The plan had been hammered out in broad strokes and, despite complaints from most of the other officers, he had kept it vague intentionally. They were going to be out of contact for most of the mission and he wanted Pike and Blake comfortable with making decisions as information became available instead of feeling the need to rigidly adhere to a plan that may no longer be valid. In a nutshell, Blake was to use his stealth and speed advantage to fly deeper into the system and scout out the area he felt the core mind was likely located. Pike would come down into the system and use his ship’s towed passive array to map out any anomalies along specific parts of the spectrum as he spiraled in, and the Ares, the toughest ship to hide, would glide in under minimal power.
The destroyer was the only ship that would be at specific waypoints at specific times as a sort of anchor for the other two smaller ships that were ranging out. The Broadhead was so small and had such a minimal energy signature Jackson hadn’t been overly worried about Pike being detected and the Vruahn warship’s unique powerplant meant that under low power modes she was virtually undetectable. The Ares, yet again, was the big question mark as Jackson had to decide if it was worth it to shut down one of his reactors in an attempt to mask his power signature.
In the end he decided to keep them both running. Bringing up even the newer generation fusion reactors from a cold start wasn’t something that was done quickly under the best of conditions, much less when under fire and sitting defenseless. The Starwolf-class designers at least addressed the exhaust of byproducts from the reactors by routing them through the main engines so that whenever a purge was required under normal conditions it would exit through the plasma nozzles and not as a bright thermal plume from a hull vent.
“Now … where are you hiding, you sneaky, evil bastard,” Jackson muttered under his breath as the Ares crawled into the suspect star system. Every hair was standing at attention on the back of his neck. He had already been convinced that Blake was onto something with the evidence he’d presented, but the feeling he was getting sitting right inside the heliopause … he felt, knew this was the right system.
****
“Helm! All ahead flank! Everything she’s got!”
“All engines at maximum output, aye!”
The Icarus thundered downhill towards the largest cluster of Phage ships, her active sensors singing and the stasis cube in the cargo hold providing telemetry to Celesta’s tactical officer. The Phage communications node had worked perfectly so far and she couldn’t help but feel her luck had to run out sometime.
They’d transitioned into the system and saw that it was still clogged with Phage ships, most unidentifiable. Coming in alone, they had flown a normal course all the way down through the outer system without so much as a second glance, metaphorically speaking, from any of the passing Phage. In fact, many of the lesser units had scrambled in an apparent panic to clear the way for what they must have believed to be a Super Alpha.
Celesta had come all the way to just inside the orbit of the fifth planet, and clear of most of the debris that made up the sparse asteroid belt, before she slipped her mask off. She’d ordered the full active sensor suite brought up right outside a large cluster of standard Alphas just after telling the cube to squelch their fake Phage-call. The response had been immediate, as most came about to face the Terran ship that had inexplicably appeared in their midst while a few broke for the inner system.
“Eleven Alphas, locked on!” her tactical officer called. “Shrikes are loaded and ready.”
“Fire!” Celesta jumped out of her seat, adrenaline coursing through her body. The Icarus might not make it out of the system … but what a way to die!
“All birds away! Tracking hot and clean!”
“Shut down the actives! Helm, zero thrust … stealth protocols in place,” Celesta ordered.
“Engines to idle, aye,” the helmswoman said. They’d crept in so close and fired their Alpha-killer Shrikes at such a close range the results were almost inevitable. The space in front of them erupted into a hellish nightmare of strobing, painful bursts of light as the powerful nukes hammered into the Alphas and began detonating. The Icarus was carrying so much velocity that she shot by the mayhem just as the last three missiles detonated.
“All good detonations, ma’am,” the tactical officer said. “Eleven dead Alphas.”
“Settle down!” Celesta shouted above the cheering. “OPS, tell the cube I’d like our disguise back in place now.”
“Aye, ma’am. Phage transponder signal is broadcasting again.”
“Tactical, is that next formation moving to intercept?” Celesta asked.
“Negative, ma’am. Cube telemetry shows that all twenty-eight of them are just milling about.”
“Twenty-eight, you say,” Celesta mused. “Tactical … load up two of our gravity bombs, maximum yield. Helm! Put our nose right on that cluster and engage the mains, ahead full.”
“All engines ahead full, aye.”
“Remember everyone, the more we kill now, the less the fleet has to deal with when they arrive.” Celesta paced the bridge. “This is your chance! You want payback for Xi’an, for Haven, for your friends on the Artemis? Now is the time. Make it count!”
“Yes, ma’am!” several spacers shouted in unison as the Icarus bore down on the second group of oblivious Phage ships.
****
“Nothing yet,” Hayashi reported. “We’re at the edge of the time limit, sir.”
“Very well,” Jackson rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. “Tell CIC I want double watch on the passive array for another ten hours and then they can stand down until the next waypoint.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And make sure you call up a relief,” Jackson told him. “You sound exhausted.” The Ares had come to her first listening spot right on schedule, but there was no Vruahn warship and no Broadhead, so they continued on. There were two more rendezvous spots in the outer system where they could make contact, so he wasn’t overly surprised that they hadn’t had success on the first stop.
The two smaller, stealthier ships were ranging out trying to pinpoint where the core mind was actually located. Once it was found they would try to intercept the Ares and let the destroyer come in and hammer the location. It was a sound plan on the surface, but one of the big stumbling blocks was that nobody knew what the hell the core mind looked like. It could be enormous, far too large for the Ares to destroy, or it could be so small that they’d fly around the system for months and never find it. Worse yet, it could be something so exotic that they wouldn’t even recognize it when they saw it. It was that last scenario that made Jackson wake up in his rack covered in a cold sweat. While it was the least likely, it was still a possibility that he had no real way to plan for.
“We’re coming to our first course change, sir.” Accari stifled a yawn. “I’ve programmed the turn for the compressed gas jets as you requested.”
“Excellent,” Jackson stood. “Helm, execute the course correction per Nav’s instructions. Look alive, everyone! I know this is mind-numbing but we could find ourselves in deep, deep shit at any moment. I want—”
The Ares was yanked hard to port and explosions could be felt thumping through the deck plates before he could finish. Screams of shock and fear filled the bridge from those not violently thrown against the starboard bulkheads. Jackson’s prosthetic leg smashed into Barrett’s head before the captain was flipped end over end and landed in a heap near the nav station.
“Report!” he vaguely heard Davis shout out before the darkness closed in around him.
****
“Captain! Can you hear me?”
The voice seemed to trickle down from the surface even as he floated up towards it and the bright light that was tantalizingly just out of reach. He felt like he should know who was talking, but all he could focus on was how comfortable he was and that so long as he stayed where he was he wouldn’t have to face whatever was behind the voice and light.
“Captain
! We need you, sir.”
“Davis?” he croaked as the fog cleared from his mind as if before a gale force wind. “Where am I?”
“Sick Bay.” Commander Owens pulled the syringe out of his IV drip. “This will clear out the cobwebs, but you’ll have a pretty nasty headache for a while.”
“What happened?” Jackson asked.
“We actually don’t know,” Davis admitted. Her face was covered with grime and blood that he assumed wasn’t hers. “Our operating theory is that it was a lateral meteorite strike. It punched in through the top of the hull at an angle on the aft, starboard quadrant and exited out the bottom on the opposite side. There wasn’t anything left behind to analyze, even if we could spare the manpower to do it.”
“A through and through meteorite strike?” Jackson pushed himself up. “That’s absurd.”
“Nothing else makes sense—”
“Send Daya in here,” Jackson cut her off. “I need to know what the hell hit us.” He looked up as nobody made a move to carry out his orders. “What?”
“Captain … the strike went directly through aft berthing, including the officer’s deck,” Owens said somberly. “Commander Singh was asleep in his stateroom when we were hit. I’m afraid—” Owens trailed off as Davis turned away, quietly weeping into her hands. The cold lump of ice that had formed in Jackson's gut as he began to realize that Owens was giving him the talk had started to spread through his body, numbing him.
“He wouldn’t have felt anything, sir—”
“Get the Second Engineer up here,” Jackson sat up, stone-faced. “Lieutenant Davis, please send someone to my quarters for the spare prosthetic I have in my wall locker and then I want a full report on the current status of the Ares.” It was important not to feel anything right now. Shove it down, bury it, and move on. He had to finish the mission if the Ares was still able. Nothing else mattered at that moment.
“The ship is still flying under power,” Davis reported after speaking into her comlink to have someone fetch his spare leg. “Whatever hit us missed all the primary flight systems, including the warp drive components, but it destroyed the power system for the auto-mag, took out our primary targeting radar, and the MUX controller for Main Bus A looks to be on the way to irreparable failure.”
“Which means no point defense or laser batteries while the mains are running,” Jackson nodded. “So, we’re flying … but toothless.”
“More or less, sir,” she said. “Pressure hatches activated and closed in time and closed off most of the ship to space. Damage control teams are in full emergency mode and welding patches over the areas that couldn’t be contained.”
“How long was I out?”
“Seven hours, sir,” she said.
“I have to get to the bridge,” Jackson said. “We need to see how to salvage this mission.”
“But sir.” She looked like she was about to break down again. “Your best friend—”
“Will still be dead when this is all over,” Jackson said gently to her, reaching out and grabbing her shoulder. “Daya would not want us too distracted to finish what we started all that time ago on the Blue Jacket. We honor him now by finishing the job and then we grieve for him later.”
“I understand, sir.” She sniffed loudly and straightened her posture. “I’m ready.”
“Good.” Jackson snatched the ungainly prosthetic from an exceedingly uncomfortable looking orderly. “I’m going to need you.”
****
“That’s over two hundred and seven, ma’am!” the tactical officer whooped. Celesta’s tactics of using the Phage node to sneak up on clusters, drop a few grav bombs or fire some nukes, and then disappear again was wreaking havoc among the Phage in the inner system. It wasn’t so much that there was a real risk that the Icarus could wipe out the swarm that numbered in the thousands, but the chaos and confusion she was creating within the ranks of the Phage were a sight to behold.
“Focus!” It was at least the tenth time she’d had to remind them to settle down. Killing so many Phage was almost intoxicating, and the bridge crew was very much drunk on the bloodbath she’d unleashed upon their despised enemy.
“Ma’am,” the OPS officer spoke up over the din. “Look! Those two clumps of Alphas are turning on each other.” The short-range optics that were trained on their next target did seem to show that two large groups of Alphas had opened up on each other. Brilliant plasma blasts streaked back and forth as they hammered away on each other.
“Helm, break off,” Celesta ordered.
“Ma’am?”
“They’re turning on each other, XO,” Celesta breathed. “All of them. They have no idea who the enemy is so they’re just firing into whoever is closest. Even with our Phage transponder singing we are now no longer afforded safe passage in this system. Tactical! How many gravity bombs do we have left?”
“Seven, ma’am.”
“We may have played this hand as far as it’s going to go,” Celesta sat down. “We are now assuming a defensive posture, everyone. Nav, plot me a course to the outer system that avoids all the larger clusters. I’d especially like to avoid any Alphas or anything that’s big enough to be an Alpha, so confer with OPS for the latest Vruahn telemetry updates.”
“Seems a shame to run at this point,” the XO said quietly.
“We won’t be any more victorious by losing the Icarus with all aboard, Lieutenant Commander,” Celesta said. “We’ve bloodied their nose, now let’s get back to Admiral Marcum and report on what we’ve seen before he comes charging into the system while the Phage are busy killing each other for us.”
“Of course, Captain.”
****
“We’re still technically flightworthy, but we’re in no condition for a battle,” Second Engineer Lieutenant Commander Jace Wu said after giving a point-by-point accounting of the massive damage the Ares had suffered.
“Thank you for confirming what we’d already suspected.” Jackson leaned back in his seat. “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant Commander. Go ahead and begin making what field repairs you can.”
“Aye, sir,” Wu nodded and walked quickly off the bridge. Everyone knew about Jackson’s close relationship with Daya Singh, and they all were trying to avoid him as best they could. Nobody wanted to be in the vicinity when that cool, calm exterior cracked.
“I’ve got us heading back in the right direction, Captain,” Specialist Accari said. “We weren’t knocked off course too badly, but we did lose a significant amount of attitude control. Aft jets are completely offline.”
“Understood, Specialist,” Jackson said as he rotated the views from the external cameras on his tile. The damage was spectacular, and he was not at all convinced that they’d been hit by some random meteorite. The entry point showed that the initial impact had liquefied much of the surrounding hull, and the material was rippled and splattered all around the relatively small hole. It was significantly less than half a meter in diameter despite the dramatic surface damage around it. Where the object exited, however, was a different story. A gaping wound over thirty meters across was mushroomed out where the projectile had ripped tons of material, organic and inorganic, from the ship on the way out.
That the Ares was still flying and responding to commands at all was a testament to how well she was designed. But the hit shone a sickly light on his worst fear: the hull armor was too thin and too brittle and should never have been used on a warship. It was likely the object that hit them was quite small and travelling near relativistic speeds. He was certain his old ship would have taken the hit without the amount of damage the Ares had just suffered. As he continued to idly look at the images, another certainty hit him, as obvious as daylight now that he was looking at it in the right context.
“Jillian, look at this,” he nudged his shocked-looking XO. “Look closely at the entry and exit points of the projectile.”
“I’m not sure what I’m looking at, sir,” she said.
“We were hit with a kineti
c weapon,” Jacksons said. “Any meteorite would have broken up on impact, even one of solid iron, and shredded the guts out of this ship. This was a hardened alloy penetrator that was fired at us.”
“The Phage?”
“It would appear they have some automated defenses here in the system,” Jackson shrugged. “If it was a ship or something mobile that fired the shot I don’t think we’d be here having this conversation. It’d have taken a couple follow-up shots until it breached one of the reactors or hit the magazine and then this mission would have come to a full stop.”
“So does this mean we’re in the right system or not?” Davis asked as she leaned over Jackson’s arm and flipped through the images on the tile, causing him to squirm uncomfortably.
“I would have to still say yes,” he said. “This is a fairly subtle weapon that, while effective, could easily be dismissed. It’s also almost completely undetectable if it’s chemically fired. We only recognize it because of our familiarity with large-bore kinetic weapons in space.”
“Should we sound a general alert?”
“Don’t bother,” Jackson shook his head. “We can’t do anything about it regardless. Let them keep working without the added pressure of waiting for the next shot.”
“Yes, sir.”
The realization that they’d been hit with a weapon elicited a lot of mixed feelings in Jackson. On some level he was elated that the system wasn’t completely empty, but he also had to admit that the Phage had never employed kinetic weapons in all the battles they’d fought, so he couldn’t say for sure exactly who had set the trap they’d just flown through. He also felt that he’d utterly failed his crew. His planning had led to not only a number of KIA that he couldn’t face at the moment, but a crippled ship that, should the core mind pop up right in front of them, couldn’t fire a single shot at it.
The lack of options took him back to a moment when he’d used his own ship as a weapon, ramming the Blue Jacket into a Super Alpha to destroy it and end the incursion. Even as he idly considered the idea, he dismissed it. The Blue Jacket had been abandoned, the Ares still had most of her crew aboard, and they had not signed on for a suicidal plunge into a planet. Moral issues aside, it was a moot point since the Ares had lost so much of her stability and attitude control that he wasn’t sure she could hit a target the size of a small planet or moon at speed.
Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3) Page 22
