“Hercules is on the case, Alamo, and we’re heading in at top speed to reinforce you. Get the hell out of the combat area. You’ve done your job, now it’s our turn. Can you move?”
“Engines are about we have left. Maggie, I…”
“Later, sir! We’ve got a battle to fight. Have Caine link in with Nelyubov, you got any more missiles ready?”
“Surprise package ready to fire.”
“Get them in the air!” Turning to the helm, she said, “Race, more speed!”
“We’re already at the maximum, ma’am!”
“Go past it. Use every override on that panel of yours, we’ve got to get into the action.”
“First impact!” Nelyubov said. “Good hits on the aft of that battlecruiser, she’s dropping back out of the fight.”
“Looks like we’re the center of attention,” Mathis said. “Three of them now heading for us, just one staying with Alamo.”
“We’ve evened the odds for you, sir,” Orlova said. “Can you handle it?”
“Damn right we can,” he said, then after a brief pause, “Thank you.”
“Any time. Hercules out.” Looking around the bridge, she said, “We’ve got a battle to win, let’s get on with it!”
“Missiles incoming, fourteen, bearing directly. Make that sixteen. Not a proper salvo.”
“Getting messy out here,” Race said. “Am I going anywhere in particular?”
“Right down their throats.”
“Second salvo away, ma’am! I’ll get to work deflecting the incoming missiles…,” Nelyubov began.
“No,” Orlova said. “Concentrate everything on getting our missiles to their targets. We knew that this was Hercules’ last battle.”
“First impact coming in twenty seconds,” Mathis said.
“All hands, stand-by. Get the damage control teams ready, Durman.”
“On the case, Maggie.”
The tactical screen was a living nightmare; three long, blinking lights indicating the battlecruisers now closing in on their location, a series of missile tracks leaping forward to connect. Orlova knew the condition that Hercules was in – there had been no time for more than the most superficial repairs, and she wouldn’t withstand many impacts. Amazed, she looked at the telemetry from Alamo – twenty-nine missile impacts since entering the system.
The deck rocked as missiles slammed into its side, ripping holes into empty compartments, sending the ship waving off its course as Race struggled to compensate. Alarms flickered into life and died as Durman disabled the systems; no-one on the bridge needed to be told how desperate the situation was.
Three more shocks sent the ship tumbling, the tearing of the deck a scream of anguish as though Hercules was a mighty beast that was being hunted down. Race wrestled with the controls, desperately trying to maintain a straight heading, all thoughts of evasive action rendered moot by the damage they were still sustaining.
“Keep her moving, Race!”
“Second salvo impacting,” Nelyubov said, “We’re getting some good hits in!”
Orlova looked again at her tactical display, and a grin started to spread across her face. Those battlecruisers were lagging well behind Alamo, enough that if she could get past the remaining ship there would be a strong chance that she might actually get away. Of course, the more damage they did here, the better it would be.
“Hull breaches on five, six decks now,” Durman said. “Damage control teams are on the way. We’ve lost the starboard thrusters, sensors are gone aft and to port, and the communications antenna are gone.” Another impact, and he continued with a tinge of panic, “Fire in the aft crew quarters, and the suppression systems are failing!”
“It’ll reach vacuum soon enough,” Orlova said. “Third salvo, Frank?”
“Firing now, but the targeting computer’s overloaded, I’m having trouble locking them on anything.”
“Just fire them! Odds are they’ll hit something that isn’t us!”
Mathis said, “Lots of missiles beating those odds right now! We now have twenty missiles incoming, the last wave on time-on-target.”
Another blast, this time close to them, shook through the ship, and Orlova nervously looked at the all-too-fragile patchwork on the hull breaches they had sustained in the previous battle. For the present, the temporary repairs were just about holding, but there was no guarantee that they would stay that way.
“Two more hits, and they’re getting deep now, Lieutenant,” Durman said. “Right into the guts of the ship. I’m reading fires in two more places.”
“Look at that!” Nelyubov said, and one of the enemy battlecruisers exploded, a flash of light filling the screen for an instant. “We must have found a weak spot, or Alamo had already done something to it.”
“Don’t question it,” Orlova said. “Just enjoy it.” She was interrupted by another impact, near enough to send her tumbling out of her seat towards the floor. Reaching out a hand to stop herself, she drifted over to stand behind Race, looking down at his controls. “How are we doing?”
“Gaining speed nicely, but we’re going right into the heart of them.”
“That’s exactly where we need to be,” she said. “Let me take her.”
He looked up at her, nodded, and kicked back out of the seat, Orlova’s hands gliding into position over the console as she began to set up a course right into the nearest enemy ship, tapping override after override to get around the collision prevention system. Durman was still shaking his head at his console.
“That last one got right to the superstructure, we’ve got fractures there now in five places.”
“Another wave of missiles launched!” Mathis said. “It’s so thick out there you could walk on them!”
“It won’t make any difference,” Orlova said as she reached for another control. Five more missiles hit together, and the lights began to flicker as the power distribution network struggled to compensate for the damaged areas. She glanced up at the clock; they had only been in this system for a minute, and it was a toss-up whether they’d survive another one.
“Orlova to all hands,” she shouted. “All hands abandon ship!”
The bridge crew needed no urging, Carpenter leading the wave out of the door towards the airlock and the shuttle that was waiting outside, prepared to get the command crew to safety. All across the ship, the damage control teams would be racing for their escape craft, trying to navigate a way through the wreckage before time ran out.
She remained at the console, looking at the courses as they converged on the battlecruiser ahead; the ship kept pitching from side to side, blasts of escaping atmosphere tossing it around, making it next to impossible to keep a straight heading. Another trio of missiles smashed into the hull, a desperate creaking noise running up the decks, and a hand locked down on her shoulder.
“Come on, Maggie,” Carpenter said. “Shuttle’s loaded and ready to go.”
“We’re not on a direct course, I need to reset it,” she said, tapping commands into the console.
“Hercules knows where it’s going, and you aren’t going with it.” After a few seconds, she continued, “Dammit, Maggie, her back’s broken! It’s time to go!”
With one last, defiant look around the bridge, Orlova pushed away and made for the airlock, letting Carpenter go ahead of her. She paused at the airlock hatch for a final minute, looking around at the bridge that had so briefly been hers, looked at the readouts bathing the room in red, the devastation being unleashed upon her first command.
Quietly, a tear in her eye, she whispered, “Thank you,” then pushed into the shuttle. Nelyubov was at the controls, and as soon as she was on board, the airlock door slammed shut and he pulled away from the ship, burning the engines as fast as he could on a course for the only safe haven left in the system – the Alamo, still fighting a battle of its own.
Unde
r other circumstances, she would probably be fuming about not being at the helm herself, having someone else piloting for her, but all her attention was focused on battered Hercules, her hull twisted and gouged worse than Alamo had ever been, the skeletal interior structure exposed in numerous places. Her engines were still firing, though, and she ducked and dived towards her target.
The enemy battlecruiser had taken herself too close for safety in its bid to make a quick kill, thrown out of position. Some of Hercules’ missile hits had wrecked havoc with its maneuvering thrusters, and though the Cabal pilot was obviously good at his job, he wasn’t good enough.
In a motion that almost seemed unreal, sluggish and slow, Hercules smashed into the Cabal ship, its hull buckling and fragmenting as explosions ripped into space, vanishing as fast as they appeared, dull glowing embers of metal heated far beyond its tolerance ripping into the hull. The ship was traveling fast enough to fly right through it, and some fragments of the superstructure pushed through the fragile hull of the other ship to carry on, slowly revolving as a silent, permanent monument to the brave ship. Of its target, two large pieces of debris remained amidst millions of fragments, the shrapnel even leaping out to some of the other ships, Hercules still dealing more blows after her death.
“We’re clear of the debris zone,” Nelyubov said, dully. “Two other shuttles got away, by the looks of it, ahead of us.”
“Two?” Orlova said.
“Two. That means…”
“That means at least one of the damage control teams couldn’t get out in time.”
“It’s not your fault, Maggie,” Carpenter said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.
“I was in command. That makes it my fault.” She turned her head, looking out of the window as the tears flowed freely down her face, trying to spot some sign of her lost ship. It felt strange; she’d only been on board for a few weeks, only been in command due to a fluke, but she felt as if she had betrayed her oldest friend.
At least she’d done her job. The other two battlecruisers had both sustained damage, and now were hopelessly behind Alamo. Wiping a hand across her face to sweep away the tears, she walked forward to sit in the co-pilot’s seat behind Nelyubov, the scanner a blur as she struggled to see what else was going on.
“Skipper?” Nelyubov said.
“It’s Sub-Lieutenant now, Frank. Assuming they let me keep my rank.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. In case we don’t get time for this later, it has been an honor to serve under you. I think the rest of the crew feels the same way.”
“Those who lived through it.”
“All of them.” He smiled, “She had a good end. One that made up for everything the Cabal put her through.”
“I just wish things could have been different.”
“I know,” he replied.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “Well, Lieutenant, let’s get to Alamo as fast as we can. By the looks of it, they need all the help they can get.”
Chapter 27
Marshall looked over at the Flight Engineer’s station, watching Prentis desperately struggle to keep up with the influx of new damage reports as another missile slammed into Alamo’s rear, just missing the realspace engines. The internal communications system was only working intermittently, switching from station to station, and far too many of them were worryingly dead.
“Damn,” Spinelli said, shaking his head. “Hercules just rammed one of the battlecruisers! Direct hit!”
Caine looked up at her station, “Clever, Maggie, Clever. One of them gone, two much too far behind, that just means we have just one more to deal with.”
“I’m having trouble maintaining attitude,” Tyler said. “Too much damage to the thrusters, too many holes in the hull.”
“Ride the horse, Mr. Tyler. I want a firing solution on the remaining battlecruiser right now. Deadeye, I think we’re ready for the fireshuttles.”
“More than ready, Danny,” she replied, flipping a stray lock of hair from her forehead as she leaned over her panel. “I can’t manage another salvo, too much damage to the launch tubes.”
“Spinelli,” Marshall said, “any escape pods from Hercules?”
“Resolution was far too low to see them, sir. And the Cabal are far better placed to snatch them than we are.”
“Damn it, Maggie, you got so damn close. Launch those shuttles, get them flying.”
He looked ahead at the last remaining battlecruiser, still with the scar Alamo’s laser burned into her hull at the start of the battle. Its commander had taken the reserve position in the formation, hoping that the others would be able to deal with Alamo; instead, the two Triplanetary battlecruisers had wrought awful damage on the Cabal forces.
“Tyler,” he said, “make it look as if we’re trying to get past them. They’ll know that we haven’t any offensive capability at the moment, so I want it to appear as if we’re desperate.”
“We are,” Weitzman said, leaning over to help Prentis with damage co-ordination.
“Shuttles away,” Caine said. “How does that fit in?”
“Rats escaping from the exploding ship. Prentis, what’s the score?”
“Hull breaches everywhere, but none of them too deep. Main power distribution out, auxiliary working for the moment, long-range communications and sensors out, hendecaspace drive...sir, it’d be faster to tell you what was working.”
“And that is?”
“Life support and realspace engines, just.”
“That’s all we’re going to need, Spaceman,” he said, leaning forward to look at the display as it continued to update. Three more tracks were racing towards the battlecruiser, shuttles loaded with enough explosives – the combined power of eight missile warheads each – to blow the ship in two if they detonated.
“They’re onto us,” Caine said. “Trying to divert the shuttles. I’m working on it, but we’re so damn short of bandwidth.”
“Keep on it, Deadeye. Tyler, see what you can do to assist her. Make it look as if we’re trying for a laser pass, distract them any way you can.”
“Working on it, sir,” he replied, “but I’m not sure what I can do. It’s all I can manage to keep her flying at all.”
“Missile salvo,” Spinelli said with a sigh. “Four up, heading for us.”
“Not the shuttles?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
Prentis turned back, horror on his face, and said, “Sir, we’re on the ragged edge here. One more hit could finish us.”
“If we don’t finish that battlecruiser, all of us have had it anyway. Steele, anything from the lower levels? Their boarding party?”
“Nothing, sir, but I’m getting readings that the area is exposed to space,” she said, frowning as she looked at other reports, “and Corporal Cooper has been admitted to sick-bay as a critical case. No details. Should I call down there?”
“I don’t think this is the time to disrupt the good doctor, do you?”
“Damn, we lost one!” Caine said, as one of the tracks abruptly came to an end; the shuttle had self-destructed rather than risk it turning back towards Alamo, the oldest trick in the book and one that Marshall was not disposed to allow to happen to him. “Others still flying, ninety seconds.”
“That long?”
“These are shuttles, not missiles. They’re meant to carry passengers instead of warheads.”
Marshall sat in his chair, fuming, powerless. Alamo had taken everything that could have been expected of her and more, and just as all hope of survival seemed to have been lost, Hercules swept in like an avenging angel, catching the Cabal forces completely by surprise. When he’d entered into this battle, Marshall had been resigned to losing it, and his life with it. Now, to come so close to snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, it didn’t seem fair to fall at the final hurdle.
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“Security is working on those missiles, we’re down to four,” Spinelli said. “Come on, Lieutenant, knock those bastards down.”
“Shuttles still..., no, we’re down to one,” Caine said. “They got one with a missile.”
“That just means you only have one to worry about, Deadeye,” he replied.
“So do they,” she said.
Tyler had given up any attempt at misdirection, trying to settle Alamo down as the navigational systems labored to stabilize the ship, to adjust to the atmosphere leaks from various decks and the destroyed thrusters. Slowly he was winning the battle, but the cost was the absence of even the vestige of evasion. Raw speed was all that he could provide, but with any luck, it was going to be all that Alamo needed.
“Thirty seconds, sir,” Caine said.
“Impact in three, two, one,” Spinelli said, and the world seem to turn sideways as the three missiles smashed into the hull, just over Alamo’s bridge. The lights all flickered, then died, all the monitors going with them as the links to the rest of the ship were finally severed. Dull green lights finally came on, giving the room a ghostly, eerie feel.
“Everyone alright?” Marshall said, peering around in the gloom. “Tyler, Caine, Prentis, do you have any controls?”
“No, sir,” Tyler said, tapping dead buttons. “All out.”
“Here too, Danny,” Caine said. “We had only twenty-seven seconds before impact.” She looked down at her watch, “Which is due right...now.”
“If the enemy didn’t knock it down,” Weitzman said.
“Spinelli, try and get that elevator working. It’s a separate system, it should still be functioning.” He pulled a communicator out of a locker on the wall, and flipped through the channels of static. “Marshall to anyone, come in please.” Shaking his head, he continued, “Marshall to anyone, respond.”
“Internal communications must be fried,” Weitzman said. “We need to get to another location.” Looking around at the dead consoles, he said, “Unbelievable. Three independent systems, all of them knocked out.”
“When we get back they’ll probably install a fourth to be on the safe side,” Marshall said.
Battlecruiser Alamo - 7 - Battlecruiser Alamo: Sacred Honor Page 21
