“Affirmative, Skywatch. Vectoring three one zero for rescue intercept.”
The six-fighter formation banked in space and accelerated towards the Rho Theta perimeter at 2000 mps.
Captain Hunter sat impatiently at the conn and raised an eyebrow. He grabbed the black handset out of the overhead bay. “XO, let’s take a page from my belligerent medical officer’s playbook. I want combat space patrol to set up a medium perimeter on transit. Four formations with two Jacks and a T-Hawk in each.”
“Acknowledged. Jets in two.” Commander O’Malley turned to the force loadout screen and began calling up another team of pilots.
Hunter slammed the handset back into its hook. “Helm, steer three ten mark fifteen. All ahead full.”
Lieutenant McInerney calmly updated the course plot she had been nursing for nearly 40 minutes, laid in the coordinates and engaged the navigational autosequencers. The five million-ton warship banked gently to port and rolled on her medial axis as her remaining engines applied their thrust to her drive field.
“Aye. Helm answering three ten mark fifteen. Estimated time to Repeater Five thirty seven minutes.”
“Very well. Steady as she goes.”
Seventeen
“Captain, you need to see this.”
“What have you got, corporal?”
“Intermittent life signs and evidence of alien activity, two decks up.”
Islington and Chief Brogan exchanged an urgent moment as the same thoughts went through their minds. “Brickert with me. You two stay here and do what you can for the Proximan.” The captain quickly moved up the passageway back to the main corridor towards the magneto-lifts.
Meanwhile, marine tech Overs was busy examining a device attached to one of the main central power couplings adjacent to the station’s cephalon matrix. His instincts told him he was looking at an explosive device of some kind, but the readings he was getting from his ATMAS unit and his field kit weren’t making any sense.
“Ma’am?”
It was the tech’s tone of voice that made Islington pause. She knew what caution mixed with urgent fear sounded like. She and Brogan both examined the device.
“It’s been corroded somehow. Like it was flash-frozen or something.”
“Origin?”
“It’s not Proximan, that much is certain. Wherever it came from, it was built to be pressure and temperature-proof.”
“Power?”
“Negative,” Overs replied, showing his ATMAS readout to the captain. “I think it was supposed to draw power from the mains, but whoever put it here never got it fully installed.”
“That’s odd,” Brogan said. “Why leave it behind if it was never meant to be used?”
“Maybe they were interrupted at an inopportune moment,” Islington mused. “And if I know my Proximans, I think I can wager a good guess who was responsible. Neutralize that device, lance corporal. Same for any others you find. If you come across anything that’s powered or hooked in to any of the station circuitry, report to me first.”
“Acknowledged, captain.”
“Let’s go, chief.”
The captain was the first to reach the higher deck. She shined her handheld torch across the darkened floor panels and along the sides of the corridor. Only the powered life support panels a few yards down the passage interrupted the shadowy blackness. The temperature was noticeably colder. The light reflected off a few areas where the captain suspected ice had formed. She scrambled off the ladder to make way for Corporal Gray and Chief Brogan. The corporal took a position a few feet down the corridor, leveling his TK40 to cover the entire passage.
“Report.”
“Intermittent contact. Biological energy source. Bearing four zero degrees.”
Islington powered up her TK10 and raised it over her handheld light. She advanced to a side corridor and took up a cover position. Corporal Gray moved ahead, in a textbook two-man advance. Chief Brogan had his unit set to maximum sensitivity. Any change in air pressure, temperature or ambient light would show up in his tracking field.
A metallic sound like a tool impacting a bulkhead echoed in the corridor. Islington froze with Brogan right behind her. Corporal Gray dropped to a knee and raised his weapon.
“Report.”
“Possible change in air pressure. Something is–”
The overpressure from the weapons fire almost knocked the wind out of the engineer. The corridor lit up with orange and yellow light as intense energy beams sliced through the dark passage. Corporal Gray identified his targets, just as he was trained, and opened up with his concussion rifle. The percussive reports from the marine infantry weapon punched into the air as if a giant hand were knocking against the outer surface of the station.
Islington activated her commlink. “All marines respond my position! We have hostile enemy forces! Repeat, all marines re–”
An inhuman scream echoed as one of the corporal’s shots flashed through something solid at the far end of the passage. A return volley shattered the overhead light banks. Debris rained across the deck. Islington’s smaller TK10 pistol didn’t have quite the heavy impact of the rifle, but the rapid-fire bursts kept the enemy at a distance. At least the ones she could see. Another shot flashed out of the shadows and blasted an eight-inch-wide gash in the titanium-ceramic bulkhead right above Gray’s helmet. The next one shattered a life support panel behind him. The corporal slipped around the corner and got back to his feet. He checked his weapon and nodded to the captain.
Another round of weapons fire pulsed through the corridor. Fires began to climb the bulkheads near the auxiliary vertical access tunnel at the far end of the deck. Just as it became clear Islington and her recon party were outgunned, two of her marines emerged from the vertical tunnel, using the opening in the deck for cover. They both opened up at once. Beams from their rifles slashed across the floor, filling the passage with bright strobes. More screams filled the darkness. TK40 rounds discharged violently as they impacted the ceiling and jammed hatch the enemy forces were using for cover.
Something large moved in the shadows. In an instant a creature easily the size of a silverback gorilla appeared right in front of Captain Islington. She raised her weapon in a snakelike flash, but it was pulled towards the ceiling before she could fire. She glimpsed fangs and flashing eyes before her arms were nearly pulled out of her shoulders. A fiery blast filled the corridor with yellow light. The enormous creature’s stone-like grip dissolved and it slumped against the bulkhead.
With Gray covering their withdrawal, the captain and the engineer made their way back to the vertical tunnel. By now Strike Sergeant Brickert and two of his men had taken up defensive positions on either side of the corridor.
“Are you injured, ma’am?” Gray asked, producing his medical scanner. Another volley of weapons fire ripped a scorched wound across the overhead power couplings. What lights were visible flickered ominously.
“Negative, corporal. Just a couple of pulled muscles. Chief, give me some numbers!”
“There are at least eight of them, ma’am. Fairly heavily armed by the sound of it, and they aren’t alone. Reinforcements are on the next deck up.”
The aliens opened up again. Sergeant Brickert returned fire.
“What about the Proximans!?”
“That’s the problem ma’am. There should be more than eighty personnel on this station, and so far we can only account for one. I have no further Proximan life signs anywhere in range!”
“How can that be? We detect–”
Energy bolts slammed into an overhead security module. It dangled from the ceiling, wires in flames.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” The captain activated her commlink. “Islington to Minstrel.”
The entire squad waited. There was no response.
“Islington to Minstrel, come in!”
Eighteen
“What do you mean you lost the signal?”
“Sir, we are being jammed. Source unknown.�
�� Ensign Grant’s face was a mask of cold certitude. There were few possibilities, any of which were urgent strategic problems. Lieutenant Winchester evaluated the situation and his priorities and came to the only conclusion: The one his captain would have insisted on regardless of her personal welfare.
“Helm, plot a breakaway evasive course for the Rho Theta frontier.”
“Sir?” Finn looked back from the helm. He didn’t have to say it, because everyone on the bridge was thinking the same thing.
“Carry out your orders, pilot,” Winchester replied. Finn hesitated, glancing at Ensign Grant. The pilot met the XO’s gaze directly. Again, nothing had to be said. Nothing could be said. If they were in communication with the captain she would have ordered the XO to protect her ship first. That didn’t make it any easier, of course.
“Aye, sir,” Finn replied. He clenched his teeth as he laid the course coordinates in to the navigational computer. “Course plotted and laid in. Standing by to maneuver.”
“All ahead emergency flank speed. Tactical, engage cloaking device. Cal, signal all decks Aegis protocol until further instructed.”
“Affirmative, sir,” Cal replied. The sinking feeling in his midsection worsened the further they got from the station. “All decks report Aegis protocol engaged.”
“Very well, set alert condition two. Passive detection only. No emissions.”
The starship Minstrel dove away from the Proximan outpost and vanished into the inky blackness of space before veering back in the direction of the Rho Theta primary. Winchester’s plan, while conventional, was proper doctrine for the situation they faced. Jammed intership communications called for maximum battle readiness. Jammed short range communications meant there were unusual circumstances afoot. By and large, it was very difficult for a starship in open space to create enough local interference to block communications at extremely short ranges. To properly inhibit anything transmitted within a mile of the receiver required localized and specialized equipment that was usually man-portable. Infantry squads and recon marines often employed ultra-wideband “scatterboxes” to confound battlefield communications. It was one of many techniques Skywatch had developed to deny enemy command and control real-time information on their battlespace.
But at the kind of ranges common in starship combat, ultra-wideband transmission was simply impossible. The technology was not designed to cover the kind of volumes necessary to block communications at range. Other technologies were far more effective for interfering with intership communications, but they didn’t have the power levels necessary to stop a local transmitter from punching through. As with most all military decisions, the option to jam enemy communications was always a trade-off.
What concerned Lieutenant Winchester most, however, were two things. First, local transmissions had been jammed, which meant enemy activity on the station itself was a near certainty. Second, subspace transmissions were also being distorted by massive power levels somewhere in the vicinity of the Proximan station, which led Minstrel’s first officer to suspect coordination of some kind. If that were, in fact, the case, his ship and crew needed to be ready for nearly anything to emerge from beyond the station perimeter. Hopefully whatever showed up wouldn’t be well enough prepared to withstand a well-timed ambush.
Alas, it was not to be.
Nineteen
The starship Rhode Island was cloaked and at station-keeping approximately a half-million miles from the Proximan Station. A perfect vantage point to monitor everything going on within ten light-hours of the Rho Theta primary.
“And there it is, as big as life.”
For the first time in many weeks, Lieutenant Nessa Boyle saw her captain lean back in his chair. He broke off a piece of the pretzel he was eating and chewed as if he were drawing mental energy from the salt crystals on its surface. The tactical display of Rho Theta section ten said all that needed to be said. Directly in the center of the star map was the Proximan Communications Station, code-named “Oleander.” To the “north” on the display was the outer edge of the Mycenae Ceti system. To the “east” was the Kraken Nebula and two Skywatch repeaters. To the “south” was the Blackburn region and the extreme edge of Gitairn space. Although not visible, the inner planets of the Rho Theta system were off-screen in the “western” direction.
The tactical situation couldn’t have been more clear. If M-Ceti were the target of either some kind of Sarn activity or maneuvers by some unknown faction, the Proximan listening post would be the closest Skywatch-allied station capable of raising an alarm. Fleet units in Rho Theta or the more distant Manassas base could be mustered in anywhere from hours to days provided the station were able to get a message to them in time. The Flat River Jump Gate was situated on the high corner of the Prairie Grove Reach. It was the closest routing nexus for vessels stationed closer to Core space. Unlike Prairie Grove, M-Ceti was on the opposite side of the Gitairn Reach. Vessels operating near Blackburn or even as far away as Shasta could make the transit, but it could take considerable time. Time they were unlikely to have time to spare if Captain Walsh’s suspicions were accurate.
Further, based on the last known position of the starship Minstrel, whatever was going on aboard that station wasn’t part of Commander Islington’s ideal plan. Rhode Island was picking up an automated distress beacon from an ejected pilot, ostensibly from a fighter based on the Skywatch fleet carrier Marique Lex, a vessel which had neither announced herself, nor been seen in Rho Thetan space for weeks.
“Tactical, give me a spectroscopic pass on the last known position of that distress beacon,” Captain Walsh said lazily. He popped another pretzel in his mouth and munched on it while waiting for the answer.
“No readings above a zero point four, sir.”
“Mm hmm. Any gravimetrics? Any cloaked ships out there forget to dampen their inertial fields?”
A moment later Rhode Island’s tactical officer straightened in his shock couch. His face drained of its color. “M-massive gravimetric residuals, sir.”
“Not cloaked, but someone’s been running through the sprinklers again, XO.”
“Whatever she was, it was at least one starship in the sixty thousand ton range,” Boyle replied.
“Not the ships we chased out-system, and not the ships in the formation we tracked at extreme range, then?” Walsh asked.
“Negative. This one is brand new.”
“Start a track, tactical. Designate Tropical Nine. Now for the big question for two nights in beautiful Isla Dorada, where is the Marique Lex and where is her battle group?”
“Probably in the same place as the not-pilot who is not transmitting an eject beacon at Rho Theta position fourteen,” Boyle replied. “Problem is, that signal had a valid Skywatch auto-react.”
“Someone is ringing a dinner bell in the Rho Theta system, XO. I suspect we’re going to have a rescue party from Argent here any minute, with an unhappy captain and some big iron right behind it. And if I know my Hunters, the captain is going to have quite a bit to say about it if we don’t find him some answers first.”
“I would call that prediction a near certainty,” Boyle replied.
“Sixty kilotons sounds like a pocket destroyer to me,” Walsh said. “That or a heavier variant on that nasty little ship Commander Hunter stole before she ran off with half of her brother’s crew. What was she called?”
“The Sai Kee.”
“Right! Fast attack frigate. Palermo class. Continuous fire energy primaries.” Walsh’s voice drifted off. Lieutenant Boyle imagined he was going over the Palermo’s technical design in his head. If they did go up against a similar ship, she also imagined her captain would have at least three viable strategies at the ready and a fourth on standby. Such was life aboard the Rhode Island. After all, warlocks were rarely accused of intellectual laziness.
She examined her own tactical overlays again. The gravimetric readings they had received were just now being integrated into the battlespace overview. Boyle zeroed in on t
he alleged location of the ejected pilot. Icy fingers slid around her throat and the freezing sensation spilled through her. She ran the readings through the battle computer to try and confirm her suspicions. The Rhode Island’s systems were among the most sophisticated in the fleet, but even with her best interpretations and pre-processed data, the battle comp couldn’t make heads or tails of the passives Boyle’s sensors were recording. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t a ship and it certainly wasn’t a downed pilot.
Twenty
“Damage report!”
“Port battle screens disrupted! We’ve lost point defense forward!”
“Veer off, pilot. New course four zero mark twenty. Full power!”
Lieutenant McInerney pulled the enormous starship into her new course, deeper into the heart of the Kraken Horizon. Another explosion of electromagnetic energy swept against Argent’s drive field, straining every shock harness on the bridge with un-absorbed inertia. As she dove for the relative obscurity of the nebula’s swirling storm of opaque plasma clouds, the battleship’s gargantuan main battery reached back across her course to return fire against the attacking Sarn battlecruiser Krelex. Six of the eight 200-foot-long primary weapons locked position. There was a moment, then a blinding crack ripped through space as the first anti-proton velocity gun fired. The weapon assembly slid back in its housing as 600 tons of recoil were absorbed by magnetic reflex surges. Then, a second weapon fired. And a third. Locomotive-sized lances of unstable plasma energy screamed into space.
Aboard the battlecruiser, Captain Vadac grinned. His sharp fangs ached with the thrill of the chase. He sat forward at the conn. “Increase pursuit speed and stand by to launch capital missiles!”
“Increasing speed and arming primary weapons!” the second scale growled.
“Lock weapons!”
First scale Reznaa looked up from the weapons station. “We have them, sir!”
Battle Force Page 9
