Yes, it’s another ‘please ID that book from my vague childhood memories’ thread…
So - from a book or books that I believe that I read in the mid 80’s, although the books were probably older. I think that all of the following came from the same series, but I could be wrong. Can anyone tell me anything about the series? I seem to remember that there were at least two books, and probably three.
Midshipmen or the equivalent going on a training mission with a sadistic captain/instructor who repeatedly forces them to rapidly assemble from all the far-flung parts of the ship, and has a history of spacing the one(s) who are the last to arrive at assembly pour encourager les autres. At one point the protagonist has to travel all the way from an observation blister at the bow of the ship, and is the last to arrive.
2)Some on-the-job navigation training, in which the protagonist has an epiphany about the energy required to make a right-angle course correction: it is the same as the energy required to come to a stop and then to accelerate off in the new direction.
More on-the job training involving beam weapon turrets, where the goal is to get your two beams to focus on the enemy vessel in phase so that they constructively interfere with each other. Much talk about heterodyning and pedal controls and getting circles to overlap on viewscreens.
Use of mass drivers to cast lots of inert slugs in dispersion patterns around the ship, to overlap the anticipated course of the enemy. Done hours or days before battle is actually joined. Massive damage is caused by collision at relativistic speeds.
The protagonist (maybe a cadet or ensign or other low rank) stumbles upon two male crewmen having sex in an airlock - a capital offense - but does not report them; they later become some of his most loyal crewmen.
Maybe they depose the crazy captain and go pirate? Or mutiny and then have to flee like Fletcher Christian?
Protagonist’s love interest is a female cadet on the same training mission - I think that they marry in a later book. Maybe the love interest was going to be spaced, and that’s what lead to the cadet uprising?
It’s been a while since I read them, and my copies are packed away, but it sounds a bit like David Feintuch’s Seafort Saga, named after the protagonist, Nicholas Seafort, who started out as a midshipman in the first book and rose through the ranks as the series progressed. There were at least four books in the series, all of which had “Hope” in the title.
Do you remember if the culture of the series had a strong Christian basis? I seem to remember that as being part of the midshipman/officer training, and possibly the basis for your point #5 being a capital offense.
All but number 4 are more or less accurate descriptions of the first Bran Tregare story by F.M. Busby.
Korbeith the Butcher is indeed a crazy SOB who tries to sniff out the disloyal – when he thinks he’s got one, it’s out the airlock. He also does it more randomly at times, as described in one incident like the above.
Yup. All the graduate officers, I think, know this, but the training regimen is a bit Socratic at times.
Yup.
This, I think, is at a later point,in another ship, where Tregare is actually an officer.
Yes, but again it’s on the other ship – no one has ever deposed Korbeith. Tregare goes along with a mutiny, the new captain gets double-crossed, Tregare re-mutinies and becomes captain, and goes a-raiding.
Not exactly. Tregare has a lover on the training mission, and she gets spaced (or almost does, don’t recall for sure), and Tregare almost gets himself spaced, but they get hailed by some bigwig who wants to visit, and Korbeith can’t indulge himself in front of a witness (even though the high command knows perfectly well what he’s up to). Tregare gets married to a different woman much later.
I don’t remember this from the series, although it’s a fine way to take out a ship. I’ve seen it used in other works, usually as a means of planetary defense.
Thanks very much for the ID, folks. My mental anguish is relieved.
Bran Tregare/Rissa Kerguelen sounds right. The ship Inconnu, the Hulzein Family - it’s all coming back to me now. So six out of seven actually were from the same series, more or less. I thought it might only be two or three. I looked up the novels online and the cover art is still familiar!
Sorry about the mass driver red herring. As I think on it now, that probably belonged to a different series, about a war between two human offshoot societies. One was sort of fascist or feudalist, led by a bunch of inbred pale dark-haired nobility with fertility problems but some kind of limited psi power. The female admiral on the other side had red hair. Does that ring any bells?
No; when I first read #4, it put me in mind of a short story (or maybe a vignette in a novel) I once read about a ship or a fleet come from Earth to conscript the young people of a colonized planet. The commander (an admiral I think, but maybe an ambassador or governor) is an amiable chap from an ambitious and powerful family, and he really only cares about bees. The planet defies the fleet, and its defense is led by a retired commodore (?), who spends much of her time stalling, as they work on getting their debris into position.