by T. J. Jones
“Commander, as willing as I am to die to fight Vay, what exactly is our plan beyond detonating the ship’s power core?”
Adrian shrugged. “I figured we’d port over to the Truth and raise some hell inside. See if we couldn’t distract them a bit.”
“So you did have a plan all along.”
He nodded wryly. “Yeah. I had a plan.”
Dekav turned back to the main screen. “Remind me to avoid this poker game with you.”
He could not help himself a grin. “Aw come on. I’ll go easy. I promise.”
Dekav shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ve seen far too much of you in action to know that’s just another deception.”
“Or is it?”
Dekav looked at him concerned and he slapped the elite on the shoulder. “Take a joke, will ya?”
“Is it always customary for humans to use comedy in life and death situations?”
Adrian paused. Good question. “Hmm. I suppose it is for some.”
The Kestrel was in open space now, bridging the gap between the Odyssey and the Truth. He jerked and yanked the Kestrel escort along its X axis. Narrowly avoiding the Truth’s beam weaponry aiming for it.
“Stand by Odyssey,” Adrian ordered.
The ship collided into the Truth’s shields buffeting hard. “Try and match polarity with their shield harmonics.”
Dekav’s hands raced along his console. It chirped and beeped to him in protest. “The Truth uses an oscelitic shield network. It’s constantly in a state of flux. The computer is struggling to keep pace.”
“Well, that would explain our issues with punching through it. If we can get a toe in the door, that’s all we need.”
“Compensating,” Dekav said, flying through the EM spectrum.
The infographic on the console was of two squares. One representing the field band of the Truth, the other his attempt at matching it. The ship lurched sharply. “Any day now,” Adrian said with a stern glance at Dekav.
The two squares shrank and became equal. “Got it.”
“Alright, Odyssey. Ready for some light shows?”
“Ready.”
He turned to Dekav and nodded. The two stood up and moved to the teleport pad. “Computer, two to beam over to the Truth. On port out, execute order Rain One Bravo.”
The computer chirped. “Acknowledged.” The two men dematerialized as the ship rocked and lurched. Once the bridge was clear, the computer announced a Caution Alert. “Warning. Warp core breach authorized. Breach imminent.”
When Adrian and Dekav materialized inside the Truth, it immediately rocked violently, throwing them to the ground. The warp core safeties disengaged and the containment field gave up voluntarily.
In space, the Odyssey’s spinal lance cannon had primed to full. There was a massive gaping wound in the Truth’s shield network.
“Now! Fire!” Mary Jo shouted. There was a flutter of energy as the barrel inhaled the priming charged, and then a concentrated beam of phased photons lanced outward screaming right into the hull of the Truth unimpeded. The armor buckled and gave into the force of the beam as it chewed its way from one end of the ship clean through to the other side of the vessel into its aft shield facing. In its wake, the round left a massive cavern with super-heated edges with a 25 radius.
The situation inside the ship was turning into sheer chaos. Adrian laughed. “Betcha didn’t see that coming, you over-winded gas bag.”
Dekav stood up dusting himself off and extending his polearm weapon. Adrian drew a pistol. “It would seem your attack strategy was successful,” Dekav noted.
“Yeah, cost us the Kestrel, though.”
“Sacrifice is a cost of war.”
Adrian nodded. “Yeah. We have been making those since we got here. Let’s make the docent pony up some more of his own.”
As the two prowled along the corridors of the Truth, Dekav pressed him back. “There are far more guards patrolling than last time.”
Adrian nodded. He had figured that would happen. “Makes sense. We did take advantage of them during the last battle. Its common sense they’d double down on security.”
Dekav nodded. “What else does your plan entail, Commander?”
“Well, have you ever tried to contain a prison break during a battle?”
Dekav immediately understood. “The subjugate pens are several decks above us.”
“They’ll need weapons too. So we should carry as many as we can.”
Dekav nodded. “Agreed, though the more patrols we attack, the more attention we’ll gather.”
Adrian frowned. “Unfortunate but those are the stakes. We’ve gotta push forward. This ends with Vay out of play. The only way that happens is if we undermine his operation on this ship so much that he no longer has any operational control.”
Dekav nodded in response to his analysis. “Agreed. Perhaps some of your marines could help?”
Adrian thought it over and loathed asking his people to come back to this ship any more than he needed. “What about your people? They should be getting here eventually, right?”
Dekav paused then nodded. “Yes and their systems would be configured to allow them entrance due to the elites having the Truths’ IFF codes. Your reasoning is sound.”
“Right, then let’s go to work.” Adrian popped out of cover and fired two rounds dropping the nearest guards. They fell in a heap. He collected their weapons and slung them over his back. It was a little awkward for him but he managed it. “Ok, stealth isn’t a priority anymore. We get to those people and we bust them out.”
“Commander?” the comm crackled.
He tapped the send key on it. “Rain here, Jarod is that you?”
“Yes, Commander. There is a lot of interference from your signal but we are reading you. Are you on the Truth?”
“Yep. We’re going to play a little Trojan horse game over here.”
“Commander?”
“Never mind. Anyway, you guys keep the fight up out there. Keep the ship in play as long as you can. Help is on the way. We just have to have faith.” He cut the comm line and then turned to Dekav. “Right?” Dekav nodded.
“Yes, Commander.”
They pushed up a few meters and encountered more resistance — two guards, more insect looking men like the docent but in dressed down security uniforms, firing long rifles at them. Teal rounds slammed into the walls from the imperial weapons. Their tactical discipline was awful, though. “Jesus on a stick, who taught these shmucks to shoot?”
Dekav shrugged. “It wasn’t me.”
“Damn, that’s evident. I’ll cover you. Go educate these MacGuffins.” He leaned out of cover and laid down suppressive fire while Dekav advanced. The silver-maned elite thrust his staff out and rolled the guard from cover, twirling his staff and discharging the weapon end square in his chest. Then he turned leaning away from a round as he fired another blast into the guard’s partner, sending him sprawling over. Dekav looked up to Rain and nodded. “Clear.”
Adrian collected their weapons. “The liberated people’s army kindly thanks you for donations. Please come again.”
As Adrian stood up, Dekav looked like he had a question. He paused so Dekav could speak.
“Commander, what is a MacGuffin?”
He patted Dekav on the shoulder. “Someday when you’re older, I’ll explain.”
Dekav looked confused and Adrian just grinned as he gestured for them to push forward.
“Is this scarcasm?” Dekav asked.
Adrian turned and laughed. “Hold on, what?”
“Scarcasm? The blue-skinned woman Linara told me humans often use it to mock or convey contempt.”
He grinned. “Looks like Blue is bagging on me. No, I wasn’t being ‘scarcastic.’ Not mostly anyway.” He turned and started walking again. He shot over his shoulder, “And it’s sarcasm by the way.”
Dekav’s brow furrowed.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get you all caught up,” Adrian reassured him.
The elite seemed puzzled but accepted the reassurance. “Now, if you don’t mind we have a ship full of alien assholes to beat up.”
Dekav nodded. “Yes, Commander. I will refocus.” The silver manned Eaon bowed his head and recited the huntresses’ prayer.
The two pushed deeper into the corridor. Adrian had to take his jacket off to turn it into a makeshift bag for all the weapons. He had stuffed them all inside it and used their slings to tie them all together while tying the sleeves of his jacket together as a strap. It worked out mostly. Doing the job as best as it could at least. He followed behind Dekav with his pistol at the low ready while Dekav held his weapon at the high ready with the business end of the blaster pointed down range.
He slowed them down at a junction. A roaming patrol passed them by as Dekav slipped in behind them going into a martial arts display that sent two of them flying head first into the bulkhead and blasted the third soundly in between his shoulder blades. Three new pistols were donated to the cause. Adrian gathered those up and stuffed them into his makeshift bag.
He stood up and grinned. “Man I should have worn a bigger jacket.”
Dekav looked at him like a confused puppy. “Get it? Because I’m hitting my storage limit here? Ah, never mind.”
Dekav nodded. “Oh, I see! Ha-ha.”
Adrian sighed and shook his head. “Ok let’s push forward. It doesn’t feel like the ship is taking much more fuss from the Odyssey.”
Dekav nodded. “The Odyssey, while an offensively capable vessel, can only do so much to this super dreadnaught. The Deacon class was built to withstand assaults efficiently.”
“Which is why we need to start throwing wrenches into the gears where we can.”
On the bridge of the Odyssey, Jarod Tiaahl and Trident Vail finally made their way back up from the battle bridge.
“Lt. Tiaahl, Vail. Welcome back.”
Tiaahl took his place at the tactical station as Sol bounced over back to his own. Vail took her seat at the helm relieving an ensign.
“Where’s the commander?” she asked.
“He ported over to the enemy vessel to run subterfuge on it,” Tiaahl explained.
Mary Jo looked up to him concerned. “He sure risks his neck a lot.”
Tiaahl nodded. “It’s just who the commander is. I suspect he does not like sitting idly while things are happening. He’s a proactive leader.”
“It’s going to get him hurt.” Mary Jo frowned.
“Potentially. I would wager the commander is capable of taking care of himself. After all, he was a lead fighter pilot during the Dominus War.”
She nodded. It still made her sick to her stomach to think about. They had lost the captain and many other good people to these White Empire guys already. If they lost the commander too, things could go south fast.
“Keep as strong a sensor lock on him as you can. If things start getting ugly, I want him back on the ship and we make for Alliance space at best speeds.”
“The commander gave explicit orders to hold the line. The elites are coming. We must remain.”
She pursed her lips. It was not the call she would have made, but then again, this whole situation had her on edge. She was grateful the commander took his new role so comfortably. He may not have realized it, or even understood it, but he was definitely, what was holding them all together now. Without him, the Odyssey was not going to fare well.
“Very well. We’ll stick to the commander’s plans.”
Tiaahl nodded to her, indicating she had made a wise choice. She technically was in charge of the ship. She could have chosen to disregard his order, to port the commander back and make a break for it. The commander was right, though. They had to stop the Truth from leaving. To keep it here. Delayed.
However, the fight was a stalemate. The shields were holding against the Truth reasonably well now that Tia and her engineering teams had gotten a chance to breathe, make repairs and study the Truth’s weapons. It had afforded them a measure of safety for the most part, but their best shot against the diamond-shaped vessel was sacrificing the Odyssey’s Kestrel class escort against the Truth by a warp core detonation and then firing the spinal lance cannon through the gap in the shields.
His trick had worked and they’d blasted a fifty-meter-wide hole clean through to the aft side of the Truth. The enemy, however, showed no sign of backing down or even limping away. The hole the commander had managed to punch into their shields was gone already. She had begun to wonder if the Commander planned the whole maneuver for the sole purpose of boarding their vessel.
“Lt. Kaine, what’s the likelihood that we could get some marines on that ship to back the commander up?”
“As long as we had a delivery system, pretty likely.”
Mary Jo ran some math through her console and frowned. “Their shield harmonics are too high to try and teleport them through.”
“We still have their repurposed boarding shuttles.” Jarod offered.
“Would they still recognize those as friendly?” Kaine questioned from his post.
Mary Jo thought about it for a moment. “Hard to say. I’ve studied their system of signals transmission, though; I might be able to write up a fake IFF code for them.”
“How long will you need?” Tiaahl asked.
She shook her head unsure. “Give me five minutes and I’ll see what I can come up with.” She pulled a tablet out and went to work. If she could get some marines over there to help the commander, she would feel a lot better. This whole situation would seem a lot less risky for the commander’s sake.
The Odyssey lurched hard. “Starboard nacelle took a hard shot. Lt. Axoi is already dispatching a repair team to deal with the damage,” Tiaahl announced. His brow furrowed. “We have a problem.” He glanced up to see the hull on the Truth was shifting.
The mid-section of the diamond-shaped hull was splitting along a seam to reveal a massive barrel about the size of their spinal lance cannon.
“Not this thing again,” Vail said exhaustedly. She threw the ship immediately into an evasive maneuver favoring the starboard side. The Truth fired its massive Tetryon cannon and missed the Odyssey. Vail exhaled a sigh of relief until the barrel lit up again.
“They are preparing to fire again,” Tiaahl announced. Vail turned back to glare at him.
“I can see that.” She said with the driest hint of irritation a Stollan could muster.
She did what she could to try and put the ship into another evasive maneuver but the engines were sluggish to respond. The corners of her mouth compressed together with concern. The ship was handling more sluggishly than it should be. She swiftly went to work routing power from secondary and tertiary subsystems to help output needs.
The Truth fired again, this time slamming the shields with a concentrated blast from its Tetryon cannon. The shields buckled and dropped. Tiaahl scrambled to try to force them back online with power from the secondary batteries. “Shields are down, and the capacitors are unresponsive, the Anion field is becoming ineffective.”
“It’s that goddamned Tetryon surge,” Tia barked over the comms. “It fries out the capacitors and force shuts down the whole system. I need a few minutes to get it back up. DO NOT WRECK MY SHIP,” she growled.
The Truth then reached out with a powerful tractor beam.
“They’ve got a lock on us. We’re caught up in a tractor beam,” Tiaahl announced.
The Odyssey’s weapon systems all went active, fighting back desperately to free itself of the hold.
“Wait, lock onto grid coordinates here, all weapons you have, Mr. Tiaahl,” Mary Jo ordered. She had gone over the data from their previous engagements. The last time the commander dropped the tractor field, he disabled the emitter at those coordinates with a sustained strike.
Jarod Tiaahl input the fire commands and the Odyssey’s aim shifted to the tractor beam’s point of origin, surging it out and causing a small explosion on the surface of the hull. This made her eyebrow per
k. So far, they had been firing at random. However, when they focused on a system specifically it collapsed. Why?
She got up, ran to her station, and started doing extensive deep sensor scans. “Lt. Hunter?” Tiaahl asked.
“I’m running a deep sensor scan of their ship. I think I might have just found a chink in their armor. The tablet on the command chair has the IFF hack. It’s a sloppy job but if we’re lucky their signals man won’t be paying much attention and their systems won’t catch it.”
“Got it,” Sol said running around to grab it. “I’ll make sure they punch these into the shuttles.” Sol left the bridge at once.
Tiaahl went back to firing and sure enough, Mary Jo noticed no discernable difference. It was only a precision strike that got them money. Just like when Lt. Zezai used his fighters and bombers to attack the ship. Just like the commander’s attack, and just like then. So all she had to do was figure out where the systems they wanted to hit were. That meant she was going to have to scan through their cyberwarfare suites. Not an easy task. For all the Truth’s redundancies, it seemed to pay that particular area extra attention.
“Tiaahl, take the bridge. I’m working something big.”
Jarod nodded, transferred fire control to the captain’s chair and took a seat. As Jarod gave Lt. Vail maneuver orders and fired with her, Mary Jo kept her focus on trying to punch through the Truth’s cyber screens so she could accurately scan the enemy ship for weak points. Something they could put some fire on and buckle the Truths’ systems in any way to tip the balance of the engagement back in their favor.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Things are only impossible, until they’re not.” Captain (Now Admiral) Jaquianna Howell.
Adrian and Dekav continued to push forward inside the Truth and Jubilation. He felt somewhat bad about not letting the rest of the crew in on his plan, but they would have just ported him and Dekav back to the ship otherwise. He had a hunch this was going to be resolved here on this ship, not in some stalemate space battle.
