Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship Read online

  "I understand that, sir," she said. "It was just an observation. The last cruiser I was on had much more room and we weren't tasked with cruises even half as long as this ship sees."

  "I've read about the ship you were on, Commander," Jackson said with a chuckle. "It was only commissioned five years ago. A lot of advancements in ship design since this destroyer was built, not to mention a shift in focus."

  "How do you mean that, sir?" she asked.

  "Your cruiser was contracted, designed, and built by companies on planets within Britannia," he said. "While it may give an obligatory nod to CENTCOM and Haven, it was built with the intent that it would never leave Britannic space. This ship was designed at a time when there was still the outside chance it would actually have to fight, not just carry the flag."

  "I would disagree with you on principle, but I think I see where you're coming from," she said with a frown. "Most newer First Fleet ships are beautiful to look at, impressive in their size and technology, but I don't see the hardened systems or multiple layers of redundancy I've seen on the Blue Jacket."

  "I don't necessarily disagree with the new approach," Jackson said with a shrug. "With all the planets and resources out there for the taking, humans haven't fought with each other for centuries. We've never seen any evidence of another potentially hostile species and the expansion of the com drone network means less and less trips out for manned ships. I think we may see CENTCOM dissolved in our lifetimes and Fleet operations turned over to private contractors."

  Celesta shuddered at that. "I certainly hope not, sir," she said. "I would hate to see Fleet be broken up and sold to the highest bidder."

  "As would I," Jackson agreed. "The signs are there, however. Each year it gets harder and harder for the Senate to agree on the operational budget, never mind anything remotely resembling weapons R&D. But I suppose that's well above my paygrade."

  "It's interesting speculation nonetheless, sir," Celesta said. "If you have nothing else for me, I think I'll turn in before my watch starts."

  "Of course, Commander," Jackson said with a nod. "Dismissed." She nodded to him and walked out of the office. He hit the control to lock the hatch and to extinguish the illuminated indicator that let people know if he was in or not. He made the pretense of pulling up some overdue fitness reports and going through them. Absently he keyed open a locked drawer at the bottom of his desk, reached past the antique sidearm sitting in its holster, and wrapped his fingers around the neck of a squat, heavy bottle. He pulled it out and set it on the corner of his desk without actually looking at it, continually shuffling around words in the report statements, all the while watching the clock closely out of the corner of his eye.

  When First Watch officially ended he leaned back in his chair and stretched, yawning hugely. Shrugging to himself, he grabbed a short plastic cup off the shelf by his desk and poured a generous two fingers from the bottle into it. He swirled it around in the bottom, bringing it to his nose, giving a little shudder as he did. This was genuine Kentucky bourbon from his home planet, not the rotgut he suspected his engineering staff was making in stills down in the lower decks. Alcohol was strictly forbidden on Fleet starships for obvious reasons, but there never seemed to be a shortage of it once a cruise started.

  Jackson took the first tentative sip, letting the amber liquid play across his tongue before tilting his head up and letting it burn all the way down to his stomach. He followed that with another, more generous sip before setting the glass back on his desk. There were only four bottles left in the case in his quarters so he would need to conserve what he had until he could figure out a way to get another shipment, or at least get some of the acceptable commercial spirits available on any civilized planet they came across.

  He continued pecking at the keyboard for the better part of an hour, draining two-thirds of the bottle away without being consciously aware of it. When he finally grew bored of pretending he was working he shut off the interface to the ship's personnel server and brought up a playlist of soft jazz, piping it into the speakers in the ceiling at a low volume. He grabbed the bottle and, with teeth set, screwed the cap back on before replacing it in the locked drawer. As the soothing music washed over him, the familiar self-loathing rose up in him at his inability to control himself. Sighing heavily, he killed the music, pulled a pillow out of a wall locker, and stretched out on the sofa that ran along the bulkhead. It wouldn't do at all to have his crew see him stumbling bleary-eyed back to his quarters.

  ****

  "These are your new mission parameters," Aston Lynch said, handing Jackson another sealed envelope with hardcopy orders enclosed.

  "You couldn't have given me these before we left Alpha Centauri?" Jackson asked as he plucked at the seal on the envelope's flap.

  "Operational security, Captain," Lynch said in a condescending voice that earned him a hostile glare from Jackson. "If these had been available while still within range of the com drone network the mission could have been compromised."

  "Mr. Lynch, I have a hard time believing anybody would really be that concerned that you are traveling to Tau Ceti," Jackson said, his head pounding as he tried to read the small print on the sheet in front of him. "These are just navigational updates. What could possibly be so secret about these?"

  "Look closer, Captain," Lynch said. "There are also emission security protocols and very specific com instructions for once we arrive."

  Jackson just rolled his eyes and passed the sheet over to Celesta. "Sort it out, Commander," he told her. "If anything appears to be too far out of the ordinary please inform me."

  "At once, sir," she said and began reading through the document.

  "Is there any particular reason we're deviating course and stopping outside of the system instead of flying the normal route?" Jackson asked.

  "That is sensitive information, Captain," Lynch said.

  "I understand that," Jackson said, rubbing his temples with his left hand. "But the bridge is a secure location and they're going to find out sooner or later ... unless you planned to confine them to quarters and fly the ship in yourself."

  "Just follow the orders given to you, Captain," Lynch sneered. "Everything you need to know is in them and nothing more."

  "Your course correction has us transitioning into real space outside the system, but not so deep in space that there aren't navigational hazards," Jackson said with more patience in his voice than he felt. "That's why we have pre-determined routes into, and out of, star systems. If I feel like you are putting this ship at unnecessary risk I will ignore these orders and stick to our original course. That is, of course, unless you can give me some assurances otherwise."

  "The spot in which we will transition is clear," Lynch said quietly, still seeming unaware that every ear on the bridge was straining to hear what he was saying. "It's an area that's been used for these types of handoffs before. The data Commander Wright has in her hand will confirm the details of that."

  "Very well," Jackson said, not feeling like dragging out the conversation any longer than it had already gone. "I will review the orders and make the necessary adjustments. If I have any other concerns I will contact you, otherwise be prepared to arrive in approximately thirty-six hours."

  "Thank you," Lynch said, stepping over and whispering something in Celesta's ear before continuing off the bridge. Despite a burning curiosity, Jackson didn't ask what he had said and she didn't offer to tell him.

  "While these orders are a bit unusual I don't see anything in here to be overly concerned about, Captain," she said, handing the orders back to him. "We'll be rendezvousing with another ship in that area so I think we can assume it's clear of any hazards."

  "Maybe," he said, unconvinced, before raising his voice. "OPS! Scan these orders in and ensure they're properly disseminated."

  "Yes, sir," Ensign Davis said, grabbing the sheet from Jackson and heading back to her station. The scancode on the orders would access the data all the different departments woul
d need to execute them from the secure server that had been loaded at Jericho Station. The hardcopy orders were an archaic method to ensure the server couldn't easily be accessed until it was necessary.

  "If it's as simple as the orders seem to indicate, once we deliver Lynch we'll be on our way to our next port of call," Celesta said quietly, leaning in towards Jackson a bit so she didn't have to raise her voice. He self-consciously leaned away from her and simply nodded at her assessment, not wanting to breathe on her.

  "Provide me a synopsis of the order updates and send it to my inbox," he said, standing up. "See if you can dig out who we're supposed to be meeting up with in all that cloak and dagger nonsense I was reading in there. I'll be in my office."

  "Aye, sir," she said, the narrowing of her eyes barely perceptible as he walked quickly off the bridge.

  Chapter 5

  "Navigation, confirm our position and time until transition," Jackson said as he settled himself into his seat, securing his coffee mug carefully.

  "Position is confirmed. We're ten minutes away from transition into real space," the spacer second class reported from the Nav station. He looked a little too old to still be a second class, but the telltale silhouette on his sleeve indicated that he'd been busted down in rank recently. Two stripes by the looks of it. Jackson made a mental note to ask Commander Wright why someone with such a disciplinary record was manning a station on First Watch during sensitive operations like a transition.

  "OPS?" he asked.

  "Confirmed, Captain," Ensign Davis said crisply. As a courtesy she began putting up the countdown timer and relative position of the ship on the main display. "Nav data has passed redundancy checks. We should come out where we're supposed to."

  The bridge remained silent as everyone tensed up for the coming transition. Even Aston Lynch, secured in an observation seat, kept his mouth shut, though he looked at the display pensively.

  "Five seconds!" Ensign Davis called out loudly and a sharp klaxon sounded twice throughout the entire ship. A few seconds later the ship shuddered violently and there was a slight dip in power on non-essential systems that caused the ambient lighting to dim slightly.

  As soon as the shuddering subsided the main display cleared and became a window once again, allowing the crew to see that beyond the glowing warp drive emitters there was a clear star field, letting them know that they had reemerged safely into real space.

  "All departments have checked in," Davis reported. "Waiting for confirmation of position." Jackson waited patiently as the spacer at the Nav station determined their position by taking star captures and measuring local gravitational anomalies.

  "We're fifteen thousand kilometers from our expected transition point," he reported. "I'm sending the data to OPS and Engineering."

  Jackson frowned. Even though this was still within the limits for the length of the previous flight, he'd hoped to emerge much closer to their target. When the ship was in warp it was literally flying blind, relying on internal instruments to make sure they emerged where they were supposed to. The Blue Jacket's crew routinely hit targets of less than five thousand kilometers on longer flights so he was inclined to believe it was something that Jericho Station had done to his equipment rather than an error on his crew's part.

  "I expect that to be tightened up on the next jump," he said, giving fair warning to everyone that they needed to find out why the internal navigation systems were off by so much. "Plot a course to our rendezvous coordinates and send them to the helm. OPS, retract the warp drive emitters and close the external hatches. Once they're stowed, start the main engines and let me know when we're clear to begin maneuvering."

  "Aye, sir," Ensign Davis said, the emitters beginning to slowly retract into the hull even before Jackson had finished issuing orders. He watched as the delicate devices were carefully nestled back into their storage nooks and the heavy external hatches were swung over and locked into place, protecting them from debris hits or potential enemy weapons-fire. Early generations of Terran starships had two enormous rings, one fore and one aft, that made up the warp drive and were permanently affixed around the hull. Jackson had always been idly curious how many of those ships were lost because they became stranded between jumps due to a micrometeor impact damaging an emitter ring.

  "I don't like the fact we're not permitted to take an active scan of the area," Jackson said quietly to Celesta. "I'd like to you to go down to the CIC and begin a passive scan of surrounding space, full spectrum."

  "Aye, Captain," she said, popping the latches on her restraints and hustling off the bridge.

  The Combat Operations Center was the heart and soul of the ship when it came to flying, tracking, and shooting. It was a room located near the middle of the main hull and was crewed by fifteen specialists at all times manning every instrument on the Blue Jacket, ready to feed information to the bridge whenever needed. There was even a command station in the room where the captain could run the ship from there if needed. The Operations Center used to be referred to as the Combat Information Center back before human vessels were capable of travelling between the stars, but the term "CIC" was an anachronism that had survived to the modern age of starships. Jackson was semi-certain it was because the acronym COC led to a phonetic pronunciation that Fleet deemed to be inappropriate.

  The passive scan wasn't the only reason he wanted Commander Wright in the CIC. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on with regards to his orders and having her in the ship's nerve center was one more direct channel of information. So far Lynch seemed calm and unconcerned and he wasn't sure if he took that as a good sign or not.

  ****

  Commander Wright quickly made her way to the CIC and relayed Captain Wolfe's orders. As luck would have it, the second watch OPS officer, Lieutenant Peters, was in charge of the CIC during the transition back to real space. Having served on the Blue Jacket for three full cruises, he immediately understood what the captain wanted without Celesta having to spell it out for him.

  He offered her the command seat and quickly went to each station and got the operators moving in the right direction. A lot of the task would simply be data processing since the ship's passive sensors were recording at all times. The operators would need to go back from the time the ship emerged into real space and look for any anomalies. While the computers were good at picking out patterns and sudden shifts, they often overlooked subtle changes that a human was able to intuitively pick up on.

  As Celesta sat patiently waiting for them to sift through the data she felt a deep rumble resonate through the ship. The main engines starting up caused quite a bit more vibration down in the CIC than they did on the bridge. She felt the change in intensity and pitch and surmised that Captain Wolfe was moving the ship to the rendezvous coordinates listed in their orders. She assumed they were simply delivering their political operative to a ship in Fourth Fleet so that he could discreetly make contact with the New American government on behalf of Senator Wellington without raising any flags, and she really didn't understand Jackson Wolfe's increasing paranoia about the mission. While she would be glad to be rid of Aston Lynch, especially given the number of unwelcome advances he'd made since coming aboard, she had to admit to herself she was more than a little concerned about some perceived erratic behavior from her new commanding officer.

  "We have something, Commander," Lieutenant Peters reported. "Thermal anomaly, two hundred thousand kilometers off the port bow, twenty-two degrees elevation."

  "Show me," Celesta said, rising from her chair and walking over to the sensor station.

  "These two points of light, completely in the IR band, exactly seventy-three meters away from each other," Peters said. "They were there when our sensors came back up after transition and disappeared shortly afterwards."

  "You have an idea what they were?" Celesta asked.

  "Yes, ma'am. Those are the reverse thrust nozzles of a Descendant-class destroyer, flown exclusively by Fourth Fleet. That newer class only has two
main engines instead of our four," Peters answered. "If you'll give us a moment we can tell you which ship it is."

  "The contact was that strong?" Celesta asked, surprised.

  "It was enough for us to get an engine profile for the ship, ma'am," the sensor operator spoke up. He was a young specialist first class and had a scar running down the length of his left cheek. Celesta read the name on the front of his utility top.

  "Get me that ship name as quickly as you can, Specialist Jacobs," she said. "The captain will want this information immediately." She waited patiently behind the operator while he ran the brief thermal flash against the ship's database of engine profiles for that class of ship.

  "Got it," Jacobs said. "She's the Oscar Marks, registry DS-8101."

  "Good work, Specialist," Celesta said. "Begin scanning real time data again and see if you can reacquire her."

  "Aye, ma'am."

  "They must have been out there, waiting for us, and closed off their reverse nozzles as soon as we transitioned in," Peters said.

  "That's what I'm thinking," Celesta said. "Since they were also using passive sensors, by the time they received the data of our arrival we were already recording their engine heat." She moved to the command seat, pulled the terminal over to her, and began to type a message that would go directly to Captain Wolfe.

  ****

  "Fourth Fleet destroyer Oscar Marks standing off our port bow at a range of two hundred thousand KM when Blue Jacket transitioned in. She's gone dark. CIC working to reacquire. Will advise. Cmdr. Wright."

  Jackson read the message twice before replying to Celesta to keep at it. He looked over at Lynch and tried to get a read on the man's demeanor. He still just sat there with the same bored, slightly irritated look that he seemed to always have.

  "Mr. Lynch," he said loudly. "So here we are. What happens next?"