Truth and Beauty 12-2

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“Hard-a-starboard,” Jack ordered, picking himself up. “Mister Veidt, hit them as they reload.”

Roth’s head came round, and her two-gun broadside fired again. They were at the edge of their effective range now, and one of the bolts dissipated into nothingness before it reached the target; but the other struck, splashing along the shield in a brilliant phosphorescent display. “Turn to pursue,” ordered Jack, “straight at her.”

On the view screen the Frenchman continued to turn, growing until she was broadside-on, then shrinking as her engines came into sight. “Sparks,” said Jack, “send off another Ajax-2 message, ‘request permission to pursue’.” After a minute’s consideration, he asked, “can you turn down the range of the transmitter?”

“No, sir.”

Jack crossed to the communications console. “This knob here,” he gestured.

“That’s been bypassed, sir.”

“Very well.” Jack turned back to the view screen, where the enemy was in full retreat, her engines burning brightly. He clenched his fist absentmindedly and relaxed it. “Very well,” he said again. “Sparks, make the signal for 'received'. Helm, slow us to one quarter and bring us to port. One last broadside, Mister Veidt. Give them something to remember the Roth by.”

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Truth and Beauty 12-1

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Mister Lorre was another puzzle, though to be true the puzzle was more his position than his nature. He had introduced himself as the carpenter, which Stephen had originally taken to mean the person responsible for repairs to Roth’s meager woodwork. But when the Roth had been damaged during her jump to hyperspace (Stephen closed his eyes at the memory), her evaluation and repair seemed to have been Mister Lorre’s responsibility. Welder or metal worker might be a better title, or even foreman, since he oversaw several other people in their work to repair the ship.

Regardless, the carpenter was of that cast of person whom Stephen had met several times before: knowledgeable within his field and somewhat street smart without it, reliable in everyday situations and likely in some extraordinary ones, and willing to join one in a drink though never one to propose one. He was solid, but not special. His way of speaking betrayed a lower-class upbringing, which was no demerit in Stephen’s eyes, though it may have stunted Mister Lorre’s creativity through want of nurturing.

Mister Humphries, the engineer, was a Surrey man, though he had been born on Earth’s moon. He had been raised by his grandparents - the reason was a little vague - and had run away to space after completing an M.S. in engineering in Boston (the reason for this was a little vague, too). But he was knowledgeable, and kind, and cared deeply for his people, seeing himself as the father to the family of the engineering crew, for whom the rest of the Roths were a great extended family. In his leisure time, he was likely to be found pacing the engine and mechanical rooms, trying to tease out another ounce of efficiency form his beloved ship.

Which left only the master, Mister Henreid. What exactly a master did remained something of a mystery to Stephen - or rather, what exactly what exactly his responsibilities were, since he seemed to do or oversee just about everything, and Stephen wasn’t sure whether the master or Mister Greenstreet held a higher position in the command chain. But here the Roth suddenly jerked - Stephen was reminded of the time as a boy when the Staten Island Ferry had rammed the pier - throwing him to the floor and shattering his reverie.

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Truth and Beauty 11-12

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On the view screen, the frigate suddenly bloomed, yawing to starboard and presenting her broadside. “I believe the Junos mount 36 16-gigwatt plasma-arc cannon, plus assorted smaller kinetic weapons,” said Mister Lorre, in a decidedly calm voice.

“Twenty-gigawatt,” said Lieutenant O’Brian. “Helm, turn toward her - give ‘em the smallest target possible.”

“Eighteen-gigawatt,” said subLieutenant Greenstreet.

“Do you not see the spotters guide in the Lieutenant’s hands?”

“Sergeant!” warned Jack, but, “IFF received, sir, she’s French,” said the communications man, and pale-blue bolts streaked out from the Frenchman, who was now broadside-to the Roth. The bolts grew larger and brighter, brighter and larger, blocking the enemy from view, filling most of the view screen, all of the view screen, “brace for impact!” and Roth stumbled, her lights flickered. Jack had grabbed the rail along the bottom of the view screen and so fell only to his knees. Behind him, he heard thumps and curses as the others fell, or didn’t.

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Truth and Beauty 11-11

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Stephen was roused from his reflections by a noise, something like a turbine quickly starting up and shutting down, twice in quick succession. Nothing else seemed to occur, though (he did not notice the change in Roth’s motion as she came about to her new course, having by now become largely insensible of the movements of a living deck), nor did Katya come or call for his assistance, so with nothing else to do (for he also failed to notice that the mood lighting now shone only red) he returned to his considerations.

The morbidly obese purser was something of a puzzle. He was corrupt, though Stephen was not particularly surprised at this: a great deal of money and material flowed through his hands, apparently without oversight; high character indeed would be needed for nothing to stick to his fingers on its way through. No, the puzzle was why he was in space, for clearly he was not happy in this position. This seemed not to be the result of a dislike of the Roth nor anyone aboard her: Stephen had considered the possibility that Lieutenant O’Brian, as a new captain - skipper, he corrected himself - might have upset Mister Blaine’s previously-content life with unwelcome changes, but he could find no evidence to support this theory, for while the lieutenant had certainly made changes, the purser’s unhappiness seemed to predate them; nor did the man seem to be on particularly bad terms with anyone aboard; nor did he tend to speak disparagingly of Roth herself. No, the truth seemed to be that Mister Blaine simply did not like space, or did not like being in space, and that being so, Stephen did not comprehend why the man had chosen a vocation that kept him afloat.

Aside from this puzzle and his corruption, he was a reasonable companion, if a certain shallowness were overlooked. Whatever Roth’s current emergency, Stephen wondered how the purser was taking it. “I hope he doesn’t stress himself into an MI or a CVA,” he muttered to himself: even a single flight of stairs was enough to leave the man puffing for breath.

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Truth and Beauty 11-10

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Roth’s guns went off, all two of them, lavender bolts that flashed toward the Frenchman, growing steadily fainter until they vanished entirely. Jack hadn’t expected a hit; the bold front of the attack was the point. “Helm,” he said, “lay in to intercept. Give me a 30 degree taking pattern with legs of 1 kilometer. Mister Veidt, fire a salvo each time we cross her bows - keep trying for the range.” He looked down at his nightshirt. “Mister Greenstreet, I’m stepping below to change into something more respectable. Call me if anything changes materially.”

He left the bridge and dropped down the companion to return to his quarters. In the great cabin he paused at the drinks machine. He dearly wanted a cup of coffee, but there was no such machine on the bridge itself, so his officers were without. “The long-term solution is to install a machine on the bridge,” he said to himself, “or perhaps in the officers recreation space there might be more room,” he added as he pulled his nightshirt over his head and tossed it onto a chair. he found a matching set of uniform pants, shirt, and jacket, and threw them on, stepped in front of a mirror to set everything more-or-less straight, and clapped a hat onto his head, Resolutely turning his back on the drinks machine, he returned to the bridge, trying to ignore the first twinges of what he feared to be a caffeine headache.

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Truth and Beauty 11-9

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Mister Veidt, the gunner, was another jolly man, though lately he seemed preoccupied. He had no great fund of things to say and seemed to know it, but unlike others with nothing to say, who inflicted that nothing upon everyone else with endless streams of prattle, the gunner stayed silent. He was not taciturn; he laughed easily, but had little in the way of opinions of observations to offer. It was more than possible to spend a pleasant Sunday afternoon sharing the wardroom with him, and Stephen had done so twice, catching up on his medical journals while the gunner occupied himself with his own tablet, trading no more than the occasional “coffee, sir?” “yes, thank you,” when one or the other of them rose to refill his mug in the prep room.

Also quiet was Ms Lund, the electrician, though in her case it seemed more a case of shyness than lack of imagination. She was not from the Middle East, as Stephen had at first supposed, but from somewhere in the Carribean, more specifically she did not say. When not actively at work she generally studied to pass an exam whose name was an acronym of some sort, the passing of which would qualify her to serve on a larger vessel. At other times she was a talented chess player, easily the best Stephen had played against in many years. Stephen had learned with surprise that she was close to 30 years old - he had thought her to be in her early 20s - but on reflection he realized that melanin was protective against sun exposure, so he should not have been surprised.

Ms Bergman, the other woman in the ward room, looked at first glance, to be older than she was, being grey-haired but only 28. She never seemed to have to study her trade; she knew the syntax and nuances of every programming language yet developed as if they each were her primary language. On most evenings she painted in the officer’s recreation suite or exercised in what passed for their gym, but occasionally she joined Sergeant Strasser in his bouts of drinking, matching him glass for glass, to his amusement and frustration, spinning increasingly tall tales (‘let me tell you about the space whales - we got rammed by one off Sirius-II’) and making increasingly scabrous remarks (‘they call it Orion’s sword but it’s really his dick’). Two or three nights ago she had launched into a lecture on Roth’s true name, which she claimed to be Wrath. “Look at the raised letters on the counter. They’re off-center ‘cause the W’s missing. And the O, what they’ve painted as if it’s a broken O, is really a broken O, I mean A.” On regaining sobriety the following morning, she never remembered any of the claims she’d made while inebriated.

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Truth and Beauty 11-8

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The radio man looked up from his console. “Message sent, sir.”

Jack pulled out his pocket watch. His eye on the second hand, he said, “Mister Veidt, are your guns ready?”

“Yes, sir,”

“Be prepared to fire a salvo in another minute or so.”

“Yes, sir. We’re out of range, sir; we can’t hope to hit her.”

“Try for the range nevertheless. Sparks?” he said, watching the second hand near the end of a complete revolution, “send the message, ‘received,’ and the raise the IFF. Show her our colors.”

“Message sent, sir,” said the radio man, then, “colors aloft.”

“Helm, put us across her stem, broadside-to. Mister Veidt?”

“Sir?”

“On my mark, give her a salvo.”

“Aye, sir.”

Jack stepped up to the view screen, almost touching it with his nose. For the moment, everyone was with him, with the single exception of his grumbling sublieutenant. If his gamble worked, he could cement that loyalty, but if it failed, they would never fully trust his judgement again. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, hiding them from sight and crossing his fingers. With agonizing slowness the frigate’s nose crept across her bulk - “Mark!”

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Truth and Beauty 11-7

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Stephen, left with nothing else to occupy himself, fell to reflecting upon his shipmates. He had quickly grown to like Sergeant Strasser. Stephen was a keen judge of men and women - he would have been dead several times over if he had not been - and he pierced through to the man’s essential goodness: vain at times to the point of silliness (he shaved twice a day, and owned a pair of micropliers, Swiss made, specifically for plucking out errant eyebrow hairs), but steady, reliable, capable, and fun. He had consulted Stephen professionally for a GI complaint, and when he had removed his shirt for the wholly negative exam, Stephen had been surprised by the number of scars he had seen, evidence mostly of the King’s enemies, though also of one or two bar room brawls.

Stephen had been dismayed at the results of his exam, for they lent credence to his working diagnosis of PTSD. Even the many scars had supported this diagnosis - someone with this much battle experience should long ago have been rotated off of the front line, though now that he thought of it, Roth wasn’t exactly in the thick of the fighting. The drinking, so far only occasional, supported this diagnosis, too, Stephen thought ruefully.

Mister Greenstreet was the Yin to the sergeant’s Yang. He seemed to care nothing for his appearance, shaving only when his beard grew long enough to itch, and not always bathing on a regular basis. As he bitterly recounted, he had yet to see action, and believed that people held this against him. In truth, he was far more vain that Sergeant Strasser, as his chief concern in life seemed to be what various people thought of him, but though he was happy to complain of being passed over for promotion to anyone who would listen (and to many who would rather not), he did little to actually improve his station, seeming instead to believe that he was owed. Why exactly the sublieutenant was owed Stephen had yet to discern, not that he had truly applied himself to the issue. The sublieutenant was the oldest member of the wardroom, at 49, and the most religious. He ruled their proceedings with a dour hand, frequently conflicting with Sergeant Strasser, who Stephen (and the rest of the ward room, he believed) felt to be better company, and a better and more-reasonable person. Stephen had been more than a little surprised to learn that Mister Greenstreet was married, wondering who might possibly chose to bind their life to his.

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Truth and Beauty 11-6

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He returned to the bridge. “Mister Greenstreet,” he said, “do you think we can run the engines at flank for a few hours without damage?”

Mister Greenstreet made no reply, but picked up the phone and rang the engine room, spoke for a few moments, then offered the receiver to Jack.

“This is the captain,” Lt O’Brian said, “If the number three burns up we’ll have to deal with it as it arises. Unless you want to sit out the war in a French prison I need every revolution.”

“Anything more than three-quarters will run us in a circle, sir,” replied the tinny voice on the other end of the wire, probably Mister Humphries. “The fuel rail is too unbalanced. Even at three-quarters I have to run the nose ring at half just to keep her steady.”

Cursing would only bring bad luck, so Jack handed the receiver back to Mister Greenstreet wordlessly. He turned back to the viewscreen, where the Frenchman continued to grow.

“Radar, what’s the range?”

“36 clicks, sir. Still shortening.”

“This is maximum magnification?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have we silhouettes?”

“Partial, sir. Onscreen?”

“Please.”

The radar operator worked his console, and after a moment the partial top, front and end of the Frenchman appeared along the bottom edge of the view screen. Jack crossed to the binnacle, pulled a spotters guide from the shelf and flipped through the pages, comparing the drawings to the images on the screen. After a minute’s searching, he said, “French corvette, Juno class.” he looked back to the ship, still slowly growing larger in front of him, a plan forming in his head. “Sparks,” he said at last, “using the Ajax 2 code, send the following message to the space on the far side of us from that Frenchman, ‘Enemy vessel of inferior strength in sight,’ and request instructions.

“You are forgetting, sir,” said Mister Greenstreet, “Ajax 2 was reported broken while we were at Neva-IV.”

“I have that in mind, Mister Greenstreet.”

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Truth and Beauty 11-5

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On the bridge, Jack scrutinized the image of the unknown vessel, which had turned to intercept the Roth. “Helm, keep us away. Sensors, magnify.”

“Beg pardon, sir, that’s maximum magnification.”

Jack stepped up to the view screen. The French vessel, if French it was, was bow-on, making her identity difficult to determine. “Rotate the image 30 degrees clockwise.” Yes, now she looked upright, more or less. “Is she showing an IFF?”

“No, sir,”

Not that it mattered. The law required that a vessel show her proper IFF before opening fire, but was silent on the matter before that time. And pirates and terrorists would ignore the law as a matter of course. Privateers had been known to do the same… .

“Helm, keep us away,” said Jack again, for the image had started to grow. “Mister Greenstreet, I am stepping down to the chart room, you have the bridge.”

“Yes, sir,”

In the chart room, Jack pulled up the local region of hyperspace, dropping in the positions of the Roth and the stranger. There really was nothing in area, no reason for anyone to be just waiting here, except to intercept British or allied shipping. The route between Pleiades and Hawthorne Circus ran close to French-occupied space, and if he, or she, was willing to risk the occasional armed transport, a French commander could make a pretty penny before being discovered and driven off. But Roth, with her Algonquin-Electric 375s, could probably outrun any French corvette or brig, and most frigates, if the engines could be run at flank. He would only need a few hours to disappear.

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