Penance (RN: Book 2)

by David Gunner

Stavener pumped his fist and whooped for joy on seeing the rear quarter of the Bristol filling the view forward as they headed toward an open section of the hull.

  His smile faded, however, as they approached and kept approaching with no cessation of velocity toward a hole that appeared far too small for the launch. He shook his head, his eyes terror wide, sweating hands pushing him deeper into the seat as the shrinking gap in the side of the gunboat approached at a suicidal rate, and then the pilot yelled, “BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!”

  A volcano erupted in front of them as the braking motors fired and Stavener felt like a doll being shaken by a mad baby as he was thrown against the restraints, arms and head projecting forward zombie like, and then, thunk! They were in. With the starlight cut off by the descending veil of the launch bay door.

  Stavener sat panting, tears streaming down his corpse white face from the realisation that he was still alive. He looked to the pilot who was already unrestrained, both hands clicking through the dozens of system switches as the fuel pumps whined down.

  The operations officer never considered himself a stupid man, as with his understanding of complex multi-spectral systems and computer operations he was a cut above the normal operations staff, and way smarter than most anyone he knew to the point of contempt. He was just more capable at pretty much everything he did. Nevertheless, this man, this jockey – he glanced awestruck at the pilot who had the unruffled workaday countenance of a street sweeper, and who raised his eye brows in an are you ok gesture; Stavener nodded in return. This man who had just piloted this glorified furniture truck through a closing dragon’s mouth to escape the seven fiery hells, possessed skills he could never hope to have and must be one of the most capable men he had ever met.

  The pilot picked at his teeth as he said, “You scream like a pansy.”

  Stavener sniggered as his head flopped against the seat back, his eyes closed and chest heaving from pure relief. After a few long seconds he said, “I fuc –“

  “Let me guess,” the pilot said, a huge grin cutting his face as he removed his helmet, “You fucking hate me?”

  ***

  “Where we at, Tom?” Canthouse called as he jogged onto the bridge, his sling flopping loose and a blood stained gauze pad held to the left side of his head from where powdered glass had peppered his face.

  “I set a course directly away and we’re on the limiters, but she’s crawling. The secondary’s are keeping the majority of their missiles at bay, which are all old stuff for the most part. I think their keeping their class fives back until they’ve picked away our close in defences.”

  “Tactical?”

  Hewton glanced to the tactical presentation on the screen. “Twenty three ships, half of them light raiders, several frigate sized and this thing.” Hewton tapped a series of controls on the arm of the command chair.

  The largest contact magnified to show an armoured atrocity that was more weapon than hull.

  “What the hell is that!” Canthouse cried on seeing it in greater detail.

  “Operations, repeat to the LC what you told me.” Hewton said.

  Guimar’s fingers rapped over the keyboard with a data cell appearing next to the bandit profile. “Tactical sensors report the contact as –“

  “It’s the god damn Queen Victoria!” Canthouse cried taking a step forward with his eyes widening in astonishment. “How the hell did they get her? She was supposed to have been scrapped more than fifteen years ago.” He shook his head in slow wonder as he gazed at the antique battleship.

  The Queen Victoria was a relic from the RNO’s first steps into projected interstellar might when the fledgling EDP anticipated more of an alien threat than existed. Superbly armoured, but over gunned and under powered she was decommissioned after a short and horribly expensive tour of duty.

  For the first time in his RNO career, Canthouse felt genuine fear from another star ship. A onetime encounter with a Russian, Peshchera Nonstr - class battleship during manoeuvres had caused butterflies, but this thing positively throttled his stomach. “My God!” He turned to Guimar, “Is she active?”

  “No, Lieutenant-commander, she has no internal power, her engines are dead and she is under tow by the four larger enemy vessels. Two of which are providing power via umbilicals.”

  “She has no functioning motives, but we suspect one or two of her main turrets are active,” Hewton’s pale countenance reflected his worry.

  Canthouse picked up on his concern but had no real idea as to the threat, “What can she do to us?”

  “We use rail drivers in our turrets. She uses torial drivers. The same things that shift our fourteen thousand tonnes at point nine. Imagine what they could do to a two tone projectile! Even with the shields we couldn’t withstand a direct hit. Without them, we’ve no chance.” He slowly shook his head in bleak conclusion. “We need to leave.”

  Canthouse bit his upper lip as he glanced at the screen, “Navigation! Distance to nearest gate point?”

  “We’re experiencing severe interference from the charging FTL, sir, and the variables keep shifting. Distance to nearest viable gate point is currently 3200 kliks, but this could change any second.”

  The first officer evaluated curves, masses and accelerations as he watched the constantly shifting tactical display, but the variables were too much for his frazzled mind. “How long will that take us?”

  “On our present curve, time to gate point is fourteen minutes.”

  “Fourteen minutes, Christ! It may as well be a week.” He turned to Hewton, “Tom, their filling the gate capacitors this minute, but- “ Suddenly the lights dimmed and the officers were almost thrown to the floor when the Bristol staggered from the force of something striking her hull. The shattering ha-roo ha-roo of the calamity alarm filled the command deck.

  “Im-pact,” Guimar reported. “Missile strike! Aft hull. Turret three is destroyed. The area was unmanned; no casualties reported.”

  “That was a class three,” Honus said from the weapons console, “Looks like they’ve upped their game as that was targeted at the port engine but curved away to avoid the flak batteries.”

  Canthouse cancelled the alarms, a spark of desperation shone in his eye as he turned back to Hewton, “Tom, they can’t take this ship! It’ll take the engineering crews at least ten minutes to fix the engine, but we need fourteen! The VLS is too slow to load and we need to buy some time, what can you do?”

  Hewton stood perplexed, his mouth moving as if in silent prayer and his eyes flitting as he assessed what armaments he could offer. “There’s not enough power for more turrets, but I think I can increase the rate of fire if I limit the driver charge. It’ll reduce her stopping power, but with the size of those ships it won’t make any difference as they’ll still be dead. But the rear turrets are close to the sub-light engines. There’s a lot of heat. If we do this it’ll cost us in men and equipment.”

  Canthouse fully understood the pained look on the weapons experts face. “You’ll know what will happen if we don’t. So do it!”

  As Hewton turned to leave Canthouse took the weapons officer by the forearm. “Tom, what happened to the commander?”

  Hewton’s face flashed anaemic as he lowered his gaze and slowly shook his head, “There was a hostage situation –“

  “Hostages!” Canthouse’s grip intensified, his fingers becoming bloodless.

  Hewton nodded, “Cummings - she was one of them. It wasn’t good. The commander, he …he’s kind of lost it.”

  ding ding

  “LC! The Queen Victoria and the enemy heavies are within firing range. They are launching missiles and there’s a power spike from one of her forward turrets.”

  Ignoring Honus, Canthouse asked, “What happened?”

  “It didn’t end well. I’ll tell you later.“ The big man looked positively ill as he tore himself free from the first officer’s grip and jogged to the rear door.

  Canthouse stared after Hewton for a second he could barely afford befor
e turning to face the main screen. The tactical view was something from a nightmare, with the Queen Victoria advancing faster than they could retreat and the remaining bandit craft closing around them like a crab’s claw.

  The gate point hovered twelve minutes away and no matter what they had to make it. An idea came to him and he moved to the command chair to pull up some data on the arm display. He nodded as he evaluated tactics, this just might work but they’d need to be closer, so they’d need to hold them off and he just hoped the old girl could hold it together until then.

  ding ding

  “LC,” Honus said with a look of such stilted terror that Canthouse clenched his teeth in dread anticipation. “The Victoria is charging her main weapons.”

  ***

  Four thousand kilometres to the rear, two of the frigates towing the Queen Victoria shut down all unnecessary systems and diverted every kilowatt of power to the thick umbilical cords stretching from their rear to the aging dreadnought. Deep within the bowels of the armoured relic long dormant accumulators hummed as their storage cells eagerly received the influx of raw power. Rectifiers and regulators diverted the life giving energy to the remaining systems with the superbly designed batteries maxed out quickly, and the ship once again becoming a living entity. Much of the electricity rippled along cables and conduits, through circuits and relays to meet dead ends where engines and gravity systems had been removed prior to her ordered destruction. Yet somewhere lights flickered, relays closed and motors whirred as an overlooked redundancy system located in the base of number one turret sprang to life, with the military AI eagerly accepting the data fed to it by the lead brigand. It evaluated, calculated and offered a solution on the fleeing gunship, which its fraudulent controller accepted, and the AI diverted power to massive capacitors which began to charge. In her number one turret twin contra-rotating torials wound to speed as a rear hoist lifted a two and a half tonne barrel shaped projectile from a deep magazine. A channel unfolded from behind to meet the breech of the main weapon and accept the ordinance, which was pushed hydraulically into the breach block where magnetic constrictors secured it in place and the breech cover pivoted shut. The attendant frigates manoeuvred gently, their tow cables adjusting attitude and angle as best possible, nudging the Victoria until they neared the solution and then cut their power. In any atmosphere the turbining torial drivers would have screamed louder than any tornado as they reached critical rotation and the constrictors released.

  The heavy projectile matched the rotational speed of the torials in an instant, which then stopped dead transferring their magnetic vortex to the spinning projectile, and ejecting it from the barrel with such violence it removed an inch of bore lining.

  ***

  “Eight class twos coming in from all sides!” Honus cried, ducking low as the bridge yet again shuddered from an impact somewhere on the forward hull.

  “Forget the class twos” Canthouse shouted over the wail of the calamity alarm, “Keep the secondary’s concentrated on the class fives as if they make it through it’s all over.” He fanned at the growing smoke coming in through the damaged ventilation system. “Navigation! Have you removed the limiters?”

  “I sent the request, sir, but engineering is not responding.”

  “Try again, man. We need more spee -”

  “She’s firing!” Guimar cried.

  ***

  The milk white double helix missed the Bristol’s starboard hull by less than twenty meters, with the projectile moving so near the speed of light it shredded magnetic flux lines and spat x-rays as it boiled everything in its path.

  The bridge lights dimmed as the projectile flashed past and Canthouse grabbed at the spinning command chair, only to be bodily lifted and dragged across the bridge toward the far wall along with several other unsecured crew members and loose equipment. The Bristol’s superstructure groaned as she slewed toward the true vacuum left by the projectiles passage. Her scarred hull shuddering from the magnetic maelstrom of flux restoration as a near inter-dimensional fissure, ultimately over a light minute long, snapped closed to release a tsunami of exotic forces that broad sided her with such inconceivable violence the starboard launch bay door buckled and atmosphere began pouring into space.

  The first officer’s world was one of underwater carnage, he felt as if spun senseless in a centrifuge with his ears water filled and no sense of balance. He moved drunkenly towards the spinning command chair, pulling himself to a sitting position from where he watched the equally disorientated bridge crew recovering from the event. He had experienced many strange sensations whilst working on star vessels, but the feeling of being dragged across the floor by a powerful magnet set to human was the strangest yet.

  The disorientation passed quickly, but it was very disconcerting to know that even a near miss from the Victoria’s primary weapons could have such a debilitating affect on men as well as machine.

  Canthouse shook his head and rubbed his eyes to help clear the fog, and then stared at the main screen which bore a split operationstactical view. Dozens of red flags peppered the hull as the damage assessment systems reported in, but there was little he could do about this as the damage control and engineering teams were already fully committed.

  “Distance to gate point?”

  The navigator sat slumped over his console, his hands splayed about the as his body heaved from long panting breaths. He slowly sat upright, shook his head and said, “Distance to gate point, aye, sir.” He worked his controls monotonously, staring at the three large spirals that hunted about the screen and diminishing in size until they interlocked and turned green. He shook his head dolefully as he gazed at the scrolling information. “Gate point now at 4800.”

  “4800!” Canthouse’s face twisted in despair, “You said it was closer than that.”

  “Aye, sir, but that shot really messed up the local grid. The flux lines are everywhere and there’s no cohesion. This is the closest lock and I’ve no idea how long it’ll last. If it fires again, we’re screwed …sir!” The navigator gave him a sheepish look.

  Canthouse ignored the remark. He felt as if he’d just finished a triathlon as he pushed himself from the seat. “Best speed to the new coordinates.” Something occurred to him and he realised there was no alert for incoming enemy fire. “Tactical situation?”

  Guimar looked near death with her eyes dark sunken pits and the bloodless tight lipped mouth a stark contrast to the bone white face as she sourced the information. She hunched close to the display, her forehead in her left hand and the light playing across her face as the data presented itself. “El-cee, the bandit forces have halted their attack and those nearest to us appear scattered and disorganised.” A hint of humanity returned to her pale complexion as something peeked her interest. “Correction. All nearby vessels and missiles are either without power or are showing a loss of control.” She glanced to the first officer, “They appear disabled!”

  Canthouse gestured to the screen with a nod and the latest data appeared in a second. He analysed the once perfect enemy formation now ragged with a wide swath of deactivated ships and missiles cutting through the center.

  “Speculation?”

  “The ee-em-pee from the Victoria’s projectile, Lieutenant Commander, it has to be.” Guimar suddenly looked a lot better with her hands gesticulating as she spoke. “They can-not regulate the weapons systems and are using far too much power to shoot. The magnetic suppression systems must have been removed, so I don’t think they anticipated such a powerful overspill from her primary weapons.”

  Canthouse thought quickly as this could be the opportunity they were hoping for. Even if some of the bandits remained operational, they would have to be far more cautious in their approach if they planned to use the Victoria again. They would need to steer wide, spreading their now depleted forces which meant they represented a significantly smaller threat. He’d need to take advantage of this.

  “Are they all disabled?”

  “No,
sir, only those in the projectile corridor. The larger vessels and those further away were unaffected. The lighter craft appear to be congregating behind the Victoria, which is still under tow by the frigates which are advancing on our position.”

  Canthouse tapped his finger on the command chair as he considered how to take advantage of the break. “Navigation, has engineering lifted the limiters?”

  “Still no response from engineering, LC.”

  “Distance to gate point?”

  “4400, sir.”

  Canthouse swore under his breath on hearing the response. “Keep trying.”

  She was crawling and they were still too far from the gate point to attempt his last ditch chemical engine solution. A red dot approaching the freighter caught his eye.

  “What’s that ship doing near the Jeremiah?”

  ***

  The scout vessel approached the Jeremiah at breakneck speed, with its braking motors firing so late the exhaust scorched the paint from around the airlock. It connected hard with the six black suited figures moving into the main lobby before the airlock had even completed cycling. The lead pair pulled out hand held scanners and directed them ahead as they worked their way down several long corridors toward a door welded shut, with the depressurised area within containing the controls to the twin reactors. They communicated quickly in regards to the obstacle the welded door presented, which was insignificant. Two of the men placed several limpet charges around the door with the rest retreating to a safe distance and anchoring themselves to the floor and walls with magnetic grapplers. The concussion wave incapacitated one man with the others abandoning him as they moved into the loading bay toward the makeshift consoles that mounted the reactor and FTL controls. One man checked the controls over, indicating their status with a cut throat hand gesture. He took several steps back as a colleague hefted a wide bored, short barrelled weapon and levelled it at the console.