“They’re on close approach now, Commodore; they’re beginning the firing run,” reported the Sensor Ensign.
LeGodat’s eyes were nailed to the main screen, as the lines and icons representing the 1st Squadron of the 25th Sector Guard interpenetrated with that of the Medium Cruiser.
“There’s considerable weight of fire, and I’m seeing shield flares,” reported the Ensign tightly.
“Give me the blow by blow, as fast as you’re able,” LeGodat said in a hurried voice, as he activated the small screen on the arm of his chair and pulled a close-up of the Medium Cruiser onto it.
“The Hydra just went into a spin, and the Light Destroyer rolled several times before straightening out. She’s streaming air, Sir!” he cried.
“Which one,” LeGodat asked urgently.
The Ensign blinked. “The Guard Flagship, Sir,” he reported, as his Petty Officer whispered something into his ear.
LeGodat throttled back on his temper at this imperfect information; it was, after all, very much his own fault for specifically requesting it from the Ensign.
“The Destroyer lost her entire forward-facing shield! It looks like she and the Hydra had a near miss,” exclaimed the Ensign.
“The Hydra is still in an uncontrolled spin,” Lieutenant Command Stravinsky whispered into his ear.
“I agree; it doesn’t look good,” he said grimly, just as the Hydra started to straighten out.
He, along with the rest of the Bridge crew, watched as the aged Medium Cruiser came out of her spin before doggedly resuming her course towards the Dungeon Ship.
While the bridge around him gave a cheer, LeGodat stared at the Hydra’s new acceleration profile with growing concern.
Chapter 45: Spalding deals with Battle Damage
He could feel the shots pounding into their forward facing armor, as the bow’s shield generator struggled to keep up with an entire squadron of corvettes weight of fire. Eventually, they had failed, due to his order to reinforce the rear shields prior to engagement. But he wanted to take zero chances with his precious engines.
Then the Corvettes were on them like a pack of coyotes, and there was a power surge that knocked the crewwoman at the Shields console from her seat in a shower of sparks. A crash quickly followed which shook the entire ship, as something sheared off the left corner of their forward facing hull, and knocked them forward from their chairs.
Fortunately, Hydras were built to be almost as wide as they are long—although, in his mind, that spindly little engine they had sticking out back hardly counted for anything—which meant that the front of the ship was very heavily armored; its shape like that of a sideways-turned spade. It also meant they only had one forward facing gundeck. A Hydra was built to meet its foes head on, something his team had just successfully managed to do, but the cost of weakening their forward shields had been severe.
Power flickered off and on a few times, and Spalding was grateful for his last minute order to cut power to their engines. If they had been accelerating like they had been just moments prior, they would have all been splattered into little gobbets on the floor when the power fluttered and the grav-plates failed to protect them.
“What the blazes just happened?” the ancient Engineer demanded.
The Helmsman looked up, blood streaming down his nose and a nice black eye already starting where his head had met the console, and then leaned back over the controls.
“From the large gash on the side of the Light Destroyer—and the way she’s streaming air—I’d say we hit her,” the Rating nominally in charge of the Sensor Pit coughed.
“I’m reading a quarter of our forward facing weaponry is gone,” coughed the Damage Control watch stander. “Half of which appears to have been sheared off the hull, likely when we hit her.”
“We’ve lost one of our two main sensor arrays,” reported the Sensor Operator, sounding shaken up.
“Main engine is not responding, all I’ve got are the Cutters,” reported the Helmsman.
“We didn’t lose any of them?” Spalding said incredulously.
“Two of them report cracked housings, and are using their maneuvering thrusters to stay with us,” the Communications crewman reported. “I’ve also lost my backup Comm array.”
“Fire up the other three, but isolate the two with cracked housings until we can get a team out to repair them,” Spalding ordered the Helmsman, and then glared at the Damage Control stander, until the man got on the horn with his rapid response team down in Main Engineering.
For a moment, everyone scrambled to make sure of the condition of their various departments, and a Medical team arrived to cart off the still-smoking Shield Operator and patch up the various cuts and contusions absorbed by the rest of the bridge crew.
Spalding angrily waved off a medic when he came to check on him. The ancient Engineer reminded himself that medics were not all bad, but they had an annoying tendency to turn into quacks. He wanted none of that sort around him, unless the situation was so dire that even a quack like Dr. Presbyter was unable to worsen the matter.
“I’m reading several of the grav-plates around the ship aren’t responding to bridge control,” reported damage control.
“Cordon the area off, and have damage control parties spray red and yellow hazard lines a few feet from the edges of the damaged plates,” Spalding growled, “and what’s the status of my main engines?!”
“It looks like it went into standby mode when Fusion Two automatically shut down,” the other man said.
Spalding shot to his feet. “Why wasn’t I informed one of our two fusion generators—the one supplying power to the main engine—shut down,” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, Sir; I just noticed it,” said the damage control rating hastily.
“If you want something done right, you always have to do it your very own self!” Spalding raged, running for the lift.
“I have the Bridge,” he could hear Brence say behind him, but he made no acknowledgment. That was precisely why he had the former slacker up here: to help out, and learn to be a team leader.
Spalding knew he was needed elsewhere.
Chapter 46: An Engineering Overload
The aged Engineer arrived on a scene from perdition itself. Main Engineering was strangled in smoke, and ratings were running for the exit.
“Stand to at your posts, you slackers!” he screamed, grabbing a discarded—half full—fire suppression device that was just rolling around on the floor, while his crew of inept wannabe Engineers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off.
“Where is Warrant Officer Hastings?!” he bellowed, striding through the smoke. His good eye unfailingly spotted the source of dark haze within moments.
Even though his single remaining lung was protesting in the worst possible way, his robot legs still obeyed his every command.
“When I find that feckless fool, I’ll,” he stumbled and almost tripped, as he ran into something just short of the electrical flame.
Looking down with his mechanical eye (his good eye could no longer see a thing), he saw a fallen Engineer. He reached down and lifted the other to up to face level.
It was Hastings, and he was missing half his face.
“He died at his post; a brave man,” he declared solemnly, dropping Hastings back to the floor without a second thought. However, he did grab the nearly three-quarters full suppression device that had been rolling around behind the fallen third in command of the Engineering department.
With nothing else to slow him down, he rushed the blaze, with a pair of fire suppression devices in hand. Cutting loose as soon as he was within range, he stood before a flame so hot it had melted one of the trunk lines he was going to need later, in order to pull off the Maneuver.
The heat was so terrible it burned what little real skin and flesh he still possessed that was unprotected, but fortunately the rest of him was mostly synth-flesh, and after a few excruciating moments, the pain cut off.
�
��Take that, slackers,” he screamed, advancing on the blaze with both suppression devices going full out. He refused to stop, even as his first device clicked empty.
“You measly morsel of misfiring parts!” he raged, stepping up to the source of the fire. Seeing a ruptured plasma conduit, he realized a mere fire suppressant device was nowhere near equal to the task of subduing something like that. However, the hole in the pipe was no bigger than his foot…
Wild-eyed, he looked around for something—anything—made of duralloy to plug it with. But nothing except the mesh grating of the catwalk above him was available, and even that was full of holes, meaning it was entirely useless to his purposes.
His breath started to feel like it was burning a hole in his chest, and his vision was narrowing due to lack of oxygen, so he knew there was only one thing to do.
“This is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me,” Spalding growled. With no time to stagger around looking for the manual cutoff for the leak, there was only one thing to do.
Stomping his foot down hard on the hole in the conduit, he shoved his foot down so hard that he bent the pipe ever so slightly. Plasma stopped streaming out, and his foot turned a bright, cherry red that started creeping up his to his ankle.
Leaning forward, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out several strips of duralloy, and then activated both his right and left hands. Kneeling down in a rapidly cooling pool of plasma, he was grateful for his mechanical legs for the first time since receiving them.
Yelling defiance at the heat that dared to cause even a Chief Engineer to flinch, he started welding his foot to the conduit.
“There’s more than one way to plug a leak!” he roared defiantly, just before everything became hazy and he slumped forward.
He came back to himself to the sensation of pain in his abdomen, and the realization that while by no means clear, the smoke had dissipated enough that there was actual oxygen to be had.
Then he glanced down at the knee his stomach was resting on, and realized it was glowing a nice cherry red.
“Ack,” he gobbled, trying to straighten. For a moment, the leg resisted and when he returned to a standing position, synth-flesh—as well as natural flesh—stuck to the knee.
Screaming in pain, the Engineer took one look at his overheated leg, which was now welded to the conduit, and bent back down.
The smell of burnt flesh both synth- and natural, reached his nose and the pain grew beyond that which originally woke him. But he knew that if he failed to get away from that conduit, he was going to roast like a birthday pig.
“I finally know what a lobster feels like, right before he’s done cooking,” he gibbered with agony, activating his plasma torch and starting to cut through the ankle of his foot.
Fortunately, it was already overheated, or he never would have been able to free himself in time.
“Come loose, you filthy piece of droid trash,” he screamed, using all his fingers to cut their way through his ankle. With a jerk, he stood back up and pulled himself free.
Now minus a foot, and with the knee of that same leg hiccoughing, misfiring and generally acting in a similar manner to most robot legs that had been damaged, he hopped around on the floor.
“You did it, Chief,” cried one of the ratings, a man he would have sworn he saw running for the blast doors when the going got tough.
When the cowardly slacker was fool enough to run up to him, Spalding bellowed and laid him out on the floor with a right hook.
“Hastings stayed at his post, while the trainees ran. Where were you?!” he screamed at the man’s unconscious form, his chest still in agony.
“To Fusion Generator Two!” he half-yelled, half-gobbled, still doing his best imitation of the turkey dance as he hopped and skittered his way toward the Generator responsible for getting them back up to speed.
He arrived and stared at dismay at the blackened fuses and half-melted breaker boxes mounted on his side of the Fusion Generator.
“We need wire, boxes and new fuses,” he declared.
“We can get the wire and boxes, Lieutenant Spalding, but we already swapped out most of the old fuses for the new issues you brought on board,” said Parkiny.
For a moment, Spalding stared at him, resisting the urge to lay this naysayer out on the deck alongside the runner. Then he gave himself a shake; Parkiny was a good lad, if far too liable to smuggle a multi-tool inside his lunch box.
“Good lad,” he said after a moment, giving the other man a pat that was more like a slap on the cheek, “you just bring them over here to Spalding now, on the run!”
“You said if we ran with those fuses, it’d be the same as killing us all,” Parkiny reminded him.
“Never you mind what I said before; if we don’t get this Generator back online, we’re all dead men,” Spalding said through gritted teeth.
Parkiny’s face hardened and he gave an abrupt jerky nod. “Yes, Sir!” he shouted, taking off on the run.
Spalding looked around him in a daze at all the greenhorns and slackers malingering about. “What in the blue blazes are ye waiting for,” he screamed, “these fuses won’t pull themselves!”
Seeing his men jump into action, something started to give inside the old engineer, and he leaned against a pylon for support. He cried out in surprise, and before he knew it, a quack-in-training was all over him.
“Away, you murderer of perfectly healthy engineers; away,” he said, trying to fend the other man off, but every movement he made seemed only to increase the pain.
Then the Medic applied some kind of foam to his chest, and slapped a patch on the side of his neck. Quickly, the pain subsided to a dull roar.
For a moment, Spalding felt his eyes begin to roll and his heart fluttered from the rush of the stimulants, but he forced the feeling back under control.
He felt much better. He was well aware that it was an artificial sort of relief, but for the moment he was willing to grab onto it with both hands and run.
Then the Medic stabbed him in the side of his chest with a syringe, and Spalding glared at the young punk.
“Back off, Lad and go see to others who need you more than me,” growled the half-borged Engineer, hobbling back to his feet—make that, foot, “I’ve got a ship to save!”
Chapter 47: Maneuvering into Position
“Yes!” Lieutenant Commander Natasha Stravinsky declared at his side.
Commodore LeGodat watched as the other ship first regained some speed, and then some more. A wretched hour of watching the Light Cruiser slowly gaining on the Hydra had seen it nearly close to turbolaser range. Finally, and inexplicably, the plucky old Medium Cruiser took off like a mad hornet out of an abused hive.
The tension on the Bridge of the Confederation Heavy Cruiser, Little Gift, was sharp enough to cut firewood as the Medium Cruiser ran for all it was worth. The vessel had been named Little Gift, because it was a repurposed Heavy Cruiser which Admiral Montagne had seized from pirates, and bestowed on LeGodat months before.
“I see the 1st Squadron of the Guard is hanging back to escort their heavily damaged Flagship back to the planet,” murmured the Lieutenant Commander.
“One of the perks of Commanding the Guard, no doubt,” LeGodat said with a crooked smile.
Stravinsky bared her teeth. “I hope the new,” her voice changed to a nasty pompous imitation of Rear Admiral Yagar, “Supreme Sector Military Commandant enjoys being towed all the way back to the repair dock.”
“After such a brilliantly planned and flawlessly executed maneuver like the one we were so blessed to just witness, who would not return back home with his head held high?” the Commodore asked with genuine humor.
“I hope he chokes on the humiliation,” she spat. Clearly, someone had yet to forget all the overbearing, ham handed attempts to browbeat, crush, infiltrate—and in any other way possible—bring all of Easy Haven under the banner of the Sector Assembly, personified by one Rear Admiral Yagar and his Sect
or Guard.
“Moderation in all things, Lieutenant Commander,” the Commodore advised her.
She looked at him, clearly still angry at the overbearing and very arrogant Rear Admiral. Then she smiled sweetly. “Even in moderation itself,” she said with a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expression, and LeGodat sighed.
“I fear you are very much a lost cause, LC,” he said wryly.
“Thank you very much, Commodore,” she said, clearly taking the rather pointed observation as a compliment instead.
He shook his head and gave up on his Chief of Staff for the moment, turning to watch events unfold.
Eventually, the Hydra increased its lead back to a comfortable margin, and around this time System Command must have finally pulled its collective heads out of the sand.
“I’ve got two Medium Cruisers breaking formation from Praxis IV’s defense grid,” reported the sensor operator urgently.
“What about the Battleships and Heavy Cruisers?” demanded Stravinsky; her tone was measured and precise.
“Negative,” came the operator’s reply after a moment’s analysis, “the two Battleships, three Heavy Cruisers and other two Medium Cruisers are maintaining position; only the two Medium Cruisers are on an intercept course with the Dungeon Ship.”
Breaking orbit, the pair of SDF Cruisers started burning for all they were worth, to catch up to the lumbering old prison transport.
A tense few moments ensued, as the Ship’s Navigator started running the numbers. According to LeGodat’s own thumb in the air yardstick, it looked like it was going to be close.
The Navigator turned to the Commodore, looking like someone had shot his favorite cat. “I’ve run the numbers three times, Sir,” he said with a hang dog expression, “they’ll reach the Dungeon Ship before she can reach the hyper-limit, and at least a half hour before the Hydra.”
Admiral's Trial (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 34
