Spaceship Struggles

by Ingo Potsch

  "Let's get out of this, sir," whispered the engineer-lieutenant. "Thought it would take a lot to capsize me, but, by Heavens…!"

  He backed abruptly, followed by the lieutenant-commander. Randolphfield, deep in his task, had not noticed their presence.

  An astronaut from the communications’ team, his blackened and scorched mecha-suit with the torn armour bearing testimony to his part in the struggle, pattered along the shell-pitted main deck, and, saluting, tendered a message-pad to his commanding officer.

  Bergerault took the tablet and read the message written thereon in violet letters.

  "H'm!" he muttered. "Suppose they want us out of it."

  It was an order to the effect that the Mandana was move to certain rendezvous coordinates, fall in with one of the parent ships, transfer wounded, and await further orders. There seemed very little possibility of the destroyer participating in the planned second-round attack upon the Aesuron fleet - an operation in which the swiftly-moving Human Nation’s destroyers might achieve greater results, even if they failed to surpass the glory they had already acquired by their wild, tempestuous dash during the first wave of assault.

  "Almost wish I would let the damaged hyperspace com device go for a bit longer," mused Bergerault as he made his way to the badly-shattered bridge.

  CHAPTER IX - The Warriors of Walhalla’s Last Stand

  "What do you think we are up against?" asked Astley, taking advantage of a lull in the firing to put the question to his companion in the auxiliary weapons-control station.

  "Something big," replied the other, wiping a thin layer of sweat from his forehead and some moisture out of his eyes. He had looked very intensively at his screens for some while and his eyes were hurting now. "With these rotten hyperspace dustortions hanging around, one has to be jolly careful not to pitch a salvo into one of our own craft. Wish to Heaven I would have remembered to bring my personal along. By Heavens! Wouldn't the old Defender of Justice make a fine picture when she opened fire?"

  "I will fetch it for you," volunteered Astley.

  His companion looked at him in astonishment.

  "I mean it," continued the junior lieutenant. "We won't be in action again for quite ten minutes, unless those Aesuron take it into their heads to alter course - which I don't fancy will be at all likely."

  He pointed to five faint objects represented on the main screen, all of which were scurrying farther away through the patches of dimensional distortions which rendered them occasionally unobserved. They were Aesuron light cruisers, which, having had a taste of the salvoes of the leading ships of the Human Nation’s Third Cruiser Squadron, had thought it prudent to sheer off; as the two young officers calculated. They didn’t think of the other possibility that these vessels where following exactly the battle plan as given by their commander.

  "Then look alive, old friend," said the other. "I'm rather keen on getting the thing; I'd go myself if I were not here on duty spelled with a capital letter. I will pass the word for the hatches to be left open for your return."

  Opening the hatch to the conveyance tube, Astley descended with quick movements. Gaining the level of the main deck, he passed several bulkheads and then he descended the ladder to the substructure below it, and, passing along the houses of the trained-abeam major gun turrets, reached the only hatchway leading to the deck with the junior officers’ accommodations that had not been closed with an armoured lid.

  Between decks the air was hot and oppressive. The confined space reeked almost immediately once the air vents were closed. Those had been shut so that in case of fire or loss of pressure, the problem would be contained, and not spread from one compartment to another in no time. These measures were necessary, as the young lieutenant soon came to realise. Through the glass in one hatch he could see a jagged shell-hole in the ship's side. Even such strongly-armoured vessels like the Warriors of Walhalla were susceptible to super-fast projectiles which could strike through the ship from side to side; and sometimes did.

  Farther along, a party of sick-bay paramedics were lowering a stretcher through a hatchway. On the stretcher was strapped a wounded petty officer, one of whose legs had been shattered below the knee.

  The man was struggling violently, and expostulating in no mild terms. Ignorant of his terrible injuries, he was insisting on being allowed to return to his station and "have another smack at the Aesuron". Sometimes, the analgetics had quite odd side effects.

  "Cannot go farther this way, sir," announced an apprentice astronaut, recognizing the junior lieutenant, and knowing that he was new to the ship. "Bulkhead doors are shut. There is a way round past this store-room, sir, down this tube with the ladder here."

  The store-room was open. An electric lamp illuminated the irregular-shaped space, which on one side was bounded by the convex base of the last after gun turret, a thick wall of hard steel.

  Astley could hear voices raised in loud and vehement argument: two assistant ship's stewards were discussing the respective merits of certain dance-hall favourites.

  A third voice joined in the discussion - that of one of the ship's astronaut recruits.

  "It’s neither the one nor the other," he began. "I was saying…."

  "Then don't say it, but get on with your job," interrupted the first speaker. "Those casks look a regular disgrace. You haven't polished the brass work and the crystal glasses here for more than three days, and it's captain's rounds to-morrow. And you know, the dish washer is out of order."

  The next instant and incredibly loud smash was to be heard and from all sides of the storage room came an irregular avalanche of flour-packs, casks, tin cans, plastic food containers, and other paraphernalia pertaining to the ship's kitchen storage department. Across the raised coaming of the doorway tripped the three occupants of the food storage-room, landing in a confused heap at Astley's feet. Their helmets had already closed automatically and so had Astley’s helmet done.

  From a distance nearly in principle far out of range an accidental freak shell had hit the Warriors of Walhalla abreast of the last after gun turret. It was some little time before it was realized that the damage was slight. Luckily, the room was so full and the hole was so small that the content of the storage served as cork to the hole.

  The first to pick himself up was astronaut recruits.

  "Guess you don't want me to carry on with that there polishing job," he remarked nonchalantly, as he heaved the winded petty officer to his feet and indicated the debris of the food casks and casks the spread cutlery and broken porcelain dishes.

  Astley lost no time in fetching the camera from the gun-room. Slinging it round his neck, he gained the upper deck, and began his ascent to the auxiliary fire-control room.

  "Thanks," said his companion, as the junior lieutenant handed the precious apparatus to him. "You're only just in time. Those light cruisers have altered helm seventeen degree. Looks fishy, by the Gracious Heavens! They have something behind them to back them up."

  It was now nearly six hours after the battle had started. Already the Defender of Justice was hurling missiles at the leading Aesuron light cruiser at barely under the range limitations, with the distance momentarily decreasing as the two squadrons closed.

  The Aesuron were certainly not devoid of courage, although, as Astley's chum had remarked, they evidently had some card up their sleeves.

  For the next fifteen minutes the Warriors of Walhalla and her consorts were at it hammer and tongs, directing a furious fire into the head of the approaching column. One of the hostile cruisers, hit by a double salvo from the Warriors of Walhalla and the Defender of Justice, got scorched first, and then annihilated in one huge, violent blast. Another cruiser, burned terribly in three different places, hauled out of line.

  "Great sport, isn't it?" exclaimed Astley's companion, setting down his range-finder, for the distance had now decreased so much that the long-range artillery was slowly getting useful. The ship’s artillery crews were getting ready to join the struggle. Wit
h their own auxiliary fire-control they were able to use their weapons independently of orders from the bridge, once the general signal for firing at discretion was given.

  Suddenly and unexpectedly a salvo of heavy warheads was hurtled by dangerously fast missiles through the hyperspace haze caused by myriads of dimensional micro-perturbations, and, with deadly force, riddled the flagship Defence through and through. Her telescopes and sensors were scorched away, her armour largely evaporated, the resulting momentum hammered through the ship, flames burst from her forward, amidships, and aft actions, and while with her twin main hyperspace drives both disabled, running on emergency energy only and with the default system sustaining her in the superposed dimension, she dropped slowly astern.

  It was now the Warriors of Walhalla’s turn to lead the squadron. As she forged ahead, other enormous nuclear warheads detonated all around her, coming in from different direction from the tempest of rage that had already crippled the Defender of Justice.

  "By Heavens!" exclaimed Astley. "We're in for it now."

  Between the drifting clouds of dimensional distortions could be discerned the huge shapes of a dozen large battleships and battlecruisers, not those of Grand Admiral Jollyheart's command, but those obeying the orders of the Aesuron leadership. On the port side, and well within artillery range, were four hostile battlecruisers. At a similar distance to starboard were at least five battleships of a class known among the humans as the Tyrranonavis Rex. The Aesuron gave them only numbers, though, but for Homo sapiens names were easier to remember. And the name of this class of battlecruisers indicated their war-worthiness: King of the Ships of Horror!

  The Warriors of Walhalla and Defender of Justice, already damaged severely and furthermore hemmed in by vastly superior numbers, and on top of that menaced by guns of far greater calibre and piercing force than their own, were seemingly doomed to annihilation. All that remained, as far as human judgment went, was to fight to the last, and worthily uphold the glorious traditions of the Human Nation’s Military Service.

  The Warrior held grimly on her way, battered fore and aft on all sides from the gradually contracting circle of big Aesuron ships. In spite of the terrific hail of projectiles rained upon her, the Warrior still maintained a rapid and determined fire. It was against overwhelming odds, and the Aesuron knew it.

  Presently a violent thud caused the already trembling auxiliary fire-control room to shake to such an extent that Astley quite thought the whole concern was about to turn into a stone crusher for his poor bones. A shell had shattered the turret of the foremost optical telescope, the debris spaying into all directions and even hitting the top of the steel and ceramic hull protecting the auxiliary fire-control officers. Other projectiles smashed into the ship at different locations and turned to dust a raffle of gear, including external parts of the hyperspace communications’ system.

  By this time the cruiser was battered over and over again. Several of her smaller missile-defence turrets had been bodily swept away and some of the gaping wounds at their place were so deep that the maintenance crews had been lost, too. Hangar gates had gone by the board as grenades had smashed into the voids and blown out the doors. The ferries had been demolished as well and the remaining pair, unfortunately perforated like sieves, were held in position merely by stubborn beams of steal which had bent like claws to held them. A fierce fire was raging aft, fuelled by energy supply from one of the cruiser’s main power arteries. Either, it couldn’t be deactivated or the engineers were too busy with other work. A yellowcake grenade had landed in the wardroom and with its heavy dose of radioactive dust prevented any of the crew in its vicinity from donning their mecha-suits and attempting to quench the flames further on aft. Likewise, they were hindered from cleaning up the mess in their mess, which was affected as well, together with the surrounding accommodations and technical compartments.

  Thirteen minutes of terrible battering the Warriors of Walhalla stood, until an armour-piercing shell, ripping through her steel-and-ceramic layered hull, burst inside the portside generator compartment, shattering the main supply for the larboard hyperspace drive.

  The scene in the confined space was terrible beyond description. The concussion had shattered almost every piece of technical equipment, and the remaining human lives were extinguished by the noxious fumes which arouse from the combination of great amounts of energy with many diverse chemical materials. The entire cavity of this generator compartment was being haunted by scalding oil that sprayed violently from torn hydraulic pressure hoses. The scalding oil spray surged to and fro with each roll of the sorely-pressed vessel, and added to the torments of the engineers already wounded by the shell explosion. These engineers wore only combat suits with emergency helmets which protected them for some time from vacuum, but which helped little against other impositions.

  Yet even in that inferno there were astronauts whose courage did not desert them, and dozens of heroic and never-to-be-recorded deeds were performed in the darkness of the hellish generator compartment.

  Then the starboard hyperspace drive compartment was also swept by the explosion of a high-velocity grenade, increasing to a terrible extent the casualties amongst the courageous engineers there. Now, only the default hyperspace drive, a comparatively humble emergency system, maintained her in hyperspace. For nearly two light years the Warriors of Walhalla carried on, until, deprived of her main means of propulsion, till she lay still, a battered hulk, surrounded by her enemies. In hyperspace, the laws of motion which ruled our normal space faced certain alterations. The superposed dimension produced counter-forces against the mere presence of material objects as well as against their moving, accelerating, changing of direction, and so on. Remaining in hyperspace already required the supply of energy, as did continuous movement.

  It was the story of the battleship Irdabama all over again, but with a different sequel. Earlier during the battle, the Irdabama, belonging to a class of war craft which was widely considered the most beautiful among all the major units, had been annihilated completely by a squadron of Aesuron cruisers.

  Astley realized that he and his companions were virtually prisoners in the auxiliary weapons-control room. Even had they dared to risk descending through that single conveyance tube which led down from their position at the very surface of the craft into the ship’s belly, it wasn’t clear that they were better off in that concoction of spallation-produced shrapnel and flying slivers of molten steel. Their means of escape were limited to one solitary hatch, and if they should pass through or not, that still remained the question. The rest of the spaceship was anyway not so much safer, as it was being beaten like scrambled egg into a confused tangle, were dangers were more or less the same all over the ship, from side to side.

  Passive spectators, for their tactically useful work was done, they awaited the end, their eyes fixed upon the monitor where the Aesuron battlecruisers were shown, as at intervals they became visible through the drifting cloud of dimensional distortions. Few instruments on the ship of the young lieutenants still worked. What had definitely ceased being operations was the gun turret which could be controlled from their position. This auxiliary weapons control room was a good idea, containing even portholes made of lead crystal, so that astronauts could from here make the machine cannons home in on their hostile targets. Yet, when the weapons had been rendered defective by enemy action, controlling them was anything but important.

  Only two gun turrets of the Warriors of Walhalla were now replying to the hostile fire, firing far too slow to be guarantors for maintaining the ship. They did fire at regular cadence, as they sent their projectiles hurtling through the surrounding space at the nearest of the assailants, yet numbers mattered almost more when it came to missile defence.

  "By the Gracious Heavens, look!" exclaimed Astley's chum, pointing with a bandaged hand at the main surveillance screen where a large object was shown which was looming through the bank of hyperspace perturbations under the Warriors of Walhalla's st
ern.

  It was the gigantic battleship Vulture of Vengeance.

  Tearing along at well over her contract speed, the extra-large leviathan meant business. Receiving a salvo of heavy missiles that were intended to administer a coup de grâce to the crippled Warriors of Walhalla, and which all of them were destroyed by the super-heavy vessel’s ferociously firing artillery, the battleship saved her smaller sister from annihilation. The debris and radiation resulting from the warheads’ interception bounced off harmlessly from her super-powerful deflector shields; and what came through was held up by the massive armour. Then, the Vulture of Vengeance let rip a salvo of extra-fast grenades with her splendid artillery, mounted in gun turrets which trained the guns with supreme precision. That was followed by a double triplet of nuclear missiles. At this second salvo an Aesuron battlecruiser simply succumbed to the onslaught and vanished in a cloud of smoke. It was an excellent example for the concept of saturation attack, a military tactic in which the attacking side expected to gain an advantage by overwhelming the defending side's technological, physical and mental ability to respond effectively.

  Pitted for the first time in this particular engagement against guns of more than their own calibre, the Aesuron began to fire more rounds, but on greater distance and with less precision. They now wanted to keep the extra-large battleships from the Human Nation’s Space Fleet at a safe distance, so that they could use their missiles instead. Because of the increased distance, many more of the projectiles failed to hit their targets. Their shooting, hitherto fairly accurate, became over-motivated, more wasteful, and less efficient. They were learning the truth about modern Human Nation’s gunnery, with eager minds behind the powerful weapons.