Wasteland of Flint

Aboard the Cornuelle

Hadeishi entered a briefing room sandwiched in between the bridge and the officers' mess. His senior officers stood to attention beside their chairs. Kosho turned sideways and nodded as the chu-sa reached the head of the table and set down a v-pad and some printouts.

"Good evening," he said, unsealing his collar. "Sit, gentlemen, sit. We are off duty."

Everyone sat down, though he couldn't say any of them were "at ease." Sho-i Ko-hosei Smith, at the end of the table, was sitting at parade attention, hands clasped tight on an engineer's workpad. Hayes and Engineer-second Yoyontzin were equally stiff. Just to his right, Kosho was watching him evenly, her face expressionless.

"This is not traditional," Hadeishi said, shrugging out of his uniform jacket. "But I think it is necessary." A little old man in a leaf-green-and-brown kimono appeared and took the jacket away. Hadeishi spread out the v-pad and several papers. He looked around the table and pursed his lips. "We have to find this refinery ship swiftly. I fear our current approach will take too long to yield results. So — we need to try something different. Do any of you have any ideas?"

The officers looked nervously at each other, then back at the chu-sa. No one spoke. Hadeishi hid an expression of dismay, but he understood their wary surprise. He had served in the Fleet for nearly twenty years, on a dozen ships. In all that time, he'd never attended a staff meeting where the agenda, problems and solutions presented had not been decided in advance. A commander might consult with his exec or with senior department heads about specific technical issues but he did not discuss problems in an open forum. Meetings were a venue for the command authority — be he a ship's captain or an admiral — to issue orders, perhaps make a small speech and show honor to the Emperor.

Kosho, in particular, looked as if she'd sat on a porcupine. Hayes was surprised and Yoyontzin was petrified. Only young Smith-tzin — who had finally worked through Hadeishi's reference to being "off duty" — had relaxed at all, allowing himself to sit back in the chair.

"Does anyone want tea?" Hadeishi turned away from the table and lifted his chin at the attendant. The little old man blinked in surprise and then scurried off down the corridor to the officers' mess galley. When the chu-sa turned back, Kosho and Hayes were staring at him in amazement. "I am having tea," Hadeishi said, emulating Smith and leaning back in his chair.

"Here is our problem," he said, spreading his hands. "We are hunting for a relatively small object in a huge volume filled with a great deal of obscuring debris. Our objective is to find the refinery ship quickly and quietly and remove it, by one means or another, from this system."

The attendant sidled up to the table, attempting to be unobtrusive, and Hadeishi paused. The little old man froze, staring at him in something like horror, as the chu-sa gathered up the porcelain cups from the tray and handed them around. Kosho took her cup reflexively, then stared icily at her own hand, which seemed to have betrayed her.

"I'll pour," Hadeishi said to the attendant and waved him away. Clutching the tray to his chest, the little old man backed out of the room, eyes wide in fear. "Patrick, you take a great deal of sugar, I believe?"

"Hai," Hayes said weakly, goggling at the chu-sa. Hadeishi filled his cup, then pushed a fat green bowl toward him.

"Help yourself." Hadeishi turned politely to Kosho, who had frozen into complete immobility. "This is a particularly good bancha," he said, guiding her cup — still clutched in a tight grip — to the tabletop. Hadeishi caught her eye. "Not the nasty stuff I drink in the morning."

Both of the sho-sa's cheeks were suddenly suffused with two pale rose-colored spots. Hadeishi — though he felt tremendously cheerful — ignored her blush. He filled her cup halfway.

Neither Smith nor Yoyontzin wanted tea. The engineer was hunched down in his seat, trying to hide behind Kosho. The communications officer had finally realized there was a queer tone to the meeting, so he was trying to make himself as small as possible. Hayes had nearly emptied the sugar bowl into his cup before taking a long sip.

"How do we find the refinery quickly?" Hadeishi posed the question again and looked around at them expectantly.

"Not by poking around in the dark with a sharp stick," Hayes muttered, then froze. Kosho had turned her head to glare icily at him. The weapons officer became rather pale.

"I agree," Hadeishi said quietly. Kosho turned her head fractionally, her eyes narrowing.

"We are following Fleet doctrine," she said in a clipped, toneless voice. "Which is sound."

"It's too slow," Hadeishi said, leaning forward. "We don't have time to run down every particle trail and false reading our drones find. We do not have time to quarter this entire belt and peer in the radar shadow of every asteroid. We need to find the refinery now."

"Without going to active combat scanning," Kosho stated. Hadeishi nodded.

"What," the sho-sa said tentatively, "if we broadcast a message on the commercial comm channels, indicating a systemwide emergency. We could promise not to pursue or attack any ship immediately making gradient to hyperspace."

Hadeishi considered the proposal for a moment. Then he looked at the weapons officer. "Hayes-tzin, do you think the commander of the refinery ship would respond to such a message?"

Hayes blinked, stole a look at Kosho and then faced the chu-sa again. "Ah…probably not, sir. He'd think it was a trick."

"If the Palenque made transit immediately upon receiving the message," Kosho said, rather stiffly, "the wildcatters might become worried. The clumsiness of our message could be interpreted as honesty in a moment of crisis, rather than a ruse to draw them out."

"And then?" Hadeishi was almost smiling at his exec. "What happens if they appear on our sensors, engines hot?"

"If they are in weapons range," Kosho said, eyes glittering, "we disable their ship. HuГ©mac's Marines storm the refinery and we bring these criminals before an Imperial court."

Hayes looked questioningly at Hadeishi.

"Unfortunately," the chu-sa said, "we must operate under a constraint of silence. A broadcast message is out of the question. We cannot draw attention to ourselves with any kind of broad-spectrum event." Hadeishi nodded to Kosho. "So we cannot saturate the belt with mines, hoping to drive the refinery out of hiding."

"Very well." Kosho, to her credit, did not seem to have taken the rejection of her plan personally. "Then we will have to scan the entire belt very quickly, hoping to pick the refinery out of all this debris and rubble." The exec looked expectantly at young Smith-tzin at the end of the table. The sho-i ko-hosei swallowed nervously and nodded to both Hadeishi and Kosho.

"Leave to speak, sir?" Smith's voice was a little thin, but steady.

"Granted!" Hadeishi was impressed with the boy. Most midshipmen in the presence of command authority could barely stand up, much less speak. "You're sure you don't want some tea?"

"I'm fine, Hadeishi-tzin." Smith nodded in thanks. "I've been thinking about the same problem the last couple of watches. I mean — we can all see how slowly we're moving now — and I was wondering if there was a way to speed things up, search more of the volume at a time, you know, and I mentioned something to Kosho-tzin and she suggested I look at the specifications for the absorptive mesh on the skin of the ship and…" Smith had to stop and take a breath.

"Sho-i Ko-hosei Smith," Kosho said, smoothly interrupting the midshipman's rush of explanation, "has devised a means of improving the sensitivity of our gravitational field sensors."

"Go on." Hadeishi fought to keep from smiling broadly at his officers. In particular, at Kosho and Smith, who had obviously been trying to anticipate his wishes. What a blessing is a good exec, he thought, considering Susan Kosho fondly. For all her cold demeanor, she is a fine officer.

"Well, um, sir — you know we have a series of gravitational field sensors which let us track hyperspace transits, since they 'dimple' the g-field in the area where a ship made gradient. We also use them for navigational purposes, to avoid black holes and hyperspace eddies and so on. Well, a ship has mass so there is a faint distortion of the g-field around even the Cornuelle. I think…" Smith held up a v-pad showing a page of system circuit diagrams and equations. "I think we can tune the g-sensors on the Cornuelle to detect the mass displacement of a Tyr."

"Even if the refinery drive is shut down?" Hayes raised an eyebrow at the younger officer.

"Yes, Hayes-tzin, because we're going to be searching for the g-dimple caused by their antimatter pellet storage, not for an active A/M reactor." Smith started to grin, then composed himself.

"Storage? A/M doesn't mass more than any other particle — "

"True, true," Smith interrupted, "but antimatter is difficult to produce, so its packed super-densely in storage — I mean, positive particles are easy to find — and that makes a difference we can see. Well, I think we can see."

Hadeishi looked questioningly at Kosho. "Effective range?"

"Five or six light-minutes," she answered. "A very substantial volume."

The chu-sa nodded, fixing Smith with a considering stare. "Smith-tzin, why don't we use our gravity sensors this way as a matter of course? Why isn't this Fleet doctrine?"

"Speed, sir." Smith's face fell. "There's a lot of data to process. Normally, the system just watches for big differentials — a ship entering normal space throws a huge, easy to detect spike — but we need to reconfigure for a mass/density differential." He paged through his v-pad to another screen of equations and diagrams. "In this case, we're looking for an object making a sharper than expected g-dimple in local spacetime. So we've got to program the sensor comps to look for a specific, rather subtle scenario. And processing all this is going to take hours."

"How many?" Hadeishi was watching Kosho.

"Twenty to thirty hours to complete the first scan," the exec answered. Obviously, she'd already quizzed Smith to within an inch of his life about this proposal. "We need to extract all the gravitation and density readings from the navigation survey, then build a model of the area within range, then resample with the reconfigured g-sensor array. Then we can see if something falls out into our hands."

The chu-sa started to frown. "How extensively will sensor systems be degraded by this change?"

Smith swallowed nervously and looked hopefully at Kosho. The corner of the exec's wine-colored lips twitched. Hadeishi recognized the motion as the equivalent of a wry smile.

"While the array is in this mode, Chu-sa, we will be blind to gravitational events outside the immediate area of our detection sweep."

"So a ship could make gradient into, or out of, the system and we would be unaware."

Kosho inclined her head gracefully. "Yes. But inside the five to six light-minute range, we will have an excellent picture of the g-field and any related events."

"How long to switch the array between normal operation and this special mode?"

Smith shrank down in his chair, but Kosho merely gazed steadily at the chu-sa. "Five to six hours for the initial changeover, Hadeishi-tzin. Each skin array node will have to be reprogrammed and tuned by hand. We will, however, retain a comp image of the previous configuration for each node. Then, if we have to reset the nodes, we can do so very quickly."

Hadeishi gave her a look. He'd gone through more than one shipboard comp upgrade in his time. "Very quickly" meant one thing during normal operations and quite another in the heat of combat. He had a momentary vision of plunging into battle with the shipskin sensor array out of action. That would be unfortunate.

"Hayes-tzin, what do you think of this approach?"

The weapons officer's broad face was conflicted. "I'm worried, sir. If we take the g-array offline we'll be partially blind. I don't like that. On the other hand, we'll be able to search the belt far faster than we can now with the drones. And this way will be really, really quiet."

"What if we segment the shipskin nodes and only reconfigure half of them for this detailed search?" Hadeishi mused. "Leaving the other set for normal sensor work?"

The suggestion drew a slight frown from Kosho and hopeful looks from Hayes and Smith.

"Initial setup will be more complicated," the exec said. "We will have to divide the sensor feeds to the bridge into two discrete sets, which will require some work. The regular array will be reduced in capability, but we will not lose long-range g-spike detection."

"Combat effectiveness, Hayes-tzin?" Hadeishi raised an eyebrow at the weapons officer.

"Reduced, sir. Though truthfully there's a great deal of redundancy in the sensor array. We could probably lose half of the nodes and only be reduced ten to fifteen percent."

"Very well. Sho-sa Kosho, I entrust this project to you — with the able assistance of Smith-tzin, of course — and expect regular status reports. This has priority over other duties. Thai-i Hayes, pull in the Outriders for refueling and a maintenance check. Yoyontzin — " the engineer-second started with surprise and tentatively peered around the slim, stiff shape of the exec. "Master's Mate Helsdon and his section are reassigned to provide Kosho-tzin with the hands she needs to change out the sensor array. You will take charge of the Outrider refit when the drones are back in bay."

The engineer-second looked a little queasy. Hadeishi's eyes narrowed fractionally. I'll have to discuss this one with Isoroku when he's back aboard. But not now.

Hadeishi gave them all a stern look, saying "The Emperor expects you to do your duty!"

Then he stood up, forcing them to do the same. "Dismissed."

Kosho did not join the general stampede for the door, taking a moment to straighten her already perfectly arranged v-pad and notes on the table in front of her.

Hadeishi waited for the passageway door to close before he spoke. "Yes, Susan? Is something bothering you?"

"Will you be holding more of these meetings in the future?" The woman's face showed even less expression than usual. "Will you be soliciting comment and advice from junior officers?"

"If circumstances warrant," Hadeishi replied, wondering at her choice of words. They had a familiar ring to them… Ah yes, he remembered, recalling an Academy first-year course, circumstances of sedition and mutiny aboard ship. "We will not," he continued, "be discussing opinions of command authority competence or operational concerns."

"I am very glad to hear that, Chu-sa." Kosho seemed to relax a fraction, though it was very difficult to tell. "Did you know Smith-tzin and I had been working on this g-array reconfig?"

Hadeishi nodded. "I did. Main comp informed me when the sho-i ko-hosei requsted data about systems outside of his security area. I saw you had approved the request."

"You said nothing."

"There was no reason to say anything, Sho-sa. Both of you are fine officers and understood the problem at hand. I saw no benefit to be gained from interfering in your work."

Now Kosho did relax and Hadeishi felt a sudden warm affection for her. She worries about the boy, he thought. "You did well to encourage him, Susan. He's very bright."

"Hai," she said, making a properly polite bow. "But he does not understand Fleet tradition."

"I know. He's still young and he's only served aboard the Cornuelle." Hadeishi sighed, stroking his beard. "I fear he will not do so well if transferred to another ship. We will have to help him if something like that happens."

As a general rule, Fleet did not like to shift crews around from ship to ship. The Great Clans, in particular, resisted attempts to reform the recruitment and staffing policies of Fleet. However, as men and women advanced in rank, they were often required to change posting to secure the proper duty slot. Within a clan-squadron, a junior officer would be taken care of by higher-ranking relatives. In such a case, Smith would be posted to a heavier-gauge ship — a battle cruiser or a dreadnought — where he could find clan-relatives to guide and protect him in the new environment.

The Cornuelle, unfortunately, was on detached duty — another result of Hadeishi's low status in Fleet — and if Smith were promoted as he should be, then a posting to an entirely different squadron would be inevitable. Circumstances weighed against the bright young Englishman finding as understanding and lenient a commander as Hadeishi.

"We could keep him here, Chu-sa," Kosho offered.

Hadeishi shrugged. "We've a full allotment of junior lieutenants, unless someone dies or requests a transfer off-ship."

"What about Yoyontzin?"

Hadeishi's lips quirked into a half-smile. He looked sideways at Kosho. "You think he will suffer an accident in the coming action? A regrettable incident with a shorting panel or falling structural beam?"

Kosho drew herself up stiffly. "Of course not! I suspect he may request a transfer when this duty patrol is complete."

"Well," Hadeishi said, giving her a considering look. "I would certainly give such a request my full attention."

The exec nodded, gathered up her v-pad and notes and bowed.

"Dismissed." Hadeishi watched her stride out. Poor Yoyontzin, he thought in amusement. Caught between Kosho and Isoroku…like a bug between granite and steel.