"Bah! Nothing to worry about. He's a culture nut. A pseudo. Wants to enlighten his philistines. He goes through the same routine every patrol. He'll come out of it after we make contact."
"And you?" "Eh?"
"I thought maybe something was bothering you." "Me? No. All systems go. Raring to get into competition." His face belies his words. I'll watch him closer than Piniaz. He's my friend...Is that why he wants me out of Ops?
5 On Patrol
It's a twelve-day passage to the squadron's patrol sector. As the days drift away, the men become quieter and more reserved. They have a crude, seldom reliable formula. A day's travel outward bound translates to three days' travel coming back. We've been aboard the Climber seventeen days.
Fifty-one days to go? That seems unlikely. Few patrols last more than a month. There's so much enemy traffic.... Hell, we could run into a convoy tomorrow, scramble, clear our missile elevators, and be home before the mother.
Eventless travel leaves a lot of free time, despite the depressing frequency of drills. I'm spending a lot of time with Chief Energy Gunner Holtsnider. He of girder-clinging fame. He's refreshing my knowledge of ballistic gunnery.
"This's your basic GFCS Mark Forty-six system," he tells me. I guess this is the fifth time we've been through this. "You got your basic Mark Thirty gun order converter, and your basic gyros, stabile element, tracking, and drive motor units. Straight off a corvette secondary mount. You just got your minor modifications, what they call your One-A conversions, for spherical projectiles."
Yeah? Those are killing me. My poor senile brain keeps harking futilely after my Academy gunnery training.
Half the problem is my sneaking suspicion that the Chief On Patrol 107 is learning while I am, staying a few pages ahead in the crisp new manual.
"Now, off your radar, and your neutrino and tachyon detectors if you have to, and even your visuals if it comes to that, and your transiting missiles in norm, you get your B, your R, your dR, your Zs, your dE, and your dBs. You feed them all to your Mark Thirty-two. Then you get your Gf...."
I keep getting lost in the symbols. I can't remember which is relative motion in line of sight, angular elevation rate, angular bearing rate, gravity correction, relativity correction, light velocity lag time—"
"And send your RdBs over V and your RdE over V to your Mark Thirty..."
I could strangle the man. He has a too-ample store of that most essential of instructor's virtues: patience. I don't. I never had enough. Many a project and study have I abandoned for lack of patience to follow through.
"... which brings your B prime gr and E prime g to your cannon train and elevation pump motors."
For all his patience, the Chief is ready to give me up.
"Cheer up, Chief. We could be trying to program a twenty-meter ahburst in tandem quad with the cobattery in nadir."
"You did time in the bombards?"
"Second Gunnery Officer on Falconier. Before this." I tap the bad leg. "Thought everybody knew."
"I was in Howitzer before I cross-rated Energy."
We exchanged reminiscences about the difficulties of putting unguided projectiles onto surface targets from orbit. Tandem quads are the worst. Two (or more) vessels each fire four projectiles, over each pole and round each equatorial horizon, so that they all arrive on target simultaneously. Theory says the ground position can't duck it all because it's coming from everywhere at once.
The bombards, or planetary assault artillery ships, are a poor man's way of softening ground defenses. A way which, in my opinion, is a little insane and a whole lot optimistic. Budget people find the system attractive. It's cheap. A sophisticated missile delivering the same payload costs a hundred times as much.
Once a world's orbital defenses are reduced, bombards are supposed to blast away, creating neutralized drop zones for the Fleet Marines. The main weapon is a 50-cm magnetic cannon. It launches concussion projectiles of the "smart" type. The bomb packs a hell of a wallop but has to be on target to do its job.
Bombard tactics were theoretical till the war. I was involved in just one live operation, against a base used by commerce raiders. I did most of my shooting in practice.
The system was worthless. In practice on planetary ranges we found the ballistic ranges so long, and so plagued by variables, that precision bombardment proved impossible. My First Gunnery Officer claimed we couldn't hit a continent using "dumb" projectiles.
The other firm uses bombards, too. For harassment. For accuracy they rely on dropships, or use a missile barrage.
"Ever shoot the range at KincaidT Holtsnider asks.
"That's where I screwed up the leg." Kincaid is a Mars-sized hunk of rock in Sol System's cometary halo. Its orbit is perpendicular to the ecliptic. It's so far out Sol is just another star.
"I wondered. Didn't think it would be polite to ask."
"Doesn't bother me anymore," I lie. "Except when I remember that it was my own fault."
Holtsnider says nothing. He just looks expectant.
I have mixed feelings about telling the tale. The man shouldn't give a damn, and probably doesn't want me to bore him with the whole dreary story. On the other hand, there's a pressure within me.
I want to cry on somebody's shoulder.
"Remember the Munitions Scandals? With the Mod Twelve Phosphors for the Fifties?"
"Bribes to government quality-control inspectors."
"Yes. Flaking in the ablation shields. Normal routine was to blow a cleaning wad every twentieth shot during prolonged firing. With the Jenkins projectiles we were getting flakes instead of dust.
We had orders from topside to use them up practicing. The Old Man had us blowing a wad after every shot."
"Royal pain in the ass, what?"
"In the kneecap, actually." It's easy to recall the frustration, the aggravation, and the sudden agony. They're with me still. "We'd been at it watch and watch for three days. Trick shooting.
Everything but over the shoulder with mirrors. We were all tired and pissed. I made the mistake. I blew the tube without making sure my trainee had opened the outer door."
"Recoil."
"In spades. Those outer doors can take a lot more pressure than the inner ones. So the inner door blew back while I was climbing up to reset for live ammo."
Holtsnider nods sympathetically. "Saw a guy lose his fingers that way. Our magnetics went out. We had a live time shell in the tube. He tried to blow it like it was a wad. Worked, too. But the inner door locks snapped. Lost two-thirds of our atmosphere before we got the outer door sealed."
He glances at my leg. "Medics had him good as new in a couple months."
"Wasn't my day, Chief. We were alone out there. Nearest medship was in orbit at Luna Command. And the reason we were screwing around out there in the first place was because our number two hyper generator was down.
"The medship hypered in fast, but by the time she arrived my knee was beyond salvation—more through the agency of an overzealous medical corpsman than from the initial injury.
"Falconier was so old she wasn't fit for training Reserves anymore, which's what we were doing."
Funny. This sharing of an unpleasant past is loosening me up. I'm more relaxed. My mind works better. I feel the old data coming back. "Chief, let's try it from the top."
I haven't spent all my time in Weapons. I've tried, with limited success, to visit with each crewman. Other than the officers I met on Canaan, only Holtsnider, Junghaus, and Diek-ereide have cooperated. Varese's Engineers barely remain civil. The men in Ship's Services tolerate me only because they have to live with me. I hear they've convinced themselves that I'm the dreaded eido.
My sessions with Holtsnider have eased the situation in Weapons. But only in Ops do I have much chance to ask questions.
The Ops gang considers itself the ship's elite. That pretense demands more empathy with the problems of another "intellectual."