Her guns went silent.
“Captain Shao,” said Mattis, his heart in his throat. “Report status.” Nothing but static on the line. The Fuqing burned on his monitors, red flares igniting in front of their windows. “Calling any soul on the Fuqing. Report status.”
Nothing. He slowly took off the earpiece. “Mister Lynch,” he said coldly. “Consolidate firing solutions on the hostile ship. Concentrate fire on the smallest area you can, firing as rapidly as you can. Melt our barrels if you have to. I want everything except the torpedoes shooting, even the point-defense guns, strike craft, you name it. Give them everything, and when they break, put a pair of torpedoes into them. Pound that son of a bitch back to the Stone Age.”
Lynch did exactly that, cranking up the rate of fire on the Midway’s guns, explosive salvos flying. The rounds came together at a point right at the center of the ship’s front, each impact sending up a blue flash as the shield blocked them.
“Keep firing,” said Mattis. “Send them to Hell.”
A round slipped through the shield. And then another and another. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the shield flashed a bright blue and winked out.
“Torpedoes away,” said Commander Pitt. “Strike craft recalled out of the blast radius.”
Twin missiles leapt away from the Midway, each the size of a strike craft, their engines glowing brightly against the dark of space. At close range, they barely had four or five seconds in space before they plunged home, burrowing deep into the hull of the alien cruiser and detonating within. The ship bucked wildly, as though it were a living thing in pain, rolled over onto its side, and exploded.
The shockwave of debris washed over the Midway, shaking everything in a way that, to Mattis, reminded him of the way Friendship Station had gone up. Wreckage pelted the Midway, hitting its hull like rain, scraping and bouncing off the armor.
And then everything was quiet.
“Target destroyed,” said Commander Pitt.
The bridge erupted into cheering. Mattis kept a cool, commanding posture during it all, but inside, he was yelling along with them.
And, of course, there was the matter of the Fuqing. “Report status on our allies,” said Mattis. “Any word from Captain Shao?”
The request tempered the joyous exultations on the bridge. The glow of the fires on the Fuqing painted her hull orange, but that was a good sign, ultimately. Her hull was intact. The fires were probably on the surface. No radiation leakage from her reactors.
“Not yet,” said Commander Pitt. “But early scans show the ship is floundering and adrift, but likely salvageable. They’ll need a couple months in spacedock, a partial refit, and of course the front part of the hull will probably need to be repaired—but the Fuqing will live to fight again.”
That was welcome news. They’d need as many ships as they could get.
“Although,” said Commander Pitt, his brow furrowing as he further examined the scans, “I am detecting some strange readouts from their ship. A buildup of power. They might be attempting to…use their Z-drive, maybe?”
He scowled. “I hope not,” said Mattis. “If they try to jump away with that amount of damage, they’ll tear themselves apart.”
“I don’t think it’s the Z-drive,” said Lynch, studying his readouts with increased fervor. “It looks like it’s coming from their reactor core, I think, or some kind of secondary system.”
Damn. “What could it be?” asked Mattis. “Some kind of weapon? An emergency protocol?”
“I have no idea,” said Lynch, as he and everyone else stared at the monitors which showed a energy build up deep within the ship. “What in the blazes?”
“Launch our SAR bird,” said Mattis, taking command of the situation. “Continue to broadcast on all frequencies, all channels. See if we can raise someone—even if it’s on handheld radio. There’s no chance their whole crew is dead. Lots of Chinese are alive over there, and we’re going to save them.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Lynch. “SAR bird away. We’re dispatching some of our dropships to serve as rescue shuttles. We should be able to dock with the Chinese airlocks, or if we can’t, cut our way in. Our ships should be able to make a solid seal. If there’s anyone alive in there, they should know to come to the sound of cutting.”
Sounded like a good plan. “Make sure you send over medical teams as well,” he said. “There will be casualties.”
“Sir,” asked Commander Pitt, “we could have our alert fighters do a sweep of the ship. See if they can see any escape pods launching, or otherwise provide assistance.”
“Whatever we can do.” Mattis took a breath. “Okay. Let’s—”
“Sir,” said Lynch, “the energy buildup. It’s reached—”
The Chinese ship exploded.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Forward Infirmary
USS Midway
Although they both hurt, Guano cradled her left hand in her right all the way to the infirmary. Frost came with her. There was help that was closer and better, but this one had Flatline.
As she approached, the nurses came out to meet and remove her, but she held up her blackened hand. “Hey, legitimate, legitimate!” she said, waving one of her damaged hands around as protest.
“It’s true,” said Frost, although she looked nervous, hopping from foot to foot.
Dammit, woman, the goal here is to get my hands fixed, then check in on Flatline. Don’t mess this up for me…
For a moment, she thought she’d get turned away, but perhaps seeing the bruises changed their minds. Reluctantly, one of them stepped forward to examine the injury.
“Looks painful,” he said, blinking in confusion as he turned the hand over, causing her to grimace.
“Hey, careful, that’s my throttle hand!” She held out her right instead. “See, this one too.”
The nurse stared at the injuries in amazement. “What the hell did you do to yourself, Lieutenant?”
She saw no reason to lie. Not directly. “I hurt myself at the gym. Put too much weight at the bench, and I couldn’t lift it.”
The guy sighed. “You pilots are all the same. Here. This should reduce the swelling.” He pulled out a needle and, without so much as a hello, injected it into her palm.
“Ow!”
He glared at her. “Baby.”
“How’s Flatline?” asked Frost. Guano was glad she was the one asking that question.
The nurse, however, was less than receptive. “Are we going to have to throw you out too?”
“No,” said Frost, holding up her hands. “No, no, no.”
Sighing, the nurse jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Head inside,” he said. “They’re fixing him for surgery now. Joker’s waiting there.”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Guano bolted through the infirmary, with Frost right behind her. They skidded around the corner to the surgical ward, where Joker—one of their fellow pilots—was standing, her brown hair pulled back, face pressed to the window that look into the surgery room. Guano muscled her way in beside her.
“Hey,” said Joker, shoving back, “I was here first!”
“He’s my gunner,” said Guano. Together, they managed to fill the window, Frost jockeying behind them for even a glimpse.
Flatline had his leg slathered in surgical gel and was hooked up to several IVs. The ship’s doctors stood around him, hanging bags filled with all kinds of liquids. Blood in one bag, fluid in another, and a cloudy mixture in a third, likely some sort of medication.
“He’ll be fine,” said Joker, and, in a feeble attempt to clarify, “he’s a big guy.”
Guano spoke with confidence she didn’t feel. “Yeah. Little boo-boo like that, he’ll shrug it off. I’m just making sure he gets a real fucking sick scar. I’m going to make the doctor sew a little smiley face into him, so, you know, he can always look back on these good times and think of me.”
“Yeah,” said Frost. “When we rotate Earthside again, I was thinking of g
etting a tattoo. You know, something like, Crew of the Midway.”
Guano twisted around to look at her. “How do you deal with being a”—she hated saying it but forced the words out—“replaceable gunner?”
“Simple,” said Frost, beaming back. “Don’t be replaceable. Anyone can shoot a gun, Corrick, but being part of a team? Even a team of two? That takes something else.”
As they watched, Flatline was wheeled into the next room and, with an angry scowl, the doctor closed the blinds.
“Hey!” Guano banged on the window. “Hey, open up! We want to see!”
“He’s not even in the room anymore,” said Joker.
The nurse from the main infirmary came storming in, his hands on his hips. “You three. Out. You were warned.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong!” protested Joker.
Guano sighed and, with a last look at the blinds, turned and trudged out of the infirmary with the other two.
“Wanna play cards?” asked Frost brightly. “It’ll keep our minds off things. We can go until he’s out of surgery.”
“Great,” said Joker. “I got more money to win off you soon-to-be-much-poorer idiots.”
The very last thing Guano felt like doing was playing cards, but there was nothing she could do for Flatline. “Fine,” she said, absentmindedly cracking her knuckles, before immediately regretting it. “I’ll show you bitches how this game is played.”
As she said that, another doctor stepped through the doors and into the surgical suite, almost running.
“He’ll be fine,” said Joker again, although Guano couldn’t help but notice the slight tremble in her voice as she said it.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bridge
USS Midway
Stunned silence filled the room, broken by a tremor as a shockwave from the detonation passed over the ship, creating a faint ripple that shook computers and rattled the various systems.
Nobody spoke. Only machines quietly beeped, almost mournfully, reporting the status of a ship that was no longer there.
“What the hell?” asked Mattis, bewildered. “Their reactor was intact, their core life support systems functioning… Was it a side effect of the alien weapon?”
“No, sir,” said Lynch. “The projectile was just a standard ferrous lump of inert mass. It didn’t cause the explosion, at least not directly.”
Another long, languished period of silence.
“Get Modi up here,” said Commander Pitt. “If anyone can sort this mess out, he can.”
“Do it,” said Mattis.
For a moment, Commander Pitt yelled into a communicator, arguing with Modi. Mattis appreciated the time to think. To digest. Shao and he had almost—almost—become friends, despite their history. And her loss… Well, there would be time enough to think on that later.
He was using that excuse a lot. Deferring his problems onto Future-Mattis. Eventually, he knew, he would become that guy, but not today. Not right now.
Quiet pervaded until Modi arrived. It was Mattis’s first chance to get a good look at him. He was tall, wry and impeccably groomed. He had a neatly trimmed mustache that, to Mattis, appeared slightly ridiculous. Still, he carried himself with a serious, almost distinguished air, his stride stiff and formal as he walked over to Mattis’s chair.
“Commander Modi reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Thank you for coming up here, Commander. We figured getting hands-on with the systems directly would be beneficial for you.”
“I concur.”
An odd phrase, but Mattis let it slide, giving a deferential nod. “Good. Our ally’s ship exploded. Find out why.”
“Of course, sir,” said Modi. “Mister Lynch, please play back the recording of the explosion. I’m sure I can give you some kind of information as to what went wrong.”
Commander Pitt typed on his console and, after a second or two, an image of the burning Fuqing reappeared on their monitors. Modi took Lynch’s console and, examining it carefully, scrolled forward, playing back the ship’s destruction in slow motion. A brief flash from within, and then a much bigger one, completely blowing the ship and all her crew to atoms.
“The only thing I can offer by way of explanation,” said Modi, his tone apprehensive, “was that flash right before the explosion.”
“Do you know what it was?” asked Mattis.
“No, but it does not seem consistent with a typical reactor overload.” Modi switched the screens back to real-time mode. “Its presence is certainly…odd. It appears to be a secondary explosion of some kind, a trigger to the primary.”
A secondary explosion? But the enemy ship’s ordnance was inert. “If you have the answer, lemme hear it.”
“I do not.”
Mattis grimaced. “Got a reasonable guess?”
“Yes,” said Modi, without elaborating.
Lynch rolled his eyes. “You damn cyborg! He’s not asking for mathematical proof. A guess is fine.”
“The admiral asked if I knew what it was,” said Modi. “If he wanted my guesswork, he would have asked for that.”
Mattis flicked his tongue from one side of his lips to the other. “Commander Modi, I’d appreciate any input you may have on this matter, regardless of certainty, so feel free to contribute whatever you have.”
“As you wish,” said Modi. “Admiral, that flash appears to be indicative of a Type IV shaped charge explosion. That kind of hardware is used in various roles, from breaching charges to demolition purposes, but its primary role in a ship of that size and configuration would be as a scuttling charge.”
“You could have just said that,” muttered Lynch.
Mattis’s surprise was impossible to conceal. “Scuttling charge? You mean the Chinese blew up their own ship?”
“Why in blue blazes would they do that?” asked Lynch. “They were hit pretty bad, but not that bad. Certainly not so bad as to blow themselves to Kingdom Come when there were no enemy forces in the AO and a ship obviously attempting to organize a rescue effort for them.”
“This is why,” said Modi, his tone even, “I would prefer to avoid speculation in the future.”
“Maybe,” said Commander Pitt, “it was the very fact that rescue was so certain and so immediate. Maybe they didn’t want us on board, sir. Maybe they had something to hide.”
It felt strange to cast aspersions on the Chinese so soon after they were friends, with the debris swirling around his ship. But the truth was, for all her banter and friendliness, Shao had kept secrets from him the whole time he’d known her.
“I think you may be right, XO,” he said, watching the last of the Fuqing’s debris field expand and disappear into nothingness. “We’ve got two mysteries on our hands now. Where the hell did these enemy ships come from? And what the hell are the Chinese hiding?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Bridge
USS Midway
Despite the loss of the Fuqing, the atmosphere on the bridge was electric. They had defeated their first alien ship—assuming they were aliens and not another rogue nation state—and discovered a critical weakness in their shield designs. Mattis knew why they were happy, but despite it all, couldn’t bring himself to feel much except a vague, hollow feeling in his gut.
It had been too easy.
Damage assessments and repairs were made, including an assessment of the front armor of the ship. It had taken quite a beating, but with a little field repair, it would be right as rain.
He did his job, transmitting a report to the fleet, which included a full breakdown of what had transpired. Everything he could think of was included, starting with the appearance of the enemy ships at Friendship Station and ending with the loss of the Fuqing. Mattis made specific note of Shao’s skill and courage, especially in the face of adversity, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything positive about Admiral Yim.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Having sorted out as much as he could, he slept, which was the be
st thing in the world. Waking up and returning to the bridge, however…less so.
It had been cleaned. The whole thing had been scrubbed from top to bottom. Every scorch mark and blood stain had been scrubbed away and the whole room lightly scented with pine. The damaged consoles, even ones that were still working, had been replaced, and every scrap of debris had been meticulously cleaned up. It looked like a brand new ship.
Were the crew always this damn clean?
“Report,” he said, his head clouded. Nobody had brought him coffee yet. It was difficult to think without his brain juice.
“Admiral,” said Lynch. “The fleet has responded to your report. They’ve dispatched reinforcements, the USS Alexander Hamilton and the USS Paul Revere. They are expected to complete Z-space translation in approximately one hour.”
He knew those ships. “The Hamilton and the Revere? They’re sending us scout frigates?” Mattis frowned. “We’re going to need something a little bigger.”
“That’s what they’re sending for now,” said Lynch. “The rest of the fleet is slower. We’re expecting a much larger group of ships within a week.”
Another week might as well be another lifetime, but there was an old saying: You went to war with the army you had, not the one you wanted. Same applied to the Navy. “Anything else?”
Lynch flicked through his reports. “Oh, wait, there’s one more thing. A supply ship, the HMS Somerset, carrying fuel, repair crews, and a lot of interesting things…including a wing of strike craft. They were set to resupply Friendship Station, but we could really use those ships to replace our losses.”
Some good news. The irony of a British ship coming with the Paul Revere was not lost on him. “The British are coming,” he said, unable to keep a smile off his face. “Send word to the incoming ships, inform them of the tactical discoveries we’ve made and ensure they’re briefed on the various weaknesses we’ve exploited. And regarding those strike craft, make sure we transfer them all, even if we don’t have room to operate them yet. If we take more losses, I want to keep our combat effectiveness.”
The Last War: Book 1 of The Last War Series Page 14
