The hours ticked by before the scope of the damage became apparent, and it was worse than initially thought. The ship now had serious structural integrity issues since the projectile had severed two of the six main supports that essentially tied the front of the ship to the aft section. Lieutenant Commander Wu’s initial assessment was that despite the warp drive being fully functional the Ares wouldn’t survive the first transition; the shear forces from the opposing distortion fields would tear her apart.
The bad news didn’t stop there, however, as damage control teams discovered that the cooling system for Reactor Two had been streaming water out into space through a smaller hull breach that they hadn’t found on the first sweep. The pressurized compartment was leaking air at a high enough rate that it kept the thin water stream blowing out the rupture instead of freezing along the hull and sealing itself off. Even though it wasn’t a bad leak, it had diminished cooling capacity on the system by fifteen percent and there wasn’t enough coolant left in the reservoirs to refill it.
“Throttle number two back to fifty percent,” Jackson said as he read the summary report on his tile. “If we lose any more capacity than that shut it down completely.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Wu said before leaving he bridge. The man looked ready to pass out where he stood, but there would be no rest for any of them anytime soon.
“We have something on passives, sir,” Barrett said. “Just a small thermal blip and then it was gone.”
“Can the computer come up with a probable match based on what you have?” Jackson asked.
“Tac-Two is offline, sir,” Barrett referred to one of the four computers that made up the Ares’ tactical processing avionics. Tac-Two handled the database of known sensor contacts and was able to extrapolate probabilities based on even brief contacts like Barrett’s thermal blip.
“Why didn’t Tac-Four take over when Two went down?” Jackson demanded.
“Still booting, sir,” Hayashi said. “Sorry, sir.”
“Just keep with it, Lieutenant Commander,” Jackson sighed. “How spotty is our sensor coverage?”
“It would be better if any contacts came at us head-on, sir,” Barrett said. “Rear coverage is degraded considerably, but I won’t have an exact answer until Engineering gets power restored to some of the affected areas.”
“Contact!” Keller shouted from the coms stations. “Weak LF-band signal detected … it’s Colonel Blake! He’s standing off the starboard bow and requesting permission to dock.”
“Permission granted.” Jackson breathed a short sigh of relief. “Tell him I’ll meet him at the starboard airlock.”
****
“I wish we had more precise data from the Vruahn system,” Celesta griped. “A real-time sensor suite would be a game changer right now.”
“It looks like the infighting is dying down,” the second watch OPS officer said. The tall woman from the Warsaw Alliance was filling in as second in command while the XO was down in CIC trying to manage all the confusion.
“From what we’re looking at on our own passive sensors I think the Super Alphas in the system are reestablishing control over the swarm, Lieutenant Baska,” Celesta said. “I’m not sure what this means for us, however.”
“I don’t follow, ma’am.”
“We have no way to tell if they suspect us or not,” Celesta said. “Or if they even know we’re out here. Let’s just stay hidden out here for a while longer until we get some kind of indication what’s happening.”
The Icarus had single-handedly delivered a massive blow to the Phage swarm. The ship racked up hundreds of direct kills which then in turn sparked the infighting that claimed thousands more as Phage Alphas turned their powerful plasma weapons on each other. Even the smaller, Bravo-type units had gotten in on the action as they ganged up and tried to take down larger targets like schools of predatory fish.
“We’re starting to see the individual clusters reorganizing,” her OPS officer said. “If I were to make an educated guess, I’d say that each Super Alpha is exerting its influence on the local clusters to keep them from trying to kill each other. This has profound implications on our understanding of how their networked consciousness works—”
“Thank you, Commander,” Celesta said firmly. Her OPS officer, while proficient, had a tendency to want to “educate” her at every turn. Perhaps if he had spent a little more of that energy on introspection he’d have figured out why he was still a bridge station operator on a destroyer as a full commander with over twenty years in service instead of commanding his own ship. “Just keep an eye on them and report on any further changes in behavior.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, clearly miffed.
They went through two full watch changes, twelve hours since Celesta had gone to six-hour shifts during the seemingly non-stop, adrenaline-fueled combat operations, and there still was little movement out of the Phage. During that time she had taken three, hour-long naps, bullying her chief medical officer into giving her an entire array of uppers and downers to chemically control her sleep cycle and allow her to remain alert on the bridge when she was there. She was constantly having to temper the crew, the success of the previous ninety-six hours making them feel invincible. At every turn she reminded them that if they were boxed in by just a couple of those Alphas the Icarus would be turned to slag in short order.
Despite her admonishments, however, she had to admit to herself that the mission had been thrilling beyond all measure. Sneaking around behind enemy lines, popping up to fire off a weapon, and then slinking off to do it again while the enemy began to turn on itself … it was the type of mission that made legends of ships.
“We have some movement, ma’am,” Lieutenant Baska said before Celesta had even fully walked onto the bridge.
“What are they doing?” she asked, now fully alert.
“Leaving,” her OPS officer said simply. “They had finally organized into nine individual groups … there are only four remaining.”
“Show me,” Celesta waved to the main display. “Compress the time so that I can get an overall picture.”
She watched as, one by one, the Phage groups winked out of existence as they left the system. They were all leaving along different vectors and had been spread pretty evenly throughout the outer system.
“Maybe the Super Alphas reached a consensus to separate the mini-swarms to keep them from going back at each other,” Celesta mused.
“That was my assessment as well, Captain,” the OPS officer beamed.
“We’ll wait until they’ve all departed the system before making it back to the main fleet to report in,” Celesta sat down. “Keep tracking all movement in the system. The obvious answer might be the correct one, or there may be something else in play that we’re not seeing.”
****
“What happened?” Colonel Blake asked before the airlock hatch had even fully opened.
“We were hit with what I suspect was a kinetic weapon deployed in the system somewhere,” Jackson said. “Punched clean through the ship. We’re no longer combat capable, unfortunately, and the structural damage is bad enough that she’ll never leave this system. How about you? Any luck?”
“Yeah,” Blake said absently as he looked at the chaos around him. “I found it. Or at least, I’m pretty sure I did.”
“Go on,” Jackson prompted.
“There’s an irregularly shaped moon orbiting the second planet of this system. I was drifting by there when there was a sudden burst of traffic on the target frequency,” Blake said. “I’m talking about a lot of back and forth, not just the burst transmissions we were originally tracking. There was so much that I was able to determine a source of origin with the passive detection sensors.”
“This is interesting for a few reasons,” Jackson waved for Blake to follow him as four Marines took position guarding the hatch to the airlock, hurling good-natured insults down to the NOVA team on the other side. It was only then that Jackson not
iced that Lieutenant Commander Essa had come through with Blake and was walking behind them, all without him even noticing.
“This means that something has changed,” Jackson went on. “It also means that it was talking to someone along the system boundary if they hold to their SOP we’ve observed so far.”
“Agreed,” Blake said. “I came out and found you before making any closer inspections of the suspected site so we could decide on what to do without potentially tipping our hand too early.”
“Good thinking,” Jackson nodded as they dodged crewmembers running to and fro with tools or parts in hand. “We may only get one shot at this. If the flurry of com activity was due to our being detected there could be a whole fleet of Phage sitting out beyond detection range waiting for us to pop up.”
“So what are we going to do, sir?” Blake asked.
“The first thing we won’t do is something rash,” Jackson said. “We’ll give Pike another five hours to make contact and then we’ll get down to planning the final assault on this bastard and end this war.”
As if on cue, the Broadhead sent the LF pulse just before the five-hour mark and was directed to dock onto Blake’s ship. Since the port airlock of the Ares was too damaged to safely operate, he would have to walk through the Vruahn ship to get to the destroyer. He took the damage to the ship in stride, not bothering to pester Jackson about the details of an obvious kinetic strike, something the captain was grateful for.
“So we have a confirmed target location?” the CIS agent asked, obviously having gotten the broad strokes of recent events from Ortiz as he was escorted through the damaged destroyer and up to the command deck conference room.
“Nothing precise enough for a strike package, but we think we’ve narrowed it down to a small moon,” Jackson said.
“That’s not really all that narrow.” Pike flounced into one of the seats.
“It’s better than an entire system,” Jackson shrugged. “Either way it further confirms that we’re in the right place. But we have some obvious issues to talk about. The first is that the Ares is non-viable. She’s keeping the crew alive and has minimal propulsion, but she can’t fight and if we have to retreat she can’t survive a warp transition.”
“That’s … not good,” Pike said. “The Broadhead is a spunky little ship, but it’s made to hide and listen, not engage and kill. I don’t have the firepower aboard to make a dent if the thing has even a little bit of protection around it.”
“Using the Broadhead offensively isn’t what I had in mind,” Jackson shook his head. “Unfortunately, what I’m thinking of isn’t going to be easy or pleasant.”
“Oh, good,” Pike rolled his eyes. “I was beginning to think this mission was a bit too easy.”
****
“Once we’ve departed, begin getting the Ares up into the outer system,” Jackson said as he rummaged through the safe in his office. “Don’t push her too hard. Once you get word from us, success or failure, fire off your com drones for Terran space.”
“I don’t understand why you have to go on this, sir,” Davis said. “You’re a starship captain, not spec ops. This isn’t something you’re trained to do and we could use you here.”
“There’s not much here for me to do,” Jackson shook his head. “I need to be with the strike team to finish this. Don’t worry, Lieutenant … I’ll stay out of the way and let Essa’s men do their jobs.”
“That’s not exactly my worry.” She bit her lip. Jackson pulled out a small bundle of datacards and laid them on the desk.
“Here’s all the command codes and security bypasses you’ll need to access every part of this ship,” he said. “Fleet doesn’t know I have those; the Tsuyo design rep gave them to me when the Ares first launched. Even if we make it back I suppose I won’t need them after this … the ship isn’t ever going to leave this system.”
He pulled out an exact, working replica of an ancient Colt 1911 .45ACP handgun, meticulously crafted for him as a gift by Daya Singh. As he ran his hand over the oiled slide, he could feel the tidal forces of emotions he’d shoved down threatening to rip the wall down at a time when he could least afford it. He quickly shoved the weapon into the leather holster it had been sitting on top of and slammed it down on the desk too.
“And take care of that,” he said gruffly. “It has a loaded magazine but no round in the chamber. You’ll probably want to look up what that means before handling it.”
“I’ll hold it until you get back,” Davis said. Jackson turned and looked at her, noticed her red-rimmed eyes, and again was forced to face the conflicting and wildly inappropriate feelings he had for his subordinate.
“I guess that about does it,” he said. “You know what to do. Just try to keep everyone safe and maybe we’ll find a way to get the crew back to Terran space alive.”
“I will.” She mirrored his movements so that they met at the side of the desk. “But you stay alive too. We need you.” Before he could stick out his hand for the intended handshake, Jillian moved inside his arm, wrapped hers around his neck, and kissed him savagely on the lips. Too shocked to protest, all he could do was put his hands on her hips and let his body respond how it would to her. She broke the kiss with a gasp and pulled away.
“I’m … I’m so sorry, sir,” she said. “I didn’t intend for that to happen.”
“We really did kiss on the bridge of the Blue Jacket that time, didn’t we?” he asked. “I’ve always thought I imagined that.”
“I suppose I’ve been acting unprofessionally for some time,” she mumbled, looking embarrassed.
“Given the circumstances on both occasions, I think we’ll go ahead and forego the court martial,” Jackson joked lamely.
“Is there—” she left her question hanging.
“There is,” he said softly. “Let’s both do what we need to do here … and if we both survive we can talk about it then.”
“Even if I’m under your command again?” she joked with a half-smile.
“Jillian, this is the second ship I’ve lost in less than ten years and my fifth major insubordination incident … I think we can safely say that if we make it back I won’t be in command of anything,” Jackson said. “I’d actually be thrilled if I just avoided any serious jail time.”
****
“All the cargo is transferred to Colonel Blake’s ship.” Hayashi handed Jackson a tile with all the pertinent information. “Major Ortiz and his entire detachment are loaded up and over there as well. Your gear is stowed in your quarters … Colonel Blake said you’d know where that was.”
“Very good.” Jackson handed the tile back to his OPS officer. “Now get your ass back up to the bridge and back up Lieutenant Davis as best you can. No heroics … just keep our people safe and try to keep your heads down.”
“Understood, Captain.” Hayashi actually did bow this time. “It was an honor, sir.”
“Hopefully it will be again,” Jackson said. “Until then, keep her together.”
“ARES DEPARTING!” Chief Green’s voice thundered across the bay, his bellow triggering hundreds of boot heels to snap together as the throng of assembled spacers popped to attention and saluted. With a lump in his throat, Jackson came to attention and returned the salute before turning and striding through the hatchway and into the waiting Vruahn warship.
“Was that Green?” Pike called when Jackson emerged into the main corridor. “I could hear him all the way up by the flight deck.”
“He’s very proud of his voice,” Jackson nodded. “We ready?”
“Locked and loaded, Captain,” Pike said. “One last ride?”
“I wish everyone would quit looking at this as a death march,” Jackson quipped. “I do have every intention of walking away from this.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Pike said over his shoulder as he walked back up the corridor.
Once the Broadhead had disengaged and thrusted away the Vruahn ship unlocked from the Ares and slid over and above her. Jackson
looked on the thermals and felt a raw, burning rage as the imagers played over his crippled ship, thin jets of gas escaping into space through at least three dozen micro breaches. After Blake had engaged the drive and turned them away from the stricken destroyer, Jackson left the flight deck to go and check on his cargo and men.
The NOVAs had already made the ship their temporary home and were busy idly talking and going through gear checks, most nodding politely to Jackson when he walked into the large bay. He left them to make sure Major Ortiz and his Marine detachment was settling in equally well. While the NOVAs were trained to handle almost any scenario, he was completely confident that his Marines would adapt quickly to the conditions on the small moon. They were mostly trained for shipboard combat but they were all pros.
Lastly he went to check on his cargo: twenty Vruahn gravity bombs and one cylindrical tank that was attached to a sort of oversized loadbearing harness that would fit over a combat EVA suit. The tank also had a long, thin appendage attached to it via a shielded line. The tank had been fabricated by his Engineering crew and filled with a substance that was synthesized by Commander Owens’s people. The original sample had come from a cryogenically stored capsule that Pike had been carrying on his Broadhead. It was a nasty little something from Fleet Research and Science that had never been weaponized until now … Jackson just hoped it wouldn’t come down to that, as it was very much an option of last resort.
“Pike should be over the moon.” Blake turned his head as Jackson walked onto the flight deck. “We’ve got another nine hours until we make orbit so he’ll have plenty of time to map out the surface.”
“Or find out what sort of orbital defenses there are,” Amiri Essa said from the copilot’s seat.
Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3) Page 23
