This Corner of the Universe

by Britt Ringel

  “Diane,” Heskan commanded, “slow us down, keep us inside the field. Jack, sweep the BigEye in a full counterclockwise circle. Let’s either find her or keep her away from us.”

  Anelace spun gracefully, her bow starting its one hundred eighty degree swing so her drives could reduce her speed. At the same time, the BigEye array swiveled independently of the ship’s turn to begin its search for the elusive craft. More seconds elapsed and Heskan’s concentration was broken by the sensation of a cold drop of sweat running down the left side of his face.

  A loud ping from tactical shattered the bridge’s preternatural silence as a new contact was updated onto the plot.

  “Contact!” Truesworth exclaimed. “Civilian sloop bearing three two zero at eight light-seconds!” The tactical plot placed the new ship just forty degrees port of Anelace’s bow. Due to the corvette’s maneuver to reduce speed, she was actually already turning toward the new contact. “Blue shift projectiles! Incoming fire from that ship, Captain!” Truesworth warned an instant later.

  Lieutenant Vernay had already depressed the mass driver fire key that, when executed by activating the command-accept-execute button, would initiate the first shot from Anelace’s most fearsome weapon. When Truesworth had called out the contact, she was disgusted that she would have to waste precious seconds turning the turret nearly sixty degrees to face the sloop. She had kept it pointed toward the edge of the asteroid field, thinking that portion of space was the most likely place the ship would appear. As the weapon slewed to port, she became equally appalled that the ship was outside the range of the two portside lasers that could have fired immediately. Behind her, she heard her captain issuing orders to Diane to belay the speed reduction and close with the enemy. As she waited the longest four seconds of her career, she reaffirmed her weapons lock on the target and then stabbed the command-accept-execute button the instant the mass driver trained out to the sloop. The iridium round left the barrel less than a second later. Two more would follow in five-second intervals.

  The first round raced along at .66c, like its successors, five and then ten seconds behind it. As the 0.762 meter projectile hurtled on its collision course with the tiny pirate sloop, the shot passed within fifty kilometers of the dozens of fist-sized railgun rounds travelling on a reciprocal course.

  Railguns, like mass drivers, operated on the same principle but pushed projectiles of far less mass. Consequently, the push pulse could be generated with much less heat, allowing for a greatly increased rate of fire.

  Despite this, the gunner on board the pirate sloop was pushing his railgun’s tolerances beyond their limits. The sloop captain had just been completing his turn away from the corvette and was about to open fire when the military ship had done the unthinkable and began searching for them with its sensors. He had been sure the sloop had not been detected as they stalked the ship through the asteroid field and had been momentarily dumbfounded as Anelace blasted the empty space in front of her with active search emissions. His astonishment turned to horror when the corvette began to turn toward his ship. At that point, there was no doubt; that damned ‘vette knew where he was and shortly its sensors would illuminate him. His “hit and run” plan to fire from extreme railgun range while moving at the fastest speed possible away from the corvette to ensure it could not return fire before his ship could break contact had been ruined.

  He now faced the terrifying prospect of a real battle as the corvette ominously turned to face his own ship. Cloak was not designed for this. Sure, the pirate captain thought, she was perfect for ambushing freighters or ore extractors; she even excelled at that. In fact, Cloak had been so successful during the last year the captain had gone to great lengths to ensure the optics of each kill were recorded and he proudly displayed them in holo-frames on his cabin walls. He had even gone so far as to order the painting of victory tallies for each of his kills onto the side of Cloak’s hull but that had been countermanded by the operation’s higher authorities. Still, when docked at “Haven” inside the Alpha Field, he swaggered around the tiny asteroid base like the ancient pirate Blackbeard reincarnated. There were ships that were far more powerful in the organization, even in this system, but his was the ship with the most kills and his skill and daring in each encounter was the driving force behind each of those victories. As the captain’s heart now raced faster than the railgun’s rhythmic burst of bullet after bullet, he realized no amount of skill or daring could compensate for or alter the inevitable result of his first real space engagement against an armed foe.

  The gunner had set the Cloak’s weapons computer to automatic fire. All he had to do was maintain the weapon’s lock on the corvette and the computer would cycle the railgun as fast as possible. When originally installed, the gun’s loading mechanism had been altered to allow for nearly twice the rate of fire as the railgun’s design allowed. This was not normally a problem as only short bursts were used against frail targets like civilian freighters. However, the gunner’s sustained, rapid-fire stream of shots against his first shielded and armored target quickly heated the inside of the barrel well past acceptable limits. Further, the gunner, in his panic, had disengaged the safeties designed to detect the gun’s temperatures and automatically slow its rate of fire. The corvette would soon be firing at him and the urge to kill it before the shark-like vessel finished its turn was overwhelming. As he watched his railgun’s projectiles move toward the corvette, the gunner grimly realized the corvette would fire its opening salvo well before his first shots reached it and started to reactivate the safety protocols. While the gunner was midway through the process, the railgun successfully pulsed fourteen additional times after the temperature had already reached a dangerous 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. By the fifteenth pulse, the main barrel had warped sufficiently to no longer allow a bullet to travel through it. It punched out of the side of the barrel, causing fragments from the main barrel to tear into the surrounding trio of pulse barrels. On the sixteenth pulse, the electromagnetic effect distorted as the pulse rode along the tangled mess and the railgun system exploded.

  The railgun mechanism, mounted on top of the sloop along its centerline, sent most of its force spaceward. The fraction of the detonation directed downward perforated Cloak’s hull, venting the unmanned ammunition compartment into space. All five of the sloop’s compartments had been sealed before the battle and the actual effect on the crew was minor.

  Heskan furrowed his eyebrows as the BigEye Array optics picked up the small topside explosion on the distorted optical of Cloak. Did Stacy snipe that railgun? he questioned. No, her first shot has three more seconds to go.

  “Ana’s closing with the sloop now, sir,” Selvaggio stated, “but she’s running from us, reducing our closing speed to barely point oh-one light.”

  “At least we’re closing, Diane. That’s all we need,” Heskan told her.

  Truesworth voice raised an octave, “We’re taking hits, Captain!”

  Hands reflexively tightening on his chair arms even though nothing had changed on the bridge, Heskan quickly checked his command chair console’s screen dedicated to displaying the ship’s status. He saw Anelace’s defensive AIPS screen withering in a hail of railgun bullets. “Z plus ten-K with the thrusters!”

  Anelace’s thrusters, installed around the ship for fine maneuvering, touched off, working hard to “lift” the corvette ten kilometers “higher” while still maintaining her intercept course. The shower of bullets from Cloak had scattered somewhat over its 8ls journey to Anelace. Increasing imperfections in the railgun barrel as it heated and a shoddy weapons program each contributed to the pattern of the rounds that looked less like an orderly line and more like a spray. Although eighty-three projectiles had been fired at Anelace, only fifty-three struck her. The first forty-one impacted or deflected off her AIPS screen. Blow after blow progressively degenerated the screen’s integrity and, before the AIPS generators suffered complete overload, the automated controls dropped the protective screen to avoid c
atastrophic failure. After the AIPS collapsed, the final twelve railgun projectiles struck low on Anelace’s bow nearly head on.

  The first physical blow suffered during Anelace’s eight years of service came to her leading portside bow navigation lights. Unarmored, the light emitters were battered into thousands of pieces. Each of the twelve, one kilo rounds shattered into hundreds of fragments as they impacted on the surface of the corvette’s duralloy armor. The armor deflected a sizable percentage of the fragments and stopped the smallest ones but the larger pieces sliced through the corvette. The armor absorbed roughly sixty percent of each of the dozens of fragments’ kinetic energy before they penetrated into the bow compartments of the ship.

  The first compartment breached contained the ship’s liquid stores. Intentionally placed in the front of the ship, the non-combat compartment housed the majority of Anelace’s available water. Machinery deeper inside the corvette recycled the used water and could even produce more when demand was high, such as during the hours before the start of each work shift.

  During its design, Brevic engineers had anticipated that, given its mission and probable opponents, a Dagger class corvette would most likely experience return fire in the form of non-military B-pack lasers and small caliber railguns. More efficient and deadlier weapon systems were either cost prohibitive or simply impractical to be mounted on their expected rivals. Further, the ship’s engineers had concluded that since the corvette would most commonly be the pursuer, fire directed at the ship would be concentrated at her relatively small bow. As a result of these findings, every weapon on Anelace could fire in the forward firing arc. Further, when possible, the least critical systems were placed in the areas most likely to be breached. The engineers took advantage of the enviable properties of the water in the liquid stores, which could reduce the kinetic energy of a solid slug passing through it and also reflect a tiny percentage of a laser while also minutely refracting it. The refraction, while only a few degrees, could theoretically bend a laser away from the essential ship’s center.

  The bullet fragments striking Anelace drilled through the exterior wall of the liquid stores and into the water. The water flash vaporized as it met space’s cold vacuum but not before it had its effect upon the fragments passing through it. Each fragment’s kinetic energy, already severely reduced by the duralloy armor, was abated even more. By the time the railgun bullet fragments pushed through the tank and ran into Anelace’s last layer of defense, a fifteen centimeter duralloy armor plate which separated the liquid stores from the Kruger Mk 237 mass driver control compartment, each fragment carried with it less than ten percent of its initial energy.

  The placement of the ship’s mass driver control compartment was out of necessity. Quite simply, the three-man crew had to be co-located with the mass driver. Although computers controlling the function and targeting of the weapon could have been placed anywhere in the ship, the crew needed proximity to the weapon to fix any mechanical problems that might arise during a combat situation. Mass driver rounds jamming in the loading mechanism, while rare, were not unheard of. Damage to the system during a difficult battle was almost expected. Consequently, Petty Officer First Class Douglas and the two spacemen he supervised occupied what was considered one of the most dangerous battle stations on Anelace. Unsurprisingly, each crewmember accepted this fact with great pride.

  The fragments had traveled just fifteen and a half meters into Anelace and lost ninety-two percent of their energy. Still, the remaining eight percent was ten times greater than the energy of a one tonne vehicle moving at one hundred sixty kilometers per hour. Ripping him to pieces, three fragments moved through Douglas as easily as they had moved through the vacuum of space and continued their tour of Anelace deeper into her interior. A cluster of fragments removed Spaceman Apprentice McKinley’s left leg while Spaceman Bonner emerged unscathed but gaping at the destruction around him. The fragments traveled another fifteen meters through the ship, destroying the ship’s mess, exercise room and damage control station DC-2, killing Spaceman Murrell, on loan from Engineering. All told, the twelve fragments had lanced nearly a third of the way into Anelace.

  Automated containment screens triggered in each of the five affected compartments as soon as internal sensors detected a low pressure environment. The low-powered containment screens were strong enough to maintain a barrier to keep a habitable environment for humans but were far too weak to act as a protective barrier against weapon fire. Anelace’s computers triggered the liquid stores’ containment screens first but the passing fragments had destroyed the actual containment generators. The entirety of her liquid stores was lost to space. Amazingly, each of the triple redundant containment generators in the mass driver control compartment was destroyed as well. Inside the compartment, pure instinct moved Bonner’s hand to close his shocksuit’s visor when the depressurization alarm sounded. McKinley, in shock and with his suit torn apart, especially at the leg, was not so fortunate and gasped for oxygen that would never come. The containment field generators in the mess room functioned as required and stopped the hemorrhaging of Anelace’s atmosphere.

  The last thirty-one rounds fired from Cloak’s railgun missed Anelace completely as Ensign Selvaggio used the ship’s thrusters to slip the corvette above their trajectories. The ship was left streaming frozen water shards as the vaporized stores recrystallized, followed shortly by the streaming atmosphere from the mass driver control room.

  Had the light from the stricken corvette reached the pirate sloop faster, its crew would have undoubtedly cheered. They had dealt a harsh blow to the fast ship and, as shards streamed from her bow, her damage looked even more severe than it actually was. However, the three iridium mass driver rounds from Anelace reached Cloak first. The ship, only a third of the size of Anelace, was a Bowrider class sloop manufactured by Harrison & Wright Incorporated. It had been specifically chosen by her owners for its svelte shape and small profile, which assisted in her transformation into a covert pirate ship. After six months undergoing illegal conversions, she was one of the stealthiest ships launched by her underwriters. The tradeoff for her stealth was lack of durability and as the first mass driver projectile struck her six and a half meters from center, it showed.

  The iridium round broke apart as designed and the resultant destruction of the ship’s mid-section was total. Between the ship’s third and fourth frames, the sloop nearly ceased to exist. Stress from the sloop’s main drive, still accelerating, and the impact of Vernay’s second shot finished the work the first had started. The sloop broke in two and the ungainly pieces tumbled away even as the third iridium round streaked through the expanding wreckage, striking a moderately sized asteroid seventeen seconds later.

  “I need a damage report, Boats,” Heskan urged as he watched the optical of the sloop being cut in half. There had been no shaking of the ship or calamitous noise on the bridge as the fragments had smashed into Anelace, so he had no idea if the damage was minimal or cataclysmic. Shifting his eyes from the destruction of the sloop to the tactical plot, Heskan saw the pirate fleet had rotated one hundred eighty degrees and was slowing. Anelace’s computers estimated the ships were braking hard enough to come to relative rest 2lm from the Beta Field’s edge. It makes sense; they have the advantage so why throw the confusion of the Beta Field’s interference into the mix?

  “Bow sensors registered numerous impacts, Captain.” Chief Brown’s report ripped Heskan away from his thoughts. “I have depressurization in main compartments L-One and L-Two. Containment fields have triggered in L-Three. Murrell must be pickin’ her way through to get an eyes-on damage report. I can’t raise her on her comm unit yet. L-T, do you have contact with your folks in L-Two?”

  Vernay could only shake her head. She had gone from the elation of three perfectly placed shots on the sloop to growing horror as she saw subsystem after subsystem fail inside the mass driver main control room. She had already twice requested a status report from her section leader and then one
from anyone in the compartment but each passing second made it more likely the reports would never come. The shock of loss Vernay felt was unlike any feeling she had experienced before. She had worked with Dale Douglas ever since coming aboard Anelace. He was an easygoing and friendly non-com who had a natural ability to inspire confidence in his subordinates and trust in his superiors. Both McKinley and Bonner were young and promising spacemen, each only a couple years younger than Vernay. McKinley, with his sarcastic humor, routinely kept the weapons section in stitches during section meetings. She had easily been able to identify with all of them and after two years of working together, she was fiercely protective of the entire crew. Mustering every ounce of professionalism she had, she swallowed hard and then reported, “Communication with L-Two is down. I have multiple mass driver system failures but I believe the turret itself is undamaged. The weapon is inoperable at this time but I think I can reroute functional control to the bridge and restore operability. ETC—” she pronounced it E-tic—“is five minutes.”

  Heskan took in the discussion going around the bridge. He did not think he would need the mass driver before Vernay’s repair estimate and was thankful Anelace’s best weapon had not been destroyed. His skin broke out in goose bumps as he considered going into battle with just his four GPs against the remaining pirate ships. That was almost a disaster, he thought sourly. What went wrong? I thought I was being so clever. He shook his head in disgust. If just a tiny sloop can do that to my ship, what chance do I have against three ketches?

  Riedel appeared by his right side. “Sir, if you don’t need me, I’d like to head forward and help out.”