“Yes, sir. All tubes are loaded and ready to deploy,” the weapon’s tech reported.
By this time, the Tempestas was in weapons range. Slone now gave the order all were waiting for, “Roll out the guns, Hister make us visible.”
The gun ports slid open and the gun crews stood ready to fire. The enemy was in range of the starboard cannons. Slone ordered a full broadside of 36 cannons. As the guns fired, the ship shuttered a little. “Begin rotation. Fire port broadside as she bears.”
The ship began to rotate around her long axis as the starboard cannons were reloaded and the port ones came around. Before they completed the first ninety degrees of their rotation, Slone ordered all missiles to fire. All twelve starboard missiles were fired and locked onto the enemy. As the starboard side of the ship rotated away from the enemy, the ship bottom came around as the Saltic vessel fired her energy weapons. As the duel between the capital ships started, the serpent vessels and the scout ship began their work. They knew from the previous battle that it was suicide to keep firing from the same location, invisible or not. Therefore, they resolved to keep moving. They began to make strafing runs at the enemy, zooming in to near point blank range as they targeted the small, lens-clustered domes that generated the energy bolts. The railgun slugs started hitting around the energy projectors as the Saltic ship returned fire on the Tempestas.
Since the battleship fired unexpectedly, its cannon shots hit home first. Due to the tremendous size of the enemy vessel, all shots hit and either detonated on the surface or penetrated to detonate internally. What was frustrating was the fact that the Romani had no idea of the internal structure of the enemy ship; therefore, there was no way of knowing what kind of damage was being done. The Saltic energy bolts hit the Romani ship before the Romani missiles reached their target. The Saltic energy weapons appeared to fire a set of five bolts then rested. Slone had no idea why this was, but was glad for it. This meant that the eight energy weapons on the side facing the battleship, threw out 40 bolts that hit in groups of eight. Unlike with cannon shots, Slone could not feel the impacts of the energy bolts. “Damage control. Did the enemy fire do anything?”
“Most of their bolts were stopped by the armor, but in places where more than one bolt hit the same spot, there was penetration. We put some portable force fields over them but if they keep firing this way, they’ll make Swiss cheese out of our hull.”
“Understood. All ships fire on those weapons.”
By this time, the Tempestas was upside down, relative to where she stared out and the port broadside fired and slammed into the enemy just as the first set of missile reached their target. The combination actually blew large gaps into the enemy ship and some of the crew was sucked out.
Aboard the Saltic ship, there was pandemonium. The Saltic had been in command of their galaxy for many human centuries and were not used to a capital ship battle. Captain Hek’Lok knew he had to get his ship out of orbit and ordered immediate movement away from the gravity well of the planet. As they moved away from the planet, the second wave of shots hit his ship, as did the odd weapons he had heard about. They appeared to be rockets of some kind with explosives aboard. This time the damage was significant to the side of his ship. He ordered his gunners to keep up fire and was aware that shots were coming in from areas where no ships were visible. Whoever this enemy was, they had the gift of invisibility. He had to get back to warn the Saltic of the danger. From the ship design, he was certain they were humans attacking him, but they were much more powerful than imagined. They would have to approach them with great care in the future. However, humans had one weakness. They were defenseless against the electrical weapon of the Saltic. He now ordered this charged. He now had a dilemma. To use the weapon, he had to stay close enough to the enemy for it to work. This meant he would remain in range of their weapons. He would do his duty.
On the bridge of the Tempestas, Slone watched the battle unfold. His weapons were doing damage to the enemy, but not enough to matter much given the size of the vessel. The energy weapons were much weaker than he imagined. Ironically, the lens arrangement the Romani techs used for the experimental energy weapons on the Mary Rose, made their bolts more powerful. They were starting to have an effect on the weapons of the Saltic and the Romani were slowly taking out any that fired on the battleship. The battleship itself was beginning to take some moderate damage on the engines, which were exposed on the outer hull of the ship, three quarters of the way to the stern.
“Captain, damage control reports the port engine is down due to multiple hits on the external manifold. We can repair it but not until we are out of combat,” Diana Gardner reported and Slone noted a drop in performance of the ship.
“Captain, I’m detecting an energy buildup on the enemy ship,” Roger Umgabe reported. “The signature indicates they are powering up their EMP weapon.”
“Helm, get us away from that ship, best speed.”
“Yes, captain.”
“All ships, get clear of the enemy and move towards the gas giant. They are powering up their EMP weapon. Diana, load two of the rear missile tubes with nuclear missiles.”
“Right away captain. I will activate them from down here on your key command.”
The Tempestas began to pull away from the Saltic ship and this started to remind Slone of the situation in which he found himself in Andromeda. If he can’t get far enough away from the enemy before they use their EMP weapon, then all aboard the battleship will be incapacitated. Whatever that weapon was, it not only rendered ship systems useless, but also caused the human brain to shut down long enough for the Saltic to take the humans off the ship and process them for brains. No matter what, they had to keep ahead of the Saltic harvester ship. As he looked at the projection of the enemy, he began to realize that his shots did little damage to them. It would take a small fleet to take out one of these monsters and that fleet would need either battleships or several dreadnoughts.
“All hands abandon the hanger deck and move into the ship. We will seal the ship in five minutes.”
When the time was up Slone spoke to the Diana Gardner, “Diana, seal the ship.”
“Yes, captain.”
The blast doors separating the major portions of the vessel were now closed and the hangar deck was sealed off from the rest of the vessel. Slone hoped that if worse came to worse, this move would slow down the Saltic boarding party until the Romani woke up and could defend themselves. He knew from his experience on the Hayden, it did not take long for the Saltic to process hundreds of crewmembers, and that was with a skeleton crew. Once the power went out, the Hangar deck force fields would go down until the battery backup came on. The Hayden’s battery backups came on within seconds of losing power, but that was time enough for anyone in the hangar bay to be sucked out into space as the force fields flipped off and then back on. These were all precautions if they could not get out of range, or destroy the enemy before they used their weapon.
“Captain, the nukes are loaded and ready to arm.”
Slone placed his key into the slot on his console and said, “On my mark, three... two... one... mark.” He turned his key and in the engine room, Diana turned hers. She then keyed in the identification codes for each missile and the warheads were armed.
Slone then said, “Missile control, lock onto the enemy and fire the nukes.”
“Yes sir, missiles away,” and a few seconds later, “Missiles running hot and true.”
This was a desperate move. Since the missiles were carrying very heavy nuclear warheads, they were very slow accelerating. This made them vulnerable to point defenses and explained why they were almost never used against ships. They were strictly designed to take out ground targets or space stations. The Saltic did not seem to have any point defenses, so Slone was hoping the missiles would go right in and detonate on the enemy.
The Saltic ship saw the slow missiles moving in its direction and Captain Hek’Lok ordered his forward gunners to try to take them out.
They kept firing energy bolts at the missiles, and though they did not have automated point defenses, they did have excellent gunners. Both missiles were hit and detonated. A nuclear detonation in space is completely uneventful. There is no mushroom cloud and the force of the explosion is rapidly dissipated since there is no atmosphere or ground on which to transfer all the energy. The only result is a massive burst of radiation, but space is a radiation rich environment and all ships are shielded against its effects.
Slone and the bridge crew were disappointed in the results of the nuclear missile attack. He had hoped that at least one would get through. Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by Roger Umgabe, “Captain, their EMP weapon has stopped charging.”
“Are we far enough away?” Slone asked and the words were hardly out of his mouth and there was a bright flash behind his eyes and his last thoughts were of his family and he prayed they would not suffer too much.
Chapter 10 – Surprise!
Aboard the Saltic cruiser, things were at a standstill. The EMP weapon was the Saltic’s major punch. The only species ever able to resist its effects were the Urk’Radi. Those methane breathers did not have a real nervous system. However, humans had a very fragile nervous system and they would be out for a while with the EMP. The Saltic cruiser was dead in space. The down side of their secret weapon lay in the fact that it required all of the energy the ship could concentrate. Only life support was maintained. The rest would take hours to return. Now time was of the essence. The humans would regain consciousness within two human hours. Captain Hek’Lok went onto the communicator. “All gatherers and guards deploy to the enemy vessel now.”
Since the Saltic cruiser was massive, it held a considerable number of personnel. They now crowded into large shuttles with room for thousands of gatherers and guards. The plan was to gather as many unconscious humans as possible before they start to wake up. Since there was no backup to the EMP weapon, as the humans began to rouse, they would have to kill them. That is why it was important to get as many humans aboard the cruiser as possible. The guards would take care of any resistance as the humans they could not find, woke up. In all, the captain would send over a thousand gatherers and fifteen hundred armed guards, since the gatherers were unarmed.
Aboard the Mary Rose and the serpent ships, they were watching the activity with great concern. They had all managed to get clear of the EMP pulse but the Tempestas was dead in the water and Alaya knew what that meant. She ordered all ships to return to the Tempestas and stand ready to attack the Saltic if needed. She ordered the Mary Rose to return to the Tempestas at flank speed and saw on the tactical plot that the serpent ships turned to follow. They were at least an hour away and even at flank speed, they would not get there before the ships launched from the Saltic vessel landed on the battleship. No matter what, she had to make sure they prevented the Saltic from taking the humans aboard the harvester ship. All she could think about was her husband and daughter at the mercy of those malignant worms. She recalled the image of the naked bodies of the Hayden crew, stacked like cordwood, waiting to be sent out of the airlock; each one having their head cut open and the brain missing. She gave an involuntary shutter.
The first Saltic shuttles began to enter the battleship hangar bay. The force field had reset and the ship was on batteries, but nothing had rebooted yet. The Saltic shuttles were large and each held one hundred gatherers and one hundred guards. The last shuttles would contain only guards. The plan was for the guards to remain on the battleship while the gatherers packed as many humans as they could retrieve into the shuttles and sent them over to the cruiser to be processed. The EMP weapon would only keep the humans incapacitated for about two human hours, but each human retrieved was given a shot that assured they would not wake up. Once the brain was removed, they would never wake up. The brain had to be carefully handled and quickly placed in nutrient or it would die and be of no use. The Saltic did not care about the humans in any way. To them they were just a resource to be used and then discarded. Since the Saltic knew they were the only truly dominant species in the universe, they cared little for contact with other species, other than conquest. When the shuttles landed, first the guards came out, just in case there were any humans unaffected. This had never happened before, but one could never be too careful. They had taken out the occasional human ship, but they were always small. They had no way of knowing the ships they had encountered at the rim of human space were pirates and not the normal warships. The one they were now on was huge by comparison. They would have to move through the ship as quickly as possible to get the most specimens available.
The guards gave the all clear and the gathering techs came out and had a quick look around. Only a small portion of the ship was forward of the hangar bay, so they decided to leave that alone and head aft, where they surmised the most humans would be. The bulkheads had been closed and the ship was compartmentalized. This was not a problem. The chief tech carried a flat, square device he placed over a keypad and this, not only unlocked the door but also gave it enough power to open. As the door opened, the guards and the gatherers went into the first section of the ship. They knew right away that something was wrong. There were no unconscious humans. There was no reason any part of the ship should be deserted, so the humans must have gone to another part of the ship, thinking they would be safe. That was strange and it would suggest the humans knew about the EMP weapon, and that was impossible. There was some discussion about this but then there was no time to be concerned about it. They were working against the clock before the humans woke up.
The guards cleared this part of the ship and entered the next area, which was a large, open space. When they entered, they froze. There were no unconscious humans; there was a wall of some kind of protective barrier with obvious movement behind. As more and more Saltic entered the area, the guards came in and looked confused. There was nothing in their knowledge that would account for this. The humans should have fallen unconscious from the EMP burst, yet here they were, standing in front of them. The Saltic guards ordered the gatherers back and they filed in and started firing at the protective wall. Suddenly the wall came down and a row of huge creatures stood up and pointed something at the Saltic. What they pointed began to spin and hell came out of it as projectiles from the device ripped through the armor and bodies of the Saltic guards.
When the Saltic unleashed their EMP weapon, the expected happened. Just as had been the case aboard the Hayden, in the Andromeda galaxy, all electrical functions aboard the Tempestas ceased and the ship continued its forward movement by momentum only. The ship was also rotating around its long axis, from the recent cannon duel. In addition, just as had been the case aboard the Hayden, the central nervous systems of the humans also shut down for a fraction of a second. Long enough for them to lose consciousness but not long enough for them to stop breathing. Since the pulse was calibrated to affect only the central nervous systems of all sentient species, and not the cardiac impulses, the individuals did not die until the Saltic wanted them to.
Something unexpected also occurred aboard the Tempestas. When the EMP pulse hit the ship, the humans throughout the vessel began to fall to the deck all around the serpents aboard. However, serpent anatomy was not the same as human anatomy and part of their special abilities were due to a nervous system that was shielded from all external pulses. The serpent brain registered the EMP and then dismissed it as a space based anomaly. What the serpents could not dismiss was their human allies dropping all around them. Fortunately, serpents process situations fast and they had been shown the footage from the last voyage of the Hayden. They were fully aware that the next step would be to retrieve the unconscious humans to harvest their brains. In the legion aboard, half the cohorts were serpents, each cohort had a primary centurion, and these now took over control. Serpents are not humans. They do not have long discussions or fight over ascendancy. If there is a job to do, they intuitively know who is best to handle any aspect of it and divide their work
as needed.
The first step was to secure the humans and make sure they were safe, but there was no way of knowing when the Saltic would come over. The primary centurion of the second cohort was in charge and she ordered runners to go to all serpent crewmembers and order them to bring all unconscious humans in their area to the center of the ship, near the sickbay. This area was secure and could be easily guarded. While the crew moved through the passageways that pierced the bulkheads for movement through a sealed ship, the centurions marshaled their troops to repel boarders. They just managed to move all of the humans to safety, when the first enemy shuttles arrived. The ship’s computer was starting to reboot its systems and one of the first designed to come on line was the intruder detector. Suddenly, throughout the ship, the klaxon sounded and the computer began repeating, “General quarters, prepare to repel boarders.”
Aboard the Mary Rose, Alaya and Tavia were speeding to return to the area of the capital ships. They were accompanied by the 19 serpent ships. All were invisible and waiting for a chance to do something. They had seen the shuttles crossing from the Saltic ship to the battle ship, but they were too far away to do anything about them. They were now determined to prevent the Saltic from taking anyone off the ship. As they were watching for their chance to enter the hangar and destroy the Saltic shuttles, the battle channel suddenly came to life and they heard serpent speak coming over it. “What are they saying?” Alaya asked.
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