by Andrew Beery
“Exactly, Sir.”
“The same thought had occurred to me, but, at the end of the day, we are either better people than them or we are not. I choose to be the better man.”
Horse nodded. He had already laid in the course, so he hit the engage button and the Defiant started to move towards the lone pod.
I toggled the comms for the Sickbay.
“Tange, I’m going to have another patient for you soon. An engineer, from one of the vessels we disabled, is in an escape pod. His injuries are serious but, beyond that, I have no details.”
“I’ll be ready, Colonel. You do realize we’re not setup like a hospital down here. I’ve only got three beds and you’ve just filled two of them in as many hours,” the doctor replied.
“We’ll just have to make do, Your Highness. I’m going to direct the pod to docking bay two. Meet them there if you would.”
“Understood. And Colonel… call me Your Highness again and when I get done with you, you’ll wish you were still drinking,” she said in a bit of mock anger.
I smiled. “Trust me, I already do. Riker out.”
I swiveled my command chair to face the weapons station.
“Master Gunny change into your armor and meet our guests. Make sure everybody plays nice.”
“On my way. I’ll keep them in line.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
***
“How close are we to docking with that pod?” I asked Horse, a few minutes later.
The Major checked his board. “We’re two minutes out.”
Don’t ask me to explain why, but somehow, I knew that things were about to go sideways. To quote Shakespeare, “something was rotten in the state of Denmark.”
“Arquat, give me a sensor reading on that pod. How many lifesigns are you detecting?”
The hologram shimmered into view next to my command chair.
“This is curious. I’m detecting no lifesigns.”
I slapped the red alert button. “FULL REVERSE! Get us out of here!”
Before the words were even out of my mouth, the Defiant was rocked by a massive explosion. Arquat would later confirm it was a low-yield fusion bomb on the order of fifty megatons. Our shields easily absorbed the force of the blast… had we been closer that might not have been the case.
“I take it we’re not picking up an injured party,” Horse said dryly.
I ignored the comment. Instead I hit the ship-wide comms.
“Status report – all departments. For those who may have missed the fun, our rescue mission turned out to be a bust.”
“Colonel, Her Highness and I are fine. She’s on her way to Medical to check on our patient,” the Master Gunny reported.
“Sir, this is Thompson. I’ve got a bunch of red lights down here. Our shields handled the load but some of our chameleon emitters our offline. We’re only going to have a partial cloak until we can replace them.”
“Understood,” I acknowledged. “What’s the status of our Skip Drive?”
Before he could answer, the turbolift doors opened and two men stepped out. My Chief Engineer and an unexpected face, Sergeant Jesús Del Torres, walked onto the bridge. The Sergeant was holding an arm against his chest. I had to give the man kudos for raw grit. As I said before, there wasn’t an ounce of quit in him.
“Mister Del Torres, have you been released from Medical?”
“No Colonel or Captain? How would you prefer I address you, Sir?”
“Colonel is fine. If you haven’t been released, why are you here?”
I held up my hand. “Hold your answer for a second.”
“Horse, put us in a slow tumble away from the explosion. Take our cloak all the way down. Arquat do the best you can to rig the ship for silent running.”
“Rigging for silent running. We will appear dead to anyone watching. Shall I eject some gasses and fluids?”
I nodded. The AI had picked up on my plan. “Drop a remote-controlled nuke as well. We might as well go out with a band.”
I looked over at the young man who had literally just come off the operating table.
“Mister Del Torres, why again are you here? You look like you can barely stand.”
Jesús gave a wry smile. “It’s been a rough day, sir. As far as, why I’m not in Sickbay… Sir, I was a sensor officer onboard the Heterodontus.” He shifted his arm on his chest. It looked suspiciously like he was trying to hold something in. “I’m no use in Sickbay. Let me help.”
There was a stark reality I had to face. The Defiant was woefully understaffed. She was designed to be crewed by twenty. Trying to run her with six… especially in a combat situation was begging for trouble. Having a sensor officer on the Bridge meant that Doctor Thompson could remain in Engineering.
I made a snap decision. I had known this guy for all of two seconds. Technically, he was the enemy or, at least, he had been. Despite all of that, my gut said to trust him. I had learned over the years to trust my gut. I pointed to the sensor console.
“Go ahead and take your station. I’m reinstating your rank Second Lieutenant Del Torres. And Lieutenant,” I paused for emphasis, “the next time you leave Sickbay without the Doctor’s permission… I’ll bust you back down to Sergeant. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Sir!” he said as he took his seat a little too quickly. I suspect he needed to get down before he fell down. Founder medical tech was light years ahead of ours, but the man had just had a sizeable piece of a lung removed and was supposed to be in a medically induced coma. How he was standing at all was baffling. As I said before… the man reminded me a lot of me. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
I turned my attention to my engineer.
“Chief, give me some good news. Do we have a working Skip Drive?”
“As far as I can tell, we should be good for interstellar travel. All the diagnostics are coming back clean and Arquat concurs that we are good to go.”
“Excellent work,” I said. “I hate to dump more on your plate so soon, but Thompson is reporting damage to our cloak. What’s the ETA on getting it back?”
The Chief grinned which was not the reaction I had been expecting.
“There’s no rest for the wicked. I understand that. Unless the wicked have access to functional Founder automated repair systems, that is. Arquat’s baking repair parts in the fabricator. As soon as they’re ready, bots will collect them and head out onto the hull to install them. The cloak should be fully functional in a day or two.”
“That long?” I asked, somewhat disappointed. You’d think I had gut-punched the man, his chest fell so quickly.
“That long, Sir? You’d be looking at a week in a space dock with a team of technicians; if we didn’t have these automated systems…”
“Don’t get me wrong, Chief. I appreciate what you and the Founder tech are making possible. But without that cloak, we’ve lost a significant advantage. Given the number of ships we’re still fighting, it would have been nice to continue with that advantage.”
“We still have a significant leg up in speed and weapons,” Horse said.
“True,” I agreed, “but now that they will be able to see us, they can engage in evasive maneuvers, which means, we will need to be closer to hit them.”
“Which means, they will have a better chance of hitting us back.”
I nodded. The Defiant was a tough little nut but even she could only take so much. As we had just gotten her back together, I was reluctant to bang her up again if I could avoid it.
“How long before that armada can reach orbit around Epidamnus?”
As I spoke, I had a sudden idea. Maybe, it was time to give our newly repaired Skip Drive a workout.
There was a new tension in the air. The Queen could feel it. Something was happening that worried her captors. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Suddenly, her cell door banged open.
“Up on your feet Your Majesty. Your trial has just been moved up.”
&n
bsp; Chapter 16: Diversion
With the exception of Chief Michaels, who was in Engineering, everybody was on the bridge when we made our first ‘normal’ Skip jump.
The sensation of Skip Space was hard to describe. The only other time I had experienced it had been when the drive was malfunctioning. This time the hop to Azul from the vicinity of the Twins went smoothly. There was the briefest moment of absolute silence as we transitioned into and exited from Skip Space. In between, there was normalcy.
It would have been hard to recognize anything had happened except, that now, the blue-green orb of Azul floated in front of the Defiant’s forward viewscreen.
“Distance to primary target,” I asked calmly. I was proud of myself. I acted as if what we had just done was as normal as grabbing the subway. Judging from the slack-jawed look on the others’ faces, they were as impressed as I was. Only Arquat was smiling.
“Lieutenant?” I prompted.
“Ah… Sir?”
“Distance to primary target?” I repeated.
“Yes, Sir. Distance is two thousand six hundred and forty kilometers. We are just behind the horizon line with an orbital period of twenty hours. The Mashuta shipyard is in geostationary orbit with an orbital period of twenty-four hours and sixteen minutes,” Jesús answered, in a voice that was still distracted.
I nodded. We were exactly where we wanted to be.
“Engage the partial cloak and move us to match the orbital period of our friend out there.”
“Engaging cloak,” the Master Gunny confirmed.
“Adjusting orbit,” Horse said a fraction of a second later. “We should be in position in six minutes.”
With the partial cloak engaged we would be seen on sensors, but our size would appear to be that of a basketball. The fact that we were not approaching the shipyard, but simply assuming a similar orbit should give the yard’s defense systems a false sense of security.
Finally, Horse confirmed we were in position.
I swiveled my command chair to look at the weapons station.
“Master Gunny Porterfield would you be so kind as to send a friendly hello to the Mashuta corporation? Be enthusiastic.”
“Roger that, Sir. Railguns are saying howdy, now.”
Mel spent the next two minutes giving the railgun a good workout.
The effect on the shipyard was not immediately obvious. Suddenly, one of the ships under construction, but almost complete, lit up like a Christmas tree. It seemed someone was trying to get it out of harm’s way. The Master Gunny adjusted her aim and a moment later the ship was an expanding ball of plasma.
This was a guess on my part, but I suspected an explosion of that magnitude next to an orbiting construction platform was injurious to the structural integrity of said platform.
As an additional side note for anybody that finds themselves in a similar situation, powering up a ship’s fusion reactor while under fire presents a unique set of risks. Typically, such a ship would be without shields until the reactor finished coming online. At the same time, the aforementioned fusion reactor represented a highly unstable and volatile entity. Such an entity was suspectable to catastrophic failures from any number of causes… to include enemy fire.
Any risk verses reward analysis should, therefore, include an acknowledgement that a ship with a bunch of holes in it is marginally preferable to a ship whose containment field has been breached and explodes like a miniature nova.
We watched a few more minutes as the Mashuta shipyard broke apart. I was relieved to see a number of escape pods make their way away from the doomed space station. Loss of life was an inevitable consequence of war… and we were most certainly at war, but that didn’t mean, I relished the taking of life.
“Ok Gunny I think we’ve been friendly enough. Helm move us to target two.”
***
Ten minutes later, we had jumped back to Epidamnus. The moon was less than seven light-minutes from Azul so, I knew the Mashuta fleet would just be receiving reports of the attack on the shipyard. With any luck and them being unaware that we had access to FTL technology, they would reprioritize and rush home to protect their Mashuta masters.
Jesús leaned forward in his seat to adjust a control on his sensor board. It was obvious to anybody watching that the man was in pain. I was beginning to question the wisdom of allowing him to stay on the bridge. I was already sure I would be receiving an earful from Tange before the day was done. In point of fact, she had already chewed me out in front of the bridge crew just before we had made our first Skip jump.
I have to say some women are gorgeous when they are mad. The princess certainly fell into that category.
“The enemy fleet is breaking up, twenty-eight are now on an intercept course with Azul. I show ten more en route for Epidamnus.”
“That number seems to be a bit light,” Horse commented, from his seat at navigation.
“It does indeed, Major,” I agreed. I wondered where those missing ships had gone. I had a feeling they would come back to bite me when I was least expecting it. Sadly, it goes without saying that I was right.
“Orbital ETA for those ten remaining?”
Jesús didn’t respond.
Horse and I both looked over and saw Jesús had a glazed look in his eyes.
Horse tapped a few buttons on his console and rerouted sensors to his station.
“Fourteen minutes, Colonel.”
“Thanks, Major.”
I toggled the comms for Sickbay.
“Doctor…” I began.
“Let me guess. You have a sensor officer who is either passing out or throwing up or both,” Tange said, with disgust in her voice.
I looked over at Horse.
He mouthed the words… You did It - not me.
I’d need to thank him later for the moral support.
“Yes, Doctor. Your assessment of the situation is spot on. Yielding to your vastly superior understanding of the intricacies of medicine, I’m temporarily relieving Lieutenant Del Torres and, assigning him to your tender care.”
“I suppose you need me to come up and fetch him too.”
“That would be appreciated, Doctor. Riker out.”
“Sir, I’m fine,” Jesús said. “I just closed my eyes for a moment.”
“Lieutenant, while I appreciate your desire to prove yourself, right now you are a bigger danger to yourself and to this ship than you are a help. I don’t mean that as a criticism but as an acknowledgment of your physical condition.”
Tange walked onto the Bridge pushing a hoverchair. The look she gave me made dry ice look warm. Yup, I was definitely on someone’s least favorite Colonels list. Fortunately, she glanced over at Jesús and any anger at me was replaced with concern for him.
The Master Gunny help Tange and together they got the Lieutenant on to the hoverchair. He protested the entire time, saying he’d report to Sickbay once the crisis was over. The Princess resolved the issue by giving him a shot that effectively put him out.
The Doctor stopped by my chair and said in a very soft voice that was surprisingly more terrifying because it was whispered, “As the chief medical officer on this ship, I expect to never have to do this again, Colonel. Not unless you want me to make your life very miserable… and don’t think I can’t and won’t do it.”
“I believe you, Doctor,” I said diplomatically. “My mammy didn’t raise no fools.”
“Clearly, you were raised by your father,” she said dryly, but with a wink to soften it.
For the record, I hated it when she did that. She was gorgeous even when she was chewing me out. Winking, smiling and a host of other things she did, completely discombobulated me in ways I couldn’t begin to understand. Everything about the woman distracted me. Did I mention how well she filled out her surgical scrubs? Just another distraction.
All I knew was she was a Princess and I was a Battleborn. I could fantasize all I wanted, but it would go exactly nowhere. I shook my head to clear it. When she finally
exited the bridge, I toggled my comms.
“Engineering, this is the Bridge. Jamie I’m sorry to tear you away from whatever you’re doing, but I need you up here on sensors.”
“I’m just wrapping up a software update for the cloak. Can you give me five minutes?”
I looked at Horse.
“I can hold the fort down for a few minutes.”
“You have your five minutes Doc. Try not to make it any more than that.”
Turning back to the former Stallion, I asked, “How’s that ETA?”
Horse checked his board before answering.
“Looks to be nine minutes. They’ve slowed to about one third their previous speed.”
“Any sign of our missing ships?”
“Negative.”
“OK, same drill as before. Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.”
“Roger that, Sir,” the Master Gunny said.
“Plotting intercept run now,” Horse said by way of an acknowledgement. “Beggin’ the Colonel’s pardon. You’re not expecting this to work again, are you?”
“Not a chance, but they’re going to expect it, none the less, so we might as well give them what they expect.”
“And then?” He prompted.
“Arquat, do you have your ears on?”
The hologram shimmered into existence just to the side of my command chair.
“Metaphorically speaking,” I added.
“Metaphorically speaking yes,” the Founder AI agreed.
“When I was reviewing the armament database, I ran across something called a neutronium gravity mine. I don’t suppose we have any of those onboard?”
Arquat paused to look at me a second. “We do not. Neutronium requires an active Higgs field gravitational suppressor in order to handle safely. It’s simply too dense. The unattenuated gravitational fields it generates would destroy most anything it encountered.”
I nodded. I had anticipated as much.
“I assume you’ve already put together what I’m hoping to accomplish. Any suggestions?”
Arquat waved his hand and a hologram popped into existence in front of him. My hand immediately went to the hologenerator built into my command chair, but I restrained myself at the last moment.