Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Evasive maneuvers, Mr. DuPont,” barked Officer Tremblay.

  Instantly the ship lurched around and underneath us, the emergency power of DuPont’s suddenly erratic course making itself felt. Then, as if by a miracle, the next concentrated barrage of turbo-laser fire lanced by us, mere meters away from our shields.

  It’s pretty hard to jink and dodge around space in a big thundering battleship, but somehow DuPont seemed to have managed it! When fire from the Omicron petered out into a hail of random heavy laser fire, the whole bridge seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

  As Tactical started high-fiving themselves, and DuPont and Shepherd grinned at each other, I was about to get in on some of the celebratory action when a message popped up on arm of my throne.

  With irritation I noticed it was listed under the header of one Technician Steiner. Glancing up at the petite little communications tech, I saw her give me a short nod and a significant look before leaning back down over her console in the communications section.

  What could be so important that she would interrupt me in the middle of battle and make me take the extra time of reading it on a screen instead of just blurting it out and letting me get back to business. I didn’t like any of the scenarios I could come up with, and I determined that if this was a false alarm, she and I were going to have a little chat later.

  I quickly scanned the message, and when the import of its words reached me, I stared wide-eyed for a second.

  —Admiral, the Long Range Array has once again been activated. Somehow they managed to spoof our monitoring program and we were unaware that it was in use until Mike just did another manual check. Whoever they are, they’ve been transmitting and we can’t tell for how long.

  Lisa—

  My first thought in response to this message: Blast and Double Blast!

  Forcing myself to take a deep breath (one soon followed by several more) I tried to think pro-actively instead of reactively. In the end I couldn’t come up for any good reason for someone to be transmitting from my ship in the middle of a pitched battle, I don’t care whose side they were on.

  I typed out a quick return message to Technician Steiner instructing her to let me know as soon as the Long Range array stopped transmitting before pulling out the data slate I had used to contact Suffic after Lisa Steiner’s visit to my room. Linking it into the internal communication system, I tapped out a sixteen digit code.

  Pressing the execute glyph, I waited expectantly. It was irrational and I knew it, but still I’d expected to feel something. Suppressing my sense of disappointment, I glanced over at the internal communications technician.

  Lisa’s eyes widened and she glanced up at me. Raising her hand in the air she gave me a thumbs up sign. She quickly typed a message. —They’ve stopped transmitting, Admiral.—

  Breath I hadn’t even been aware I’d been holding whooshed out of me. Cocking an eyebrow and flashing a superior smile, to let her and anyone else who might be surreptitiously monitoring me for a reaction, I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs. I like to think I projected the image of a man in full and total control of the situation.

  Whoever said a thermal detonator attached to the relay that handled the main control load to and from the long range array wasn’t the way to go when you had conspirators plotting against you? I had to remember to thank Suffic later.

  “Sweet Murphy, what are they doing,” demanded Science Officer Jones.

  My head whipped around and just as quickly as that my carefully constructed pose was destroyed.

  “They’re linking the Shield Generator to the Grav Plates and shunting the entire load through one of the ship’s two primary power mains,” Mr. Harcone, the Damage Control Officer said hesitantly.

  “Exactly!” Jones flared, standing up and leveling a finger at his screen, “Those systems are not designed for something like this, they could explode!”

  “Our ‘two’ primary power mains,” I inquired, struggling to sound mild. I must have failed.

  Heads whipped around and our Science Officer’s attention fixated on me.

  “The ship has two main power distribution systems. Each one is more than capable of carrying the entire load for the ship; we have two of them for redundancy,” he said making the last word sound distasteful, “in case of battle damage.”

  “The cross linkages they’re making between the systems should take weeks of prep time to set up at a minimum, Admiral,” protested Officer Harcone, our liaison with engineering and damage control.

  “They’re cutting corners and taking risks,” I replied dismissively. That was nothing new onboard this ship, “So long as you don’t suspect sabotage—” I started, only to be cut off.

  “You don’t understand, Admiral, what I mean is that it’s literally impossible to make these sorts of connections in the time frame we have. These cross linkages and relay junctions had to have been prepared long in advance,” Harcone explained, shaking his head and pointing to something on his screen.

  I shook my head in response, mouth tightening. I not only wouldn’t have understood it if I could’ve seen it, but more importantly no one with normal human eye sight could be expected to see anything he was pointing at from as far away as I was from his screen.

  “Are you saying they’ve been making secret modifications to my ship, and no one’s bothered to notice or report this,” I demanded, my voice in unison with my body as I stood up.

  Marcone looked surprised for a second, “No, Sir,” he said hastily, “Whatever they’re doing, these modifications haven’t been done on the trip from Easy Haven to here,” he said with assurance, once again pointing at his screen.

  “I can neither see that screen you’re pointing to, nor,” I said raising a finger as his mouth opened eagerly, “would I likely be able to understand it in the kind of time frame we have available here. So explain to me in simple terms how they are able to compress weeks’ worth of work into a matter of minutes!”

  For the first time Marcone looked uncertain. Science Officer Jones on the other hand looked at me like I was stupid.

  “Someone, perhaps even our very own dearly departed Chief Engineer, must have made these modifications at some point in the past,” he said speaking slowly, as if to a child.

  I shot the science officer a look that said as clear as a blaster bolt that no one on this ship was irreplaceable.

  “Then how are they aware…and we’ve no idea….” once again I trailed off. That answer was perhaps unknowable at this point. What was more important was the fact they were going to be able to actually attempt what they claimed they could do.

  “We proceed with the operational plan then,” I said flatly, sitting back down in my chair. A lot of things weren’t making sense right now. I had hidden communications, secret linkages between the shield systems and the internal gravity system, pirates on the one side and parliamentary interests to deal with on the other. Something had to give, and soon.

  Chapter 15: Close Encounters, as observed from the Flag Bridge

  The Lucky Clover came barreling into point blank range, at the last minute cutting our engines and slewing to the side. As the Pirate Station almost unbelievably continued to miss our ship with wild shots all around us, we unleashed all the fury of a Caprian build Dreadnaught Class Battleship on a single point in space.

  “It’s going to be close!” roared Warrant Officer Laurent.

  “She’s spotting,” yelped one of the Sensor Operators. “Looks like the loss of those shield generators, combined with our broadside has started opening a hole!”

  “Keep pouring it on,” screamed Laurent.

  “Initiating Maneuver,” yelped our Helmsman, “here goes nothing!”

  “I have a power spike in the shield generators,” reported the main Shield Operator with rising concern.

  “Ship’s crew is to take emergency crash positions. I repeat: the crew is to take emergency crash positions immediately, the ship is undergoing emergency deceleratio
n,” Tremblay relayed over the main speaker system, his voice distributed throughout the ship.

  On the main screen the lines representing the power of our broadside, started to wither.

  “I’m losing power to the main guns,” snarled Laurent.

  “Shield spotting is fading,” cried the shield operator, “The Omicron is compensating despite those lost generators.”

  “We need more power or we’re gonna bounce!” barked Laurent.

  “Instruct main Engineering—” I started.

  The Lights on the Flag Bridge flickered and everything turned red.

  “We’ve gone to emergency power,” reported Damage Control.

  “Shield load at One Hundred and Fifty percent and climbing,” screamed the Shield Operator.

  “There’s no power to the guns!” roared Laurent.

  The ship bucked underneath us.

  “Everything’s being routed through the gravity and shield systems,” reported Officer Harcone as the bucking increased.

  “I’ve got a wicked shimmy going on here,” yelled DuPont as the bucking turned into a jerky side to side motion, “adjust those inertial compensators before we’re splattered against the wall plating!”

  “The inertial compensators are already beyond factory settings, and have been linked into this abortion of a maneuver,” Harcone said his voice rising, even as his fingers flew over his console.

  “200% of maximum tolerance!” hollered the Shield Operator,” slapping his console, “I’m locked out, I can’t shut it down! The Shields are about to overload!”

  “No,” I ordered, thundering out of my chair and down into the pit containing the majority of our bridge workers including the Shield Operator, “hold steady and don’t try to override the shield controls!” I didn’t like this talk of being shut out of control of anything, but even more I failed to like the idea of some mere shield operator trying to throw a monkey in the works because he was scared.

  “Relays are overloading,” reported the Damage Control Officer, “one of our fusion cores is about to go into automatic shut down!”

  I whirled around to yell at him too, when all of a sudden there was a crash and the ship lurched out from underneath me.

  “Ayiee!” my scream was cut short by my back and the rest of my body hitting the ceiling.

  Seeing the floor return with surprising speed I crossed my forearms in front of my head. Slamming into a console in the damage control section, my nose crashed into my crossed arms, which in turn took the majority of the impact. Like a top slowly coming to rest, first I slammed into the console and then the floor. Curling into a ball I rolled down the aisle, flopping and somersaulting until a pair of legs broke my forward motion.

  For a moment I just lay there, stunned. I was still seeing stars, everything hurt but most especially my nose and arms.

  A hand reached down and helped me up.

  “Admiral, are you okay? You really need to get back into your chair, Sir,” asked a concerned Technician, “it’s really not safe out here.”

  “I never would have guessed,” I mumbled sarcastically.

  I would have continued, but the process of getting to my feet sent a lance of pain through my side.

  “We’re gonna make it,” shrieked the Navigator.

  A cheer started, then there was a crash. This crash was different; unlike the previous one which threw us around, this one sounded like something had broken off the hull.

  “Cut it out you blasted jinx, before you kill us all,” snarled the Helmsman DuPont.

  “Sorry,” yelped Navigator Shepherd, there followed the sound of knuckles rapping a hard wooden surface.

  “We’ve lost our rear port shield Generator,” reported Officer Marcone.

  “Is it gone, gone, or just temporarily overloaded?” demanded Officer Tremblay.

  I started to get up when it felt like a giant suddenly sat on my chest, pinning me to the ground.

  Grunts and groans sounded throughout the Flag Bridge.

  “I can’t pull us out of this spin,” moaned DuPont.

  “Battle Bridge…is…now routing everything through…the…hyperspace def—deflector,” Science Officer Jones managed to grind out, and despite the laborious effort of producing the words, he still managed to sound outraged and disapproving.

  Suddenly the giant known as gravity threw me toward the front wall, except this time I was only able to move a few inches or feet before the console in front of me stopped my motion. Crammed under the feet of the Damage control operators and wedged into the crack where the console met the floor, there was nothing I could do but holler my defiance at the hoary old gods of cold space and the forces of gravity.

  “It was just overloaded, coming back online now,” exclaimed the Damage Control Officer.

  “We’re going in,” screamed DuPont, producing a sound any teenage girl would be proud to call her own.

  The giant on my chest increased to the size of an elephant and the ship slammed into something. The console above me exploded into a series of hot sparks that rained everywhere, including on my face.

  “We stopped. We made it,” declared DuPont, this time sounding more like a man excited to be alive and less like a terrified young girl. The gravity crushing everyone into their chairs or, in my case the floor, suddenly let up.

  “Shields are down to only one generator,” yelled the Shield Operator.

  “Counter battery fire,” ordered Laurent, shouting to be heard above the cheers spontaneously breaking out among the bridge.

  “Focus, people,” roared Tremblay, “we’re at point blank range!”

  Slapping at my face to take the fuzz out of my brain, I rolled out from under the damage control console.

  Hands reached down to help me, but I slapped them out of the way, balling up my fists as I went.

  Staggering out of the damage control area, ignoring my various aches and pains, I lunged for the Admiral’s Throne.

  “Impossible,” yelled Jones, “You can’t just siphon your forward motion into an artificially created gravity sump like that, it defies the laws of physics!”

  “The rear port shield generator’s not just overloaded this time; it sheared off the hull and slammed into the Omicron,” cut in Damage Control Officer Marcone.

  “That’s our brand new shield generator,” protested Officer Tremblay. As if by pointing out the obvious reasons it shouldn’t have been the one destroyed, he could bend reality to his will.

  Ignoring the ruckus of orders, counter orders and general reports of madness and mayhem, I climbed back into my seat.

  “Get me my power armor,” I snapped, catching the eye of a battered yeoman.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, unstrapping from an emergency crash seat he’d been wise enough to take refuge in, unlike myself who’d leap from the safety of my chair like a fool.

  As the yeoman made a bee-line for my ready room, I turned my attention to the main screen.

  We were in so close to the Omicron that our sensor display could make out every deadly detail of the blasted thing.

  But what caught my attention wasn’t the Pirate Station, it was the two Caprian built Dreadnaught class battleships we were nestled in between.

  The Lucky Clover shook and shields flared. “Red Alert, this is a Red Alert, hull breach in sector 8, and 11,” shrilled the overhead speakers.

  “Cut that off,” instructed Tremblay.

  “Why in the world are we stuck between two battleships, at point black range,” I yelled in sudden rage before remembering it had been my orders which had placed us there.

  “Our boarders are crawling all over those two ships, Admiral,” barked Officer Laurent.

  “It’s the only way we’re able to stay clear of the majority of the Station’s heavy weaponry,” explained DuPont, still riding his controls.

  As I watched, a powerful beam lanced just past our ship as the Helmsman crept us just that much closer in between the two Blood Reaver ships.

  “The
only way we won’t be blasted to pieces by that much firepower is to use those ships as cover,” barked Laurent, “better two pirate ships than that whole Battle Station!”

  I didn’t like what I was hearing, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Cycle those barrels as fast as you can and suppress those pirates,” Laurent screamed into his speaker.

  Chapter 16: Counter Fire

  “There’s too many of them, Chief,” screamed Warrant Lesner, the acting deck chief for the Portside picking himself up off the floor, “we’ve already lost too many guns on the way in!”

  “I always thought the mythical Montagne Maneuver was just another piece of space garbage, a bit of malarkey told around the poker table,” Bogart said, shaking his head in awe. “A-a holo-fiction created by the overactive imaginations of the big Studios,”

  “If anyone would know how Captain Montagne, the old Jean Luc, figured the trick of stopping a ship on a dime, it would be someone privy to the family secrets,” exclaimed Lesner, “the Little Admiral doesn’t need our help with ship’s maneuvers, he needs us taking out those enemy gunners!”

  “You’re blasted well right,” growled the Chief Gunner, “remove the focusing arrays on half our remaining heavy lasers, Assistant Deck Chief and insert the blanks.”

  “Grease monkey ,” Bogart yelled.

  “But Chief, you can’t use blanks for targeted fire,” protested Lesner.

  The Chief Gunner scowled at his assistant, “Exactly, Warrant,” he said shortly before turning to face the grease monkey who’d just run over.

  “Grab a couple friends and pull out as many blank, uncut arrays as we’ve still got on this ship,” he instructed the Rating, “and hop to it, grease monkey!” he roared.

  Not bothering to make sure the grease monkey was following his orders, the Chief of the Gun Deck turned at the sound of another set of blast doors dropping down, signaling the loss of another gun turret.