Measure, countermeasure, counter-countermeasure, layered thick and heavy. That was the way it had been since the time beyond recall when some human first set out to kill his brother. It wasn't enough to just have a fast ship, good weapons, and solid teamwork. You needed a plan and skill… and luck.
Or so Phil had told them all when he invited them out to dinner at the O club a week ago.
***
Wardhaven O club, two blocks from Main Navy, had been ancient when Kris's Great-grampa Ray was a freshly commissioned subaltern. Its carpeted and thickly curtained rooms were perfect for fine dinning between the wars. On its walls hung battle trophies from Wardhaven's first unpleasantness with fellow Rim worlds. Rich oil paintings celebrating victories going back to mother Earth's dim, bloody past before humanity spread into space four hundred years ago.
Kris wasn't tempted to drink here; she got high on just the ambiance. But the white-jacketed waiter led the twelve junior officers right through the main dinning rooms to a small one off to the side, smelling of fresh paint and new, cheap carpet.
''What did we do to deserve this?'' Kris frowned.
''Not us,'' Phil Taussig said, his perpetual smile only slightly dampened by the toxic outgassing from the recent refurbishment. ''Being junior officers, and somewhat less reputable than swine to the president of this august mess, we are cast out into this for our dinner tonight.''
''It stinks,'' Babs Thompson said, making a face, which on her, the scion of one of the wealthier families on Hurtford, still was beautiful.
''Probably because they had to rebuild it after the last herd of JOs got through with it,'' Heather Alexander said, another rich offspring who had been shuttled to Fast Patrol Squadron 8 for crimes yet unconfessed. With the war scares, lots of young men and women were signing up to do their patriotic duty. Several of them were causing General Mac McMorrison, chair of the Joint Staff, fits as they struggled with greater or lesser success to fit their own strong heads into uniform hats.
None of them had come as close to open mutiny as Kris had. But then, no charges had been filed, so Kris wasn't officially a mutineer. It was now generally agreed—behind closed doors—that she had been right to relieve her first Captain of his command during what was about to become wartime.
Of course, that hadn't made it any easier for Mac to find Kris a second, now third commanding officer. Squadron 8, with its bunch of spoiled, hotshot orbital skiff-racing hooligans, at least looked like a safe place to dump Kris. With any luck, Mac probably figured, the troublesome JOs would take each other down a peg or twelve, teach each other a few desperately needed lessons in humility, proper social behavior, military deportment, what all. All the Navy risked was a few tiny toys half the fleet considered worthless anyway. And the last few wisps of hair on Commodore Mandanti's shiny pate.
How often had Kris heard her father, the Prime Minister, mutter about bringing all his problems together in a small room and letting them solve themselves? Kris savored the pleasure of being one of someone's too many problems as she glanced around at her fellow skippers and wondered if they would find a way to prove Mac and all the other top brass wrong … or all too right.
Dinner was ordered and eaten as the twelve took each other's measures again. Most knew or had heard of each other from the skiff racing championships. Taking a thin eggshell of a craft from orbit to a one-meter-square target on the planet below while using the least amount of fuel had taught them to feel ballistics in their bones. But a racing skiff didn't have a crew of fifteen nor did it work as part of a squadron of twelve.
Kris kept up her end of the table banter while thanking whatever bureaucratic god it was that gave her the crew she drew. Her XO was Tommy Lien from Santa Maria's asteroid mines. Her buddy from OCS had backed her up through thick and a whole lot of thin. Of all the crews, she and Tommy were the only two that had actually heard shots fired at them in anger. A few of the shots Tommy had dodged had actually been in legitimate firelights, not assassins' bullets that had missed Kris first.
Chief ''Stan'' Stanislaus was her only crew member who'd earned any hashmarks for his dress uniform. Ten years in the Navy, Kris would be losing him soon to OCS. Until then, she counted on him to see that PF-109 was real Navy rather than the playboy/girl toy flotilla that the media tagged them.
The rest of the crew of PF-109 were a challenge. Raw and new, Kris and Tommy spent most of their time trying to come up with ways to get them past green to something close to practiced. Take Fintch at the helm. She was a whiz at ballistics and tested out of sight on the Navy's aptitude scores… all involving computer games with her bottom comfortably seated on firm ground. But she'd never actually steered anything bigger than a motorbike. And never been off planet in her life!
Fintch was actually an easy one; Kris took her over to the Wardhaven Space Yacht Club, rented a two-seat racing skiff, and took her backseat on a skiff drop. Halfway down, Kris handed Fintch the spare stick she'd hidden aboard.
''You land her. Crash her. Your call.''
''Yes, ma'am,'' Fintch said, ignoring the offered stick. And she did manage to put them down. Just over a mile from the target. Next to the number-three green at Wardhaven's most exclusive country club. At least they didn't scorch that much grass.
''Sorry, ma'am. I'll do better next time, ma'am,'' Fintch insisted as the two of them hotfooted it off the course, the still cooling skiff dangling between them.
''Let this be our little secret,'' Kris said. And it was. Until the five o'clock news featured them.
But Fintch did better the second drop, and Kris stood her for membership in the Wardhaven Skiff Club, paid her first year's dues, and got out of her way.
If only it was half as easy to come up with ways that made it as much fun to maintain and calibrate the ship's lasers, electronics, motors, sensors, and all the other drudgeries that went into converting a very small chunk of space into one deadly little warship.
Dessert was on order when Phil Taussig rapped on his crystal water glass. Most fell silent, though Ted Rockefeller and Andy Gates had a problem with who-gets-in-the-last-word and didn't shut up until they noticed ten very silent peers staring at them.
''It could not have escaped your notice,'' Phil said, ''that should hostilities ever come to the space above Wardhaven, we are its last line of defense.''
''And its worst,'' Babs put in.
''Speak for yourself,'' Andy said.
''Well, folks,'' Phil said, trying to cut through the usual banter. ''I, for one, would like to see us take out a battleship or two. Hopefully without being annihilated like a torpedo squadron namesake of ours was a few centuries back that I've mentioned once or twice.''
''Or forty-eleven times,'' Babs sighed.
Phil Taussig was one of the two exceptions to the rule of spoiled rich kids among the boat commanders. His family was Navy, going back to the times when navies were wet water affairs. Kris suspected that Phil had been added to the mix by Mac in an effort to reduce the hooligan factor. Among his several contributions was digging up the story of Torpedo 8, a flying squadron that sounded very much like them. They'd taken on some ocean type battleships and been annihilated, almost to a man. Though Babs rolled her eyes at the ceiling, even jolly Andy Gates now gave Phil his undivided serious attention.
''As I see it,'' Phil went on, ''our problem breaks down into several easy phases.'' He held up a hand. ''Find the enemy, approach the enemy, destroy the enemy, exit the battle area in one piece.'' Phil counted each on a finger. ''That says it all.''
''Shouldn't be any trouble finding the battleships,'' Andy Gates put in. ''Since our PFs don't do star jumps, we'll just be lounging around here in orbit when the big boys waddle in.''