0146 hours CST, June 17th, 2673; the Skate

“Combat warning!” shouted the bulkhead speakers, waking everyone up as alarms started to ring throughout the hull of the boat. The crew members in their bunks woke up almost instantly as the shrill alarm echoed through the compartments.

The combat warning alarm was not the worst alarm; that distinction was reserved for the call to battle stations. The current alarm was initiated when there was some warning before a vessel was about to enter combat.

A combat warning call was just as important as the call to battle stations; the warning gave the crew time to get into their space suits before reporting, while the call to battle stations did not. Janice and Hillary shared the same bunk room. Being female members of the crew, they were segregated from the male members to give some semblance of privacy. Both were catching up on their sleep, and both were startled awake.

“I thought you said you were joking!” Janice shouted to Hillary over the noise of the alarm. She hopped out of her bunk and ran quickly toward her space suit locker, stripping off the clothes she wore to bed.

“I thought I was!” Hillary shouted back and moved toward the vac suit she had hanging next to her locker. Hillary’s skin-suit locker was empty and was not big enough to house the replacement suit.

Donning a skin suit was not a quick task, but it was still faster than donning a vac suit. Janice pulled out the first item of the kit, a set of panties that she slipped up her legs.

Hillary and the other crewwomen needed another fifteen minutes to don their suits. They were joined during that time by two others who came from their duty stations after being relieved to don their suits, but they could not help with the vac suits since they had to get into their own suits.

The helmsman was finally able to slide into the top section of her suit and with some amount of fighting, was able to lock the top to the bottom of the suit. She grabbed the thick gloves and her helmet and waddled to the door with the other crew members.

* * *

Murphy was on the bridge sixteen minutes after the alert started. He had the benefit of knowing when he entered the time for the alarm, but he waited till now to enter the bridge to give the drill a proper basis. He climbed the ladder up to his chair. Junior Lieutenant Sinkovich was on watch; her watch was the night watch that ran from 2300 hours till 0700 hours.

“I have the con,” Murphy said simply. “Get into your suit and report to station.”

“Aye sir,” Kostya responded, unbelted herself from the chair, and climbed down the ladder on the right side of the bridge, the ladder opposite from Murphy, to rush to her quarters to get her own suit on. She was back less than twenty minutes later. Lead Hart still had not arrived at her station on the bridge.

“Cancel the alarm,” Murphy ordered after the signals officer was seated at her station. “Report the manning status.”

“We are eighty-two percent manned, sir,” Lieutenant Bell reported from the seat in front of Murphy. The commanding officer looked at the clock, 0223 hours. It took thirty-seven minutes for the drill to be completed. Leading Spaceman Hart was just coming onto the bridge and climbed up to her station.

“Lead Hart, what the hell is that?” Murphy asked, his irritation showing more than he had intended.

“Uh, it’s my vac suit, sir,” she said. Her embarrassment coloured her tone as she brought herself up to her seat and relieved the helmsman from the night watch.

“What’s it doing on my boat? Never mind. XO, how many crewmen don’t have proper skin suits?”

“About six, sir.”

“About?” Murphy paused and let his irritation leave him. “XO, why do I have crew members who aren’t properly equipped?”

“Sir, in Lead Hart’s case, the requisition was signed by Lieutenant Williams four months ago and filed with the squadron.”

This time the sigh was noticeable by the entire bridge crew. “When we get back to station, check on those requisitions. I want to know where they are. It is unacceptable that crewmen are forced to wear vac suits for months without replacements.” He focused his glare at Able Hart, who tried to look even smaller in the helmsman’s seat, despite the bulk of the suit she wore. Her job forced her to use her hands with some dexterity, and that meant she could not wear the overly bulky gloves that were part of the space suit. If the bridge lost atmosphere, it was unlikely she would be able to don the gloves and helmet in time.

Murphy took a few moments to calm down and then turned on the ship-wide intercom. “Now that everyone is awake, at this dim and early two-hundred-twenty-seven hours in the morning, I want to explain our mission in more detail. Within minutes we will be reaching zero relative velocity to Clearwater Prime and will begin the training exercise. I know it hasn’t been an easy trip, starting out at four G, and then an extended period of acceleration at one-point-two G. The orders of the exercise are that it will start when we get to the starting position. The rest of the squadron launched hours after we did, and only accelerated at one G. This means we’re at least five hours ahead of them.

“The first three hunters are still trying to get into the first box to patrol, and they are still decelerating at one G. They’ll be in position in roughly five and a half hours. By the time they start patrolling, we should be well into the next box and past them. This gives us the advantage.

“As for the combat warning drill, we were too slow. I know some of you are not properly equipped, but for those that are, you should be on station in seventeen minutes. From my reports it took twenty minutes. The on-duty crew members were not all back at their stations by the time we needed them to be. If this had not been a drill, those on duty would not have had time to get into their suits before fighting broke out. This would have left them vulnerable to any holes in the boat, and could possibly have left the ship unprepared.”

He did not have to say it, but the implication was clear. The slowness of the people getting to their battle stations could have killed their friends and colleagues, and could have killed themselves.

“We will have to do better, but we don’t have time for practise now. Now we go hunting.” He turned off the intercom and looked over to his XO.

“Secure from battle stations.” He waited for the orders to be given and then turned to Petty Officer Yosufzai, the VSO. “Where’s the Mighty Jim, VSO?”

* * *

0820 hours CST, June 17th, 2673; the bridge of TBC-412

The torpedo boat arrived at the far end of its patrol box at 0820 hours. Commander Robertson had positioned his boat in the most likely place that TBC-473 would come through, but he was still not happy. Not only did he have to have breakfast on the boat as part of the exercise, but he also had no idea where TBC-473 was.

“Report all contacts,” he ordered sharply.

“Contact echo-one is an asteroid shepherd moving toward us. Contact echo-two is a large bulk carrier, decelerating to the station at one G and is due to pass through the exercise area in fifteen minutes. Echo-three is another bulk carrier an hour ahead of echo-two. TBC four-twenty-three and four-thirty-eight are off our port and starboard. They’re each about a half of a light second away.”

The VSO answered from his station, knowing that his commanding officer could have looked up the information much faster than he could have read it off.

“No sign of TBC-four-seventy-three?”

“No sir.”

“Look again!” Robertson’s voice was rough and high-strung.

Minutes passed as the VSO surveyed the area around the boat, working with the various camera operators on duty. “No other contacts, sir.”

“Keep looking, it’s out there.”

Another twenty minutes passed, and Robertson wiped the sweat from his brow. He was more nervous than he should have been. He had to show this upstart, has-been lieutenant where he was in the rank structure, and that was at the bottom, if Robertson had his way. He just had to find the hiding torpedo boat first.

“Thermal contact, bearing oh-oh five by three-one-five degrees, one camera only, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Unknown. It’s faint, and I only have it on one camera, sir,” the VSO repeated. “Getting an image on another camera now, but it’s intermittent. Cameras three and five, I can’t get a good enough reading to triangulate or to get a parallax reading yet.”

“Helm, rotate us seventy degrees to starboard.”

The torpedo boat rotated to point the long side of the boat toward the thermal contact. In the process it unmasked more cameras and gave a better chance of getting a good range estimate.

“Camera twelve now has an image of the thermal contact. It looks to be three light seconds away, moving along the asteroid belt, sir.”

“That’s it. Signal four-twenty-three and four-thirty-eight that we have contact with the fox and they are to move to make visual confirmation with us. Astrogation, plot us an intercept course.”

* * *

TBC-473 was already moving pretty fast, and TBC-412 needed to accelerate to catch up with it. Again Robertson was savouring his victory over Murphy. While he did not catch the other boat right at the start, he could still catch it near the beginning. This would be better, much better.

The overweight junior commander sat in his chair on the bridge, thinking of the best way to break it to Murphy that he had lost; he wasn’t paying much attention to the rest of the activities on the bridge.

Robertson had refused to allow the acceleration to rise above one G during the interception. It made it too hard for him personally to climb up and down the ladders on the bridge. The interception took slightly over six hours. During this time TBC-473 had moved farther and farther into the patrol box that was eight light seconds wide. The target moved at a constant speed—faster than the orbital velocity of the asteroids, but still constant, giving Robertson a chance to catch up.

“How close are we to four-seventy-three?”

“We’re still about a tenth of a light second behind. We’re gaining on the target, sir.”

“Good, go for visual confirmation as we pass.”

The minutes ticked by as TBC-412 moved closer to the target.

“Sir! We’re on a collision course with some of the asteroids, about five percent of a light second away!” the VSO called out when he discovered the obstruction in their path.

“Helm, adjust our course to avoid.”

Robertson watched his tactical plot; the main screen was divided between the plot and a feed from the cameras. The thermal image was still there, and they were definitely gaining on it, but the image looked smudged and indistinct. The camera operators and computers could not confirm it as a torpedo boat. Robertson had not seen anything that looked like a torpedo boat yet either. The contact was moving along the rocks of the asteroid belt, barely avoiding them as it went.

That’s another thing I’ll cite the piss-ant for. He did not say it out loud, but he did write down, “Endangering the crew of TBC-473 by travelling through an asteroid belt” in the official after-exercise report. He had already rewritten the engagement time several times. Currently the engagement time was written down as 1503 hours.

Robertson’s boat accelerated past the 473 without spotting it. The thermal image rolled to the aft of the ship.

“Did we spot them?” Robertson asked. He did not see anything from the main screen.

“No sir, too many rocks in the way.”

“I had an intermittent radio contact as we went past, sir,” the ESO reported.

“What type?”

“It looked like an exercise umpire frequency burst.” They were not supposed to be monitoring that frequency; it was for the exercise evaluators only.

“Helm, reverse acceleration. Astrogator, plot us a course at least point-zero-one light seconds from the asteroids. We’ll get it on the next pass.”

He looked at the clock and then the boat’s position. He was getting close to the end of his patrol zone, and if he did not have a confirmation of engagement soon, he would have to pass the engagement to the next box, something he had never had to do in all the years he led the squadron.

The boat made two more passes over the next two hours, and still did not get a good image of anything but more asteroids. He was almost out of time; it was getting close to 1715 hours, and the contact was less than a tenth of a light second away from the edge of the patrol box.

“OWO, set up programming for a Mark Fifteen to target the four-seventy-three,” Robertson ordered. He could still win this exercise by engaging the fox with a torpedo. He would not get as much credit as a visual engagement, but he would still win.

“Aye sir, run time is sixty seconds.”

“Simulate fire!” The offensive officer simulated the fire of the torpedo, sending the programming back to the John Charlie over the exercise’s umpire frequency. It took time for a response to come back.

“Umpire says the torpedo ran into an asteroid. Four-seven-three took no damage.”

Robertson cursed. “Fix the run. Program the torpedo to go slower. Tell it to avoid the asteroids.”

“Yes sir,” the OWO answered and then took some time to program the new instructions. “Torpedo run is now one hundred and twenty seconds.”

“Fire!”

The OWO sent the commands back to the umpire again. This time the wait was longer. The tactical display showed the projected plot of the torpedo as it moved back and forth, dodging the asteroids. The final seventy seconds of the run were what the umpire calculated and sent back to the boat.

Robertson held his breath as the torpedo reported a radar lock on the thermal target and accelerated to 150 G for the final run toward the target. The torpedo track disappeared from the tactical image.

“Yes! Report!” Robertson exploded with glee.

“Umpire reports…uh, torpedo impacted with an asteroid. Zero damage to four-seven-three.”

“Robertson cursed more. “Fire again!” he ordered loudly.

“Can’t, sir. Weapons are locked out. We’ve moved out of our patrol zone.”

“Call forty-four-three! Tell them we have the fox, but he’s running in the asteroid belt. Get him to move his section to take over.” Robertson did not want to share the credit of the kill, but he was not going to let the upstart lieutenant get away with this.

Moments later the signals officer spoke up. “Four-four-three wants confirmation of the order. They have a faint contact they are trying to triangulate, but they’re working echo-three.”

“It’s a sensor ghost. Tell them to engage four-seventy-three. We have it crossing into their area now.”

“Four-four-three is moving to intercept.”

Robertson looked at his report. Time for engagement read 1530 hours, but the current time was already 1737 hours. TBC-473 was lucky those asteroids had gotten in the way of his torpedoes.

* * *

Robertson was still monitoring TBC-443 and her two sisters as they moved to intercept the fox as it travelled along the asteroid belt. The fox’s speed was constant, and it moved in an orbit farther from the asteroids as time went on. This was natural, as only the first three patrol boxes had the asteroid belt running through them.

TBC-443 was out of position to intercept the fox in its patrol zone, but the third boat in the patrol element had remained back, almost in the exact centre of the cube that was six light seconds wide. TBC-413 raced to intercept, setting its acceleration at two G. The other two boats in the patrol zone, the leader, TBC-443, and TBC-427, likewise raced to intercept the thermal contact.

An hour passed, and then a second as the three boats moved to catch up. All the while Robertson remained on the bridge, his ship coasting out of its patrol zone. The other two boats of Robertson’s element stayed with him in formation.

After the second hour passed, 413 moved in for a visual engagement. The tactical display showed it going past.

“Did four-thirteen get them?” Robertson asked.

“One moment, sir,” the signals officer replied. Communications between the two boats took a few moments, the distance between the two was six light seconds, giving a communications delay of twelve seconds.

“No, they saw a lot of asteroids, but they did report faint radio contact, sir.”

Robertson let out a loud curse as he sat back down on his chair and breathed out heavily. His face was red, and his brow was lined with sweat.

The other two boats in the second patrol zone were still accelerating toward the target. They would only have one chance before the fox was out of this zone and into the third cube. This was the first time in years that any torpedo boat attached to the Charlie’s squadron had gotten past the first box, and this one was about to make it into the third. In all the past exercises, all the boats would be heading back to the tender by now.

Robertson’s stomach rumbled as he sat in his chair. He ignored it, or tried to. The pass conducted by the last two torpedo boats came up with a lot of rock, but not the wayward torpedo boat.

“Signals, get hold of…” Robertson started to say, but he had no idea who was in the third box and had to look it up. “Four-eighty-one. Tell him the fox is passing into his zone and to get him at all costs.” With those orders given, Robertson heaved himself out of his chair, which was quite a feat in the weightless environment, and went to his quarters. The time was 1947 hours.

The three boats in the third patrol zone moved to intercept. Their patrol zone was only four light seconds wide, and they were already moving in the direction of the asteroid belt when the orders came in. The three boats moved to the edge of their box, where the asteroid belt left the exercise area; 473 would have to fire up its engines to leave the cover of the asteroid belt or be disqualified.

Commander Robertson was back on the bridge by 2030 hours, and he watched the delayed tactical display. His fingers banged against the armrest of his chair, waiting for the three boats to secure the fox.

“Four-eight-one reports confirmed visual with thermal target. Picture coming in now, sir.”

“At last!” Robertson cheered with elation. He looked at his report and was already correcting the engagement time to 2035 hours on his console, but his fingers stopped. His face fell as he saw the image come onto the screen before him.

It was an asteroid, with some of the exposed metallic portions melted and glowing on the thermal display. The cylindrical shape of a decoy was embedded into the rock. The decoy asteroid was moving faster than the rest of the rocks in the belt, moving it farther from the sun as it continued its journey to be caught by Shepherd One and tugged into mining orbit around Clearwater.