Cloak of War Read online

  The most exciting thing I see is a chunk of rock a few million kilometers off. Whee.

  Captain Hallverson returns to the bridge that evening. He sits for a moment but doesn’t say anything. Yao stands to the side and keeps his watch as if Hallverson isn’t there.

  Hallverson clears his throat.

  Yao stands up rigid straight, like a board runs up his spine.

  “Mr. Yao, would you join me for dinner this evening?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Captain Hallverson stands and starts to walk off the bridge. “Mr. Jager, would you join us as well?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good,” Hallverson says, and off the bridge he goes.

  I finally breathe. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath. The only thing I have to wear to dinner are Winkelman’s clothes and a big ol’ black eye. Hopefully the captain appreciates my attire.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  As it turns out, dinner with the captain is not quite like I expected. I pictured black jackets, gloves, and you know, an admiral spinning boring tales of logistics and space politics.

  Instead, it’s like eating in a closet with four other people.

  Captain Hallverson sits next to First Officer Yao. They bump elbows; hell, they are so close they bump shoulders. I sat in between Yao and Colby.

  Hartford passes in the meal: a sealed tub of soup and a crock of pickled fish.

  I watch Captain Hallverson to see how the meal will proceed. It’s a nerve-wracking thing, especially as I’m quite hungry.

  Yao ladles out the soup and plops it out into bowls.

  Colby cracks open the tub and frowns. “Where’d he get this, the bilge?”

  Hallverson gives her a half smile. “Don’t ask any questions, and we won’t tell you any lies.”

  My soup sits before me, along with a bowl of pickled fish and some translucent onions. No one else is eating, nor do I. I learned long ago to follow the lead when dancing, dining, and…well, you know.

  Hallverson looks at me with a pleasant smile. “I prefer not to converse when eating. Bad for the digestion.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But,” he says as he waves a spoon before him, “we’ll be inquiring as to your role on this ship. So give that some thought.”

  Great.

  Later, I have no clue how that soup tasted. Even the pickled fish went down without a taste. Though I’ve got a soft spot for pickled fish.

  Instead I focus on what this is turning into. A job interview. What does he want to know? Prior qualifications?

  I keep pace with Yao; he is the slowest eater.

  University. Internships. Merchant Marine. First role on that freighter and then my own missile boat. Should I wow him with my grasp of tactics? Or maybe quote some bits from Admiral Sobieski’s memoirs? I’m grasping at straws about now, and they’re crumbling. I don’t have much.

  Colby tips her bowl up and slurps the broth.

  “Must you do that?” Yao snaps at her.

  Hallverson watches with a crooked smile.

  “Must you bitch?” Colby says. She has a look that says she enjoys taunting him.

  How long have they complained about the same things? I could barely stand my roommate for a semester back at the frat house; his socks drove me mad. These people, though, years of living together, the same faults and follies. I need to take some lessons on getting along.

  “Did you enjoy dinner, Mr. Jager?” Captain Hallverson asks. He looks pleasant, relaxed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Hallverson nods and looks down at a data tablet by his side. “Time to hammer some nails, then. Karl Jager. Merchant Marine University, at, uh.” He pauses and taps back. “Brandenburg Orbital University.”

  “Sounds enchanting,” Colby says. She rolls her eyes and tucks her shoulders into the corner.

  “Yes,” Captain Hallverson says dryly. “The issue is, Mr. Jager, you have no specialty, no skills, nothing this ship needs. Your crewmate, Copper Henna, will make an exceptional engineer. But with you”—he spreads his hands apart—“we’re at a loss.”

  Great. This just keeps getting better. Next thing you know, he’s going to toss me out the airlock.

  Captain Hallverson pushes the tablet away. “Are you prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before? Prepared to learn every role, every place, the nuances, the skills, the trades? Learn how to run this ship, know it like the back of your hand?”

  He looks straight at me with those piercing eyes.

  How do you answer that? There is no safe answer.

  “You were a mediocre student at a third-rate university. That fraternity, a waste of your time. Hell, even your studies are all over the board. I wouldn’t hire you if someone else wrote the paycheck.”

  I swallow hard. The blood is already gone from my face. I feel about a millimeter tall.

  “But you’ve got promise. You took initiative when your boat was hit. You managed to land a hit on the Queen too.”

  Yao and Colby nod in agreement.

  “I’m offering you a position on the Orca. You’ll be our second officer. But make no mistake: I will work you to the bone. You will spend half a watch with me, then you will rotate between every position on this ship. And, to top it off, you’ll have a watch of your own.”

  All three officers look at me. So this is it. My moment. I’ve always kind of followed the flow. But now I’m at a decision point. There is no flow. I have to decide for my own. Is this what I always wanted?

  Captain Hallverson spreads out his hands. “You can make a choice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He sounds like a broken data bank, stuck on one set,” Colby says. “Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir.”

  “Well, Jager? Do you want it or not?” Captain Hallverson is starting to get annoyed.

  “Yes, sir. I mean, absolutely, Captain Hallverson. I’d be proud to be your second officer.”

  Captain Hallverson nods and looks quite solemn. “Very well, Mr. Jager. By the power vested in me by the navy, you are now the second officer of the Orca.”

  “May God help your soul,” Colby mumbles.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The following week I spend doing everything. And I mean everything. The moment I wake, I rush to the bridge to get my duty assignment for the morning. That’s right, just the morning.

  Once I work through that stint, I stand on the bridge at Captain Hallverson’s side and watch as he administers the ship. This is the part I enjoy the most. It’s a distillation of everything I’ve ever learned in university. Right here. Right now.

  We run through drills. Countless drills. Weapons drills. Loading drills. Fire drills. Decompression drills. Even scuttling drills. Everything is rehearsed, choreographed, perfect.

  Hallverson has an eye to point out any flaw. His tone is never condescending, but if I make a stupid mistake, he is quite certain to inform everyone.

  After standing that watch, he assigns me my homework for my watch. It really is mine. On the data display, it plainly states Duty Officer Karl Jager. Though Captain Hallverson says I am simply to observe, the chief of the watch, in my case a Philonean sailor named Vienna Toma, runs everything.

  “Chief Toma,” Captain Hallverson tells her in a stern voice, “Mr. Jager is to observe, but don’t listen to a damned thing he says.”

  That’ll make you feel good.

  I spend a few days in Engineering and learn more about reactors than I knew existed. Henna fits in perfectly. Physicists and engineers have a mutual bond, one that I appreciate and don’t understand. Only they really know the fiery forces that propel us through space.

  That and they’re happy to tell you about it.

  Then on to Colby. She doesn’t have much patience for me. If ever I met someone who was outwardly hostile and toxic, it’s her. Not only does she think I’m a useless idiot, but she enjoys telling me.

  Maintenance covers every system that isn’t specialized. A leak
y sink? A bad valve? A toilet that spits shit? Or maybe you have a propellant gas jet that is firing intermittently? You send in Maintenance.

  They keep the tub running so that all of the other systems can function.

  But the loaders, they are my favorite. The aft tube is manned by six men, burly men, rough men, the kind you’d see boxing or talking about it. They are led by a man named Pots. Pots earned his name by stealing beer from one of the orbitals around Wallenstein and pouring it into a nitrogen storage pot.

  When the Tyroleans hit Wallenstein Orbital, he was doing time in a prison asteroid. He survived. His family didn’t. He’s a wedge of a man, barely a meter and a half tall. The jokes he tells would make a sailor blush…at least he makes me blush. I like him right away.

  “Three torpedoes left, ya see, Mr. Jager? But two of ’em are regular duty. Then we’ve got that beauty, she’s for the Queen.” Pots points to a sealed capsule that sits by itself on the wall. It’s covered in messages, the names of family members, even a few pictures tucked into the edges. “That’s the harpoon.”

  It’s a shrine to death.

  “And Bertha,” Pots says with a wave.

  “Bertha?” I say with a smile. By now I’ve been the butt of every joke and inside term. Left-handed wrench. IDI0T-CPT radio repeater. Reverse-flow electron gate.

  Pots pulls back a banged-up capsule. Inside is a torpedo, except it isn’t. “This here is how we practice. Can’t very well slide our only sharks in and out now, can we? Coating’d wear off, and then they’d see it in a heartbeat.”

  Pots explains that the torpedoes, the real ones, have a special coating to protect them from the corrosive gas. On top of that, they are equalized to vacuum temp and as nonreflective as can be. A few fingerprints and suddenly they’d gain heat. Bad news.

  It’d be like telling someone you were about to punch them.

  So I spend a day hauling Bertha in and out. They pack her with ballast, normally food and supplies, but now it’s just spare parts. It reminds me of an oversized coffin.

  The men work until they glisten with sweat. Then to mix it up, they disengage the artificial gravity for the room, and we have to manhandle that big ol’ beast in and out. Let me tell you, I slept well that night.

  In the middle of the night, a hand shakes me awake. I’m too bleary to see who it is, but the message is simple. Get to the bridge. Now.

  I grab my uniform, or rather Winkelman’s, and go out without bothering to check how I look. Halfway along the hall, I catch a look at myself. Shit. Grease smudges on my forehead. Sunken eyes with a touch of purple underneath, all tinted with a gray that says I needed to get some sun lamp time.

  Oh well. Who will really notice at this hour?

  I jog to the bridge.

  Captain Hallverson stands in the center of the bridge with his hands clasped behind his back. I try to sneak in quietly and stand behind and to his right. He likes me to be where I can watch and not get in his way.

  He gives me a glance. Then a second glance. Two glances are always bad.

  “Mr. Jager,” Hallverson says in a tone that lets me know this is a lecture. “You show up on this bridge looking like that once again, and I’ll have you scrubbing slag from the hull until I can dump you with the fleet garbage where you belong.”

  I swallow hard. “Yes, sir. Apologies, sir.”

  Hallverson shakes his head. “It’s an insult to the service and your position as an officer. You’re not doing it for me but out of respect for the crew and the ship.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bridge is still, but from the color of the lights all around I know exactly what’s happening. Contact. One display shows a weapons plot. A second display lays out navigational courses. Finally, the last contains two twinkling orbs with target designations all over them.

  We are close enough to spit on them.

  “They are Tyrolean transports. One is a type used to carry munitions, and the other contains troops,” Hallverson says with a nod to the tactical display. “Munitions are priority.”

  If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this war, it’s that humans are really good at fighting on the ground. Dirt under our feet means a huge advantage. At an evolutionary level, it’s what our species is designed for. In space, the tables are even. The Tyroleans tend to drive us off a planet and use orbital assets to help out their ground troops. Hence the munitions priority.

  He lays out the plan in precise detail. Our forces have covert beacons scattered throughout the border systems. All we have to do is listen until we get our ping, and then we intercept. The big, slow transports have a low duty cycle and drop out of star drive to coast for a bit.

  “Why haven’t we fired, sir?”

  Hallverson chuckles. “Eager, eh? Well, for one, you always watch. What if they have a fighter tucked on the back? Or perhaps some hidden batteries? Patience here. Maybe they aren’t freighters but a pair of warships in disguise? We know the duration of the drive duty cycle. Plenty of time to wait and watch.”

  That makes sense. It seems they even use hidden warships. Cruisers dressed up as freighters. I dated a girl like that once…

  “Two torpedoes. See the plot?” On one screen, two arcs fly out from the Orca, and both intercept at the exact same moment. “Both die at once. Two clean kills. We haven’t had to use our kinetic in quite some time. Seeing as they are Tyrolean merchant marine, I doubt they are watching.”

  I catch that jibe but don’t even smile.

  “Check everything, Mr. Jager. Then if it meets your satisfaction, give the order.”

  I survey each station, check the captain’s viewscreen, take in every detail. Sweat dews up on my brow. I’ve only had a few drills like this, and never with more than one target. My math is rusty. I don’t have time to check the calculations, so I trust the computer.

  I look to Captain Hallverson. “Looks good, Captain.”

  He nods. “Give the order, Mr. Jager.”

  “Prep to fire. Roll. Increase acceleration to max. Drop three degrees. On my mark.” I rattle off the commands, and just as quickly come acknowledgments. The bridge is tight as a wire.

  “Fire.”

  Two blue dots race out on the tactical display. My eyes dart between that and the visual. At our range, the ships are barely visible. Did they know? Doubtful.

  Hallverson sits back and steeples his fingers in front of his mouth. His eyes are hard, dark, unforgiving. Eager.

  The first strikes, and in an instant the freighter disappears. It is a sunburst, a flicker of light that collapses into darkness. Glowing bits of debris spread away.

  The second hits home, a straight up sucker-punch. That freighter goes up like a ton of fireworks doused in gasoline. The video display actually overloads, and our sensor banks register an extremely high energy level. A few seconds later, it dims down enough to show an expanding wave of plasma and nothing more. The freighters are gone.

  When you hit a ship with a kinetic or a laser, it’s usually pretty boring. Some internal system is destroyed, and the ship is rendered inoperable. Maybe, if you’re lucky, a compartment blows apart. On a rare occasion, you strike munitions just right and it’s fireworks time.

  With the torpedoes we use, though, it’s an internal explosion. They detonate either in contact with the armor plate or once they pass through the hull of ship. In both cases, they have the atmosphere inside the ship as a conduit for energy. Now you’ve got oxygen, and that equals fire. Hence the much cooler explosions.

  I smile. It’s involuntary. A one-two punch. Wham-bam. Just like that, two enemy freighters—poof, gone.

  Hallverson stands, his fists balled at his sides. On his face are anger, rage. He leans forward toward the tactical display.

  The smile falls from my face.

  “Sloppy and shoddy! That roll was shit. That strike was shit. There was a second gap! If one of those was an escort, by God, we’d be dead. You people,” he sneers as he says it, “have been doing this long enough to know
better, Mr. Jager! There’s a dozen things you missed. Patience, I said. Patience. Go, clean up, study the replay, and find your issues. Dismissed.”

  At that, I snap to attention and depart the bridge. Then, just as I start to close the door, I hear him truly lay into the bridge crew. The fury is terrible. I can’t bear to close the door all the way. At what point do I step in and call him on his actions?

  It isn’t right. They followed my orders. I take a deep breath, and just as I’m about to push the hatch open, a hand clamps on to my shoulder.

  First Officer Yao pulls me back and gently closes the hatch with his other hand. His eyes are somber. “The captain does this every time. Take no offense. He demands perfection.”

  “But it was my command, my authorization. I should take blame. I—”

  “No,” Yao says. “The Orca is his. We are but his instruments of wrath. Now go, study.”

  “Study? How did you know?”

  “I was once in your position.”

  I walk through the ship on shaky legs. The kill replays through my mind. I head down to Sensors to get the feed downloaded to my tablet.

  Standing at the door is a bantamweight. An angry little man with a head of coal-black hair. He’s a fighter. I can see it in his eyes. His hands are balled up with his chin tilted down.

  “You done fucked up. Who do you think you are? That should’ve been my berth! You hear me? You fuck up again, and I’ll beat your ass so bad Captain Hallverson’ll have to promote me. You fucking hear me?”

  This just keeps getting better. My mind is on the torpedoes, not on a fight with some communications tech. “Who are you? And is this how you address an officer?”

  “Chief of Communications Huttola Huttola. You took my position. That was my”—he jams a thumb into his chest—“position.”

  Time to defuse this. “Then I suggest you take it up with Captain Hallverson. He offered it to me.”

  He grabs on to my shirt with both hands and pulls his face tight to mine. “I should’ve been the second officer! Not you! Once Winkelman died, I was next in line!”

  I slam him against the bulkhead and tap two fingers into his chest, hard. “Shut up. If you have a problem, find me on shore, and we’ll do a few rounds. But we’ve got our jobs to do. Now get me the feed from that engagement.”