Last Measure of Devotion (TCOTU, Book 5) (This Corner of the Universe)

by Britt Ringel

  * * *

  Flashing indicators near Covington’s arm hinted vaguely to the extent of Hawk’s damage. Although Heskan felt no perceptible sign of distress, he understood all too well that each, tiny blinking light on the console meant raging turmoil for the sailors inside those compartments. He felt extremely vulnerable without his shocksuit despite being relatively well protected, deep in the heart of the two-decked brig. It was unnerving, the knowledge that a decompression event on the bridge would mean a horrific death for him and his friends.

  “Damn, the AIPS has already collapsed,” Covington exclaimed while shaking his head. He looked fiercely toward his first officer. “Damage re—” Covington stopped speaking abruptly as Heskan’s hand closed around the young ship captain’s right arm.

  Heskan pointed at Covington’s ship status display with his other hand. “Look at the positions. It can’t be too bad so it can wait. Use this time to plan your pass based on which ship you want to target.”

  Across the bridge, Hawk’s weapons officer announced, “Approaching five light-seconds shortly.” He glanced at Vernay standing over him and added, “At least our forward batteries show green.”

  “It’s still a bad time to lose our screen,” Vernay grumbled.

  “Jack,” Heskan said, “can you shave time off the regeneration routine? Use every trick in your book.”

  Truesworth looked questioningly at Hawk’s sensor officer. The young woman quickly withdrew her hands from her console and nodded frantic permission. Truesworth grinned as he leaned in close. “You don’t have to just sit here,” he whispered. “Why don’t you work on spoofing their sensors? Those ships can’t have that sophisticated of a targeting suite and your average pirate officer is a lot more interested in his weapons than the data that guides them.” His fingers rapidly tapped commands to split the controls of the console into twin hemispheres. Controls for the advanced integrated projection screen flared into existence on his side of the panel.

  Ahead of Heskan, Lieutenant Selvaggio slapped at the hand of the navigator. “No!” she scolded in a quiet voice. “Never execute an opposing evasive maneuver when facing kinetic weapons. Think about it; if you duck to the right and then jink to the left… you’re just standing still in the middle.” She tapped at the ventral thruster controls. “Use ninety-degree evasive maneuvers.”

  The seated officer nodded his head feverishly and grappled with the thruster controls. He quickly zeroed out the port thrusters while simultaneously firing four thrusters located along Hawk’s keel. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he gushed as he looked up to his raven-haired mentor. “I’ve never faced rail guns before and we’re usually trying so hard to keep our best face toward the enemy that we don’t have much room for evasion.”

  Selvaggio smiled supportively while resisting the urge to correct the young navigator. If Hawk were facing modern rail guns instead of outdated coil guns, she would have been much more concerned. “You’re doing fine,” she murmured while tapping a finger near the chart plotter. “Now mind your heading; you’re going to get a course change order very soon.”

  Heskan’s eyes darted away from the muted conversation in front of him and to a waving Vernay. Her expression conveyed impatience and great need. Heskan nodded in understanding but brought a calming hand up as if to say, “It’s coming.”

  “Okay,” Covington said loudly. “WEPS, target Mirific and fire at will. Helm, port turn, forty-five degrees. I want both of them to pass on our starboard side. Keep our speed up.” He immediately looked toward Heskan for affirmation.

  Heskan gave him the thumbs-up but said quietly, “Keep planning your battle, Captain. How will you know when to switch your fire to the other pirate ship?” As Covington pondered the question, the elder captain ordered, “Jack, split screen. Opticals of both pirate ships with tactical in the middle.”

  Covington smacked his forehead with a hand. He leaned close to Heskan and whispered, “Of course! If I see her break apart, I can switch fire.” He grinned at the simple realization and added, “This isn’t anything like we were taught at the Sekhmet Academy. It’s completely free flow.”

  To Heskan’s left, the WEPS officer simply pressed the confirm button on his weapons director console cluster. Under Vernay’s guidance, he had worked ahead and properly anticipated the most likely target for Hawk’s batteries. The electronic orders were sent to the twin dual GP turrets atop Hawk and the quad mount along her starboard beam. Given the weapons officer’s augury, Hawk’s gunners gained an extra four seconds to aim at their target.

  The Seshafian brig burst through the 5ls envelope as it narrowly evaded a second score of coil gun rounds rushing past her at half the speed of light. A heartbeat later, Mirific’s maser struck Hawk’s partially regenerated AIPS screen. The protective barrier flared brightly as waves of energy competed against each other for dominance. The AIPS screen lost the fight but shunted much of the maser’s destructive potential before expiring in a crescendo of light. The remaining bursts of energy gouged wicked scars through the duralloy protecting the Number Six starboard thruster. An eye blink later, the thruster erupted outward in a shower of debris.

  With the threshold to light laser range breached, both sides opened up their arsenals. Twin spits of death stuttered from the coil gun barrels of Salvage One-One. Less than 2ls to her port side, Mirific’s maser recycled and, once again, unleashed its doom. The freighter had rotated slightly, offering more of its starboard profile to her target in order to unmask two additional, hidden B-pack laser mounts.

  Hawk responded with eight general purpose laser shots, slaved in two-second intervals. Under expert tutelage, Covington had resisted the urge to fire at the pirate ship that had already struck him. Instead, he wisely decided to concentrate his fire on the ship that was the greatest threat inside of five light-seconds, and to trust in his helmsman’s elusiveness and sensorman’s ECM talents to neutralize the coil guns of the second pirate ship.

  A pair of heartbeats after the first salvo, Hawk’s turrets belched again. Two seconds after that, they fired a third time. Before the GP turrets could recycle for a fourth salvo, the opening barrages touched their opponents.

  Red status indicators lit all along Hawk’s starboard beam on Covington’s arm console even as Vernay leaned over the WEPS panel and dragged the salvage vessel’s avatar toward the targeting queue. “Switch over soon, L-T,” she guided her charge.

  The young lieutenant looked up in confusion. “Why? We haven’t stopped the first one yet?”

  Vernay’s eyebrows screwed together as she explained, “You really think that freighter’s going to last past the twenty-four laser bursts you’ve already fired at it?” She glanced at the panel’s status and added with slightly more annoyance, “The forty bursts you’ve now fired at it?”

  A bright, ruby light flared into existence on the panel. As the WEPS officer absorbed the information, Vernay, acting on instinct, announced, “Starboard quad has been hit, Captain.”

  Heskan opened his mouth to acknowledge but caught himself. From his left, Covington answered, “Yeah, we’re being hit all down our beam.” Heskan watched Covington’s hands tightening around his chair arm consoles in death grips. “Get ready to switch targets, WEPS,” Covington advised. To his right, Hawk’s sensor officer was in near hysterics about how the AIPS screen was going to burn itself out laboring under Truesworth’s new protocols.

  Hawk had endured nearly half a minute of combat starting with the opening coil gun bombardment. Throughout the hectic maneuvering, the brig had closed to within 2.9ls of the enemy before her port skid permitted the agile ship to skirt around the spinning pirate ships. During those moments, the third burst from Hawk’s quad GP turret struck near the massive drive mounts attaching Mirific’s starboard CT-20 Allison drives to the main hull of the Q-ship. The combined torque of the drives and thrusters, rotating and accelerating to keep Hawk within view of her weapons, stressed the compromised mounts past their shearing point. Twenty-seven seconds int
o the fight, Mirific’s starboard drive broke loose and rotated a full thirty-two degrees outward and twenty-two degrees upward. The resultant stress tore the freighter apart from the stern. Sixteen additional laser bursts from Hawk were wasted on the dying ship, tallying unnecessary damage to a doomed enemy.

  Heskan was about to advise Covington to switch targets when the right third of the wall screen flared brightly. Heskan’s eyes darted up to witness the final death throes of the Q-ship. He mouthed the words along with the sensorman’s cry. “ELTI Mirific.”

  “Move your fire to the salvage ship, WEPS!” Covington said triumphantly as he thrust a fist into the air. During the time it took Hawk to change her focus, the remaining combatants reached their closest approach.

  WEPS scrambled to comply with the order. “How did you know?” he asked his overseer.

  “Experience,” Vernay replied. Her shoulders slumped in a morose admission. “I killed my share of civilian ships when I sat in that seat.”

  The confession drew a fleeting, horrified look from the seated officer but he wisely remained silent.

  “Captain,” Hawk’s operations officer announced, “we’ve got decompression events all down our starboard side. Worst of the damage is to our Number One quad mount and Engineering says we’ve lost the starboard drive. The crew quarters also took several hits.” She glanced over her shoulder to Covington and added, “The core is good for now but Lieutenant Casey recommends we strike our lights after this pass.”

  Seeing the range to the salvage ship beginning to tick upward, Hawk’s weapons officer exhaled and instructed his gunners to cease fire for the pass. Vernay’s jaw dropped. “Keep firing!” she commanded tyrannically.

  The weapons officer’s face turned bright red while he quickly countermanded himself, “Fire, fire, fire!”

  The time lost during the conflicting orders cost Hawk six laser bursts. Had the brig’s starboard quad turret been operational, the missed opportunities would have more than doubled. The result was to leave Salvage One-One damaged instead of crippled. The final pirate’s own coil gunshots, seemingly perfectly aimed, fell wide to port, victims of Hawk’s elusiveness and the wall of ECM placed between herself and her opponent.

  As Hawk withdrew from 5ls, Selvaggio issued a hushed reminder to maintain their evasive efforts until a full fifteen light-seconds separated the combatants.

  Covington looked up to Heskan, as if seeking permission before ordering a detailed damage report. Heskan placed a reassuring hand on the captain’s shoulder and complimented, “Well done, Clayton. You fought your ship well.”

  A contagious grin broke over the Seshafian’s face. “That was incredible! I’ve never seen a combat like that before. It was so… fluid.” He looked up at his mentor. “Is that what it was like against the Commonwealth?”

  Heskan cringed at the question. I talked to him privately for a reason, he thought. If it becomes common knowledge that we’re Brevic, then it’s going to leak across the media and that means, eventually, Bree will find out. He furrowed his eyebrows at Covington, who wilted before him.

  Chapter 15

  “I’m sorry,” Covington whispered and he ducked his head. After a moment, he covered, “I meant, was that what it was like fighting for the Commonwealth?” His face had turned a deep red.

  Heskan shook the man’s shoulder congenially to knock him from his self-rebuke. “You did great, Captain, and yes, the battles we fought in the Hollaran-Brevic conflict were a lot less scripted than corporate warfare.”

  “It’s so different,” Hawk’s weapons officer confided as he shivered from the adrenalin dump. “We weren’t just trying to damage each other’s ships; we were openly trying to kill each other. We weren’t even hiding that fact.” He looked up at Vernay. “I’m sorry I stopped firing, ma’am. I’m just used to ceasing all hostilities after a pass. I was taught you have to give your rival time to surrender.”

  Vernay smiled at him. “It’s okay. I overreacted. Where I grew up, it’s taught that you don’t give the enemy anything except as swift a death as possible.”

  “We need to send a distress message out to the nearest Federation ship,” Covington said. He looked up at Heskan. “Do you want us to dive when we reach the tunnel point?”

  Heskan scanned the tactical plot. Absent-mindedly, he ordered, “Full tactical. Jack, forward your damage analysis on that salvage ship to the first officer when it’s complete.” Hawk was 19ls from the pirate ship and that distance was expanding. One light-minute ahead, the tunnel point to Nyx waited for them. “We won’t get dive clearance, Clayton. I’m sure tunnel point control will order both Hawk and that pirate ship to heave to while they try to sort this mess out.”

  Covington nodded. “We have to keep our distance from the pirates though.” He looked up questioningly again and mouthed uncertainly, “Right?”

  Heskan chuckled lightly at the unwavering deference. Clayton Covington has two corporate battles under his belt. He’s a talented ship captain. Why is he acting like I’m the universe’s gift to Seshafi? He nodded to the seated captain. “Definitely. Also, good thinking on sending that distress message out. We’re the injured party here. They attacked us.” He made sure he gave the young captain an approving look.

  Hawk’s operations officer reported in during the slight pause in conversation. “Captain, the preliminary damage report is compiled. It’s a little worse than I thought. We’re down to roughly half of our propulsion. The starboard quad has been destroyed. A number of our AIPS components have burned themselves out.” She looked away from her panel and stated, “I know this isn’t a corporate skirmish but by regulation I have to recommend striking our lights.”

  Vernay, watching from across the bridge, seemed discontented with the report. She waited half a beat and then finally said with a sharp annoyance, “Casualties, Lieutenant?”

  The OPS officer flinched. “Oh. I’ve got eleven killed or injured, including Midshipman Piper from the quad control room.” Her eyes widened at Vernay’s continued glare and she added, “I’ll get more specifics now, ma’am.” The sub-lieutenant spun in place back to her station.

  “Understood, Trish,” Covington interjected. “Let’s set a course toward the nearest Federation system defense ship. Power down the weapons but charge the AIPS up as much as possible. I want to keep as much distance between us and that pirate ship as we can. If the range starts to shrink, tell me immediately.”

  Selvaggio and her apprentice bobbed their heads in unison.

  “Sorry about the AIPS generators, sir,” Hawk’s sensor officer apologized.

  “Better to burn it out than take extra hits,” Heskan noted.

  “Yes, sir,” the Seshafian concurred. “With two ships, I thought there’d be a second pass.” She shrugged. “It’s not easy to think outside a box you’ve trained in for your entire life.”

  Vernay and Heskan nodded in agreement. The petite commander offered supportively, “That’s an understatement. I’m still struggling with corporate warfare, Lieutenant, so don’t worry yourself one bit that this type of engagement seems strange. Honestly, I think your ways are better.”

  Heskan stared, shocked by his friend’s admission.

  She merely returned his look with a thoughtful one of her own and explained, “How many of our friends would still be alive?” The look darkened. “How many on Salus?”

  Truesworth, still standing at the sensor panel, announced, “Message from tunnel point control, Captain Covington. Playing it now.”

  Hawk’s wall screen divided and the baffled expression and desperate words of the space traffic controller easily translated over the one light-minute distance. “CSS Darlane Salvage One-One and CDS Hawk, you will cease hostilities immediately! I say again, cease fire! Both vessels will immediately heave to. Truncheon will close with both vessels and provide further guidance. Acknowledge receipt of this order immediately!”

  “System plot, please,” Covington ordered.

  Heskan glanced at th
e expansive map on the wall screen and saw SFS Truncheon, a standard fast ship, transiting from the Nyx tunnel point to Enyo’s main orbital. She had yet to come about… the light from the recent combat would not reach her for another seven minutes. However, once she reacted, Heskan knew that the corvette’s engines would push her rapidly toward them. Hawk had finished her turn toward Truncheon. The maneuver placed the brig slightly outside the normal shipping lane between the Nyx and Ophion tunnel points. Salvage One-One had continued past Hawk and was speeding toward the Nyx tunnel point. She’s not stopping, he surmised. No surprise there. A quick check of the surrounding space made it clear that no ship was in a position to prevent the pirate’s dive. Even the tunnel point orbital was unarmed.

  “Confirm receipt of their order,” Covington commanded. “Helm, you can start your rotation to bring us to relative rest but be lazy about it. I want that pirate’s uncertainty zone a little farther away before we kill our momentum.”

  “Aye, sir,” came the reply.

  Lieutenant Selvaggio uttered a final compliment to Hawk’s navigator before straightening her back. “Well, that was exciting for a moment, wasn’t it?” She stepped away to stand near the bridge door. As if on cue, Truesworth and Vernay likewise relinquished their positions near their novitiate counterparts.