The Sirens of Space (19 page)

“
Systems?”

“
Computer gives us an eighty-one, Mr.
Ashton,” said Chief Andersen, the yeoman assisting them on the
bridge while the captain made up his mind on permanent assignments.
“That’s the best score we’ve ever gotten.”

“
All right, take ten. But don’t any of
you leave the bridge.”

“
Unless— ”

“
Right you are, Miss Palmer. Unless
you’re needed in the head, as Chief Connors would say.”

Jeremy wandered off the bridge. The
captain’s chair was the hardest bridge station by far, and he
needed some air and something cool to drink. The water fountain in
the hallway leading to the bridge shell would do quite nicely, he
thought. He had to clear his head before facing another round in
the hot seat.

When Jeremy had gone, Talbert spun the
navigator’s chair halfway around, then rose to stretch his legs. He
was a tall man, with dark features contracting into a permanent
scowl. His jet black hair was combed straight back, and body hair
seemed to ooze from every pore not covered by his standard
blues.

“
I won’t repeat this in front of
Ashton,” Talbert said; in Jeremy’s absence he was the highest
ranking officer on the bridge. “But I could strangle that witless
Isitian.”

“
How so?” asked Underwood, the
communications officer. A technician through and through, he could
not understand why he had to participate in these endless bridge
drills when there was still work to do on the communications
systems on board. He hesitated mentioning this to Mr. Ashton, who
seemed to have enough troubles of his own these days.

“
I’ll tell you, Lieutenant—that maniac
has ruined the navigation computer. Completely ruined it! He
reprogrammed the damn thing so that it doesn’t respond the way it
should. Fixed it, he says. But now it’s all wrong. It’s set to
different guideposts. I have to relearn everything.”

“
I’ll tell you what I don’t like,”
said Palmer. “I don’t like the fact that we’re up here slaving our
butts away while he’s gallivanting around the ship without a care
in the world. The only time I’ve seen him up here is once after
drills. And all he did then was pace around and about the bridge,
listening to the computer telling him when the guns were fully
charged—over and over and over again. Then he left, right as time
neared for our second session of the day. It’s bad for morale. I
mean, what does he think? That he’s too good to drill with us on
the bridge?”

Janet Mendelson had vowed never again to
defend Cook to his detractors, and had succeeded since coming
aboard. When put to the test, she found that old habits were hard
to outgrow.

“
Actually,” she said matter-of-factly,
“he is.”

“
Oh, really?” scoffed Talbert. “And I
suppose pacing around an empty bridge is supposed to give him some
sort of mystique—like the ghost of the
Canada Royal
?”

“
He’s getting a feel for the rhythm of
the ship,” Janet said, to the disbelieving groans of the
others.

“
Right.”

“
I know I can’t explain it,” Janet
responded defensively. “But he was something of a musician in his
younger days, and that’s how he senses the way the ship will
respond, and how to time his commands. That’s why he’s having
Jeremy conduct the bridge drills. Cook has better things to do with
his time. He prefers to be visible— ”

”
I can imagine some of those better
things,” Talbert sneered. “Though I always thought it took two to
tango. And he must be so lonely with his dance partner busy on the
bridge all day.”

Janet blushed a furious red, and struggled
to maintain her temper. “I’ve never said that Cook wasn’t a
jerk—although, Mr. Talbert, I can already tell that he will not be
the biggest jerk aboard this ship. But I’ll tell you this: he is
the best captain any of us will ever serve under.”

“
The voice of experience, Missy?”
Talbert said wickedly. Titters echoed across the bridge and burned
in Janet’s ears.

“
The voice of experience is telling
you,” she shot back angrily, “that when Captain Cook finally does
come to the bridge, you, Commander Talbert, will have the most
difficult time of any of us. The captain is hard—mark me, very
hard—on his navigators.”

Janet slumped back in her chair. She had no
stomach for Talbert’s salacious smirk. Besides, Jeremy was due back
on the bridge any time now, and she wanted to practice their last
maneuver. Even if she had brought them smartly within striking
distance, it had been far too sloppy.

The voices around her soon faded from her
awareness, leaving her alone with her thoughts and her professional
pride. The captain was hard on his navigator, she mused bitterly,
replaying the last “Hard a-Starboard” to see where she’d gone
wrong. But he was even harder on his helmsman.

“
The
Constantine
isn’t where she belongs!”
barked the image on the monitor screen. “Explain yourself,
Commander!”

Cold and austere, Commodore Jefferson
McKinley Jones had a reputation for tactical brilliance, but he was
not the most patient commander in the fleet. He’d won the gold
medal at the semi-annual maneuvers five times running, and didn’t
like having his orders ignored. Especially when his deployment
instructions were being disputed by a hot shot newcomer. The Jones
temper was legendary, and his fiery blue eyes looked like they
could burn a hole through space itself.

“
We are the only ship in
this sector, Commodore,” Cook replied earnestly. “If the enemy
attacks us here, they’ll open a breach ten klicks wide, along our
entire flank. In my opinion, this is precisely where the enemy will
strike—because it’s precisely where we’ve given them an
opening.”

“
Those morons from Looking
Glass couldn’t strike an asteroid if they were sitting on it,”
Jones snapped. “I have McIntyre’s whole attack wing pinned
down
over here
—and
this
is where I want you.”

“
With all due respect,
Commodore....”

“
No, Cook—you get your
sorry Isitian ass here, on the double. And bring your damn ship
with you.”

Janet couldn’t understand why the Skipper
was being so stubborn. The skies in front of them were clear, and
most of the action was far to the east. The wing commander’s orders
seemed perfectly reasonable to her, and Skipper had already pushed
his orders to the limit.

“
Commodore— ”

“
Now, Commander,” the
commodore snarled.

“
Commander Cook—activity
on portside, Screen Number Two,” came an accented voice from the
systems desk. The executive officer turned to face the command
seat, panic in his eyes.

“
We are under attack,”
said François LaRue.

Janet glanced at the screen and gasped.
Across the entire sector, hundreds of ships from the Red Fleet had
appeared, heading right toward their position.

“
Commodore...,” began the
Skipper.

“
Hold them as best you
can,” Jones fumed.“We’ll be along as soon as we disengage
here.
St. George
out!”

“
Mr. LaRue, sound battle
stations. Helm, come about—heading 770, ten degrees north.
Weapons—charge the forward shields and stand by the starboard
guns.

“
Mr.
Cardinale—”

“
Sir!” replied the
navigator, moving to the edge of his chair; Cook rose from the
command chair and tapped him on the shoulder.

“
Stand down.”

“
Commander!” the young
officer protested.

“
Helm—take us due north,
250 degrees.”

Without thinking, Janet lifted the ship from
its directional plane, taking it well above the Red Fleet’s vector
of attack.

“
No disrespect intended,
Lieutenant,” Cook said, physically ushering his navigator from his
station, “and I apologize for any inconvenience. You may remain on
the bridge—sit at the command chair, if you like. But things will
be a bit dicey for the foreseeable future—we’re going to have to
move very quickly—and I won’t have time to be giving you
orders.”

“
Sir— !”

“
Command
seat—
now
!” barked
Cook.

As the Skipper plopped into the seat beside
her, Janet felt her heart racing. They’d never practiced it this
way. And there was no way they were going to be able to stand
against all those ships.

“
Just follow the plots on
your screen,” Cook whispered to her, “and hope for the
best.”

“
I just hope you know what
you’re doing, “ she replied softly. “We never trained for this, you
know.” She saw the navigation arc plotted—a tight line that would
bring their ship racing along the top of the enemy fleet. She
adjusted her instruments and took a deep breath.

“
No promises, Missy,” said
Cook, his eyes fixed on the monitors, his fingers racing over the
navigation controls. “I haven’t trained for it, either. Nobody ever
trains for this sort of thing, when it comes right down to it. I’m
making this up as we go along.

“
Weapons—blank all shields
except those on the keel, and charge all forward guns.”

“
Aye sir.”

“
Helm—slow to
C-2.”

“
Guns amain,
Commander.”

Soon, the
Constantine
swooped down
to confront the advanced line of the Red Fleet, and Janet felt
herself becoming one with the ship. Her world was the Skipper’s
voice, and she found herself bending along with the effortless arcs
he plotted and re-plotted on her screen. Soon, the rest of the crew
began bouncing off walls and ceilings as the two of them sent the
ship darting and weaving like a whole swarm of bees, bringing the
enemy attack wing nearly to a halt as the lone Blue ship scored hit
after hit. Before long they had thoroughly disrupted the Red
formation, luring two squadrons of Red attackers away from the main
body of their fleet to deal with the source of the annoyance,
grinding the entire Red attack to a halt.

But the battle didn’t last
long. The
Constantine
couldn’t stand forever against an entire attack wing. Five
minutes later, the grading computers scored a kill, relieving
the
Constantine
from further participation in the maneuvers. A minute later
the Blue Fleet arrived to begin their counterattack.

Except for the ship’s
navigator, and the Skipper, the bridge crew of the
Constantine
was
ecstatic. They’d managed to fend off the entire enemy fleet
single-handedly. At least for a time. And, after all, their deaths
were only theoretical. It wouldn’t matter that some desk jockey
muckety-muck would later disqualify them for consideration for the
gold medal for the best performance by a ship of the line, because
their ship didn’t survive the engagement. They’d proven
themselves—to each other, and to the rest of the fleet.

And none of them would ever look at the
Skipper in quite the same way again.

* * *

“Swing that
lantern this
way, Crewman. We need better light to check the
connection.”

Chief Andersen waited as the redshirt
clambered over the connector cables. The engine coils were always
the trickiest part of a ship to unglitch. Even on a frigate, the
coils never worked quite right until the ship had been in space for
at least a month, letting the crew figure out what was wrong under
conditions of actual use. And the eight-foot high,
straighter-than-a-preacher coils on the smaller ships were child’s
play, compared to those on a cruiser or starship. Omni-directional
steerage may have made Terran warships more maneuverable, but it
made their propulsion system hopelessly complex. Instead of beaming
the engine’s subspace energy waves forward in single-directioned
simplicity, cruiser coils—or their twenty-foot high cousins on the
larger starships—circled the ship in arcs of coiled power,
spiraling outward from the outer edge of the interior plating to
the final abutments of the inner hull, interlaced with
multidirectional links to the power release valves of the outer
hull. This let the helm send the ship in any direction at full
power while maintaining a constant forward view. It was a
masterwork of engineering but a technician’s nightmare, and the
failure of the lighting system wasn’t making their job any
easier.

“
Crewman?”

“
Here you go, Chief.” Crewman
Apprentice Delaney stopped to wipe his brow. Even with the lights
out, the inner hull was like a steam bath. The poor ventilation
made the work seem harder, and beads of sweat poured from their
bodies like steam from a kettle. With a third of the crew split
into inspection teams, readying the coils still promised to take
forever. It was the single most hated job on a starship. It was
also the most important, for only with the system functioning
perfectly, with all relays operational, could the ship perform as
it should in space. A starship with plugged power valves was like
an eagle flying with a sprained wing.

“
What’s it look like on the other
side?”

“
Same as before, Chief,” breathed
Delaney. “Ramsey and Esshaki keep double-checking the B-12 relay,
but the lattice gauge still shows a blockage. Either the gauge is
wrong, or it’s fucked up somewhere along the line. All the same,
I’d hate to trudge all the way back to Supply, only to find out
that we’ve wasted another day’s work and have to start all over
again from 90-starboard-20.”