“Thank you, Junior Lieutenant,” the Commodore acknowledged with a nod.
“If we break our silence and head in now, at full speed, two of our Destroyers and both Corvettes could make it there in time,” Stravinsky said eagerly.
LeGodat stroked his chin and opened his mouth to give the order, and then just froze in mid-stroke.
“Let’s give it a little longer before we make a move,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Whoever’s in command over there has put more than a little thought into this. Let’s not risk throwing them off.”
Stravinsky looked at him with disappointment clear in her eyes, but relayed the order that they were to maintain silent running.
Chapter 48: Big Rocks
The Navigator cursed and swore at his console, giving the impression that if they were not still laboring against bone crushing gravity, he would have kicked or done something else physically violent to the thing.
“Now-now, Navigator,” Spalding said sternly, “while I admire the fighting spirit, there’s a time and a place for everything. Tuck it in lad, and focus on your duty; it’ll all be fine, just like a kinked hydraulic line with too much pressure. Let the kink out, and nothing to it,” he assured him.
“Nothing’s going to be fine; we’re too late, Lieutenant Spalding! There’s no way we can catch them before they’ll reach the Admiral’s ship, even if we keep killing ourselves like this!” he cried.
Spalding scowled. “You just crunch the numbers, and keep a firm hold on that fighting spirit of yours,” he said sternly, a core of solid Duralloy II in his voice as he stabbed a thumb into his chest, “and let Officers like me do the thinking.”
The jab-to-the-chest turned out to be ill-advised, as it caused him to bite back a cry of Murphy’s fury. The desire to curl up on the floor was surprisingly strong; second and third degree burns were the very Imps in the engines themselves, even with topical pain killers and synth-flesh to cover them.
“Ouch, Lieutenant,” Brence said in sympathy.
“Stuff and nonsense,” the old engineer said gruffly, as soon as his breath caught back up with him.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t be back in Medical? They give out the good drugs for damage like that,” Brence reminded, sounding like a man with experience on the subject.
The Chief of Engineer gave him withering look. “The last thing I need, in the middle of a repair job, is to be knocked into lala land,” he said scornfully, making sure the other would-be engineer knew he had noted the hint of his second in command’s old, criminal ways. Any backsliding, when the men needed Brence the most, and he would shove the fool right out an airlock!
Spalding considered himself a man with near infinite patience for the hijinks of hooligans and slackers the galaxy ‘round; after all, an Engineer could hardly run a work crew without having the patience of a Saint. None of that meant he was going to go easy on such a person; however, his patience ran out when such a man reformed and accepted a position of greater responsibility. Then, if he fell off the wagon, it was no longer just himself he was hurting; it was his fellow crewmates and the ship that would suffer. He stared at the former slacker through narrow eyes.
“I understand,” Brence gulped, and the wily old engineer could see that he did. So reluctantly, he let go of the grudge.
“This is all the fault of those quacks anyway! Why, if they hadn’t saddled me with substandard parts, none of this would have happened,” he grumbled irritably, looking down at his hastily welded new foot. It had no range of motion, and the knee was still giving him trouble now that it had cooled down, but all in all it made him feel like he was walking around in a cast; off balance, stiff-legged and such.
“But, sir,” cried the Navigator, “what about the Dungeon Ship and those Cruisers?”
Terrence Spalding’s face brightened, taking on more the resemblance of a kid in the candy store, than a hard battened Engineer. He rubbed his hands together, unable to contain himself.
“There’s no need to fret just yet; this old Engineer has just the trick up his sleeve—one guaranteed to get their undivided attention,” he bragged, unable to help himself.
When they all looked at him in curiosity and rising hope, his forehead wrinkled, and then after a moment smoothed.
“Did you ever skip stones as a boy, Brence,” he demanded of his engineering sidekick.
The ship’s new Executive Officer looked taken aback. “I suppose,” he said cautiously, “I mean, all kids do at one time or another.
“It’s no trick question,” Spalding hastened to assure him, “you see, the trick’s on them.”
“Some kind of new, gravity-skipping, missile?” Brence hazarded a guess.
Spalding blinked. “Not a half bad idea for future experimentation,” he admitted, the possibilities racing through his brain like greenhorns fleeing his plasma torch, “but sadly, no.”
“A stealth torpedo,” the other man guessed.
Spalding waved his hands in their air to shut him up. There had been enough raining on his parade already. “No, bucky me boy-o; we’re going old school with this one,” he declared.
Brence seemed to pick up on his own excitement, because he and the rest of the Bridge were starting to look excited. “Tactical, prepare to release…the Big Rocks,” Spalding said triumphantly.
When he was met by uncomprehending, cow-like eyes, he stomped his bad foot in fury. The pain of the act vibrated all the way up into what should have been his hip socket, and he gritted his teeth to keep from yelping.
“Rocks, Sir?” the Tactical Officer confirmed hesitantly.
“The KEW’s,” Spalding said in exasperation, and this time the members of the bridge looked at each other in confusion. A few even shrugged.
“What is this universe coming to, when the man at Tactical doesn’t even recognize the lingo for a Kinetic Energy Weapon,” the old Engineer cried.
“Uh, I don’t think we have any of those,” said Tactical, ducking his head furtively.
“Of course we do; I strapped them to the outside of the hull me-self!” he declared. “Just access the weaponry section on your console labeled Kinetic Energy Weaponry: target the Capitol City of Praxis IV with one, and send the other one straight to Central!”
There was a fury of tapping, and he finally had to go over and show the undertrained idjit how to work his own console. When he was done tapping his way through the weapons selections, he stepped back.
“Sir,” the Tactical Officer said blinking, “the DI says it can’t find a targeting lock.”
Spalding felt the urge to tear out his hair and scream bloody murder. “That’s because it’s strapped to the backside of the ship! You have to coordinate with the helm to spin the ship,” he snarled.
“It says it can’t make a solid lock on the targets,” the Tactical Officer continued, in a small voice.
“Just input the coordina—wait, let me do it,” he said, pushing the rating to the side. “If you want to get something done right, you might as well just do it yourself,” he grouched, inputting the coordinates and making sure they were uploaded. When he was satisfied they were, he snapped his head toward the Helmsman.
“Do an end-o, Helm—now!” he snarled.
The Helmsman did as instructed, flipping the ship as quickly as he could without compromising their grav-system. When the DI had confirmed target locks, Spalding pressed the firing button. “Ah ha, and it’s bombs away!” he cried, his happiness at firing off his distraction temporarily overcoming his fury at the incompetence surrounding him.
The Bridge then seemed to realize what they had just done.
“You’re orbitally bombarding their home world?!” cried the new woman at the Shields station. Spalding turned on her.
“You have to be in orbit to orbitally bombard a planet,” he corrected.
“It’s the same difference!” she sounded outraged.
Spalding pursed his lips. “There’s no need to worry about thousands and millions of
casualties; any SDF worth its salt—especially one with that many ships between it and our KEW’s—could blow those two Rocks right out of the sky long before they ever get there,” he said soothingly, well aware of the trauma many of their families had gone through when the Imperials bombarded Capria.
“Then why did we bother launching them, if they’re going to be so easily detected?” Brence asked, clearly concerned.
Spalding rolled his eyes. “They’ll see the KEW’s—each with an old shuttle strapped to it, to make sure they can reach their target I made sure and certain to make them noisy enough, and they’ll then assume we fired off a few of the more traditional ones from further out of the system,” he explained.
“Why won’t they just keep the two Medium’s on the trail of the Dungeon Ship?” asked Brence.
Spalding looked at him like he was a moron. “If someone tried to bombard Capria, would you risk sending off a pair of cruisers to chase down a few prisoners, or would you make blasted well sure that entire cities weren’t destroyed because you frittered them away?”
“But we only have two rocks,” Brence Protested, “their planetary Grazers should be enough to stop them all by their selves. The Fleet is overkill.”
“You know that, and I know that, but these Praxis boys…they have no way of telling for sure, until our mythical KEW’s have the chance to get a lot closer to their planetary sensor arrays,” he smirked.
Brence looked as if he wanted to continue the argument, but his mouth snapped shut just before he did so. After a moment’s consideration, the man’s eyes brightened as he exclaimed, “This could actually work!”
Spalding looked at him nonplussed. “Well, of course it could work, you nitwit! What do you think I am, some senile old fool, too far gone to come up with a potentially effective diversion?”
The other engineer was too wise to say anything in response, and quickly turned away to check on the rest of the Bridge.
Spalding was still muttering to himself about naysayers and nanny halfwits, to keep himself from wondering if his distraction was too small to work, when the pair of Medium Cruisers on their screens started to waver, and then turned around for their home world.
“Yes!” cried Brence, who was quickly followed by most of the rest of the Bridge. In the excitement of the moment, the new woman at the Shields Console gave an almost incoherent cry, pumped her fist in the air once, and then her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she passed out.
“The gravity is slowly killing us, Chief,” Brence was now panting after the exertion of the rousing cheer.
“This ship has terrible luck with Shield Operators,” Spalding said damningly and then with a grunt, hauled himself out of the Command Chair, and stumped on over to pick up the unconscious woman.
By the time he had reached the blast doors, a Grav-cart was waiting outside to take her down to Medical.
“Terrible Luck,” he repeated. Just out of curiosity he checked the medical reports and did a double take. Taking them in, he grimly observed the casualty figures caused by the increased gravity. “They’re dropping like flies,” he whispered as his face hardened, “don’t worry, my brave little rabbits; it’ll all be over soon enough, one way or the other.”
Chapter 49: Rendezvous x2
“Herrings one through three, this is the Sprocket, time to return to the tool box,” the Comm Operator said over an open channel.
Spalding nodded his head sagely; there was no point in giving these politicians (or their wage slaves, however willing or not, given the shackles) the chance to take a look at his Confederation encryption. All would be revealed in due time.
It took several minutes for the transmission to reach the three different Corvettes, and for them to respond.
“This is Red Herring Three, we’re coming home,” said the Captain of the corvette being chased by the single Light Cruiser.
“Red Herring Two here; we’ve been showing them our heels the whole time we’ve been in system. It’ll be tight, but we’re more than ready!” said the Communications operator for the second corvette, being chased by 2 SDF Corvettes.
“Yee-ha,” cried the Captain of Red Herring One, “these Praxis boys ain’t got nothing on this sweet little ride, Sir! Just give us the word, then their ships are grass and we’re the plasma torch!” His ship was also still being chased by a pair of SDF Corvettes.
Spalding winced at the thick Stonelander accent; it sounded like he was from the Jupiter district, but it had been too long for him to be entirely sure. Stonelander or not, the lad needed to learn how to tone it down. Unfortunately, it simply would not do to discourage the fighting spirit of one of his Engineering boys at this particular moment, so he was forced to lower his level of disapproval to a frown.
He watched on the main screen as his Corvettes slowly converged on his run-down—and now beat up—Cruiser.
As the tracks of his three little Corvettes slowly came closer to his, and the six Corvettes of the Sector Guard closed in on an intercept, the four Corvettes and single Light Cruiser following his smaller warships started to fall back and link up with the pair of Light Cruisers that had been tenaciously following him. The Heavy Cruiser was too slow, and too far back, to be much of a worry right at the moment.
Three Light Cruisers, and a quad of well-maintained CR-70 series Corvettes were more than a match for three hastily repaired Corvettes and a single, badly damaged—and badly outdated—Medium Cruiser. When you tossed in another six in the Corvette squadron of the Guard, even his little Five Cutter Surprise would likely fail to handle them all at once.
“It’s gonna be tight, Chief,” Brence said, wiping the palms of his hands on the thighs of his uniform pants.
“We’ll just have to chop them down to size and take ’em one by one, until we get hold of the Admiral,” Spalding said dismissively.
“And then,” Brence asked.
Spalding’s brows beetled. “Then, it’ll be the Little Admiral’s problem, and we can run for the hyper-limit if he’s so inclined,” he said dismissively. It would be a relief to get back to what he did best: fixing ships, and keeping their Engineers running—literally, and figuratively. This Captaining business was for the birds! Why, if the Lady Akantha had not asked him personally…
He balled his fist and thumped it on the arm of his chair several times. Blackmail—emotional blackmail, that’s what it was—he thought bitterly. And at a time when he was in a moment of weakness, having just learned about the loss of the only lady that ever mattered to him: the Clover!
“Sir, we’re coming up on close approach to the Dungeon Ship. If we want to slow down and match course and speed, it needs to be now, Chief Engineer Spalding,” the Navigator said sharply, looking like a raccoon with his pair of black eyes and medical tape over his clearly broken nose.
“Tell Engineering they’d better have that melted trunk line replaced by now,” Spalding growled to the rating over at Damage Control.
“Sir,” the Navigator acknowledged urgently, and the Helmsman threw in a look that said he was quite eager to follow this advice.
“Prepare for the Maneuver,” Spalding said, flicking one of his fingers open and then closed, like a lighter flame with a cap covering it, as he gave the Helmsman a significant look.
The Helmsman gulped, and turned back to grab his archaic steering controls for dear life.
“Set Condition Red throughout the ship,” Spalding bellowed, stumping back to the Captain’s Chair.
“Condition Red set,” stated the man at damage control, and overhead the lighting strips along one side of the bridge flickered and turned red; the other side turned dark casting the bridge in an eerie light. An old fashion alarm chime sounded.
“Yet another thing wrong,” Brence muttered and Spalding smiled. It was good to see that even a slacker like Brence could be reformed into a conscientious Engineer.
Instead of replying, Spalding suppressed a smile and turned toward the Communication Station. “It’s time t
o reveal who we are. Operator, put me through to that Dungeon Ship—on audio only,” Spalding said after a moment’s thought. There was no point in scaring the locals with the sight of what might be mistaken for a cyborg engineer. A ’Borg might sway the opinion of the ignorant masses, who were unable to distinguish a shanghaied engineer, from a willing victim of an illegal quack doctor.
Also, for a professional Command Track Officer to know on the front end that they were being told to surrender to a ‘mere’ Engineer…that was no risk worth taking, as Captains tended to get squirrely about such things.
The operator made a few modifications on her console and then gave him a nod, signaling he was on open air.
“This is Lieutenant Terrence Spalding, of the Confederation’s very own Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. You are herby ordered to begin an emergency deceleration of that Dungeon ship, with the intention of bringing your ship to a full and complete stop dead in space. After that, you will be boarded by Confederation Forces,” Spalding growled over the Comm.
There was a pause, and then the Com-Operator jerked in his seat.
“I’m getting a live video feed,” he reported.
“Well, don’t just stand around looking pretty; put it up there on the screen,” instructed Spalding, gesturing to the main screen to cover a sudden attack of nerves. Things were so much simpler down in Engineering, or even up on the Bridge, when you could just blast your way through the opposition with a little unexpected engineering. This diplomacy business and politely telling the other side they were screwed, blued, and tattooed without getting their dander up, was for Captains and Admirals and such. An honest engineer such as himself had no business getting in the middle of such mealy mouthed nonsense.
An ugly as sin, hatchet-faced woman on the wrong side of middle age stared back at him. Spalding’s wizened eye could tell she had gained early access to life prolongation treatments.
Admiral's Trial (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 35
