Frontline sf-4

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Flight deck, get ready to retrieve the Clever Dream. She's space worthy but I don't know anything else about her condition, so have emergency crews ready and have people with medical training standing by. They have refugees with them,” Alice called down to Chief Vercelli.

  “Aye, Captain. My people will be standing ready.”

  “Now we just have to keep it all together until the Clever Dream can get to us,” Alice said as she looked at the Triton status screen to one side of the command seat and watched the larger tactical display at the front of the bridge. The shields were holding, the gunnery deck was already firing a mixture of heavy seeker shells and electromagnetic pulse flak while the torpedo bays were loading high speed fusion torpedoes with simple guidance systems. The ship's shields were down to ninety three percent and recharging, drawing on four of the ships massive fusion generators but there was an entire squadron of fighters on their way, and several West Watch and Regent Galactic destroyers were bringing weapons to bear. “Hurry the hell up Jake.”

  The Saviour

  “We have a new contact, sir, the Triton, ” announced the lead tactical officer in the forward control pit.

  The bridge of the Saviour, when put to its full use was nothing like the Triton's and he enjoyed its state of the art responsiveness, the tight organization of the stations and the pedestal mounted command chair. He could see what everyone on the bridge was doing with three quick glances and the command holograms he viewed were angled especially so only he could see them. Even someone standing right behind him wouldn't see them clearly.

  “Thank you Garrison, there's a pay bonus coming your way,” Wheeler said from the command seat as he brought the tactical sensor data to the center of his display. The hologram focused in on the Triton, manoeuvring perfectly to avoid most of the enemy fire that was being hurled its way. The defensive fields were deflecting and absorbing all of it, gunners were effectively repelling incoming craft, shredding half the fighters who were unlucky enough to cross the dorsal side of the broad ship or get caught by one of her intense hangar defence beam turrets or pulse cannons.

  He checked the status of his own ship. The Saviour was behind allied lines and only adding its own firepower to the defence sporadically. It was weathering the battle extremely well. Shielding was holding at ninety nine point seven percent and his squadron of fighters was in a light inner defence rotation, his pilots barely had the opportunity to fire a shot at Carthan craft. “We've found our target. Recover our patrol craft and launch everything we have with a heavy munitions loadout. Bring us about and start advancing on the Triton at best speed. All batteries are to fire on the sections I'm marking.”

  Wheeler watched as his crew went to work, passing orders down the line, activity radiated out from the bridge in great waves starting at his elevated command seat. Dozens of heavy interceptor class starfighters were launched with perfect precision and great speed, power to the shields was increased, gauss and particle accelerator cannons began firing on Triton while his helmsman used allied and enemy ships alike for cover.

  They were just beginning to close the gap between themselves and the other ship as his quarry turned to hide behind a moon tens of thousands of kilometres away. Already the effect they were having on the Triton was evident. Wheeler couldn't help grin. I might not have to chase these bastards across the galaxy after all.

  Departure

  Jake ignored the crushing headache and gnawing hunger as he finished familiarizing himself with the controls of the Clever Dream and listened to the reactor power up. He knew Dementia had already tested the whole system, that the small holographic and two dimentional displays all told him that the remade machine was performing within its optimal range, but that didn't mean he had to trust it.

  The tactical screen suddenly marked Triton's location and as he glanced at the status of the exterior hatches and verified they were all closed up he started to lift off.

  “I'm opening the main hangar doors and raising the shields, there are soldiers outside who may be ready for our departure.”

  “Do you know what kind of armaments they have?” Ayan asked.

  “I don't imagine they have enough firepower to sufficiently damage our energy shielding, the anti air guns in Damshir are another story, however.”

  “I'll see if I can channel Minh a bit, he's pretty hard to hit,” Jake said as the nose of the long black vessel tilted up and he pushed the accelerators hard. The Clever Dream erupted from the hangar and turned tightly upward, pointed towards the darkened sky and the numerous protracted landing platforms that were in the way.

  Ayan braced herself and sucked air in through clenched teeth as the inertial dampeners began to struggle. Jake forced the ship up the center of the spaceport, twitching the controls just in time to avoid colliding with the underside of one thick platform after another. A screech sounded against the outer hull as he guided them around one of the last ones. “Hope we didn't need that,” he said under his breath as he punched the solid rocket booster activation control and the wining of the inertial dampeners became a screech that was loud enough to compete with the roar of the controlled explosion they rode up into the atmosphere.

  Jake took a moment to look at the tactical screen as it updated and shook his head.

  “We're not going to make it through that,” Jason said as he looked from where he sat to the right. “There's thousands of fighters in our way.”

  The outer atmosphere was approaching quickly, seconds away and Jake considered the problem. There were thousands of fighters from both sides fighting for dominance over Pandem and the entire solar system, the Clever Dream would only last seconds and their cloaking systems would be useless until they cleared the inner orbit.

  The image of the Triton loomed just beside the second closest moon and it was being swarmed by fighters. “We have to take the long shot,” Jake said under his breath before looking to Ayan. “Do we have enough power to project a wormhole two kilometres past the Triton?”

  “We do, and plotting the course isn't the problem, the atmosphere is the problem,” she answered. “It's too dense.”

  “We'll be clear in eight seconds. How are our shields?”

  “We've only taken a few hits, they're regenerating.”

  “All right, so could we survive a collision with one of those heavy interceptors?”

  Her eyes went wide and she glanced at the tactical screen, realizing then that a collision was a distinct possibility. “Depends on how fast we come out of the wormhole.”

  Jake looked at the main pilot's display then back at Ayan; “Forty eight point four kilometres per second?”

  “Let's just hope they're going in the same direction when we hit. I'll try to shore up the shielding.”

  “I'm setting a wormhole course, Dementia has half the work done,” Jason added.

  “We'll open one as soon as we're in low orbit, there shouldn't be enough matter there to interfere with its formation or stability, at least not for the amount of time we need it for,” Jake said, turning his focus back to the controls and the main pilot's display. A few seconds passed before he burst; “You know, this was supposed to be a milk run.”

  “Just tell me it's not always this exciting in this end of space,” Jason said as he worked through course calculations.

  “It's not always this exciting,” Jake replied.

  “Well, that hasn't changed,” Ayan remarked as she redirected power to the shields and emitter systems.

  “What's that?” Jason replied.

  “He still can't manage a good lie with a straight face,” she teased. “That's as much power as you'll get.”

  “Breaking into inner orbit now,” Jake said just as the solid fuel boosters cut out and the inertial dampeners powered down to a level that allowed for a momentary perfect silence. For that instant it felt as though everything in the universe had gone quiet, that they existed in a peaceful space that was isolated from all their problems and the realization that they had ma
de it off Pandem started to sink in, carrying with it a relief that none of them would be able to describe.

  The moment ended abruptly as Jake's tactical console marked several West Keeper fighters that were moving to intercept them and flashes of green and white energy streaked past the transparesteel window.

  “Activating the wormhole generator!” Jason said with a start as he quickly manipulated the keys at his station.

  As the first of the enemy rounds struck their shields they were drawn into a wormhole that just barely warped and lensed the view of the destroyers, carriers and other myriad fighting ships all around them as they passed between. When they emerged no one was ready, but Jake jerked the controls and hit the thrusters hard as an enemy fighter appeared right in front of the Clever Dream.

  “Energy shields down to eighty one percent and failing,” Laura announced as the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up with the heavy impacts of large, high explosive, high velocity shells. “We're starting to recharge but we're using everything the reactors are putting out.”

  “In other words we can't afford to take more fire,” Alice said as she found the source of the firepower. “The Saviour, never heard of it. Concentrate fire on that ship and the incoming fighters. We can't afford to take damage from both.”

  The bridge quaked suddenly, nearly tossing Stephanie out of her seat and shaking everyone else. With a quick glance to the tactical display everyone saw that all of their dorsal shielding was gone; gravity, energy, even refractive. “Ashley, turn us over! We need to give those shields time to regenerate!” Alice ordered. “What hit us?” she asked Agameg.

  “An antimatter enhanced nuclear torpedo, I didn't see it coming because of its high velocity.”

  “I hope that was their only one,” Alice said.

  “This is the gunnery deck! We've got fighters crawlin' on us an' no shields! Get us under cover or we'll have to abandon-” Frost shouted into Alice's subdermal earpiece.

  “Frost!” she replied.

  There was a long moment of silence before he replied; “Lost a whole section, barely got out.”

  “Can you keep firing?” Alice asked as she looked to Laura, who shook her head pointing at the dorsal section of the ship.

  “I'll keep the guns blazin', but I dunno for how long!”

  Alice looked at the pattern of damage across the ship and immediately recognized that the fighters were closing the distance between them and the ship to within hundreds of metres and launching electronic pulse rounds to disrupt the shielding protecting their lower engine pods and the forward command section. She didn't give the order to operations, but locked down the forward observation areas as well as the ready quarters and bridge conference room herself. Her status display told her that there were fourteen people in the forward observation areas and they had twenty seconds to get out. She closed the display highlighting crew locations down, focusing instead on ordering any non-essential personnel to the core of the ship.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glance at Stephanie's expression. She was keeping herself together, looking terse, but she couldn't hide her fear entirely. “Stephanie, keep a few people here, but go direct the movement of crew to the ship's core,” Alice whispered.

  Stephanie nodded and strode directly off the bridge, signalling four of her security officers to accompany her.

  “I have nine percent energy shielding back up on our rear dorsal section, four on the rest. Our aft shielding is failing,” Laura said.

  Alice looked at the status of the Saviour and saw that they were running with a field of flak in front of them as they launched even more fighters, torpedoes and heavy gauss cannon rounds directly at them. “All right! Bring us about and fire everything at the Saviour, ignore the fighters, ignore the shielding.”

  Without flinching, Ashley fired all thrusters so the Triton spun around and drifted backwards. Torpedo bays all along the edges of the Triton fired, belching short jets of flame and high velocity long shells at the enemy ship. Many were redirected or destroyed as they encountered the flak field between the ships, while a few flew past and even fewer struck directly at the narrow, long hulled ship.

  The forty nine turrets that could fire on the gunnery deck were alight as they erupted streams of deadly rail cannon shells at the enemy vessel, striking her more often than the torpedoes. The defensive cannons that could rotate in the enemy's direction fired along with the smaller rotary particle cannons there, normally reserved to defend craft as they came in for a landing.

  The effect of the focused efforts were immediate, the shield readings of the other ship dropped megajoules per second, but there was no telling how much power they had in reserve to keep them charged. Her eye was equally drawn to the status display of the Triton, where she could see the shields covering their main rotary engines were down to seven percent and falling quickly. “Any reply from the Carthans?” Alice asked.

  “Nothing,” Cynthia replied, looking near panic.

  “Any sign of the Clever Dream?” she asked Agameg.

  “They made it to the outer atmosphere and disappeared,” he replied quietly.

  The ship shuddered and Alice shot to her feet as she caught sight of the cause. “Abandon the bridge!” she shouted as she hit the emergency switch that activated the large main rear hatch behind them. The double doors began to close immediately at their normal pace which had seemed slow until that moment. “Chief Vercelli! Get your people out!” Alice shouted just before the ramp ways to the lower half of the bridge sealed.

  She watched as everyone on the bridge moved, not so much as locking their stations. All except for Ashley, who was focused on the controls. Alice took three long strides forward, grabbed the woman by the collar and pulled her to her feet. The younger woman just stared at her, shocked. Nose to nose Alice shouted; “Get out!”

  Ashley turned and ran as Alice sat down at the helm and clipped her safety line to the seat, sealing her vacsuit. She hurriedly brought up a smaller version of the tactical and ship status displays and took the controls, piloting the Triton in a much less graceful fashion so the forward section faced away from the Saviour. “Hurry the hell up Jake, I don't think we can take much more of this,” she said to herself as she heard the large main bridge doors seal behind her. With the touch of a quick sequence of buttons on her command unit she initiated the emergency sequence on the bridge, beginning the process of venting the atmosphere into space.

  With a flick of her wrist she tried to turn the ship away from an oncoming formation of three fighters, their guns blazing, trying to break the already badly damaged layers of hull protecting the forward command section and the bridge. The energy shielding in front of her was completely gone and in the thinning air of the bridge, through the surface of her vacsuit headpiece she could hear the rapid, thunderous impacts of their energized shells striking the hull.

  The tactical display flashed, indicating a new contact and without so much as verifying who it was she reached to her secondary control panel and ordered the main landing bay doors open. “Welcome home Jake,” she said through a smile as she watched the Clever Dream swerve from where it had emerged and strike an interceptor head on.

  A small explosion sounded behind Jake, Ayan and Jason followed by a girlish scream that could have only belonged to Minh-Chu. The ship spun end over end as the cabin began to smell of burned cables and electronics.

  The sound of a fire extinguisher followed it. “I step out of a stasis pod into a strange exploding hallway. Best day ever!” Minh exclaimed from just outside the cockpit as he fought the small electrical fire.

  “Are you all right?” Jason asked over his shoulder as he watched Jake stop the Clever Dream's spin and fire the thrusters hard towards the opening landing bay doors of the Triton.

  Somewhere behind the looming hangar opening an explosive decompression was taking place. Starfighters swarmed the carrier, concentrating their fire on the bridge and another designated target in the aft section. Several rou
nds struck the Clever Dream as well and Jason braced himself for an emergency landing.

  Ayan was much calmer, perhaps numbed at that point or on autopilot herself. “Brace for impact,” she said calmly into the ship wide intercom.

  Minh, dressed only in underpants dropped to the ground at the back of the cockpit, threw the fire extinguisher into the narrow hall behind and crossed his arms over his head. “Wasn't the grenade bad enough?”

  The inertial dampeners whined and screeched under the strain of the sudden deceleration as the Clever Dream struck the deck of the landing bay at a seventeen degree downward angle, grinding, scraping along and slowly turning for over a hundred meters then colliding with a heavy safety barrier.

  The quiet that followed was thick as Jake, Ayan, Jason slowly looked at each other. Minh lowered his arms and looked around. “Guess today can only get better,” he chuckled.

  Alice ordered the bay doors closed and verified that the Triton was ready to create and enter its own wormhole. With a nod to herself she activated the projection systems and set course for the opening. The sound of more shells striking the hull in front of her was quickly followed by ominous creaks and even louder thumping, furious cracking.

  Seeing that the ship would pilot itself into the opening of the wormhole she started to stand and was just about to unclip the safety line that would keep her in her seat when the entire helm flashed red. The automated navigation system failed to calculate a straight course into the opening of the wormhole as it began adjusting for the sudden failure of one of their main engines and Alice cursed to herself as she took the controls to manually directed the ship into the passage opening.

  The sound of a massive impact against the forward hull was followed by a groan and creak as Alice locked the controls and sat back. There was no time to move as the inner layer of the hull tore itself to pieces under the increased pressure and she watched the breach begin to burst.