This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #39Double Double (14) by: Seuzz   Chapter 14
AT THE SOUND OF THE ALERT, Subcommander T'ourou lifted his head and dropped his steepled hands into his lap. He got to his feet and flinched slightly at the twinge in his back. The pains of age were getting worse.
But they had faded by the time he reached the bridge, and he had recomposed his features into the mask-like scowl that was expected of a battle-hardened senior officer.
Commander T'bak cocked his head only slightly as T'ourou eased himself into the chair at his side. "Khnai'ru rhissiuy," the Commander said.
"For what?" the startled Subcommander replied.
"Interrupting your meditation period." T'bak's tone was cold.
"Duty comes before all, Commander," T'ourou replied. He let only the slightest growl blur his voice. "If you believe I feel otherwise—"
"Let it pass, old man, let it pass." T'bak turned to the communications station. "Signal the fleet. Helmsman, come about fifteen degrees on my mark, and accelerate to point-nine impulse. Execute," he said as he saw T'ialla close the channel to the other ships.
The field of stars on screen shifted as the flagship adjusted its course.
"Tactical," T'ourou ordered, and the starfield on screen vanished, replaced by a graphical representation of local space with the Romulan fleet marked in flashing red points, their positions and movements adjusted to account for space-time dilation effects.
Like all fleet maneuvers, this one was highly artificial. Each of the other five vessels had been assigned a fixed point and heading, into which it would leap at the Commander's signal to begin maneuvers. But such artificiality was in the service of realism, to mimic the start of a dynamic fleet action: the action of a fleet of Federation starships converging on a lone Romulan Warbird.
Each of the other ships had its orders, based upon Romulan understanding of Starfleet doctrine and capabilities. Only the Ka'frah, taking the role of the Romulan, was not constrained by such orders. For it was T'bak's challenge—the one he had set himself—to evade being cornered by the others.
And, if possible, inflict damage upon them.
So, as the other five ships bore down upon it, the Ka'frah wheeled toward the enemy's flank. In particular, it bore upon the M'sarr, which was playing the part of the U.S.S. Saladin, a Federation destroyer.
"Arm plasma torpedo," T'bak ordered.
"Saladin is firing," T'ourou reported.
"Evasive maneuvers. Continue arming torpedo." A light smirk showed on T'bak's face.
One ... two ... three pops sounded against the hull of the Ka'frah: phaser bolts shot at one-percent power.
"Forward shield down to eighty-seven percent," the weapons' officer reported. He was reading from a monitor as the computer, programmed for the simulated battle, adjusted the shield strength in reaction to the calculated damage.
"Exeter changing to intercept course," T'ourou reported. It was his job to concentrate on the tactical display, even if the Commander was himself studying it too. "The others are passing us starboard. They are going to try to surround us," he observed.
"Navigation," T'bak said. "Bring us to one hundred thirty, or best guess to intercept Exeter. Fly us down her throat," he added coldly at the startled look that Centurion Khiy gave him. "Weapons, fire torpedo at Exeter immediately on securing a lock."
Despite himself, T'ourou tensed.
This was a perplexing maneuver. If the Brak'makh, playing a Constitution-class heavy cruiser, fired her weapons before the plasma torpedo was released, she would be obliterated (in the judgement of the war game computers) when the torpedo, blazing toward her, hit her. But her weapons would in the meantime have crippled—or even destroyed—the Ka'frah with a spread of phaser blasts and photon torpedos, ending the game almost before it started. But even if the Federation ship concentrated all weapons on the cloud of high-energy particles rushing to envelop her, the Romulan player's position would scarcely be improved.
"Torpedo away," Centurion Nveid reported. "Impact in— Hold, Exeter slowing."
T'bak sank into his seat, seeming to burrow there. "T'ialla, be ready to signal Contingency Aeh'lla-Panairr-Lhi to the fleet."
Contingency Aeh'lla-Panairr-Lhi? T'ourou's eyes widened as he dimly grasped at his commander's intentions. It would be incredible if he pulled it off.
"Exeter is firing all weapons at plasma torpedo."
"Ready cloak. Activate on torpedo detonation."
Out of the corner of his eye, T'ourou saw Nveid momentarily hesitate in surprise. Then his hands went flying over the controls.
"Detonation," Nveid reported. Then: "We are now cloaked."
On the tactical display, the gem-like points representing the enemy fleet faded and blurred, becoming clouds of expanding possibilities rather than defined points as the cloak degraded the Ka'frah's own ability to utilize her sensors.
"Signal Contingency Aeh'lla-Panairr-Lhi. Helm, hold course, accelerate to point-nine-nine light speed."
T'ourou almost came out of his chair as, on tactical, the Ka'frah pierced the quivering cloud within which her sister Warbird was located. He knew that the ships had many hundreds of cubic kilometers of space through which to move, so that the chances of collision were astronomically remote; and he knew further that if there were a collision, both ships would be destroyed instantly, before he himself could even know it. Still, it took all his willpower to keep his mask of imperturbability in place even after the Ka'frah exited the other side.
"Computers are simulating cloaking success," T'ialla reported. "Fleet reports they have dumped data on our location, speed, and heading from their tracking computers."
"Come to port fifteen degrees. Reduce speed to fifteen percent light speed."
"My congratulations, Commander," T'ourou said after some few silent moments as, together, they and the rest of the bridge crew watched the tactical display, where the puffy clouds that represented the Federation fleet swarmed and sniffed in different directions, trying to pick up the scent of their cloaked adversary. Only Exeter showed no movement, mimicking the effect of a crippled cruiser. "A maneuver of your own devising?"
"Yes." The Commander didn't bother to muffle his smile with any pretended modesty. "What do you think?"
"Ingenious. Daring. But I wouldn't attempt it outside of a fleet exercise."
The smile abruptly fell from the Commander's face. "Why not?"
T'ourou was uncomfortably aware of the centurions' presence on the bridge. Though they pretended to be absorbed in their stations, they were clearly listening.
"It's the kind of maneuver that works well in theory—"
"And it worked in practice." T'back gestured at the screen.
"According to the simulating computers. Yet, as the Commander knows, under the rules that govern Aeh'lla-Panairr contingencies, there is an ineradicable element of chance. We were lucky."
"And as the Subcommander knows, there is always an element of luck even in practice," T'bak retorted. "But I have shown that it is possible."
T'ourou shrugged.
"When the game is over and analyzed, we will find out how much was luck and how much wasn't," he said. "What now? A run for home? Or shall we continue the gamble with a second engagement?"
"Helm, continue course and speed," T'bak said. "Communications, passively monitor all signals."
A silence fell over the bridge, during which T'ourou attempted to analyze the Commander's tactic in his own head.
For many years the Star Empire and the United Federation of Planets had engaged in a kind of arms race around the cloaking device. The Empire steadily improved the cloak so as to avoid new methods of detection, while the Federation invented new detection methods to penetrate the cloak. Romulan intelligence had recently procured a new sensor algorithm developed by the Federation that allowed them to acquire a lock on a ship as it was in the process of cloaking, so that they could track it afterward. The challenge to the Romulans was to find a way of defeating the algorithm until their technicians could refine the cloak yet again to defeat the lock.
And according to the war game computers, Commander T'bak had done just that.
A plasma torpedo, if fired point-blank at a starship, would atomize it. Federation fleet doctrine held that, if the torpedo could not be dodged until it had weakened, concentrated fire should disrupt it enough to let the targeted vessel survive.
But detonating a plasma torpedo generated an intense burst of radiation, enough to blind sensors to anything that was happening in the immediate vicinity.
Commander T'bak had put those two insights together. Rushing at the Exeter, he had fired a torpedo close enough to force the starship into firing at it, and at the same time had brought the Ka'frah close enough that the resulting detonation masked her as she cloaked.
Or, that's what the computers simulated. There being no actual plasma torpedo, no actual phaser fire, and no actual detonation, the enemy fleet had known exactly where and when the Ka'frah cloaked. But when the computers rendered their judgement on the maneuver, the rest of the fleet purged that data, the better to simulate a blinded and confused Federation task force by blinding themselves.
So the Ka'frah was now, in fact as well as in theory, invisible and undetectable even to her own sister ships.
And so T'ourou had to wonder: Why was the Commander casually conducting a stately cruise away from the fleet, and away from her intended destination, that field of space demarcated, for war game purposes, as the "Neutral Zone"?
The answer was not long in coming.
"Sir," Centurion Sulleen said. "We are approaching Federation space."
"Hold course and speed."
T'ourou held his breath when the alert chimed, signaling that they had crossed the forbidden frontier, not in simulation, but in reality.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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