by Peter Rhodan
Emerging onto the outer hull he could see the incoming plasma bolt’s which was unbelievably scary. The whole forward part of the ship was now completely wrecked and dissolving into a floating mass of particles and plasma. They struggled across the hull keeping a careful watch for debris sailing past at various velocities and after a seeming eternity reached the assault shuttle bay doors. It wwas with great relief the saw that the destruction had not really reached the assault shuttle bay yet and the emergency access hatch was still operable. Rather than try and manhandle the unconscious crewman through the narrow space he left Aldershot to watch him and entered the shuttle bay on his own.
Inside it appeared the bay was still intact and more importantly still had power. Arturo quickly entered the squatting shuttle and reaching the command cockpit started powering the ship up. He brought up the display showing the entire cruiser and was depressed by the amount of damage his once lovely ship had taken. Indeed the continuing strikes upon the cruiser could be felt inside the shuttle. Certain the shuttle was still operational he opened the main access hatches and raced outside to help Aldershot bring the wounded crewman inside. They strapped him into the navigator’s seat to the right rear of the cockpit while Aldershot took the flight officers seat to the right leaving the command chair to Arturo.
The display he called up was still on and he realised with a start that the second transport shuttle was still docked. Leaving Aldershot to continue the checklist as the shuttle powered up he got on the comms to the other shuttle.
“Shuttle two zero this is the captain, why are you still docked, status report please!”
“Captain!” Came a female voice he recognised as Ensign Anderson. Almost immediately another voice came on the line.
“Captain! You’re still alive! Where are you?” Lieutenant Williamson said frantically, his voice climbing in octaves. This was probably the most excited he had ever heard his normally suave and calm first Lieutenant. The combination of fear of what was happening and relief the captain was still alive came through in the man’s voice very palpably.
“I’m in the Marines assault shuttle, three one, unfortunately they won’t be needing it. Why are you still on board?”
“We were waiting for you sir! I think you and Aldershot are the last still alive as I have not been able to raise anybody else for some time now.”
“How many have you got with you and how many are off already?” Arturo demanded, hiding the trepidation he felt at the expected butcher’s bill.
There was a pause for a few seconds before the first Lieutenant came back on the line. “The first shuttle had one hundred and six crammed in. I put Myers in charge of that one and he should be getting to the jump point about now. The other marine shuttle has twenty-nine Marines under Sergeant Blenks with Lieutenant Jorgensen in charge. Ensign Kuznetsov is with him and I managed to get another thirty-four crew in there as well. I have the remaining officers and another forty-six crew with me here.”
Arturo breathed out, his losses, apart from the Marines, were minimal. Still fourteen dead crew and twenty-three Marines plus their Lieutenant, whose name he could not even remember, was a depressing way to end the mission. For himself he’d be lucky to have command of a planetary shuttle after this debacle. And that would be if the court-martial court were feeling generous.
“Right. Get out of here Charlie. We’ll be right behind you.”
“Yes sir. Undocking now. I’ll see you on the other side.” The First Lieutenant emphasised the last phrase, a common spacer farewell. Arturo knew he meant that he expected his Captain to be following right along right behind him through the jump point they had traversed so confidently such a short time before. Arturo would be right behind him, once he had completed a complete sweep of the ships systems that were still intact just in case any of the fourteen crew who were missing were still alive.
By the time Aldershot had the shuttle prepped and ready to go the hull was vibrating alarmingly from the continuing barrage by the Imperial defence platforms. Arturo did one more scan of the ship just to be certain there were no more living survivors then he powered up the shuttle’s engines and eased out of the shuttle bay. The damage was rapidly approaching the first of the fusion plants, Arturo realised once the shuttle had left the docking bay, so their departure was none too soon. It was heartbreaking to look out over his once beautiful ship as it was turned to scrap. At the same time it was a credit to the designers that the ship was still holding together despite the punishment it was taking.
What the view brought home even more was just how short a time remained to the ship so Arturo powered up the thrust to a near the maximum fifty gravities the armoured beast was capable of. The star field began to visibly move under the thrust of the engines but they did not feel the sudden acceleration due to the ship’s internal gravity field. The Hood disappeared astern as their shuttle began gaining on the First Lieutenant’s more stately transport model. The Hood had travelled a good distance from the jump point during the brief fight and crew’s evacuation so it was going to take a while to get back to their entry point.
Two minutes later a salvo of Imperial plasma burst through the shielding on the fore fusion plant and almost instantly the Hood was turned to a glowing, expanding ball of plasma. They were far enough away to be fairly safe from anything but the largest pieces of wreckage and those could be dodged while the anti-meteorite defences would deal with most of the incoming smaller shrapnel without even bothering the crew. It did not take Arturo’s combat shuttle long to catch up to Lieutenant Williamson’s transport shuttle and Arturo used his manoeuvring thrusters to flip his ship so he could use the main engines to decelerate and allow the other shuttle to enter the jump point first. Just as the other shuttle settled on its final approach vector Aldershot suddenly exclaimed. “Shit! Incoming Sir!”
“What the hell?” And Arturo called up the tactical display on his console. It only took him a second to realise that with the total destruction of his cruiser the Imperial defence batteries were now targeting the closest shuttle, which happened be the one he was sitting in! “Hurry up Charlie!” He said into the microphone then turned to Aldershot. “I’m going to align us up now and go through right on their tail. Get the shields up, they won’t hold but they may last long enough for us to get through.” Unlike the transport shuttles a Marine Assault shuttle had shields, although they were more for defence against ground defence weapons not anti-ship weapons like those which had destroyed the Hood.
He tightened up his course to the jump point and boosted the ship’s speed so that they would arrive at the jump point literally right behind the other shuttle. Normally when going through a jump point behind another ship you would leave at least five minutes time gap to ensure they were clear of the area when you jumped through. Ships arriving could appear anywhere within a half light millisecond radius of the jump point which made his planned jump immediately behind the lieutenant’s shuttle rather a risky operation although the chances of their small shuttles actually being in close proximity upon exit on the other side were actually very small. Still it was not a way of traversing jump points that was encouraged by fleet instructors!
To make even less attractive an option there was that annoying theory which said that ships emerging from a jump would tend to land on any other body in the immediate area, an unproven theory, but one which accounted for the seemingly frequent and usually disastrous collisions and subsequent annihilating explosions that seemed to happen whenever two ships jumped too close together. Statistically there were far more collisions than the boffins calculated there should be given the large volume of space transiting ships arrived in which is how the theory had arisen originally. No one was certain although there was clearly some sort of problem and if the Empire had ever solved the conundrum there was no record of it.
“Charlie? The defence platforms are targeting us now so I’m coming in right behind you. I will give you as much time as I can to clear the area before jumping but o
nce my shields are down I won’t have any choice.”
“Roger that skipper. I’m in the lane now so come on through.”
Arturo busied himself with the navigation computer making sure they took on exactly the correct vector. It was a requirement of all shuttles used on deep space ships that their navigation systems and computers should be powerful enough to enable the shuttle to successfully jump through a warp gate. The idea of being marooned in some uninhabited system that was right next to the system with a major world in it was no one’s idea of a fun way to die. As most systems were uninhabited, if an accident did occur, the chances of it being in an uninhabited system were a lot higher than 50-50 and Murphy's law said it was almost guaranteed that any problem would occur in an uninhabited system.
“Adrienne, put as much power into the rear shields as you can, redirect the side shields as far back as possible.” He smiled tightly at Aldershot and she nodded before turning to her Control Panel and started trying to comply with these orders, although one handed it was harder than usual although fortunately not a very difficult task. Arturo knew it probably wouldn’t do any good but it was better than nothing. He concentrated on the navigation computer and tried to ignore the incoming plasma bolts. As luck would have it as a consequence of their changing both their direction and speed the Imperial fire was coming in somewhat dispersed and the first salvo missed them completely. Whether that would be enough to save their skins was a moot point and one he wished he could avoid finding out.
They were almost within spitting distance of the back of the first Lieutenant’s shuttle before the navigation computer came up with the correct vector. It was a good thing the shuttle ahead of them was locked into the course for the warp point and not using as main engines otherwise the nose of their shuttle would have been badly toasted by the exhaust steam from the water powered reaction motors. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to actually accelerate into a warp point. Any ship which did so was never heard from or seen again. The same with any ship decelerating as they entered a warp point.
Arturo jumped back to the navigation station and locked the vector into the warp jump computer. This took over control of the ship and after a few minor course corrections using the manoeuvring thrusters the ship settled on a course that appeared to be identical to the shuttle in front of it. Lieutenant Williamson's shuttle disappeared from the screen just as Arturo got back to the command chair which meant the Lieutenant’s shuttle had successfully jumped.
“Where not g’na make it!” Aldershot said sharply looking at the threat warning screen and the incoming Imperial plasma bolts.
“Hopefully the shields will hold.” Replied Arturo calmly. He glanced at the screen. “We are in the lane. We are going to jump right about…” And he was interrupted by the arrival of the first Imperial plasma bolts which did not quite penetrate the shields but did rock the ship violently as the energy was released creating turbulence. “... Now!” Arturo said more loudly than he intended. The ship wavered as it went into jump and then shook as a plasma bolt slammed through the shields as they wavered and some of the charge impacted on the rear of the ship.
Chapter 2
Arriving somewhere
The silvery dots and blurry coloured vision that habitually accompanied warp jumps were far more intense than normal it seemed to Arturo, the colours being much sharper yet strangely less defined as the silvery dots were almost throbbing. He could feel the ship shuddering, something he had never experienced before during a jump and wondered if this going to be the end. The ship to be jumping around and his skin felt like it was glowing or burning or perhaps melting. So this is what happens to the ships that never appear at their destination he thought to sadly himself, resigned to dying any second.
The jump sensation normally lasted a subjective four to five minutes, sometimes a little longer on a really long jump although the distance did not really make that much difference to the duration of the sensation, well at least it didn't seem to normally. This one went on, and on, and on. He wanted to scratch himself all over, he wanted to cry or yell or do something, anything! But he was immobilised and could do nothing in the strange limbo that the shuttle had segued into. He wondered how he had not died from lack of oxygen as he could not even breathe yet he was still conscious somehow. Then finally the sensations died as did the shuddering which calmed as the spots in his vison slowly went away and then finally the cabin came back into focus as if nothing special had happened. He sat there dazed for some amount of time before finally deciding he wasn’t dead yet.
Aldershot was slumped in the co-pilot’s chair and turning his head he saw the medical crewman was still out or if he had woken up was unconscious again after that very strange warp jump. The ship’s systems seemed to be fine so Arturo called up the ship’s schematic noting a couple of warning lights on the command console and saw that they had taken some damage in the rear around the engine compartment though the engines themselves appeared to be green. He then called up the scanners and checked the local area and discovered there were no other ships on the screen, which was a worry, and as Aldershot was still out he overrode her console and instructed the navigation computer to determine their position. His first thought was that the impact of the plasma bolt as they jumped must have thrown them well away from the normal emergence area which would explain why the screen was empty. As the scan radius increased hopefully the other shuttles would appear.
As the seconds ticked by and the sphere their sensors covered grew exponentially larger he became increasingly more and more worried as no friendly targets appeared on the screen. “Shuttle two zero come in.” No response. Aldershot groaned so he moved over to her console to help her. Her visor opened and she appeared groggy but her eyes tracked when he waved a hand in front of her face. “You all there?” He enquired after a moment.
“I, I think so skipper.” The Lieutenant said somewhat slowly. Arturo nodded and called up the centre display on her console but it too was blank, at least as far as the detecting of other ships was concerned. The display now showed a star, a small planet in close orbit, two larger, terrestrial planets, and a smaller planet further out. The jump point was just below the ecliptic and outside the smaller planet’s orbit. A large asteroid field out beyond the fourth planet was being marked on the screen even as he watched.
“Where are the others sir?” Aldershot said after a moment spent peering at the display. She fiddled with a couple controls clumsily with her uninjured hand, refining the data. “We were almost right on top of Lieutenant Williamson’s shuttle!” She sounded alarmed at not being able to see the other shuttles on the screen.
“The equipment may be damaged.” Arturo said but it did not sound very convincing. The sensors would not be displaying the planets and now numerous asteroids if they weren’t working properly, on top of which they were now updating the planet types as spectrographic information was analysed. Arturo had never had a situation like this arise before and was not sure how to proceed. He returned to his command chair and slumped back idly watching the sensors as they updated and expanded their information. He was getting very worried about exactly what had happened to them. At least they were not dead, he thought to himself, at least not yet he added ruefully.
“What could have happened Sir?”
“I don’t know Lieutenant. I’ve never heard of something like this ever happening before. I mean ships disappear undertaking warp jumps every now and again as you are well aware but we appear to still be in one piece sort of. I think the odds of a failed jump were about one in a hundred thousand when I was doing my captains course at the naval College.” He paused as the sensors plotted in a large gas giant way out beyond the asteroid field. The third planet had a large moon while the fourth had two small ones he noted idly and the inner system was home to numerous loose asteroids following orbits away from the main belt. “But we haven’t disappeared, at least not to our reckoning.” He smiled ruefully. “I imagine that’s what the situation ap
pears to be to Lieutenant Williamson though and I have no doubt that lost in warp jump will probably be the ruling of the court-martial board as well, that is until we can find our way back to civilisation.”
Aldershot muttered something he couldn’t catch but kept her face calm and went back to fiddling with her controls. “There does not appear to be any artificial electromagnetic or gravitational waves anywhere in the area already scanned.” She said after a moment, her face displaying her clear disappointment with this information despite her effort to remain calm and professional. At least she had no one waiting for her at home as far as Arturo knew, unlike himself.
Arturo began a comprehensive systems check and found there was a problem with their warp generator. It didn’t seem like anything major as the actual jump device and processor both came up green so it was probably just a minor dislocation caused by the plasma impact as they jumped but they would need to exit the ship and inspect it first hand to be sure. Everything else appeared to be functioning normally, which was something at least. He told Aldershot to begin locking down the warp jump point coordinates and then start a sweep for any other warp anomalies as a star this size would likely have two or three although only having the one they arrived through would not be too exceptional.
He idly noticed that the system had been further populated by another gas giant although neither of them were of sufficient size that they were likely to have their own warp anomalies trailing behind them. Only the really large super gas giants occasionally had their own anomalies. Deciding he needed to do something he got up and went to check the crewman, Cranston, who was still unconscious although there did not appear to be anything obviously wrong with him so after looking the fellow over he moved further back to where the escape hatch was. Given all three of them were still in their combat suits he could have just lowered the ramp at the rear and exited through the assault troop bay but this was closer and a good deal quicker.