“Hold on this view,” O’Ree finally told the AI.
She leaned forward against her station’s SMART surface. She squinted, nodded to herself. “Hard to sub-port!” she barked aloud and followed immediately with a terse string of numbers—the new course she was ordering.
Clontarf veered toward the smallest and most dangerous of the system’s three asteroid belts. The ship moved as sharply and as swiftly as possible in its battered state.
Now the alien cruiser closed far more rapidly. Pushing on at high but not quite top speed, not wasting precious reaction mass, it rode massive flumes of fusion fire from three fully functional engines. And it continued on a basically straight-line interception course, while its target now moved laterally. The Narakan warship seemed sure to overtake Clontarf short of whatever rocky sanctuary the asteroids might offer.
O’Ree called up more calculations, plus a tiny countdown clock. It wound down.
She sub-vocalized again. Then she repeated the command aloud, this time for her human shipmates: “Standby for full emergency shutdown, starboard engine nozzle! Simultaneously reroute as much of the auxiliary reactor’s output through the port exhaust as it can safely handle!”
“Captain?” several voices chorused.
O’Ree ignored all but the duty pilot’s.
“Just do it, Des! At my order—” She eyed the clock, waited. It hit zero. “Now!” The vessel’s partially blocked exhaust nozzle sputtered unpredictably to the very end. But its sudden cessation brought a final, sideways lurch so pronounced that Clontarf’s artificial gravity failed to fully compensate.
O’Ree looked around.
Secure in the body-adaptive embrace of their SMART duty stations, the bridge crew suffered no significant injury in this momentary lapse. She wondered about her people on the lower decks. Most, but not all on-duty personnel would be similarly protected. But what about those off-shift, deployed around the ship for damage control duty? How many had been walking unawares down a corridor, say, only to be thrown off-balance—maybe flung headlong against a bulkhead?
Then things stabilized, gravitationally and otherwise.
No longer burdened by the damaged starboard exhaust, the ship actually flew straighter and even slightly faster—almost half of the auxiliary reactor’s output added to the surviving, post-side main.
Would it be enough? Even the AI wasn’t certain.
“Be ready to shutdown port drive once we enter the field. You’ll need full attention on the maneuvering jets in there!”
“Aye.” Lieutenant Desmond grunted, seeing O’Ree’s intent. “But what about—?”
“He won’t follow us into that debris field, Des. A ship that size couldn’t possibly maneuver safely through that mess.”
“What about a ship our size?”
“I have every confidence in your skills, Lieutenant.”
Desmond snorted, but said no more.
He angled Clontarf between three large “shepherd” asteroids and entered a portion of the belt that resembled a maze of smaller debris mere seconds before their pursuers could close in for the kill.
The ship’s normal-space drive cut out a millisecond later. They drifted forward on built-up momentum.
For three thudding heartbeats it was unclear what the enemy ship would do.
Then: “He’s turning!” the Sensor Officer exclaimed.
“Yes.” O’Ree wheezed relief. “He certainly is, Ensign.”
The Narakan cruiser assumed a course roughly parallel to Clontarf. It reduced speed, staying close without entering the belt.
“Just watching us,” Murphy observed. “He knows we can’t stay in here forever. And when we finally come out—”
O’Ree chose to ignore that for the moment.
She watched her very able pilot guide the ship between an especially jagged, house-sized hunk of rock and three smaller pieces of dirty water ice. A point-defense laser automatically dealt with a fourth bit of frozen debris. The latter, laced with volatile chemicals, produced a vivid but harmless explosion that momentarily brightened a corner of the main viewscreen.
“Miserable place to die,” Desmond grumbled.
“We’re not dead yet, pilot.”
“Right, Captain—not yet.”
The tone of the lieutenant’s voice was impossible to miss.
O’Ree frowned, but let it pass.
The pilot was a steady veteran, not normally given to insubordination. But their situation was hardly normal—and the decision to fight the larger ship had been hers.
Maybe the pilot had a right to get snippy, within reason.
Murphy gave Desmond a sharp glance, however. “Just do your job, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir,” the pilot replied, grimly but with no overt disrespect. He adjusted course yet again, maneuvering past another random chunk of rock.
O’Ree sighed, closed her eyes for a moment.
Murphy sub-vocalized an order and the Operations Station unwound around him. He rose, planted his feet. Two strides put him at his captain’s side.
“That was interesting.”
O’Ree opened the eye closest him. “I figured the Nark wouldn’t ramp up his speed.”
Murphy nodded. “Why stress your engines over some panicky human you’re bound to intercept anyway? Sure, I get it.”
“And that mangled nozzle was doing us more harm than good. We should have the Chief Engineer—” O’Ree groaned, blinked her other eye open. Smithfield was in sickbay, her prognosis uncertain. The Second Engineer was already dead—along with several others from when they lost the starboard reactor. That left whom? Her computer-assisted memory kicked in. “We’ll have Ensign Walsh put a repair crew on that—see if they can clear it enough to be useful.”
Murphy crossed his arms, nodded again. He glanced at the tactical display and exhaled slowly. “This place—”
“Right.” O’Ree cleared her throat, went on speaking in a low voice while staring at the flowing image. “I noticed the gravitational braiding. Between the two stars and those larger rocks along the fringe, it produced this comparatively thin ribbon of junk, bunched a lot closer together than your usual asteroid field. It seemed like a place where we could catch our breath—maybe think of something?”
“Uh huh.” Murphy chewed his lower lip. “Postpone the inevitably, at least.”
“Kieron—”
“I’m not complaining, Captain. Honest. Just don’t see any good alternatives. And when we finally have to surrender—” He paused, absorbed O’Ree’s glare without flinching. “Only saying, Morri.”
“Oh, sure.” O’Ree growled; spoke with increasing force and sudden anger. “Three of my grandparents fought the Earthers in our War of Independence. Know that, Kieron? Since then, I’m one of seven family members to serve. I have no intention of being the first O’Ree ever to surrender a command!”
“Morri—” the lieutenant-commander warned with a soft murmur, a gesture to remind her of the people around them.
She controlled herself with obvious effort.
“All right,” she said slowly and so softly that even Murphy struggled to hear. “Look, it may come to that. But in the meantime, we try to come up with something better. That’s an order.”
“Understood,” Murphy agreed almost as softly. “But when—if—that time comes, at least it’s the long-noses out there. Those pint-sized pachyderms are tough and mean. But they take the rules of war and their code of personal honor seriously.”
“As opposed to certain humans who’ve thrown in with them?” O'Ree sighed then offered a wry grin. “True enough. Now, let’s see about putting this ship back in something resembling fighting trim, huh?”
“Yes, sir!” Murphy snapped to attention with a thin smile and jerked his head around. “Communications!”
“Aye, Commander.” The Chief Petty Officer working that station looked up. “Updated casualty and damage reports coming available. Transferring to your station—”
“In a bi
t, Mr. Arlen. Raise Ensign Walsh first and pipe it over here. The Captain and I need to talk to her.”
“Yes, sir. You’ll have her in a second.”
“Excellent.” Murphy gave O’Ree a look. “Maybe she’ll have a suggestion?”
The captain pursed her lips.
Anything was possible.
She hoped.
“Walsh says the starboard exhaust will be about 70% functional in another ten minutes. At least the AI should be able to compensate for any fluctuations, now that her team has mapped out what they couldn’t immediately fix. But two plasma feeder-lines from the auxiliary got fried when the starboard main went. They’ll have to be replaced—another three hours’ work at least.”
O’Ree frowned. “We probably don’t have that kind of time.”
“Agreed. That leaves two undamaged lines and the one they unblocked—barely enough to supply useful thrust on that side. And the Nark’s liable to get impatient. If we don’t come out and play soon, he’ll try and flush us out—take a few random potshots, maybe invest a torpedo or two.”
“There’s that.” O’Ree chewed the next-to-last bite of her sandwich. “In any case, I’ve a different task in mind for her. A little fakery I hope will confuse the issue—maybe even set the stage for getting us out of this in one piece.”
“Morri?” The Lieutenant-Commander grinned. “What have you dreamed up this time?”
She told him—in relentless, blank-faced detail.
Murphy didn’t laugh or cry. He also didn’t think it was likely to work. “And if it doesn’t—”
“Right.” O’Ree stared back at him, clear-eyed. “It’s desperate, maybe even reckless—strictly an all-or-nothing ploy. You have anything better? No? Okay, so let’s call the duty officers up here. I want a quick face-to-face, make sure everybody knows what’s expected of them.”
Murphy nodded as his captain popped the last of her lunch into her mouth.
“He’s turning,” the Sensor Officer reported. “Firing main engines; increasing speed. Captain—he bought it, he’s taken the bait!”
“Looks like it,” O’Ree murmured. “From what he can see, what his sensors tell him, we just made a break for it.”
“Tried to,” Murphy corrected with the hint of a smirk.
“Yeah,” O’Ree nodded. “His sensors registered the sudden increase in expended energy and the abrupt course change—just like he’d expect. Only a split-second later—a massive, seemingly uncontrolled spike in power.”
“Okay,” the pilot spoke up. “He thinks we blew out the last of our normal-space engines.”
“Right. From his point of view we’re now utterly helpless. All he has to do is swing over to the far side of the belt, calculate where we’ll drift out and wait.” O’Ree turned her head. “Communications, convey following message to Ensign Walsh and her staff: ‘Well done and congratulations. Prepare for next phase as planned.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
The pilot’s head was still turned. He was still eyeballing Captain O’Ree.
“Something else, Lieutenant?”
“He’s committed, moving at high speed. I say, we wait a bit more—say, ten more minutes. Then we power-up, whip her around 180-degrees and make a real run for it!”
“In our current condition? Sure, we catch him flat-footed. Worse, he’s headed the exact wrong way. So we get a lead on him—assuming we don’t run headlong into a big enough chunk of rock. But it’s only temporary, Des. He’s still faster and we’re too deep in system’s gravity well. He’ll turn, come after and catch us hours, maybe a full day before we can jump into hyper-space!”
“But, Captain—”
“No!” O’Ree’s eyes narrowed, her cheeks reddened. “The decision has been made, Des. We go with the plan as is—got that?”
“So the maneuvering thrusters, the lasers—”
“Everything stays off-line till I say different, Lieutenant. Life support running on emergency battery power and all else down, with our two functional reactors idling too low to attract notice. His sensor must indicate we’re a near-total wreck.”
“With respects, Captain, if we collide with much more junk in here—and with no way to steer around anything in our path that’s likely—we could be a full wreck before that alien bastard even gets another shot at us!”
“Noted.” O’Ree turned to the Operations Station. “Speaking of the lasers—?”
Murphy nodded. “Starboard and dorsal emitters still to be reconfigured—give it another eleven, twelve minutes.”
O’Ree turned to the Sensor Officer. “How about you, Mr. O’Toole?”
“My people should have the last targeting sensors repaired in fifteen.”
“Hmm.” O’Ree checked the AI’s calculations. “At present rate of drift we’ll clear the belt in—uh, twenty-two minutes. So I’ll hold you to these estimates, gentlemen.”
“Aye, sir,” Ensign O’Toole said.
“Understood,” Murphy added, though he looked dubious. “You realize these lasers weren’t designed—”
“—as offensive weapons,” O’Ree interrupted. “And at 125% of design-maximum output they’ll quickly overload. We already had this discussion, so let’s not rehash it.” Nonetheless, she glanced at the readout once more. “The AI predicts average burnout time at 55.7 seconds. That should be enough—if we coordinate everything else. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Murphy said reluctantly. “And if suddenly powering everything back up yet again doesn’t cause a real blowout, like the one we just faked! You’re counting on a lot of things going just right—not to mention plenty of untested emergency repairs—”
“We’ll test them in use, Kieron. No other way, it we’re to keep from tipping our hand.”
“Aye, Captain.” The lieutenant-commander went back to work, unhappy but resigned.
“Receiving message from the Narakan ship,” CPO Arlen said. “Noting our apparent crippled state and demanding our surrender.”
“Ignore it, Chief. He’ll assume our communications are out, along with everything else.”
“What would their famous code of honor say about that?” Murphy mused.
“Subterfuge is an acceptable military tactic, Commander.” O’Ree sighed. “Now, if we answered and promised we were willing to surrender then we resisted—yeah, that would enrage them. But we’re gonna play dead, till we get close enough.”
“If they let us.” Desmond swung his head around again. “If they don’t decide against taking the chance and make us dead first. I remind the captain that they offered terms and we didn’t respond. Ethically, they’re free to blast away. And in our present state, all it would take—”
“One very well placed shot.” Morrigan O’Ree winced then nodded. “I’m gambling the cruiser’s captain will want the greater glory—taking an Alliance ship and crew intact, rather than simply blowing us apart. You know that old saying, Lieutenant? The one about how the only thing a Narakan likes better than fighting is counting all the enemies he’s humbled?”
“Aye, sir. But it’s still taking one hell of a risk.”
“A calculated one, Des.”
“Almost clear!” Lieutenant Desmond called out.
Kieron Murphy gulped the last of his coffee, crumpled the cup and tossed it in the general direction of the bridge recycler. He moved past his captain’s chair and sank into his station’s malleable embrace.
O’Ree pursed her lips. “Aggregate new damage from debris strikes?”
“Fairly negligible. One targeting sensor on our dorsal side got totaled—not three minutes after we had it repaired! Starboard number three coil-gun took a hit down around its base—looks to be jammed, frozen in place. Minor hull pitting from micro-meteors, as expected. And power-feed to the backup comm-laser was severed. Otherwise, looks like we’ll come out relatively clean—everything else ready to come back on-line.”
O’Ree leaned forward till her pug nose nearly sank into the formless tactical display. “Wait for
my order.”
“There he is,” the Sensor Officer murmured, “straddling our projected path, not quite 1,000 klicks beyond the last asteroid.”
O’Ree nodded, stared at the tactical display.
“Signaling us again, Captain.”
“Content?”
“Same as both times previous,” Arlen said. “A standard comm-laser transmission, demanding our immediate surrender under general rules of war, on all frequencies—and in perfect Pan-Human.”
Murphy chuckled. “Complimenting then on their grammar, Dickie?”
“Wha—? No, sir. It’s just—”
“Ignore it, Chief.”
“Aye, Captain. I’d expect him to try visually signaling, now. Maybe flash his running lights at us and—yes, there he goes!”
“And we just drift closer, ever closer. Our lights are out, like most everything else.” Now that there was no turning back, Morrigan O’Ree sounded almost too calm—perhaps even a bit mad. “That’s right. Let us close. Better tell your boarding parties to get ready. Here comes your prize—a fat, juicy, helpless Alliance destroyer and its crew—over a hundred of Planet Tir na nog’s fiercest humans, at your mercy! Just wait for it; wait a bit more.”
“Captain, shouldn’t we—?”
O’Ree held up a restraining palm, staring at the calculations flashing before her green eyes. Precisely 200 kilometers from the cruiser, her palm suddenly became a fist.
“Now!”
Battle of Clontarf’s two operational reactors surged to full life.
Controlled and orchestrated by the ship’s AI, and carefully calibrated milliseconds apart to lessen the chance of overload, one ship’s system after another followed suit.
Targeting sensors went active, sought out their counterparts on the alien warship.
Lasers, designed as defensive weapons but now altered and channeling more energy than they were ever supposed to handle, flared. Two burned out almost instantly, but others shot out, momentarily blinding enemy sensors.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 8 Page 8
