Jethro: First to Fight

by Hechtl, Chris

  While they were doing that the four remaining fighters launched. They scissored in, distracting the enemy while another war, a cyber war, raged on.

  Chapter 33

  “Sir!” Captain Maul said, pounding on the door to his old quarters. He heard soft sounds then a snarl. If it was anything less important he would have left it for later, but this couldn't wait.

  “What!” the admiral snarled, yanking the hatch open. He was naked, trying to belt a robe on that was obviously not his. Captain Maul looked away from the admiral's flag pole as his boss got himself covered. He could see a pair of naked legs hanging over the side of the bed. There was a red hand print on one bare flank.

  The admiral grunted in irritation and the Captain flushed, looking away into the companionway.

  “Master, come back to bed,” a silky feminine voice pouted. The Captain caught sight of a quirt the admiral had in his hand. The admiral tossed it behind him.

  “Sir, sorry, but Sirius has been destroyed.”

  The admiral's red face swelled even further then paled as if someone had thrown a bucket of water on it. “What did you just say?” he demanded quietly.

  “Sir, Sirius and her group were ambushed. Something hit them, we're not sure about the details. We were in contact with them per your orders when something started jamming. My tactical officer thought it was a malfunction at first, but when we didn't get a reply he ran a sensor sweep. That's when CIC reported Sirius and the other ships had gone dark and well, this...” he held up a tablet.

  The admiral snatched it out of his hands. He stared at it blearily. Blood was still collected in the wrong head, but it was slowly being released. He frowned. “What am I... shit,” he said, recognizing the infrared overlay of a broken ship. “Damn it to hell, what happened?”

  “I'm not sure sir, but we picked up a flash of a larger ship and shuttles in the area. CIC reported a drive consistent with a cruiser. The prey has gone dark as well.”

  “That Pyrax ship? But it's too soon! And they came from Triang right? Not B452A! What the hell is going on??” The admiral demanded.

  “I think we have to assume it's here sir.”

  “And you say it's gone?”

  “It's back under stealth. Or at least gone dark.”

  “So it might be dead?” the admiral asked hopefully.

  “We can't assume that. I'm not sure what's going on.”

  “Then find out!” the admiral fumed, thrusting the tablet back into his hands with excessive force. “Do that now! Send a recon drone. Send two of them! Hell send ten for all I care! But get me some damn information!”

  “Yes sir!” the Captain said, stepping back.

  The admiral scowled then stepped back through the hatch. “I'll be on the bridge in ten.” He heard a growl behind him. He looked over his shoulder for a long moment. “Make that twenty.”

  “Yes sir,” the Captain said dutifully. Technically it was up to the admiral, he really didn't need him holding his hand or worse, looking over his shoulder and trying to find some way of pinning it on a certain Captain.

  “Get what you can. Get the drones going. Get the a sitrep on the fleet and station.”

  “I'll get it done sir,” the Captain replied, nodding.

  “You do that,” the admiral growled. He turned, slowly closing the door. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get my mad out.”

  The hatch clanged shut just as the Captain heard a giggle then a slap and squeal. He shook his head, about faced, and headed back to the bridge. Unlike some people he had real work to do.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  When the brief battle was over only a slightly wounded, but triumphant Firefly remained. The Captain ordered the drive dropped to standby mode, there was no sense giving the enemy a clearer sight of it. If they were lucky it had been overlooked. Not that she was going to count on that.

  They licked their wounds, treated their casualties, and recovered the fighters. A SAR shuttle was dispatched. It picked up the three drifting life pods and pirates who went EVA. Another shuttle boarded the wrecks and picked a few more personnel off. The pathetic pirates plucked off the air bleeding wrecks were grateful for any reprieve. The Dutchman had been pretty shook up, each dropped to their knees and clutched at their savior's sobbing, or in two cases, went stark raving nuts and had to be sedated. One guy had curled into a fetal ball while in space, once recovered he refused to move from that position.

  Once they were in a group they clammed up however. There were sixty seven pirates recovered, all but one were male. Nine were in sickbay under guard and heavy sedation.

  The Horathians filled the ship's brig. The Marines who had been housed there had been kicked out to the boat bays. They would just have to deal with it, they wouldn't be on the ship much longer.

  “One big happy family,” the Captain said, checking the camera feed of the main boat bay. It was a sea of Marine green.

  “Yeah. And there is going to be a lot of empty bunks soon,” Shelby said softly. She'd seen a pair of lovers climb into a closet to get it on, only to be kicked out by a troop of elves living inside. She felt sorry for them, they had no place to go and little time before combat.

  “Are we ready?” Captain Mayweather asked, adjusting her uniform.

  “It looks that way Captain. All shuttles have been recovered. All personnel accounted for. We've got two dead when that buss blew, ten wounded, most of them Marines. Missiles are down to two hundred forty.”

  “So magazines are three quarters full. And we've got two more playmates.”

  “With friends.”

  “Yes. Let's move out. Drop us into stealth again.”

  “Captain, if we do that we won't make the planned timing with the fighter attack.”

  “I'm not going to go all the way in under stealth, I just want to keep them guessing a little longer.”

  “Aye Captain, rigging for silent running now.”

  “And Commander...”

  “Sorry skipper, devil's advocate. Part of the job.”

  “I know that. I'm fine with that.”

  “They will be ready for us Captain.”

  The Captain nodded, cold sober. She knew the risks. One good hit at just the wrong angle and a shot could punch through their hull and tear their hyperdrive apart. Or worse, blow them apart. They all knew the risks. But with lives on the line, they were going in anyway. “If they are smart they'll pull out. Count their blessings and get out while the getting was good. But if I'm right, this Cartwright may be part political animal. He may know that if he returned with his tail tucked between his legs he'd lose his head.”

  “I see.”

  “So, he'll risk losing it anyway. Let's be a good headsman shall we?” the Captain asked, smiling slightly.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Admiral Cartwright came onto the bridge an hour after he'd intended, but the Captain wisely didn't draw attention to that little slip. From the look on the admiral's face he had indeed gotten some of his mad out, but he didn't know at what amount of expense. He frowned briefly, then shrugged when the admiral looked at him.

  “CIC has gone over what we've picked up. It's sketchy as hell admiral, but I'm pretty sure they are right, it is the cruiser.”

  “Firefly.”

  “Yes sir. There is no way a ship that mass and with that number of missile tubes could be anything else,” the Captain said, waving to the main plot. The admiral's eyes cut to the frozen display. Up until his entry the Captain had obviously been going over what sensor readings and optical footage they had available. Unfortunately not a lot.

  “Drones are away, but it will be at least forty hours before they are in range of the... ambush sight.”

  “By that time they could be long gone. On their way here.”

  “Yes sir,” the Captain replied, nodding.

  “Which means we'll have to figure out something and fast.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “No other drive readings?”

 
“No sir, they've dropped back into stealth,” the Captain replied.

  “Which means they could come in on a straight baseline course, reversing the track Sirius's group had followed, or they could go wide and slingshot in from another angle and hit us from a flank.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Get with the group commanders. I want a conference in twenty minutes. While they get their shit together, form a defensive rosette. We don't need any more surprises.”

  “We're not going to run?” the Captain asked in surprise. The admiral scowled at him. “Sir?” he added weakly.

  “No. We're not cowards. We're not going to run. This prize is too important to lose to one ship no matter how big it thinks it's britches are. We've got the numbers, we'll use them. We're the hunters, it's about time we acted like it,” the admiral growled.

  “Aye aye sir,” the Captain said, feeling a bit nervous. It was one thing to hunt unarmed civilian freighters, quite another to hunt something that could shoot back.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  “Captain, a moment,” Firefly said. The Captain looked up from the damage report.

  “Something?”

  “Yes. I have come to understand why I didn't get anywhere with the gunships. They aren't salvage, they are new construction.”

  “New... did you say new construction?”

  “Yes. A lot of their parts were off the shelf, but their computers were apparently based on civilian hardware unfamiliar to me. And firewalled.”

  “Ah. I see.” They had hoped that Firefly could have pulled off the same stunt admiral Irons and Sprite had pulled off in Pyrax, taking control and lobotomizing or activating the self destruct on some or all of the smaller ships. That unfortunately hadn't happened.

  “Yes. One of the frigates seems to be new construction as well. Built from a mix of salvaged civilian and military grade hardware, on a new hull.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes. So, we have some strategic thinking to think about.”

  “You mean later. Much later. We have a battle to win in...” she looked at her chrono. “Twenty hours.”

  “Yes ma'am.”

  “Anything more on their specs?”

  “Quite a bit actually. Lieutenant Purple Thorn?” the AI asked, turning to the tactical officer.

  “Yes,” the elf said. “I was going to finish, but anyway,” she said in irritation. “Here goes. The gunships have two point defense turrets, one dorsal, one ventral, both mounted near the center of gravity of the ship. Both are slow firing, we didn't have time to take them apart so I'm not sure if it is because the ship's have only a tiny civilian grade capacitors or something else. Two of the gunships have a small class 1 spinal mount neutron particle beam. They also have two cells of missiles, short range twenty missiles in each cell.”

  “How short ranged?”

  “Under fifty kilometers of drive times skipper.”

  “Ah.”

  “The point defense lasers are ball turrets, each with a one eighty degree firing arch and a three sixty degree rotation. They have the standard one meter aperture so they are limited to about one hundred km range.”

  “Okay.”

  “Crew of four to five max, she's really an oversized fighter. Short range.”

  “Okay.”

  “From the brief look at their wiring and from going over the footage of the battle, I've determined that they can't fire both turrets at the same time. They stagger fire, fire one, then as it's recharging fire the other.”

  “I see,” the Captain mused. “Spinal mount you said?”

  “The particle gun? Yes ma'am. One of the Frigates had a rail gun of all things instead of a particle gun.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes ma'am. I'm wondering why. A problem with particle weapon supply?” she shrugged her tiny shoulders. “And why they didn't apply that to the missiles instead.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “True.”

  “So they can't hit what they aren't heading towards. Okay,” the Captain said, nodding. “We can use that.”

  “The point defense lasers aren't powerful enough to pierce our shields unless we have more than one attack us at the same time in the same sector.”

  “It's an oversized pop gun with the shields of a shuttle craft.”

  “Really?”

  “From the look we got of them, yes,” the elf said. “Their armor is almost nonexistent. Which is understandable, the weight trade off,” she shrugged.

  “No fullerene? No diamond?”

  “There is a refractive coating but it's cheap. A micron thin layer of aluminum and silica. Our weapons go through it like tissue paper.”

  “Ah,” the Captain replied. “Still, if we stay out of their engagement basket...”

  “How?”

  “If they're running they can't hit us with the particle gun. And if they're running they'll conserve all their power for their drive not their pop guns.”

  “True.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, the frigates are manta class, they have one particle gun, also spinal mount, and two microwave guns, these are mounted on the tips of the drive pods.”

  “Okay.”

  “Along with the microwave guns they have a plasma weapon cluster at each. I'm not sure I follow the logic here, but I'm assuming it's for show. It would make for a big bang.”

  “Plasma being short ranged and unstable?”

  “Yes. Again, point defense turrets, two dorsal, two ventral and one on each flank. Again one kilometer range and limited to firing one turret at a time.”

  The Captain nodded thoughtfully. “Missiles?” she asked.

  “Again the short ranged missiles, all crude, nonnuclear in design. Four cells of twenty missiles, but there are mounting points on the hull to carry what looks like either torpedoes or capital missiles.”

  “Oh? That would make more sense on a gunboat.”

  “The gunboat is for interdiction and running down a target Captain. Frigates are only slightly slower but have the hyperdrive.”

  “True.”

  “Civilian fusion reactor, civilian grade hyperdrive. Crew of about a dozen humans, most likely hot bunking.”

  “I'd hate to have to be in that. It was bad enough in Sun-Yat.”

  “True.”

  “Armor?”

  “Four centimeter thick layered armor. Again, I didn't get a sample, I wish I had. Again, no fullerene, but there are reflective and ablative elements in it.”

  “Heh, they're so toast,” a rating said softly. The Captain looked his way and then away. It was true, firefly's armor was over a meter thick over her vitals, and arranged in layers. There was even some space in two layers for spalling effects to trap shrapnel or plasma from breaching the inner hull. There were layers of diamond, fullerene, sapphire, and other even more classified materials, all arranged at angles in an attempt to deflect or absorb incoming damage. The armor was thinner over non-vital parts of the ship, down to in some cases ten centimeters, but still better than what the pirates had.

  “Someone didn't think these designs through did they?” the Captain mused. “I'm assuming the corvettes are right around the same lines?” she asked, shooting the elf a questioning look.

  The elf nodded. “For the most part, these are either designs thrown together for militias to defend a system in haste, or...”

  “Or?”

  “Or they were purpose built for piracy in mind Captain. To chase down unarmed freighters, not tangle with a proper warship at all.”

  “True, so let's show them what a real warship can do shall we?” the Captain asked. There were grins around the bridge at that. Feral grins. One or two of her crew had seen what the pirates did to prisoners up close and personal. The idea of getting some of their own back was a powerful one. She couldn't really blame them, but she'd have to watch for excesses.

  “So, to summarize what you are telling me,” the Captain said. “The tin cans are it. Once we
kick or kill them there is nothing else that can hurt us?”

  “Not individually Captain, but in concert...”

  “I know. But still.”

  “Essentially... yes.”

  “Okay, why not just say that in the first place?” the Captain asked, with a bit of mirth in her voice. She knew the report of the pirates and how outclassed they were was going to make the rounds on the ship soon enough. Morale should get a punch in the arm.

  “I was getting to that,” the elf said. “The implications strategically...” she shook her head and blinked her goat eyes. “And I wanted to be sure.”

  “Fine, be thorough while we've still got some time. Right now we have a battle to fight. But log all this deep thought for later.”

  “Aye aye Captain.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Just as the enemy got set up Firefly's AI and the cybers from Prime combined their efforts to attack the pirates. They spammed the Horathian's computer and communications net, hammered them with worms and viruses at a thousand hits a second, cut off their radio net with jamming. Some of the viruses got through the weak firewall. Once they were in they copied the headers and information about the ship and then adapted their attacks on other ships with that information. The Horathian's didn't see it coming.

  The same thing happened on the station, the cybers launched a divide and conquer campaign. They cut Major Zimmer's groups into small chunks by slamming doors shut, trapping groups into pockets with little life support.

  Major Zimmer had anticipated such tactics, after all, they had been doing it for the past ten days. But the stationers caught him off guard by using robots and volunteer welders to weld hatches shut in areas he had thought had been secured.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  “Shit,” the tac officer muttered, checking his feed. Today had seemed like a good day, things were finally getting somewhere on the station, they had destroyed a planetary defense center on the planet last night with a rock, and now a freighter was sailing in all fat dumb and happy. But now things were going south fast. “What the hell's going on?” he demanded, turning to glare at the JTO. “Fitzgerald!” he snarled.