Every man had a job. Every man was busy. No one was standing around waiting for a part or waiting for instructions or waiting for someone else to get out of the way so he could do something. In short, it wasn’t chaos. It was a symphony. Max could not remember ever being so impressed by anything he had seen in any engineering space in his entire naval career. No wonder Brown always seemed to get things done in record time.
Determining that he could contribute nothing by making his presence known, Max slipped out of the compartment without being seen and went back to his Day Cabin, a small but efficient space containing a washroom, changing area, office, and dining space attached to the area where he slept. Max went straight to his work station and called up the utility for sending text messages to a crew member’s percom and wrote: “Werner, I stopped by your work area and watched the proceedings for a few minutes. You and your men are doing a positively brilliant job. Please pass on my appreciation to everyone involved in the project and understand that I find your management of the situation totally outstanding and exemplary in every way. If I had my choice of any engineer in the entire Navy, I would keep the one I’ve got.”
He hit the SEND button, knowing that in a second or two his Chief Engineer would be flipping open the tiny communications device attached to his wrist and reading the message. Men need praise for a job well done just as they need criticism for a job done poorly. A few good words from the skipper can sustain a man’s morale for weeks, even months.
***
It turns out that the recently-lauded Engineer Brown had not been entirely truthful. He had estimated that the construction of the new jump drive power junction would take at least 24 hours and maybe as many as 36. The job actually took eighteen and a half. According to the book, it should have taken 38. Having seen Brown’s methods, Max now understood why Werner was so often able to complete repairs in less than the nominal time. The jump drive repaired, Brown could turn his attention to completing repairs to the fusion reactor cooling systems so that the
Cumberland
could recover all of her remarkable speed—speed which the tiny ship needed desperately to complete the kinds of missions for which she was built.
Meanwhile, Max was writing the Contact and After Action Report relating the engagement in the Mengis system to be sent to his immediate commander, Admiral Hornmeyer, at Task Force Tango Delta, with a copy to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at Norfolk on Earth. As usual, he was struggling with where to strike the balance between the two competing goals of any after-action report: on the one hand, communicating to one’s superiors the commander’s aggressiveness, courage, dash, and daring while, on the other, reassuring those same superiors of this same commander’s prudence, reasonableness, caution, and circumspection. Maybe it would be easier to write if he had Multiple Personality Disorder.
Max was particularly keen on getting this report right. The last time he had met with the Admiral, old Hit-‘em Hard had hinted that he had some sort of interesting assignment in mind for the
Cumberland
, and Max didn’t want to say anything in the report that might change the Admiral’s mind.
Some captains solved this dilemma by walking the line in every sentence—that is, by writing the entire report in a moderate, balanced tone, neither too aggressive nor too cautious. Max could never make himself do that. His technique was, instead, to strike a balance by using counterweights. A series of aggressive sentences would be balanced by a few cautious ones so that, on the whole, the report was an appropriate compromise. He never knew if it had the desired effect but, until someone told him to do it different, he was going to keep doing what he was doing.
In any event, it would be several days before the
Cumberland
was going to be doing much of anything, interesting or otherwise. With her compression drive out of commission until she could rendezvous with a repair tender,
Cumberland
could travel through space in only two ways: propelled by her main sublight drive through normal, Einsteinian space, and hurled by her jump drive from one pre-surveyed jump point to another, similar point in a nearby solar system, skipping over the intervening light years in an instant. With these limitations, it took the
Cumberland
something like 16 hours to travel at roughly half the speed of light the average 60 AU distance within a star system from the jump point by which it arrived to the jump point by which it left. And, the task force was four systems away. Given the present performance level of this crew, though, there was always plenty to keep the men busy while the ship crossed one star system after another, mainly training, training, and more training. There were GQ drills, combat drills, fire-fighting drills, damage control drills, and boarder repulsion drills. There was rifle practice, shotgun practice, side arm practice, grenade practice, and practice with the various edged weapons issued to or allowed to be used by the officers and men, including the boarding cutlass, the dirk, and the battle axe. Maybe, if they worked very, very hard, this crew’s proficiency level would rise to the task force average. Average would represent a substantial improvement because, when Max took command, the crew’s performance rating was the worst in the task force. Max was about to summon his XO to come see him about trying to squeeze more training into the schedule when his comm buzzed.
“Captain, here.”
“Skipper, this is Chin. I’ve just decrypted a signal that I think you need to see. And, sir, this is going to sound a bit odd, but I think you’re going to want to have Doctor Sahin there with you when you see it.”
Unlike some officers, Max believed that the obligations of command ran in both directions. Obviously, subordinates owed to their superiors duties of obedience and respect. Perhaps not so obviously, but of equal importance, superiors owed to their subordinates duties as well: loyalty, compassion, respect for their dignity, recognition of their value as individuals, teaching and guidance, correction and discipline, praise and reward for excellence and outstanding effort, and—maybe above all—trust. For Max, when a subordinate made a recommendation of that kind, particularly when all that was at stake was a little time and inconvenience, you didn’t cross examine the man about his reasons. Instead, you took his advice, proving by your actions that he has your trust. It nearly always paid off.
“Come to my Day Cabin in half an hour. I’ll have the doctor here by then.”
Chin got there first, with the doctor arriving a few moments later. The Captain’s Steward served all three men some of the excellent and ruinously expensive coffee given to Doctor Sahin by Ellington Wortham-Biggs, an art dealer on Rashid IV. As always, the taste was sublime. When Chin took a sip of the coffee and recognized the flavor, an ironic smile slowly wrote itself on his lips.
“Ok, Chin, what have you got.”
The Communications Officer, who was, after all, only a twenty year old Ensign and who had never before sat drinking coffee in the Captain’s Day Cabin, took a second or two to compose himself, and then began. “Sir, the
Cumberland
has assigned to it metaspacial data channel 77580, and we monitor it constantly. We get ten or twelve transmissions on it per watch, in addition to the signals we get on the ALL FLEET channel, the Task Force Tango Delta Channel, etc.
“Well, about an hour ago, we received a signal on channel 77580, only it didn’t start off with an authentication code prefix.” To the obviously confused doctor, “That’s a twenty-seven character identifier assigned to each authorized naval sender, which is how we know a signal is from Norfolk or Admiral Hornmeyer instead of from the Krag or a bunch of school kids in North Tonawanda, New York. Ordinarily, we would have discarded it, since civilians send signals on the wrong channel all the time. They get the digits transposed, punch in the wrong number, have a glitch in their equipment, bump the channel selector in the middle of sending, and so on. Most of those signals are in clear. No code. No encryption. But this signal was encrypted. Not only that, it’s a Union Space Navy encrypt.
Permafrost
.”
Max, who had been sitting rather comfortably (all right, he was slouching) suddenly sat bolt upright. “
Permafrost
? You’re sure they used that one?”
“No doubt, sir. We get a perfectly comprehensible, if a bit cryptic, message if we use
Permafrost
. Otherwise, we just get a lot of gibberish.”
“Pardon me,” the doctor verbally threw an elbow to get into the conversation. “But not everyone present is versed on the latest developments in military and naval cryptography. What is so special about
Permafrost
?”
The entire ship’s company had tacitly agreed that it was the Captain’s job to answer this kind of question for the doctor. Max tried to keep his voice from sounding too pedantic. “It’s the code name of a high level naval encrypt. In fact, it’s Indigo level, which is the second highest. We replaced it with
Icicle
what, about four months ago?” Chin nodded a confirmation. “Even if we have no indication of it having been broken, we never use any encryption for more than a year. That way, even if someone does break it the damage is limited and the enemy has to start off breaking a new one.
“Anyway,
Permafrost
was the main high level encrypt we used for sending intelligence reports, operational orders, tactical and strategic communications, basically the kind of information that would do the most damage if it fell into the hands of the enemy. There’s only one higher level, Violet, that we use for our deepest, darkest secrets. I’ve never received anything encrypted at that level—I’m not important enough, you see—so I really don’t know what is more important than the Indigo material. Who other than the Navy would have the ability to send a message in
Permafrost
and why would they do it?”
“I have an idea, sir,” said Chin, somewhat tentatively.
“Let’s have it.”
“Another government with a strong defense and intelligence establishment could pull it off: Romanova, Rashid, Ghifta, Pfelung. Now, suppose a private party wanted to hint that he had high level connections with one of those governments, but did not want to come right out and say so. Or, what if a government wanted to communicate something to us unofficially through a private party, but in a way that said the communication had official sanction. This would be a good way to do it. The sender would be providing us with his
bona fides
right there, in the structure of the message. Of course, I’ve seen the message, and that theory fits with what it says.”
“Let’s see the message, then.”
Chin reached into a pocket of his uniform and pulled out two slips of paper. Actual paper. Very few things on a warship were printed on paper. With each man having two or three padcomps and computer work stations and consoles with computer access all over the ship, there was little need to print anything. Perhaps more than anything else, committing the message to hard copy showed how much importance Chin attached to the communication. He slid the printouts across the small table to the Captain and the Doctor. They read: “TO THE DISCIPLE OF APOLLO COMMA THE MAN WITH WHOM YOU LAST TOUCHED SWORDS URGENTLY DESIRES TO MEET WITH YOU AND YOUR PRINCIPAL IN CONFIDENCE ON A MATTER OF THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE IMPORTANCE TO THOSE WHO SHARE YOUR QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN ATTIRE STOP COME TO THE PLACE WHERE THE MASTIFF SLEEPS AS SOON AS YOU ARE ABLE STOP WEAR SOMETHING TURQUOISE AND ARRIVE RIDING THE SAME HORSE AS PREVIOUSLY STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”
“Now I don’t understand all of this,” Chin said, “but based on the reference to Apollo I thought it was probably addressed to you, Doctor, and that he wants to meet with the both of you. I don’t know the rest, but it looked extremely important to me, so I brought it to your attention right away.”
“Outstanding work, Chin,” Max said. “Your instincts were perfectly correct. Thank you. The doctor and I will take this from here. You’re dismissed.” Chin drained his coffee cup, set it down, rose, and left.
“Well, Bram, I hope you can make more sense of this than I can, because other than knowing who Apollo is, the rest of it is Greek to me.”
“Apollo. Greek. Your wit never ceases to amaze. But, as a matter of fact, Max, I believe I understand every word of it perfectly. This is only fitting. The message is, after all, addressed to me. One might expect, therefore, that the writer would adapt the message to my particular understanding.”
“All right, then, translate it for me.”
“Very well. As Ensign Chin correctly surmised, I am the disciple of Apollo. The physician’s Hippocratic Oath begins with the invocation of several ancient deities, the first of whom is Apollo. The man with whom I recently touched swords is Ellington Wortham-Biggs. As part of our recent dealings we swore a Rashidian ‘Sword Oath’ that involved drawing our swords and touching them flat to flat near the tips. You, my friend, are my principal. Those who share my questionable taste in attire are, I believe, the Navy, as we all wear the same uniform which, I believe, the perfectly turned out Mr. Wortham-Biggs would regard as most unbefitting a gentleman. The directive to wear something turquoise is most likely a reference to the turquoise sash that goes on my uniform when I am acting as an Ambassador. He wishes that I be empowered to act in that capacity when I meet with him, just as I was with the Pfelung. The place where the mastiff sleeps is his private office. There was a most enormous, somnolent, loudly-snoring mastiff there when we met.”