"Captain Wolfe, I think you've already met Commander Essa." Pitt gestured for the man behind him to walk up. "I'm placing NOVA Team Blue on detached duty aboard the Nemesis under your command. Hopefully you won't need them, but they'll be here if you do."
"Is my mission back on, sir?" Jackson asked eagerly.
"We should talk in private." Pitt looked around. "Just the three of us, and then you can decide how to disseminate the information to your crew."
"Follow me, Admirals," Jackson said and walked off towards the lifts, Sergeant Castillo falling in right behind them.
They exchanged tense small talk on the way up to the superstructure. The observation lounge had been built as a multi-purpose area, but Jackson had taken to conducting any meeting there that involved more than two people. The space was nice, the view was much better, and the furniture far more comfortable than what was in his office. Not only that, but it seemed to put people more at ease to talk on neutral ground rather than his personal domain.
"Judging from Admiral Wright's face I have a feeling I'm not going to like what you're here to tell me," Jackson said once the hatch had closed and locked.
"You've already heard the vague brief regarding the Amaterasu attack," Pitt said. "I've come out here personally to let you know some things that I hope won't cloud your perspective, but I also don't believe in hiding information like this from my people. I'll leave it up to your good judgment to decide if you've been compromised.
"The com drone that came in with the sensor data of the attack was sent by your wife. She was aboard a small Fleet runabout in that system mapping out prospective training grounds and had just departed Amaterasu when the attack began."
Jackson felt like the room was spinning and he leaned forward onto a chair to keep himself from falling. What the hell was Jillian doing out in the Kiran System in a fucking yacht with no Fleet assets in the area?
"Captain, we have no reason to believe at this time the ship she was on was caught up in the attack," Celesta said. "The last part of the transmission she sent stated they weren't being actively targeted."
"I assume there's a reason you're telling me this while bringing NOVAs onto my ship at the same time?" Jackson asked.
"The attack has rattled people. Badly," Pitt said. "The President seemed content to allow an internal Ushin power struggle play out without interference, but now the Tsuyo Corporation board of directors is pissed. Rumor is they want this rogue Darshik Specter brought down … and they've specifically requested you to do it. Off the record, I think we all know where the real power lies within the Federation. I'd expect your official orders to come through at any time."
"Sir, I—"
"In the meantime," Pitt cut him off, "I'm ordering the Nemesis to fly directly to the Kirin System for a fact-finding mission in relation to the latest attack. You will depart immediately, Captain."
"Thank you, sir," was all Jackson could manage to get out.
"Don't make me regret this, Wolfe." Pitt pointed his finger across the table at Jackson. "I want this ship repositioned so she's able to more quickly respond when those inevitable orders come through, but I am not authorizing you to go cowboy out there and resume actively hunting this bastard without express permission. The Kirin System is closer to the Juwel System than DeLonges is, and you'll need those jump points to cross over into Darshik space."
"The Ushin are officially accepting the Darshik's unconditional surrender, at least for two of their three planets," Celesta took up the briefing. "All active Darshik combat units are to be considered rogue and hostile. You are authorized to defend yourself and any Federation ship or system, but at this point you are not to pursue past our borders."
"Two of the three?" Jackson asked.
"The system where Admiral Wright took out that derelict Super Alpha is still declaring itself independent," Pitt said. "The Ushin politics are as murky as everything else we think we know about them, but it seems the commander of that unique warship has a complete stranglehold on that planet. They've fortified the system with a force of unknown strength … all we know is the Ushin don't feel they can safely approach the planet."
"So the war is over save for this one asshole still flying around blowing up every Terran orbital installation he can find," Jackson said.
"It's more than one ship but yes, that's the long and short of it," Celesta said. "There's more … the detailed analysis of the sensor data Jillian sent back shows a ship that isn't consistent with the original Specter. This ship looks bigger and more refined, whereas the other was a hodgepodge of borrowed technologies."
"And if they get a toehold somewhere else they can start producing these more powerful starships in greater numbers," Jackson said, his cheek twitching at the mention of Jillian being involved in the latest attack. "That also explains why Barrett reported that he saw the ship we fought over Juwel so recently in the Columbiana System," he continued. "The big dog got a new ship, so a subordinate must be flying the one Pike disabled."
"Our assumption as well," Pitt said. "That's everything we have, Wolfe … get your ass out to Kirin and take a look around. This ship will easily overtake the recovery ships we've dispatched. Hell, she'll outrun the goddamn com drones, so make sure you remain there long enough for Admiral Wright to get your orders out to you."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Prepare the Nemesis for departure," Jackson said without preamble as he strode onto the bridge. "OPS, tell Engineering I want my ship ready to break orbit within the next twenty minutes. Coms! Message Fleet Control and let them know we're breaking out of formation and pushing for the Kirin jump point and we'll be at full power."
"Aye, sir!" Lieutenant Makers said enthusiastically.
"OPS, put me on the shipwide if you please," Jackson said as he slid into his seat.
"Go, sir."
"Attention crew … we've just received orders to depart for the Kirin System as fast as the Nemesis can safely make it. More details will be forthcoming through your department heads, but just know that the ship may get her first real combat action sooner than later.
"The Darshik have attacked a Tsuyo orbital habitat and the civilian casualties are expected to be shockingly high … likely in the hundreds of thousands. We're going there on a fact-finding mission as we're currently the fastest ship in the fleet, but we also need to be ready for anything. This is what we've been training for … let's make sure that if given the chance we put an end to this bastard. That is all."
"Kirin System?" Commander Chambliss asked. "So our mission is back on?"
"Not entirely, XO," Jackson said. "I'll be giving a briefing to the senior staff as soon as we're transitioned out of this system to give you all the details, but for right now I want to be underway as quickly as we can manage it."
"Understood, sir."
The Nemesis thrummed with power as the crew readied her for departure. His crew dove into their tasks with an enthusiasm that was borne out of endlessly circling the same planet for the last five weeks. It didn't matter where they were going, all they had to hear was that it was someplace different.
Soon the Nemesis broke smoothly from orbit, her powerful main drive allowing the destroyer to accelerate away directly without having to bump up into a higher transfer orbit first. Once they were clear of all the Black Fleet formations, and the com section had fielded all the good luck calls from the other ships, Jackson ordered them to flank speed on an arcing course that would take them up the well and to the Kirin jump point. He had been overjoyed to find out that there was a direct warp lane between DeLonges and Kirin.
Even as the Nemesis screamed towards the jump point, Jackson couldn't help but think no matter how fast his ship was, he would be too late. He also had real concerns about his ability to command the mission should he find out that Jillian had been killed in the Kirin System by the Darshik ace he'd been pulled off the trail of earlier. The regulations were explicitly clear in situations where a commanding officer found himself to be emotio
nally compromised. If he felt that he was simply unable to detach his feelings from the task of command then it was up to him to step down. He looked over at Commander Chambliss, who was busy scheduling briefings so that the information he had been given by Pitt was able to be filtered down through the senior staff and department heads. Did he trust the man to command the ship in battle if he couldn't? Should he tell him of his predicament now so that Chambliss was able to keep an eye on him?
"Six hours to transition," Lieutenant Hori called out from the OPS station.
"Acknowledged," Jackson said, shaking his head. "Open the hatches over the warp emitters and charge the transition capacitor banks."
"Hatches opening up … all four emitters deployed."
Jackson settled back for the last few hours until the Nemesis would cheat her way around relativity and outrun the light from DeLonges Prime to the Kirin System. His guts were twisted in knots at the prospect of what he might find there. The thought of losing Jillian was so horrifying his mind seemed to tiptoe around the issue, refusing to look at it head on. Instead he bathed in the righteous anger that came from the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents and let that burning sensation fill him. There would be no mercy once he caught up to this Specter. He'd hunted one alien invader across star systems before, and this time he wasn't bringing a ship that was decades out of date. He intended to give no quarter and would only be satisfied with the death of this Darshik rogue.
"Emergency power is stable!" Jillian called over her shoulder.
"Bringing the scrubbers back online," came the faint shout back.
The ship had landed safely but had been pummeled by debris raining down from the falling habitat. They'd had nine hull breaches so far and the last major impact had knocked their main power out. The chief engineer said the power junction was irreparably damaged and he had no choice but to shut their only fusion reactor down completely. Without main power there was zero chance of the ship taking off again, much less making it to orbit. The yacht had effectively just become an emergency shelter and they only had breathable air and heat for as long as the emergency power held out.
The com systems all still worked, but their passive sensors located on the dorsal surface hadn't survived the barrage of incoming debris. Their location hadn't been far enough north to completely miss the strikes as the station broke apart, but they were saved from the largest chunks that would have smashed the yacht flat. Those bigger pieces of structure had also kicked up a cloud of dust so heavy upon impact that most of the ship's optical sensors were now useless, and Captain Eckler had ordered them retracted to protect the sapphire lenses from the swirling grit.
They did have one wavelength that still gave them some detail: long-wave infrared. They had two imagers that could see in that part of the spectrum and look through the dust to at least get a rough idea of what might be coming their way, so they risked keeping them deployed. The high-power radar was still functional but would instantly give away their location.
"How are we looking on lifeboats?" Jillian asked.
"Same number as we initially picked up are still transmitting strong beacon signals," the sensor operator said. "Four hundred and three total."
"So a possibility of maybe eleven thousand survivors if they overloaded a few of them," Eckler muttered. "Damn! They must have not had any time from the beginning of the attack to when the order came to abandon ship."
"But at least the Specter isn't going around hitting lifeboats," Jillian said. "That could mean they're beneath its notice or that it's already left the area."
"Or it's laying a trap for the recovery ships," the first mate said. He'd slunk back onto the bridge after they'd landed and appeared to be back in control of himself.
"A possibility," Jillian conceded. "But that doesn't fit the usual pattern of hit and run it's been fond of so far. Even as powerful as its weapons are, it has shown itself to be very reluctant to meet a Terran warship head-on without having a numerical advantage. Celesta Wright chased it across three star systems and it did everything it could to try and escape her."
"I recall reading a redacted version of the post-incident report when she flew the Icarus all the way to Juwel to take another shot at it," Eckler said. "It did seem that it was hesitant to pit itself against the Starwolf-class ships and instead went after your husband's assault carrier and the Intrepid-class destroyers."
"The computer has finished the orbital debris analysis," the sensor operator spoke up.
"Go ahead," Eckler said.
"Even if we could take off, the chances of making it to orbit safely are less than fifteen percent. All of the lower orbits are clogged with debris that isn't coming down … the preliminary analysis indicates it could be years before they're navigable again."
"So that makes a rescue ship coming down equally unlikely," Jillian breathed. "How long can we sit down here on emergency power?"
"Power, food, and potable water will likely outlast us," Eckler said, looking at his tile. "Breathable air will become an issue within five weeks and that's assuming all the scrubbers are working at peak efficiency to that point. We're on the secondary environmental system after the primary was damaged by debris."
"Can it be repaired?" Jillian asked.
"Possibly," Eckler said. "A ship like this doesn't carry much in the way of spare parts, but we'll certainly try."
Jillian didn't say anything further. She looked out the forward window at the swirling gray dust, the light of Kirin Prime barely penetrating it. She had no doubt that CENTCOM had already dispatched ships once her com drone made it to New Sierra, but would they have the capability of getting them off the yacht before the air turned stale and they all suffocated?
9
"Transition complete. All departments checking in."
"Position confirmed, we're in the Kirin System, sir."
"Secure warp emitters and bring the main drive online," Jackson ordered. "Tactical, let's not be subtle about this; full active sensors. Begin scanning the system. Coms?"
"There are a lot of Fleet transponders down there, sir," Makers said. "Hundreds of them."
"Lifeboats from the habitat," Chambliss said. "That's a good sign. Either the Specter isn't bothering with killing off the survivors or it's already cleared out of the system."
"I wish it was still here," Jackson growled. "I can't do anything to pursue it outside of this system on these provisional orders from Admiral Pitt. We need CENTCOM to come through with an official go-order."
"Main drive power is available, Captain," Lieutenant Hori said. "Engineering has cleared the Nemesis for maneuvering."
"Helm, all ahead full," Jackson said. "Just take her down the well. Nav! Get a proper course laid out that parks us in orbit outside of the debris field over the fourth planet and send it to the helm."
"All ahead full, aye!"
"Course locked in and sent to the helm, Captain."
"OPS, bring up the ident and nav beacons along with our Link transponder," Jackson ordered. "We need to let everyone down there know that a friendly has arrived in-system. Do we have an estimate on how far back the initial wave of recovery ships were?"
"Four more days, Captain," Hori answered.
"And we don't have the capability of recovering that type of lifeboat, much less the room for all the survivors," Chambliss said. The lifeboats used on large orbital platforms were huge, far too large to fit in a destroyer's hangar bay. They could try and dock to them using one of the external airlocks, but they also didn't maneuver very well and posed too great a risk to a ship not designed specifically to recover them.
"We're not here in a rescue capacity, Commander," Jackson said. "We're here to observe and render what aid is possible. OPS, tell CIC that I want every transponder cataloged and tracked so that we can give the recovery fleet detailed information and expedite things as much as possible."
"Aye, sir."
The Nemesis pushed down into the system towards what was undoubtedly the single
most deadly attack on a civilian target in the history of their species outside of the planetary-scale attacks during the Phage War. Jackson had no doubt that the new President would move quickly to get his mission approved and fast-tracked through CENTCOM after this latest atrocity. It was one thing when Starfleet ships or platforms were attacked, but with likely hundreds of thousands of civilians dead on a Tsuyo-owned habitat there were going to be very powerful people calling for blood. President Nelson might have been able to hold off the hawks in Parliament before and let his "none of our business" strategy play out, but not after this.
The United Terran Federation was new and had been thrown together out of desperation at a time when they were looking down the barrel of another protracted war and hemorrhaging systems to the already established Eastern Star Alliance. As would be expected, the political waters were mostly uncharted since there were a lot of new players at the table, and the centuries of tradition from the Confederate Senate were tossed out the window. President Wellington had commanded enough respect and had the clout of the Columbiana System behind him to force through the changes he wanted and to hold the other member systems in check. President Nelson of Britannia had neither the support of a powerful star system nor the commanding presence Wellington did. Jackson wondered how he would respond in this first real test of his leadership.
"CIC reports the computers are isolating and cataloging all transponder signals, Captain," Lieutenant Hori said. "Lieutenant Commander Hawkins has pulled in extra people and authorized the use of two of our emergency backup cores to get a report to you as quickly as possible."
"Good man." Jackson nodded his approval. Lieutenant Commander Jake Hawkins should have been a full commander already, but he'd been busted down in rank twice early in his career due to an ill-advised romance with an admiral's daughter when he was a lieutenant junior grade and then again for a bar fight on DeLonges where he put three Fourth Fleet spacers in the hospital, two with serious injuries. Jackson had been dubious when Captain Ed Rawls of the TFS Relentless had recommended Hawkins for the Nemesis's CIC department head job, but so far he'd outperformed all his peers.
Destroyer (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 3) Page 9
