First Command

by Scott Bartlett

  Guerrero found her voice again, though it came out as a low croak. “Shields down to thirty-five percent, sir.”

  “Acknowledged.” For a moment, Thatcher marveled at how calm he sounded. None of this felt real. It was like a dream, or maybe a training simulation back in the academy. An interesting puzzle his instructors had devised for him to solve—if indeed they’d included the possibility of a solution at all. In war, some scenarios simply had no victory condition.

  “Ten percent, sir.” Guerrero sounded close to tears.

  He knew she must be tortured by thoughts of her husband and children on the planet’s surface, doomed to lifelong slavery, if not an early death.

  But he couldn’t concern himself with that right now. His mind ran faster than it ever had before, churning through variable after variable. A distracted part of him wondered whether this was a process that might produce a positive result, or simply the flailing of a terrified consciousness in the moments before death.

  He pushed that aside as well, instead considering the enemy fleet’s posture as well as that of his own fleet; the task each vessel was engaged in; Reardon’s delicate position in the Dawn Cluster at large contrasted with their dominant position here in Freedom. What he knew from Mittelman about each enemy ship’s crew, as well as Pegg himself. By all accounts, he was a bold man with unbridled ambition, but also a strong instinct for self-preservation. He was willing to enforce his upper hand mercilessly, when he had it, but he also knew to play conservatively if it served his best interests.

  Last, Thatcher considered the battlespace as a whole. Even in a 3D environment, the flow of the engagement limited each ship’s options. Where she could move, which hostile unit she might engage. Her options for defending herself.

  The stillness in his CIC was absolute.

  Then, Guerrero broke the silence. “Sir, our shields just went down.”

  Eagle stopped firing her primary a second later—in a one-on-one engagement, it was much more efficient to rely on missiles and autoturrets to rupture an armored hull.

  Right on cue, two missiles departed the destroyer’s tubes to hurtle across the void toward the Jersey. The cruiser’s autoturrets took down one, but the other struck home, rocking her entire frame and throwing everyone in the CIC against their restraints.

  Thatcher was about to order evasive action when the chief engineer contacted him.

  “Go ahead, Ainsley.”

  “Sir, you can’t move the ship.”

  “Why not?”

  “That last missile screwed up one of the auxiliary thrusters. Its feed system got knocked out of calibration. Antimatter made it past the attenuating matrix and the magnetic storage rings. If we move now, there’s a good chance it will trigger an annihilation. We’d be done for.”

  Thatcher found himself gripping his chair’s armrests, his knuckles whitening. “How fast can you fix it?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know, sir. Devine and Jowers are headed there now.”

  On Thatcher’s holoscreen, the Eagle loosed two more missiles.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Aboard the New Jersey

  Freedom System, Dupliss Region

  Earth Year 2290

  “Come on!” Jowers roared from a few meters ahead.

  With an effort of will, Devine forced his legs to move faster, a rattling steel toolbox gripped in each hand. Guess I’ve been slacking off with PT. It was hard to stay motivated with a boss like Commander Ainsley, who personally avoided exercise at all costs. But that was no excuse for Devine to do the same.

  Technically, he outranked Tony Jowers, who shouldn’t be shouting orders back at his superior. But this was no time to dwell on the chain of command. Right now, all that mattered was that they reach the Jersey’s bow section as fast as humanly possible.

  Another missile struck home. The passageway bucked, and Devine found himself in midair for a fleeting moment, before coming down hard on his side. The toolbox in his left hand connected with his knee, sending pain shooting through his leg, but the other hit the deck hard. The latch popped open, and tools flew across the deck.

  “Damn it. Come help me, Jowers.”

  “No. We have to go.”

  “Come help me, I said!”

  Jowers tossed his head in frustration, but he ran back and begin scooping up the tools with Devine, helping him cram them back in the toolbox whatever way they would fit. We might need one of these. If they did, he doubted they’d have the time to run back here and collect them.

  “Let’s go,” he said once all the tools had been stuffed inside, with the box’s latch secured once more. Jowers grabbed his pair of toolboxes, and they dashed along the passageway as fast as their heavy metal loads would allow.

  They raced toward one of the Jersey’s port-side auxiliary thrusters. Not a critical ship component, under normal circumstances—but repairing it had become very critical when a missile had impacted the bow near it, which compressed the metal around the thruster and disrupted the emergency ejection system.

  The ejection system served as a final defense against an internal antimatter leak. If every other failsafe malfunctioned, the computer would simply jettison the afflicted thruster, rather than risk a catastrophic explosion that would rip apart an entire section of the ship, if not the ship itself.

  In the case of the auxiliary thruster, every failsafe but one had…well, failed. The feed system was knocked out of calibration, and the computer had shut it off, but not before a significant amount of antimatter had been injected into the positron conduit. The primary attenuating matrix had been breached, and so had two of the magnetic storage rings. Now, all that kept the antimatter at bay was the final magnetic casing, which was designed to keep the free-roaming positrons spinning around the thruster’s internal housing until the whole apparatus could be ejected. Except, the ejection system was broken. The last failsafe wasn’t made to contain the antimatter for this long, and even a single positron spiraling out of control could cause a cascade effect on the antimatter’s stability. The result would be catastrophic.

  “Shit,” Jowers said from up ahead. He stood where the passageway turned right to run parallel to the Jersey’s port side.

  Devine drew up beside him, panting. Then, his stomach clenched. The passage ahead was blocked off by a closed hatch.

  “That last rocket must have blown the section open to space.” Jowers stamped his foot, letting his toolkits fall to the deck, where they bounced roughly but didn’t come open. “One of us has to suit up.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  The deck engineer turned to study his face with wide eyes. “Seriously?”

  “Didn’t your whole family move to Dupliss?”

  “Yeah. To the new colony on Marconi.”

  “Well, they’ll want to see you again. I don’t have anyone in the Dawn Cluster, and I doubt I’ll ever get back to Venus. I’ll go in.”

  Jowers’ shoulders rose and fell as he seemed to take a deep breath. “I was wrong about the old man. You were right—he’s the best thing that could have happened to the Jersey.”

  “Only if we take care of this thruster. Come on. Help me suit up.”

  They sprinted back to the last supply closet they’d passed and pulled out a pressure suit close to Devine’s size. He stepped into it, and Jowers helped him fasten the many seals, checking them over as quickly as they could. Similarly equipped closets were distributed all throughout the Jersey’s exterior passageways. A hull breach could happen anywhere, after all.

  At last, Devine stood near the sealed-off passageway, with Jowers at a control panel several meters away.

  “Hit it.”

  Jowers punched the panel, and a second barrier descended from the overhead, blocking him from view. This formed an impromptu airlock, and at once vents built into the bulkhead began sucking out all the air.

  At last, the barrier blocking the section that was open to space retracted into the overhead. Devine stared at the tools at his feet.
What am I likely to need down there?

  He plucked up the toolbox with all the power wrenches, but that was probably wishful thinking. More likely, the missile had twisted the metal around the auxiliary thruster enough to make this a bigger job than loosening a few bolts.

  He opened a second toolbox and took out a laser cutter, which he affixed to his belt. Then he jogged down the corridor toward where the damaged thruster waited.

  The ship rocked again, throwing him forward. But before he could crash to the ground, the gravity failed. He smashed into the overhead, managing to grab a handle and steady himself in time to watch his toolbox hurtle down the corridor, passing the thruster access before ricocheting off a bulkhead and careening even farther out of reach.

  “Damn it.” Well, I doubt those wrenches would have done me much good anyway.

  He pushed off from the handle to send himself floating forward, catching another one as he drew level with the damaged thruster.

  Game time. He drew a deep breath and keyed open the thruster access, reading the proper code off his eyepiece, from a message Ainsley had sent him as he and Jowers had sped through the Jersey.

  He drew back to let the hatch’s hydraulics push it open, then poked his head inside.

  Oh, Lord.

  The thruster’s inner casing was a twisted mess—warped enough to turn the fact that no annihilation had taken place into convincing evidence for the existence of God. To an engineer, anyway.

  Then again, the fact the Jersey was still intact seemed like evidence enough.

  Devine got to work, using the laser to cut through one of three places that seemed to be holding the thruster fast. Sweat dripped from his chin onto his faceplate as the beam slowly separated the twisted knot of metal, which reminded him of a bird’s nest. Come on. Come on.

  He finished cutting…and nothing happened. He’d hoped to see the casing shift outward, or at least some sign he was making progress. But the thruster stayed exactly where it was.

  Next one. He rotated in the cramped compartment, until his head was roughly where his feet had been. He activated the laser once more.

  When he finished cutting this time, the thruster did shift forward, and if he hadn’t been working in a vacuum he was sure there’d be an ominous groan of metal. But the casing only moved an inch.

  For a moment, he eyed the final spot that needed cutting. If that doesn’t do it…

  But he couldn’t think about that. He rotated himself once more and activated the laser.

  Halfway through, the entire casing shot forward, and a thrill ran through his chest.

  Then, it stopped, after moving just a few more inches.

  That was it. There was nowhere else to cut.

  He raised a hand toward the panel on the side of his helmet, to tell his comm to contact Ainsley. But what point was there? There was nothing the chief engineer could do from the main engineering deck. The ejection system had already been engaged automatically, and it had failed.

  So had Devine. Right now, he was Jersey’s only chance to avoid becoming so much floating shrapnel. And he’d failed.

  He moved without thinking, at first unsure what he was doing. His hand found the hatch’s handle in the passageway outside, and he pulled it shut.

  Wow. I do believe I’ve lost my marbles.

  Despite that, he planted his feet on the hatch, wedging his back against the thruster’s casing. And he pushed.

  For several moments, nothing happened.

  What do you think you’re doing, Devine? Do you think you’re actually going to push this thing out of here?

  But he continued to strain, ignoring the sensation that his spine might snap in two at any moment.

  “Agh!” The grunt filled his helmet, and it took him a moment to realize he’d produced it. “Aghhh!”

  The casing shifted. Just an inch, maybe less, but it shifted.

  He shoved harder, stretching his body between the thruster casing and the hatch, ignoring his fear the hatch would simply pop open.

  Millimeter by millimeter, the thruster began to scrape outward.

  Then, without warning, it left the Jersey altogether, leaving a gaping hole where the apparatus had been.

  Devine scrabbled for purchase, his hands grasping for something to stop his momentum, anything. But there was nothing to grab onto. Engineers weren’t meant to climb inside thruster compartments to push thrusters out of the craft.

  So he followed the thing into the void of space, cartwheeling end over end, just another piece of debris.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Aboard the New Jersey

  Freedom System, Dupliss Region

  Earth Year 2290

  “The thruster has been ejected, sir,” Commander Ainsley said. The chief engineer sounded breathless but relieved. “We’re out of the woods.”

  Where the thruster’s concerned, maybe. There’s still the destroyer bombarding us. “Acknowledged, Commander. And good work.” He thumbed his comm to end the conversation.

  While engineering had scrambled to rid the Jersey of the thruster, Thatcher had been forced to rely on autoturrets to defend against incoming missiles from the Eagle, supplemented by manual point defense fire from his gunner crews. Only two missiles had gotten through, but that was two too many, and it would only take one or two more well-placed Hellborns to make sure Thatcher’s first command was also his last.

  He knew the missiles were Hellborns, because he’d ordered Ainsley to try hacking them, and it hadn’t worked. Defeat stared back at Thatcher from the tactical display on his holoscreen, and he knew that if he didn’t do something drastic, it would claim him.

  But his mind had continued to churn during the forced standstill, and he had an idea.

  “Ops, order Squall and Redpole to draw toward the center of the engagement—toward the Eagle. The moment they’re in range to affect the destroyer, I want them to blanket the battlespace with omnidirectional jamming bursts.”

  To her credit, Guerrero didn’t hesitate. “Aye, sir.” She raised a hand to her ear and began to relay his orders to the electronic warfare ships.

  The enemy logistics ship kept the destroyer’s shields healthy, but during the struggle Thatcher had tracked the evolving flow of the engagement, as options were closed to each actor while new ones opened up.

  He’d read about rare naval captains of old with the uncanny ability to anticipate enemy movements—to get inside their heads, using only their intuition and seamanship to do so. That had been incredible enough in a 2D environment; the open sea. Now Thatcher would need to replicate it in 3D.

  To carry out Thatcher’s bidding, the eWar ships didn’t have far to go. Less than two minutes after he’d given the order, they triggered their bursts, and his tactical display went blank, cut off from all sensor data. An instant later, it refreshed with the last known positions of each vessel.

  “Nav, take us on a course trending toward the Squall, now. Tactical, continue firing the primary at the destroyer’s last known location, and prepare to update your firing solution to track the Eagle’s movement.”

  Ortega looked up from his console and blinked at Thatcher. “But sir—how will we track her without sensor data?”

  “She’ll be where I say she is. For now, continue firing on that spot, but prepare to update according to a projected course I’ll send you. Have gunner crews stand by to add their fire.”

  He was working on the projected course now. Probably, he should have gotten Sullivan involved in this process, but there was no time to have the Nav officer check over his calculations. Instead, he’d have to draw on what he remembered from every astrogation course he’d ever taken, knowing that failure would mean death at worst and loss of the crew’s trust at best.

  One thing he could be sure of: the enemy logistics ship had almost certainly stopped feeding power to the destroyer. Tracking a receiver array with a microwave beam was a delicate process, and the targeting required constant updating. While Ortega only needed t
o hit the destroyer anywhere on its hull, the logistics ship would need to aim for a tiny part of it. Next to impossible, without updated sensor data.

  Without the help of the logistics ship, the destroyer’s shields would fail. Once they did, Pegg would begin evasive maneuvers.

  The question was, where would he move? Thatcher thought he had the answer, but there would be no do-over. If he guessed incorrectly, he and his crew would likely die.

  “Sending you the projected course now, Ortega.” Thatcher tapped at his console to transmit his calculations. “Assume the destroyer is accelerating as fast as she can, using one hundred percent of her engine power. Nav, prepare to change course to give chase, and Helm, bring us up to one hundred percent as well.”

  The three officers mumbled their acknowledgments, so intent they were on their respective tasks. Normally, Thatcher would rebuke such sloppy form, but right now they were welcome to behave in whatever way helped them concentrate.

  Thatcher had done what he could to get inside Pegg’s head—to see the engagement as he saw it. He’d needed to factor in the fact that Thatcher’s move with the eWar ships would likely come as a surprise. That limited Pegg’s reaction time.

  What would Thatcher have done in Pegg’s position, with his sensors fogged and laserfire coming from nowhere to finish off his shields?

  Oasis. Pegg certainly wouldn’t fly toward the Jersey, and Thatcher doubted he’d fly deeper into the battlespace, either. Instead, he would flee toward the one thing keeping Reardon Interstellar safe: the planet they held.

  “Ortega, I want you to stop firing the primary and instead fire a Hellborn in Barrage Mode.” Barrage Mode was an innovation Thatcher had arrived at with Commander Ainsley after the Olent engagement. Now, instead of having to separately reprogram each missile to repeat the trick he’d used then, every Hellborn on the Jersey could be switched over to the new mode before firing. “We will build up a barrage of four missiles, accelerating to catch up to our Hellborns before firing the next.”