Battlespace (The Stars Aflame Book 1)

by Richard Tongue

  “Enemy ship is charging lasers,” Sullivan warned.

  “Initiating evasive maneuvers,” Chen added, his hands working the controls like a master pianist, playing the thrusters with precision to send the ship spiraling through the sky, always with an eye on the original course, the path that would take them directly in line to the target. Scott’s eyes darted between the viewscreen and the weapons display, hardly able to believe the power levels that were seeping into the masers. It would pack an overwhelming punch.

  And yet, in the back of his mind, there was still a faint doubt. The Professor, still laboring away in the bowels of the ship on his ancient codes, had warned that the Folk had used every means at their disposal in a bid to defeat the enemy, and they are failed. That there might be no military solution to the nightmare they were facing.

  “Thirty seconds to firing range,” Sullivan said. “They have weapons hot.”

  “All decks are secure, Captain,” Ivanov added. “Blast doors sealed, damage control teams at the ready.” Throwing a control with evident relish, he continued, “Sensors gathering lots of nice data, sir. I’m preparing it for a full data dump as soon as we clear the enemy ship.”

  “Is there any way we can start to send it now?” Bouchard asked, her eyes betraying the same doubts Scott was feeling.

  Shaking his head, Wilson replied, “We don’t have the power, ma’am. Not with the amount of energy we’re pumping into the masers.”

  “Enemy ship is opening fire!” Sullivan said, as the first of the all-too-familiar crimson beams ripped through space, Leonidas nimbly ducking from side to side as Chen attempted to anticipate the attacks. The enemy was getting smarter, using some of its beams to guide them, reaching with others in a bid to strike critical hits, but the recharge rate was way down, far slower than it had been during their previous encounters.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Ivanov warned. “They might be trying to lure us in.”

  “Main battery has a firing solution, sir,” Rochford said. “Coming to optimum range.”

  Chen’s hands were a blur as he navigated the nimble cruiser to its target, decoying first one way, then another, tricking the enemy ship into wasting energy on shots that could never find their mark. All the time, Leonidas raced along the trajectory plot, the alien vessel growing larger as they made for the weak spot. For the second time, Rochford was ready at the controls, ready to deploy the manual override should the computer fail to take the shot in time.

  “Just a little closer,” he said. “Just a little closer. We’re almost there.”

  “Ease us in, Ensign,” Scott urged, bright beams flying across the screen ahead of them. Chen boldly pushed on, into the heart of the enemy defenses, knowing that a single wrong move would be the death of them all. It seemed to take an eternity, but after only a handful of seconds, Rochford opened fire, three star-bright bolts of energy racing from the maser cannons, flying towards the enemy ship.

  An explosion ripped through the side of Leonidas’ hull, sending them spinning out of control. Scott was thrown from his chair to the deck as the gravity compensators faltered under the unexpected load, knocking the wind from his body. Chen struggled with the controls, trying to stabilize the ship, trying to bring them back under control, the alien vessel still within easy range. Sirens rang through the deck as Scott struggled to his feet, fighting with the sound of anguished hull metal, strained deck plates threatening to break completely under the load.

  The consoles flickered, some of them crashing as the power network struggled to come back on-line. Emergency reports streamed down every functioning monitor almost too rapidly to read. Scott punched at the communicator control on his chair, but only static replied, a dull roar that added to the cacophony of noises.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked, turning to Ivanov. “Someone shut down those sirens. What did we do to the enemy ship?” The sensor display was a mass of static, and he added, “Report, someone, damn it!”

  “I’m trying to get a damage report, sir,” Ivanov replied, punching at the controls. “Engineering, this is the bridge. Respond, please. Respond.”

  “Overload,” Rochford said, slumped in his chair. He looked up at Scott, and said, “When we took our shot, Val tried to feed just a little more power in at the last second.”

  “Are you telling me that we did this to ourselves?” Scott asked.

  “The starboard power network blew in nineteen places, and took out the backup oxygen reservoir,” he replied, tapping his screen. “Mike, Val and most of the weapons team were down there trying to keep everything running.” Despair in his eyes, he added, “No additional damage to the enemy ship. Our shot was right on target, but it didn’t do a thing to them.”

  “All of this was for nothing?” Sullivan asked.

  “Mind your station, Ensign,” Scott warned, inwardly sharing her feelings. “Helm, can we manage a collision course?”

  Chen shook his head, and said, “The helm isn’t answering to control, sir.”

  “Bridge to Engineering,” Scott said, punching a control.

  “I’m not getting any response from engineering, or anything from that section of the ship,” Ivanov said, frantically typing commands into his console. “I think Commander Rochford’s assessment is right, though, sir. That matches the data I’m seeing.”

  “Sir, the ship,” Sullivan said, gesturing at the screen, static filling the image as the overhead lights flickered. The alien ship seemed to be hanging in front of them, matching course and speed. It would never have a better chance to destroy them, never have a better chance to bring them down.

  Instead, it fired one last desultory pulse of energy, turned, and flew away, heading in the direction of the wormhole leading to Kapteyn’s Star, the next step on their journey into human space, and the last system standing between them and Earth. They’d taken their best shot at destroying the alien ship.

  They’d failed.

  And now all humanity would pay the price for their failure.

  Chapter 16

  Novak picked her way along the corridor, clumsy in her cumbersome armored suit, brushing away debris as she walked. The access path was a total wreck, exposed to space in hundreds of places, the stars shining through the gaps in the hull. Above her, the power conduits they’d worked so hard to strengthen were a blackened mess, only the vacuum of space preventing a catastrophic electrical fire that could easily have destroyed the ship.

  In the distance, she spotted something buried under a fallen ceiling strut, and walked carefully forward, peering down into the gloom below. An officer’s uniform. She reached for the strut, gently easing it from the body, and sighed. Commander Garcia lay dead on the deck, her eyes wide, all the bones in the upper part of her torso shattered. The sole mercy was that she couldn’t have had any idea what was happening, not until it was all over.

  “Novak to bridge,” she said. “I’ve found Commander Garcia’s body. Request burial detail.”

  “Understood,” a dejected Rochford replied. “Any other bodies?”

  “Just one, Spaceman Williams. He almost got into an emergency airlock in time. We’re almost finished with our sweep, and we haven’t found any survivors. Anything from the outside search team?”

  “A few bodies, most of them in pieces, and a hell of a lot of wreckage. I don’t see how anyone could have lived through that nightmare, anyway.” He sighed, then added, “How much longer?”

  “Maybe ten minutes, then we can lock down this section. I don’t think anything here is going to be salvageable outside of spacedock. Sherman’s isolating the lifesystem now. At least we won’t be venting anything into space.” Shining her beam to the ceiling, she added, “The superstructure weathered it fine, though. There’s still nothing fundamentally wrong with the ship.”

  “Thank goodness for small mercies,” he replied. “Keep me informed.”

  “Commander,” Novak asked, “What’s our plan?”

  “Captain’s holding a staff briefi
ng in an hour. I guess we’ll find out then. The alien ship’s still heading towards the wormhole. They don’t seem to be in any hurry. Not that we hurt them, but I guess they used up a hell of a lot of power.”

  “That’s one weakness, right there, sir.”

  “If we had anything we could use to exploit it, Lieutenant, that would mean something.”

  “We can’t give up, Commander.”

  “No. Of course not.” He sighed again, then said, “It’s just been a damned long day. Bridge out.”

  Moving to her side, Patel said, “He sounds in a good mood.”

  “One of his oldest friends just died, Chief. I guess he’s earned the right to a little sulk.”

  “That’s a lot of crap, and you and I both know it. I’d been serving on Vanguard for four years. I’ll mourn them when the fight is over, but I’m not going to let it interfere with my job. And neither are you, if it comes to it.” Looking around the deck, he added, “This is a mess, Lieutenant. It’s one hell of a mess, but we will patch up the damage, and we will move on. Because we’re Navy, and that’s what we do.”

  “Have you ever considered moving to the command track, Chief?”

  “The Chief’s Mess runs the Navy, Lieutenant. I thought every officer knew that. We just keep you around to handle the paperwork and look nice in dress uniform.” Cracking a smile, he said, “We hurt them. Don’t forget that. We punched a hole in their armor. That means they are vulnerable, and that means they can be beaten. They’re mortal. They have mortal weaknesses. We’ll find them. Somehow.”

  “War of the Worlds, George Pal, 1951?” she asked.

  Patel’s smile widened, and he replied, “Another old movie buff? Fantastic. We were watching it last night, before the battle. One of Lieutenant Ivanov’s few good ideas. Inspirational entertainment from the past.” Tapping the hull, he added, “Though he’s at least spared us endless rants about Thermopylae.”

  A pair of figures walked down the corridor towards them, and said, “Lieutenant, we’re just about ready. Lieutenant Santoro wants to close down the blast doors and seal the deck.”

  “On our way,” Novak said. “Fast work.”

  With a smile, the engineering technician replied, “Having that big ugly bastard lurking in the shadows is pretty good motivation to move quickly, ma’am. None of us want to be caught on the hop when they attack again.” He paused, then asked, “We’re going to beat them, aren’t we, Lieutenant?”

  “Damn right,” she said, as the four of them scrambled to the temporary airlock. They stepped through one at a time, gratefully shedding their spacesuits as they emerged, hanging them on a rack left in the corridor. Santoro was waiting for them, welding team at the ready, the smell of ozone heavy in the air as the equipment warmed up.

  “Thanks for the help,” Santoro said, watching her technicians on.

  With a shrug, Novak replied, “Not as if I had any plans I couldn’t cancel.”

  “That Professor wants to see you. He seems to think you’re still the Science Officer. Two decks down, in the laboratory.”

  “Since when did this ship have a laboratory?”

  “The Ambassador brought a load of junk with her, and Belinsky managed to con someone into putting it together for him. Elevator’s still working on this deck. You can go right down. Chief, I could do with you heading down to Shuttle Maintenance. You managed to do a nice bit of damage to that ride of yours, and I somehow think it fitting that you fix it up. It’s the best shuttle we’ve got, and we might need it on our next encounter.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Patel replied, making his way down the corridor as Novak stepped into the elevator, entering the command to send it lurching to its destination. Gone was the smooth ride from before, the power network still unreliable enough to force the system directly to its battery backups, and those seemed rather less stable than they once were. When the doors opened at the bottom, it was almost a relief.

  The corridor was clean, quiet, the lights stable. No trace of the devastation that reigned just a few decks above, a significant portion of the ship now open to space for the foreseeable future. They’d done the damage to themselves, the enemy not even bothering to finish them off, and that almost rankled. The aliens had proven to be methodical, carefully wiping out anything they considered a threat. Evidently Leonidas no longer counted in that category. They hadn’t even bothered to waste the energy to finish them off, instead opting to make for their next target.

  Though if the aliens had read their behavior, they’d know that Leonidas would be coming after them. No matter the odds against them, no matter how unlikely their victory might be, they’d continue to press their attack until all hope was lost. It wasn’t as if they had any other choice, not knowing what was at stake. She walked down the corridor, rubbing her wrists where the heavy spacesuit had rubbed, then turned to a door with a hastily applied stencil advertising it as the ‘Ship’s Laboratory’. Whoever had applied it had been in a hurry, the paint running down the door in long trails, but it still brought a smile to her face as she rang for admittance.

  “Come in, come in, Lieutenant,” Belinsky said, the door sliding open. “I’m glad someone is willing to talk to me. Everyone else was too busy.” He gestured for her to take a seat, and she stepped into the cramped room, analysis equipment scattered in every corner, monitors on every wall flashing the strange pictograms she remembered from the vault. “I couldn’t even speak to the Captain.”

  “We’ve just fought a battle,” she replied. “And we lost a lot of people. It’s understandable that he’s a little preoccupied at the moment.”

  “Maybe, but what I’m doing here is far more important than that,” Belinsky replied, tapping his hand on the desk. “I’ve decoded another of the messages from the Folk. Our attack plan never had a chance. They tried all that before.”

  Her eyes widened, and she said, “You’ve got more data?”

  Nodding, he replied, “They wanted their information to be easily accessible, remember. Wanted us to understand their secrets. I can only imagine what the last of them must have thought, a million years ago. The sacrifice they made might yet save our lives.” He dropped down into a chair, and added, “The codes are of increasing complexity. My assumption is that it was intentional. They must have considered that we might stumble across the relics of their race in the middle of some sort of crisis, and that we might need to decode their text in a hurry. It was brilliant philology. I just wish Walter could see it.” At her expression, he added, “My old linguistics professor, back at Cambridge.”

  “Professor, we are just a little pressed for time. Can you give me the short version?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I’ve got the records of their final battle. It must have been the last records ever made by their race, probably written and encoded by the survivors we found. It wasn’t even in the vault, but in the corridors outside. A last-minute afterthought. Scrawled…”

  “Professor,” Novak pressed.

  “Their armor works through energy absorption. They’ve got fantastic radiators, far better than anything we’ve ever seen, and they use the heat generated as a supplementary power source. The catch is that it requires significant management, computational power, they thought. Strange as it sounds, the alien ship isn’t that far ahead of us. We’ve done a lot of theoretical work along these lines.”

  “Then the recharge time…”

  “Is probably related to their computers, rather than their power levels. Whenever they fight a major battle, it must tax their systems to the limit, especially when we attack them. No wonder they’re limping out of the system right now. That maser blast must have hurt, but not in the way we’d expected. You can tell that to the Captain, if you want to cheer him up a little.”

  “What about the attack we launched on the enemy ship, the bombing run?”

  “Yes, I saw that,” he replied. “It was like watching something out of an old movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like that. It must
have taken an awful lot of courage to launch an attack like that, knowing the odds.” He paused, then continued, “I’m not a weapons specialist. I can only go by what I’m learning from the Folk, but it might have been a different sort of attack. Perhaps it was the force of the impact that did the damage, rather than the explosion, or maybe you caught them by surprise. They’re still dependent on working out the details of an attack strategy in order to respond properly to it.”

  “Then you’re saying that any attack based on energy weapons won’t work.”

  “I’m saying that the answer isn’t in preparing some sort of mass attack, Lieutenant.” He paused, then said, “The Folk must have tried everything they could think of during their war. They had far longer to prepare than we do, but they also had little instinct for fighting. The very notion of conflict was confined to their ancient legends, as though the last record of war we had was the tales of King Arthur. It must have taken then a long time to realize just what they were up against, and still longer to determine what they were going to do about it.”

  “Then there’s still hope.”

  He frowned, then replied, “Of course, Lieutenant. I don’t know where you can have got the idea that there wasn’t any. I’m looking forward to publishing these findings.” Sliding a tablet across the desk, he said, “I’d also appreciate it if you could take a look at my grant proposal. I know that it’s on the large side, but I’m going to need prolonged access to a quantum computer if I’m going to complete my analysis in any length of time. I know this won’t help with the current crisis, but…”

  She picked up the tablet, shook her head, and said, “You realize this would be one of the largest research projects the Navy has ever undertaken.” Lowering it again, she added, “I’m acting as though we’re going to win. As though this is something that is actually going to happen.”