“There’s no backing out now, Harris,” Warshaw said. “I hope you were right about everything.”
It took me five minutes to get from my billet to the bridge. Warshaw and one of his top NCOs, Senior Chief Hank Bishop, met me at the lift when I arrived. Well, he had been a senior chief. Now that we had broken relations with Washington, Bishop was the captain of the Kamehameha.
Warshaw had not yet ordered the call to quarters, but the bridge was on full alert. Technicians ran system checks and radar sweeps. Amber lights flashed on several computer consoles.
Warshaw led me to a large table in the center of the bridge. On the table, a holographic display showed our fleet and the intruders as quarter-inch three-dimensional models on a green-and-black grid. Our ships filled the center of the grid. The U.A. ships moved along the edge of the display.
“Why haven’t you sounded the alarms?” I asked.
“If we sound general quarters, they’ll hear it,” Bishop said. “The fleetCom system notifies all U.A. ships in the area when one ship sounds general quarters.”
“What’s so bad about that?” I asked.
“That’s not how we do things in the Navy,” Warshaw said. “We don’t go off half-cocked.”
I wanted to tell Warshaw to get specked, but I controlled myself. “I don’t see what’s wrong with telling them we’re ready for a fight. They came here looking for a fight; we should let them know that we’re willing to give it to them.”
“They will take it as a sign of guilt …like we have something to hide,” Warshaw said. He turned and faced me, fury flashing in his eyes. “Why the hell do I bother even trying to explain these things to a Marine?”
“Because you need me as much as I need you.”
“For now,” Warshaw said, calming slightly. “Here is the situation, Harris. They sent two unarmed research vessels to look for their ships. The only contact we have had was with those first ships. They asked us if we knew what happened to their battleships. We told them that we haven’t seen them.
“Apparently they don’t believe us,” Warshaw said pointing to the display.
I shook my head. “Twenty self-broadcasting ships. If we could take them …”
“We can’t,” Warshaw said. “If we make a move, they’ll broadcast out.”
I expected a show of force. As the staff meeting ended, I had said as much, but I had not expected twenty ships. That was half their fleet. Even with twenty ships, they would not have any leverage. Not on our turf. They might make some hollow demands, but we would say, “No,” and their self-broadcasting fleet would return to Earth with its tail between its legs …figuratively speaking. Sending so many ships had been a mistake, it made them look weak.
On the holographic display, the ships meandered around empty space. They could have been looking for debris or maybe the radioactive signature of a broadcast engine.
“What would you do if you were in their shoes?” Bishop asked me. “What if an enemy stole three of your tanks?”
“They don’t have a hound’s breath of a chance against us, not with only twenty battleships,” I pointed out.
“Obviously. That is why they haven’t engaged us,” Warshaw said. He pointed to the display. “They’re staying well out of firing range.”
“But they are in an offensive formation,” Bishop added.
Warshaw shook his head. “It’s aggressive, but not offensive,” he said. “They’re still far enough apart to break and run if we attack.”
Bishop looked more closely, thought it over, and agreed.
“Where are the ships we commandeered?” I asked.
“Over here.” Warshaw sounded distracted as he pointed to the center of the display. He’d parked the commandeered ships in the center of the fleet. As he showed me the location, something struck me. Normally testy, the master chief was now showing a surprising amount of patience.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.
Warshaw and Bishop traded a silent glance, then Warshaw gave me an embarrassed grin. “You were right about the Navy building a new class of ships. Our engineers found these.” He pressed a button, and the holographic image of a ship replaced the tactical map on the table.
“Is this a battleship?” I asked quietly as I inspected the design. The three-dimensional image showed a long and slender hull. For the last hundred years, U.A. capital ships had been moth-shaped wedges. This boat was shaped like a knife.
“We found plans for an entire fleet,” Warshaw said.
As Warshaw said this, a sailor came and saluted.
“What is it, Brown?” Bishop asked.
“Sir, the battleships have changed course. They’re coming toward us, sir.”
“Sound general quarters,” Warshaw shouted.
Bishop struck a button on the table and Klaxons began. Warning lights were already flashing when I came onto the bridge; now the ambient lighting faded, and the glow of blinking amber flashed across the bridge.
Bishop fiddled with a dial on the table, and the tactical view of the ships reappeared, only more magnified.
“Scramble the fighters,” Warshaw ordered.
Bishop repeated the order.
“Scrambling fighters, aye,” an officer yelled.
“Send out all three carrier groups,” Warshaw yelled.
I might have only been a lowly Marine, but I recognized overkill when I heard it. Warshaw was sending thirty-five fighter carriers to intercept twenty battleships.
“How many ships are incoming?” the fleetCom asked.
Across the bridge, communications officers relayed orders as loudly as they could against the distant blare of the Klaxons.
“Keep your fighters in close,” Warshaw told Bishop.
Watching Warshaw, I thought he looked like a schoolboy spouting information he had memorized but did not understand. He’d spent his career as a deckhand, never expecting that he might one day become an officer. There was no strategy in his attack; he was simply throwing every ship in his fleet at the enemy.
But strategy would not make a difference in this near battle. Bright flashes appeared on the 3-D display. The enemy battleships broadcast to safety before coming close enough for us to shoot at them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We needed the three U.A. battleships for several reasons. We needed ships with broadcast engines if we ever wanted to travel beyond Terraneau. Commandeering Pershing’s self-broadcasting cruiser would have given us broadcast-travel capabilities, but it was a runt of a ship, and we needed cargo space for what I had in mind.
We also needed ships with the location of the Mogat home world stored on their broadcast computers because none of us had the slightest specking idea how to find the place. The Unified Authority Navy sent all of its self-broadcasting battleships to fight in the final battle against the Morgan Atkins Believers. Before a ship can self-broadcast to any location, coordinates must be programmed into its broadcast computer.
The computers on the battleships we captured yielded unexpected treasures. Along with the location of the Mogat home world, we found external diagrams of the new ships and a tentative launch schedule. Over the next three years, the Unified Authority planned to swap out its old fleet for an all-new one. From what we could tell, the new ships would be slightly smaller than earlier models. Our engineers were unable to decipher the weapons.
Hoping to glean a little more information about the new fleet, we decided to take a detour as we flew out to the Mogat home world.
Lilburn Franks—formerly a senior chief petty officer in the U.A. Navy but now an upper-half rear admiral in the Enlisted Man’s Fleet—suggested we swing by the Golan Dry Docks on our way to the Mogat Fleet.
The dry docks sat in an otherwise-unpopulated corner of Norma, the smallest and innermost of the galactic arms. Long noted as the Unified Authority’s most advanced shipyard, the Golan facility measured eight miles from top to bottom and included hundreds of cubic miles of construction space. If the Navy had new ships under construction, the Golan Dry Docks was where it would build them.