“Ten for ten!” Barrett whooped. “Sending the self-destruct signal to the remaining two Hornets.”
That had been easy. Maybe too easy. “Still no new contacts?”
“None we can see,” Barrett confirmed. “High-power scans have been active since entering the system.”
“Very well,” Jackson said. “Helm, all engines zero thrust. We’ll just coast the rest of the way to Xi’an without lighting up the sky. OPS, are the pieces of the Dao going to miss the planet?”
“Engines answering zero-thrust.”
“Standby, sir.” Lieutenant Davis calculated possible trajectories from where the Bravos had abandoned the four enormous pieces of the destroyed battleship. “Affirmative. They’ll be turned in by the planet’s gravity but should continue on past it. We’ll overtake the prow section before it crosses Xi’an’s orbit.”
“Identify each of the four pieces and report back to me which sections of the ship are still intact,” Jackson ordered. “I need the information before we start braking for orbital insertion.”
“Yes, sir.” Davis turned back to her station and took control of the tactical sensor array.
“It seems odd that they would try an assault with only ten Bravos,” Celesta said as the post-battle excitement settled down.
“I think they may have been sent as a distraction,” Jackson said. “There was no logical reason for them to abandon their prize when they could have easily gotten the Dao pieces to Xi’an before we could have closed the range to stop them.”
“But to what end? Deorbit them?” she asked. “As far as we know, they haven’t reestablished their operation on the surface since the CIS Prowlers nuked the slicks from orbit.”
Jackson shuddered at the mention of the Phage “slicks,” enormous tracts of a viscous substance that was essentially digested material, organic and inorganic, that they used to build their ships. During his only encounter with one, he watched it eat one of his crewmen.
“And between the nuclear fallout, the debris cloud, and the atmospheric damage the Phage did, we can’t get a clear picture of the ground,” he reminded her. “Either way, Commander, we’ll need to get over Xi’an and ascertain exactly what they were so interested in that they would risk an engagement with thirteen Fleet ships.”
“Of course, Captain.” She nodded.
Jackson could tell she wanted to argue for a quick flyby of the planet and a fast flight back out to their jump point, but she had worked with him long enough to know when he wasn’t open to debate.
“Xi’an orbital insertion in three hours,” the chief now manning the nav station called out. “Braking maneuvers in two.”
“Confirmed, Nav,” Jackson said. “Helm, you’re clear to execute course and speed corrections from Nav.”
“Aye, sir.”
“You have the bridge, Commander,” Jackson said, standing up. “I’m going to grab a couple hours in my office before we begin decel.”
“Yes, sir.” Celesta transferred her terminal over to the command chair and sat in the vacated seat almost before he could get out of the way.
While it was a great comfort to have an XO who was maturing rapidly and showed all the necessary aptitude for command, Jackson often wondered if she regretted her decision not to take a ship of her own when it was offered.
Chapter 2
“Captain Wolfe! Report to the bridge immediately!” The harsh call over the intercom was immediately followed by a klaxon calling everyone to general quarters and the subtle but distinct rumble of the engines coming back up from idle.
Jackson rolled off the small couch in his office and sprinted back to the bridge through the open hatch, his prosthetic leg whining in protest. It was only about a twenty meter run, but before he could make it, the Ares bucked under the unmistakable impact of enemy fire.
“Report!” he yelled as he ran onto the bridge.
“Indirect plasma fire coming from the surface!” Lieutenant Davis said. “We were clipped by the last one, but I don’t believe we’re being specifically targeted. No significant damage reported.”
“She’s right,” Celesta said, looking at her display. “It looks like they’re shooting up out of the atmosphere indiscriminately. I can’t tell if they even know we’re here or not.”
“Can we penetrate that cover now that we’re closer?” Jackson asked.
“Negative, Captain,” Davis said. “There’s too much particulate matter suspended in the upper atmosphere. The long-wave thermal optics are useless, and radar is completely ineffective below thirty kilometers.”
“Understood.” Jackson took his seat. “I assume we’re accelerating off course to avoid our original orbital path since it was full of incoming?”
“Yes, sir,” Celesta said. “Sorry, sir. I’m sending you our course corrections now.”
Jackson looked over their new course along with the path of the enemy fire, trying to find some correlating pattern. It looked like his officers were correct in their initial assessment, and the enemy was firing blindly into the sky, but for what purpose?
“Nav! Get me a course correction that puts us over Xi’an at seven hundred and twenty-five kilometers at thirty-two degrees inclination,” Jackson ordered. “Helm, execute immediately.”
“Yes, sir!”
“What are your thoughts, Captain?” Celesta asked.
“I want us coming over the planet as far away from that incoming fire as we can manage, but we still need to see what they’re protecting,” Jackson said. “Is that drone ready to fly?”
She confirmed the status quickly on her terminal. “Yes, sir.”.
“Good,” he said. “Launch it as soon as we’re in range. I have a bad feeling they’re either protecting something on the surface we don’t know about or clearing the way for something coming up.”
“That’s ominous—”
“Contact!” Barrett called out, interrupting Celesta. “Big contact! Something is coming up three kilometers across, roughly hemispherical.”
“Helm, hard to starboard!” Jackson barked. “Get us away from this planet, ahead full!”
“Engines ahead full, steering away from the planet, aye!” The helmsman angled the Ares over sharply, so she was pointing almost perpendicular to their previous course, and thrust hard away from Xi’an.
They were still being influenced by Xi’an’s gravity, so their course flattened out from a steep orbital insertion to a shallow arc that would send them over the northern hemisphere on their way past the planet.
“Another contact! Identical to the first, coming up five hundred kilometers south of the first contact,” Barrett said.
“OPS, get optics on the new contacts, and put it on the main,” Jackson ordered.
“Optics coming up.” Davis worked on controlling the Ares’s external optical sensors.
The image of Xi’an was soon on the main display, slightly blurry as the computer searched for the new contacts and tried to focus on them. The results were terrifying.
“Tactical, confirm what we’re seeing.” Jackson didn’t want to believe what he was looking at.
“Confirmed, Captain.” The blood drained from Barrett’s face. “Two Alphas are coming up from Xi’an, stern-first.”
“OPS, display our orbital track,” Jackson said. “I need to know how close we’ll pass. Coms! Broadcast a warning to the rest of the fleet. Tell the Brooklands to get the hell out of this system.”
“We’ll sling around Xi’an well away from the Alphas thanks to our steep orbital inclination, but we’ve decelerated so much that we’re still at risk.” Celesta pointed out their projected course as Lieutenant Davis put it on the main display.
“Nav, correct course to straighten us out, and sling us around the primary,” Jackson said. “Helm, full acceleration when you get the new course. OPS, give me a location for the squadron to rally away from Xi’an and broadcast a recall order to the fleet. Tactical, bring all weapons online.”
Jackson took a momen
t to compose himself and not make any rash decisions. He was now looking down the barrel of two ships like the one that had torn through this region of space unopposed some four years ago. He had a much more powerful ship at his disposal, and four more just like it fully armed and in the system, but he held no illusions about standing toe-to-toe with either of the leviathans pushing up slowly out of Xi’an’s murky atmosphere.
“Now we know what they were protecting,” Celesta remarked as the Ares groaned under heavy acceleration.
“We also know those Prowlers weren’t as thorough as we’d originally thought.” Jackson’s voice was bitter. “We’ve left this planet alone for a few years while they built two more of these monsters.”
“Captain, we’ve ordered the squadron to form a heliocentric trailing orbit behind the sixth planet,” Lieutenant Davis said. “The Artemis and Hyperion have checked in—all Bravos destroyed, no casualties. Third Fleet units are exiting the system.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.” Jackson stood. “Tactical, I don’t want you to take your eyes off the Alphas other than to blink, understood?”
“Understood, sir.” Barrett’s eyes didn’t come off his displays.
“We’re now in optimum range to deploy the surface drone,” Celesta said.
“Deploy,” Jackson said. “Have it broadcast real-time, since we may not be able to come back and pick it up, assuming it even survives its mission.”
Celesta sent the command down to Flight Ops. “Drone away. Lieutenant Davis, I’m sending the telemetry feed to you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Davis didn’t up from her station as she controlled the flow of information to and from the bridge.
“What’s the plan, sir?” Celesta lowered her voice. “Can five Starwolf-class ships take on two Alphas?”
“It’s possible,” Jackson said. “It would take some inspired tactics and more than a little foolhardiness. Unfortunately, we’ve had such little time with this ship, I’m not inclined to push it to the edge of its performance envelope just yet. This is a disputed system with zero civilians and zero strategic assets. There’s nothing to be gained by taking on such an overmatched opponent. We’ll regroup further out, observe as long as possible, then report and withdraw.”
“Very good, sir.” Celesta kept her voice completely neutral. While she didn’t directly say it, her relief at his plan was obvious.
Jackson couldn’t blame her. There wasn’t a single crewmember that had served on the Blue Jacket currently in the Xi’an System that ever wanted to engage an Alpha again, much less a pair.
The Ares quickly accelerated away from Xi’an, angling up and away to swing around the primary star and fly out to the rally point with the rest of the Ninth Squadron ships. Capable of over seven hundred G’s of acceleration, the new destroyer would be able to make the rendezvous on the other side of the system in thirty hours without even taxing the engines.
Their best intel on the Alphas, mostly extrapolated from the Blue Jacket’s recovered sensor logs, have their best acceleration at significantly less than the new ship was capable of. The issue, however, was that the giant killing machines weren’t hampered by Newtonian physics and were able to accelerate to any point within the system in a straight line, completely ignoring the gravitational pull of the star and its planets.
“Coms, message the rest of the squadron and order them to go silent,” Jackson said. “Thermal and radio emission protocols are now in place until otherwise stated.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Keller said from the com station.
Jackson, now technically a senior captain, was in charge of the Ninth Squadron when it was deployed on its own. The Confederate Senate, with the intent to show their constituents they were taking the threat seriously, tried to make him an admiral and put him in charge of the Fleet response to the Phage. After the initial shock and horror of the idea wore off, he’d appealed directly to CENTCOM Chief of Staff Marcum and asked to be put back on the bridge of a starship. After some back and forth, a compromise was reached to promote him to senior captain and give him the first operational Starwolf-class ship off the line: the TCS Ares.
A few well meaning officers and ranking Senate members had lobbied to have the new ship christened the Blue Jacket, but Jackson had steadfastly refused. His previous command would be remembered for her crew’s bravery and sacrifice. Resurrecting the name wouldn’t bring them back and could only diminish their legend. Besides, he rather liked the name of his new ship. Ares: God of War.
While he felt a burning need for vengeance, his hard-won experience told him the current situation in the Xi’an System was a fight he probably couldn’t win, and wasting ships and lives to spit in the eye of the Phage would be the height of foolishness. One of the main reasons he had stopped watching the news, and most broadcasts from Haven in general, was because much of the programming these days still centered around the initial Phage incursion into Confederate space and his ship’s efforts to stop it. The highly dramatized propaganda about his “victory” couldn’t be healthy, and he was worried he might begin to believe the bullshit about the “implacable Captain Wolfe” and get more good men and women killed in the process.
Deep down, he felt like a fraud. His risky gambles borne from desperation and fear were being portrayed as strokes of genius, cunning, and courage. The fact that so many people were looking to him, their eyes gleaming with hope that he would save them, terrified him more than the two Alphas just breaking out of Xi’an’s ruined atmosphere.
****
The bridge remained tense as the Ares continued to pull away from Xi’an and the two Alphas that were now sitting in low orbit. The destroyer was still running her engines at full , and they were painfully aware that they were lighting up the sky with an impressive thermal plume, should the two alien ships decide to give chase.
“Captain, you’ll be interested in this.” Lieutenant Davis had been analyzing the sensor logs of these new Alphas, the first to be seen since the initial encounter the Blue Jacket had. Jackson climbed stiffly out of his seat, put weight experimentally on his prosthetic left leg, and walked over to her station.
“What do you have, Lieutenant?”
“I’m not sure these Alphas are even combat capable.” She pulled up some high-resolution optical scans and overlaid them with the radar picture and thermal spectrograph images that showed the ships in multiple wavelengths.
“You have my complete attention, Lieutenant.” Jackson leaned in to look at her monitor. She took a breath before continuing.
“If you’ll look here at the stern and see that I’ve divided the view into quadrants, the radar is showing that the areas under the hull, where the plasma charges originate, are hollow spaces,” she said. “The thermal scans back this up—the four areas are significantly colder than the flanks. In fact, visual spectrum shots seem to show the hull material is very thin, almost translucent.”
“This is quite interesting,” Jackson said. “Conclusions?”
“Impossible to reach any with this small amount of information, sir,” she said. “But when taken in the context of the wild shots fired from the surface and the fact that they haven’t pursued us, I would have to say that we’ve interrupted the construction of these two, and they’re pulling them off the planet before another nuclear bombardment.”
“I’m inclined to agree with your assessment,” Jackson said. “But let’s do this right. Send all this down to the engineering and science sections, without your own conclusions attached, and let’s see what they come up with. I’m willing to bet they’ll agree with you as well.”
“So what can we do with that information?” Celesta had walked up behind them while Davis had been talking, the acoustics making it impossible for her to hear the conversation from her seat.
“For now, nothing,” Jackson said firmly. “I won’t turn and attack with a single ship while they’re in orbit over Xi’an. They’ve demonstrated already that there’s something down there capable of lobbing h
igh-energy plasma bursts into orbit. I’d rather not find out the hard way that the new outer hull armor can’t withstand what the Tsuyo engineers say it can. We also have no way to determine if the entire ship is unarmed or if it was just the stern that didn’t have plasma weaponry installed… or however the hell they put them together.
“For now, the plan remains the same. Meet up with the rest of Ninth Squadron and reassess the situation then. It’s possible that we can gather more data from the drone and make a run at these two. Taking down two Alphas would be a huge victory but not at the cost of five of our most advanced starships.”
“Yes, sir,” Celesta acknowledged while Davis just nodded.
“Keep at it, Lieutenant,” Jackson said. “Commander Wright, let’s stand down first watch and get everyone rested and fed now that we have a good idea that those two Alphas won’t be pursuing us anytime soon.”
“Aye, sir.”
Jackson took the time to grab a proper meal from the wardroom and go to his quarters for a shower and a change of uniform. Before entering the shower, he sat on a seat he’d had installed in the head and carefully detached the prosthetic leg from what was left of his real leg below, about four inches below the knee. He set the mechanical apparatus aside and began carefully cleaning the connections on the metal cap that was surgically attached to his leg.
The cap had a locking socket on it that the prosthetic snapped into as well as inductively coupled electrical connections that allowed it to send nerve impulses so he could control the actuators. In a lot of ways, it was as good, if not better, than his real leg had been. There were much more advanced procedures available that would allow him to have a real leg grafted back on at the knee, but the rehabilitation was far too time consuming for him given the seriousness of the challenges he’d faced after they’d fished him out of the Blue Jacket’s wreckage.
The mechanical prosthetic might not be pretty, and certainly made people uncomfortable to look at it, but that actually made him like it all the more. Despite the accolades that had been heaped upon him of late, he still felt like an outsider looking in, the dirty Earther who was being tolerated as long as he was useful. After performing a few maintenance tasks on the leg, he climbed into the shower and reveled in one of the luxuries the brand new ship afforded him: unlimited hot water in Officer Country.
Call to Arms (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 2) Page 3
