“Ten seconds to target,” Okuda called in his imperturbable voice, and the drive roared again. “Weapons, make ready.”
Absen was grateful the man had taken over combat operations; he had to accept the fact that Orion was part battleship, part oversized fighter-craft right now, and they were all learning in her crucible forge. He kept his mouth shut and watched, conscious that he had to let Okuda do his job.
“All surviving beam and gun weapons free to fire at their own discretion. Offensive missiles hold fire.” Ford sat poised with his fingers over touchscreens. “Scoggins, once you identify the frigate I’ll slave all weapons to a coordinated firing solution and try to hit it with everything we have.”
“Roger, Weapons. Here we come.”
The plot showed the ship falling past the asteroid at close range. If Absen read it right, Okuda was shaving the rock at a range of less than a kilometer, barely two ship lengths. Cripes, the man was good. It was like flying a blimp backward between skyscrapers.
“Conn: Weapons, beams firing.” Lights on the bridge dimmed suddenly as all available power went to the lasers.
Outside, the massive projectors lashed the underside of the asteroid with coherent light. Chunks of rock blew off, silent explosions that marched across its surface in the vacuum.
“Conn: Sensors. No target.”
“Find him, Scoggins, we can’t kill what we can’t see.”
“Trying, sir.”
Orion’s deceleration was almost complete. Absen’s eyes roved the screens mounted along the dome of the bridge, searching for the enemy, looking for some clue, some angle. “Scoggins,” he snapped, “where are those first four bogeys? Are those them?”
“Here, sir.” Four icons flashed red.
“They look like they are holding position relative to us.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
“If they are recon drones for the frigate…they are staying in a plane perpendicular to us. Imagine if they were the corners of a square…”
“I got it, sir,” Scoggins responded excitedly. “He’ll be near the middle, which is…on the other side of the asteroid from us.”
“He’s hiding!” Absen thumped the chair with his fist. “He sneaked around! That means he might not be able to run. How bad are we hurt?”
“Drive at full, sir,” reported Okuda.
“Sensors at about half, sir.”
“Weapon losses: one laser, three DBs, nineteen Tridents inop, the rest still collating, sir. Roughly ten percent of the defensive systems destroyed.”
Rick Johnstone at Comms responded, “Seven hundred or so casualties. Engineering reports power at fifty-eight percent.”
“Damn.” Seven hundred. Machines were always tougher than people, doubly so in space. Absen didn’t know whether “casualties” included wounded or just the dead; he hoped the former. Edens and nanos would heal eventually.
“All right,” the captain said firmly, “Orion’s still got a lot of fight left in her. Weapons, start single-round deliberate fire of Tridents at the rock, surface burst. I want to break that thing up, blow it to smithereens. If he wants to hide, let’s take away his cover.”
The drive noise ceased, mercifully eliminating the pogoing and distraction. Absen realized that he felt much better now, despite the pounding. Perhaps the Eden Plague was taking effect already.
“Ford, see if you can take out those recon drones. At least make them work to maintain position.”
“Aye, sir. Let’s see how the lasers do. Coordinated fire, all beams…no effect.”
“You sure you hit it?” Absen asked.
“There was some visible flare, sir.”
Okuda interrupted, “Did you compensate for range and relative velocity? Lightspeed delay at one thousand kilometers will yield a three-meter variance.”
“Damn,” Ford cursed. “Computers should be compensating…I’ve got damage to the cross-coordinating circuits.”
“Let me see,” Johnstone said, moving over several seats, displacing the assistant weapons officer. “I think I can fix this…”
“Can you do it while I fight?”
“Sure,” he mumbled, frantically tapping keys. Then he muttered something else, shooting Ford a look, then reached for his wrist. A pop and snick sound came and he pulled the fine wire and plug out of his sleeve, slotting into the console. Then he closed his eyes. “Unh…”
“What the hell?” Ford barked.
“Fight the ship, Ford,” Absen snapped. “Let Mr. Johnstone do what he can.”
“It’s a direct interface, like mine,” explained Okuda, tapping his head. where his own plugs trailed wires that talked to Orion. “I can feel it.”
“Conn: Sensors, bogeys are maneuvering. Looks like random evasives.”
“All right,” Absen said, “keep at it.” He looked at the screen centered on the asteroid just in time to see it white out with the flare of a set of twelve simultaneous nuclear detonations. When it cleared seconds later, the asteroid had been largely vaporized. Only an expanding field of debris showed.
“Where’d it go?” Absen asked. “Where’s the frigate –” His words were cut off as he felt Orion shudder and twist. “What was that?”
“Gyro three failure. Damage to surrounding decks. Compensating.”
“What caused it?”
“No way to tell, sir,” reported the Engineering station. “Gyros are relatively delicate. It could have just taken too much shock and finally failed.” He paused in his narrative. “I have a report from the damage control team on site of some kind of…infestation.”
“Dispatch a biohazard team there and spread the word to look for more of whatever it is.”
“Sir, it looks like –”
“I don’t need the details. Handle it. Sensors, where’s that frigate?”
“Possible bogey here, sir.” One dot among hundreds flashed as Scoggins marked it. “There’s too much crap between us to be sure but if your idea about the drones is true, it should be near there.”
“Helm, we need to move in.”
“Sir, if I use the drive now the damage control and biohazard teams will have to stop and brace for acceleration.”
“Can you reduce the G load?”
“Certainly, but the bombs are finite. Detonating them farther from the shock plate means lower G, less push, wasted efficiency.”
“Do it. Two G, warn them.”
Okuda nodded. “Aye, sir.” He triggered the PA. “Now hear this, two-G intermittent acceleration, prepare for intermittent drive. Three, two, one.” The next bomb went off almost gently after the eight-G pushes they were used to.
“What’s our bomb stock down to, Helm?”
“Sixteen hundred ninety-four. Approximately fifty-five percent.” Orion moved forward sluggishly.
“Should be enough,” Absen muttered. “Weapons, prep a twenty-missile salvo of Grackles and SM5s. Plot them to curve around what’s left of the asteroid and home in on our prospective bogey. Have them look for anything the right size. Also send one against each of those recon drones, see how they act. Fire when ready.”
“Aye, sir.” Ford tapped industriously at his keys, eyeing Johnstone in the seat next to him now and again until the man’s eyes finally snapped open.
“All right,” the cybernetic Comms officer announced, “I’ve cross-connected all the weapons into an integrated heuristic network run by the KimPark.” He saw Ford look at him in irritation. “The supercomputer. We should have done this earlier, link the supercomputer for our targeting problems.”
“Listen, freak, I was doing just fine –”
“Ford!” Absen barked. “You want to join deLille confined to quarters? Helm has implants, so does Johnstone. Get over it. Use it. Fire your missiles, get the feed from Sensors, load a solution and start drilling anything that looks like the enemy. Johnstone, well done and get back to your station.” I’ve seen this before in green crews. They can turn on each other like dogs. Have to keep them
focused on the enemy, not each other.
Okuda nodded to the Captain as the bridge crew settled back down. “We’ll be past the debris in about four minutes, Skipper.”
Skipper. That felt good. Absen knew it was a calculated thing on Okuda’s part, but well done anyway. Using nicknames, especially semi-official ones like “Skipper” for the ship’s captain, demonstrated trust up the chain, and accepting the nickname did the same downward.
“Steady as she goes, Mister Okuda.”
-52-
Gunner’s Mate Third Ted Rippin swore as he directed his decontaminant spray forward. Whatever the alien stuff was they were fighting, it didn’t like bleach, which was good: that’s mostly what they had. Clever of them to include it in their missiles, though, he had to admit.
He looked at the spots where it had touched metal, eating holes in conduits, decks, ladders, even the brass pressure-plated pressure doors. It didn’t like plastic, though, which was lucky. Even though the conduits looked like Swiss cheese, the insulated wires inside were generally left intact.
The worst part had been where the stuff had invaded one of the molten salts reactors, causing them to have to scram it before it blew. The Russian engineering crew was frantically replacing shielding, insulation, and pieces of the pressure container. Orion ran on electrical power, especially the lasers, and without the reactors, they would be dead in the water.
He also heard from the scuttlebutt the stuff had eaten one of the gyros, and the two-story-tall flywheel had raged out of control through the surrounding areas, dismembering crew as it expended its thousands of RPM like an insane killer toy.
He and the rest of his damage control team sprayed until the walls dripped with the harsh bleach. Fortunately the suits kept the fumes out. The whole thing reminded him irrelevantly of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, where the common cold felled the invaders. Rippin could also remember an old sci-fi story he read somewhere, in which salt turned out to be poison for the aliens. He wondered about that. If these things were like giant amoebas, would they shrivel up like snails when they were bleached or salted?
This isn’t exactly what I thought of when they asked did I want to go into space, he thought. I’m the best damn CIWS technician in the Navy. What the hell am I doing playing cleanup to some alien mold? But everyone had their damage control station, and there weren’t all that many CIWS left to fix anyway. At least they should have put in viewports, he grumbled to himself. The railgunners are lucky; they can see out when their weapons fire. All I do is make sure the computer knows when it can engage, and that the ammo and power is flowing properly. Fix one outside in a spacesuit? Good luck. I guess this job ain’t so bad.
Cheered, Rippin went on spraying.
-53-
“No result against the drones,” Ford reported tightly. “Missiles are too slow, they just dodge. They’re too small and fast for even lasers at this range. Our accuracy is just not high enough.”
“And the range is?” asked Absen.
“One hundred ten klicks, give or take. Sir.”
“How big are the drones? Scoggins?”
“About the size of a UAV. They just have too much acceleration.”
“How can they carry enough fuel to do all this dodging?”
Silence reigned for a long moment. Then Rick Johnstone spoke up. “Ah, sir? They might be collecting fuel from their surroundings. If their fusion drive can use any fuel…they could be eating the dust and debris. If they get anywhere near full atomic efficiency, it would be enough.”
Ford glared at Rick, who ignored him as he went on. “One more thing, sir: they are talking to the frigate. I am picking up telemetry like we did before.”
“Didn’t we crack their code?” Absen asked, leaning forward eagerly.
“Not this one; this is much more sophisticated. But I took the liberty of getting the KimPark working on it and I estimate decryption in approximately seventeen hours.”
Absen shook his head while Ford smirked. “It will all be over by then, but thanks anyway.” He saw Johnstone give a very unmilitary shrug and turn back to his board. As long as there’s no outright insubordination, I think I’ll ignore shrugs and smirks.
“Clearing the cloud in ten seconds, Captain,” Okuda called.
“Stay sharp, people. If we see him, hit him with everything we have.”
The screens showed several synthesized pictures, blending optical and virtual when possible. The bridge crew watched Orion approach the edge of the cloud, hearing the faint whine of CIWS fire from time to time as the Gatlings broke up or drove off anything big or fast enough to do damage. Even a small rock with enough velocity could take out an R2-D2, an Archerfish, or a sensor.
Abruptly the view opened up as the debris field seemed to fall behind and sideways. Scoggins yelled, “Gotcha!” A large red crosshair highlighted the frigate, now a blinding white blob against the starry black. Beside the icon, range showed sixty-eight point six and falling.
“Ford, engage,” Absen snapped as the Weapons officer stabbed down at his console.
“Laser strike initiated. Recharging. DBs firing. Missile salvo away.”
“How long to recharge the lasers?”
“Approximately fifteen seconds.”
“Any effects?”
“None visible. High reflectivity of the enemy is probably a mitigation strategy for laser weapons. Oh!” Ford gaped and pointed at the main screen.
The enemy frigate suddenly sparkled, then several small flares appeared on its sides.
“Report!”
“Looks like kinetic strikes, sir. Some of the railguns hit it, knocked it sideways a bit, and the flares were probably thruster corrections.”
“So they have thruster power and they have some control, enough to keep their pointed nose directly toward us, which will make them hard to hurt. But their main drive must be out or they would have run. I mean, why stay and fight when we’re so damn slow?” Absen bit his tongue, clamping down on his flow of speech. Stop running your mouth, Henrich, they need confidence, not doubt.
“Or perhaps they have a short-range weapon that can take us out,” Okuda suggested.
“No…” Absen responded. “That makes no sense. They could stand off out of our range and pound us with those hypervelocity missiles. In fact, they could do that now, we’re nose on and we couldn’t avoid them. Oh my God, are we nose on?”
“No, Captain,” replied Okuda. “I’ve brought the tail around again, we just can’t tell here on the bridge, between the gimbals and the computer stabilization.”
“Good work. We may need that drive as a shield.”
“Understood.”
Absen realized he was still talking too much but he could hardly stop himself. All of his experience counted for little in a battle he felt completely unqualified to visualize. He was barely able to keep up with the pace, so much faster than in a submarine. Then he realized what he was doing wrong, and scolded himself. Stop trying to take control of the situation. Okuda’s the pilot, he’s really fighting the ship. Take a step back, Henrich, and nudge people, don’t steer them.
A score of single-warhead missiles curved inward now, approaching the seemingly helpless enemy. The bridge held its breath as the ring of rockets closed in, converging on the alien ship.
Klaxons blared as several things happened at once. The target on the screen leaped toward Orion, its drive flaring, avoiding the missile attack. “COLLISON – ALERT. COLLISON – ALERT” blared the automated voice, over and over. Okuda’s fingers danced over his controls as the ship shuddered with drive-bomb induced G-forces. Gyros screamed and the gimbaled bridge swung wildly.
“Conn: Sensors, bogeys from the drones.” Each enemy drone launched a hypervelocity missile, which lined up on Orion with frightening velocity.
“Fire!” yelled Absen desperately as he saw his quarry closing at high speed. If they ram us we’re all dead. Fair trade for the home planet. “Ford! Fire!”
-54-
S
kull ran along the corridor toward the side-branching openings. He had no idea where to go, but anything was better than blundering around in the confusing warren of the bio-cells.
Until now most of the interior had been lit with a pale greenish light, and he had a bioluminescent head-lamp of his own, but the first branch was dark and he skipped it. Something about the layout made him think he should go onward, toward that end of the ship. He wasn’t sure whether it was the nose or tail, but he was guessing that the massive tubes at the other end supplied the drive. Maybe something important and fragile, like weapons or the bridge, would be up front.
The third branch was lit, and had stripes as well. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a mass of white cells rolling sticky along the central corridor, and made his decision. Something interesting down here, and if not, back to making holes in walls.
The tube terminated in a wall, which he slapped with both hands as he ran. It opened before him to reveal quite a different scene from anything he had yet witnessed on this ship.
It was clearly a control center. And it was clearly occupied by Meme.
One of the huge amoebae turned an enormous eyeball toward him, then extended pseudopods in several directions, manipulating controls and reaching for him at the same time. Skull threw the bio-bomb in his hand and watched in despair as the Meme batted it away to stick on a far wall. It began to necrotize there but would make no critical difference.
Touching another place on his suit, a bread-loaf sized chunk fell to the floor – gravity! – he realized, and he picked it up and folded it in half. This activated the chemical explosive inside and he pitched it high like a horseshoe, aiming at the farthest Meme and control console.
The Orion Plague Page 23
