Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins

by Randolph Lalonde

  “They'll have to ask nicely,” Laura's holographic image replied. “Jason, I love your brain.”

  “You're not serious. Ask nicely?”

  “Well, that and you have to be in the Freeground Fleet registry, exist in her personnel database, submit to a DNA scan and pass another fifty or so other subtle security checks I've programmed in.”

  “Sir, there's a power surge in one of the asteroids closer to the station,” tactical reported.

  “Evasive action!” I called out as I saw what was going on in the tactical display.

  The whole ship shuddered.

  “That impact brought our shields down twenty three percent. We can't take more hits like that,” Laura reported.

  “An asteroid mounted rail cannon. I was hoping we'd be under cover by the time they brought it on line,” Oz said to himself as much as anyone else.

  “Get us under cover, Derek!” I called out.

  “Almost there, Sir.”

  The ship shuddered again. The graphic representation of the ship at the bottom of the tactical display showed an impact on our lower port side. It hadn't ruptured the outer hull, but our shields were down on that quarter. They would take a while to regenerate. “We can't keep taking hits. Any way of predicting where they'll strike?”

  “They're coming at us at over forty thousand kilometres per second, Sir,” tactical replied, I could hear panic creeping into her tone.

  “Easy, Shelly,” Oz soothed.

  The tactical display showed the First Light manoeuvre right behind a massive asteroid at the edge of the uncleared field and explosions behind us as the Triton began attacking the incoming fighters. She was still cloaked and picking them off at her leisure.

  “About time Captain Wheeler started working,” Jason mentioned.

  “He's sticking to the plan. He had to guard the gate until we had it locked down,” Oz added.

  “Keep us under cover, Lieutenant, I want to avoid getting picked apart by rail cannon fire.”

  “I'm starting to connect to the station's communication network. The first layer's weak, after that it's all dynamic encryption.” Jason said. “The quantum core's speeding things up but it would take decades.”

  “How close do we have to be for you to access the internal network?” I asked as I watched the shields regenerate three percentage points a second.

  “A couple kilometres if we're lucky.”

  “Just like the mission profile. Navigation, start plotting an evasive course that'll get us as close to the station as possible once we're clear of the asteroid field. Be creative.”

  “Yes sir.”

  One of the nearby asteroids showed an impact on the tactical display. “That explains why those destroyers aren't following us, that rail cannon is still firing into the asteroid field,” Oz pointed out. “This could get messy.”

  “Ronin reporting all fighters away. We're working the plan,” I heard Commander Minh-Chu report through the communicator.

  I could see their transponders on the tactical display, and knew they were fakes. Minh's maintenance and fighter crews had finished building their decoys. They were all different sizes, using partial and complete hulls that were set with roughly similar capabilities and masses. They would navigate through the asteroid field towards the station using transponders that matched our fighters. In the meantime Minh's wing would be drifting ahead of the First Light behind a shower of meteors we would send towards the station.

  “Captain Wheeler's moving on to the Command Carrier,” reported communications.

  “What the hell is he doing?” I asked no one in particular. “That's completely off mission.” I found myself wishing that I could communicate with him directly, but any open communications would most likely compromise his cloak.

  “Well, here's hoping he has a better plan,” Oz said, shaking his head. “Besides, we switched a few things up just in case.”

  We wove between asteroids and meteor clusters, all the while getting closer to the dark red star the spinward portion of the Blue Belt orbited and the station. The dim light cast by the failed star reflected blue off of the tumbling rock all around us. This was where the ergranian steel used in the construction of the First Light came from. I was in amazement at the skill of our pilot, Lieutenant Derek Gregor. I watched in awe as he steered us through safely, making one split second judgement after another, coordinating with his navigational partner who plotted and adjusted the course second by second and watched the colliding, milling lethal stone all around us.

  The shields were taking strikes -- fewer than anyone had planned -- and as we came to the last few hundred kilometres before exiting the field they were almost back up to full charge.

  “Fire conventional high yield torpedoes. It's time to create a screen of moving cover,” I instructed tactical.

  We began firing on meteors far ahead and after a few seconds we were right behind a growing, heavy mass of ore and stone hurtling towards the huge station before us. The station was a disc of girders, habitation and research complexes that reached out from a flat centre like a halo of spikes. Hundreds of other sections, many unfinished, fanned out across the top and bottom. I couldn't help but be reminded of early images of Freeground, before the first major expansions were built hundreds of years ago.

  Thousands of support ships -- construction, external habitation, transportation cruisers, movers, smelting and mining vessels -- filled the space around the station and after the hellish challenge our pilot had just been put through, it must have seemed like heaven. He rolled the First Light as we broke free and I couldn't help but smile. He was moving our kilometre long home as though she were a heavy fighter.

  “Mark any ships that are charging weapons or firing and slag them. Instruct rail cannon emplacements to switch to antimatter rounds. Torpedo bays and turret emplacements; load ordinance nine B’s and hold.”

  “Sir, the resistance here is light. There are very few armed ships,” tactical reported.

  “I don't like this,” Oz said as he brought up a sub-display and focused in on a large empty space in front of the station. “This is exactly where I'd manoeuvre the heaviest defences if I were in command.”

  “Then that's where they are,” I replied.

  “Helm, let's go around. Use the ships surrounding the outer perimeter as cover while we see what those meteors run into.”

  “My pleasure sir,” Lieutenant Gregor acknowledged as he taxed the engines and took us into a drastic ninety degree turn within a hundred meters of a massive ore transport. The rail cannon that had been tracking us through the asteroid field stopped firing; obviously the defence commanders didn't want to risk taking out any of their support vessels.

  The fighter drones ran into heavy resistance. The command carrier well behind us had launched fighters to intercept and had run into them earlier than expected. Minh's diversion had delayed station support craft from being sent in our direction. Not as much as he would have liked, but I'd have to congratulate him later since the plan had kept most of the fighters from even looking in our direction.

  I looked to where the hail of meteors was careening towards the station, they were tearing through support vessels too slow to move out of the way and were just about to emerge into the empty space. “Ronin, don't follow the meteors in. Use the civilian vessels as cover.”

  “Acknowledged. And Captain?” Minh asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Get out of my head.”

  Oz snickered despite himself. “If you weren't already with Ayan, I'd say you and Buu should get married. You already share the same brain.”

  “That's my man you're talking about,” Ayan interjected as her holographic image worked at the controls.

  “Now we get to see what's behind curtain number one,” I said as the meteors drifted into open space.

  To my utter surprise they were cut into billions of sand sized pieces in the span of a few seconds. The bridge fell silent.

  “What happened?” ask
ed Derek's navigator.

  I could see tactical was already busy trying to analyse it. The dedicated science station, manned by two officers new to the post, were scrambling to explain what we had just seen. I was suddenly very glad the engineering crew had made the late addition. Having them there could only speed up our information gathering process.

  We were still weaving between the hundreds of ships and the occasional massive asteroid, taking minor fire that was of little consequence. Our load of antimatter ammunition was still several times what we'd need to complete our mission, and our shields were over ninety percent charged. The clock was ticking. The longer we took to figure out what could annihilate thousands of ore laden meteors in mere seconds, the less chance of success we had.

  “Disruptor fire. It's the only thing that could cause that kind of destruction,” Ayan finally reported.

  “That's theoretical,” Oz spat.

  “We can confirm it. Whatever they're using breaks down molecular bonds with a form of energy we haven't gotten a handle on,” reported dedicated sciences.

  “What will that do to our shields?”

  “I'm sorry sir, I couldn't tell you for certain.”

  “Best guess?”

  “Refractive armour may not work, but energy barriers should.”

  “We'll know soon enough,” I said. I thought silently for a moment, watching as we wove between several habitation cruisers.

  “Orders, Captain?” Oz asked quietly.

  “Laura, can you coordinate with our science team and modify the shields to be more effective as we start taking hits?”

  “I can try,” she replied after manipulating a set of controls. “Without knowing more about the weapon--”

  “Do your best. Can our ablative shielding help protect us against it?”

  “It can, but it would take a lot of power to regenerate it as we're taking damage,” Ayan said. “Actually about half our power as we generate it.”

  “Then bring the antimatter power core on line and use it to charge the hull.”

  Ayan actually stopped and looked at me for a moment before following through with my orders.

  “Do you have another option?”

  “I was trying to think of one. No.”

  “That sounds bad. Why is that bad?” Jason asked in a whisper.

  “It's bad because we were going to use it to generate a wormhole to get out of here, and the power core only has enough antimatter to operate for about five minutes,” Oz replied. “Looks like we'll just have to get power from another system when the time comes or use the gate we entered through.”

  Jason cringed. “Well, it's not that bad, really. This ship can generate a lot of power,” he concluded, trying to reassure his assistant, who looked absolutely terrified.

  “The antimatter core is ready,” Ayan reported.

  “Helm, take us straight for the station. As soon as we break out into the open start rotating the ship. We want to spread any damage that gets through the shields across the hull.”

  We took a sharp turn, and just as we were breaking past the last of the civilian ships, Ayan brought the antimatter core online and the hull was charged with so much power that I could hear the metal creak. The outer hull sounded like it was alive, singing sustained soprano notes that almost sounded mournful.

  We were immediately under fire. The hull started showing damage from whatever undetectable enemy was on our port side. Our hull was regenerating fast, more quickly than I thought possible, but the disruptor fire had hit one turret already and a gunner had been killed. “Get those shields adjusted please,” I requested as calmly as I could manage.

  I looked to the front of the bridge and saw on the forward two dimensional display that covered all the walls that a ship was appearing. It had two long forks in the front attached to a primary hull that bristled with field emitters. The rear of the ship sported six manoeuvring engines with one main thruster at the back. The design of the hundred fifty meter long ship made it look like it was lurching forward in an attack posture. We were within two hundred meters and the vessel's Captain had obviously decided that decloaking was in their best interest.

  “Helm!” was all Oz and I could say before we careened into the starboard side fork. Everyone on the bridge was tossed to the left as the inertial dampeners fought to keep up with the force of the impact.

  I regained my feet as quickly as possible, wincing as I put pressure on my left ankle. I had sprained it, bad. The pilot had been jostled, but remained in his chair the entire time and rotated the ship so our undamaged side faced the incoming disruptor fire.

  “Scanning the enemy ship's shields and doing my best to match the energy pattern. It's resistant to disruptor fire!” Laura called out, already manipulating the engineering control console before being fully on her feet. “Medical team to engineering, we have injured!” she finished.

  I couldn't see Ayan on the holographic display at all and I tried to put it out of my mind as I looked at the tactical and ship status display. Our port manoeuvring thrusters and RAD scoop had taken heavy damage, but the rest of the ship was all right. Hull damage was heavy. Portions of our outer hull had been reduced to just over fifty percent. If we couldn't get our shields working against the disruptor fire soon there wouldn't be enough metal left to regenerate in some sections.

  “Helm, get us under the cover of that station. Do it now.” I said, falling back into my chair.

  “The station is opening fire. Multiple signatures. Several dozen torpedoes, three squadrons of fighters so far, energy weapons, and some smaller rail cannons,” Oz reported.

  “Target torpedoes with all cannons and instruct rear gunners to fire a fan of flak at high velocity. Track impacts and mark firing zones. If you find any of those cloaked ships, switch to antimatter rounds and light them up.”

  Our shield status changed and I heard Laura cry out. “Got it! Shields are now blocking over ninety percent of the disruptor fire.”

  “Ronin leading the charge. We'll take care of those fighters for you. Time to shred some hulls.”

  “Badman breaking with squad two to proceed to our objective,” added Minh's second in command. His small group of eight fighters were tasked with taking out the gravity field generators holding the milling mass of asteroids away from the station.

  “We might just make it at this rate,” Oz said.

  “Right, but where the hell is the Triton?”

  “Good question,” Oz replied as he checked our back trail on the tactical display. “They actually managed to take out the engines on that Command Carrier. That was the last sign of them,” he reported, searching the combat record for any other indication that they had done anything helpful.

  I watched as the station loomed larger with every passing moment on the live screen on the bridge walls. It stretched over a hundred kilometres across in all directions. The mission report claimed that Freeground had started building it as a defence station when they were in possession of the Blue Belt, but lost control of it decades before completion. Now it was a monolithic structure, and we were its only assailant. One of the older sections came into view and I stood up. “Helm, get us the hell away from the firing line of those cannons!” I said, pointing at a series of ninety centimetre wide bore rail cannons.

  It was too late.

  Chapter 20

  Hell

  A stationary rail cannon fires a highly dense projectile that fragments on impact with another solid object, such as the hull of a ship. That projectile is magnetic and conductive; it comes supercharged with energy and is sent spinning down the magnetic barrel at speeds of up to ten thousand kilometres per second and sometimes faster. A BN class (or Big Ninety), rail cannon has a barrel ninety centimetres across and five hundred ninety meters long. They take up a lot of space, take a while to aim, use enough energy to power most medium space stations for over two years, but one shot can reduce most destroyer class ships to a wrecked hulk.

  The First Light sustained
three shots all at once.

  I opened my eyes. The lights flickered on dimly throughout the bridge. The surrounding two dimensional display was up a moment later followed by the three dimensional tactical display. At a glance I could see we had lost the old bridge located at the front of the ship completely, it and the part of the hull it jutted from was just gone. Our lower aft engine had a hole at least ten meters wide right through it and was showing offline, and our landing bays had been rendered useless. We had taken a full-on hit that mulched everything down there. We were down to seventeen operational rail cannon turrets and power had been disrupted to half of our underside.

  “First Light, come in!” came the sound of Ronin's voice through my arm command unit. “Jonas! Tell me you survived that.”

  I tried to turn my comm on with my right hand but intense pain flared up. It was almost blinding. My forearm was broken, I could see the awkward bulge under my suit. I looked around the bridge.

  Jason was already working at the controls of the communications console at a feverish pace. His assistant was helping him. Oz was standing up, holding his side but checking the status of the ship at the same time. Laura was back in the engineering command console. It looked like it was restarting from a cold boot and I still couldn't see Ayan. At the helm I could see that Derek's neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. His navigator looked at me and shook her head. “The impact broke his neck sir,” she said quietly.

  Oz moved to take the pilot's seat, letting himself down very gently into the chair.

  “Personal comm, open channel to Ronin,” I commanded and heard a blip as my communicator complied. “We're alive, for the most part.”

  “I knew you weren't that easy to kill! Hey, they're sending boarding shuttles. We're trying to knock them back and take out those cannons at the same time just in case.”

  “Let the boarding shuttles come, we have some life in us yet. How about those cannons?”

  “We shredded the front of their barrels. Just fighting in close to the station while we wait for orders,” Minh replied.