In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (45 page)

Honor’s jaw tightened. She didn’t even want to imagine how her old mentor had reacted to the news of her utter disgrace.

“The reason I mention this to you, Commander,” Webster told her, “is that in the course of my personal conversation with Admiral Courvoisier, he informed me that he was extremely saddened to hear about all of the trouble in which you’d landed yourself. I thought you might perhaps like to know that he argued quite passionately in your defense. That, in his opinion, you have never demonstrated less than total dedication to your profession, to the men and women under your command, to the Service, and to the honor of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Nor does he feel that anything which has emerged out of your actions in Casimir alters his opinion one millimeter in that regard.”

“Thank—thank you, Sir.”
 

To her horror, Honor’s voice came out husky, almost cracked, and her eyes burned with the unshed tears the loss of her career had been unable to shake free. At least the admiral knew. At least he
understood,
and she hugged that knowledge to her.

“I hope that under similar circumstances, someone would have informed me of that, as well, Commander Harrington.”
 

There was frank compassion in Webster’s voice this time, and Honor looked at him. Silence stretched out between them, and then, finally, Webster let his chair come fully upright at last.

“There’s one last thing, Commander,” he said.

“Sir?” Honor asked when he paused again.

“As I say, I spoke personally to Admiral Courvoisier about your case. In fact, I’m afraid that when I screened him, I interrupted him. He was in conference with the senior instructors at the ATC facility.”

Honor nodded. She’d been delighted when Courvoisier finally received his long overdue promotion to flag rank and was given the Advanced Tactical Course—otherwise known as “the Crusher.” ATC was the final step towards senior starship command. A handful of officers might have received light hyper-capable commands without surviving the Crusher, as Honor herself had with
Hawkwing,
but no one who hadn’t passed ATC could ever hope to command anything heavier or more prestigious than that outdated destroyer. She could think of no one in the entire Navy better suited than Courvoisier to run the Crusher, and the fact that the Navy at large had finally recognized that had filled her with deep pleasure.

“As I’ve also already mentioned,” Webster continued, “the admiral was extremely distressed when I informed him that I saw no option but to relieve you of your command. He protested quite strongly, although, in the end, I believe he came to the view that it was the best decision all around.”

Honor flinched. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes darted in disbelief to Webster’s face, but to her mingled horror and disbelief, he was actually
smiling
at her!

“I believe that the reason he came to that view, Commander,” the First Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Navy continued, “is that ATC is beginning a new training cycle next month. If we hadn’t expedited the paperwork to get you out of command of
Hawkwing,
it would have been impossible for us to fit you into that cycle, and you would have had to wait another six T-months before you could attend it.”

For a moment, it simply didn’t register. And then, suddenly, it did, and Honor’s eyes went huge.

“Don’t think for a minute that we’re not all dead serious about the extraordinarily dim view we take of officers who blithely disregard their orders,” Webster said, his voice momentarily grim once again. “And don’t even
begin
to think about getting into the habit of doing so! But this time, Commander—just this
once—
the Service is prepared to overlook this little faux pas on your part. Of course,” he smiled nastily, “if we can satisfy Sector Governor Charnowska and her allies by relieving you of command, so much the better. By the time they figure out what we’ve really done, the moment for them to press for something more…significant will have passed. But one of the reasons I just spent the last ten minutes scaring the hell out of you, Commander Harrington, is because you are
not
going to get away with something like this the next time. And you’d better be aware that you’ve just finished making yourself some
significant
enemies in places like Saginaw and Mesa. I doubt they’d even noticed you before, but, trust me—they’ll be keeping an eye on you from now on.”

“Yes, Sir. I understand.”

“Good…even if I find it difficult to believe you really do, given the smile you can’t quite keep off your face,” Webster said dryly. “Now go.”

“Yes, Sir!”

*
   
*
   
*

“So, dear, are you ready to talk about it now?” Allison Harrington asked calmly as she and Honor helped Alfred Harrington load supper’s dishes into the dishwasher.

“About what?” Honor asked.

“About whatever it is you haven’t been talking about for the last month,” her mother explained with exaggerated patience. Nimitz bleeked in amusement from his high chair at the table, and Allison glared at him. “You stay out of this, you furry little monster!”

Nimitz only bleeked louder, and Allison chuckled, then sobered—a bit, at least—as she turned back to her daughter.

“I’m serious. Are you ready to talk about it?”

“Alley—” Alfred Harrington said warningly, and she made a face at him.

“Oh, pooh, Alfred!” she said. “I’ve put up with you and Honor and all of that ‘do the right thing’ Navy crap ever since she came dragging home with her tail between her legs. Now I just want to know what it’s all been about.”

“Mother, I’m sorry,” Honor said, “but I still can’t tell you. They told me not to talk about it, and no one’s told me that’s changed. But, if it’ll make you happier, I think I can honestly say my meeting with Admiral Webster went enormously better than I ever expected. In fact, everything is going to be just fine.”

“You’re sure about that?” Allison Harrington studied her daughter’s expression with unusual intensity, her own eyes far more anxious than she would normally ever have allowed them to be.

“Positive,” Honor said firmly, and her mother’s taut shoulders relaxed.

“Good,” she said softly, reaching up to pat her far taller daughter’s shoulder gently. “Good.”

“Yes,” Honor replied, putting her arm around her and hugging her gently. “Yes, I think it really is—good, I mean.”

The two of them stood that way for several seconds, and then Allison gave herself a shake and looked up at Honor with something much more like her normal grin.

“Now that you’ve told me that much, though,” she said, “I suppose I should ask you if all of that stuff you’re not supposed to talk to me about has anything to do with that little unauthorized attack you made on the Casimir System in company with the Ballroom?”

Honor blinked in astonishment, and Allison snorted.

“Honor, Beowulf is just on the other side of the Wormhole. Where do you think all those liberated slaves went? And what makes you think a ‘merchantship’ crewed almost exclusively by people with last names like ‘X’ could land a thousand liberated slaves on Beowulf without my family knowing about it? I got Jacques’ first letter less than a week after you got home from Silesia! But since it was obvious to your father”—she glowered at Alfred—“that you’d been ordered not to talk about it, I didn’t press you for any details. Now that you’ve been to talk to the Admiralty, though, I’m not feeling quite so charitable. So, tell me. Did Jacques get the details right?”

“Since I don’t know exactly what he told you, I can’t say,” Honor said. Although, she reflected, her mother’s older brother almost certainly had gotten “the details right.” In fact, given his role in the Anti-Slavery League, she strongly suspected that he’d gotten the “details” directly from Samson X and Henri Christophe. “I’d say it’s likely he did, though,” she added out loud.

“And did you really come as close as he thinks you did to throwing your career away to do it?” Allison asked much more quietly.

“I don’t know—” Honor began, but then she met her mother’s gaze and knew it wasn’t a time for brushing things aside.

“Yes, Mother,” she said instead, her own voice quiet. “I did.”

“Oh, Honor!” Allison half whispered, reaching up to take her daughter’s face between her hands. She held her there, looking deep into Honor’s eyes, and her own brimmed with tears.

“Jacques told me what you did,” she said. “He told me he didn’t think there was another officer anywhere—even in the Manticoran Navy—who would’ve done what you did with the
Ballroom,
of all people. He was so
proud
of you, Honor! But all
I
could think was to wonder why you’d done it. Was it my fault? I know how much the Navy means to you, love—did you come that close to throwing it all away because you know how
I
feel about genetic slavery?”

Honor looked back at her, knowing her mother wanted the truth, even if, until this very moment, Honor hadn’t known exactly what that truth was, herself. And then, finally, she shook her head slightly.

“Mother, it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Oh, I
do
know how you feel about Manpower, and Mesa, and genetic slavery. I won’t pretend that how
I
feel about them isn’t of reflection of what you—and Daddy—taught me to feel, either. But when the Ballroom came to me about this, I didn’t decide because of you, or because of Daddy. I decided because of
me—
because of who I am, and what
I
believe, and what my conscience demands of me. I couldn’t just walk away, knowing what I knew. That was the bottom line, Mother—not sitting on your lap when I was a kid and listening to you and Uncle Jacques talking about the ASL and the Ballroom. It was knowing that if I did something I might actually save at least a few lives from that sort of living hell…and that if I
didn’t
do something, no one else could.”

She looked down into her mother’s eyes.

“I couldn’t let that happen. I just…couldn’t.”

Allison Harrington looked up at her towering daughter for endless seconds, and then, slowly, she shook her own head.

“You’re wrong, you know,” she said softly, “it
is
my fault—mine and your father’s. After all,” she smiled hugely through a haze of tears, “we’re the ones who named you Honor.”

An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design

Mr. Hegel DiLutorio, CAPT, RMN, ret.
HMSS
Hephaestus
, 1906 PD

Author’s Note: The author developed a healthy respect for and interest in armor systems during thirty odd years spent cursing the stuff while trying to get at some component or other. He is greatly indebted to friends at BuShips and various design yards across the Manticore System and beyond for their patience and willingness to provide (always strictly unclassified) information. They are too numerous to name here but their contributions made this article possible. All his dates are Post Diaspora (PD), and all his errors are his own.

The last century of dramatic development in naval weaponry has driven constant co-evolution in starship passive protection systems. A starship’s main defenses might consist of electronic countermeasures, countermissiles, point defense laser clusters, and powerful gravitic sidewalls, but all too often the last line of defense between the spacer and vacuum is armor. Modern armor designs are able to protect vital components from beam attacks carrying energy enough to convert solid matter into plasma very much like that at the heart of a sun. How is this possible? The present work begins with a history of weapon threats to starships, goes on to examine the laser head armed impeller drive missile threat now emerging as a significant factor in armor design, and concludes with a description of the design process. The
Star Knight
-class heavy cruiser’s armor system is used as a practical example.
 

Deep Space Warfare from 1246 to the Present: A Short History of the Threat

The threats to starships are often classified by origin—natural or artificial. Spacers have been familiar with many of these threats since the first primitive chemical flights left Earth in the centuries before the Diaspora. The natural threats are meteorites of various kinds and radiation from various sources. The artificial ones that come most readily to mind are weapons but also include debris from human activity—a constant concern even after two thousand years of spaceflight and made more serious by the high relative velocities generated by impeller drives. A collision with even small debris at today’s relative velocities can produce catastrophic results quite as deadly as weapons fire unless proper safeguards are in place. Indeed, it was protection from the natural threats of micrometeorite impact, debris, and radiation that drove initial research into early spacecraft armors. Every threat has unique aspects and a proper treatment of armor design would examine their influence in detail. Bandwidth and the patience of editors constrain us here to pick just one threat whose influence has been growing in modern armor design.

It can safely be said that the impeller drive missile armed with laser heads is emerging as a significant anti-ship threat as the twentieth century of the Diaspora begins. The last few decades have certainly borne this out, though the ship-mounted graser and laser still reign supreme in short range combat. No single weapon type has ever been the central object of a longer arms race than the impeller missile. The laser head is merely the latest in a long line of developments. The thrusts and parries of the offensive and defensive schools within starship design circles are intimately connected with this amazing and terrible engine of destruction.

The impeller drive missile dates back to shortly after the introduction of the impeller drive itself in 1246 PD. The first small automated impeller test spacecraft were essentially missiles in all but intent. A single impeller ring, a short lived power supply, a guidance package, and a telemetry system were all mounted in a sturdy spaceframe which could withstand the notoriously unpredictable accelerations of these first generation drives. These early prototypes, massing thousands of tons, were uneconomical as weapons, but their test results spurred investment in the new technology. Widespread experimentation by several groups, notably Beowulf in the still young Solarian League, soon produced smaller more practical drives. The galaxy’s militaries were quick to recognize the possibilities of weaponization. The age of the impeller drive missile had begun.