by Randy Moffat
The general plan was to depressurize several compartments aboard the Gaia as close to simultaneously as possible over there, killing a lot of the theoretically unprepared crew in the loss of atmosphere. Then Sho’s men would force entry against the remnants and use their recent superior training and weapons to overpower any survivors. They could then study the TESS ship at their leisure and send the data back to Earth.
As always in combat situations though… the enemy got a vote too. He saw the thrusters near the bow of the Gaia began to fire near her nose and caught the motion as she began to turn up and away from the planet. Fine instincts in TESS he admitted grudgingly to himself. A very fast reaction over there. Just then the first missile struck. Had the Gaia stayed still as planned it would have hit dead center in the front deck and probably penetrated deep into the compartment below it. As it was, the last second sluggish movement by the Gaia caused the missile to miss its planned target. Sho cursed. Instead of into the hull the warhead exploded on a top corner of the forward storage unit welded onto the bow. Fragments of missile, warhead and hot metal from the container sprayed outward and riding the instantly imparted momentum of the missile she started to roll along the new vector as well.
I had just sealed my suit when a missile struck. The crump of the explosion transmitted through the hull and the ship staggered and began to roll around its Z axis instantly. My heart fell, I could tell we had been hit forward somewhere. I knew Chief Gaston had been on deck somewhere up there. I shrugged off the infinite sadness that threatened to distract me at what must be his loss—this was battle. There was no time for grief in battle. Too much to do. Another sound like a sustained growl then vibrated through metal and into my feet in a sound that essentially overlay the first explosion slightly. I glanced at the control panel to my left. My first break! Forgotten in the takeoff from the Atlantic, the rotary cannon on the bow had been engaged against possible aircraft or ships approaching the launch site in the ocean down Earth-side and had remained activated and armed despite a TESS protocol that required it to be locked down and turned off once we got up to orbit. I thanked the stars we were careless and sloppy. The gun was still in action!
Sensitive to motion that was directed towards the ship and travelling within the required band of speeds the gun’s computer had rightly interpreted the missiles fired from Bogey #1 as a threat to the Gaia. It had slewed to defend the ship. Its software had just missed firing on the first missile and had instead plotted to engage the second of them faster than any human ever could have. Firing 3000 depleted uranium rounds a minute it had shredded the second missile shy of the ship faster than documents in a political cover up. The Gaia continued to roll right—the impact of the first missile still driving it. We could correct the things later.
“Smith! I yelled. “Assume we will get more missiles from Bogey #2! See if the gun will bear.” The Gaia had only one cannon… . intended for defense earth-side and not in orbit it was already operating way outside it design parameters.
Smith was smart. I loved smart women. She had felt the gun’s vibrations too and was already heading for the controls for the rotary cannon as I commanded it.
“Roger!” She yelled distractedly compensating for the odd tumbling spin on us now. The Gaia as treating us as gently as gravel in a cement mixer.
I scanned the radar imagery and in a moment realized that Bogey #1 was rotating away from us… clearly tumbling now… so were about half of the slower whatever-they-were it had launched at us. In a flicker of intuition I knew that whatever cannon rounds had missed the missiles when the gun fired had simply continued onward in straight lines through space with near infinitesimal inertia and struck whatever they ran into behind the missiles. Pure luck again… a luck that was bound to run out. The non-missile indeterminate objects and the Bogeys themselves were too slow moving for the gun to see them as proper targets and its computer software had not purposefully fired on them. Any impacts on the slower stuff was accidental. Some of those slow movers from Bogey #1 had been halted by our happy accident, but the other half were almost upon us. I heard a ‘clump clump’ resonate faintly through the hull. I knew that sound. Santa’s feet on rooftop. The slow movers were men. And they were coming aboard.
I had a nanosecond of astonishment. I shook my head. Guns and men to carry them had required a huge effort just to get them up in orbit. Talk about work. Someone had once again selected the least efficient class three lever of action where the load was on the same side of the fulcrum as the lifter… an act that required enormous effort and lots of guns instead of just continuing to ask us to move their damn loads using the fulcrum of our willing support. How rude.
I glanced over at my second radar and my gut seized up as I realized that the second mess of ‘debris’ had also fired missiles as well and was “breaking apart” just like the first had. More trouble was on the way! TESS SOP.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I ad-libbed. “Smith… go to manual and spray bullets… . lots of bullets in the direction of that Bogey two as soon as she bears! Rivera!” I knew a message via traditional radio would take many minutes to reach the L5 Lagrange point and double that to return. We would be twice baked and stuffed if we were calling for help conventionally. I tried to sound cool. I think I succeeded. “Contact L5. Use your new gadget. Tell them we are under attack and to contact Tellus, see if she is in range to send any help they can get to us immediately!”
Sho cursed when he saw the TESS ship continue to fire its maneuver jets away from Earth. He felt a rush of adrenaline from a surge of triumph as the first missile struck her and then his stomach lurched down towards his feet when he saw the sparkle of the rotary cannon on the bow of the Gaia flicker with unbelievable rapidity. A fireball blossomed short of the ship. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing was the remaining fuel in the second missile being ignited shy of the TESS ship’s hull. He used a mandarin word that mixed all TESS ancestry with animal husbandry. The gun was not supposed to be in action. He had been told they would inactivate it once in space. He was already in the act of flipping the hatch clips that dogged the exit panel above him closed while the air inside his helmet turned blue from his curses. Every tenth round in the TESS gun was a tracer and though their zirconium powder and their potassium perchlorate lacked enough oxygen to burn longer than a couple seconds in the vacuum of space their basic direction was clear enough—straight back along the inbound missile’s track! On his radar he saw a haze in space and then he suddenly saw several of his men stop their forward momentum towards the TESS hull and begin moving abruptly backwards. He shoved himself upright and was half outside the capsule when he felt a click-clack-click-clack typewriter sound transmitted through the thin metal skin of the capsule. His brain interpreted it as rain on a tin roof, but that rain jerked the capsule hard to the left and sent out a shower of sparks inside so that all the idiot lights went out simultaneously while the new motion was busy slamming him against the coaming of the hatch. That jerk forced the wind out of his lungs for a moment. He hung grimly to the edge trying to get his breath back. The stars were flashing past and there were at least five twenty millimeters bullet holes visibly stitched along the capsule’s face in front of his eyes as he bent and hung on. His own face was half hanging over the hatch window of the pilot’s station and he could clearly see two holes through the pilot’s suit too. The pilot was as dead as his equipment. Sho pulled himself out of the womb of the capsule and hung onto an exterior handle grimly despite the dizziness brought on by the stars blurring past. The capsule was like a top now, moving around and around from momentum imparted by the TESS cannon rounds. He spoke to his two remaining men still clinging there.
“We have to get off… we are moving away from the target! When I give you the command push off straight ‘up’ and away from the capsule… make sure you hold onto your maneuver unit firmly…” He crouched, gripping with his hands and planting his feet. One of the men mimicked him… the
other did not.
“Shui!” Sho barked, but the other man continued to lie flat. Sho’s suit had a light fixed above his right wrist. He shone it across his body and in its light saw the hole in the camouflage of black spray paint of Corporal Shui’s suit with a clear rim of eloquent frozen red and white crystals. One of the TESS rounds had put an end to him too. He cursed and realized every second wasted was moving them still farther from their quarry.
“GO!” He snapped and pushed away from the doomed capsule.
“All personnel!” I shouted over the radio on the general command frequency. “We have boarders. Say again—boarders! They will certainly have weapons—get weapons of your own… say again… arm yourselves. Chief Pinta… give me two men with firearms locked inside the reactor chamber and protect the drive compartment. NOW!” No one was stupid enough not to know what the target was for an opponent desperate enough to launch an attack in outer space. The attackers boarding anywhere forward would most likely have to pass through the reactor room to reach the drive components aft.” Spread our weapons around!” I yelled. “Stand by to Repel boarders! Get a fighting party to the aft hatchway for action out ship.” I ordered absently—wondering if ‘Repel Boarders’ was a command given in earnest since the Napoleonic wars.
“Two men in reactor! Weapons around! Boarders! Aye-aye, Sir.” Pinta acknowledged in his deep skirmish voice that carried over the largely useless chatter of the com frequency. Too many rookies aboard engaged in excited chit-chat. I thanked that bitch the universe for the real professionals I had.
I glanced around. A couple of my old Q-Kink hands were on the bridge with me. Rivera was busy working her rig—too busy for this kind of work.
“Lieutenant Maxmillian! Staff Sergeant Diaz! With me.” It was the second most preemptory command I had ever given them and I was gratified when they immediate launched towards me as I dragged myself along the tumbling ship using random conduits and whatever hand holds that came in reach as she spun. I felt the gun’s vibrations again through my hand on metal. Smith. I reminded myself to promote her later. If we survived. I was clearing the back hatch when I felt the ship shudder and jerk again. Another missile impact for certain. The terrified chatter filling the radio net rose in volume. Most had never seen a shot fired in anger.
“ALL PERSONNEL! SILENCE FORE AND AFT! This frequency is for coordinating actions… NOT discussing your fucking feelings… !” I hollered in my best 40 knot gale hail. A shocked silence fell over the com net. They were not used to their Admiral’s terse battle voice. Or his curses. It worked. It made them think quietly instead of moving their lips to feel the breeze. My body and inner ear responded to the most recent missile’s strike which I could tell had imparted momentum somewhere aft of the sail and below. A new vector was added roughly around the ‘Y’ Axis to complicate the ship’s tumbling still more.
“Baskarian!” I called as I dogged the hatch shut behind us. “Have you brought her about yet? Can you get us out of here?”
The Midshipman’s voice sounded shocked when he answered.
“Negative. Negative! There has been a missile strike on the lower hull… not sure where. The strike is spinning us roughly in the correct direction, but the blast must have damaged the center ring of maneuver jets. They are off-line. There is more. The impact also hulled us in the bottom deck billeting compartment area—idiot lights say it’s open to space somewhere. There’s worse…” He hesitated—shrugged mental shoulders. “There’s worse, sir! The… at least two of our water tanks at the 5 and 6 o’clock position bottom side were apparently damaged by the last missile and are venting coolant… water… out into space… acting as jets. We are moving away from their exiting mass as well. To top that with the loss of pressure in the coolant tanks the reactor has responded and dropped into automatic SCRAM. It is shutting itself down. We are going to lose main electrical power in a minute once the turbines spin down. Without electricity we cannot engage the McMoran engines even if we finish the turn. The capacitors were at half charge and I would use them, but they have also dropped offline. I show at least… . three breaks in the electrical system to them… more battle damage… somewhere.”
We had swum through another hatch as this conversation was going on. I got Maxmillian and Diaz clear and slammed it angrily.
“Keep working on it!” I said encouragingly but absently. I was fast approaching another sensory overload. I saw Pinta’s feet disappear up into the airlock above me. The security bar that held the weapons to the rack below the air lock entrance had been unsecured and was hanging down. We had mounted a group of guns and ammunition in the rack in a handy location by the hatch ladder just after the original attack on the Gaia that had occurred off Groton so very long ago now… at least in TESS time.
Most of the rifles were gone. Maxmillian had just selfishly snatched one and I thrust the second at Diaz with spare ammunition. I grabbed what was left. A pistol off the lower rack. A square looking .45 caliber—an ancient weapon. I jammed it into the single pocket on my transparent suit along with a pair of clips. Maxmillian’s massive form was already hanging inside the lock. Diaz squirmed inside with him, the pairs bulky suits almost filling the space. The big Lieutenant had his carbine strapped across the chest of his suit and the heavy steel bar from the rack clutched in one hand. He glanced down at me. I was not used to it in the mild Lieutenant, but even through the helmet face plate there was a fierce piratical gleam in his eye. I realized I would hate to encounter him in battle just now… it would be like being charged by a vampire zombie the size of a grown Kodiak bear. I started to follow them and then abruptly stopped myself. I thought better of it and slammed the door shut behind them.
“Sir?” Maxmillian inquired in a puzzled voice over frequency.
“You two support Chief Pinta… he’s out on the hull!” I said abruptly and felt the hull vibrate again hoping I there would still be a hull to defend out there. I was busy. I had finally gotten my brain to kick in about where our real dangers might lie. I was trying to outthink my opponent. I started back the way I had come.
Sho was approaching the TESS ship relatively slowly. The hand held maneuver unit only had a small amount of fuel. He had used a good third of it controlling his movements after bailing out of and away from the abandoned capsule. He had used another third beginning his current motion towards the TESS hull. He had none left to accelerate to a faster speed and he was conserving what was left to adjust his close approach and landing. His hopes had risen at the fireball of a second missile slamming solidly into the Gaia near her girdle of water tanks. Then Sho had been agonized over what followed. The damned cannon had found the second missile from his second capsule too, obliterating it shy of her hull. Sho looked grim… . he had three men on the hull of the TESS ship already and two more approaching from the first wave launched from his own ship. He had immediately ordered the men down on the hull to find and neutralize the damned rotary cannon which had been completely discounted as a danger in their original planning since TESS was supposed to have had a rule that called for them to lock the damn gun down once they left planet and should have prevented this. So much for the rules… . apparently TESS felt free to ignore their own. Had they suspected? Who knew? Then he ground his teeth fruitlessly. He could see the gun begin to deliberately traverse in short arcs back and forth to fling countless bullets out into the void in the general direction of Capsule #2. That was not software aiming the gun. There was a human mind directing it. Judging from at least two cut off screams, it seemed certain that at least some of those rounds had gone home among the second capsule’s inbound team. Then the second capsule stopped transmitting abruptly in mid sentence and Sho knew instantly she had been hit by that fire-hose of bullets too. As if the TESS gun were not bad enough, the tumble of the TESS ship was now more dramatic too. The missile impacts, the repeated firing of the cannon and continued use of thrusters by the ship meant she was rolling and tumbling in an totall
y erratic manner—it made landing on her very difficult which was also not according to plan. Sho began to take roll call to access that he had left of his force, trying to override and ignore the sound of pleas from two men who had overshot the ship entirely and used up their thrust mass in their maneuver units inexpertly trying to work back. They were negotiating desperately for assistance that any idiot could see would never come.
His answer eventually came through the chaos of noise.
Eleven men remaining. He had lost all his spacecraft and two thirds of his force in something like two minutes.
The rotary cannon stopped speaking suddenly.
“Gun silenced.” One of his men on the hull reported phlegmatically. At last!
“All personnel!” Colonel Sho transmitted. “Aim for the point in the middle of where the ship’s sail meets the hull—she looks to be turning least there. We must land in the next two minutes before her momentum moves the hull beyond range of our thrusters. Do not try and land on her fore or aft decks… she is tumbling there too much! Aim for the middle!” They acknowledged in a staccato and Sho risked a small squirt of thrust at where he judged she would be when he got closer.
The Chinese jarhead was carrying a big iron crowbar he had gotten someplace and Pinta caught a glimpse of him pulling himself forward. He raised his rifle to aim at the crowbar guy when another Chinese guy came over the hull’s horizon, turned, acquired him, and began to raise his own weapon aiming for Pinta’s head. Pinta flattened himself down in the two feet of space between the airlock head and the open outer hull hatch just as the guy fired on full automatic. The rounds largely struck the cocked back hatch cover and ricocheted out into space.