h.i.+p seemed to be on the ball, at any rate.

Greenlee explained to Max that Captain Oscar had prohibited beverages at stations because he thought they didn't "look s.h.i.+pshape" and because of fears of spillage (absurd because all the consoles were hermetically sealed). Accordingly, some of the men in Sensors had to be shown how to pull up the Tray Request menu from their consoles.

While all this was going on, Chief Klesh had brought Ensign Harbaugh up to speed, and Harbaugh had been to every console to see what each man was doing and to get a look at what each sensor was reading. Max put him on getting crash training to the five men who were new to the department, with the rest of the people there either helping those five or running training exercises until the next jump.

"And after the jump, when you've determined everything is clear, everyone but two of you go back to running exercises while two watch the consoles. All the senior people rotate through keeping an eye out.

"Harbaugh, Klesh, put your heads together and see if there's anyone off duty who would be helpful in increasing these men's proficiency in a big burning hurry. If so, get them in here. You have my leave to wake anyone in this department from both of the off-duty watches. Harbaugh, when the next watch comes on, put them to work doing the same thing this group is doing, and have them do the same for the next group."

"Yes sir." Harbaugh seemed eager, anyway.

"And Harbaugh, effective immediately, you're the new sensor SSR commander. I need green lights across the board from this room and I need 'em yesterday. Anything you need to make that happen, you come straight to me. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

"Carry on, then."

"How in the h.e.l.l did you get your hands on that?" Chief Tung pointed at the object on the table in front of him. It looked like a slightly oversize, bright yellow pancake with a few b.u.t.tons and lights set in the center.

"The lock on Ordinance Locker Number Three has had an electronic fault since we were commissioned. You can open it by entering zero-one-two-three. I never reported the problem, in case I ever needed to liberate something." Chief Kapstein was proud of himself.

"Why didn't you 'liberate' something that would do us more good than one d.i.n.ky little thermoflasher?" snarled Chief Larch-Thau. Resting at the center of the tiny table in the Goat Locker, the stolen device looked more like an hors d'oeuvre than ordnance.

"Because, dumba.s.s," answered Kapstein, "there's a sniffer in there that reads the chemicals in the air. You take out too high a volume of ordnance, the trace compound concentration in the air goes down and the computer triggers an alarm. You can slip out one or two of these little jewels, but anything more or anything bigger and you're nabbed."

"But what," Tung asked, "can we do with a thermoflasher? All the drives, deflectors, reactors, and every other high-energy component is high temperature tolerant. A thermoflasher will just burn off the paint or melt the dials. Brown can just pop on new panels or a new control interface, and it'll be good as new."

"Come on," Kapstein chided. "You mean to tell me you can't think of a single low-energy system that's also mission critical?"

"You mean...?" Larch-Thau smiled, pointing at the ceiling.

"Absolutely," Kapstein answered.

Having skillfully removed the ceiling panel and an air return duct access panel, all three men were crawling along the air conduit, which was approximately one meter square. Tung had already entered a command from his percom, directing the computer to reduce the airflow through this duct so that there wouldn't be a pressure buildup to alert the computer that there was an obstruction consisting of three chief petty officers. After five minutes of stealthy creeping, they reached a branching duct that led toward the lower decks. Fortunately, there were rungs bolted to one of the sides.

Not saying a word, they moved more slowly as they went down. After descending almost two decks, they came to another horizontal duct, which they followed for just under twenty meters. By this time, all three men were sweating, not just from the warm air in the air return ducts and the exertion, but from fear of being caught. If apprehended, the very least they would likely face would be a court martial, and at worst, in theory the skipper could toss them out the airlock.

After a few minutes, they reached a grille that blocked their way. On the other side of the heavy metal grating they could barely discern a complex array of pipes, ducts, and electronics. Attached to the grille's corner were three small signs. The first read: "MAIN ATMOSPHERE PROCESSOR MANIFOLD." The second: "WARNING: ENTRY WHILE PROCESSOR IS IN OPERATION WILL KILL YOU IN LESS THAN ONE MINUTE. CONFIRM PROCESSOR IS OFFLINE AND UNIT POWER LOCKED OUT BEFORE ENTRY." The third: "ENTRY WHILE PROCESSOR IS IN OPERATION PROHIBITED BY 60 CNR 29623 AND WILL RESULT IN SEVERE DISCIPLINARY CONSEQUENCES."

Larch-Thau laughed. "I wonder what's worse: dying in less than one minute or the 'severe disciplinary consequences.'"

"Once you're dead, I'm thinking that the discipline isn't too bad," said Kapstein. "Okay, let's do this."

Tung pointed at the sign. "But..."

"We're not going inside, dipstick," said Kaptstein. "We'll just make a little deposit." He rotated four release catches on the grille from "LOCK" to "OPEN" and punched a few b.u.t.tons on the thermoflasher; then he checked the display against his percom and firmly thumbed the largest b.u.t.ton on the unit. It was red. He s.h.i.+fted one side of the grill far enough back for him to stick in his arm and toss the disk a meter and a half or so into the unit, after which he reset the grille, relocked the release catches, and turned to his companions.

"All right, boys, back to the Goat Locker."

The crawl back seemed much faster than going the other way, perhaps because three chiefs in an air duct could always be explained, but three chiefs in an air duct with one of those chiefs carrying a piece of thermoexplosive ordinance might prove a bit harder to pa.s.s off.

Once back at their starting point with the duct and ceiling panel returned to their original condition, Kapstein reached into a chiller and removed three soda bottles whose labels were an ever so slightly darker shade of green than the norm, and pa.s.sed them out. Each man opened his bottle and quickly downed an "off the books" contraband beer, which-like all alcoholic beverages-was banned unless consumed in the wardroom or the enlisted mess and officially logged to the drinker.

"Here's the drill, boys," Kapstein said with a grateful belch. "Our little deposit is set to do its business in the middle of the next watch. If you're on watch, be sure to be doing something that's in view of other people, preferably a senior chief or an officer or two. If not, be sure to be in the mess or someplace where there's lots of people to say you were there. That way, you've got a triple-s.h.i.+elded alibi and Bob's your uncle." They laughed together and, as one, dropped into the chairs that surrounded the table.

Just as the laughter started to die down, they heard a faint noise in the corridor. Before they could begin to stand, the hatch lock cycled, and two gigantic Marines burst into the room, pulse rifles slung, but sidearms in their hands. They were followed a second later by Major Kraft, his sidearm pointed at the center of Kapstein's chest.

"Hands on the table and freeze!" he demanded in a voice that threatened to crack the bulkheads. "We've got the last forty minutes of your lives on video," he added. "And Bob is no longer your uncle. Your mother's sister just divorced him. Zamora, Ulmer, put cuffs on these... individuals. Let's see if they like the brig as much as they like the Goat Locker."

Max left Sensors just as the coffee and drinks arrived-he had not ordered anything for himself-and started for the wardroom. He still craved that coffee and chicken-salad sandwich. He was just bellying up to the pot of dark roast-at least that idiot Captain Oscar hadn't banished coffee from the wardroom-when his percom beeped. He looked at the screen. "NDED IN BRG." Needed in Brig.

Great.

One of the benefits of serving on a small vessel was that everything was close to everything else. Climb down one level to C Deck, walk forward about eleven meters along the one corridor that ran along the center of the inhabited portion of that deck, and turn right into the second to last hatch.

There he met Major Kraft, the Marine commander. As always, Kraft seemed to be enjoying his job. "Captain, that little hook we put in the water a few hours ago has already caught us some fish. We got Tung, Kapstein, and Larch-Thau on visual surveillance, trying to plant a thermoflasher in the atmosphere processor primary manifold. They're in there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the closed security door.

The Primary Manifold was a ton-and-a-half, fifty-eight-cubic-meter, bewilderingly complex apparatus that ducted all of the air recirculated from the s.h.i.+p after it came in through the primary air return duct, scrubbed out the carbon dioxide, a.n.a.lyzed its composition, and adjusted it. If the air were too dry, the manifold added water vapor. If it were oxygen depleted, it added O2. If there were too much argon, krypton, or radon, the air was routed across a catalyst bed that removed it, and so on. The unit was triple and, as to some functions, quadruple fault redundant, and the s.h.i.+p carried ample spares for any component of the unit that could wear out or break.

For that reason, and because it was so large and heavy that carrying a spare was impractical, the huge unit itself was one of the few pieces of critical equipment on the s.h.i.+p for which there was no backup and no replacement. In the unlikely event that a manifold were destroyed-usually by enemy action-the s.h.i.+p would go on emergency atmosphere scrubbers. If it didn't get back to base or have its crew offloaded to a rescue s.h.i.+p, the air quality would get bad enough to start doing damage to the men in two or three days. It was the perfect sabotage target, which is why Max had put it under surveillance. If the thermoflasher had detonated, it would have instantly melted the entire unit to worthless, unreparable, unsalvageable slag.

"What do you want to do with them, Captain?"

"What I want is to throw them out an airlock."

Kraft smiled as though the idea appealed to him. "Well, sir, as we are in a combat zone and as planting the thermoflasher was 'an overt act tending to give aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war,' it is within your authority." On a destroyer, the Marine detachment commander was also chief of security, which made him the resident expert on the laws and regulations pertaining to crime and punishment on board s.h.i.+p. Kraft had, in fact, served in the Marines' JAG Corps, retired, and was serving as a an a.s.sistant planetary prosecutor on Houstonia when it fell to the Krag while he was attending a continuing legal education seminar in a nearby system. He promptly re-enlisted and requested a combat a.s.signment.

"I could gin up the paperwork for you and the XO to sign in no time at all. h.e.l.l, I bet we could have these three b.a.s.t.a.r.ds sucking vacuum before dinnertime. It won't be any trouble. Happy to do it. Sir."

"Major, as appealing a prospect as that may be, I don't think that executing three senior chiefs on my first day in command would be the best of ideas. For now, make sure they are in separate cells and that they can't communicate with each other or anyone else. Feed them normal rations, and let them have full terminal access; just disable the ability to send anything. I don't want to talk to the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds-traitors give me an itchy trigger finger, but I want you to do a full interrogation. Bring in Dr. Sahin if you think there are psychological issues worth worrying about. I need to know if anyone else was working with them. Other than that, they'll keep for a while."

"Yes, sir. But if you change your mind and want them outside, dancing with the stars, you just let me know."

"You'll be the first, Major."

Max went back into the corridor and rolled his wrist to look at the time display on his percom. Still forty-five minutes away from the jump point. He'd have time for that coffee and sandwich after all. And maybe some pie. He wondered if the pecan pie on this s.h.i.+p was any good. The way things were going, he doubted it.

CHAPTER 6.

14:29Z Hours, 22 January 2315 Much to Max's surprise, the pecan pie was top notch. After all, the Navy was never short of nuts. The s.h.i.+p's progress through s.p.a.ce was also more than satisfactory. c.u.mberland had made ten jumps in just over eighteen hours, wearing two of the three watches to a frazzle. Crews were used to making one or two jumps a day at most, not one jump every hour or two. So when Max asked Engineer Brown if he needed to take the jump drive down for maintenance, he took the hint. The Engineer gamely replied that because it had never been put through so many jumps in so short a time, he would be more comfortable if he could tear it down for inspection, which was at least a twelve-hour process. Max concurred that it was better to be safe than sorry, and so kept the c.u.mberland to .52 c as it crossed from the Alpha to the Bravo jump point in the Van Berg Minor system.

Max decided that his plan to cross each of these systems in just a few hours was too optimistic. This crew was not prepared for the pace of all those jumps so quickly. But he still wanted to get to the Free Corridor before he was expected. So, he arrived upon a compromise. The s.h.i.+p would travel at 10 c on compression drive about halfway across each system and at roughly 0.5 c for the remainder, allowing the crossings to be made in anywhere between nine and ten and a half hours. It was clear that this crew needed the extra time in transit for training. Lots of training.

All of the jumps so far had been uneventful, and Max had noted that the Sensor section was performing more briskly and accurately with each jump. It was still not up to the standard he had been accustomed to on the Emeka Moro and other s.h.i.+ps on which he had served, but had already risen to adequate and was rapidly approaching fair. Intense drills and training were taking place all over the s.h.i.+p, from reloading missile tubes in the bow to targeting the "Stinger" aft-firing pulse cannon.

Max had visited those parts of the s.h.i.+p where her key functions were performed, all the while encouraging, exhorting, teaching, and occasionally ordering changes to procedures and practices that weren't working. This was how he had spent the entirety of the middle watch: a little touch of Maxie in the night.

Things were improving. But for reasons he could not put his finger on, Max could see that they were not improving as rapidly as they should, given this crew's undoubted ability. Perhaps it was some mental barrier left over from Captain Oscar.

Max even managed to find the time to eat a hot meal, the main course of which was something called "Navy noodle ca.s.serole," a moderately savory offering that consisted mostly of noodles and cheese, but also contained visible quant.i.ties, very finely chopped, of various frozen vegetables. The official description of the dish mentioned meat as one of the ingredients, but if meat were present, it was in quant.i.ties below the threshold detectable by modern scientific means. It didn't taste bad, and at least someone in the galley had enough sense to make sure to pack some zing into it in the form of onions (frozen, reconst.i.tuted), garlic (same), and various other spices, including cayenne pepper.

After that, he managed a shower and a five-hour nap before returning to CIC in time for the next jump, this time from Van Berg Minor to Tesseck A. This crew was getting good at jumps, and this one went even smoother than the one before, the CIC crew benefitting from some rest. The men were managing to restore the systems more quickly and smoothly with each jump. The jump completed, Max again craved food and drink, this time boiled crawfish and beer. Good luck finding that on the c.u.mberland. As Max was trying to figure what food and drink might satisfy his envie and could be found on board, he noticed Kasparov suddenly tilt his head, reflexively touch his earpiece to listen to someone in his back room, and then quickly punch a few b.u.t.tons on his console, all in less than a second and a half. Max knew exactly what came next.

"Contact," Kasparov nearly shouted, "designating as Uniform one, probable s.h.i.+p, approximate bearing zero-one-five mark zero-niner-zero, working on ID and range."

Oh, s.h.i.+t. No way was this a Union s.h.i.+p. "General quarters. s.h.i.+p versus s.h.i.+p." Max gave the order that sent the entire s.h.i.+p to battle stations.

Klaxons immediately erupted, loud enough to grab one's attention, but not so loud as to be distracting. In the background, Max heard the s.h.i.+p-wide address system broadcast the voice of the able s.p.a.cer who manned the Alerts Station: "General quarters, general quarters. Set Condition One throughout the s.h.i.+p. Close all airtight hatches, and secure all pressure bulkheads. All hands to action stations: s.h.i.+p versus s.h.i.+p."

The overhead lights dimmed slightly, and red lights went on in various places, providing a visible reminder that the s.h.i.+p was on alert. The crew quickly prepared themselves and their vessel for a possible battle with another wars.h.i.+p: racing to the stations a.s.signed to them for that kind of combat, closing hatches that divided the s.h.i.+p into seventy-eight separate airtight compartments, each of which could sustain life if the others lost atmosphere, arming weapons systems, and securing items that could become dislodged in a battle.

That was all fine and dandy, but what Max really needed right now was for his sensor people to give him a precise location and an accurate identification of that contact. Rapidly. Until he knew who it was and what they were up to, he needed to do something. Mainly, that something involved not dying.

"Maneuvering, let's clear the datum. Give me twenty seconds at flank on the sublight and hard delta-v in X and Y and a thirteen-hundred-meters-per-second kick from the maneuvering thrusters minus Z; then reduce the main sublight to one-quarter, engage Stealth, and from whatever course that puts us on give me minus fifty degrees in X, plus thirty degrees in Y, and give me an additional seven hundred MPS push from the thrusters minus Z."

He wanted to impart some speed to the s.h.i.+p quickly while making rapid changes in course in all three dimensions, to throw off any firing solution the other s.h.i.+p might be working up; then basically drop off their sensors while making another series of course changes, again in all three dimensions, so the c.u.mberland could not be targeted or found simply by extrapolating from her prior course. In s.p.a.ce combat, two-thirds of the battle was crossing the staggering distances that separated everything just to get to where the enemy was, and 90 percent of the rest was finding him when you got there. Max planned to use his s.h.i.+p's excellent stealth capabilities to make the c.u.mberland difficult to find.

Max heard the engines going to peak output, saw the men at the Maneuvering Stations pus.h.i.+ng the s.h.i.+p through the course changes, and felt it twisting and turning through s.p.a.ce.

"Weapons, give me a firing solution on the contact ASAP, but do not arm warheads, do not open missile doors, and do not engage any targeting scanners. On the off chance they can read what we are doing, I don't want to escalate this until we know who is out there and what they want."

"Roger, Skipper."

Kasparov was busy, talking and listening over his headset as he started to get useful information from his improved but still not proficient back room. Max bet that demoting Lieutenant Goldman and getting coffee in there boosted performance 15 percent.

"Bearing on Uniform One is firming up. Now three-five-one mark one-zero-three, range approximately two-five-zero-triple-zero kills. Change of aspect on target-target is changing course to intercept our former track before we engaged Stealth. He may not see us now. We are certainly not seeing him: between his low-albedo hull coating and how far away we are from this system's star, he's totally dark-no visual detection at all. We are reading him on ma.s.s, graviton flux, and very faint EM only."

Short pause, as he listened to his back room. "Starting to get some size parameters from occultations, though." Every now and then the other s.h.i.+p would come between the c.u.mberland's visual scanners and a star or other light source, causing it to wink out, known as a stellar occultation. Complex calculations of the relative movements of the two s.h.i.+ps, their ranges, and the exact apparent location of each occulted object, plus which objects were not occulted, allowed the computer to make some inferences about the other s.h.i.+p's size and shape. The c.u.mberland, however, was so small that she created very few occultations and was very hard to spot in that manner, or in any manner for that matter.

"And?"