The Merrimack Event (Shieldclads Book 1)

by David Tatum

  The ship shuddered, but little more happened as the debris washed around them. Burkhard, who Rachel had last seen flying into the ceiling, was the first to notice that the imminent danger had passed. “Report!” he called, pulling himself to his feet. One of his legs looked a little off-kilter, however – probably a break.

  Rachel had nearly flown into a neighboring station’s monitor before Chris somehow caught her arm and eased her to the floor safely. She stood up and dusted herself off. “Um, stand by,” she said, taking her seat again. She hoped Chris was all right – he paid for his act of heroism by cartwheeling out of his own chair and hitting his head against the ground – but she couldn’t afford the distraction of checking on him herself when there was the chance that an enemy ship could come in and destroy them.

  “Minimal damage,” Carol called. “We were fairly well protected from the explosion, but some systems weren’t prepared for the strain of the turn. Um, wait... the hyperspace sensor package is now detached from the support beams. We are still getting data from it, but if we move too quickly the line will likely break and we’ll be flying blind.”

  “Fortunately it is still working, sir,” Rachel added. “The explosion destroyed four of the smaller enemy ships, and I believe caused severe damage to all of them. I can’t tell which ones, however, thanks to interference from the explosion.”

  “Sick bay calling, sir,” Emily reported. “More casualties are being reported, though no fatalities yet. Mr. Rappaport is listed as one of the casualties.”

  Chris, still sitting on the floor and looking a little gray, sighed. “I’d better get down to engineering.”

  “Stay there,” Burkhard ordered. “Ms. Mumford, tell Dr. Ehrlich to send a medic to the bridge. We’ve got at least two injuries – Mr. Desaix’s and my own.”

  Carol suddenly winced, pulling out her ear bud. “Um, sir? I have a direct request for Mr. Desaix’s intervention in the artificial gravity situation.” She paused. “Mr. Evans refuses to allow Mr. Langer to use backup data to speed up the calibration.”

  “Tell him Mr. Langer knows how to make that computer calibration software work better than anyone else on this ship,” Chris snapped from his place on the floor. “And he should defer to Yannis’ judgment. Make it a direct order.”

  Verne nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Chris took a deep breath, then coughed up a little blood. “Damn. Looks like I’m hurt worse then I realized. Someone has to take charge in engineering, though.”

  “Not your concern, Mr. Desaix,” Burkhard ordered. “Just sit there and wait for the doc to send someone up here. Ms. Katz, what’s the enemy doing out there while we’re busy gabbing around out here?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Rachel replied, glancing over at Chris with concern. “They appear to be assessing the situation, themselves.”

  “I’m not going to abandon my engineers,” Chris replied vehemently before coughing again. “But I obviously can’t go down there at the moment. Jeff, could you take over tactical?”

  Cohen, who had been relatively unfazed by the sudden upheaval on the bridge, nodded. “I could, but in a battle it’s a good idea to have two people at tactical at all times.”

  Chris nodded. “I don’t think I should move far, but I think I could limp over to the tactical station, and I’d be a lot more comfortable on a chair then here on this floor. Rache, I want you to go down to engineering and take over as chief. I’ll take your station, but switch jobs with Jeff so that I only have to keep an eye on the monitors.”

  “You want me to take charge of your engineering staff?” Rachel gasped, incredulous. “I mean, I was able to handle the job on the Ishmael, but that’s only because I knew more than the others there. You’ve got this whole crew better than me, even the ones who were just first-years yet to pick a major.”

  “Maybe,” Chris replied. “But you’ve got enough knowledge now that I’d welcome you on my engineering team, and you know enough about command to make it work. You’ll have team members who may know more than you, but none of them could run the place. I taught you how to run the shop while I was teaching you to be an engineer, so you should be able to handle it. Plus, you’re the only person left with any real experience in the job. Go!”

  “Excuse me,” Burkhard intervened. “But I’d rather not have you making personnel decisions on my own bridge.”

  Chris scowled. “With Rappaport incapacitated I’m chief engineer, and we have an engineering crisis. I can’t get down there, myself, but I can handle the tactical position. Rache, on the other hand, can do the job, and technically falls under my chain of command since you authorized my adding her to the engineering roster. You can relieve me if you prefer, but as your chief engineer I’m telling you this is the only option.”

  The Captain and the Engineer stared at each other defiantly for several moments before an unlikely source provided them both an out.

  “Sir, I think we don’t need to worry about it,” Emily replied. “They just signaled their surrender. We don’t need two tactical officers at the moment.”

  Burkhard smiled thinly. “Very well. Mr. Desaix, you can take Ms. Katz’s station until the medic gets here. Ms. Katz, you are at the disposal of Engineering until further notice.” He paused. “And I’ll just forget what just happened here, since I’d rather not charge one of my best officers with insubordination. You get the pardon this one time because it’s your first real combat situation, and I know what sort of stress that can cause. Just don’t do it again.”

  Chris stiffened. “Yes... sir. I won’t, sir. And thank you, sir.”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  EAS Chihuahua, in Hyperspace Transit

  “You know, until those ships surrendered and we had a chance to look at them, I still wasn’t sure I trusted the information we got from Cygni,” Burkhard sighed. “I’m not looking forward to working with them, to be honest.”

  Beccera, fresh from the debriefing they had just concluded after his squadron – and the Cygni fleet – reunited with the Chihuahua, brushed that aside. He knew that the Keppler, his wife’s ship, had been abandoned... and that she was now on board the Chihuahua for medical treatment. “How’s my wife?”

  “Alive,” Burkhard replied gravely. “Whole, and healthy. A bit bruised up, and she was nursing a concussion last I saw her, but she’ll be okay. The officer who saved her life, Lieutenant Christian Shay, might not be able to say the same. He’s still in surgery.”

  “I knew that before the meeting,” Beccera snapped. “I mean, how is she? She was just very nearly killed by her home world for no apparent reason. That has to have come as a big shock to her.”

  “You’ll have to go see for yourself,” Burkhard suggested. “I’ve been too busy trying to get my ship repaired under a third string chief engineer to actually visit any of the wounded.”

  “Third string?” Beccera balked, momentarily startled out of his single-minded concern for his wife. “What happened to Jacques and Chris?”

  “Mr. Rappaport’s leg snapped when he was thrown into a table during the battle,” Burkhard reported. “He’ll be all right, but he’s not supposed to walk on it any time soon. I’ve temporarily switched him onto the bridge, to take over the engineering station’s bridge duties, since he can just sit in a chair most of the time he’s on station.”

  “And Lt. Desaix?” Colonel Beccera asked.

  “He had multiple injuries,” Burkhard spat, looking rather annoyed suddenly. “I’m not entirely sure when or what all happened, but between a nasty fall and a rather heroic effort to save Ms. Katz, he tore his abdominal muscles, cracked a rib, and... well, I’m pretty sure something happened to him to cause internal bleeding, since he literally was spitting blood last I saw him. Possible concussion, too. The sad thing is, he’ll be able to move around a lot sooner than Mr. Rappaport with his broken leg, and he’s been bugging Dr. Ehrlich to release him to go back to work early. He intends to take the acting chief engineer’s job on as soon as he gets out.” />
  Beccera shook his head. “He’s going to work himself to death if he isn’t careful.”

  “In this case, I think it’s more that he wants to give the current acting-Chief Engineer a bit of a break,” Burkhard said. He gave the other man a rather deadpan look. “He actually convinced Ms. Katz to take the job for a bit. She’s actually doing rather well – managed to get the hyperspace sensors reattached without the tender to help us, and settled a dispute which was threatening to halt repairs to the artificial gravity systems. She is rather overwhelmed with some of the more subtle aspects of the job, though, and Chris knows it.”

  “Good enough motivation for trying to escape the hospital,” Beccera mused. “Speaking of which... what room is Kimiko in?”

  “She’s scheduled to be transferred over to the tender Violet for the evacuation pretty soon,” Burkhard said. “So she’s probably on board the shuttle already. It’s not leaving for a few minutes, though, so you can catch her before she goes.”

  “Will do,” Beccera replied. “If you’ll excuse me...”

  He took off at a sprint. He might be able to get to the shuttle bay in time just by walking but he wasn’t going to lose any time with her, or take any chances he might miss the shuttle. He would see his wife before she left if it killed him.

  He very nearly collided with three people on the run, but he paid no attention until he heard a very familiar voice call him. “Drew? Is that you?”

  Col. Andrew Beccera, known to many as one of the most stable rocks in military service for over thirty years, very nearly fell stumbling to a stop as if he were a raw recruit being surprised by his drill sergeant when he heard that voice. He spun around, and almost couldn’t believe his eyes... even though he had known he would be seeing her shortly. “Kimiko!”

  She limped over to him as quickly as she could, almost leaping up into his arms with her last couple of steps. “I thought I heard something about you being in charge around here,” she said softly, holding him. “I couldn’t believe it, though. I was rescued by the Navy, not the Army, wasn’t I?”

  “Yeah, I’m sort of in charge here,” Beccera replied, grinning happily. It didn’t matter the circumstances – he was just glad to have her in his arms, alive and largely unhurt. “And yes, it was the Navy that rescued you.”

  “But how can that be?” she asked, perplexed. “You’re an Army officer!”

  Beccera laughed softly, smiling at her. “I said the same thing. It’s a long story, but the short version is that I was loaned to the Navy and the Marines for the Wargame. It turns out I was the senior-most officer in the fleet, thanks to that, so they gave me the temporary rank of commodore when they split the fleet up into four different squadrons. I suppose that’s a good thing – otherwise, I might not have been able to authorize your rescue mission.”

  Kimiko smiled, but her smile was very troubled. “And I’m very glad about that, but how did you even know we were going to be attacked? And who attacked us? We weren’t at war seven days ago, and that was no pirate force.”

  Beccera flinched. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard?” she asked. “Heard what?”

  “There was a massive surprise attack in Sol system,” he explained hesitantly. “We didn’t know who it was, but as we investigated we began to get tip-offs and clues. The captured ships just proved it, however.”

  Kimiko looked at him inquiringly. He didn’t seem to want to tell her what they had found... and, unfortunately, she could only think of one reason why. “It was Pleiades, wasn’t it?”

  Beccera couldn’t meet her eyes as he nodded. “I’m afraid so, love. And I’m very sorry.”

  She took a deep breath and sighed. “I see.” She paused. “And you’re probably going to play a major role in this war, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t see how I can avoid it,” he admitted. “And before you say anything, I know I might be coming up against your family if I do. I... don’t know what to do about that, but considering Earth itself was struck... I don’t see how I can not fight in this war.”

  Kimiko shook her head. “I wasn’t worried about that. My family won’t get involved in a war on Earth, I will promise you that. You, however... I’m very worried about you. A Navy command is out of your element, and it doesn’t sound like you’ll be re-joining the Army any time soon. Can you handle it?”

  Beccera nodded slowly. “Command is much the same, regardless of who you’re working for. When it comes to tactics and strategy... well, I have good people working for me.”

  She smiled confidently. “Then I’ll see you when you return. My fellow scientists and I are being taken to the orbital hospital at Barnard’s Star to be checked out. I’ll wait there until you can contact me again... and you will. You’ve never failed at anything you’ve ever tried to do, and so as long as you really try, here. I believe you’ll make it work.” And, she didn’t say aloud, I’ll be praying for you.

  Beccera nodded, offering her his arm to escort her the rest of the way to the shuttle bay. I wish I had your confidence, Kimiko...

  ——————————

  Chris sighed, looking over Rachel’s analysis from his bed in sickbay. He wasn’t able to leave just yet, but he’d managed to beg and plead for an update on the investigation into the enemy ships so he wouldn’t go crazy from boredom. “Yeah, I agree. There just isn’t enough left of their ECM systems to figure out how they work or how to counter them. They sabotaged them quite effectively before they surrendered. We should have taken some of that time arguing on the bridge to at least try a few things on the passive scans to penetrate their stealth. I didn’t even think of that until just now. Damn.”

  “I think you can be forgiven for being a little distracted,” Rachel mused dryly. “When I last saw you on the bridge, you were coughing up blood. I’d say that’s a pretty good excuse for not thinking up something no-one else considered, either.”

  “I understand the Keppler and Pascal were able to detect something on their more advanced passive sensors, though,” he said, deciding not to argue the point. At least, not when he was still nursing several broken ribs and just-repaired internal injuries. The dull pain he still felt was enough to kill much of his taste for debate with his favorite verbal sparring partner. “Do we at least know what those sensors can detect that ours can’t, exactly?”

  “Solar flare activity,” Rachel replied. “Most ships are designed to filter out sensor disruption from sunspots and solar flares. The Keppler and the Pascal, however, were designed to study stars – their sensors are tuned specifically to pick them up.”

  Chris considered that for a moment. “So they mimic solar flares to make our sensors ignore them?”

  Rachel cocked her head as she considered how to answer that. “Well, thanks to a certain science expedition we rescued, we’ve had a lot more scientists on board than usual to ask that question to, and their analysis suggests that it’s more complicated than that. After all, Keppler and Pascal weren’t detecting the ships themselves, only the ‘solar flare activity’ their stealth technology was mimicking. The scientists seem to think that the ‘sunspot detection’ was merely detection of their communications between each other rather than the ships themselves; if they were running silent, we wouldn’t have gotten that much. It’s something, but not much.”

  Chris ran his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. “Hm... an uncrackable technology that we’ve cracked, but the moment they know we’ve cracked it we’ve lost the advantage.”

  “The Second World War on Earth had several stories like that,” Rachel sighed. “It’s not much of a ‘crack,’ though. The supposed ‘solar flare activity’ wouldn’t have even been noticed in real space; ambient solar energy would have masked it. In the starless void of hyperspace, though, it stood out.”

  “So it’s useless at the moment,” Chris said. “But it’s our best lead. Maybe we can follow that thread through those stealth systems, in time.”

  “Perhaps,” Rachel ad
mitted. They lapsed into a bit of a silence after that. Rachel bit her lip nervously – she wanted Chris to be able to get out of sickbay and back to his job, letting her return to the tactical slot – not just because she was finding the job of Chief Engineer a little overwhelming, but because she knew he was bored and going stir crazy. The silence wasn’t helping. “So... what does the doctor say about when you’ll be allowed out of here?”

  “She hasn’t been by to see me in hours,” Chris sighed. “She’s not only taking care of our wounded, but also helping care for the crew and passengers of all of the science ships. Sick bay on the Keppler was destroyed, and its entire staff was killed, so she’s been overwhelmed.”

  “Well, that was the case,” Dr. Ehrlich said, coming into the room. “But now that Commodore Beccera and his ships are here, there are other doctors who can take over. Captain Burkhard wanted me to try and clear you and a few of the other wounded, now that I’m free. He wants you up available first, if possible, so you’ve just become my top priority. Rappaport was just cleared for desk duty, so he’ll take your job on the bridge, and he wants Ms. Katz freed up for her spot on tactical, so he needs you to take over as Chief Engineer.”

  “Why does he need me so soon?” Rachel asked. “I was under the impression we were still waiting for some stragglers from Cygni to catch up before we began the attack.”

  “Commodore Beccera just returned to his new flagship, the Natsugumo, after giving the final briefing to Burkhard. I think he wants both of you available for a tactical conference prior to the assault. I told him I’d make sure you could attend.” She paused. “Ms. Katz, it’s possible Mr. Desaix may want some privacy while I remove his hospital gown.”

  Chris smirked cheekily, his eyes twinkling with humor as he glanced up at Rachel. “Oh, she can stay if she wants to. I have no problem with that.”