Loyalty to the Cause (TCOTU, Book 4) (This Corner of the Universe)

by Britt Ringel

  Just three more missiles, Hall gaped at the seeming simplicity of it all. Nothing can stop us.

  * * *

  Heskan’s concentration had been so great he did not hear the calls of the successful missile intercepts. In the last three minutes, he had devised, plotted and ordered minute changes to course and plane for each of his fleet’s three sections. He hoped to keep the main unengaged or, at the worst, barely grazing GP laser range, but Wallace had expertly anticipated the angle of his attack. Heskan resigned himself to the fact that all three sections would be fully involved in the pass. Additional course corrections this late into the run would only result in mass confusion during the skirmish. While he may have been bested by Wallace in charting a fleet course, Heskan believed he outsmarted the Saden admiral in speed, ensuring the closure rate of each section’s pass would be .25c or greater.

  With no final sailing orders to give before his three sections engaged, Heskan regained situational awareness of Elathra. Unsurprisingly, point defense had been executed flawlessly. Earlier in the week, Heskan overheard Vernay talking to Hall about where to place Thomas and Pruette. She explained that both gunners were highly experienced and if “the game” was presenting a best broadside to the enemy, Elathra could ill-afford the absence of such expertise. Vernay’s instinct had once again been proven correct. In the first pass, Pruette’s single shot with the typically inaccurate particle cannon had placed its mark on Specter while Elathra’s second beam missed by a wide margin. During missile defense, Thomas’ skill in his dual GP turret enabled Vernay to augment the inexperienced Seshafian gunners in the carronades. All of the petite officer’s formidable instinct and experience in naval combat united to provide a perfect missile defense strategy for the snow. Heskan waited now for his ship to go on the offensive.

  Elathra pivoted slightly under Selvaggio’s steady hand to present Courageux not only her previously masked, portside particle cannon, but also the coaxially mounted dual laser turret near it.

  The two adversaries closed to 6ls by the time Lieutenant Selvaggio counter-thrusted to null Elathra’s rotation. At that instant, twin beams of neutrons pulsed from the linear accelerators of her cannons and reached out toward Courageux at .998c. Heskan noticed that Vernay had assumed direct control over the portside particle cannon, presumably to provide Elathra the best chances for hits at such extreme range with the powerful weapon.

  Courageux’s second heavy laser volley arrived as Elathra settled into her new facing. The AIPS screen had been recharging for ten seconds and achieved seventy-four percent of its maximum integrity before the volley battered it down. The charged energy lashed at Elathra’s main hull, flash-vaporizing duralloy to expose the snow’s vulnerable internal structure to its brutal assault.

  The first compartment depressurized was Elathra’s galley. Unmanned and secured for combat, minimal debris evacuated with its atmosphere. As the spit of energy tore a sinister gash along Elathra’s port side, seven enlisted crew compartments were annihilated and immediately frozen after subjugation to the frigid rigors of space. This time, Elathra coughed gas and debris for several seconds along the length of her hull before interior containment fields flickered into existence to preserve the ship.

  The distance between the combatants reduced to 5ls during Elathra’s coughing fit and all hell broke loose. Courageux’s enormous quad laser mount, seated atop the center of her hull, combined her fire with the twin streams of energy shooting from her stern. Her heavy laser turret barked impressively a third time near her bow to punctuate the fusillade. Elathra replied meagerly with only her twin dual GP laser mounts. The energy flashed across space while GP gunners in each ship waited impatiently for their weapons to undergo their two-second recycle time. As their turrets spat destruction a second time, Elathra’s first particle shots reached Courageux.

  When the design of corporate ships of the line evolved to single-sided armament for best offensive advantage, so too did their defensive design specialize for line of battle combat. In addition to an AIPS screen, modern ships of the line were routinely outfitted with a single, sometimes double, shield generator that protected the “battle face” of the ship. This optimization made rated ships much more powerful in their particular arenas than they otherwise would be. Shield generators that would be too weak to shelter an entire ship could focus to protect her single side, guaranteeing most of the fire she endured would be expended beating down defenses instead of wreaking havoc inside her hull.

  The twin particle cannon beams of Elathra cared not about such things. Each of the thirty nano-second pulses issued inside the single salvo penetrated deeply into Courageux’s side shield before depositing their energy several centimeters into the projected barrier. Each pulse burrowed deeper and deeper into the shield wall until the twenty-third pulse breached the shield entirely. That pulse continued toward the fourth-rate at nearly the speed of light, brushing aside the AIPS screen as so much paper, and slammed into the duralloy armor encasing Courageux’s drives. The thick armor resisted the next four pulses before succumbing to the inevitable. The final three pulses burned through Courageux’s inner hull and tore through her rotary-impulse drive machinery. A duo of flashes etched the large ship’s stern as Elathra’s twin beams of destruction tore savagely at the line ship’s conventional propulsion.

  Two seconds after Elathra’s rebuke, the first of the GP laser volleys reached their objectives. Elathra’s AIPS screen had but five seconds to prepare for Courageux’s broadside. The combined fire of six GP lasers and one Maclex heavy laser crushed the screen’s integrity inside a heartbeat. A laser burst struck at one of Elathra’s portside carronade mounts and the alloy cage holding Leading Spaceman Tory Fernandez vanished. A second burst painted a line of melted armor over the snow’s forward starboard wing while a stray burst from Courageux’s forward dual mount again deeply gouged Elathra’s ventral radiator.

  Each laser burst dotted the snow with gashes and craters ranging from hideous to oddly sublime, but the worst of the blows was awarded by the fourth-rate’s heavy laser. The Maclex scored nearly a direct hit down the centerline of the ship, penetrating two-thirds of the way through her to strike at Elathra’s bridge.

  Chapter 29

  Until now, Heskan had neither felt nor heard the grievous blows inflicted upon his command. He was monitoring the tactical situation when, in an instant, the right wall screen displaying the myriad of flashes and decompression events on Courageux transformed into a smoking hole. The sight by itself would have been simply alarming, but the noise associated with the visage rocked Heskan to his core. In all his time in combat, Heskan had never experienced the horror of decompression. At the academy, each cadet was forced to endure a simulated atmospheric evacuation event but Heskan found that preparation sorely lacking as air ripped from his lungs, his eyes bulged and skin began to freeze by evaporative cooling. Without conscious thought, his left hand slapped down his shocksuit helmet’s visor. A chime informing him of a secure seal sounded in his helmet but Heskan’s state of shock rendered him oblivious to the suit’s notice. He sat in a stupor for several moments recovering from the calamitous event as the mayhem continued around him.

  While Heskan regained lucidity, each ship’s GP lasers recycled. Elathra’s laser gunners, seated safely in their dual mounts and unaware of the catastrophe occurring on the bridge, dutifully fired their weapons. In the starboard particle cannon control room, Gunner’s Mate First Class Pruette volleyed his second shot at the fourth-rate while the port particle cannon operator, Brevic Lieutenant, junior grade Daily, a naval aviator turned gunner, waited patiently for Commander Vernay to activate his weapon.

  Two-second old laser fire reached each ship an instant after newly created turmoil was released from barrel and lens. This incoming volley of destruction, purely from GP turrets, splashed against rebuilding shields and screens. Courageux coped better, her defensive suites withstanding all but the final burst from Thomas’ laser turret. The shot expended sixty-four p
ercent of its energy vaporizing duralloy armor before destroying a workshop along the perimeter of the ship.

  In contrast, Elathra’s screen absorbed only two of her adversary’s six laser bursts before collapsing. The remaining four torrents of ruin engraved crooked scars along her decimated, ventral radiator. Computers controlling Elathra’s automated cooling systems noticed the obliteration of five of the six ventral heat sinks along with the primary heat exchanger and alerted both particle cannon gunners and the ship’s bridge of the damage.

  Despite the new mural of destruction covering Elathra, only four seconds had elapsed since the decompression of her bridge. Heskan, finally clear-headed, looked around eagerly to his companions and breathed a sigh of relief when he found them uninjured. Judging from the scorch marks on the bridge bulkheads, the shot had entered high along the wall and gouged the ceiling. No containment fields had yet appeared and the frightening knowledge of operating in a vacuum took hold over him. The only noises Heskan heard came through his helmet’s speakers as expressions of dismay spewed from his bridge team and Vernay’s predacious growl preempted her belated firing of Elathra’s port particle cannon. The range between the two ships expanded back to 5ls when they launched their last GP salvos of the pass.

  As each gunner blew their final kiss, the third volley of GP laser fire, issued seconds ago, reached the ships. Shields and screens remained offline and the charged energy touched naked duralloy with token resistance. Elathra gained a matching blemish down the length of her port hull and a grouping of slashes over her port wing radiators. Additional hits cleaved impressive chunks from the snow’s already devastated ventral radiator but had little more than cosmetic effect. The standout barrage was inflicted to Elathra’s portside Argus VSP-14 sensor suite. The array, bulging from the snow’s hull like an eye, erupted in a shower of metal and heat. On the bridge, Heskan watched the tactical display begin to flicker and update in fits and spurts as the ship’s sensory capability was cut cleanly in half.

  The next, brutal laser barrage smashed into Elathra two seconds after its predecessor. The assault was abated, somewhat, by damage inflicted to Courageux’s dorsal quad laser turret seconds earlier in the pass and the slow, ten-second recycle period of her heavy laser. Only twin streams of energy from the fourth-rate’s forward turret splashed across Elathra’s weakened AIPS screen, partially absorbed by the system’s efforts to recharge. As the remainder of the pulse struck duralloy armor, a mere twenty percent of the residual energy burned through to Briefing Room – M1 and Navigation Control. No witness was present for the calamity of decompression inside the briefing room; however, three of the four occupants in the Navigation Control compartment endured the visceral experience. The fourth crewmember, Spaceman Darren Cooper, laid motionless, victim of a direct hit from Courageux’s forward lasers.

  Elathra’s and Courageux’s momentum finally extended the distance between them beyond 5ls. Each ship’s final GP shots, just fractions of degrees out of alignment, missed their targets, giving Elathra an additional three seconds of respite before Courageux’s heavy laser struck. The AIPS screen, provided a full six seconds of relief to regenerate, absorbed forty-three percent of the Maclex energy burst, but the excess battered through the screen to pound unmercifully upon Elathra’s port wing. The stream gashed through the duralloy armor a scant two meters from the port linear accelerator. In the blink of an eye, the “barrel” superheated, warped and finally melted from the nearby energy transfer. Ensign Daily, safely seated eleven meters behind the point of impact, watched his weapon’s control panel indicators shift from green to a universal red. After a short appraisal, he quickly reported the loss of the weapon to Lieutenant Hall.

  During the conversation between Daily and Hall, Courageux’s finishing heavy laser burst reached for Elathra. The shot, fired eight seconds ago from a range of 8ls, flew true and slammed against a nearly rebuilt AIPS screen. Absorption levels jumped from nominal to overload in an instant before Elathra’s computers disengaged the screen. As the remnant of the parting shot traveled into the snow, it retained little more than twenty-one percent of its energy. That ostensibly insignificant amount, compared to the incredible sum the snow had already withstood, seemed almost trifling.

  It was not the quantity of energy that caused the destruction along much of Elathra’s port wing but its precise application. The laser burst lanced duralloy armor just one meter in front of the previous shot. The internal structure and its underlying support, crippled from the earlier blow, failed completely under the second assault and caused the first third of the port wing to fold “upward” as maneuvering thrusters fired to reduce the snow’s relative plane. Nearly four hundred tonnes of wreckage broke free and raked down the length of Elathra’s wing, demolishing the port particle cannon control room and the entirety of her portside radiators. As the debris struck the blister turret of the already destroyed carronade, it bounded upward marginally and cleared the balance of the ship. By the time the mutilation of Elathra’s port side was complete, the two combatants sailed a further half light-second apart and out of direct fire range.

  Out of immediate danger, Heskan glanced away from the stuttering tactical plot to his shocksuit’s status display on his left arm. The bridge still registered as a vacuum. “Gables,” he barked over the bridge comm frequency, “where’s our compartmental integrity?”

  Lieutenant Gables’ voice rang over his helmet speakers. “Working on it, sir. The problem is that shot not only cored the bulkheads but also the ceiling.” She shook her head in frustration. “Captain, we’ve also lost both the port particle cannon and dual GP mount. Damage reports are pouring in from all over.”

  Heskan felt his frustration boiling over but nodded acceptance. “Report to Vernay when you can.”

  To his left, Commander Vernay’s concentration on her chair arm console seemed unbreakable. “Jack,” she called over the network, “focus what’s left of the Fisheye on that fourth-rate and give me a damage estimate on its propulsion capabilities. Pruette and I nailed her, and I don’t think she’s able to maneuver.”

  Heskan looked forward. The center wall screen updated the tactical situation in drunken lurches and the right side screen had been destroyed by the shot that deprived them of atmosphere. Only the left wall screen seemed to be functioning well. The status of his section was updating while the main engaged its Saden counterpart. Farther behind, the rearguard braced for its pending skirmish.

  His own vanguard, minimally damaged in its first, stunted pass as the rearguard now openly displayed the rigors of combat. Every Colossus-class snow had suffered at least moderate damage. Anakim and Ravana, squaring against fellow snows, escaped brutal harm and the trailing corvette, Honor, managed well against her opponent, an already damaged snow. However, Rindr, forced into conflict with a brig, had been nearly as mauled as Elathra.

  Heskan glared at each update as more and more damage was reported. Though the reports were serious, he saw nothing that should retire any of his section’s ships from battle. Still, we can’t go up against a superior section again, he thought. That will be the end of us. His eyes moved to the status of the other sections but no additional information was yet available. It’s too early for damage reports from them. The rearguard has barely begun their pass. Heskan’s stomach churned as he awaited the results of the other two combat runs. The Seshafian main, already mangled, was facing the same section as before. He shuddered as he contemplated the possible results. At least Ajax’s section should do better against Wallace’s undersized rearguard.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Gables stated soberly.

  Both Heskan and Vernay swung their heads toward the Operations officer.

  “Everything on the port side is gone except for a single carronade and now, we’re getting a heat exchange error from the starboard wing radiators.” Gables paused to look gravely at the command officers through her visor causing Vernay to gesture hastily for her to continue.

  “Um,” Gables sta
rted, “that means our last particle cannon can’t fire without melting and the dual GP turret’s recycle time is going to at least double.”

  “Unacceptable,” Vernay stated. She turned to face Heskan.

  On the tactical plot, Heskan’s rearguard concluded its pass. I must command the fleet, he thought. I’ve got to start planning our next maneuvers. The bitter memory of the ships of CortRon-15 scrambling to assume formation because he had fallen behind on issuing orders haunted him briefly. He locked eyes with Vernay. “Handle this, Commander. I have to focus on the fleet.”

  Heskan watched Vernay nod determinedly and then release the restraints on her shockseat. She walked quickly over to Gables’ station while stating, “That repair gets priority.”

  Heskan heard gasps wash over the fleet command channel followed by an “Oh, no.” On the tactical display, Diomedes’ symbol flashed briefly before disappearing.

  “ELTI from Diomedes,” Truesworth announced grimly.

  Heskan blinked hard, refusing to believe in the loss of his fleet’s strongest ship. When he reopened his eyes, the news grew worse. Malabar had followed her flagship into extinction. The main’s new lead ship, the brig named Falcon, was highlighting so rapidly with damage updates that it was clear the ship was lost as well. The snow behind Falcon appeared to be heavily scarred but still in the fight. Only the last ship in the section, a snow named Fame, had avoided heavy damage.

  I’ve lost nearly the entire main section, Heskan realized in shock. From behind him, Chief Brown entered the bridge wearing a blackened shocksuit. He immediately headed for Vernay and Gables. The pair had obviously formed their own channel to keep the main bridge comm clear. Vernay was pointing viciously at Gables.

  * * *

  “The longer you wait, the worse the chances will be, Denise,” Vernay stated savagely.

  “Commander,” Brown said over the subchannel as he reached out to grab Vernay’s arm. “You can send someone down the wing to reset the heat exchanger but they ain’t gettin’ back. There ain’t no chance.”