A Call to Duty

  That was the hope that continued to drive Kiselev and his people. The hope that one day someone would come with orders to restart the quiet fusion engines, to flood the empty decks with air and heat, to refill the fluid reservoirs, and to reactivate the electronics.

  And when those orders came, Kiselev had privately promised himself, Mars would be the first ship that would be brought back to life.

  Because Mars was their home. It hadn’t made sense to create a new space station just for the caretaker crew, not with six perfectly serviceable ships sitting out here. So Mars had been nursed back to partial life, her fusion plant turning out enough power to keep the spin section running and supplied with the necessities of life. Kiselev had spent the past five years living aboard her, first as the caretaker unit’s XO, then as its CO.

  And finally, the day of new orders had arrived. Admiral Carlton Locatelli, commanding officer of the Star Kingdom’s System Command, had personally come to Mars to deliver them.

  Only the orders weren’t the ones Kiselev had hoped for. Not in his wildest nightmares had he ever expected to receive orders like these.

  Kiselev’s beloved Mars wasn’t going to be brought back to life. She was going to die.

  To be murdered.

  “I don’t understand, Sir,” Kiselev said, his heart sinking, his stomach tying itself in a succession of ever-tighter knots. “She’s being dismantled?”

  “Only partially,” Admiral Locatelli assured him, offering Kiselev his tablet. “She’s going to be cut in half and turned into two new sloops.”

  Kiselev sent a hooded glance at the image on the tablet. One glance was all he wanted.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he insisted, turning his eyes resolutely away. “Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?”

  “You can blame it on Breakwater, if it makes you feel any better,” Locatelli said. “He’s the one who started the ball rolling. Just be thankful he didn’t get to mulch all nine of the battlecruisers at the same time. That was his original wish list.”

  Kiselev mouthed a silent curse. The Chancellor would have done it, too. He would have taken the battlecruisers apart, and in the process emasculated the Star Kingdom.

  “He should be charged with treason,” he bit out. “In fact, he should have been charged a long time ago. If he’d given us the funds we needed to keep Mars and the others running like they should, they could have been the precious patrol ships he claims to want.”

  Locatelli smiled faintly as he pointed at Kiselev’s chest.

  “Preacher,” he said. He tapped his own chest. “Choir.”

  “Yes, Sir, I know,” Kiselev said, feeling slightly ashamed of himself. He was an officer of the RMN, and he shouldn’t be venting his frustration this way. Not to a superior officer. “My apologies, Admiral.” He braced himself. Horrible or not, he had a duty to see what they were planning to do to his ship. “May I see that, Sir?”

  Silently, Locatelli handed him the tablet. Kiselev took it and forced himself to look.

  It was as bad as he’d expected. It was certainly as insane.

  The first sloop was to be created from Mars’s stern section, making the cut through the hull just behind the spin section, leaving the aft fusion plant and impeller ring intact. The aft endcap would be removed, taking with it the aft laser and autocannon, with the various conduits, flowlines, power and sensor cables rerouted or repositioned to accommodate the shorter length. The work stations and living quarters would also have to be drastically rearranged, he knew, with those details presumably on a set of schematics lower in the stack. A truncated neck and small forward endcap were to be added to the stub, with the heavy armored hull plating removed, presumably to save mass. A pair of autocannon jutted from the endcap, with a pair of missile box launchers attached midway down the neck. “Box launchers?” Kiselev asked scornfully.

  “A concession to us,” Locatelli explained. “First Lord Cazenestro insisted the sloops be armed. I doubt Breakwater ever expects the weapons to actually be used.”

  Kiselev grunted and keyed to the next page. The forward sloop was just as ridiculous looking as the aft one, though with a slightly different flavor of insanity. Again, the cut here was to be made in front of Mars’s spin section, with the forward part of the ship left mostly intact, except for the large middle section where the hull plating was again to be cut away. The forward autocannon were intact, but the amidships autocannon and missile tubes had vanished with that section of hull. Two more of the box launchers had been installed behind the endcap. Apparently, box launchers were Breakwater’s idea of a consolation prize.

  “And he thinks this is actually going to be cheaper than building a pair of corvettes from the keels up?” he asked.

  “So he says,” Locatelli said, gesturing toward the tablet. “And he has numbers to back him up, supposedly from a professional ship designer named Martin Ashkenazy.”

  “Then Ashkenazy’s even more incompetent than Breakwater,” Kiselev growled, scrolling down the document and finding Ashkenazy’s bottom-line estimates. “These estimates can’t possibly be right.”

  “I agree,” Locatelli said, his voice darkening. “So do our own engineering experts. But Ashkenazy had answers for everything, and in the end Parliament gave him the go-ahead.”

  “It’s insane,” Kiselev insisted. “Ashkenazy can’t be this much of a fool.”

  “A fool?” Locatelli shook his head. “Consider. Ashkenazy now has at least a year’s worth of steady work ahead of him, probably two or three, with all the prestige and comfortable funding that comes from a Parliament-sanctioned project. Breakwater gets what he wants: a small but immediate reduction in RMN monetary outflow, at least on paper, which fits his long-term philosophy of having more to spend on his own pet projects. Not to mention that the sloops will be transferred out of the Navy and straight into MPARS. Under the circumstances, I hardly think either of them would be motivated to honestly look for flaws in their proposal.”

  “I suppose not, Sir,” Kiselev said with a sigh. It was still criminally insane, and it was going to hurt like hell to watch his ship being slowly tortured to death.

  But he was an officer of the RMN. He had his orders, and he would obey them.

  “Do we have a timetable yet?”

  “The final details are being worked out,” Locatelli said. “But you won’t be the one dealing with it. You’re being transferred to Casey-Rosewood as the new CO of the Northwest Sector training school.”

  Kiselev felt his mouth drop open. No—that had to be a mistake. Aside from a short stint teaching electronic warfare at the Academy three years ago, every minute of the past five years had been spent aboard Mars. This was his ship; and if she was to be destroyed, it was his right and responsibility to oversee that destruction.

  “Sir, I respectfully request—”

  “Save your breath, Captain,” Locatelli said. “It’s already been decided at the highest levels that your particular talents will best serve the RMN at Casey-Rosewood.”

  “Yes, Sir, I’ll just bet that was what they were thinking,” Kiselev ground out. “I don’t suppose there were any suggestions that I might take this personally, and therefore might not put the necessary effort into the operation?”

  “Rest assured that no such thoughts were ever voiced,” Locatelli said, his tone studiously neutral.

  Which wasn’t to say Dapplelake or Cazenestro or Breakwater hadn’t thought it, of course. Not only were they going to take his ship away from him, but they were going to bring his professionalism into question in the bargain. Snakelike butt-coverers, the whole lot of them.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said stiffly.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I opposed the decision,” Locatelli said. “That’s just between you and me, of course.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Kiselev said again. That was Locatelli, all right—a man by, for, and from the RMN, without a single political bone in his body. “Thank you, Sir.”

  “I’m just sorry I couldn’t
carry the day,” Locatelli said ruefully. “What’s the old quote? If it has to be done, a real man shoots his own dog himself.”

  Kiselev winced. No political bones, but not always the most tactful of men, either.

  “Something like that, Sir.”

  “Yes,” Locatelli said. “At any rate, you’re to report to Casey-Rosewood at oh-nine-hundred next Tuesday for a preliminary briefing from Colonel Massingill. The two of you will have some flexibility as to when your permanent transfer will take place.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Kiselev said. “I assume my replacement will be aboard before I leave?”

  “Yes, assuming Breakwater gets his rear in gear and confirms one of the people the First Lord has put forward,” Locatelli said. “Not sure why he was allowed veto power over that decision, since the transfer to MPARS isn’t going to happen until after the conversion. But it is what it is. At any rate, you’ll still be in command here until he or she is approved and on board.” He pursed his lips. “Well. I’m sorry to have been the bearer of bad news. If there are no further questions, I’ll be on my way.”

  “No questions, Sir,” Kiselev said. No questions that Locatelli could answer, anyway.

  “Very good,” Locatelli said, his voice all brisk and businesslike again. “I’ll be sure to check in with you again after you settle into Casey-Rosewood and see how you’re doing.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, and one other matter I don’t believe I mentioned. Along with your new assignment, you’ll be receiving a promotion.” He offered his hand. “Congratulations, Commodore Kiselev.”

  Swallowing, Kiselev took the other’s hand and shook it.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “No thanks needed,” Locatelli assured him. “It’s long overdue. Good luck, Commodore, and I’ll see you again in a few weeks.”

  With a nod, the admiral turned and left Kiselev’s office.

  The office that had been Kiselev’s official working home for the past three years. The office, and the home, that would soon be torn up and mangled, all at the egomaniacal whim of an ignorant, pennypinching civilian. And there was nothing Kiselev could do about it.

  But maybe there was someone else who could.

  Circling his desk, he sat down in his swivel chair and keyed his com system. On a real ship, the odd thought struck him, he would have a yeoman or communications officer to do this for him. Maybe at Casey-Rosewood he would, as well. But for right now, he was perfectly comfortable doing such things for himself.

  The com ran through its protocols and self-checks and aimed its laser at the nearest System Command relay satellite.

  “This is Captain—this is Commodore Kiselev, aboard HMS Mars,” he said into the mike.

  “System Command communications,” a brisk feminine voice came back promptly. “How may I direct your call, Commodore?”

  Kiselev smiled tightly. So his promotion had already popped up in the system, without the mid-rank delay that could be embarrassing to a newly minted officer and disconcerting to the subordinates who hadn’t yet received an official notice. Leave it to Locatelli to get even the small details right.

  “Patch me through to Defiant,” he ordered.

  “Direct or message?”

  “Message,” Kiselev said. He wasn’t exactly sure where Defiant was at the moment, and even a few of seconds’ time delay made direct conversations awkward.

  Besides, there was no guarantee the recipient would even remember his old division CO. Best to post a message that would give him time to sort it out before responding.

  “Recipient?”

  Kiselev took a deep breath. “Commander Edward Winton,” he said. “That’s Commander Prince Edward Winton.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Missile trace, thirty-five hundred gees,” the young woman at the missile room’s sensor repeater station said briskly. “Estimated impact—”

  “How many traces?” the senior grade lieutenant supervising the exercise interrupted.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” the woman apologized. “Two traces. I was going to—”

  “Apologies waste time, Midshipwoman,” the supervisor cut her off again. “Start over, and get it right.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the woman said, a hint of clenched jaw in her voice. “Missile trace, two: thirty-five hundred gees, estimated time to impact eighty-three seconds.”

  “Copy two inbound, three five hundred gees, impact eight three seconds,” one of her fellow students called an acknowledgment from the command station. “Tracking good?”

  “Tracking good,” the woman confirmed.

  “Midshipwoman Jones?” the supervisor invited. “You should be joining the conversation about now.”

  “Yes, Sir,” another woman said from the fire-control station. “Autocannon prepped and ready, Sir.”

  “Missile capacitors charged,” a second man added from the missile station. “Still waiting for targeting parameters.”

  “Hang on,” the student commander said, fiddling with his board.

  Peering at the big display that showed the scene inside the simulator, trying to stay beneath Fire Control Specialist First Class Matayoshi’s direct line of sight, Travis felt a mixture of envy and frustration. Envy, because this kind of simulation looked a lot more interesting than his own impeller class schedule. Frustration, because the Academy students in there clearly hadn’t properly learned the procedures for this kind of action.

  What made it even more annoying was that the bits of procedure they were muffing weren’t even part of Travis’s curriculum. This was officer territory, a tactical scenario that enlisted personnel like Travis, Chomps, and most of the rest of Chomps’s fellow students sitting silently in the observation room around them would never even get to play via simulation, let alone experience for real. The only reason Travis knew anything at all about it was that he’d happened on the listing once while looking up something else and had read it through because it had looked interesting.

  Apparently, the officers-in-training hadn’t found it nearly so intriguing. More than once as the simulation progressed Travis had caught himself muttering the proper wording under his breath, as if the observation room’s intercom went both ways.

  Each time, he’d clamped his jaw firmly shut. Matayoshi and his assistant, Fire Control Tech Third Class Lorelei Osterman, had been extremely leery about having an outsider join the class for their observation, and it had only been through some fast talking on Chomps’s part—which had included the fact that, as an impeller-track student, Travis might someday be handling these same missiles—that the two petty officers had reluctantly allowed Travis to stay. But they’d made it clear he was to keep his mouth shut.

  Still, lapses in the students’ procedure apart, it was a fascinating exercise, every bit as intense as his reading had implied it would be.

  Not that anyone in there was ever likely to run into this kind of situation in the real world. If history was anything to go by, there would be little need for the RMN to ever shoot at anything out there, and even less likelihood that anything would shoot back. Far more important to the RMN was good old-fashioned tech training.

  Because a mistuned compensator could kill the entire ship’s crew faster than an enemy warship could ever hope to achieve. Ditto for a balky impeller node, a field-cracked fusion bottle, a ruptured coolant line, or damage to any of a hundred other critical systems. Simulator battles were undeniably fun, but there was little point in learning how to fight if the crew managed to blow up their own ship on the way to battle.

  Which was why the cheating problem nagged so hard at him. Funk had warned him to drop it, and Travis was really, really trying to do that. But the cheating continued, and at some point he was pretty sure he would break down and once again bring the topic to Lieutenant Cyrus’s attention.

  “Missile trace: one,” the woman at the sensors called. “Ten thousand gees, estimated time to impact one hundred twenty seconds.”

  “Copy one inbound,” the man at the command station acknowle
dged.

  Travis frowned, looking at the repeater tactical readout beside the main display. This latest attack had been launched from Bogey Two, which at five hundred thousand kilometers was the more distant of the two opponents. The missile was coming in at the higher of the two standard missile accelerations, instead of using the lower setting of the two missiles coming from Bogey One.

  Except that this latest attack was stupid. At ten thousand gravities the missile’s wedge would burn itself out in barely sixty seconds, with over three hundred thousand kilometers still separating it from its target. At its six-thousand-kilometers-per-second terminal velocity, it would take nearly a minute to cross that remaining distance, and it would be following a purely ballistic vector the entire way.

  The autocannon would have no trouble intercepting it well outside of kill range. Travis could practically climb out on the hull with a hunting rifle and shoot the damn thing down manually. On the surface, it looked like a colossally idiotic waste of an expensive weapon.

  But surely the people who programmed these simulations didn’t make such obvious mistakes. There had to be something going on beneath the surface, some lurking threat or subtle trap.

  Only Travis couldn’t figure out what that trap might be. The missile was tracking along just as it should, coming in on a vector that would take it across the forward edge of the starboard sidewall. The controller in Bogey Two would undoubtedly try to twitch that vector a bit before the missile’s wedge burned out, but that would still leave it running helplessly into the autocannon’s blaze of metal shrapnel.

  “Don’t know why they have to use our simulator in the first place,” Chomps muttered toward Travis’s ear. “If the Academy can’t afford to build one of their own, they should fire a couple of admirals or cut back on the fancy shellfish parties—”