Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Shortly after that, the whole of the shuttle filled up with the thin, green fluid and as if his fingers were moving through water Spalding placed his hands on the control panel and entered a command.

  A surge of electricity on a specific frequency surged through the liquid, and the green substance went from thin, like water or juice, to a thick jelly so strong a man couldn’t move against it.

  Of course, as soon as he went to move his arm and press the engine button, the jelly kept him from being able to move his arm or fingers either.

  “Oh, bother,” he grouched.

  “What now?” Persus asked over the com-link in his helmet.

  “I think I just locked myself in place. I can’t move my arms to fly the lander,” he admitted.

  “You mean we are stuck here,” shouted the Lancer, struggling against the anti-shock jelly and failing to escape, “here while the battle rages around us!”

  “Just hold onto yer horses,” the old engineer said testily, “I had a fix. The console can emit a surge of low-level electricity on a frequency weak enough to just keep the jelly around the console clear so I can fly the ship.”

  “Then do it,” Persus grumped, calming down slightly.

  “The only problem is…I can’t seem to move my hand enough to use the touch screen,” said the old Engineer.

  Persus drew loud breaths over the channel.

  “But never fear, I can still fly this ship,” the old Engineer said confidently, “I’ll just need to use my eyes and my tongue. I’ve got a backup interface here in this helmet. ‘Always be prepared,’ that’s what I say.”

  “You plan to fly this lander…with your tongue,” Persus boggled.

  “Right, that probably won’t work well,” the old engineer said after a moment’s consideration. “I guess I’d better use the helmet to activate the console and liquefy the jelly around my hands then.”

  Persus growled with anger, right before Spalding activated the new function and, finding that it was working like he hoped, he floated the craft out of the Phoenix and then goosed the engines to maximum speed.

  “Yeeeeeeee-haw!!!” shouted the old engineer, right before an elephant landed on his chest and he realized that with this much gee forces he wouldn’t have been able to fly the ship with his tongue even if he wanted to—his eyes, maybe—but definitely not his tongue!

  Fortunately for everyone on board, the autopilot was pointed right at enemy Battleship #3 and all he was needed for was minor course corrections and if the computer fouled things up.

  “Here we go, lads,” he grunted over the lander’s speaker system from the massive pressure on top of him.

  **************************************************

  “Lass, I wish I’d taken the chance to woo you proper,” Spalding reminisced mournfully, thinking of the way his lady’s figure was accented by a most desirable—and complimenting—tool belt. “But I’m no longer the man I used to be, so it’s better this way,” he finished with a sigh. As a younger man he’d never wavered in the fulfillment of his duty, proudly representing Engineering and never turning down a fight. But now…

  “Is there anything I can do, other than ride to my doom with an invisible stone rhino sitting on my chest?” Persus eventually asked.

  “I suppose you could monitor the com-channels,” Spalding growled at the interruption, moments before the feeling of acceleration abruptly stopped, happily fobbing off the duties of Comm. Officer for the little lander onto the Tracto-an.

  Persus grunted but returned to his silence as they coasted slowly past the pair of Cruisers assaulting the Phoenix. Counting on nothing but prayer and the stealth systems Spalding had retrofitted onto the old lander.

  “I’ve turned into a coward, that’s what it is,” the old Engineer declared as they slowly crept past the enemy cruiser, “afraid to do what’s right and proper. Why, it would have been better if I had died in that fusion reactor,” he nodded his head in agreement with his own words—or, tried to nod his head. The ballistics jelly refused to allow him to move any part of his body.

  With a few taps, the old Engineer deftly moved the lander across the battlefield to the designated target. Fortunately, the stealth coating he’d added to the small, Penetrator class ship was paying off. There wasn’t a sign they’d been spotted yet.

  “You’d think the moment it all went bad was when the body choppers gutted my body and replaced most of it with substandard parts!” he bellyached, but inside he knew the truth. It wasn’t turning him from man into machine that had robbed his soul of its starch—machinery could never destroy the soul of a real engineer! “But nooooo; it all started when my heart turned to mush. I should never have let them replaced the blasted thing. Knowing what I know now, I would rather have died!”

  Even a blasted mechanical pump would have been better than this wretched mutated thing they installed inside me, he decided. Who knows what kind of weakness, imp, or defective protein strand they’d introduced when cloning him the new heart?

  “They probably cloned it inside the same nutrient bath as one that belonged to a natural born coward, and somehow it rubbed off,” he spat angrily, and frankly he wasn’t a young man anymore. He was too old to retrain a weak heart. Why, the last one had taken the better part of eighty years to break in properly; how could he possibly justify putting that kind of time into a hunk of flesh like that? The simple truth was that he couldn’t.

  He was resolved; he no longer had a proper job. His beloved Clover, while in pieces, was safely placed in the hands of the lovely Glenda Baldwin, and now his corrupted heart had poisoned the rest of him—what little of him remained after the chop-shop quacks had gotten through carving him up like a chicken dinner.

  “Too old…just too old to complete the training,” he declared, knowing it was better to die soon than live with the shame he would bring upon his good name by continuing to live, as he slowly lost his skills, resolution and his fighting spirit.

  Making an adjustment, he pointed the lander straight at battleship #3 and it’s still very intact shields.

  “What is the plan of attack?” Persus asked.

  “It’s in the hands of space gods now,” the old Engineer informed him smiling crookedly, “there’s not much chance we’re going to make it out of this alive, but then I told you that when I said I needed men for a suicide mission!”

  There was an extended pause.

  “You did not mention there was no chance of victory before asking me to recruit for this attack,” Persus said direly.

  “No chance of victory!” Spalding said with growing anger, “I bloomin’ said we’re probably all about to die by craterin’ on a Battleship’s shields, not that we weren’t going to do our part to win this battle!”

  “We are attacking a Battleship,” Persus said with some satisfaction, “at least it is a worthy foe—to victory!”

  Half a minute passed in a tense silence as they inched toward the enemy target. “There she is,” Spalding growled pushing the throttle of the lander up fractionally in order to continue a slow and steady approach. The urge to push down the throttle and get it over with was strong, but he manfully resisted it. If it was important enough to do it, then it was worth doing right.

  “We do not seem to be in any great hurry,” Persus grunted as the lander slowly continued to approach the shields of enemy Battleship #3. “I am hearing voices from the boarders,” Persus reported, “they are saying ship is full only of droids. The warriors report many casualties getting to the ship and they have now been pushed out of the ship. The survivors are making a stand on the outer hull, trying to damage the ship’s main weaponry before they are overrun.”

  Spalding grunted in acknowledgement. “Maybe we can get them some reinforcements,” he said doubtfully. The odds of finding a hole in the enemy’s shields and sneaking through were very low.

  Silently, his lips moved in prayer. Sweet Saint Murphy hear my prayer. Let me defeat this Battleship and then someday soon receive a
proper reward somewhere within your great machine shop in the sky, he prayed fervently. For himself, he would be just as happy to dash his lander against the shields of the battleship, thereby setting off the contact device attached to the top of the ship. That would be the easiest route to go, but for the sake of the Lancers loaded onto his heavily-modified transport, he hoped they would succeed in touching down on the hull.

  “Hold on tight,” he said tightly as the lander continued to inch toward the enemy battleship that was trading broadsides with the beleaguered Parliamentary Power.

  “The sooner we can get to the fighting, the better; all of this sitting around doing nothing…I have done too much before now,” Persus commented.

  “Prepare to activate the bucking cables,” Spalding ordered, as if he were a proper ship’s captain. Then, because there was currently a crew of two—and one of them was a ham-handed sword wielder, who mistook simple technology and basic engineering for magic—he flicked the switch himself to prepare the cables for deployment.

  For the majority of the trip, the lander’s stealth coating had protected it from detection. But as they began a final approach to the enemy Battleship and its active sensor sweeps, that was about to end.

  Right on cue, the lander’s sensor controls sounded an alarm.

  “Threat has been detected! Enemy sensors have locked onto this vessel, please take immediate action to eliminate this threat,” reported a very familiar, female voice that Spalding had personally uploaded into the ship’s computer as the default.

  A heavy laser fired, completely missing the lander by a good ten meters, but a follow-on medium laser scored the hardened under-section of the ship. Meanwhile, all around them was heavy and turbo-laser fire, as two of the most powerful ships ever designed by humanity slugged it out broadside to broadside in a battle of void-going titans.

  Belatedly, the old engineer jinked the Penetrator class lander from side to side until there was no more time for running or dodging—the Battleship and its shields were right before them.

  A single tap of a button put control over the lander out of human hands, and turned the craft’s controls entirely over to the ship’s computer.

  Up until then, the lander had been moving slowly, almost lethargically, as it snuck in close to the battleship. But then, under the old engineer’s orders, the auto-pilot engaged and the safety lockouts designed to keep the ship’s crew from being crushed by excessive gee forces were overridden and the engines went into overdrive.

  Whatever cover had remained from the stealth coating on the hull of the ship, and power-masking heat sinks and workarounds he had installed, disappeared and lit the lander up like a Christmas tree to every sensor on the battlefield. Fortunately, though, the old engineer had a plan for that.

  No sooner had the engines gone to maximum overdrive than a pair of electro-magnetic pulse devices were ejected from the back of the little troop transport, which immediately started doing their best to ruin any target locks by rapidly pulsing.

  The drawback of this plan, of course, was that, being powerful enough to hopefully confuse the enemy computers meant that their effect on the smaller, less sophisticated sensors and computers of the lander was even more pronounced.

  In short, to make the trip survivable it was necessary to turn over control of the final approach to a machine that had to find a hole in a set of shields at the exact moment it couldn’t see and then land or engage the bucking cables before crashing into the battleship…assuming it made it through said shields in the first place. In short, while it was the old engineer’s best hope for success, he wasn’t holding his breath and thus the contact activated ion bomb attached to the top of the hull.

  One way or the other, Spalding was determined that the shields on that battleship were coming down. So, in obedience to its programming, with a dive the lander shot forward. Less than a second later, the feeling of overwhelming weight and pressure was followed by a lurch and high-pitched whining sound—followed by a sudden crash.

  **************************************************

  Electricity surged through the interior of the lander turning ballistics jelly back from a mostly solid back into liquid form. As soon as this process was complete, a hatch opened and vented the liquid from the interior of the ship out into space.

  Spalding came to jerking against his seat restraints as the ballistics liquid was sucked out into cold space. Moments later, there were hands on his seat restraints which were attempting to free him from their safety.

  “Get your fool hands off me, ye idjit!” the old man roused, slapping his attackers hands off irritably.

  “We must leave here, Wizard; there are many enemies to kill,” said Persus, once again reaching for his hands.

  “We made it?” the old Engineer asked in bewilderment. He was sure they were going to die and, now this? What bad luck!

  “Let us go, the others are already on the hull but the enemy are numerous we’ll need ever swordsman on the line,” informed Persus.

  “Sweet, crying Murphy,” Spalding swore looking over at the other man, “now that we’re here, you’re going to have to lead the men over to the shield generators. There are demolition charges in the back of the troop pod behind the last row of seating; I’ll upload a copy of the waypoints onto the map in your HUDs. Just remember: after placing the charges, ye’ll need to get inside the ship itself as quickly as possible—they’re only set on ten minute timers.”

  “Come with me and you can show us,” urged Persus.

  “No, no, no,” the old Engineer said, raising his hands, “you’ll do better without me. I’ve lost my starch and would only slow you down; I’m nothin’ but an old man who can’t even hold down a proper job anymore and all. You lot go out and give them what for!”

  Persus shook his head and, after another attempt to convince him, headed back into the troop pod.

  Spalding waited until the outer doors slid shut and then ran a system’s check. The ship was damaged, but not so bad that it would no longer work—or so he hoped. As soon as his board settled into a pattern of yellow and green lights, he spun back up the engine and took off from the hull of the battleship.

  “Probably best to fly it nape of the hull and try to exit around the stern,” he decided aloud.

  Punching up the engines, he sent the lander rocketing toward the rear of the ship, causing a few belated lasers to fire behind him as he passed.

  “This’ll be the rocky part,” he scowled as the shots pierced to the engine’s wash. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to be burned. However, despite this, he reoriented the little lander until it was facing the same direction as the battleship and sent it into a coast—at least, he did until a point defense turret set to the back of the ship opened up on him.

  “Confound it!” he yelled, punching the engines back up to high speed and made a run right for the shields. He was aiming for that part that was under the pressure of the Parliamentary Power’s main guns.

  “Here we go!” he shouted as the computer reported an area of high grade shield degradation. Increasing the speed to maximum, the little lander shot toward the exit. “Yes!” he cried right as the ship lost power, spun around in a high-gee turn, and crashed into something.

  For a heart-thumping moment, he wondered if he was going to be marooned on a dead ship drifting around the middle of a major battlefield.

  “Alert! Main engines are down. Main power trunk line has been cut. 40% of external sensor units not responding,” squawked the voice of the lander’s computers, along with the return of red emergency lighting representing the tally of dead and damaged systems continuing to roll out.

  “Confound it, woman,” he swore at the computer, momentarily forgetting that it was a machine he was talking to and not a person, “cease your chattering—there’s work to be done!” Realizing what he’d just said, he momentarily colored before pushing it aside. He would have time to indulge in emotion later. Or, at least he thought he would, since recent
events seemed to indicate he was cursed to survive at least for a little longer.

  Then a hand landed on his shoulder.

  “How can I help?” Persus asked.

  “What in the blue blazes are you doing here?” the old Engineer barked with dismay.

  The gauntleted hand squeezed ever so slightly, and Spalding was forced to hide a wince.

  “The Lady said it was my duty to ensure you survived,” Persus said, as if such an order was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  “Of all the fool-headed things to do; you should have stayed on the battleship and left an old man alone to do his job in peace,” Spalding fumed, getting up out of his chair. Pushing aside the other man, he headed for the back, “The main line’s been cut and at least one of the auxiliary lines has been damaged, so I’m going to have to take a look and see about a workaround—assuming we aren’t blown out of cold space by target happy gunners! So I suppose you might as well come along,” he groused.

  **************************************************

  “Main starboard auxiliary power line detected. Beginning system test,” reported the computer.

  “Ah ha!” the old engineer declared with the righteous satisfaction of a job well done. Wiggling around to get out, his legs clanged against the walls to either side of the access panel before the old engineer managed to pull free. “Now we can get back in the fight!” he declared with fire in his eyes.

  “For a man who claims to have lost his eagerness for battle, you seem to work exceptionally hard to enter them one after another,” Persus pointed out.

  “What?” Spalding barked with outrage, shoving a finger at the closed helmet of the other man.

  “I was just saying that for a man who has ‘lost his starch,’ I think you said, that all you have done today is throw yourself into one battle after another,” Persus pointed out but behind his closed-face mask, and the old Engineer could all but hear the grin in his voice as the warrior made fun of him.