I decided dryness was a part of the style. So here's the first chapter.
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Amark had the bridge watch. He recalled back in command school that the students had known a war with the Hydrans and Kzinti was imminent, but that it wouldn't last more than a few months. It was assumed there would be a major war like the Four Powers war a decade before. It had seemed certain that at the start of the conflict, the Imperial fleet would head toward Hydran space, engage the Royal fleet and wipe it out. The Hydrans, isolated, would be out of the war before it had begun. The ships of the war reserve would be part of those units getting a first crack at the Kzinti. They would make it easy for the main fleet to mop up what was left of the enemy.
There was no warning from his command school instructors that their allies, the big cats with the big temper, couldn't run a competent navy. Even more difficult to believe was that they would throw the whole war plan away from just a single-ship battle with the Kzinti. Yet the reason he was heading toward Kzinti space now was that the Lyran offensive, while tying up many Kzinti ships, was being held up by their starbases and base stations.
After command school, in 2278, Amark had gone to the Imperial War College to learn the theory of the Ubitron Interface Module. That was where he had been when the Lyrans and Kzinti had met each other at some asteroid where they were both commemorating their dead from the earlier war. The sudden outbreak of hostilities had changed his leisurely routine of physics classes to a quick wrap-up of schooling and then a transfer to Kareli Labs on Klathor. In the next few weeks there, he was able to master the new updates to the technology.
He had been transferred to the tug Greffor with the title of UIM repair officer with nothing to do but decode messages. So it was a happy moment for him when a message said the Shangba was to be brought by the tug to space dock for reactivation. Without hesitation, he had bearded the Greffor's captain in his stateroom and told him he wanted command of the Shangba.
The captain of the tug, reputed to have been a fire-and-brimstone commander in his day, was both amused and sympathetic to his request. "I can't blame you, young man, for wanting to see some action," he had said enviously. "You've got my permission to take the Shangba. But why take a broken-down D6 when you can get on a new D7 when they are ready in a few months?" He had confidentially added, "Several have been ordered to this station for K-refits after their next tours."
The D7s were relatively new and were larger than the D6s. They were capable of longer independent operations; they had a larger crew, and could fire disruptors at a greater range. But, probably, the most important difference was that the D7s had modern crew facilities and the D6s did not. This was a critical difference when conducting a long patrol in enemy territory.
Knowing all this, Amark still went aboard the Shangba. The Shangba was repairable, needed a captain, and was scheduled to go on patrol in April. That would have gotten him to the front in time to see some early action. So he had eagerly accepted Commodore Kling's invitation to take his gear aboard the Shangba and fill his vacancy.
But the Shangba took two months longer than planned to make her sufficiently spaceworthy to be risked on patrol. Meanwhile, the other D6s of her division had gone out for their patrols. Two of the next division had already departed on their first patrols before the Shangba cleared spacedock and set course for the starbase that was the northern fleet headquarters. Still, Amark was delighted to be on her bridge, contemplating the many targets for their disruptors that lay ahead.
The sensor operator was warned that an Orion raider had been sighted recently just outside the home system. "No sloughing off," was the attitude demanded for the bridge crew. Concern about meeting the Orion, however, was divided, as the Shangba's engineering plant developed trouble after trouble.
Early in the afternoon, a spray valve broke up in the port nacelle, putting it out of commission for the rest of the afternoon. This was followed by lube oil suction being lost for a moment. The Shangba was thus forced to temporarily run on her impulse engines. Suction was regained, but without finding out why it was lost. Hearing about this, Amark muttered, "It isn't right, but there's nothing wrong."
When he left the bridge, Amark tried to get some sleep. But the Shangba was rolling so heavily – problems with the internal gravity stabilizers – that he couldn't stay in his bed. Yet he didn't feel like tying himself down.
Two days into the patrol, the chief engineer reported that the Shangba had used over three hundred gallons of lube oil on the first day. At that rate, the patrol could last only eleven days. Fortunately, he reappeared later and said he'd found big hole in a lube oil line and that he had repaired it.
In the afternoon, battle stations was sounded and the crew was taken through a series of combat drills. The new men, just out of training, caused many foul-ups as each system was tested. There was much joking about "the greenhorns who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground." It made it hard for Amark to get much sleep. But the crew began to get deadly serious about getting ready to fight. They rushed to their stations, carefully checked the gear they would have to use, and sounded like good warriors as they gave their reports over the intercom.
During the evening briefing, Amark showed the route he'd plotted through the Empire and between the Kzinti and Federation outposts to the Shangba's duty station near the Federation border. With reports of greatly increased activity by the Federation, it looked as though the Shangba was in for an exciting time. Yet Amark felt no nervousness as he discussed the defences likely to be encountered in getting to their station.
By the third day, the crew was responding sufficiently well to conduct a live fire exercise. Amark examined the sensor readings, ensuring the area was vacant, the exercise began. The helm officer ordered flank speed and the Shangba surged toward her target. At the moment they came into range, "Drop to impulse" was ordered.
D'ghor, the darkly handsome, heavy-set weapons officer was watching through the eye-port of the tiny console in front of him. When he could see the target, he loudly ordered "Lock phasers." They were directed to fire three disruptor bolts and twenty phaser bursts at the target, an empty hole in space. At his command, the ship jumped back to warp.
There had been a few minor injuries as the men had carried out their duties with perhaps too much eagerness. It was surprising how the crew who had seemed so lackadaisical about readying the Shangba for patrol could suddenly be so intensely serious about being ready to shoot it out with an enemy starship.
The attitude of the crew in the battle drills was a welcome change from their griping and reluctant approach to the long hours of work that had been necessary to get the Shangba back into operation. They had acted like a bunch of civilian workers who were not going to do a stitch more than required by their contracts. The engine room gang had reacted to their tedious job of replacing burned-out bearing surfaces by demanding they be given higher rank, liberty, and occasional sleep-ins. On of the machinists in particular, who had been dogging his work, had highly resented to a threat to bring him up on charges for shirking his duties. "You've never been phasered, missiled, or gone without food," he had told his lieutenant. Then he had snidely suggested to the lieutenant that he wasn't going to be brave when the Kzinti missiles started exploding against the hull.
There had been considerable dissension among the lieutenant's workers and it didn't help to have Chief Kordite put him down. When he had asked the chief why the men used such a painstakingly slow way to get a job done, he had curtly said, "Because that's the way it was done on the D6s fifteen years ago and that's the way we do it today." When the lieutenant had suggested he could show him a better and faster way to do the job, the chief had snorted and spat on the deck to show his disgust. Addressing everyone, he had loudly declared, "These young Biq'a'lyn will always have a better way of doing things which they know nothing about."
When Taman reported the incident to Amark, he commented, "Somebody must have never told the lieutenant that it was the chiefs who actually run the DSF." Amark nodded, wondering if that's the way it should be. Could that kind of starfleet be successful in a modern war?
"What did you do about it?" Amark asked.
"Told the lieutenant to exercise command authority next time, demoted him two steps in rank, replaced him with his junior officer, and made the engineering crew do the work their former lieutenant's way. Then I had the machinist arrested and replaced." Both knew the machinist would find his next ship to be of the penal variety. A last chance if he survived it.
On the last watch, "Ketha" spotted a brief flare on the sensors. Not taking any chances, he had the Shangba brought to battle stations. Upon arriving at the location, there was nothing there. He seemed to think he had seen another Klingon cruiser. He checked with the communications officer, who received no response to a hail, and asked if there was any classified explanation for another ship to be in the vicinity. The communications officer assured Ketha that there was nothing. In his taciturn, self-assured manner, Korax was hard to disbelieve.
Upon reflection, it was evident that Ketha was justified in his concern as to whether Korax, a newcomer to the DSF, had grasped the importance of his communications duties. His handling of a dispatch dealing with promotions of the officers was a case in point. Korax had collected a pile of general messages just before the Shangba departed on patrol. Then, feeling that no one had time to look at them until the Shangba was well on her way, he didn't post the messages until he was near the end of his first watch. For the most part, the comm. Traffic consisted of unclassified messages. But the message promulgated from DSF headquarters hit the spot. When Ketha read it, he immediately called the captain to the bridge. The message said that Ketha had just been promoted to lieutenant commander and that Taman had been promoted to full commander at the same time. The news made Amark chuckle.
Amark took the opportunity to study the full message, and it showed that two other members of the crew had been promoted. There was cause for much celebration. And a little more discipline to be handed out.
Commander Taman spent the next day getting the ships records up to date. He had discovered that for the most part records didn't exist on the Shangba. Evidently those responsible for keeping up the records felt the Shangba wasn't going to be brought out of mothballs before becoming obsolete, so why bother with records.
After taking the late bridge watch again, Amark went to breakfast. Officially it was nightfall in the capital city of the Empire. The eating schedule had been changed so that dinner was at midnight and supper just after dawn. That was to conform to the all day patrol routine that was starting the next day. "Then we start taking off poundage," he prophetically recorded in his log. Only Taman was there to eat breakfast with him. Amark took the opportunity to go over his planned patrol with the executive officer. He felt it was a good idea to share his thoughts and get Taman's reaction.
During the night, the chief engineer reported that he cleaned a plugged up drain and that on breaking down the drain he'd found it was clogged by a lantern and numerous large bolts. Also, he sadly noted that an oil transfer line that had split – dumping oil into the port nacelle – had shown definite tamper marks. "That's some sort of sabotage," he angrily observed.
The primary bridge crew took the second watch the next day because the Shangba was crossing the official border of the Kzinti Hegemony. That wasn't enough to worry about, however. An engineer reported that there were heavy grounds on the starboard power converter and the batteries wouldn't hold a charge until he had cleared the grounds. On hearing the report, Amark muttered, "Going to war in this ship is fighting two wars – one against the Kzinti and another to keep this old-age tub running."
To better understand the routine of operations of a D6 on war patrol, Amark kept a detailed account of the next day's activities in his log. With the changed watch schedule, he came off midwatch and climbed unthinking into his bed and went to sleep. Exhaustion had gotten the better of him. He was awakened, gagging and choking, by an alarm bell and stinking hot fumes pouring over his body. The environmental systems had failed, again.
By morning watch he was back on the bridge. He checked the sensor logs and sat in his command seat. The other officers relieved the boredom of the watch by telling stories. Koll, a brash talkative helmsman, told about how he had gotten on the Shangba after being with the Lyrans for the first part of the war. "I was the Klingon representative on the Lyran cruiser Droyer, interpreting Klingon signals for the Lyrans. Then, when she was destroyed by the Kzinti, I got into a shuttle which hid until an F5 came alongside and took us in. The captain asked if there were any Klingons in the shuttle. I quickly called out that I was and without waiting for permission, scrambled out of the shuttle and into the F5. From there I got brought back to the spacedock and got brought over to the Shangba. "
The navigator told about a Dunkar cook, who, on hearing a string of exploding missiles and thinking his ship had fired disrupters, had exclaimed with great glee, "We're sure giving the cats hell." Mostly the talk was about who they got into or didn't get into when they were in port. Amark found that sort of talk off-putting.
Two nights later, the sensor operator announced to Taman, who was on watch, that he had detected a destroyer making high warp. It wasn’t Klingon, so the ship was brought to battle stations. At the thought of first blood, the crew moved eagerly and nimbly to their stations. Amark took a quick look at the sensor panel. "It's too far away. We won't catch it." The Shangba continued on her way. Off to the starboard side, their sensors could now reach into Federation territory.
That night Korax received a message addressed to the Shangba. It told of a report of several Kzinti transports plus four warships at the sector starbase. Included was a small carrier, the Warrior's Claw. Ketha looked up the ship and declared, "That's the baby we're going to destroy." With a chuckling laugh, Amark said, "Tell the crew, Ketha, whoever fires the shot that finishes her, gets a quart of bloodwine."
Fighters were essential to the Kzinti war effort. Destroying the Claw would delay their efforts in the sector. They were only a day away from the starbase so Ketha called up the charts on the sector and the area near the starbase. There was no chance they would take the Shangba near the starbase. Its weaponry made that impossible. Yet, operating near the starbase might make sense. Not much, it turned out. Unfortunately, their charts were three decades old Federation charts.
Again Amark decided to expand his log entries for the next day. With poor environmental controls, with vetlh everywhere, with cranky machinery and suffering in general from the infirmities of old age, the Shangba was nevertheless endured with good spirit by the young warriors who manned her. Young warriors readily adapted to a life like that lived on the Shangba. There was little griping about the conditions. A few of the old timers on board, however, were less tolerant of the demands put on one by the environment in the old ship and were continuously requesting transfers to the new D7s.
In sharp contrast, griping about the lack of enemy ships was now the pastime. It was an occupation of frustration, even making one forget about the miserable life led by the Shangba's crewmen.
Topic: Amark's War (Read 10259 times)