Valiant Dust

2

Aberdeen Fleet Gunnery Range, Caledonia System

“Main battery, engage target Alpha,” Lieutenant Commander Hiram Randall said in a calm and unhurried manner from his station at Hector’s tactical console. “Helm, take us to the port side of Alpha at eleven thousand klicks.” The tall, laconic Aquilan lounged in his battle couch as if he didn’t have a care in the world, one hand tugging absently at the small dark goatee he wore. As head of Hector’s Operations Department, Randall served as the tactical officer when Hector was at battle stations.

“Engage target Alpha, aye,” Sikander repeated. He was stationed at the cruiser’s master weapons console, the customary battle station for the ship’s gunnery officer, just a few paces behind the tactical station. It was Randall’s job to decide which targets to engage and in what order, and it was Sikander’s job to make sure that whatever Tactical wanted hit got hit hard. Captain Markham observed the exercise from her own station in the middle of the bridge. By long-standing tradition she left the details of the engagement to the tactical officer and focused on maintaining her overall situational awareness. If Randall started to do something she didn’t want done, she’d step in—but so far Randall handled Hector’s pass through the Navy’s Aberdeen firing range perfectly.

Sikander checked his displays to confirm that Hector’s sensors held a good lock on the target drone, and keyed the engage icon, selecting the ship’s forward kinetic-cannon mounts for the job. His battle couch overlooked the stations for the main-battery fire control, secondary-battery fire control, and the torpedo battery, each manned by a junior officer of the Gunnery Department. In fact, Sikander could easily see the main-battery console, manned by Ensign Michael Girard, from his station. Girard would actually do the shooting.

“Target Alpha, Mr. Girard,” Sikander said. “Blue shot only!” The engage order on the console sufficed, of course, but Sikander felt it couldn’t hurt to be a little specific the first few times he worked with his new team.

“Commencing fire!” Girard replied, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. One of the youngest officers on board, only five months out of the Academy, he still looked like a schoolboy with his slight build and unruly hair. What Girard lacked in experience, he made up for with quick reflexes and a natural aptitude for his battery console: Even as he acknowledged the order, his fingers flew over the controls. From somewhere forward of the bridge and a few decks above, Sikander heard the electric whine of Hector’s turrets slewing their weapons onto target, followed by the deep, thrumming pulses as the electromagnetic coils launched their heavy slugs at the target drone. At the same time, Hector’s acceleration changed, the bow dropping and rolling left as the chief pilot at the helm maneuvered to keep the drone at optimal range. The motion pushed Sikander deeper into his battle couch for a moment until the ship’s internal compensators caught up.

Sikander ignored the ship’s movement and kept his eyes on the integrated sensor display. Kinetic rounds, even the general-purpose ones, moved fast: the big Mark V kinetic cannons in Hector’s main battery accelerated a ten-kilogram rod of tungsten alloy to a velocity of more than three thousand kilometers per second. Each rod hurtling downrange was moving at one percent of the speed of light when it left the driver coils. Even so, flight time between Hector’s cannon snouts and the armored drone stretched out for three full seconds. The target drone twisted and rolled, maneuvering like an enemy destroyer trying to throw off the cruiser’s aim … and Girard’s first volley missed, blasting through empty space just behind the drone.

The young officer raced through a set of corrections and fired again, this time overcorrecting and leading the target too much. Sikander’s display plotted the path of the missed shots into the blue-and-brown mass of the gas giant Aberdeen, which served as a convenient backstop to the firing range. K-rounds that could have leveled a small city vanished into the huge planet without a splash.

“Let’s tighten it up, Guns,” Randall drawled. “Otherwise we’re going to have a long day on the range.”

“Sorry, sir,” Ensign Girard stammered. “I’m on it!” He fired again. A little more than ten thousand kilometers away from Hector, the kinetic cannon’s ten-kilo solid shot slammed into the drone’s armored side. Fortunately for the drone, the practice round—or “blue shot,” in Commonwealth Navy parlance—was built to shatter and dissipate most of its energy on impact. A real war shot from Hector’s main battery would have delivered energy comparable to a small nuclear explosion, and not even the toughest synthetic alloys and nanoengineered armor could stand up to that kind of abuse. The practice round still hit with enough force to crack one of the drone’s replaceable armor plates and knock the robotic vessel into an end-over-end tumble; the drone began to flash its I’m dead beacon.

“Target Alpha destroyed,” Sikander reported with a note of satisfaction. He couldn’t help it; the little boy in him liked playing with the biggest firecrackers he could get his hands on, and the Mark V kinetic cannon was a very big firecracker indeed.

Hiram Randall promptly deflated whatever momentary satisfaction he might have felt. “About time,” the operations officer drawled. “Three salvos is two too many.”

Sikander suppressed a sharp retort. The firing range was supposed to be challenging, and the drone operators tried hard to make shots miss. Besides, Girard was a gunnery officer, not an ops officer, and that meant it was Sikander’s place to come down on the young ensign, not Randall’s. He’d intended to keep quiet and do a lot of watching on his first live-fire shoot with his team, but he certainly didn’t like another officer chastising one of his new subordinates. Or does Randall think he needs to do my job for me?

Sometimes the best thing to say was as little as you could. “Aye,” he answered, mostly to let Captain Markham—and Ensign Girard—know that he’d heard the criticism but wasn’t about to add to it. Markham said nothing, but Sikander was sure she was paying close attention. As for Girard, Sikander couldn’t see his face from his battle couch, but he thought he could make out a flush coloring the younger officer’s neck as he waited for his orders.

“New target, target Bravo, bearing three-three-five, range twenty thousand k,” Sublieutenant Keane, the sensor officer, reported. He was stationed on the right-hand side of the bridge, forward of the tactical officer’s position. “New target, target Charlie, bearing one-zero-zero high, range fifteen k.”

“Commence tracking targets Bravo and Charlie,” Randall ordered.

“Let’s get ready to split our fire,” Sikander told Girard quietly, making a point of keeping his voice unexcited. He tagged the new icons on his board, marking Bravo for the forward mounts and Charlie for the aft mounts. “Take your time, and let the targeting system steady up just a bit more on the firing solution. At this distance we’re not getting good returns on a small target like a drone.”

“You’ve done some shooting with the Mark V board, sir?” Girard asked.

“I just finished the refresher course at Skye,” Sikander replied, referring to the Navy’s gunnery school. He had to work twice as hard on his technical proficiency as a native-born Aquilan; if he was anything less than very good, his fellow officers might wonder whether he was displacing a more qualified officer for political purposes. Fortunately, he’d always had a good feel for shooting, whether it was a hunting rifle or a target pistol. Targeting computers shot far faster and more accurately than humans, but enemy helmsmen had a way of never being quite exactly where a computer predicted. Human intuition and anticipation in just the right amount made a noticeable difference in the accuracy of most combat shooting. “Relax, Mr. Girard. This is the fun part of the job.”

Girard glanced over his shoulder, startled, and managed a weak smile. “Yes, sir.”

“Main battery, engage target Charlie,” Lieutenant Commander Randall ordered.

“Engage target Charlie, aye,” Sikander responded, and keyed the engage icon on his board. He glanced back to Girard. “Hit him just when he finishes a jink. Fire when you’re ready.”

“Commencing fire,” Girard reported. He pressed the fire button, and once again Hector’s hull quivered and thrummed, this time from somewhere a little aft of Sikander’s station, as the kinetic cannons opened up. Girard’s first volley missed again—not entirely surprising, since it was a significantly longer shot than Alpha, and Hector continued to maneuver. But the ensign’s second volley scored a direct hit and hammered the small drone.

“Target Charlie destroyed,” Sikander reported.

“Very well. Engage target Bravo,” Randall ordered.

“New targets Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot up on the board!” Sublieutenant Keane announced.

“Engage target Bravo, aye,” Sikander acknowledged. He keyed the engage icon and started figuring out how to assign the ship’s cannons to the next batch of targets. Ensign Girard hunched closer over his console, concentrating intently on the task at hand; the atmosphere in the combat center grew tense as more targets began to appear, and the pace of the exercise rapidly increased.

For the next twenty minutes, the cruiser drove aggressively through the firing range, hammering first one drone and then another as the range operators presented a dizzying array of targets for Hector’s main battery of K-cannons. They were relatively simple weapons; the principles had been worked out more than a thousand years ago. A kinetic cannon was simply a very powerful coil gun or mass driver, a tube ringed by electromagnets that accelerated a hunk of metal to the highest speed possible. But, as with so many things, the devil was in the details, and design trade-offs forced difficult choices on weapon designers. Unlike a gunpowder cannon of ancient Earth, a kinetic cannon wasn’t measured by the heft of its projectile—its power was really a function of the velocity the cannon could impart. High velocities meant more impact energy and a reduced flight time for the kinetic round. The longer it took a round to reach its target, the more time the target had to detect the incoming round and dodge the attack. In general, flight times of more than seven or eight seconds were very unlikely to result in hits, unless the target was completely surprised or unable to maneuver. A battleship-caliber kinetic cannon threw rounds close to five thousand kilometers per second, so its effective range was perhaps thirty-five or forty thousand kilometers. A destroyer’s smaller K-cannon might only achieve 2,000 kps, which meant that its effective range was more like fifteen thousand kilometers. As a light cruiser, Hector carried K-cannons that fell in between the two, and threw metal at a velocity of a little more than three thousand kilometers per second; she fought most effectively at ranges of twenty-five thousand kilometers or less.

However, velocity wasn’t the only consideration for kinetic-weapon design. There was actually such a thing as too much velocity. A K-round traveling too fast might punch completely through its target, a less damaging interaction than transferring all of its staggering energy into whatever it hit. After all, any of the projectile’s energy that it retained after passing through the target was energy that did not get used to break things inside the target. A Mark V round fired at full power against an unarmored freighter would leave two neat, round five-centimeter holes in the freighter’s sides unless it happened to hit something big and heavy, such as an engine casing or a structural frame, in the target. But slowing down the shot of course increased flight time and decreased effective range. To counter this, kinetic projectiles came in “hard” armor-piercing rounds and “soft” general-purpose rounds, which were intended to squash and fragment in the moment of impact and therefore dump as much energy as possible into whatever they hit. Soft K-rounds were soft only in the most relative sense of the word, of course—if you fired taffy at 3,000 kps into a steel hull, you’d still punch a hole in it.

Most things CSS Hector would be expected to shoot at would be armored. Nothing could really stand up to ten kilos of tungsten moving at one percent of the speed of light, but layered armor plates and voids, thorough compartmentalization, and sturdy construction went a long way toward containing damage and protecting vital systems; Aquilan material technology could produce some very tough armor indeed. All these different considerations led the various navies of the great powers to make their own subtly different design trade-offs. The Dremish made a cult of achieving the highest launch velocities possible, trying to get the best range they could manage. The Aquilan navy preferred to give up some range and velocity in order to get a slightly better rate of fire and maximize energy transfer for K-cannon rounds. The Nyeirans, on the other hand, favored buckshot-like projectiles that delivered dozens of half-kilo darts to the general vicinity of the target instead of a single penetrator. Any of the schemes was lethal, but Sikander supposed that the ongoing debate about the advantages of one system over another gave naval experts across the galaxy a way to pass the time.

He observed carefully as Ensign Girard fell into the rhythm of locking on to targets, selecting rounds, and choosing firing profiles. Girard’s quite good when he stops thinking about what he’s doing, Sikander decided. The console skill Sikander had had to work so hard to attain came naturally to Girard; native Aquilans were immersed in modern information technology from early childhood, after all, and naval systems designers took advantage of a hundred everyday interface conventions and shortcuts Aquilans took for granted. Maybe all Girard needed was a little more confidence in his abilities.

Other than Girard’s jitters, the rest of the weapons team seemed to function smoothly. Sublieutenant Karsen Reno, seated beside Girard, handled Hector’s secondary battery of UV lasers adroitly. At their posts in the ship’s mounts, the gunner’s mates responded well to simulated battle damage and casualties. That was Darvesh Reza’s battle station. In his role as an acting chief petty officer he’d been assigned to the gun crew in the number-one main-battery turret, since marines usually doubled as gunner’s mates during their shipboard service. Darvesh was not an Aquilan marine, of course, but he had similar training, and he’d served in gun crews during Sikander’s previous shipboard assignments. Sikander noted that Hector’s gun crews shot quite well when the cruiser reached the part of the course where she was required to fire in local control—practice in case the cruiser’s centralized fire control was ever taken out by a bridge hit.

I’ll have to ask Darvesh for his impressions of the turret team after the exercise, but it certainly seems like they’re pretty sharp. Captain Markham was right—the Gunnery Department is in good shape. My predecessor must have known what he was doing. That would make Sikander’s job easier. Getting the best performance out of a good team was its own kind of challenge, but he’d much rather concentrate on helping people to excel than on correcting basic deficiencies. It meant that he would be hard-pressed to show a lot of improvement with the department, but Captain Markham seemed to have a good grasp on the state of the gunnery team; Sikander doubted that she would expect him to keep bettering range scores that were already pretty good.

“Mr. Randall, let’s use the torps on this last target,” Captain Markham said as they approached the final portion of the range. “I seem to recall that we’ve got practice weapons in tubes one and two.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Randall replied. He glanced back at Sikander and the weapons team. “Stand by for torpedo engagement. Target Sierra, two torps, range ten thousand kilometers.”

“Solving for target Sierra, aye,” Sikander replied. He punched the proper icons into his console and sent the orders to Sublieutenant Angela Larkin, Hector’s torpedo officer. She sat in the battle station beside Karsen Reno, and so far today she hadn’t been very busy. Most firing-range work revolved around the main battery of K-cannons, because warp torpedoes were too bulky and expensive to use up in practice shots. They packed enough punch to threaten a battleship, but Hector carried only a dozen of the weapons. In a real engagement, the Aquilan cruiser would save the torpedoes for a high-value target she could hit at optimum range. Warp torpedoes left normal space during their run to the target, and required tricky timing to return to reality at their detonation point. Too soon, and the torpedo would be exposed to enemy defensive fire. Too late, and the dense matter of the target structure would incinerate the torpedo, preventing detonation. It would still be a damaging hit, but not the spectacular explosion expected.

“Good solution on target Sierra,” Angela Larkin reported. She was a native of New Perth, slender with light brown corkscrew curls in a short mop, and her Standard Anglic had the soft burring accent common in the system. “Ready on tubes one and two.”

“As torpedoes bear, fire,” Randall said. “Helm, bring us to zero-three-five, full acceleration. Let’s make these count.” The cruiser came around toward the right, and the drive plates applied a steady but noticeable push to the center of Sikander’s back. Any ship making a torpedo run naturally wanted to close the distance fast, and give the enemy less opportunity to rake her at close range. He watched as the range to the last target drone ticked down rapidly. Larkin hovered over her torpedo console, making small adjustments to the weapons’ programming in the last few moments before firing. The better the sensor picture when the torpedoes launched, the better their chance to land hits.

The range indicator turned green. Hector shuddered as the magnetic tubes hurled the torpedoes, each one massing close to two thousand kilos, downrange. Within a kilometer of the launch tubes, each weapon vanished into its own warp bubble, driving invisibly toward the target. “Two torpedoes away!” Larkin reported. “Run time ten seconds.”

“Very well,” Captain Markham replied. She leaned back in her chair. “Now we wait.”

Sikander took a moment to stretch, deliberately keeping his hands away from the console. Maintaining any kind of telemetry link with a torpedo in flight was impossible. Objects in warp could be detected with difficulty from normal space, but it was maddeningly imprecise, since they weren’t really in the universe. That was the point of the warp torpedo—a physical missile maneuvering in real space between two modern warships was just too slow and fragile to make it through most targets’ point defenses, but torpedoes didn’t offer the enemy anything to shoot down, because they weren’t even there until they struck. It was the same principle that allowed starships to travel faster than light, but torpedoes didn’t compress space for speed, they merely bent it a little to hide as they approached their target. They didn’t need to be fast to be lethal.

“Five seconds,” Angela Larkin announced. “Four … three … two … one … impact!”

Right on cue, a bright burst of light announced the arrival of Hector’s torpedo spread. Unlike the drones they’d fired on with the kinetic cannons, drone Sierra simulated complete annihilation—a real torpedo’s nuclear warhead would vaporize a small target vessel, after all. “Hit!” Larkin called out. She barely stifled a whoop, and settled for waving a fist in the air.

“My compliments to the torpedo battery,” Randall drawled. “You certainly showed that drone what’s what.”

Sikander nodded in appreciation; sure, it was a practice-range shot, but it was good to see that the torpedo crew knew their business. “Nice shot, Ms. Larkin,” he said quietly.

“Hector, this is Aberdeen Range Control,” the comm unit crackled. “Firing run complete. Your weighted score is eighty-six point nine. You passed Paris, but Pandarus shot an eighty-nine nine, over.”

Captain Markham grimaced. “Damn. I owe Captain Yarrow a bottle of scotch.” She keyed the comm unit in her battle couch. “Aberdeen, this is Hector actual. Thank you for the range time, pleasure working with you today. Hector out.”

“Second place to Pandarus. I suppose it sets the bar for next time,” Randall observed.

“So it seems,” Markham replied. “All right, let’s recover our practice torps and be on our way.”

Sikander frowned at his display. They’d launched two torpedoes, but he had only one torpedo beacon on his screen. The practice torpedoes were designed to be recovered and reused, since they were quite expensive. Each one was a miniature ship, after all—the sort of hardware the Navy wanted to keep track of. He leaned forward and spoke quietly to Larkin. “Ms. Larkin, do you have contact with torpedo two?”

“Number two?” Larkin tapped her display, then began rapping out more commands. She muttered under her breath.

“Ms. Larkin?” Sikander repeated.

The young woman shook her head in disgust. “No contact with the second torpedo. It hasn’t emerged from its bubble.”

Well, that’s not supposed to happen, Sikander told himself. Torpedoes could return to normal space a few seconds early or late, but they very definitely returned—the warp generator cut off when the weapon decided it had been in its warp bubble long enough to reach its target. The torp had launched with good telemetry, so what had gone wrong? “Check the program,” he told Larkin.

“I am!” Larkin snapped—not a very respectful reply, but Sikander let it go without correction for the moment. The torpedo officer was obviously busy.

“What seems to be the trouble, Mr. North?” Captain Markham asked.

“The second torpedo is still bubbled, ma’am,” Sikander answered. “We’re forty seconds over program. I think we lost it.”

Heads turned throughout the bridge. “Lost it?” Randall snapped. “What kind of program did you punch in? It was a straight shot on a practice range.”

Sikander glared at the operations officer. He was a department head, too, and he didn’t answer to Hiram Randall once they secured from exercises. “We’re checking the program now.”

Elise Markham gave him a sharp look. “Please do, Mr. North,” she said. “That’s five million credits of torpedo now roaming around loose. We need to know where and when it intends to pop out again.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sikander called up the ship’s info assistant on his console and duplicated the torpedo-control console’s log for the last half hour, scrolling down to check over every command Larkin had entered during the range run. Building the attack profile for a warp torpedo required far more programming than any human could do in the space of a few moments, but the engineers who’d designed the weapons-system controls had realized that; the attack program really consisted of only a dozen or so selections and variables that the user could assemble and set with a few quick gestures on the console. As far as he could tell from a quick inspection, Larkin’s settings seemed fine, but she did have several personalized macros saved on her console. Many people liked to set up their own preferences and shortcuts for such things, but he’d have to pore over those to see exactly what she’d entered.

“The program is fine,” Larkin announced. Naturally she’d finished going over it much faster than Sikander would have; native Aquilans raced through computer tasks that he had to work through with a good deal of care. “Both torpedoes had the identical attack program. Number one worked, so it must be a hardware fault on number two.”

“Which, unfortunately, is not available for inspection,” Captain Markham said. She shook her head. “Damn. All right, then. Mr. Randall, advise the range of our lost torpedo and make sure you give them all the firing parameters. It’s probably never coming back, but they need to know. And tell the XO we’ll need to get out the Admiralty report for lost ordnance as soon as practicable.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Randall replied. He didn’t bother to glare at Sikander or Larkin, but he didn’t really need to.

“Mr. North, better pull the maintenance records for our wayward torpedo and see if there’s anything in the previous diagnostics that might explain where it went.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sikander answered. “We’ll look over the launch-tube mechanisms, too.” He’d also take a good long look at Larkin’s programming, just in case. He didn’t think she would deliberately attempt to conceal an error—that was an excellent way to turn an unfortunate accident into a career-ending blunder—but she’d reviewed her own work in quite a hurry, and she might have overlooked something.

“Good,” the captain replied. She unstrapped from her battle couch and stood. “You have the deck, Mr. Randall. Secure from gunnery exercises and lay a minimum-time course for Fleet Base. Maybe we can beat the paperwork home.”