Battleborn

by Andrew Beery

  Second, how stable was our orbit around Mudball? Were we even now in a decaying orbit that would see us burn up on reentry? Perhaps if we were lucky, rather than burn up, we would crash into the surface of the planet with the equivalent force of several thermonuclear bombs.

  I could feel myself being pulled ever so slightly. That wasn’t a good sign. It probably meant the Diaspora was accelerating.

  Option one was that the ship was moving under its own power, in which case, with inertial dampeners inop, we would be crushed the moment the engines fully engaged. Option two was we were falling into the planet’s gravity well, in which case, as I alluded to earlier, we would go the route of a marshmallow held too long in the fire.

  For those that are keeping track, both options one and two resulted in a dead ship… a dead crew… and a dead Admiral.

  Without power for our viewscreens or sensors, there was simply no way to know what was going on.

  In the light of Mister Erickson’s single floating chemical candle, I saw I was the only one that had not managed to strap in. I blame this situation on advanced age and slow reflexes. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

  Tanny released her harness and pushed off in my direction. Before she made it halfway, the battery backups kicked in. Emergency lights flickered on and partial grav-plating engaged. The gravity was only about one-third Earth-normal, but I was almost eight feet above the deck and… one hundred and two years old.

  One thing remains absolutely true no matter how far man ventures from the cradle of our own sun. Newton’s laws have no respect for either age or rank.

  I fell before Tanny could reach me. As I hit the deck, I heard a disturbing crunch followed by indescribable agony as I realized I had just fractured several of my vertebrae. Fire shot down my left leg. I wish to state for the record, it is an unpleasant experience.

  Tanny slapped the comms on my command chair.

  “Medical to the bridge.”

  Nothing. No acknowledgment. Nothing. Apparently, much of the ship was still out for the count.

  “Forget Medical, Commander. Get me strapped in my chair and a shot of joy juice. We need to focus on reaching Engineering and getting some idea of what’s going on and how much…”

  “…time we have before we burn up in Mudball’s atmosphere,” Tanny finished for me.

  “Mister Hampton, you’re the youngest here. Hightail it to Engineering. Get me a status. Have O'Reilly fire up the thrusters and break us out of orbit… Tell him to get out and push if he needs to. Do you understand?” I ordered as Tanny and Erickson fussed over me.

  “Sir, yes, sir,” the ensign answered.

  “Then what are you still doing here? MOVE!”

  To his credit, Hampton could indeed move when properly motivated.

  He wasn’t gone two minutes when partial power to the bridge was restored.

  I hit the comm to connect with Engineering. No go. It seemed we were still cut off from the rest of the ship.

  The main viewscreen flickered on. The news wasn’t good. The ship was in a rapidly decaying orbit. The hull temperature was rising. It had a way to go before it got critical, but there was no doubt it would get there, and sooner rather than later.

  “Helm, reverse thrusters!” I barked.

  “Thrusters not responding!”

  Tanny ordered the helmsman to take Hampton’s station while she took the helm.

  “Cross circuiting to secondaries. Thrusters still inop,” Tanny said calmly.

  She ripped the access panel off her control console. Quickly swapping several relays, she tried helm again. This time she had success.

  “Attitude control thrusters responding,” she announced just as calmly. “Adjusting angle of descent.”

  She checked the nav board next to her. Ensign McManus had already brought up the data she was looking for.

  “We are going to skip out of the atmosphere, but it's going to be a rough ride. We are going to take some severe damage on the way.”

  “Understood,” I acknowledged.

  I tried comms again. When I tried to reach Engineering, all I got static. Given this was different than the completely dead air I had received before, I guess it could be counted as an improvement.

  I looked over at my first officer.

  “Working on it, sir,” she said with the efficiency I had come to expect and count on.

  A few minutes later she closed a panel on a station behind me and said, “I can route you to environmental. Someone there is going to have to forward you to Engineering. It’s the best I can do from here.”

  “Excellent, Number One.”

  Before I could try, an exhausted Ensign Hampton returned to the bridge.

  “Sir,” he said. “The news isn’t good. As far as I can tell, there is no route to Engineering. It looks like there was some type of overload that ruptured a number of the plasma conduits leading from Engineering. Without protective gear, there is just too much radiation.”

  I nodded. The young man was absolutely correct. There was every possibility that Engineering didn’t survive whatever caused the overload.

  I flipped the comms one more time.

  “Riker to Environmental. Please respond.”

  “Environmental here, Admiral. This is Mike Samuels. What’s going on, sir? We lost just about everything down here.”

  “That’s what we are trying to determine… Samuels?”

  “Yes, sir. Doctor Michael Samuels. I took over from Keller when she retired about two years ago.”

  Sadly, I didn’t recognize the name. Just one more sign I was getting too old.

  “Doctor, I need you to manually transfer this comm-link to Engineering. Can you do that?”

  Rather than answer, the man apparently just rerouted the comms because the next voice I heard was a very welcome one.

  “Bridge, this is Chief Montgomery.”

  “Good to hear your voice, Scott,” I said with a certain amount of relief. “Give me a quick ship’s status.”

  “Aye, Admiral. We lost fusion reactor one. It surged on its last scram and blew out half our systems down here. We’ve managed to patch power from reactor three into critical systems, but I don’t expect it to last.”

  “Chief, we’re pretty much dead up here. Can you get main thrusters back online in the next few minutes?”

  There was the briefest of pauses. “They’re already online, Sir.”

  I looked at Tanny. She shook her head.

  “Chief, we don’t have access to thruster control up here. I need you to override the bridge and fire up those thrusters. Get us out of this planet’s gravity well before we do any more damage.”

  2100.2019.0520 Galactic Normalized Time

  The excavation to the surface had taken longer than anticipated. It appeared that additional material had accumulated on the moon’s surface during the period of dormancy.

  Active scans of the surrounding space and an analysis of stellar drift confirmed a period of approximately seventy-nine thousand years had elapsed.

  Localized scans also confirmed the presence of foreign intelligent life on both Thral and Rhral. The ancient AI consulted its programming. The prime directive did not seem to apply. Sterilization was not required unless they approached the Bringer of Death.

  Chapter 3: Bringer of Death

  Three hours later, department heads were meeting with me in my ready room. The doc placed me in a lower-body cast and strapped me into a floater so I could move about. Surgery to repair several herniated discs was on hold until the ship, her crew, and her mission were out of danger.

  One person was missing. We had been unable to bring Arquat back online. The computer core seemed intact, but there was as yet no sign of the Jabesh AI.

  The ship was in a bad way, and I needed my friend now more than ever, but there was nothing to be done for it. Maybe once we had some more time to trace and repair the overload damage, we would be able to resurrect him.

  Chief Montgomery pr
ovided a comprehensive report. The main takeaway was a confirmation that the Diaspora was operating on one fusion generator. Barring a miracle, neither of the other two were ever going to be coming back online. With no redundant power, it was too risky for the Diaspora to enter Skip Space. For better or worse, this solar system was our new home.

  Sensor data from the probes we had launched to Mudball showed more of what had occurred on Azul but orders of magnitude worse. Only about 10% of the planet’s surface was safe to visit for anything other than the briefest of stays. The oceans were also highly radioactive. Although life flourished, it tended to be hardier plants and the local equivalent of cockroaches. A smattering of fish seemed to the most advanced life on the planet.

  “One thing is sure,” I said, “Mudball is not going to be our next home. The real question is, what should be our next step? There are two other potentially habitable worlds in this system. Do we dare explore them with a ship that is in need of major repairs?”

  “Do we dare not?” Tanny added.

  Before the conversation could continue, the yellow alert klaxon began to blare. I toggled the comms on my mobility scooter.

  “Bridge, this is Riker. Report.”

  “Sir, Ensign Hampton here. We just picked up an energy signature emanating from the largest of the Bary-moons.”

  A bary-moon was a satellite that orbited the gravitational center of a complex system. In this case, the moon in question was not in orbit around either of the two planets but around their barycenter.

  It took me several minutes to get back to the bridge. Tanny beat me and was already organizing the team. I knew that navigation would have a course solution already plotted. Sensors would be running a comprehensive scan. Weapons would be verifying that we could make some type of effort to defend ourselves.

  As I entered the bridge, she looked up and walked over to me.

  “I have the CAG on alert. I recommend we launch a close cover umbrella.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Make it so. And Number One…”

  “Sir?”

  “Take the command chair. I can’t sit in it, and I’d be more comfortable knowing you were in control.”

  Tanny looked at me. I smiled. It was time for me to have the discussion I had been rehearsing for several years. I blamed myself for not having the courage to have it earlier.

  “Tanny, you have been the best First Officer I’ve ever had but,” I looked her in the eye so she knew I was serious, “ but I need you to step up. I don’t need you to protect me nearly as much as I need you to lead these people. You are going to be here long after I’m gone.”

  “Sir… I,” she began.

  I pointed to the chair.

  Rather than continue to argue, she relented and sat in it.

  “Captain on the bridge!” I announced in a loud voice. Now, technically, as a senior officer, I was the one due the honor, but this was a special circumstance and I wanted the crew to know in no uncertain terms who was the new master of this ship.

  “Mister Hampton, give me ship-wide comms.”

  “Channel open, sir.”

  “Attention, crew of the Diaspora. Effective this date, Commander Tanny Mumba is promoted to the rank of captain. In addition, Captain Mumba has been given command of the UES Diaspora. I will remain as the flag officer of record, but all command decisions route through her. That is all, Admiral Riker out.”

  The Diaspora is a big ship. She was designed to carry colonists on a decades-long journey across the stars. That made the sounds of cheering across the ship all that much more impressive.

  Tanny settled into the command chair as if she had been born to it. In my mind, she had. The newly minted captain turned to me.

  “Thank you, Admiral. I won’t let you down. But, sir, one thing.”

  I knew immediately what she was going to say, but I let her have her fun.

  “Did you have to break everything before you turned command over?”

  I put a hand over my heart in mock offense.

  “Not everything, Captain. I’m reasonably sure the commodes still work. That being the case, I believe the crew is awaiting your orders.”

  Tanny toggled her command comms.

  “CAG, this is the Captain. Launch your birds.”

  “Acknowledged… Captain Mumba!”

  ***

  The trip to the source of the unknown energy signature was going to take six hours. Tanny was reluctant to push the engines past 25%. With no backup fusion reactor and with half the ship’s systems barely holding on, caution seemed the better part of valor.

  There was no indication that the energy signal we were seeing was dangerous. It very likely was something left by the previous occupants of this system. As such, it was of interest to the scientific staff. It might represent the best chance we had to understand what had happened here.

  Since I was no longer needed to be on the bridge and because I wanted to give the new Captain space to solidify her command; I decided it was time to let Doctor Mercer have a shot at fixing my back.

  An hour later, I was pain-free and reasonably mobile again. Latonda insisted I continue to use the hover chair for another day or so but I was ecstatic not to have to have my wits dulled by the joy-juice I had been taking.

  I was just thinking about grabbing a bite to eat in the mess when the ship suddenly went to red alert. That could only mean one thing. Our errant energy signature was not as benign as we had thought.

  “Admiral to the bridge!”

  I tapped my comms.

  “On my way. What’s the situation?”

  I could hear Tanny barking orders in the background. In a moment, she answered.

  “Admiral, there was an unexpected and sudden energy surge on the moon. While we were trying to determine what we were looking at… some type of plasma weapon fired and took out one of our warthogs. This was followed up immediately with multiple missile launches. Tracking shows all are currently targeting the Diaspora.”

  I entered as she finished speaking.

  The weapons officer filled in the gap. “Counter-measures launched. Shields energized. Captain, their missiles are extremely slow compared to ours, and their speeds seem inconsistent with missile to missile.”

  “Understood, Chief.”

  Tanny hit her comms again. “CAG take out those missiles,” Tanny ordered. “Communications, broadcast our standard friend message on all frequencies – all languages. Weapons Officer, weapons hot but do not fire. Let’s see if we can’t talk our way out of this.”

  “Captain!” Hampton yelled. “We have a second, much larger missile launch… and Captain, they are targeting Azul!”

  So much for a positive response to the ‘friend’ message, I thought. I didn’t wait for Tanny. I slapped the comms on my chair. “CAG redirect all fighters. Engage that second missile volley! Repeat, that second missile volley is the priority –not the Diaspora.”

  Tanny nodded. I knew she would have given the same command. She marked a set of coordinates on the holographic display in front of her command chair.

  “Weapons launch a full spread of bunker busters at the launch point for those missiles. Fire all tubes when ready.”

  I leaned forward in my chair as if being closer to the viewscreen would yield answers not otherwise available.

  “Why are they firing on us and why only one volley with their beam weapons?” I wondered out loud.

  “I suspect it’s an automated defense system,” Tanny answered as we waited for our first counterattack to strike home. “As for their plasma weapon… it looks like there was a secondary explosion when it took out our warthog. Whoever, or more likely whatever, is attacking us may be in as bad a shape as we are.”

  “It appears their missile systems still seem operational. And if it is an automated weapons platform that has functioned for tens of thousands of years, you can bet it has automated repair and maintenance systems as well. Even if we manage to kill their launchers, they may not stay dead.”
>
  “That’s a pleasant thought,” Tanny said dryly.

  “Detonations on the lunar surface,” Ensign Hampton announced. “Multiple direct hits on the enemy’s missile batteries.”

  The forward viewscreen showed an impressive amount of damage, especially given what we were firing at our foe. We were only using standard atomics. Our supply of neutronium-tipped weapons had been depleted years ago.

  “Ensign, how many of our missiles did the enemy installation manage to intercept?”

  Hampton tapped a few buttons on his console before turning to look at Tanny and me.

  “None, sir… I mean, sirs. There was no counter-measure activity at all. They just let us pound them.”

  “That lends credence to the antiquated, automated weapons platform theory,” I said. “It also likely means that we have a little breathing space before we see any additional weapons activity.”

  I moved my hover chair closer to the Captain. “We still have the issue of the missiles they already fired.

  Tanny looked over at me. “We can’t let any of those bogeys fired at the colony get past us. They have no defenses.”

  “I agree Captain. You understand what that means?”

  “I do, Admiral. There is no way the CAG’s people are going to be able to stop all of them. It's up to us.

  I nodded. “As I see it, we only have one choice.”

  This time it was Tanny who nodded in agreement.

  “It’s going to hurt, and we might not make it. It seems a shame. You give me the ship, and the first thing I do is very likely going to get her destroyed.”

  As if to punctuate her point, the ship shuddered as two of the aggressor’s missiles smashed against our shields. There had been a total of eight inbound at one point, but the Diaspora’s countermeasures had dealt with six of them

  I smiled wanly. Tanny knew the score. Five years ago, the story might have had a different ending. Sadly, both of us knew the Diaspora what not up to what we were asking. The strike we had just taken drained our defenses by over thirty percent. With only one reactor online it would take an hour or more to regenerate our shields. That was an hour we didn’t have.