by T J Bryan
"Five minutes," called out Lars.
Toni badly wanted to pee, but that would have to wait. At three minutes to what she hoped would be a confusing 'flash bang' Silvi began to move her fleet toward the Megra. At their best speed Silvi hoped to gather enough momentum and speed that when the surprise occurred she would be closing in on the Megra, but still a good million and a half kilometres away.
"One minute to torpedo launch."
Torpedoes were the slowest weapon in the OCN fleet and this was their first chance to use them. Torpedoes were also dumb in that their tracking systems were primitive given the disruptive nature of the anti-matter warhead on advanced guidance systems.
Toni watched Silvi on the vid. She saw Silvi stand and call out "Mark".
As she did so, pre-arranged and staggered anti-matter torpedoes launched themselves from eight widely spaced OCN ships of the First Fleet.
Toni knew that impact was a good twenty minutes away. Now they simply waited another 12 minutes before firing off a handful of 'K's designed to arrive just before the torpedoes. At 13 seconds before the torpedoes entered the kill zone of the Megra the casters would be launched. The impact timing was simple. Eight seconds before the casters detonated and as the torpedoes passed through the path of the casters Toni would set of her 'flash bang' distraction.
The 'flash bang' detonation was also tied to the auto fire mechanism and Toni had little to do but watch.
While the countdown clock on the bridge bulkhead had been set to countdown to the impact of the torpedoes, Toni knew that eight seconds before zero her little surprise was hopefully going to blind the Megra fleet for a moment and give Silvi an advantage. In fact they were counting on it.
Silvi watched the clock and as it approached the eight second mark she found herself holding her breath.
The clock reached eight. Nothing happened. Just as Toni thought her little surprise was a dud, the vid screen went black. The image did not return and then the entire station was battered at if someone had hit the station with a huge fist. The lights flickered and then the power systems failed. Toni could feel the entire station tilt as the gravity plates of the deck failed and only centrifugal force kept her attached to the deck. The claxon was sounding. Toni's ears hurt.
Her pilot who rarely had much to do at Holgata was shouting that the station's orbit had become unstable, and that he was firing jectors to re-establish their orbit. Toni was reaching for the rebreather tab on her ship suit when the claxon stopped. She took a quick look at the maintenance board. They were not venting, but there was substantial damage on the 'A' deck and most of their fusion engines were down. The maintenance board had dozens of blinking red messages and double that number blinking in yellow. Moments later the overhead lights returned, but the comms remained dead as did the vid screen. The fleet status boards were blank.
Toni's first thought was that the Great Maw must have fired its' giant plasma gun. But their station was more than 1,500,000 kilometres away. Either the estimation of the reach of the weapon was wrong or something else had happened.
"I need comms. Lars, get me comms."
Toni looked over to Lars Ulf and he was holding his hand against a bloody gash on his forehead. But he was conscious and began to frantically work his control station.
The remainder of the bridge crew looked ok and within seconds gravity was restored on the deck plates.
Lars who had been working his weapons station threw up his hands. "This station is dead. We need to move to the secondary bridge. It might be working."
Toni replied, "All right everyone. Heads up. We move to the secondary bridge below, on the double. Now."
The bridge crew raced to the hatch and as Toni was about to follow and climb down the long 300 meter tunnel that led below to the tiny secondary bridge she saw Lars stagger. Toni grabbed Lars before he fell. She looked carefully into his eyes and she saw nothing. The eyes were open but he was not responsive. Concussion she thought and there was nothing she could do. Without even ship comms she could not call the med team to come to the bridge. Besides they would be busy tending to the newly injured as well as the injured survivors of the Diana exodus who remained onboard the station too fragile to move.
Toni dragged Lars over to her captains chair and pushed him down onto the seat. Then she reached for the six way restraints and pulled down the straps hard. The she pulled them again. A whiff of ozone hit her nostrils and she found it troubling. She took a look at Lars, turned, and rushed to the tunnel to the secondary station below.
With gravity restored Toni had to use the ladder. The small elevator was not working and as she passed by the elevator she saw that it had been completely knocked off its' rails and was dangling on a few bolts. If it broke loose and fell as she was below she would certainly die. She pressed on and after another full minute of climbing down the ladder she entered the triple hatch that led to the tiny secondary bridge. The crew was already standing at their stations. There were no seats.
The status board for the station was functioning as well as the maintenance panel. But the comms to the outside universe were still down. Her pilot was frantically working the station to re-establish a stable orbit and as Toni watched the status board she saw that there was hope.
"Where is Lars?" asked Paul Sanofi as he stood at defence frantically trying to restore comms.
"Out. Hit his head. Do we have internal comms? Can we call the med crew?"
Paul turned away from Toni, "Give me a moment. I think I can get the secondary comms up, but with half our fusion engines down I'll need to redirect some of the power."
Toni responded, "Give priority to the crew quarters where the med team will be working on the injured."
Paul did not respond but moments later the tiny speaker above the defence station howled with feedback. Toni's ears had been hurting before but now the pain nearly sent her to the deck. The squelching soon stopped.
"Ok. Commodore. You have the comms for the station. The external comms are down hard. It's going to take time."
Toni reached for her inter-tab that held her emergency check lists but it was missing. Lost on the bridge she thought. Well, time for good old memory.
Toni looked about for her mic and cursed the fact that she had only visited the secondary bridge once and that was when it was still unfinished. Some Commodore am I she thought.
But she found the mic attached to the bulkhead at a small station that someone had written on a bit of tape and plastered to the wall. It read 'Commodore'.
"This is the Commodore speaking. Damage control. All stations report in per emergency procedure."
By protocol the first station to report would be Maintenance and Toni expected to hear an immediate reply. Her overall concern was hull integrity. However there was no response.
"Is this working Paul?"
"Yes. I am sure. But some stations may be down."
Next Toni called upon Med Services to report status. Immediately Dr. Billings responded.
"Toni we have some newly 23 injured. That is in addition to the Diana folks. Mostly banged up heads and broken bones. Only one fatality. We had a loose bulkhead and it came down. Crew quarters are viable and the doc boxes are working."
"Good," Toni replied. "Can you gather up some non critical personnel and contact Maintenance. I can't get through."
"Yes. Most of the dock crew are here in hard vac suits. I don't know if the suits are needed, but they are ready. Shall I send them out."
"How many do you have Doctor."
Toni could hear the doctor counting. "Twelve. Eight with suits."
"Good. Now divide them up into teams of two and send teams to our four docks. I need a status. Looks like 'A' dock was hit hard. Send one team down to Maintenance. Have them use suit comms to get back to me."
"What happened?" asked Dr. Billings.
"I don't know Doctor. But we got hit hard. I think we are ok. At least we are now in a stable orbit. If hull integrity is sound we should be ok. I ex
pect that someone from the fleet or Wu will be arriving soon."
"Ok, I'm sending the teams out now."
"Thank you Doctor." Toni paused a moment and proceeded down her list of station functions beginning with the engine room. Her short discussion with the Chief Engineer indicated that they should have full power back within the hour, but if the conduits to individual sections were blown, power throughout the station might be spotty. The Chief Engineer would not know until power was restored and breakers began to pop. Without power diagnostics he would not know how to respond. Holgata Station, unlike Greayson ships, had only minimal redundancy and no automated damage control droids. Those station improvements were not scheduled for another year.
Toni proceeded down her mental list of Holgata Station functions. But every few moments she tried to raise Maintenance but there was no response. She was about to leave the secondary bridge and climb up the ladder to seek the maintenance section herself when she heard a crash and the deck shuddered. The elevator had fallen and she and her crew were now trapped inside the cramped secondary bridge.
Toni looked about and all the stations that they had been restored to full or partial function were still working. Lars and Paul had hardly noticed the crash, but her pilot, whose name she was working to remember, seemed rattled. Toni took a short step to the pilot, stood behind him, and placed her two hands on his shoulder. She could feel him shaking. Then his name occurred to her. Tom something. She simply lost the last name in the fog of war.
"Tom," she said. "Good flying. You saved our butts." Tony squeezed Tom shoulders again and she found that he was no longer shaking and as she looked at his face she saw renewed confidence in his own skill, his station, and his Commodore.
It was then that Toni smelled smoke and ozone. Not the nice smoke of a frying steak, but the ugly smell of burning plasticine and electronic circuits.
"Rebreathers everyone. Now." she shouted as she pulled the tab on her turtle neck and the rebreather hood deployed. Instinctively she looked down at her O2 bottle and the telltale was full green. She had an hour as did her bridge crew.
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
Cranmore System - Girots Entry Portal - Year 3248 October 27 ET 23:23
Ana watched as her volley of casters crashed into the enormous Spikey. Ana and her captains were well aware of the early descriptions of the Spikey and its' decimation of the Planet Girots and its' millions of human inhabitants. She knew it was huge, but when she had the opportunity to view the Spikey it was indeed enormous. Spikey was a mass of lumps punctuated by odd spikes. Its' size was well over four hundred kilometres diameter but its' form was lumpy. It looked like an accretion of odd interstellar debris and a strange organic like matrix holding the whole thing together. But covering the entire surface were spikes. Four sided spikes tapering to a pointed end and often thousands of meters long. There were literally thousands of these spikes and Ana knew from Silvi's dispatches from four years ago that some of the spikes were deadly missiles. In addition Spikey had some kind of energy beam with which he had murdered Girots and sterilized the planet.
The Spikey did not at first react to the OCN assault. Silvi's previous report indicated that Spikey was indeed slow both in reaction time and in speed should the enormous lump or ship initiate movement toward its attackers. The mass of the thing would preclude rapid acceleration, but within a few minutes Spikey began to move. And as hoped it began its' movement directly toward the Megra fleet.
The Megra seemed slow to react as Spikey launched hundreds of missiles toward the Megra fleet. Ana though that perhaps the Megra had never encountered a Spikey, or perhaps they were simply too surprised to react swiftly. However the big mouth had momentum, it was both hard for it to stop, or to change direction. The dumbbells began to form a tighter protective ring about the big mouth as the first of Spikey's missiles struck. The individual missiles did not seem anywhere as powerful at the OCN 'K's, but the sheer number of them began to destroy in ones, and twos the Megra dumbbells. A portion of the Spikey's surface began to flicker and pulse with a white light. She was powering up her energy weapon.
Ana knew it was only a short time before the big mouth would react to protect its' remaining fleet or suffer multiple direct hits from Spikey missiles. She did not wait long.
Ana had called up extreme magnification on the big mouth which was aided by the string of probes she had left behind. Ana noticed that the cavity on the big mouth began to flicker and then glow. The small orb suspended in the middle of the cavity began to sparkle as if a small electrical storm had broken out in the maw of the big mouth. Then her vid screen went black. Attenuation had set in and she knew that the cause was a blinding flash of light likely to damage her crews eyes or the ships sensors. Almost 15 seconds passed before the vid screen returned revealing a massive swirl of flaming gasses, dust, metal particles, and large chunks of stone and interstellar debris. The big mouth was gone. Spikey was gone. And over 18 of the dumbbells were gone. Of the few that remained they were badly damaged, venting plasma, or simply spinning about out of control and heading into Girots gravity well.
Ana thought to herself, the Second Battle of Girots is over. Spikey had won the first battle but now Spikey and the big mouth are gone. Now it is time to return to duty at Cranmore she thought. Ana, with a broad smile, ordered her small flotilla to return and resume its picket duty at Cranmore.
Hours later, after skirting the expanding debris field that was once Spikey and the Megra fleet, Ana and her ships headed for Cranmore. Prior to entry she dropped a mailbox providing her current status as well as a new portal monitor. Soon she entered Cranmore and found the system was free of the Megra. Quietly her ships resumed their prior positions around Borneo's moon Prince.
...
Wu System - Holgata Station - Year 3248 October 28 ET 11:32
Farn, Silvi, and Toni sat in the small mess of the New Kara and reviewed the vid recording of the final moments of the Fifth Battle of Wu once again. As she watched Toni was amazed at the power of the multiple explosions triggered by her 'flash bang' surprise. Her booby trap device was extraordinarily powerful and contained far more anti-matter than she ever expected, and the energy released in that single explosion, and the small explosions that followed, had resulted in a plasma burst of almost cosmic proportions. The blast of the hot expanding gas, its' accompanying massive electrical discharges, and the ejection of millions of tons of wreckage from the debris field, had traveled millions of kilometres through the Wu system nearly destroying Holgata Station, heavily damaging Wu Station, and destroying four of the OCN SARs and damaging New Hildr. The price paid was high in lives and ships, but the Megra fleet was entirely destroyed. If the enormous explosion of the booby trap had not destroyed them, then the following chain of explosions from the OCN torpedoes and the Great Maw's weapon itself doomed the Megra fleet.
Toni stood and walked to the coffee urn and poured yet another cup of coffee. "We lucked out." she said without emotion in her voice. "We just were lucky."
Silvi looked up at Toni. "Some famous old earth conqueror once said he preferred lucky generals to simply good ones."
No one laughed or reacted. All three knew they were lucky.
Toni returned to the mess table and sat in silence. They had lost Kata Park's Göndul, Hildeberg with Buddy Brunner, and Hirst with Tom Baxter. Gunnr with OM Marx and his green crew had taken such a powerful hit that she would never fly again. Quick thinking on Captain Marx's part had saved his crew. Four ships lost and 27 crew, most of whom she knew personally or had served with on other ships. Her pain was great, but as she looked about the mess she knew that Silvi and Farn shared that grief.
Toni remembered that Buddy Brunner was one of the original Ragnarök crew who made that first voyage to Girots more than four years ago. Silvi was taking this hard Toni realized, but like Silvi she remained focused as she set about writing up her dispatches to be loaded on Greenland within the hour and forwarded home to Abel.
New
Hildr had taken the worst of the damage to the larger OCN ships. New Hildr and the New Ragnarök, as destructor class ships, were far better armored than the more thin skinned but faster SARs. Still the plasma stream at hit her broadside and seams along her midsection were separated and most of the ship had vented. Several crew were seriously injured. Farn herself had suffered a broken collar bone and as they sat in the mess Toni noticed Farn's stiff posture and her difficulty writing up her report. New Hildr was simply to damaged to return to Jamon. Temporary seals would return her to some form of fighting readiness, but only as a last ditch defence. Her maintenance board indicated that the ship was repairable but only at a shipyard, and those shipyards had been destroyed more than 150 years ago. They would tow the SAR Gunnr to the ship graveyard above Wu Station and leave her there. New Hildr they would tow to Wu Station until Greenland or Iceland could return with enough material to rebuild the badly damaged Holgata Station. For the time being the station had been abandoned following a serious, but not catastrophic, plasma gun capacitor fire that had almost taken away 'A' deck.
Damage to Wu Station had been significant but not nearly as bad as that to Holgata. Holgata was as yet an unfinished station and Wu was anchored to the ancient and very tough monitor that had defended the Wu System for centuries. Much of the population of Wu, including the refugees from Diana, had taken refuge behind the monitor's enormously thick armor, and although portions of the newly restored docks and warehouse were blown away and sent crashing to the planets surface, the station had survived. Much of the Diana fleet had perished as well including Krzysztof on the small freighter that had carried the booby trap out to the fleet. Krzysztof had been unable to travel far enough away from the explosion to avoid destruction.
Of the Diana ships four survived intact including two liners, a small fast freighter, and a larger ship once used to refuel ships in orbit with reaction mass.
Toni wondered if perhaps this was a Pyrrhic victory. Yes they had defeated, in fact smashed the Megra fleet with its' incredible new weapon, but if the Megra made another appearance even with a modest fleet the OCN might be easily defeated. However they had repositioned the OCN ships, reloaded their munitions to the extent they had spares, and set about protecting the system. One of the first orders of business was to resume patrols along the knot lines of their allies.
