The Sakkara

by Donald Nicklas

  Roger Umgabe looked up from his console, “Captain, we are in weapons range of the enemy.”

  “Bring us parallel to them. Gunners prepare to fire. All ships fire on the enemy on my mark.”

  “The enemy is in range of our broadside.”

  “Starboard guns, fire. All missiles lock and fire,” Slone ordered and the ship shuttered as the weapons discharged.

  Chapter 11 – Turnabout is Fair Play

  The broadside fired by the Tempestas slammed into the Saltic ship and gouged large holes into the hull. The cannon shots were followed by the missiles that all hit home. Alaya’s ship and the remaining serpent ships opened fire on the energy projectors as those opened fire on the battleship. Slone could neither hear nor feel the energy bolts hit his ship, but he knew from the chatter on the battle channel that they were penetrating and doing damage. They had already put enough holes into the outer hull that those stationed in the outer areas, such as the gun crews, put on hard vacuum suits. Slone called to his serpent gunners and told them to aim for the breaches in the enemy hull. He hoped the serpents were good enough to aim at those holes in the hull. If they could continue to bombard the weak points, they should penetrate deeper. The Romani did not know where the engines were located. Slone hoped they were somewhere in the depth of the ship, that was why he wanted his gunners to fire at the breaches. The gunners were reloading and firing, as they were ready. The serpents were so fast with the guns that each of the guns fired fast enough to be a broadside each time.

  The broadsides fired by the Romani were taking their toll. Aboard the Saltic cruiser, there was panic and confusion. This is the first time this or any other Saltic crew had ever met with such resistance. Now they were paying for their complacency. This combined alien force was hard to handle, and the energy weapons of the Saltic could not dish out as much damage as the enemy weapons. The rate of fire of the Saltic weapons was faster, but they were making only small breaches that would take a long time to carry damage inward. The enemy was also rotating and by placing, a new side into play every quarter rotation, they were also limiting the damage the Saltic could do. The infernal weapons used by the enemy were passing into the large hull breaches and causing explosions deeper and deeper into the ship. Captain Hek’Lok knew he had to get his ship out of here, but had no idea how. He could close the old wormhole, open a new one next to his ship, and escape into it, but he still did not have the energy to do so. First, the engines had to recharge after the use of the EMP weapon. There was enough power in the batteries to do that and without the engines; even a wormhole next to his ship would be a wormhole too far. After the engines were charged and the ship could maneuver, he then had to charge the wormhole drive. All of this would take more time than he feared he had. The recharge sequence aboard a Saltic ship was complex and had to deal with the engines first, since to charge the wormhole drive first would not leave enough for the engines.

  Suddenly power returned to the ship and the engines came to life. Finally the charge was complete and the engines would then recharge the batteries while powering the ship and charging the drive. The captain ordered the navigator to close the old wormhole with the intent of opening a new one, as soon as the drive was ready. “Pull away from here and make a run towards the fifth planet.”

  “Yes, captain,” The navigator acknowledged.

  The bridge crew was in a bit of disbelief, they had never run from any spacefaring species before, yet they were being bested by this enemy. The Saltic cruiser began to pick up speed, however the enemy vessel was moving a little ahead of the ship and continued to fire on them as they returned fire. Captain Hek’Lok could feel every enemy hit, and there were a lot of them. His ship was much more massive than the enemy was, yet they were starting to do significant damage on the various decks. Suddenly the cruiser was rocked by a massive explosion and the power went out. The captain could feel himself lifting off his recliner and knew the artificial gravity was out. The bridge crew activated the magnates on their shoes. There was also no external view. “Damage control, report.”

  The communication system worked on its own battery backup and the response came back quickly. “This is engine tech 3246, we took a direct hit to the engine and the entire compartment is gone. We are completely without power.”

  “How long until it is restored.”

  “Captain, there is no one left in engineering. Even if there were, the engine is destroyed and we would need a new engine to move. We are at the mercy of space.”

  That last phrase was a Saltic euphemism for “the situation is hopeless.” Everyone knew space shows no mercy. The enemy must have noticed the magnitude of their hit, since they stopped firing. The captain would have done the unheard of and surrendered, but had no idea how to communicate with this enemy. The hubris of the Saltic was catching up with him. They never bothered to communicate with any aliens they could not utilize for their own purposes. As a result, the Saltic had no allies and no hope for quarter. The captain knew this would be a fight to the death. “Attention all crew. Prepare to repel boarders. We must destroy the enemy and capture their vessel if we are to make it home. Show no mercy.”

  Aboard the Tempestas, Slone noted the return of power to the Saltic vessel as it began to make headway. “Captain, they’ve closed the wormhole,” Roger Umgabe reported.

  “They probably want to make one closer. Where are they heading?”

  Paul McMann looked at his console, “It looks like they are heading to the fifth planet.”

  Slone thought a second, “They just want forward momentum to enter a wormhole when they create one. From what Commander Hammond has told me, they will need time to charge their drive. All guns keep firing as she bears and as fast as possible. We have to penetrate that ship.”

  The Tempestas continued rotation. The invisible ships were also firing their railguns into the breaches. Suddenly there was a massive explosion aboard the Saltic vessel. Slone could see the heat signature of the ship flare near the center and the bottom of the vessel actually blew out with large numbers of Saltic bodies. All power in the enemy stopped and their weapons’ fire ceased.

  “Centurion Marshal, prepare to board the enemy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Paul, bring us alongside and match her momentum. Stop rotation.”

  The Tempestas pulled parallel with the enemy and matched the forward movement of the Saltic ship. Slone spoke on the battle channel, “Centurion Marshal, you are clear to proceed.”

  In the hangar of the ship, the legion was ready to pull out. They were aboard 60 shuttles. The normal boarding procedure when dealing with a human enemy would be to breach the bridge with charges and enter the hangar deck. Half of the boarding party would attack each position. With the Saltic ship, there was a problem; the Romani had no idea where to find the bridge, the vessel had no identifiable windows. Since the ship was more than large enough to handle the full legion landing on its hangar deck, Bill Marshal decided to bring the legion into the hangar deck and deploy from there. The Saltic hangar deck was near the bow of the ship and it was assumed that the bridge was forward of the position. The first, second and third cohorts would be moving forward and attempt to find the bridge. Since the bulk of the ship was aft of the hangar deck, six of the remaining seven cohorts would move aft. The tenth cohort would stay with the shuttles and act as a reserve. The shuttles closed the distance between the ships quickly. Since the enemy was powerless, there were no weapons to concern them and the serpent ships along with Alaya’s ship became visible. If all power in the enemy ship were down, then life support would be a problem once the atmosphere in the ship was gone. As a result, the legionaries wore their hard vacuum armor, and they were protected. The shuttles began to enter the enemy hangar. The turret gunners were ready for resistance, but there was none. The force fields were down and the hangar was depressurized. The hangar was huge and the loss of their own shuttles, in their attempt to capture the Tempestas, left a lot of room. The legion landed a
nd began to deploy rapidly into cohorts. Marshal looked at his troops. Most cohorts were at full strength, but the first and second had been heavily engaged with the Saltic boarders. The serpents from those cohorts had held the ship from the start and lost so many troops they could only form two centuries. The first cohort was down two centuries and the remaining cohorts were functioning almost to capacity. Of the 6,000 troops of the full legion, 5000 remained fit for duty. The rest were either dead or too severely wounded to participate.

  On the bridge of the Ver’Tau Captain Hek’Lok had no idea what would come next. This enemy was relentless. Usually enemies the Saltic encounter ran away as fast as possible. This one just kept coming. They had a chance to put distance between the ships when they got their engines back. What did they do? They came right back on to the attack. Now here he reclined on a bridge that was dark and blind. Communications with the forces aboard the vessel indicated the enemy was landing on the hangar deck. The deck personnel had been sucked out when the engine blew up and the power to the force fields stopped. The engine explosion also took out most of the personnel on the engineering deck and most of the decks above. Of the 5000 conscripts aboard to defend the ship, almost 2000 died in that explosion along with countless non-combatants. If he was right, all they had to do was kill the boarding party and take over the enemy ship. They could then force the non-combatants on the enemy ship to take them home. Reports of combat were now coming in. The enemy was engaging with the conscripts and giving them a rough time.

  Actually, the conscripts were having a rough time but they were also dealing a lot of punishment to the Romani. Most of the conscripts were fighting desperately. They knew what was going on here and they knew the enemy would not grant them quarter. They were going to win or die, and this made them desperate, desperate enough to use non-combatants as a shield. As the Romani penetrated deeper into the alien ship, the centurions who had fought the frontline troops who boarded the Tempestas began to notice that they were not only facing inferior troops, but they had inferior weapons. When the energy bolts hit the shields, they did not melt them as much as the others had and they had a harder time penetrating. They acted more like their rifles than the heavier weapons used by the Saltic boarding party. This information was conveyed to all cohorts and they began to redouble their efforts and form the shield walls they were used to using rather than fighting from cover. The forward group met less resistance as they looked for the bridge. Slone had shown them the part of the old Hayden file, which showed the makeshift x-ray machine he had made while inside the harvester ship. This had shown an area of activity in the front of the vessel thought to be the bridge. It was there that Centurion Marshal and his troops were now heading. As they got closer to that area, resistance became heavier and he called down to the hangar deck for the tenth cohort to come up to his location. They moved up quickly, killing all Saltic they found along the way. Finally, they found themselves in front of a blast door that needed to be opened. With the power out, there was no way to open the door. The primary centurion of the fourth cohort, who was in charge of the larger group moving aft, reported resistance almost at an end and a large part of the remainder of the vessel crushed by the engine explosion. Bill Marshal ordered them to collect the dead and wounded, return to the hangar and await further orders. All cohorts acknowledged and returned to the shuttles. The Romani were protected in their hard vacuum armor, but they had limited oxygen. Centurion Marshal called over to the Tempestas, “Captain Slone, the enemy ship is secure but we are unable to enter the area of the bridge. It’s sealed by a blast door.”

  “Leave them and bring the legion back. I want to take the ship with us back to Romani space.”

  “On our way back, captain,” Bill Marshal said and then ordered all cohorts back to the shuttles.

  While the legion was heading back to the battleship, Slone called down to the flight deck and ordered Diana Gardner and Julia Hammond to come to the bridge. He also ordered Tom McMann to move the Tempestas in front of the Saltic ship. The legion was entering the hangar bay when Diana and Julia entered the bridge. “You wanted to see us, captain?” Diana asked.

  “Are we ready to activate the wormhole drive?”

  “Yes captain, we just need to know where you want us to go.”

  “Can we open a wormhole in front of us and have the enemy ship drift through it after us?”

  Julia Hammond answered this one, “Yes captain. As long as they have forward momentum, they will follow us through. Where would you like us to set the destination?”

  “Tom, project a map with coordinates showing system MR427.”

  Tom Garner projected the star map of the area with coordinates. System MR427 was labeled on the map. “Can you open a wormhole to that system?”

  Julia Hammond looked at the coordinates and said, “That is just inside the Matsua Rim. It will take about two hours to charge the drive and then we can open it. So, captain, what is in that system?”

  “Actually, not much. It is uninhabited, but it is just inside of Nova Romae space and it has a remote warning station. That is actually where we first sent a message capsule to make contact with the Romani and it is a sentimental place to some of us.”

  “Ok, sir. I will get right on it.”

  She left but Diana stayed to monitor the engineering station and begin damage control. “Captain, permission to start patching the hull and repressurizing the areas we can repair before passing through the wormhole.”

  “Permission granted. How bad are we hurt?”

  “The ship is depressurized in multiple areas, all areas just inside her hull. If that is the extent of the weapon they have for ship-to-ship combat, then they are the ones in trouble.”

  “Don’t forget their EMP weapon.”

  “I’m just glad the serpents were immune to it,” Diana said with relief in her voice.

  Slone was as well. After the legion was aboard, Slone recalled the serpent ships and the Mary Rose. An hour into the charge time, Slone called a meeting of commanders and department heads in the conference room. There were many primary centurions missing and replaced by their Optio. Alaya and Tavia where there as were the bridge crew and the department heads. Slone started the meeting. “I would like to start with Dr. Tirpak’s report on casualties.”

  The doctor stood up to give her report. “Captain, the legion sustained a total of 1098 casualties in all operations on planet and in space. Of those, 432 are fatalities with the rest suffering wounds from minor to life threatening. There were 57 casualties among the naval personnel, most among the serpent gunners. We estimate we could lose another hundred of the wounded. Those energy weapons the enemy has are extremely damaging to both humans and serpents.”

  “Thank you doctor, but I must admit that is worse than I expected. We have the equivalent of ten dreadnaughts worth of troops aboard and we got our asses kicked by only one of their capital ships. To defeat a fleet of them will take a lot more than a few legions. We must get this information back to human space. If they decide to attack the corporations, they must be made aware of what they are dealing with. You may return to your duties doctor.”

  “Thank you captain,” Dr. Tirpak saluted and returned to sickbay.

  “How are we doing with the drive?”

  Diana Gardner responded, “We are one hour into the charge and so far everything looks good. We will not really know if we have learned to control the drive until we actually get to where we want to go.”

  Before the meeting could go any longer, the bridge called into the conference room. “Captain, we are picking up an energy discharge from the alien vessel.”

  “I thought we had destroyed their engines.”

  “Sir, this is not from an engine. It could be a self powered weapon of some kind.”

  “Does it have the signature of their EMP weapon?”

  “No sir.”

  “Sound General Quarters.”

  The klaxon went off and everyone returned to his or her battle stat
ions. So far, the Tempestas had gotten off lightly from the cannon duel, but now it appeared the Saltic had another card up their sleeves. Slone entered the bridge and took his seat in the captain’s chair. “Report.”

  Roger Umgabe was back at his station, “There is an energy buildup in the area of the bridge.”

  “Any idea what it could be?”

  “Nothing exotic, just a buildup of power from an unknown source.”

  Aboard the Saltic cruiser, things were quiet after the Romani returned to their vessel. The ship was dead in space and moving by momentum only. Captain Hek’Lok looked at his bridge crew. All power was out and life support was dwindling. There was no more communication with other Saltic aboard the vessel and that meant they were all dead or incapacitated. The bridge was sealed and the enemy had been outside but they had not attempted to breach the bridge. They probably thought it was not worth the effort, but so far, they had not restarted their bombardment. Since the bridge had no windows and the power was out, they were blind to outside activity. The captain’s orders were clear in a situation like this. He glided over to a small box set in the wall of the bridge. There was a hole in the box door just large enough for him to place his eyestalk inside. His first officer came over and did the same to a second hole in the box door and there was an audible click as the box opened. Inside was a small piece of metal having a triangular shape. The captain removed the piece of metal. On one surface, there were ridges of varying height and the other side was smooth. The captain took the triangle to his console and placed it into a triangular depression, ridge side down. Even though the console was dead, the triangle had a power source strong enough to do the job. Once the triangle was placed in the triangular notch, the deed was done and all knew their fate. The triangle sent a pulse through the wires of the console and these went deep into the ship just below the bridge and activated a small nuclear generator that began to power up the electronics needed to destroy the ship. Once this system was activated, it could not be shut down and the charge mechanism would only take about ten human minutes. When the time was up, a massive burst of energy was fed into an adjacent nuclear capsule. This resulted in an uncontrolled fission reaction equivalent to one megaton of TNT. The area directly around the blast was vaporized but the outer shell of the ship was very hard metal that split and flew apart as the pressure wave from the blast filled the ship. The pressure wave of the debris spread throughout the vessel and split it open like an eggshell.