This pattern continued for another three days till we finally had a plan of attack hammered out with solutions to all the holes we could think of, already in place. By now, the ship’s repairs were completed and the engineering, navigational and tactical staff were very busy working out how to make the Wild Weasel missiles work. By this stage, they were having quite a lot of success but there were still a few wrinkles to iron out. Engineering were also working on the changes necessary to place some of the ships stock of missiles outside, to fly unpowered, in parallel with the ship till their drives were triggered by our signal.
We already expected that there was a high likelihood the pirates would make an attempt to board our ship so work on preparing the ship for a hostile boarding also continued, improving on what had already been done. Everyone aboard, had a job to do in this, the preparation phase of the operation. We were undermanned for what we were about to attempt so the more preparation we could do, the better. We created yet more booby traps and mines, some of which we placed on the approaches to the bridge and engineering, the rest, we put aside as a backup in case something unexpected happened. We just couldn’t see how we were going to escape the upcoming engagement without sustaining at least some damage to the ship. We also knew any boarders were likely to outnumber the effective combatants we had available so we needed to think of as many ways as we could to even the odds.
Finally, nearly three weeks after entering the system, we reached a stage in our journey between the two jump points where the curved part of the ships trajectory straightened out for the final run towards the jump point we were hoping to use for our exit from the system. Prior to this, we’d been moving fast enough and unpredictably enough that the pirate’s sensors would only be able to give them a very vague idea of where we were and what we were doing. From now on we were on a straight in run to his position. When I say it was a straight run, the trajectory was still curved, but any half competent tactical officer would be able to tell precisely where we would be at any given time as we approached the jump point. On the other hand, the pirate was in a relatively fixed region of space as well as moving in a predictable pattern. I went to the Captain with a suggestion for a small change to the plan. I thought if we could push the missiles a bit forward of our course and on slightly divergent courses, once activated, they would cause further confusion to the pirates. He called the appropriate officers in and we all discussed the possibilities before deciding this idea would indeed work. The engineering team proceeded to make some slight modifications to the missile launchers so the missiles could be launched without firing the missile engines.
By the time these changes were completed, it was time to begin the first phase of our plan. The ships attitude in relation to her path was adjusted very slightly, and the first flight of eight modified missiles were sent on their way. While the next flight was loaded, the ships attitude was changed again. When all was ready, the second flight of eight missiles was launched. This process was continued for three more flights till we had 40 missiles slowly diverging from our course on a ballistic trajectory. We hoped even if the pirates noticed them, they would see the divergent courses the missiles were following and decide they weren’t a threat and therefore ignore them till it was too late. This done, we shoved another sixteen missiles out the cargo doors and carefully maneuvered them so they surrounded the ship, coasting along parallel to our course. This left us with only 12 missiles for our internal launchers. Engineering reversed the modifications on the missile launchers so they would once again fire the missiles engines on launch. When that final task was completed, all eight launchers were reloaded with fresh missiles.
After we completed all of our preparations, we reached a point where all we could do was watch and wait. Our passive sensors picked up two small craft standing off to one side, clearly out of the line of fire for incoming missiles or other ordnance. The ships officers came to the conclusion these two craft were most probably the pirate boarding shuttles waiting out of the way so they could board us during the confusion of our upcoming battle. After some discussion, we decided the pirate ship needed to take precedence because it had the teeth to hurt us more quickly and from a much greater range. The ships officers came to the conclusion the shuttles would need to wait till after we had at least disabled the main ship, we could deal with them after that. Once again, we all rested as much as possible during our approach so when the battle started, we would all be fresh. We continued our approach, knowing the pirate sensors were likely to pinpoint our location sooner, rather than later. I continued to dutifully do as I was told by Shasi and Ani, eating when they wanted me to, as well as sleeping at regular times. As we approached the point where the sensor data for both ships became near real time the Captain ordered everyone who possessed it into armour. Mine had been completed almost a week before and Ani and Shasi had been merciless in making me train in it so I could fight effectively when the time came.
As the clock ticked down, the tension increased. Once again, the Captain invited me to be on the bridge during the battle. All personnel without armour, or a need to be somewhere else so they could perform their duties, were ordered to the heavily armoured compartments in the core of the ship. These compartments also held a secondary medical facility and were almost like a fortress once locked down. Only complete or near complete destruction of the ship was likely to destroy them. Our hope was, even if we were boarded, we could keep the pirates from reaching those parts of the ship altogether. However, we felt at least if they got past us, the people locked inside would still have a reasonable level of protection giving the rest of us time to evict the boarders before they could force their way into the core.
Finally, it became obvious the pirate had seen us when he turned in our direction before firing two missiles at us. The Captain immediately called us to Alert one but didn’t otherwise react. It seemed obvious to me the pirate didn’t really want to destroy us, not then anyway. It looked more like he just wanted to frighten us into surrendering or running. I think the Captain knew this as well but of course, the pirate didn’t have any idea what he was up against. He may have had some chance of frightening us into surrendering if he had his friends to help, or even if this had been anything but a Federation naval ship. As things stood however, now we were in a one on one situation, he had no hope. As far as we were concerned, though he didn’t know it yet, he was already dead. He gave no indication we could see that he saw any of the missiles we’d set coasting along outside our hull. If he did see any of the divergent ones, he already seemed to have discounted them.
Finally, the first countdown timer clicked over to zero and the Captain gave the order to activate the Wild Weasels. These were the forty divergent missiles. They immediately came to life and started on their erratic courses. The Pirate quickly activated his countermeasures as well as his point defence. A second countdown timer had been activated at the same time as the Wild Weasel missiles. When this second timer reached zero, Captain Carlon ordered the missiles flying next to our hull to be activated, followed closely by firing the rail guns, then flushing the on-board missile launchers. Once all these actions were completed, he ordered a hard turn to starboard and countermeasures activated to deal with the incoming missiles from the pirate.
The Captain had already ordered the automatic point defence systems to be bought on line when the pirate fired his first two missiles. By now several of the Wild Weasel Missiles had gone to terminal attack mode and the pirates point defence began picking them off. More Wild Weasels went to terminal attack just as the 32 missiles we’d fired from in and near the Destiny started to arrive at his doorstep. Some of the Wild Weasels went ballistic after running out of propellant and of these, it was clear at least a few would miss the pirate altogether. Our tactical personnel sent the self-destruct signal to each of these missiles timed to cause them to explode when they were as close as possible to the pirate. We hoped those missile exploding would add to the confusion on the pirate ship and place
more stress on their shields. The rest of the missiles began impacting the pirate’s shields, quickly overloading them till they collapsed and the incoming missiles and rail gun rounds began impacting directly on the pirate’s hull.
At this point the pirate must have fired everything he could in our general direction because suddenly we had twenty missiles coming our way. The two missiles fired at us earlier had already been destroyed by our point defence but of course the Captain still kept it active in case more were launched. Captain Carlon ordered tactical to launch another spread of countermeasures as he instituted yet another violent course change. Some of the twenty incoming missiles went for the countermeasures while the others were taken down by our point defence. The last few pirate missiles were quite close to our shields when the point defence lasers finally destroyed them. The blasts shook the ship a little but thankfully, we sustained no damage and the shields only lost a few percent of their effectiveness.
We were just beginning to congratulate ourselves on defeating the pirate, or at least causing him some serious damage when suddenly, there was a massive explosion with an accompanying violent lurch of the ship as we hit something. This was quickly followed by several more explosions with accompanying jolts. Most of the lighting and consoles went down on the bridge accompanied by smoke from fried circuitry with only rudimentary intra-ship communications capability remaining. The stench of burning plastics was intense and there was a fine haze in the air from the smoke and from escaping vapour emitted from the fire suppression systems integrated into the consoles. Shulari and some of the other bridge crew were thrown across the bridge when the ship lurched, sustaining varying levels of injuries when they landed. Shulari was one of the worst injured with what looked to be a fairly serious head injury. She seemed to be bleeding quite badly from a head wound. We knew the ship was badly damaged but had no idea of the extent of the damage at that point. As I re-ran the sensor data I had seen just before we lost power in my mind’s eye, I realised we had blundered into a minefield. Another explosion shook the ship just as I exclaimed “Shit, mines!”
The Captain looked in my direction with shock on his face. We had just flown into the minefield the pirates laid out on our expected approach vector from the other jump point. We were now tumbling blindly through space with no idea what we were heading for. Damage control teams along with some of the Troopers were sent out to try surveying the extent of the damage while the bridge crew and other damage control personnel tried everything they could to reset the bridge consoles. Other personnel were bought to the bridge to help the injured. When they reached Shulari, they took one look at her before immediately calling for a stasis pod. They would need that to keep her alive, at least till we could restore power to the medical bay so the medical staff would to be able to effectively treat her injuries.
Slowly, some limited power began to return as the damage control parties reset some of the tripped circuit breakers. It quickly became clear the damage control teams would need to reroute some of the power feeders around areas that suffered damage when the mines exploded. At that stage, they still thought this would return full power to all the ships systems. We still had no drives, shields, sensors, weapons or even gravity and only limited life support although the damage control parties were able to bring the main lighting and gravity back on-line fairly quickly. What concerned us most though, was our complete lack of situational awareness. We really had no idea what was going on over at the pirate vessel.
We were on a purely ballistic trajectory away from our jump point, slowly tumbling through space. We knew we would need to make a lot of repairs before we’d be able to bring the ship back under control, let alone turn her around or do anything to defend ourselves. Of course, the worst of it was the feeling of complete helplessness, of being vulnerable and not knowing what was happening around us. Were the boarding shuttles pursuing? Were we going to collide with something along our trajectory? We simply didn’t know the answers to these or many other questions.
The crew frantically continued trying to bring the ship back under control. We had small parties of four marines with each of the damage control teams in case the pirate boarding parties reached us. Really though, under these circumstances, all the teams could do was retreat if they saw a boarding party. Slowly, too slowly, additional systems began to come on line though maneuvering, shields and weapons stayed stubbornly off line. The damage control teams reported there were multiple problems with the power feeds for those three systems. They were not even able to find the cause of many of those issues, not yet. Finally, two hours after we’d hit the mines, the damage control teams were finally able to bring the sensors back on-line. There were holes in coverage caused by damage to some of the sensor arrays but at least we now had some situational awareness. When the sensors came back on-line, the sensor operators immediately began scanning space, looking for anything that might pose a danger to the ship. Initially, they couldn’t locate the pirate ship at all. We didn’t know if it was destroyed, had simply run away, or just gone dark. What we did see however, was enough to send chills down our spines. Both of the shuttles we thought held boarding parties had started to pursue us. As we monitored their progress, it became clear they were slowly gaining on us. The tactical staff analysed the incoming data, eventually coming to the conclusion that the two shuttles could not reach us for at least five or six hours. In the meantime, other systems were still coming back on-line slowly as repairs progressed. External communications came back on-line at the same time as the sensors.
We listened to the chatter coming from the shuttles. Some of the comments and threats coming from the pursuing shuttles let us know we were a little unpopular with the occupants. Those threats only strengthened our resolve to defeat these pirates and not let them capture our ship. We already knew they had at least four separate ways they could use to make easy ingress to FNS Destiny. If the hull was intact, we could have contained the pirates to only one or two entry points but we had the four large holes the mines made in the hull. Defending all four of those holes would significantly stretch our resources, probably past breaking point. We needed to find a way to concentrate the invaders into kill zones. We’d already done most of the work needed to set up those kill zones. Now we just needed to bring the pirates into them so we could inflict maximum possible damage to them before they managed to properly organise themselves or overwhelm our defences.
The Captain started sending his staff off for short breaks so they could eat, sleep and deal with any other immediate needs they might have. I asked him if I could have a quiet word and he rose and beckoned me into his office. When he closed the door, I tried suggesting that he should go to the most secure section on the ship. If that compartment was taken by the pirates, then we were all lost anyway. He flatly refused my suggestion. He wasn’t angry, he even understood my point. His reply was right of course. As the Captain, he should be leading from the front, or at least facing the same dangers as his people. He also pointed out that being in the secure compartment would not really protect him because if the rest of the ship was captured the pirates could cut their way into there at their leisure anyway.
I quickly realised that I was on the losing end of this argument so I tried the next tactic and said, “Can I suggest that you send at least one of your line officers there”.
He laughed at that and replied, “I wold be facing a mutiny as well as pirate attack if I tried”. “Besides”, he said, “We are going to need every combatant we can muster to have any chance of winning when we’re boarded”. He did at least agree to spread his officers around so they could not all be captured or killed at the same time, that was the intention anyway.
After our conversation ended he told me to go do two things, first have some food, then to prepare for my part in repelling the boarders. As I made my way down to the mess compartment, people were moving in all directions. Those who were to be non-combatants, including some key technical staff such as three of the four available
medical staff, many of the personnel from engineering and a few others, were heading toward the ships core. The remaining engineering staff would be kept in main engineering doing what they could to keep the available ship systems running from there. We’d set up a series of traps on the two approaches to main engineering as well as fortifying that part of the ship so it would be very difficult to capture. We also had quite a few people who would man barricades we were setting up on the approaches to the bridge and engineering compartments. Among other things, we set up a number of remotely detonated mines. These were hidden behind removable panels, inside vents and wherever else we could find to hide them. We concentrated several of these in areas where we hoped we could encourage the pirates to congregate while taking cover from the weapons fire we intended to be sending in their direction.
Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 15