awaiting turn-around and orbital deceleration, there were radio signals and forward looking radar beams (used to probe ahead for potentially lethal meteors or other space debris in their path) being constantly emitted, things that were quite easy to home in on with passive electromagnetic sensors. And even if a California were to shut all of its radar, navigation, and radio equipment off — something that never happened, but which theoretically could — they would still emit enough heat and radiation to be detected from one hundred thousand kilometers distance. A California crewed more than four thousand people, employed full inertial damping and artificial gravity, and required tremendous amounts of electrical power just to maintain basic functions. All of this added up to heat and electromagnetic radiation being produced. Large ships simply could not move stealthily through space, no matter what measures they took.
A stealth attack ship, on the other hand, was not a very large vessel and could move about without being noticed. This class of ships was constructed of radar absorbent material that was angled in various places to insure that even the miniscule amount of radar energy that did get reflected back was reflected in the wrong direction. On top of the layer of radar absorbent alloy was another specially made alloy, several inches thick, which inhibited the absorption of heat, both from inside of the ship itself and from external sources, such as solar radiation. The engine and waste heat generated by the people and the electronics inside of the vessel was radiated into a pressurized space between the inner and outer hulls and was then carefully dumped off in controlled bursts through a series of exhaust ports. When underway, a stealth ship used the minimum power possible for acceleration and deceleration and did not vent their plasma directly out of the exhaust ports as regular ships did, instead, sending it through a cooling cycle first. Since artificial gravity generators and the inertial dampers that were a byproduct of them created significant heat, they were not used or in fact even installed, forcing the crews to endure long voyages in minimal gravity (when under acceleration or deceleration) or no gravity at all. Active sensors, including meteor detecting radar sweeps, were not utilized on typical missions, making the possibility of running into an errant piece of space junk while at suicidal velocity a very real possibility. All of these measures, while making for cramped, uncomfortable, and often dangerous duty, made Owls and Henry's nearly invisible out in space. An Owl class, which was touted as being the best of the two superpowers' (of course the EastHem navy said that the Henry was really the best), could drift to within a few dozen kilometers of a London class super dreadnought or one of its fighters without being detected by either passive or active systems.
Mermaid had been on her patrol station for a month and was only awaiting the arrival of relief before setting course for her home base: Triad Naval Base in orbit around Mars. It had been an uneventful cruise, with only routine contacts of EastHem military and civilian vessels logged. The crew was getting quite antsy after two months away from their families (and in fact, any women at all) and the comforting standard gravity of Triad. Their hair was long and unkempt since there was no one onboard who knew how to cut it. Their faces were pale and slightly sunken from the lack of sunlight and gravity. Their clothing — shorts and T-shirts with their rank and last name printed upon them, were horribly faded and in most cases much looser in fit than they had been at the start of the voyage. Tempers had been rather heated lately with fights breaking out between enlisted men over such things as whose turn it was to use the bathing room or who had arrived at the relief tube first.
Because of the lack of gravity generators aboard, the Mermaid, like all Owls and Henry's, was oriented inside to up and down instead of to fore and aft like gravitated spacecraft. It was as if the entire ship was a small building, standing upright, with the torpedo storage and launching rooms making up the top deck and the engine rooms making up the bottom. Access between the decks was accomplished through small hatches. During periods of drifting, personnel simply floated from one level to the other, as if swimming underwater. During acceleration and deceleration however, up to a quarter of a G of gravity was imported to the ship, allowing people to stand solidly on the floor and forcing them to use small ladders to move between decks. The bridge was located just below the torpedo access rooms. It was a small, cramped area, only four meters by six, with five main stations in addition to the captain's and executive officer's chairs. Computer terminals were mounted into a semi- circular console with ergonomically designed seats before each. The captain and the executive officer sat just behind this console, just in front of the security hatch that led down to the next level. There were no windows on the bridge, or anywhere else on the ship for that matter. Cameras and sensors gave all of the input that was needed to run and navigate the ship.
Spacer first class Brett Ingram sat at the tracking and acquisition station on the bridge. Since the vessel was currently at drift and in zero G, he was strapped securely into his chair with a Velcro lap restraint. His coffee cup, which was sealed shut and imparted with a small amount of air pressure, had a magnet on the bottom to keep it in place. The display station before him was holographic, allowing a three dimensional map of the surrounding space to be generated, with the Mermaid's position as the exact center. The map showed dozens of small dots of varying color and size, most of them moving slowly in one direction or another. These dots represented the contacts that he was tracking with the passive sensors and the ship's computer system. All of the known contacts had a small designator superimposed next to them, identifying their status. One labeled S-7 for instance, was a Standard Fuel hydrogen tanker making its way from Standard City to Triad. It was coded dark green, as were all WestHem civilian contacts. About six thousand kilometers above and two thousand kilometers to the right of S-7 — about two centimeters on the map — was S-9, a California Class warship in a high equatorial orbit of Ganymede. It was coded blue, as were all WestHem military contacts. Light green meant EastHem civilian ships and there were four of those — all hydrogen tankers making their way to Earth from Callisto — near the far edge of the map. Red was the color that symbolized EastHem military contacts. There were two of those in Mermaid's field of detection, one, a London Class warship escorting the tankers and the other an anti-stealth ship escorting the London. Yellow represented contacts that had not been identified as of yet. There were none of those on his display at the moment but Ingram thought that maybe that would change in a moment. A flickering on his computer screen next to the display was starting to alert his senses.
'Con, detection,' he said to Lieutenant Commander Braxton, the executive officer of the Mermaid. Braxton was sitting in the captain's chair at the moment since Commander Hoffman, the captain, was currently asleep in his quarters. 'I'm picking up some errant readings on a bearing of 148 mark 70.'
Braxton looked at the detection tech with an unmasked measure of annoyance. 'Errant readings?' he asked. 'What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you have a contact or don't you?'
'Unsure, sir,' Ingram replied, his voice neutral. As a ten-year enlisted man with Martian ancestry, he knew not to allow emotion into his tone when addressing Earthling officers, especially pricks like Braxton, who thought Martians were good for cooking meals and scrubbing dishes but not much else. 'I'm getting some flickers in the high infrared spectrum. They've been coming and going for about two minutes now. I can't seem to get a lock on it.'
'Flickers?' Braxton said, using his hand to call up a duplicate of Ingram's screen on his own terminal. He stared at it for a moment. 'I don't see anything.'
'Wait for a minute, sir,' Ingram said, staring intently at the spot. Finally the slight flare of white, less than a pinpoint, flashed for half of a second or so and then disappeared. 'There,' he said to Braxton. 'Did you see it?'
'That?' Braxton scoffed. 'That's what you're calling an errant reading? That was probably nothing but a vapor formation from a urine dump that some ship performed twenty years ago.' The other members of the bridge crew, every last one of them Earthlings, snickered at his comment.
'Maybe, sir,' Ingram agreed dutifully, ignoring the snickers, 'but it is in the same spectrum as a Henry's maneuvering thruster. I recommend that we swing around and try to get a fix on it, just to be sure.'
'And risk being detected from our own thrusters?' Braxton asked sarcastically. 'I don't think so.'
Ingram looked at the XO, a man who was three years younger than him and had two years less time in Owl's, but who, because of institutional prejudice against those of extraterrestrial birth, had been able to attend the WestHem Naval Academy at Triad and would one day soon command one while Brett was stuck forever at spacer first. 'Sir,' he said, 'I really think that this might be a legitimate contact.'
'Do you now?' he asked, smiling the smile of condescension. 'And what makes you think that?'
'I don't know exactly, sir,' he said. 'Mostly instinct I guess. And...'
'Instinct?' Braxton said, barking out a laugh, as if the thought that a Martian developing instinct was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard of. 'You look at a floating pile of old piss vapor from the Jupiter War and you see a Henry in it? That's what you call instinct? Tell me something, Ingram. Do you see Henry's when you use the relief tube too? What do you see when you take a shit? London classes?'
