“Oh, and just how would you know when a man’s lost his nerve?” the old Engineer yelled. “I’ve been poisoned, I tell you. My heart had to be replaced a few years back, but when they did it those quacks sent it back to me with defective parts! I think they put it in the same nutrient bath as…oh, why am I bothering to tell you any of this? I can’t do my duty anymore and that’s all there is to it. The only thing that’s left to me is this one last hurrah,” he threw his hands in the air and stomped off toward the pilot’s chair.
“Computer, set a course for battleship #1,” Commander Spalding ordered.
And, slowly, the little ship built up speed as it made to follow the command.
Chapter 43: The Commodore takes Advantage
“Commodore,” the Lieutenant in charge of Sensors called out, “Battleship #3’s port shields just went down. I read a small explosion on the hull of the ship and then her shields died!”
Druid lunged forward in his chair. “Are they beginning to roll the ship?” he demanded, shooting a significant look over to the tactical pit.
“Not yet, sir!” Sensors said jubilantly.
Needing no orders to do so, the ship’s Tactical Officer immediately started speaking urgently into his microphone down to the gun deck.
“Tell gunnery to pour it on,” barked Druid anyway, “this might be our chance to even things up!”
“Shall we continue our spiral roll with Battleship #4?” the Parliamentary Power’s helmsman asked urgently.
“We’ve knocked out #4’s shields and are close to knocking out the rest of her lasers on this side; we can’t take the risk of diverting away when we’re so close to finishing her off,” the Commodore decided. “Press the attack against both ships as hard as we can!”
Despite the fact that something over half the lasers on the side of his ship facing Battleships #3 were knocked out—and he was still taking heavy fire from both ships—he started to feel something like hope for the first time since coming under the guns of three battleships. The spiral attack on Battleship #4 had placed the bulk of the enemy warship between the Parliamentary Power and the rest of the enemy ships, and Druid’s helmsman was maximizing the position while Gunnery took every advantage of the occasion by pouring fire onto the lone enemy warship.
“Press the attack,” he ordered, praying that Battleship #2 didn’t suddenly decide to get up off its duff and start acting against them. #2 had been just sitting there with full shields and, as far as he could tell, a fully-functioning battleship doing nothing for the majority of the battle so far. He didn’t know what luck had caused this, but he was suspecting it involved some plan of the Admiral’s. “We’ve got to start damaging her engines, finish off her weapons, deploy grappling cables, and send over the prize crew while we still can.”
Even shot up as the enemy battleship was going to be, if he could get a boarding party onboard #4 then maybe they could turn the tide of battle in their favor somehow. But right now, with the Power getting the worst of it from three inferior—but still very powerful—enemy battleships, things were not looking good.
Even as he thought this the ship rocked. “Venting on decks 11-14; auxiliary life support received a direct hit and was destroyed. Engineering reports the damage to port secondary engine is becoming severe and they say we need to shut her down within the next five minutes or she’ll tear herself apart. Sensors are degraded, with exterior sensor receivers down by 38%,” his Damage Control officer continued to chime out the ever-rising damage to his first major unit command.
“Dispatch damage control parties wherever you need to,” Druid ordered, turning back to stare at the screen. Even with the loss of shields to one of the battleships shooting up his ship—a lucky break if ever he’d seen one—the Parliamentary Power and the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet were still slowly, but certainly, losing this battle. He was determined to do his best, but the way things stood he didn’t see what he could do to turn things around.
The Power had a thicker, more resilient hull than the enemy battleships—but that was only going to take them so far. And judging from the rising damage reports, he was afraid that advantage was slowly coming to an end.
“Commodore, I’m reading something weird,” reported Sensors. “Battleship #1 has just redirected a large part of its fire to an area of space very near it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a last-ditch point defense fire.”
“Did one of our gunboats sneak in close?” Druid asked with surprise.
“It’s not a gunboat…in fact, contact is intermittent, as if sensors are having difficulty tracking it. But that could just be a matter of our current distance from whatever their targeting,” Sensors reported.
“A missile…or stealthed torpedo, then?” Druid asked with surprise. Of course, no one missile—outside of illegal weaponry like Liberator torpedoes, which no longer existed—could knock out such a heavy ship. But where there was one, maybe there were more!
“No, it’s—” the other Officer stopped in surprise, “it just went to full drive on a collision course with the enemy battleship!”
“Tactical computers identify it as a shuttle or modified troop transport—a lander, Commodore,” the Lieutenant in charge of Tactical reported when the Sensor Officer stumbled.
On the screen, the shuttle—or lander, or whatever it was—suddenly took off, moving like it was a high performance fighter instead of the shuttle they originally identified her as.
“She’s almost reached battleship #1,” Tactical reported excitedly.
“Receiving a friend or foe identification now; it’ definitely MSP,” reported the Lieutenant Commander at Comm.
Then the point defense fire converged upon the small ship. “A hit!” groaned Sensors as the lander lost power and went into an uncontrolled spin, “multiple hits. The little ship is starting to break apart.” Druid shook his head sadly. Whoever had done it had been a fool to try making an unescorted attack run on a battleship with nothing but their plucky little lander. But despite that, he couldn’t help but find himself rooting for the now defunct ship. Stupid, but courageous, he thought of the now-destroyed lander.
Then there was a flash that fuzzed their sensor screens.
“What was that?” Druid snapped as the main screen began to clear.
“Someone just dropped an ion bomb on Battleship #1!” Tactical said excitedly. “They just lost their starboard shields on the side pointed toward us and from what I can see they’ve got multiple systems down and nonoperational. It’s going to take them a while to boot everything back up, depending on how fast their crew can work.”
“It must have been that little lander,” Druid said, shaking his head with admiration, knowing that ionic weapons generally depended on atmosphere to function. That meant that whoever had prepped that craft had made extensive modifications to it and the ion bomb. And that kind of preparation wasn’t something to be discarded lightly.
The crew of that ship just might not have been as stupid as he’d thought.
Chapter 44: An unwanted Exit
Minutes earlier:
“Get yer hands off me—I’ve got to guide her in,” raged Spalding.
“I saw you set the autopilot. I am getting you out of here,” Persus pulled out a vibro-knife and started cutting safety straps.
“Blast it, man, this battle’s lost if we can’t do something. This is my chance, can’t you see that?” Spalding protested, punching and kicking as the overgrown Tracto-an forcibly hauled him out of the pilot’s chair.
“I have my command from the Mistress: I am to keep you alive at all costs. You are coming with me; there will be more and other battles later,” Persus said grimly, dragging the old engineer, kicking and flailing, to the hatch.
“Of all the foolishness,” the old Engineer raged as he was forcibly stuffed into the hatch, “this is mutiny in cold space!” The ornery old engineer wanted to activate his mini-plasma torches but the gloves of his modified skinsuit were on and all he’d do wo
uld be burn through his own suit, exposing himself to vacuum.
Then the inside of the hatch closed and the outside opened, sucking him out into space. Moments later, a battle-suited figure approached on a grav-board, grabbed a hold of him with a gauntleted hand, and started burning away from the shuttle.
“We are not dead yet,” Persus commented over the suit-com.
“You muscle-headed idjit,” Spalding swore at him, just before there was a flash that seared into his brain and the electronics of his skin suit failed. He tried to move his hands, but both arms and legs had stopped functioning. Also, he could only see out of one eye—thankfully his good eye—and the lack of acceleration he was feeling made it obvious the grav-board had lost power. “Blast it! Do you see what you’re mutiny has done to us?” he demanded of the empty, no longer recycling air inside the helmet of his skin suit. He then realized that his suit’s comm. was fried just like the rest of his electronics, “Now I’m going to suffocate to death within a few minutes time and even if that doesn’t happen I’ll catch my death and freeze into a corpsicle!”
But although the battle-suit flailed around a bit, it was just as dead as the rest of the electronics belonging to Spalding. Now, normally, the old engineer would have attempted some sort of repair but as he couldn’t so-much as twitch a finger that was right out.
Then Persus came around and put his helmet up against Spalding’s.
“Why has my suit lost power?” the Tracto-an demanded and, unable to take it any longer, the old engineer just started yelling.
If he was going out, he wanted it to be on his own terms.
Chapter 45: Jason Hand to Hand.
Running as fast as I could, I made my way toward the hull.
“I have a damage control team under attack 200 meters from your position, Admiral,” Tech Blythe informed him calmly. “Please take the service tube on your next left.”
“Got it,” I said, seeing the tube and launching myself into it. For a second I just hung there, before my grav-belt activated and I shot through the tube one fist clenched and extended up above my head for protection.
“For the record, I still think this is a terrible idea,” Laurent’s voice came over my helmet, “you should be leading the Fleet, not charging around the corridors like a one man army.”
“Noted,” I said flatly.
“Exit approaching; you should arrive behind the droid position, sir,” Blythe informed me.
“Copy,” I said tersely.
Dodging out of the tube, my metal boots fell to the ground with a clang. I stumbled but recovered, and I knew that my time outside of my suit and away from combat was showing itself.
Looking up, I saw that the damage control technician hadn’t been lying when she had said I would show up right behind the enemy—they were less than 8 meters ahead of me.
Pulling out a vibro-sword in one hand, and shrugging my rifle around from its shoulder strap and into my other hand, I surged forward.
With machine speed the first of the Droid Warriors pivoted and started firing blaster bolts from each of his hands.
Leveling my plasma rifle I returned fire, pulling the trigger as rapidly as possible. I figured since the droids were clogging the corridor, there was only a small chance of a plasma blast punching through and endangering the repair crew I was trying to save.
My suit lurched from multiple hits to its reinforced front section, but then I was within sword range. This new sword wasn’t as effective as the one Jean Luc had stolen from me, but it still did an effective job of splitting a droid’s head in two. Of course, when I went to pull it out, the vibro-blade became stuck.
Letting go of the blade, I aimed center mass and repeatedly fired the plasma rifle.
Another droid fell back but, because I’d been standing still for too long, I started taking shots to the helmet that scarred my visor.
Kicking back one of the large warrior droids, I grabbed another and, using all the power in my battle-suit, I slammed it into another.
All the while I was still taking hits and my left leg’s mobility was down 20% while my right arm was starting to lose some of its range of motion as well.
Knowing it was time to get out of there, I reached down to my belt. Grabbing a plasma grenade, I activated it with the flick of my finger. I dropped it at my own feet and I surged forward, in the direction of the Damage Control team I was here to relieve.
Slamming and crashing through a bunch of droids intent on killing me, I hadn’t yet cleared the entire mass of them when the grenade detonated.
I was picked up and sent crashing face-first down the corridor, landing on the last droid which stood between me and freedom. To thank it for breaking my fall, I threw it against the wall and then repeatedly stomped it in the head until it stopped moving.
Seeing most of the rest of the droids were down, I grabbed my fallen plasma rifle and turned back. With a yell, I emptied the rifle into them. Slamming a new power pack, I proceeded to finish off the droid pack before turning to the damage control team.
“Thank you, sir,” the Petty Officer in charge of the team said in a quavering voice.
Looking around, I saw less than half the team was still standing and clutching blaster pistols and sonic rifles. The rest of the team members were scattered further down the hall from the maintenance room they’d been using as a last ditch defensive position.
I scowled. “I just wish I’d got here sooner,” I informed him and then turned away. The damage to my battle-suit suddenly seeming like less than nothing, “are there any more of them in this section?”
“Part of the group broke away just before they chased us into the maintenance room. They were probably heading for Engineering,” the PO reported.
I gave a nod and hurried away, stopping only to free my damaged vibro-blade.
I was feeling the need to deal out some more machine death and destruction, but before I’d even rounded the corner of that corridor I ran into a trio of droids coming the other way and I started taking fire.
Drawing back my sword and leveling my rifle, I gave a battle cry before piling into them. One fell immediately, and then another went down before a shot pulverized the knee joint of my battle-suit, sending fire and instant agony through my leg as it started to crumple. Within moments, the auto-tourniquet built into the power armor began to constrict and something injected itself into my neck.
I never stopped firing and cutting around myself with the vibro-blade even when I slammed into the wall for support but with the pain rapidly falling back under control, I found myself once again able to aim my shots.
But by then they were all around me. One of them grabbed my sword arm, and another went for my rifle, forcing it up and out of position to shoot anything but the ceiling.
Roaring with frustration, I tried to force it back into position but their strength was equal to that of the power armor, and with only one leg they pushed me down and started to swarm over me.
Multiple-blows to my helmet had me seeing stars, and I figured it was all over. My hand fumbled desperately for another plasma grenade as I fought against the mind fog brought on by one too many blows. I didn’t figure I could do anything more than activate it while still on my belt, but at that point since I was dead anyway I wanted to take a few more of them down with me. However, try as I might to escape, they still had hold of my arms and I couldn’t reach the belt.
Then a hail of fire landed all around me cutting into the droids on and around me. The hold on my limbs weakened and I tore free.
Back and forth my vibro-blade slashed into the droids, driving them off me until I came to a sitting position.
“Are you alright, sir?” asked the Petty Officer.
Looking over, I could see that just a handful of the damage control team remained, with a trail of injured and fallen crewmen lead up to my position.
“I think I’ll make it,” I coughed.
Giving my head a shake to try and clear it was a mistake, causing ev
erything to swirl around me. When everything stopped moving I looked down and saw my right leg sticking sideways at an unnatural angle.
Hearing more droid footsteps getting louder I looked back up at the Petty Officer.
“However, I think it might be best if I took up position at this corner while you start first aid and emergency care,” I said, looking back at the others.
“I don’t know if there are enough of us to drag you back to the lift tube before more droid warriors arrive. It would take close to the same amount of time to get you out of the power armor,” he said, looking doubtfully down at my mangled leg.
“Get whoever’s alive back to Medical; I can hold them here while you evacuate,” I informed him, thankful that I couldn’t actually feel the damage I’d taken. To my surprise, while I was assessing myself I saw that I’d taken several gashes that had cut through my battle-suit. I was bleeding from the damaged arm, along with my other leg, with my vital fluids dripping through rents in my armor.
For a moment I was surprised I wasn’t yet feeling it but then I realized it must have been the medications dispensed by the suit.
“Are you sure, sir?” asked the team leader.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, pulling out another plasma grenade and arming it.
I waited until the droid footsteps were just around the corner, and then I tossed the grenade.
An instant later it detonated.
“I’ll be fine. I’ve got another fifteen grenades, so I can hold for a while,” I continued, leaning around the corner and firing a pair of shots into the droid survivors before ducking back.
With a nod, the team leader went back over to start dragging away the wounded survivors of his team and providing emergency care alongside the rest of his ambulatory team.
Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7) Page 33
