Frontiers Saga 10: Liberation

by Ryk Brown

  The shuttle suddenly rolled onto its left side and pitched its nose downward relative to the planet below.

  “Heads up, Chief! He’s coming right at you!” the copilot warned.

  “Let him have it, Chief!” the pilot added.

  The crew chief stood in the weapons turret located in the middle of the shuttle’s main compartment, his head in the bubble that protruded through the roof. He twisted around to bring his barrels onto the Jung fighter diving toward them and opened fire. “He’s diving at us!” the crew chief reported as he continued firing their small, double-barreled plasma turret at the incoming fighter. “I hit him! I hit him!” the crew chief yelled with excitement. There was a moment of silence. “Oh, shit. Hang on!”

  There was an explosion on the outside of the ship, and the shuttle’s back end suddenly shifted to the left. Smoke poured into the main compartment filled with Ghatazhak soldiers, each of them remaining still and unconcerned about the smoke since they were all wearing pressurized combat armor. A split second later, the back end of the shuttle was ripped away, taking the smoke and two of the Ghatazhak soldiers sitting at the rear of the compartment along with it.

  “We’re hit! We’re hit!” the pilot’s voice announced over the sergeant’s helmet comms. “Son of a bitch rammed into us!”

  The sergeant looked at the lifeless body of the crew chief as it dangled from its restraints. The entire turret bubble had also been ripped away, taking the crew chief’s head and shoulders as well.

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” the copilot called over the comms. “Combat One has been hit! We’ve lost our whole back end! We have to return! Prepare the deck for crash landing!”

  The sergeant closed his eyes as he listened to the copilot repeat his mayday call, disappointed in the unfortunate outcome of his mission to retrieve Lieutenant Commander Nash from the surface of Earth. He switched his comms to the Ghatazhak command channel and keyed the system to transmit. “Telles, Dog Leader,” the sergeant said as he unfastened his restraints and stood. “Mission aborted. Returning.”

  * * *

  “It’s no use, sir!” Mister Chiles yelled from the helm. “We’re going to hit!”

  “Aft topside thrusters!” Nathan yelled as the ship rocked from the close-range rail gun impacts. “Push our stern down toward the battleship so we hit her flat!”

  “They’re not responding!” Mister Chiles replied. “Nothing is responding! I have no controls!”

  “Sound collision alarm!” Nathan ordered. “All hands, brace for impact!”

  The collision horn sounded as Naralena broadcast the prerecorded alert message throughout the Aurora.

  “Talons were shot down! Combat One is damaged and returning!” Naralena reported.

  “Ten seconds to impact!” Mister Navashee reported.

  “Can we still jump?” Nathan asked in desperation.

  “Yes, sir,” Mister Riley answered, “but we have no plot and the…”

  “Snap jump! Do it!”

  Nathan looked at the main view screen as the massive Jung battleship became so close he could see the rivets in her hull plating. At the very bottom edge of the view screen, he could see the forward edge of the battleship and a small sliver of the blackness of space beyond her bow. “Jesus, we almost made it,” he said under his breath as the blue-white jump flash began to wash over the bridge.

  There was a terrible thud and a deafening, screeching sound as metal collided with metal. The sound of tearing metal reverberated through the bridge as the irregular surfaces of the hulls of the two ships caught in numerous places and tore at each other’s sides. Nathan found himself in the air, flung forward over the flight console. His face toward the main view screen, he felt as if he were being thrown into the enemy ship. The blue-white jump flash filled the bridge as Nathan landed face first and everything went dark.

  * * *

  “Jesus! They jumped!” the copilot cried.

  “Damn it!” the pilot swore. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Now what the hell do we do?” the copilot wondered.

  “We get the hell out of here; that’s what we do,” the pilot said.

  “And go where? Our back end is gone. We’ve got no main propulsion…”

  “We’ve still got maneuvering!” the pilot shouted. “If we could just get clear, we could shut down… go cold. Maybe the Aurora will come back for us.”

  “No!” the sergeant ordered as he stepped through the passageway and into the shuttle’s cramped cockpit. “Move us in closer to that battleship.”

  “What?” the pilot said in shock.

  “There,” the sergeant said, pointing at the bow of the massive ship passing alongside them. A massive portion of the battleship’s bow was missing, exposing many of her internal decks to space. “We can access her decks there.”

  “You want to board her?” the pilot asked in disbelief. “With ten guys? Are you nuts?”

  “No, I am Ghatazhak,” the sergeant answered. “And there are only eight of us now.”

  Both the pilot and the copilot turned their heads and looked aft down the passageway beyond the sergeant, seeing the gaping hole at the back of their ship and the crew chief’s dead, decapitated body hanging from the damaged turret assembly. They turned and looked at each other.

  “As soon as you turn away from the ship, they will see the heat of your thrusters and open fire,” the sergeant told them. “We must move closer now while they are still recovering from the collision. Now do as I say, or I will kill you both and fly this ship myself.”

  The pilot turned forward again, putting his hands on the controls. “What the hell,” he said. “We’re dead either way.” The pilot sighed. “Help me end this lateral spin,” he told his copilot.

  The sergeant turned and made his way back down the short passageway, returning to his men in the aft compartment. “Ghatazhak! Your attention! We have but one chance at honor! A large portion of the enemy ship’s bow is missing, her internal decks exposed. Our pilots shall maneuver this ship closer, and we shall jump out the back end, propelling ourselves across. We shall board the enemy vessel and seize control! Understood?!”

  “Yes, sir!” the surviving seven Ghatazhak soldiers answered in unison over the sergeant’s helmet comms.

  “If it breathes, kill it!” the sergeant ordered. “Stand ready!”

  The seven Ghatazhak soldiers released their restraints and stood, turning to face the gaping hole at the back of the shuttle.

  “Coming up on the bow,” the copilot announced over the comms. “Ten seconds to jump.”

  “You have made allowances for our forward momentum?” the sergeant asked.

  “Yeah, and it ain’t much,” the copilot answered.

  “Ghatazhak! Stand by!” the sergeant ordered. His men tensed their bodies, ready to exit the damaged shuttle as it coasted alongside the massive battleship.

  “Three……two……one……GO!” the copilot ordered.

  In unison, all eight Ghatazhak, including the sergeant, stepped lively out the torn open end of the shuttle, pushing off as they stepped into open space. One by one, they each fired their built-in attitude thrusters, spinning their bodies to face their direction of travel as they continued to drift closer to the damaged battleship.

  The shuttle continued to drift closer to the Jung ship, eventually colliding with her exposed decks. The collision caused the shuttle to bounce away in a spin, sending her drifting away from the battleship as she began to drift past the vessel’s damaged bow.

  The sergeant watched as the exposed decks grew closer. He could see flashes of light from inside as power circuits arced. There were also various gases being vented from broken pipes and liquids pouring out into open space. The entire battleship appeared to be dead.

  Suddenly, ligh
ts started turning back on across the face of the great ship as they continued to drift toward it. From the mighty ship’s topside, the sergeant saw a small rail gun turret turn toward the drifting shuttle and open fire. The shuttle was torn apart, finally exploding in a ball of fire, which was suffocated by the vacuum of space a moment later.

  One by one, his men began to fire their deceleration thrusters. They were coming in quite fast in relation to the massive ship, and their thrusters would not be powerful enough to slow them down to a safe contact speed.

  The first man missed his target, bouncing off the side of a bulkhead and sliding across it until he was impaled through his abdomen by a twisted metal pipe. The next man managed to grab hold of the same bulkhead and avoid a similar fate, quickly moving deeper into the depressurized deck to make room for his comrades to follow.

  Eventually, the surviving seven men were on board, huddling in the darkness of the damaged, exposed deck.

  The sergeant looked at his men. “You four, take engineering. We three will head for the bridge. Depressurize each compartment as you go. I want this ship intact.”

  One of the Ghatazhak moved to the nearest hatch and placed a small, explosive device on its latch mechanism. He stepped aside, and a moment later, the charge detonated, blowing the door open. One by one, the Ghatazhak stepped through the hatch. They were in.

  * * *

  Pain was everywhere: his neck, his head, his shoulder, his back. The air stank. It was a familiar smell… burning electrical circuits.

  Nathan coughed, which made his head hurt even worse. He opened his eyes slowly. The room was dark, only dimly lit by emergency lighting. He was lying flat on his back, yet his head felt as if it were lower than his body. He raised his head slightly off the floor and looked at his feet. Beyond his feet was the main view screen, the image of the Earth’s moon flickering on and off intermittently, each time adding additional light to the room. He was on the bridge. “Report!” he cried out. All he heard was the sound of electrical shorts and the panicked cries of his crew over his comm-set, which lay on the floor next to him.

  “Captain!” a voice cried out.

  Nathan felt himself being yanked to his feet. Someone’s arm was under his left shoulder and wrapped around his back, helping him off the cowling that ran from the back of the flight console forward to the bottom of the view screen. He looked to his left and saw that it was Lieutenant Telles. “Lieutenant, what happened?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” the lieutenant answered. “I was on my way to the bridge from combat when the ship collided with the battleship.”

  “Did we jump?”

  “We must have,” another voice said.

  Nathan looked toward the sound of the other voice. It was Mister Riley. He was helping the helmsman, Mister Chiles, back into his seat.

  “We were nowhere near the moon when we collided with the battleship, so we must have jumped.”

  The lieutenant lowered Nathan gently down into his command chair and began to look him over. “How do you feel, sir?”

  “Like hell, Lieutenant. And you?”

  “I am unharmed, sir.”

  “Of course.” Nathan looked to his left. Mister Navashee was just getting back to his feet. “How about you, Mister Navashee? Are you injured?”

  “Bumps and bruises, sir,” he said as he took his seat at the sensor station.

  Lieutenant Telles jabbed Nathan in the arm with some type of injection device, the likes of which Nathan had never seen before.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “It will clear your head and stave off your pain. It will also give you the energy you need to carry on… for now.”

  Nathan could feel his senses returning to him even as the lieutenant explained it to him. “Very well.” He looked at the lieutenant, his vision clearing as well. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Help the others.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nathan straightened himself in his chair as his senses fully returned. He put his comm-set back in his ear and tapped it. “Damage control, Captain. Report.”

  “Yes, sir!” Master Chief Montrose answered over the comm-set. “Main power is down. All four antimatter reactors are offline. We’re running on the backup fusion reactors.”

  “What about weapons?”

  “The quads are still working and maybe a few of the minis. Conventional torpedoes are still operational as well. However, without the antimatter reactors, we don’t have enough power to use the plasma torpedo cannons.”

  “Missiles?” Nathan asked.

  “No, sir,” the master chief answered. “Missile launcher is gone. It was torn off when we collided. Screwed up the entire topside. The forward lifts are offline as a result as well.”

  “Flight ops?”

  “Aft apron and transfer airlocks are operational, as are the inner transfer airlocks. I don’t know about the fighter launch tubes yet.”

  “What about casualties?” Nathan finally asked.

  “Unknown at the moment,” the master chief said. “Medical hasn’t given me a number. However, I know they’re getting a lot of calls. I’ll have more information shortly.”

  “Very well,” Nathan said, tapping his comm-set again to end the call. “Mister Randeen, threat board?” There was no response.

  “Oh my God,” Naralena exclaimed.

  Lieutenant Telles had rolled the tactical officer over. His face was burned beyond recognition.

  Nathan spun around in his chair at the sound of Naralena’s reaction and jumped to his feet. He moved around the tactical console, half of which had scorch marks and a blown-out display screen. He looked down at Lieutenant Telles and Mister Randeen’s face.

  “He’s dead, Captain,” Lieutenant Telles said.

  Nathan sighed. “Take over his station, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mister Navashee,” Nathan said as he took his seat again, “do we have sensors?”

  “Short-range only, sir. Long-range sensors are completely offline. We’re about one hundred thousand kilometers from the battleship, in between the Earth and the moon.”

  “What about that battleship? Please tell me she suffered similar levels of damage.”

  “One moment, sir,” Mister Navashee said. “The array is slow to come… Contact!” Mister Navashee interrupted himself. “A big one! Directly above us! Fifty meters out!”

  Nathan jumped to his feet again. “Is it the battleship?”

  “Too small,” Mister Navashee said, “but too big to be a fighter or a shuttle. I’m getting all kinds of strange readings from it: gases, liquids, residual radiation… but almost no electrical energy detected.” Mister Navashee turned to face the captain. “I think it’s debris, sir.”

  Nathan moved over next to his sensor operator, bending over to look at the screen as the system drew an outline based on the radar returns. “Is that a piece of the battleship’s bow?”

  “We must have taken a piece of her with us when we jumped,” Mister Navashee said in amazement.

  “Well that had to hurt,” Nathan said.

  The bridge suddenly shook as rail gun rounds began to pound the ship.

  “Helm! Can we maneuver?” Nathan barked.

  “Yes, sir, but I don’t know how well,” Mister Chiles answered.

  “What about main propulsion? Can we make a run for it?”

  “The two inboard engines are still working,” Mister Chiles replied, “but without the antimatter reactors, we’re not going to be able to outrun anybody.”

  “What about the jump drive?” Nathan asked. “We should have plenty of energy still left in the banks, right?”

  “No, sir,” Mister Riley said. “I’ve got red lights on at least a dozen emitters, all on the topside. Pulling a piec
e of that battleship along with us must have overloaded them.”

  “Helm, roll us over and put our belly toward them,” Nathan ordered.

  “Aye, sir,” Mister Chiles acknowledged.

  “Lieutenant, can you get our quads to drop to our underside?” Nathan asked. “I’d love to at least shoot back if possible.”

  “Working on it, sir,” the lieutenant responded. “At least half these systems are burnt out.”

  Nathan turned to the systems officer at the starboard auxiliary console. “Reconfigure your station for tactical, and take over for the lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Captain, if that debris is from the battleship, her decks are wide open,” the lieutenant said. “If we can get a boarding party in there, we might be able to take the ship.”

  “Where’s Combat One?” Nathan asked.

  “She collided with a Jung fighter,” Naralena said, “just before we jumped.”

  “We can launch another shuttle,” the lieutenant suggested.

  “How are you even going to get close?” Nathan asked. “They’ll pick you off as soon as you launch.”

  “They’re hitting us with their long-range guns right now,” the lieutenant said. “Why? Wouldn’t missiles be quicker? Maybe the long-range guns are all they’ve got right now. If so, they won’t be able to track a shuttle if she is flying erratically enough.”

  Nathan looked at the lieutenant as the bridge continued to shake. “How long?”

  “It will take at least ten minutes to reach that battleship.”

  “Go.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant answered, turning to head for the exit.

  “Lieutenant!” Nathan called after him. “We’ve got two shuttles left. Take them both. The more the merrier.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Naralena, tell flight ops to get some Talons launched as escorts or diversions, whichever works.”