Penance (RN: Book 2)

by David Gunner

  “It’s just not responding,” he said, leaning left and right as if his body movements would somehow be translated to the torpedo’s agility. After several swooping passes and a near miss the screen went black and the weapon disappeared from the sensor grid.

  “Damn it!” cried Canthouse giving the joy stick a frustrated smack.

  “What happened?” asked Denz.

  “The torpedo consumed all its fuel and auto detonated as a safety measure.” Canthouse rubbed the bridge of his nose and eyes. “I’m sorry, sir. It was moving just too fast to track.”

  Denz exhaled slowly to release some frustration. He knew his XO was doing everything possible “We can try again with –“

  ding ding

  Both men glanced at each other. Canthouse rotated his chair and they stared at the vacant operations console for several seconds. He glanced about to see the operations officer having her head bandaged at the rear of the bridge and moved across to the empty seat.

  “No, no, no, no ...” he said studying the display.

  Denz couldn’t understand what he was looking at, at first, until he realised the large undulating bloom to the rear of the ship to be the detonated torpedo and the dot representing the creature was moving toward it.

  “The residuals of that cloud will be burning at over three thousand degrees. The heat will drive it insane!” Canthouse gave Denz a wide eyed look of near panic. “We’ve got to move the ship!”

  “Navigation!” Denz called across the room. “Full power. Now!”

  “Sir, the engines were compromised during the last attack. We have less than 60% capa -”

  “No excuses man. Move the damn ship.”

  The Bristol’s superstructure groaned as the flaring engines pushed her at a crawl through the web of the magnetic tendrils weaving through the area.

  The creature stalked the rippling sphere of the torpedo detonation with curious interest. This too had come from the other prey, but it was much bigger and sang in a different voice, so it may taste different. It circled this new prey with mounting appetite until no longer able to resist the seductive flashes, and drove into the burning cloud with its mouth wide open. The far side of the burning sphere erupted as the creature exited like a flaming arrow. Blind and crazed with pain it dashed in huge circles, the immense jaw snapping as it shredded strips of burning flesh and vented great funnels of smoke and flame. It needed to release this agony on something else. It needed the pain maker to suffer as it did. What remained of its senses made it aware of a distant struggle, and with a swift banking turn it sped towards the Bristol.

  “Navigation!”

  “I’m trying, sir. She’s just not responding.”

  “Try harder, damn you!” Denz shouted at the frustrated man.

  Thum...thum ... thum thum. The returning sound of the batteries sparked everyone to a new sense of urgency, and some to mild panic, as the bandaged operations officer counted down the time to impact.

  “No, no fusion weapons, we’re too close for that. It’ll incinerate the ship.” Denz said shaking his head. “Try increasing the driver charge to the rear batteries.”

  “Message sent.” The ops officer said. “Engineering acknowledges. Bypassing the limiters. Driver charge increased by 30%.”

  The sound of the batteries changed to a deeper thund thund, with the bridge lights dipping noticeably with each shot, but the creature kept coming.

  “Twelve seconds!” Ops shouted over the noise.

  Canthouse activated every mine, grenade and missile in the rear of the ship with the point defence system sounding like a purring tiger as its thousands of rounds a minute joined the blue-white meteors from the main batteries in shredding the oncoming monstrosity, but it kept coming. It was a desperate measure that saw him jettison every rear weapon and the second torpedo powered from its tube in unguided flight, directly into the expanding maw of the attacking creature.

  There was a flash as the torpedo penetrated the rear of the creature’s throat followed by a rolling eruption of flame that detonated to blow the colossal jaw clean off. The creature’s great tail flapped in a death spasm as it climbed sharply, streaming smoke and shredded innards as it missed the rear of the ship by less than five hundred metres and continued in a long circular death glide that saw it curve past the Bristol one final time, and then it was gone.

  Apart from the beeps and chirps of warning buzzers the bridge was stock still as the crew watched the creature leave a trail of smoke and debris as it spiralled back the way it came and disappear into the green mist. The palpable silence was broken by a huge cheer from the medic at the rear of the room, who stood with his fists high in victory and a smile on his face. He was soon joined by others, with the crew shaking hands and clasping shoulders.

  With a relieved chatter enlivening the bridge, Canthouse looked towards Denz. “Bulls eye, sir?” He said, a relieved smile breaking across his sweat glistened face.

  ding ding

  “You can’t be serious!” The first officer cried giving ops a dejected look.

  “Has the creature returned?” Denz asked anxiously.

  “No sir,” Cummings said her unbandaged eye flicking about the screen. “The restrictive tendrils are dispersing and we’re gaining speed. And sir, we need to reduce thrust as the engines are well past critical.”

  Denz turned to the navigator who had slumped forward on his console with his head on his arms. “Navigation! Wake up man. What sort of business is this in a crisis situation?” Denz cried at the white faced navigator, who immediately sat up and began to address his uniform as if caught slacking on cadet review. Of all the bridge crew he appeared to be the least injured with no sign of bleeding or other trauma anywhere about him. Yet, he winced and loped to one side with a hand clutching his ribs as if suffering from some unseen injury.“Mr Canthouse, take that man’s name!” cried Denz, his face red with rage as he pointed at the mortified navigator.

  “Mr Feathers you are relieved of duty and confined to quarters. You will report to me the moment I have leisure to receive you.” Canthouse said in a sergeant majors voice. Gone had the relaxed easy going first officer to be replaced by some ember eyed beast two feet taller than usual, and who swelled with unnatural rage as he pointed to the rear of the bridge.

  The navigator stared disbelievingly at Canthouse before slowly rising, he was pale and sweating and pitiably solemn as he moved toward the rear door in a dejected step.

  “Unbelievable! Of all the times to rest at his post.” Denz said tossing his hands in the air in a fit of enraged despair.

  The first officer slid into the navigator’s seat where he throttled back the complaining engines and re-engaged the thrust limiter. His fingers worked the keyboard and a view of the nearest gate point appeared on the main viewer. “Four hundred and eighty four kilometres, commander.”

  Denz observed the coordinates with a considering eye before turning to face the ops console.

  “Status of the clo –“ Denz’s heart skipped a beat, his jaw falling slack when he saw Cummings sagging at her terminal. Blood ran freely from the red soaked bandage covering her right eye, with the front of her grey jacket now matted burgundy from congealed blood. What facial skin remained visible beneath the bandage was deathly white with her left eye dark ringed and depressed, seemingly painted on. She sat hunched forward and tilting to the left, threatening to topple at any minute, yet still her fingers pecked at the crimson encrusted keyboard

  “My God! Cummings!” cried Denz. He rushed to catch her slumping form and push her upright. Cummings appeared not to notice his presence and sagged like a cloth doll against his supporting hand, her body flaccid as the blood loss took its toll. Denz’s jaw wagged but despair stole his words until the anguish overflowed and his call for help filled the bridge. “Help!” He cried. “Someone help me here. You, Medic! Leave that man and come and help Cummings. I think she’s dead!”

  The next moments were a blur to Denz as grief stole his experiences an
d training to leave behind an impudent and feeble old man who could only hinder. His actions were those of a drunk with every blink stealing great scenes from what passed as people moved about him at insane speeds.

  Canthouse beside him in an instant, Cummings’s head pushed back, check the dilated pupil, two fingers on her carotid artery; a shake of the head. Medical staff jostle Denz aside as they push for access. Cummings’s limp form slid to the floor. One, two, three lift - to the rear of the bridge. Denz follows offering weak instruction, too many bodies crowd her. He couldn’t see, he wanted to see, they needed to take care. A flat monotone. Raised voices: no pulse, no pulse. A tube in her forearm. Clasped hands compress her chest, again and again. Fingers on her neck, another shake of the head. Cummings on a stretcher and out the door. Denz stands weak and useless as he watches them take her, watches the door slide shut. More to himself than anybody he tells them they needed to take care; that she was his ...that she was his.

  Chapter 5

  Avery leaned against a support column of the engine room with his arms crossed, as a slim moustachioed man in orange overalls pointed at the second furthest concentric ring in a series of eight that diminished in size as the followed the narrowing hull to the rear. He had understood the problem from the get-go, but the chief engineer insisted on a further elaborate explanation as to how the creatures bite had indented the rear hull displacing rings six and seven, pushing them beyond critical alignment and affecting the ship’s ability to gate.

  Avery’s eyes narrowed from impatience and stress, “So can we gate or not?” There was nothing he could do here and he had other critical duties to perform. Repairing the hull and realigning the rings required a major dockyard, so why the engineer insisted on holding him here, he had no idea.

  A man of few unnecessary words, the chief engineer narrowed his gaze in return, with his bushy eye brows separating from his mop of wild black hair just enough for his short thick forehead to become visible as stared at Avery as if here were a simpleton. The chief engineer chewed his tongue, something he did when pensive, which hollowed his cheeks to an unnatural degree and making his pale face appear more gaunt than usual.

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me when I speak. That ring there, and that one,” the chief engineer pointed to the rearmost drive rings as he spoke, “they’re out of alignment, but the engine was designed to jump with five rings, with the others being ancillaries. So yes, we can still gate out but it’ll take the torol a bit longer to generate and we’ll lose some top end. Take a bit longer getting there, so, but we’ll get there.” He began chewing his tongue again.

  Avery followed the engineer’s pointing finger for pure effect. Like most of the crew, he had a basic understanding of how the rings developed a torol, a large magnetic auger that drove into the space fabric behind the ship compressing it, like a screw compressing a spring, only for the screw to vanish and the spring recover. In a similar way the recovering space fabric catapulted the ship forward with no further energy expenditure. Like many scientific principles that are easily explained, the actuality was a complex balancing act of enormous magnetic forces that could easily send separate parts of the ship in different directions at different velocities if not carefully controlled. This was the fate that befell the RNO’s first FTL capable carrier, the Ark Royal, during her initial shakedown run.

  “But I need to tell you, Lieutenant, that if it had been rings five and six out of alignment we’d be in a pretty state, as we need five consecutive rings, minimum! To be able to make gate-way.”

  “But ring five is OK! So what you’re telling me is irrelevant, and we have gate ability. Good! What about the other critical systems?”

  The engineer gave Avery something of a peeved look, which made what could be seen of his thin triangular face past the bushy moustache and thick eye brows appear more grieved than usual. “Well,” the engineer’s fingers disappeared into his horse shoe of wild black hair up to the wrist as he chased an itch or dislodged a thought. “Life and science systems are all alright. The reactors are fully contained and the main batteries and the secondary weapon systems are good. But the vertical launch system is currently inoperative if we raise the shields.”

  “Why?”

  “Two banding generators shorted when they were displaced by the hull movement leaving a gap in the speculative shielding. The shield bands to either side can compensate to some degree, but they’ve lost the shutter element in doing so. So this section of the hull either has all or nothing.” The engineer referred to the donut shaped predictive shielding that encircled the length of the ship, with each donut powered by two generators. The shields could be partially collapsed, or shuttered, in the areas above the engine thrust emitters, munitions ports and main batteries to permit firing. If a section of shielding failed those to either side could compensate to some degree by expanding to cover the exposed section of hull, but it lost the ability to shutter in doing so.

  “So the weapons are all ok, except for the long axis weapon which –

  “What’s wrong with the LAW,” Avery said uncrossing his arms.

  “Well as I was about to say, I’ve no idea how the LAW is as it’s a closed system we’re never meant to look at. And as we haven’t fired it since she was launched I don’t know if these parameters on this panel are true or not,” the engineer tapped a data cell on a wall mounted display. “There are a few hydraulic anomalies and it may be a bad sensor, but as we’re not allowed to go in and check without a Koll engineer present I don’t know for sure.” The chief said with a disgruntled look at the thought of The Koll. “The book says the readings are normal. But the book’s not fit to wipe my arse with. I think I’ll need to make an access request to check everything’s still connected as a sensor may have shaken loose during the incident.”

  “But they’re in spec according to the book?” A tall figure on a lower catwalk of the engineering bay looked toward Avery and patted himself on the head. In response Avery spread the four fingers of his right hand across his left bicep. The man nodded and moved on.

  “According to the book, but -”

  “Then I guess there’s no need to enter the restricted area.”

  “Maybe so, but I still think I should –“

  Avery took an authoritative step toward the engineer, “Chief, if the risk systems say the LAW is capable then there’s no requirement to enter restricted space. And as the allotted turnkey for the secure areas, I’m ordering you to put any requests for access directly through me, understood?”

  The chief engineer found Avery’s intense stare a little disturbing, “If you insist so, any request will go through you.”

  “And the motive systems?”

  “Well, the chemical engines are all good. Tough as nails, they are. It’d take a mad monkey with a hammer to do anythin’ to them. But the sub-light engines, well ...” the engineer scratched his cheek as he considered the sub-light drive. “They took a lot of heat and the insulation on the drive coils was smokin’ like a steam train by the time he’d finished pushing them so far into the red. Why’d he do that by the way? All we heard down here was someone’s lizard had escaped.”

  “Chief, if you’d seen what was holding us back and what was trying to eat us, you’d have run the engines to melt down.” Avery said with an intriguing raise of the eyebrows.

  “But what was it then?”

  “I’ve no idea chief. The sub-light engines?” Avery nodded toward the long curved intrusions that ran the length of the engineering bay.

  “Oh, they’ll get us home as long as he doesn’t cook them again. But I’ve capped them at point six, and they’ll need to be physically checked when we get back as we lost a lot of lining.”

  “Point six!” Avery said incredulously, “Jesus, Chief, we won’t outrun a kite on a windy day at point six.”

  “Well it can’t be helped. We lost a lot of insulation and are down to the wire in a lot of places.”

  “OK, I’ll make a note for a prio
rity inspection as soon as we reach a suitable site,” Avery said looking down into the engineering bay. “Anything else?”

  Something of a considering light came over the engineer and he took a step toward Avery, “Lieutenant. I’ve an odd idea about how that magnetic crap was holding us up back there, and if you’d give me a minute I’d like to give you some idea as to –“ The chief engineer’s fingers moved as if they were constructing a 3D model in the air as he spoke.

  “Is it a priority as I have other urgent duties?” Avery said making as to leave.

  “Why, no, but if you can spare a few minutes later I’d –“

  “As soon as I’m free. Thank you, Chief,” Avery said leaving the bewildered engineer staring after him as he exited the control bay in something of a hurry. He initially turned left to give the impression of heading to the rear weapons bay, only to slip down three flights of hand rails navy style before entering a lower section of the engineering bay covered from observation above. He passed through several hatchways towards the lower center sections of the ship, eventually reaching an armoured bulkhead door with a fifty symbol keypad. Avery entered a long pass code and the door opened to a small room that was essentially a slim corridor running around a large center obstruction. He moved to the rear of the room where two figures stared cautiously from the shadowed recess of a series of vertical glass pipes tinted blood red by the fluid inside.

  The two men, one very tall, the other much shorter and squatter with dirty blonde hair, slipped from between the pipes as Avery approached. The shorter man moved to a junction in the pipes as Levre greeted Avery.

  “A-ver-ree!” Levre called, his huge mouth spread in a loose skinned grin and one hand held high in anticipation of a salutary hand slap as the Lieutenant approached.

  The top of Avery’s head barely reached Levre’s shoulders, but the taller man spat out a choking cough when Avery struck his solar plexus with the base of a closed fist. A man of little substance, Levre staggered backwards to collide with the wall where he stood rubbing his chest, his face sagging and protruding eyes fixed on Avery in pained wonder. The blonde haired man smirked at Levre’s distress and turned his attention back to the valve he was fiddling with.