by David Smith
‘Farnell, get ready to transmit.’
Janus watched the range fall, and they held their collective breath. If any of the cruisers spotted them they’d lose the element of surprise and then things would be in the lap of the gods.
At the other edge of the display, the Imperial heavy cruiser had slowed and Rhino was accelerating hard to close the gap between the two of them.
The three light cruisers passed ahead of Tiger and Lyle used thrusters to bring the ship around behind them.
Dave said ‘Hit it, Lyle!’ and the Helmsman opened up Tiger’s reaction drives to 105%, accelerating the ship as hard as she could.
Immediately, Dave said ‘Janus, standby on phasers, Farnell, transmit console codes.’
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On board ISS Essex, the Tactical Officer had a moment of panic as the ship’s shields inexplicably shut themselves down. Terrified of the retribution his Captain might bring if he admitted this problem he began frantically running diagnostics but quickly realised that nothing on his console was working.
Realising he was out of his depth, he took a deep breath and admitted ‘Captain, we’ve got a problem . . . ‘
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‘Now Janus!!’ Dave shouted.
The Tactical Officer opened fire with Tiger’s phasers. Lieutenant Farnell had used the ship’s console codes of the three Imperial cruisers to take remote control of their key functions and had lowered their shields.
Invented to allow Starfleet ships to wrest control from hostile forces that may have boarded or captured a vessel, they were a well kept secret that Dave hoped would minimize casualties in this instance.
Without shields to protect them, the Tiger’s heavy phasers could cut through the tritanium hull of the smaller vessels like a hot knife through butter.
The crew’s familiarity with the Imperial cruisers design had made a mode of attack obvious, and Lyle had brought the Tiger close in behind the three light cruisers so they could pick out a small spot between the two stanchions that spread out vertically from the rear of the main hull to carry the ship’s four warp engines.
In this spot, the warp core’s power output was split between the warp engines and other systems by a series of plasma manifolds.
Janus hit the target perfectly on the nearest of the three ships. The generators of the Tiger’s port phaser bank produced pulses of intense energy that the phasers converted into bolts of nadion particles that seared through void of space like flaming balls of lightning.
They smashed into the Essex, vaporising the outer skin of the hull then blasting clean through the structure of the ship, destroying everything in their path.
The main plasma manifolds ceased to exist in a spectacular explosion as the high-energy plasma within was freed from confinement. In the main hull of the cruiser everything went momentarily dark until the emergency back-ups cut in, but it was too late for the crew; their ship was crippled and drifting.
The Victory and Swiftsure were suddenly aware that they’d walked in a trap. Their shields were down too, but they could still manoeuvre and tried to turn away.
Janus had already brought Tiger’s starboard phaser bank on line, and ran up the forward bank too. Both banks of phasers opened fire to improve Janus’ chances of hitting the important plasma manifolds.
Swiftsure hadn’t moved quickly enough and Tiger’s starboard phasers found their mark. The plasma manifolds exploded in the same pyrotechnic fashion, but Tiger’s phasers had inflicted much more incidental damage to her physical structure. The force of the explosion tore off the upper stanchion, sending it, and the two warp engines it carried, spinning off into space.
Victory had reacted more quickly and was accelerating hard. The forward phaser bank engaged her, but Victory took evasive manoeuvres and opened fire with her own weapons.
Tiger’s first volley missed, blasting holes in the light cruiser’s Hangar Deck which looked bad, but didn’t affect her ability to fight. Victory’s sensors still couldn’t get a lock and were firing blindly, but a second volley from Tiger struck the Victory on her main hull. With no shields to protect it, the plating of the hull melted and gave way in a flash of white hot metal particles and escaping atmospheric gases.
Victory’s phasers were still firing sporadically as her sensors struggled to get a lock onto Tiger, but they ceased as Tiger’s phasers cut through the EPM conduits that carried energy from the warp-core to her phaser banks. They exploded, releasing masses of white hot super-energetic plasma, much of which flowed back into the ship, resulting in a horrific conflagration that incinerated every living thing in its path.
The flash of energy blasted the ship off course and her reaction drive cut out as her computer tried to correct for the unexpected motion. In that instant, Tiger’s phasers found their mark, blasting through the base of the engine stanchions and neatly severing the power supply to her warp engines. Completely powerless, Victory span, tumbling away and spilling white-hot plasma into the void.
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At the same time that Tiger attacked the light cruisers, Rhino had started launching salvo after salvo of torpedoes at the Hornet. As Captain Mackie ordered his Helmsman to take evasive action, he heard the incoming message that first Essex, and then Swiftsure had been disabled and that Victory was under attack, but failed to notice that his Helmsman had taken a hard turn to starboard to evade the incoming barrage.
As his Tactical Officer returned fire, Mackie realised he was now closing on the position of the three light cruisers and was horrified to see two of them drifting dead in space and Victory firing off her phasers seemingly at random.
Had he missed another vessel? Some kind of sabotage? This whole expedition had turned into a disaster. They’d been beset by weird incidents that had severely weakened his task force. He’d lost two frigates in what appeared to be a minefield yesterday, and had previously lost another couple of vessels to a near collision.
If only he still had the Avenger with them! He’d had to abandon his beloved flagship and transfer across to this bucket of bolts two days ago in order to continue the mission after Avenger had mysteriously broken down. They’d tried to get her moving but her entire computer system was shot and they couldn’t get her fixed and still make the deadline to rendezvous with LaCroix on the Tiger. Things had gone from bad to worse, and now to disastrous. His fleet was still a force to be reckoned with, and he had assumed that it would be sufficient to complete their mission.
However, his battle plan had fallen apart spectacularly, and he was now facing a no-win situation. If he abandoned the mission, Admiral O’Connor would have him executed on the spot, but if he stayed and fought, he’d be facing the huge Tana battleship alone, and possibly another adversary too.
He didn’t have a choice. He had to fight on. His best chance was to use the crippled light cruisers as a shield and keep them between him and the battleship. They’d take a pounding, but better them than Hornet. He’d just accelerated past the three ships, ignoring their pleas for assistance, when his Tactical Officer shouted out ‘SIR!!! OUR SHIELDS HAVE DROPPED!?!’
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On the Bridge of Rhino, ASBeau watched as the enemy heavy cruiser graciously manoeuvred exactly where they needed her to be.
Appearing out of nowhere, bolts of orange phaser fire arced across the view-screen, smashing into the Imperial heavy cruiser. The Bridge crew winced as with clinical precision, the near invisible version of Tiger that had arrived from five-days in the future targeted the stanchions that supported Hornet’s warp-engine nacelles.
Striking at their narrowest point just outside the secondary hull, Tiger’s phasers blasted into the tritanium skin of the stanchions. The tough metal absorbed so much energy that it vaporised in spectacular plumes of white hot metal, before the stream of phaser energy burrowed through the stanchion and found the plasma conduits that transferred energy from the warp-core to the engines.
They explode
d in a ball of white hot fury, spewing billowing clouds of hyper-energetic plasma into the icy-cold of space.
Just when it seemed the stealthy assault had run its course, more bolts of phaser energy sought out the impulse engines at the rear of Hornet’s main hull, a few shot destroying her sub-light propulsion systems too. Hornet was dead in the water.
In her engine room, Hornet’s engineers fought to control the warp-core that had been damaged by loss of the main plasma manifolds. They lost the battle and in desperation were forced to eject the warp core before it exploded and took the ship with it.
From a position at Rhino’s Comms Station Lieutenant Cavaliero picked up a message from the future Tiger and shouted ‘The enemy have ejected their warp core, sir!’
‘Crash, hard away! Maximum Delta!!’ shouted ASBeau as he diverted additional power to Rhino’s rear deflector shields.
Crash threw Rhino into a hard turn to port, bearing away from the stricken warp-core. She accelerated as hard as the ship’s technologically-limited drives and control systems would allow, straining the huge vessel’s structure and integrity fields to the limit.
Everyone on the Bridge felt the unnerving yawing sensation as the inertia dampers struggled to cope with frightening g-forces that would turn them into a red smear if the dampers failed.
ASBeau shouted to Cavaleiro, telling him to advise the original Tiger that Hornet had ejected her warp-core, but their version of Tiger was now heading directly towards Hornet as she chased after the Victory.
A few seconds later, the warp-core detonated, a blinding flash so bright the ship’s computer had to reduce the image intensity many orders of magnitude to keep the image visible.
The uncontrolled mix of matter and anti-matter produced a massive surge of radiation that was as close to the intensity of the big-bang as anything mankind had yet conceived.
The core was reduced to a surge of sub-atomic particles and radiation, blasted outward at close to the speed of light. The wave of energy smashed into the Hornet, and then into the Essex, Swiftsure and Victory, throwing them around like toys. Seconds later it hit the original version of Tiger.
Chapter 13
Dave awoke in near dark. He’d been physically thrown from the Captain’s chair, and remembered landing face first in a heap before losing consciousness.
He rolled over and opened his eyes, but couldn’t stop blinking. Slowly, it dawned on him that his eyes were staying open and it was the lights on the Bridge that were blinking. After a few more blinks, a few of them stayed on, bathing the Bridge in soft light and vague shadows.
‘ . . . Tiger, do you read me? . . . Repeat, Tiger, anyone there? . . . ‘
Still dazed, Dave hauled himself back into the Captain’s chair. Shearer, Lyle and Farnell were all lying on the deck unconscious, Janus and Benoit were still at their consoles but were slumped in their seats.
He pressed a button to open link to the Sick-bay, but no-one answered. He asked Susan to acknowledge the incoming call and began to check the rest of the Bridge crew.
Farnell appeared to be worst off. She’d been thrown over the nav-console and looked to have damaged her arm and leg quite badly. Janus had a huge cut on his head and was bleeding profusely, but as Dave checked him he came to with a groan. ‘Aaaoooww. Anyone get the number of that truck?’
He shook his head, inadvertently spraying Dave with droplets of fresh blood. ‘I’m fine, sir. Check the others.’
Even before Dave had decided he could safely leave Janus, the young relief Tactical Officer was trying to get the Tactical Station back on-line so he could check the situation.
As Dave turned, Lieutenant Shearer had come to and rolled over on to her hands and knees. He was presented with a view of her perfect posterior, unfettered by any form of underwear as was her habit.
“Wye aye. Ah feel like ah been oot on the toon fera week’ she groaned, before hauling herself up and slumping in her chair.
Aisling O’Mara seemed intact and staggered unsteadily over to check on Farnell.
There was a grunt from the back of the Bridge and the door to the emergency access ladder ground open. Ivor Bigfoot popped his head through. ‘Everyone ok?’
‘Farnell needs attention, so does Janus. I haven’t checked Lyle yet’ said Dave.
‘Nah, I’m good’ she replied softly before reaching an unexpected and much more noisy orgasm.
Bigfoot clambered onto the Bridge, followed by senior Nurse Chief Anya Skolskjaer. They attended to Farnell, although Janus pushed them away, determined to get on with his work.
He’d managed to get the tactical display up on the view-screen and in one corner Dave could see a big red dot with a big green dot in close attendance. At the other edge he could see a blue triangle that represented the other Tiger and nearby, three red crosses.
‘Janus, what’s the status of the three Imperial light cruisers?’
‘Not looking good sir. They’re all dead in the water. Our sensors aren’t fully operational yet, but I reckon they’ll have taken big casualties. They were a lot closer to that blast than we were. The other Tiger is closing to offer assistance.’
Dave cursed under his breath. He’d hoped to avoid casualties.
‘Benoit, what sort of shape are we in?’
‘Not too bad sir, drives are back on line, shields are available. Weapons are still off line.’
‘Any feedback on the crew?’
‘The Medical team have spread out, sir. Mengele is down in Engineering, they’ve got a lot of impact injuries to deal with. No fatalities, but we’ve got a lot of stretcher cases by the look of it.’
He had to be thankful for small mercies.
He contacted ASBeau on the Bridge of Rhino. ‘How’s the Hornet looking?’
‘Bad sir. She’s a wreck. Took a huge amount of structural damage from the warp-core detonation, as well as the precision hits from the other Tiger’s phasers. It probably didn’t help that we hit her with half a dozen torpedoes before her shields dropped.’
‘ASBeau, I told you to aim away from her. It was always the plan for Rhino to just drive her within range of the other Tiger so she could make precise hits and minimise casualties’ chided Dave.
‘Hey, I tried sir! Honest! It’s just that she didn’t take the sort of evasive action I expected. I think they may have had a newbie Tactical Officer or Helmsman on duty. Whoever it was just wasn’t up the job’ said ASBeau defensively.
‘Well it’s done now. Is Hornet still viable?’
‘Unfortunately not, sir. Life support is gone and transporters are off line. We’re evacuating survivors by shuttle, but it’s taking time as we’re having to disarm them and guard them too. A lot of them are in a bad way, but at least their medical team survived and are taking care of them.’
‘Ok. Keep at it ASBeau, save as many as we can. Hollins out.’
Dave cut the comm-link and immediately got Shearer to contact himself on the other Tiger. His own image appeared on the main view-screen, which was still a very peculiar feeling. ‘How are the three light cruisers looking?’
His other self shook his head ‘Not as good as we’d hoped. Essex and Swiftsure are viable but can’t move and they have a load of impact casualties from being hit by the shock-wave from the warp-core explosion. At least they survived, only a dozen fatalities between the two of them. Poor Victory is a mess. We only managed to rescue fifty three survivors.
Dave shuddered, over a hundred of her crew had been killed. That was exactly what he’d hoped to avoid. ‘I’ll bring this Tiger in closer to give more support . . . ‘
His on-screen self interrupted. ‘You can’t, you’ve got other things to be doing.’
Dave was confused. ‘O’Mara tells me we can clear out any time, so there’s no reason we can’t stay here to make sure that the survivors are looked after . . . ‘
His other self interrupted again ‘That’s not what I meant. There are another half dozen ships attached to the fleet we’ve just beaten . . . �
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It was Dave’s turn to interrupt. ‘WHAT?!? Why the hell didn’t you say? How far off are they? How many . . . ‘
‘Woaah!! Hold on, we’ve already disabled the Flag-ship of the group, another cruiser, a group of three frigates and a scout.’
‘So if you’ve disabled them why are you bringing this up now. Deal with what’s in front of us, not what’s gone before’ grumbled Dave.
On-screen Dave smirked. ‘I remember saying that! I’m you, remember? Five days in my past . . . and that’s about one hour in your future . . . I took Tiger out of orbit and used the warped-drive to go back along the flight path of the Imperial fleet and intercept them a day before they arrived, and then took Tiger back from that point to intercept them another day before that . . . Are you with me?’
Dave hoped that he looked more confident then he felt ‘Uh . . . yes?’
‘Attaboy! Well off you go then, no sense in hanging about’ smiled his other self.
‘How do we stop the other ships? I mean, we’re stealthy and all, but we’re only one vessel . . . ‘
‘You’ll work it out. After all, I did.’
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It had taken half an hour to get everything back on line and running. They’d departed immediately, leaving ASBeau and his team on Rhino behind as they had nearly seven hundred personnel from the defeated Imperial fleet to control. They’d transfer all the healthy ones down with the Imperial Marines on what the crew now referred to as “Devil’s Island”’
Commander Romanov’s team had got the warp drive systems up and running first and they’d got underway, with a hundred and one other things needing to be repaired on the way.
Janus’ wound had been stitched and Lyle, Shearer and O’Mara were intact. Farnell wasn’t badly injured but had been taken to sick-bay for further treatment and Dave had called in Chief Karen Kosior as Navigator. Karen was one of a handful of ‘true loonies’, people who lived their lives on remote homesteads on Earth’s Moon and didn’t have the luxury of artificial gravity.
Growing up in one-sixth gee had made Karen very tall and slim, and unbelievably weak. Her two meter tall frame massed barely fifty-five kilos and required a cyberneticly operated exo-skeleton for her to be able to move freely in Tiger’s artificial gravity. It was a mark of Karen’s strength of character that she’d conquered her physical frailty to such an extent that she’d been able to gain a place on a Starship.
