This Corner of the Universe

by Britt Ringel

  “Send someone with a replacement helmet to get her. We can’t have anyone sitting out the rest of the battle,” Heskan ordered.

  Brown shook his head. “Who, Capt’n? After the hits we took from that stealth ship, we sealed off the lower deck from the gym forward. There ain’t nobody forward of her on the lower deck an’ the only compartment aft of her but on her side of Aux Con is the med bay, which is supposed to be manned by folks from the OCC an’ Gables herself!”

  The news rocked Heskan. Ana’s turning into a ghost ship on the lower deck. Only one, live crewmember trapped in the lower front half of her and the rest are beyond our help. “Tell her to sit tight then, Boats, and we’ll get her when this is over.”

  The incoming missile count was back to six in three separate volleys when Blackheart fired its tenth total missile volley. The duet leapt out of her missile ports and then sped off at .45c toward their objective. The nearest volley to Anelace, the eighth, was 8ls from finishing its run. After firing that eighth volley, Blackheart’s starboard magazine had run dry and while she turned, she had been forced to wait sixty-five seconds before she could begin launching missiles from her port broadside. The gap between the last starboard volley and the first port volley was a vast 20ls resulting in the ninth volley being a full 28ls from the corvette and the newly launched tenth volley beginning its sprint toward Anelace 42ls away.

  As Spaceman Gables sat uncomfortably in helpless isolation, PO Pruette fought to remain useful in his turret gunner’s seat. The last hit on Anelace had been an enormous shock to Anelace’s computer systems. When his console had flickered, his heart had leapt into his throat as he thought the whole system might crash. The collapse did not come but even though Anelace had successfully fought to keep her vital systems online, some damage had been done. Since the flicker, his targeting computer was behaving noticeably slower. Even his target reticule lagged behind his turret control stick’s input. Standard procedure was to reboot the system, but that would take time, and vampires Oscar and Papa were just entering point defense range. He had only had a lock on Oscar for a scant two seconds but sighed with great relief when his first shot took out the missile at 5ls. Quickly slewing his turret toward Papa, Pruette tried to lock his weapon’s computer onto the second missile but stopped when Thomas negated it with his second shot. He wrenched his control stick back to the left to rotate his turret toward the next volley. Up until now, the volleys had been 14ls apart. The rhythm of the battle had been frantic, nineteen-second cycles of desperate lock-on attempts followed by even more desperate laser shots at the deadly missiles. However, vampires Quebec and Romeo, the ninth volley, were a full 20ls from Anelace when Pruette and Thomas began training their pulse lasers upon them. The increased distance gave the gunners an extra nine seconds to achieve locks and both Pruette and Thomas, with Vernay’s help, found themselves with solid target locks while still waiting for the missiles to enter laser range.

  The captain of Blackheart shook his fist in victory as the light from Anelace’s Auxiliary Control “near miss” reached the schooner. “Yes!” he called out triumphantly while rocking forward in his chair. The hit had to be the deathblow for the resilient little ship. Smiles broke out on the bridge as the ship spewed atmosphere and wreckage from the gaping hole punched into her side by the detonation. The damned ship had put up a fight though. Until now, he had watched with increasing concern as the corvette danced by missile after missile to close the range from 2lm away to just over 30ls, all the while its fearsome, possibly operational mass driver barrel pointing ominously at them. In Blackheart’s two-year career as a pirate enforcer ship, she had never permitted an enemy to close within 30ls of her, let alone ever been hit by the enemy. The captain felt Blackheart lightly shudder as she pushed out her eleventh missile volley and began to tell his missileer to stand down but stopped as he examined Anelace. Unbelievably, the ship was still closing. Not just closing due to forward momentum either, he thought. She’s still under power! What’s it going to take to stop her?

  Vernay watched both missile symbols of the ninth volley wink out at maximum point defense range with satisfaction. The extra time granted to lock onto vampires Quebec and Romeo had made their interception almost seem routine but her team’s respite from the battle’s previous hectic pace was over as the remaining volleys were once again coming in 14ls intervals. Vernay’s attention on her task was so total that she had barely felt the bone-jarring near miss in Auxiliary Control and she had not heard Brown’s damage report that implied the demise of her section chief, CPO Martin. Her entire world was herself, two gunners and the inverted “v” missile symbols on the point defense plot. Anelace was one hundred and five seconds from entering mass driver range and in that time, Vernay estimated the schooner could fire just three more volleys. With only two missile volleys in flight currently, she knew her weapons crew needed ten more successful interceptions before they would finally get their turn to respond.

  Trying hard not to think too far ahead, she willed herself to stay focused on the current task of helping Thomas lock on to vampire Tango. To Vernay’s relief, she saw that Tango’s companion, Sierra, was already in Pruette’s sights. As she locked on to Tango and held the lock, Anelace’s targeting computer spent each microsecond accumulating better data on the missile’s velocity, trajectory and evasive maneuvers, postulating with increasing accuracy the point in space at which to fire to have her laser burst and the vampire converge.

  Pruette’s target died 5ls from Anelace but Thomas needed a full three shots to kill Tango. The crafty missile had nearly evaded his point defense fire but Thomas had calmly let his weapon recycle and then took a final, coolly aimed shot to stop the Interceptor-B missile 200,000 kilometers from Anelace.

  Vernay and her gunners now turned their attention to the eleventh volley. Unnerved by the close call, both gunners were having trouble gaining an initial lock. Struggling herself, Vernay barely registered Selvaggio calling out that she was yawing Anelace to starboard forty degrees in the pre-planned maneuver that would skirt Anelace through mass driver range while staying out of the reach of Blackheart’s ten laser turrets. Heskan had chosen a starboard turn due to Blackheart’s orientation. By turning toward the schooner’s stern, he ensured Blackheart would have to rotate one hundred eighty degrees before she could engage her main drives to close to laser range and Heskan planned to have Anelace well past the larger vessel before that could happen.

  Anelace’s bow began to turn at the 26ls mark from Blackheart. Rolling to keep her starboard lasers unmasked, she was thirty-six seconds from entering mass driver range. The captain of Blackheart would have just ten seconds to react when he saw Anelace start her turn and Heskan thought it was most likely that the captain would order Blackheart’s drives to full power in an attempt to push his ship outside of the 10ls range of the Kruger. As a result, he had ordered a slightly shallower turn to starboard that would take them closer to the schooner as Anelace zoomed by. It was all a gamble. If he brought Anelace to within 5ls of the schooner, its ten B-pack lasers would slice Anelace to pieces. If he tried to play it safe and keep Anelace further out on her firing run but Blackheart was able to push the range outside of 10ls, Anelace would slip by without being able to fire a shot and would have to make another pass while still under missile attack. The game was a high stakes match. The winner would live.

  If the mood on Anelace’s bridge was tense, the atmosphere on Blackheart was nerve-wracking. Originally, Blackheart’s captain had watched with an almost heady delight when the corvette had broken from the cover of the Beta Field to defend the mining station. The little ship had already lost half of its defenses and the 2lm expanse between it and his ship amounted to an eternity, as he knew his enforcer ship would be able to dispense missile salvo after salvo against his foe. However, after each successive hit on Anelace, he grew more and more anxious as the little ship refused to die while determinedly clawing a path from 2lm to 1lm and now to 26ls. The tiny ship was a nightmare, met
hodically and seemingly unstoppably marching its way toward him while apparently ignoring all effects of the hits he had delivered. He had no illusions about the resiliency of his own civilian converted missile boat, nor any about the lethality of Anelace’s mass driver, which he now presumed was functional. As Anelace decreased the light-seconds between them, the pressure had inversely increased on his bridge. The almost casual attitude of his bridge crew at the beginning of the rush had changed incrementally to a quiet foreboding bordering on panic. His men now knew that this might not be a bloodless battle like all the battles before. The approaching ruin of a ship, the monstrosity streaming atmosphere and wreckage, promised to exact a toll higher than any of them was willing to pay. Yet Blackheart couldn’t run. If he ordered full emergency power in an attempt to open the range again, the faster corvette would simply take a position on Blackheart’s now empty starboard side while she pumped mass driver shots into his ship. He had to keep his port side facing Anelace and that restricted his options to almost none. Goosebumps broke out on the captain’s arms and a shiver ran down the pirate’s spine. Blackheart trembled as well, her twelfth volley of missiles launching from her port side.

  Tyler Pruette had fallen behind on his current target, vampire Uniform. The first burst from his turret had missed and he actually lost weapons lock during his pulse laser’s recycle. Panicked, he rushed his second shot, which converged on the space Uniform had occupied one quarter of a second earlier.

  Thomas was doing better. Thanks to Vernay, he had weapons lock for two seconds but his first shot still went over its target. Able to maintain lock during his recycle, Thomas was rewarded with a direct hit to vampire Victor on his second attempt. Thomas’ eyes moved on to his next target, vampire X-ray, 14ls away, even as Pruette’s second shot missed Uniform.

  Pruette’s panic was now borderline hysteria. They had come so close but this was the end. Vampire Uniform was 3ls away from Anelace giving him barely four seconds to achieve weapons lock and fire at the missile. In his heart, he was certain this would be the missile that killed the ship and it would be his fault they would all die. His target reticule staggered drunkenly around his console screen as his right hand quivered. He wasn’t even going to get a lock before he was forced to fire. As he resigned himself to failure, he watched the reticule shift slightly on its own and glow the glorious bright green of weapons lock. Although his finger still hovered over the command-accept-execute button, his turret nonetheless spewed a burst of laser fire that struck down the incoming missile less than 1ls from Anelace.

  “You’re still in the game, Tyler. Stay with it,” Vernay’s sweet, soprano voice urged over his helmet’s speakers.

  Vernay knew something was definitely wrong with Anelace. The old girl had suffered too many blows, had been pounded too many times and now, like a prizefighter who had taken too many head shots, Anelace was punch-drunk. Her computer systems were dying. Somewhere inside the ship’s processors, something had broken and each decision was taking slightly longer than the last. Vernay considered telling Captain Heskan but by the time she even explained the problem, she would have her hands full trying to fire the Kruger at Blackheart. She could not initiate a system reboot because they would be hit by the next wave of missiles before it had completed and switching to the redundant weapon control system that ran concurrently was pointless as it seemed to be having the same problem. The range between the two ships had diminished to where life and death events were happening every few seconds and having neither the time nor the experience to devise a solution, she decided that they would just have to live with what they had. On the main screen, Anelace plotted Blackheart’s thirteenth broadside launch and Vernay knew that, at most, there would be time for only one more missile volley before Anelace could finally return fire.

  The young weapons officer watched in horror as her gunners’ weapons reticules jerked spasmodically on their way over to the twelfth salvo. Struggling to keep Thomas’ targeting system focused on vampire X-ray, Vernay urged it onward as the computer chugged through the aiming procedures. From the corner of her eye, she saw Pruette’s assignment, vampire Whiskey, sharply deviate from its collision course with Anelace to head toward an electronic phantom. Thomas’ first shot missed but Vernay held the weapons lock while his laser recycled. Vampire X-ray met its fate on the second shot, vaporized at 3ls from the corvette.

  With but one volley remaining, Vernay glanced away from her point defense controls to the tactical plot. Anelace would be in mass driver range in twenty-four seconds. As much as she wanted to help Thomas fight off vampire Zulu, she knew she had to transfer her console over to mass driver control to begin its targeting procedures. They had come a long way for these shots and if she missed, all of this would have been for nothing. She wished her gunners good luck over the comm and switched to mass driver control.

  Pruette had accepted that he was living on borrowed time. His last target, vampire Whiskey, would have easily slipped past his defenses had it not been for the ECM. His targeting computer was truly defunct by now and besides the increasingly delayed response from his control stick inputs, his console had developed a stutter. Using more guesswork and instinct than Brevic naval point defense procedures, he coaxed his targeting reticule to the general vicinity of vampire Yankee. Strangely, he was calm. It’s pretty much out of my hands now. Poor Thomas must be having fits in his turret, he thought. His console screen blinked at him and he saw his reticule was suddenly 2ls behind Yankee. With an almost casual resignation, he bounced his input to a spot where he guessed the missile would be when his reticule eventually staggered over to the location. This was so not covered at gunnery school. He grinned as his reticule moved closer still to Yankee. I should write a paper on the calculus of point defense in an austere environment using voodoo and indifference. Pruette laughed aloud as he gained a hard lock on the missile. So focused on his goal to attain a lock, he had actually not fired when Yankee entered range. The missile was now 4ls from Anelace but he still held his fire. I’ll probably lose the lock after I fire anyway, so let’s give the old gal time to think things through. Come on, Ana! Pruette watched the range drop from 4ls to 3ls. As the missile cut inside 2ls, he input the fire command and charged bursts of energy reached out to swat the missile from space. Pruette’s elation at achieving the impossible was cut short as Anelace shook violently; Vampire Zulu had detonated six hundred meters over her.

  The shock front rained down over Anelace. The crest of the wave hit her fifty meters behind her bow, in between her sixth and seventh frame. Her first line of defense, the AIPS screen, had fully recharged, thanks to PO Deveraux’s valiant efforts inside the AIPS control room and the screen deflected seventy-eight percent of the energy. The concussive wave slammed against Anelace’s topside hull but with greatly reduced force. Located forty-five meters from the bow, the sixth frame had the additional support of the internal bulkhead separating the first port and starboard laser turret rooms from Damage Control Station One. The shock front pounded against the hull, opening several breaches in each compartment, but the actual structural braces weathered the force warping nineteen centimeters without breaking.

  The port laser control rooms and DC-One, which had already been destroyed, were pulverized further. Pruette and Thomas on the starboard side experienced the thrill of decompression as their compartments opened to space, although each had already sealed their shocksuits when vampire Foxtrot had rattled Anelace earlier. The blast knocked Pruette around in his shockseat so hard it blurred his vision. Blinking furiously, he saw through teary eyes that his control panel was dying. Just as he thought his vision was getting better, his compartment lights began a slow fade to black. Reaching out feebly to switch his computer to an alternate power source, he saw his hand was fading out too and then realized the lights were fine, it was he that was fading out. His last thought before losing consciousness was his fervent hope that there was still power running to the mass driver.

  As Pruette and Thomas were
beaten inside their compartments, the shock front dealt its deathblow further aft. Anelace’s seventh frame, already broken by an earlier near miss, could provide no more support. The hull buckled and crushed inward from the AIPS control room through the officer living quarters, collapsing everything but the two aft-most officer quarters and Damage Control Station Three. Even if Deveraux had not been deafened from an earlier blast, he would not have had time to hear the cacophony of disintegrating bulkheads around him as the shock front broke his body before it was crushed by the crumpling ceiling.

  Every person on the bridge was jolted violently in their seats. Ensign Selvaggio cried out in pain as her lower right leg slammed into the bottom of her navigation console. A shower of sparks flew from Truesworth’s sensor station followed by thick, opaque smoke. Heskan thought he heard Riedel cry out a warning about a fire on the bridge. The bridge crew, in near unison, locked their visors down, anticipating imminent decompression of the bridge, except for Lieutenant Vernay. Oblivious to the destruction around her, both hands remained glued to her weapon controls as she fought against the blast to keep her mass driver pointed at Blackheart.

  Riedel was once again screaming about the fire while quickly removing the restraints of his shockseat. Truesworth had turned to face Heskan and was saying sensors were inoperable. Meanwhile, Selvaggio was reflexively holding her right leg in a desperate attempt to stop the pain. Heskan knew that he had lost control of the situation on the bridge and needed to get it back. They had rode Anelace hard and she had taken them to the threshold of mass driver range but she had nothing left. Now, her crew would have to return the favor and carry her if they wanted to finish the job.