by Rick Partlow
“She’s not answering my hails, ma’am,” Lt. Reno responded, shaking his head. “I’m not reading any transmissions from her at all.”
“From the thermal scans,” Gianeto put in, “her reactor is still down. She hasn’t even used maneuvering thrusters…” He frowned deeply. “Ma’am, I’m getting some oxygen leaks near the hangar bay too.”
“Right now we have to worry about that cruiser…and the laser,” Minishimi reminded him.
“Captain,” Franks said, “the Sheridan’s a more modern ship with better armor and power systems than us, and they’re still down from that hit. If we risk a field intersect with that ship…”
“I think we’ve just about run out of other options, Larry,” the Captain replied quietly. “Drop field long enough to launch every Shipbuster we have left on board and program them to target that cruiser once her field is down. At least that could keep her occupied for a while…maybe give us more time to recover.”
“Slaving drive field to Tactical,” Bevins said, anticipating her command. Gianeto felt a smile tug at the side of his mouth. The Helm officer wasn’t very experienced, but he was catching up fast.
“We have two Shipbusters left in the magazine,” Gianeto told the Captain as he punched in a series of commands. “I’ve programmed them to go into standby and target the enemy cruiser when he’s in the open.” He hesitated for a moment, double-checking his work. “Dropping field and launching now.”
They could all feel the ship lurch slightly as one of the huge missiles shot out of each of the weapons pods. “I hope they can’t track well enough from whatever they’re using to control the ground lasers to take out those missiles,” he said with a shrug as he reactivated the drive field. “The enemy ship is two minutes out, Captain,” he told her.
“Mr. Bevins,” Minishimi said, “put us in a position to intercept him but make sure we stay in place to shield the Sheridan from the lasers as long as possible.” She paused, looking around at the bridge crew. “I’ve already said this once today,” she began, chuckling humorlessly, “but since this is the second ship I’m leading to possible destruction in the last few hours…it’s been nice knowing you, ladies and gentlemen.”
* * *
It was only when he began coughing uncontrollably that Arvid Patel realized that he was still alive. When he pried open his eyes, he half expected to see pitch darkness, but there were still lights on the bridge. The chemical ghostlights on the floor never went out, of course, but to his surprise some of the control stations still seemed to have power, though the main screen and Tactical displays were both dark. Black smoke drifted slowly towards the ventilators, which seemed to be working at a much lower speed than usual, and with the clouds of electrical smoke floated bright red globules of blood…
Patel snapped to alertness as he realized what that meant, and he began working at his harness with numb hands. A low moaning sounded from the Tactical station and Patel glanced up to see Commander Pirelli cradling her head, in pain but apparently still intact. The Helm officer, Lt. Ghent, was awake and blinking his eyes to try to clear them, and Reno the Communications officer seemed to be recovering.
Lt. McElroy, the Engineering bridge officer, was floating limply in his harness, his mouth and eyes hanging open and blood droplets slowly floating away from his ear. The security guard who’d been watching him was breathing, but still unconscious and there was a trickle of blood from his nose. Captain Nunez…Estefan Nunez was clearly dead. Blood leaked from his ears and nose and even his eyes from the massive cerebral hemorrhages that the stress of the field intersect had set loose in his brain.
Patel groaned involuntarily, feeling a pain in his chest as if he’d been struck. “Oh God, Steve…” he murmured. Then he shook himself, forcing the shock and pain away. His fingers finally began to get feeling back and he managed to free himself from his harness, pushing over to the Captain’s station and touching the icon to ‘link with the auxiliary control room.
“Commander Sweeny,” he called. “This is Admiral Patel. Come in please, Commander Sweeny.” He waited for another few seconds and called again, but there was no response. He let out a deep breath and made a decision, switching the comm channel to Engineering.
“Commander Kopecky,” he said. “Are you there? Anyone in Engineering, please respond!”
“This is Lieutenant Christian,” a female voice responded, then broke into a pained cough that lasted several seconds before she went on. “The main trunk line blew…we have at least three dead---including Commander Kopecky---and a lot more wounded.” She paused again with a wet cough. “Including me.”
“This is Admiral Patel,” he said gently, trying to keep her as calm as possible. “What’s our status?”
“Sir, we have backup battery power, but we’ve got burnouts all to hell and gone from the power surge, so it’s not getting everywhere it should.” Another fit of coughing that made Patel wince. “The antimatter storage pods are all jettisoned and I can’t be sure, but I think the whole Eysselink field generator is trashed…I’m not even certain the drive nacelles are still attached to the ship, but if they are, it’s only by metal, not by any power trunks.”
“Can the fusion reactor be re-started?” He asked her urgently.
“Wait one,” she said.
“Sir,” Patel heard Pirelli speaking to him, her voice a pained rasp. He looked over and saw her unfolding a backup monitor screen from a recess in her station. It was 2D and only 40 centimeters across, and included an actual physical keyboard; but it worked, unlike the holographic display that it was replacing.
“Are you all right, Commander?” he asked her. He was worried about her obvious headache: she could still have a cerebral bleed or a major concussion from the gravito-inertial feedback.
“I think so, Admiral,” she said. “Sir, is Captain Nunez…” She trailed off, unwilling to say it.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” he said with a nod. “I know I’m not technically supposed to be doing this, so if you want to take charge…”
“Sir,” she said slowly and quietly, “no matter what was done to you, I still consider you my commanding officer. If they want to court-martial me later, well,” she sniffed wryly, “I’ll claim head trauma.”
His mouth quirked in an almost-smile. “What’s our status, Commander?”
“We’re dead in the water,” she told him grimly. “No power to any of the weapons, about half our sensor net is down and of course we have no gravimetic sensors at all with the drive down. I’m surprised they haven’t finished us off with the planetary defense lasers.”
“There’s why,” he nodded towards the display on the screen.
It was difficult to perceive, at first, as if it were a ghost that wasn’t completely there, but the computer filled in the gaps quickly and they could see the old-fashioned bulk of the RFS Bradley sitting a few hundred kilometers away.
“Where’s the enemy cruiser?” Pirelli wondered aloud, typing search parameters into her keyboard.
“Try looking for gamma radiation bursts,” Ghent suggested, finally back to full alertness. “If she has her drive field up, it will be interacting with the magnetosphere and the upper atmosphere…you should get some anomalous radiation spikes.”
“Yeah, I’ve got her,” Pirelli said, and a command to the Tactical computer brought up a simulation on the screen. “She’s…yeah,” Pirelli sighed. “She’s heading right for us. Her drive field will hit us in about five minutes, give or take. But I think…” She checked her calculations quickly. “I think the Brad is moving to intercept.”
“Man,” Ghent said, swallowing hard, “if it does to them what it’s done to us…”
“Christian!” Patel called urgently, trying hard to ignore Estefan Nunez’ corpse at his elbow. “Lt. Christian, do you read?”
“Sorry, sir,” her voice came over the speakers in the headrest of the Captain’s chair. “Things are pretty fucked…err, messed up down here. I had to go grab portable air suppli
es for the wounded.”
“I understand, Lieutenant,” he said, “but what about the fusion drive?”
“The Bradley launched two Shipbusters!” Pirelli interrupted. “The missiles got out of range of the drive field perimeter then dropped thrust. They’re probably programmed to go for the cruiser after they knock out its field.”
“Sir,” Christian answered Patel’s question, “I can get the reactor back online in a few minutes…I’ve got the process started already. But with the power trunk as…messed up as it is, it won’t stay online for more than a few minutes before the electromagnetic bottle collapses. I don’t even think the lines are still intact between the reactor and the weapons pods.”
She paused, and he could imagine her shaking her head. “I can maybe get you a few minutes of thrust on the plasma drives, but that’s taking a pretty big risk too…if the bottle fails at the wrong moment, you could wind up with a catastrophic burn-through. It could destroy the ship.”
“Get the plasma drive working, Lieutenant,” he told her. “We’ll worry about how long it lasts when the time comes.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, signing off.
Patel fell silent for a moment as he watched the Bradley approaching the enemy cruiser on the Tactical screen. “Commander Pirelli,” he said, “Lt. Ghent, I want you two to grab Sgt. Elias,” he nodded towards the security guard, “and get to the life pods. Lt. Reno, sound the general evacuation order, then follow them.”
“Sir, are you sure?” Pirelli asked him, eyes wide.
“Commander, this ship is helpless and dangerous. Sitting here only makes us a bigger target for the defense lasers.”
“What about you, Admiral?” Ghent asked, yanking free his restraints.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured the man, “as soon as I make sure everyone else gets the word.”
Ghent looked doubtful, but he went over and helped Pirelli grab the security guard and they headed for the bridge exit, pulling the man between them. Patel waited for Reno to sound the evacuation alarm, then watched the man go before he pulled himself to the Tactical station and called Engineering once again.
“Lt. Christian, do you read me?”
“Aye, sir,” she responded immediately. “I heard the alarm…do you want me to proceed with the reactor re-start?”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” he told her. “Get it running, make sure I have control of the drives from the bridge, then get yourself and your people off this ship.”
“Sir,” she said hesitantly, “what do you intend to do?”
“Whatever I can, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Whatever I can.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“I can’t believe they’re this fucking stupid,” Xavier Dominguez muttered to himself, staring at the scene unfolding before him on the cabin’s holographic display. He’d hooked his tablet controller up to the communications hub earlier, so Valerie could see the sensor simulation of the battle taking place in high orbit above them.
One of the Republic cruisers---the Sheridan, she thought from her profile---already had her field down and looked to be in bad shape: even as she watched, she could see life pods ejecting from the ship. The other, the Bradley she assumed, had her drive field up but was heading straight for the enemy cruiser, which was also shielded by her Eysselink drive.
“They saw what happened to the Sheridan when she tried the same thing,” Dominguez went on, glancing across the room at Valerie to indicate he was talking to her, “but they’re going to do it anyway. Morons.”
“They don’t have any choice,” she said, quietly but bitterly. “That’s how you planned it.”
“They could run,” he argued, seemingly rational once again, after several manic episodes that night. In fact, she reflected, he sounded almost sad about what he was doing. “They should run…they won’t accomplish anything…I’ll just burn them down once their drive field drops. Just like I’m going to do to the Sheridan right now…”
Valerie’s stomach clenched as she watched Dominguez---or whatever the hell he was, because he wasn’t the Xavier Dominguez she had known for years---pull up the targeting display for the planetary defense lasers, cycling through one after another until he found the one that could fire on the Sheridan, then locking it on to the crippled warship. She knew she should try to stop him somehow; and if it had just been her, she might have risked it, even knowing it meant certain death. But the shivering warmth of Natalia in her arms reminded her that she couldn’t afford to be a hero, so she just clenched her fists and tried to fight down the surge of nausea that she felt.
“Goodbye, Admiral Patel,” Dominguez murmured in an almost singsong voice as his finger hovered over the fire control, his eyes taking on a dreamy look. “Goodbye, Colonel McKay…”
Valerie’s eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see it happen…and then flew open involuntarily at the sharp, harsh bark of gunfire. Dominguez was already on his feet, his head snapping around towards the front door of the cabin, where the dirt access road passed by it. The individual shots turned into a full-auto barrage and the mercenaries in the cabin moved behind cover.
“There are enemy troops in the tree line on the other side of the access road,” the woman who was controlling the biomechs told him. “We have two troopers down already but I’m having them take cover and return fire.”
“Get out there with them,” Dominguez ordered her. “Go out the back and take the guards from the dock with you.” He looked at the other three mercenaries in the cabin. “I’m heading out with her. The rest of you stay here.” He jabbed a finger at Valerie. “If she moves, kill her and her daughter.” He grinned, a touch of the old rueful humor she remembered coming back into his face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they tried something, desperate as your father must be.” He disconnected the tablet controller from the communications console and followed the female mercenary towards the back door. “Desperate people do stupid things.”
This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, Jason McKay thought, walking across the bottom of the lakebed.
Sure, it had made sense: there hadn’t been any dive equipment available on the Sheridan, and their HALO gear and combat armor had an onboard oxygen supply and enough insulation to keep them from getting hypothermic in the ice-cold Minnesota lake; also, their load-out weighed enough to prevent them from swimming across, so walking across the lakebed was the logical alternative. It still seemed crazy to him.
No starlight penetrated to the lake bottom and it was pitch black even with his helmet’s thermal filters engaged. Only his helmet’s GPS mapping software projected in the HUD gave him any idea where he was or where he was headed. At least the ten meters of frigid lake water should shield them from any sensors that Dominguez and his forces might have set up…and at least it was faster going than he had feared.
True, it was like…well, hell, it was walking underwater, and his quads felt like jello from the strain of trying to push himself through it, but the lake was narrow and the bottom was fairly smooth. Except for the resistance, it wasn’t that different than low gravity training at the lunar base. He winced at the thought that the lunar base wasn’t there anymore, and tried not to think of all the people he had known and worked with who had been killed there.
God knew he had enough to think about. Valerie was in that cabin…and even if it hadn’t been love six years ago back on Aphrodite, it had been more than a fling. He owed her, and the very least he could do was make sure that she and her daughter walked out of this alive. Despite what he had told Commander Villanueva, he was going to make sure that Val and Natalia made it out, even if he and the others had to die in place to accomplish the mission.
The lakebed abruptly began to slope upward as he approached the dock, going from ten meters in depth to only four, and a diffuse brightness beckoned to him from the floodlights mounted on the old, wooden posts there. McKay grunted with the strain as he pushed himself up the slope through the silt and loose rock. He had
to lean forward and support himself on one hand, grabbing at the larger stones that were half-buried in the bank and pulling himself up until he was just two meters below the surface.
He couldn’t see them, but his helmet HUD showed the IFF signals from the rest of his team moving into place along the bank of the lake. Vinnie and Jock were to his right while Sean Watanabe and two other Special Ops NCOs were lined up on his left. The remaining 18 men and women in the combined force of Fleet Marines from the Sheridan and the Decatur had circled around the lake into the woods on the other side of the dirt road, and if he had timed everything right…
He could hear the gunfire even through four meters of water and he felt a rush of adrenaline urging him to charge up the bank with guns blazing, but he held himself back, waiting nearly thirty seconds. The shots grew from an initial flurry to a steady background rattle before he finally felt in his gut that the time was right.
“Now,” he radioed to the others, then pistoned his legs and surged up the bank and out of the lake.
He grunted with exertion and impact as he landed shoulder first on the loose gravel that had been dumped on the bank beside the dock, his carbine trained upward just in case the enemy had been smarter than he’d hoped. The dock was deserted, though, and he allowed himself a relieved breath before low-crawling up the bank, peering through the high grass that grew up around the dock pilings.
There was the back porch of the cabin, unguarded…but through the clear transplas he could see three human guards inside, all hugging the front wall, trying to catch glimpses of the fighting through the windows. There was a body on the porch as well, stiffened with rigor and corpse-white from bleeding out. He assumed it was Charlie Klesko and felt a pang of sorrow: Charlie had been a good man.
“They’re all good,” he murmured to himself, remembering something he had once told Shannon.
He pulled a flash-bang from his vest and fed it into the launcher under his carbine’s barrel. He didn’t have to ask to know that on the other side of the dock, Vinnie was doing the same. It bothered him that he couldn’t see Dominguez, but perhaps the man was staying behind cover. He just hoped Valerie had enough sense to keep her head down.
