“A reactionless drive?” Jackson said, standing up and walking towards the main display.
“That’s my assumption, sir,” Tactical confirmed.
“Who would have technology like that?” Ensign Davis said with concern.
“Not us,” Jackson said, the impossible truth of the situation becoming more clear. “Ensign Davis, prepare a com drone for a quick launch, same com addresses as the last one. We need to inform CENTCOM that we’ve encountered a new enemy, and they’re not human.”
Chapter 12
“Aye, sir,” the normally unflappable Jillian Davis said in a trembling voice. “Drone is ready, message uploaded along with our preliminary sensor scans.”
“Launch it. Now!” Jackson said. While the ship was at general quarters and he was on the bridge he didn’t have to enter his passcodes to authorize something as mundane as a com drone launch. He needed to ensure that CENTCOM was aware of the situation. His last message would be worthless without the context of the new information he now had.
“Drone is away,” she said. “It’s free floating until its engine fires, but it’s out of the ship.”
“Good enough,” Jackson said. “Tactical, what’s our range?”
“We’re at three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers and closing. Heavy beams are in range at two thousand kilometers, but they’ll spread a lot that far away.”
“Understood,” Jackson said, exasperated he had no standoff weapons at his disposal. “What is the optimal range for the Avengers?”
“We’re within their accepted envelope now,” the tactical officer said. “They’ll fire an initial burn and then accelerate into the target once they break fifty thousand kilometers.”
“Lock on all four missiles and fire,” Jackson said, his jaw set. “Reload the tubes once they’re away.”
Everyone on the bridge seemed to freeze.
“Sir?” the tactical officer said hesitantly.
“I SAID FIRE!!” Jackson roared, coming out of his seat. “You send those missiles or I will have you arrested for treason and find someone who will!”
“Missiles away!” the officer said, his hands shaking as he manipulated the fire controls.
“Reload and track,” Jackson said, sitting back down. He waved off the Marine who had run onto the bridge when he heard yelling about someone being arrested.
“Birds are flying hot and clean,” Ensign Davis said once she realized the tactical officer seemed completely locked up. “No reaction from the target. Final course correction in one hour. Impact estimated in one and a half.”
“Thank you, Ensign,” Jackson said, watching the seemingly pathetically slow tracks creep across the main display as the computer opened another window to show the Blue Jacket in relation to the enemy … construct. He had a hard time calling something that big a ship. It was irregularly, asymmetrically shaped but roughly resembled an almond. It was just over three kilometers in length and two at the beam. He wasn’t even sure how you’d safely bring something that big into such a close orbit with a planet without it simply falling from the sky. But then again, he’d just witnessed it sit in space and perform maneuvers as if it could care less that the planet's gravity well was there at all.
“Target is moving!” the tactical officer said, finding his voice again. “It’s now accelerating along its original course. It’s coming right at us at over two hundred G’s of acceleration.”
“The thing is no slouch,” Jackson grumbled, surprised at how calm he felt staring down a planet killer as it raced to meet him. “Are the missiles updating their targeting profile?”
“Yes, sir,” Tactical reported. “They corrected and fired their engines again two minutes ago to compensate for the target’s movement. Impact will now be in ten minutes.”
“What will four Avengers do to something that big?” Jackson asked quietly to himself.
“Piss it off,” a voice said from his right. He looked and saw Chief Kazenski standing there, his eyes fixated on the main display. Jackson had almost forgotten about the wayward senior enlisted man.
The alien didn’t try and dodge or intercept the missiles bearing down on it. The hardened nose cones of the weapons slammed into the organic-looking hull of the target, the motors firing one more time to try and maximize the penetration before the binary high-explosives ignited. Once the flash cleared the Blue Jacket's optical sensors were able to see that the alien hull was peeled back on the nose, but the ship was so large it barely looked like they'd scraped it. Looks were deceiving, however, and the Avengers did what they were designed to do and got some penetration, causing more damage beyond just the point of impact.
“We’ve done significant damage to the target’s nose, sir,” the tactical officer said. “Laser range in two minutes.”
“Target where our missiles did the most damage,” Jackson said. “I want all beams concentrated on the hull openings.”
“Aye, sir. Updating targeting data now.”
“Helm, push our nose to starboard by three degrees and kick her in the ass,” Jackson said. “All ahead full.”
“Ahead full, aye,” the helmsman reported. The ship began to shake as the engines came to full power and the Blue Jacket surged towards their target.
“Our shot window just narrowed with the velocity change,” Tactical warned.
“Then don’t miss,” Jackson said. “Nav, once we pass the target I need a course that slings us around the planet and out the other side.”
“We’re running?” Celesta asked.
“We’re collecting invaluable data,” Jackson corrected. “Going out in a blaze of glory by slugging it out with a ship twenty times our tonnage is not helpful to anyone. We make this pass, see if we can bloody their nose, and then run for it.”
“If we survive the first pass,” she said.
“If we survive,” he agreed. “But they’ve spotted us and they’ve shown their propulsion is much more advanced than ours. This initial engagement is going to happen no matter what.”
“Agreed,” she said.
“Davis!” Jackson called. “Make sure we have as good a sensor picture as we can of the target on this first pass. I don’t expect to make another one. Make sure we’re recording all sensors all spectrums.”
“Aye, sir,” she called out, the fear in her voice that was there previously fading away as she became too busy to reflect on how scared she was.
They all watched the display tensely as the alien … ship … was resolved in greater detail. Thermal optics showed all the strange aspects of the asymmetrical hull, but failed to show anything resembling a drive output or weapons emplacement. Jackson had no doubt that they’d kicked over the hornet’s nest with this one. For centuries humans had become complacent in the fact that nobody was in the neighborhood that could cause them any trouble. That misconception had just ended, and hard.
“Firing heavy beams!” Tactical called out, startling anyone who hadn’t been watching the range countdown. The power draw for the forward heavy beams was so great that other systems began to drop out as the MUX determined who needed the power the most. Jackson watched as the beam projectors heated up under the continuous fire, but he was also watching the nose of the alien ship warp and slough away as terawatts of power per beam were poured into the breaches created by the missiles.
“”We’ve got a thermal buildup along the target’s port side,” Davis called out.
“Let's get a—” Jackson’s command was cut off as a brilliant flash lanced out from the alien ship and hit the Blue Jacket full on the prow. The main display winked out and the illusion of a window was shattered as if they were staring at a blank wall. All the other sensor feeds also were cut in an instant. Alarms were blaring on the bridge and the displays that were still working were scrolling a seemingly endless list of warnings.
“Some sort of high energy thermal blast right on the prow!” Davis yelled over the chaos. “Most of the sensors are out!”
“Go to backups,
” Jackson said, blinking as his eyes adjusted. “Get damage control parties to the prow and get me a casualty report. We’re still alive so we can assume the ship has overflown us. We need to see where we’re going and we need to see what’s around us.”
Armored hatches opened up along the forward edge of the superstructure and auxiliary radar and optical sensors deployed. Soon the main display popped back up and showed that the ship had executed its predetermined course and shot them around the planet and had them speeding along on an escape vector, still under full power.
“How are we still alive?” Celesta asked.
“Because they were as curious about us as we were about them,” Jackson said. “I’ll bet we’re the first humans to fire at them. They wanted to see what we were capable of.”
“Not much, it would seem,” Ensign Davis said. “Enemy vessel is continuing along their original course, but they’ve accelerated to over six hundred G’s. They don’t seem to show any interest in coming back around for another shot.”
“That’s good news, I suppose,” Jackson said. “Maintain sensor contact with the target and stay at general quarters. Tell Engineering to begin charging the warp drive capacitor banks.”
“Do you think it’s over?” Celesta asked as he walked back to his seat.
“For the time being,” he said. “But I think something much, much worse has just started.”
****
The trip out of the Oplotom system was fairly anticlimactic. They lost contact with the alien ship soon after they accelerated away from the planet, but it had been flying away from them at an incredible rate of speed when last they saw it. Using the backup optical sensors they were able to identify the nearest jump point and plot a direct course, wanting to warp out of the system before the aliens could change their minds.
****
“What hit us?” Singh asked as he looked over the reports coming in from his crews working in the prow. He and Jackson were standing outside of the hatch that led into the CIC.
“Some sort of high energy plasma discharge if I were to take a guess,” Jackson said. “That was just a single shot.”
“Impressive,” Singh said impassively. “It turned almost every antenna on the prow to slag and destroyed all the bulkhead pressure fittings so completely I’m not sure we can repair very much of this damage.”
“New pressure fittings?” Jackson asked. “Those can’t be too difficult to fabricate.
“Not especially,” Singh agreed. “But the heat from whatever hit us also deformed the outer hull to the point that we need to figure out how we’re going to remount everything.”
“It seemed like we were giving as good as we got on that first pass,” Jackson sighed. “But this data is telling me they gave us as much attention as you would to swat a fly. One little parting shot and they've damn near crippled and blinded us.”
“So are we heading back to Haven?” Singh asked.
“No,” Jackson said. “We’re on our way to Podere. It’s a relatively advanced world and we should be able to at least get some basic repairs done before tackling the longer flight back to Haven.”
“Maybe,” Singh said, unconvinced. “You’re still chasing this thing, aren’t you?”
“No,” Jackson said honestly. “Our single destroyer will not be able to go toe to toe with whatever the hell that was. We’re going to get ourselves into a little bit better shape and then we’re going to bug out.”
“I’m mildly relieved to hear you say that,” Singh admitted. “This is something better left to First or Fourth Fleet.”
“Yeah right,” Jackson scoffed. “If CENTCOM pushes too hard to deploy those fleets away from Britannia or New America I think we’ll begin to see the breakup of the Confederacy.”
“Truly?”
“If Haven calls on either of those governments to deploy their ships to the AU or the Alliance because of a new, super powerful alien threat, how do you think that’s going to play out?” Jackson asked.
“I guess I’ve never looked at Fleet as part of all the political wrangling between enclaves,” Singh admitted. “CENTCOM will have nothing left but a handful of old ships in Black Fleet that will answer the call, but every human world could be at risk.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jackson said. “It’s a single ship … or whatever it is … operating out along the frontier. This could either be an unfortunate misunderstanding, a declaration of war, or simply an incredible failure to communicate.”
“Which one do you think it really is?” Singh asked, ignoring the crew walking around them.
“I honestly don’t know,” Jackson sighed. “But we’ve been expanding with abandon for a couple hundred years. Our exploratory method leaves much to be desired and I think we’ve stretched ourselves too thin and too far for the level of technology we’ve achieved. We sent one deep space vessel out centuries ago and when it never came back we simply turned our eyes towards the easy targets: all those habitable worlds the warp drive put right within our reach. I don’t know … I feel like this was more or less inevitable.”
"Profound," Singh said sarcastically. "I wasn't aware you were such a philosopher."
"Right now I'm the CO of a badly damaged ship that's running scared," Jackson snorted, ignoring the barb. "I'll leave the philosophy of it to the politicians. Can we successfully transition with the backup sensors?"
"Certainly," Singh said with confidence. "This ship was designed with the assumption the prow was going to take some hits. You could have retracted everything but the targeting sensors before the engagement, but given the power the alien ship put out it wouldn't have made a difference. The outer armor was so badly warped the carriages to bring the assemblies back into the inner hull were nearly vaporized."
"Terrific," Jackson said. "I'm going to get us to the jump point as fast as she can get us there. Just keep the repairs up and keep your people busy. The less time they have to reflect on what's happened the better."
"I don't see that being a problem," Singh said, watching crewmembers scurry past them with a nod of acknowledgment to Jackson as they went about their business. "I'll admit ... when I heard you decided to make a head on pass with the old girl at an unknown alien hostile I was a bit apoplectic. But, despite the damage to the prow we're still quite capable. Powerplant and propulsion are one hundred percent, sensor backups are functional, and we still have some teeth. We lost the forward projectors but my crews have been steadily getting our lateral beams operational."
"How long?"
"You'll have a full port broadside available within another two days," Singh answered, consulting his tile. "I've kept the crews that were already on that job there since cramming the forward compartments with bodies doesn't necessarily help the work on the new damage go any faster."
"And the mag-cannons?" Jackson asked, not really putting too much stock in what he considered to be an antique of a weapon.
"All the accelerator rails in each gun were fully functional, shockingly," Singh said. "We're recalibrating the turret actuators and they should be fully operational. You really think we'd need such a short range weapon?"
"Given the distances involved in space warfare, all of our weapons are more or less short range," Jackson said. "Just let me know when you have them functional so I can have Armament bring the rounds up from the magazine and into the loaders."
"Will do," Singh nodded. "We'll be using the warp flight to catch up on a lot of the repairs and then hope that Podere has an orbital platform capable of some repairs to the nose."
"Keep at it," Jackson said, draining his coffee mug. "I'll be up on the bridge until we've transitioned out."
"That's a long watch," Singh noted.
"You can say that again."
****
"Chief Kazenski," Jackson said loudly. "A word, please." The senior enlisted man, despite having a clean and pressed uniform on, still appeared scruffy and unkempt.
"Yes, Captain?"
"Ther
e's not much you can do on the bridge right now," Jackson told him, deciding to forego another lecture on dress and appearance. It wouldn't do to appear so petty while they were facing such dire circumstances. "I want you to make your presence felt down on the lower decks in the shops and work centers. The crew will need reassurances and that should come from you."
"What should I tell them?" Kazenski asked. The man's utter stupidity set Jackson's teeth on edge. He let out a calming breath before answering.
"You should tell them the truth," he said. "We were in a brief engagement with an unknown hostile and now we're going our separate ways. We'll be transitioning to warp soon and then we'll begin making our way back to Haven."
"That's all?"
"What more is there, Chief?" Jackson asked. "The details of the engagement are highly classified. There will be no saving you if I find out you're divulging the information of the encounter to junior enlisted spacers." The implied threat seemed to penetrate the fog Kazenski perpetually lived in.
"I ... think I understand, sir," he finally said.
"That's good," Jackson said, looking past him. "You're dismissed."
"Is he always so—" Celesta trailed off, unsure how to complete her sentence.
"Useless?" Jackson supplied, not caring who on the bridge heard him. "Yes. But I'm stuck with him thanks to his family connections."
Celesta stared at him in open-mouthed shock. He never was so candid in front of her, much less sitting in the middle of the bridge. She looked over as Ensign Davis suppressed a small giggle at the comment. Apparently the operations officer was the only one who’d heard.
"I see."
"OPS," Jackson said, ignoring her tone. "Anything new in the area?"
"No, sir," Davis said. "We've been running active sensor sweeps and we cannot locate the enemy vessel."
"Could they have left the system?" Celesta asked.
"Since we don't know how their propulsion works we can't begin to speculate if they're still around or left the local star system," Jackson said, standing up to stretch his legs. "I suspect that they're sitting still out there in the asteroid belt watching us, not making any motion that the computers will flag."
Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship Page 12
