Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Every approach Dan made was putting the ship in danger, and it had gotten worse as the cruiser continued to release more fighters. He heaved a sigh of mixed relief and frustration as they cruised away to a safe distance.

  “Now what do we do?” Charline asked.

  “The Naga ship is still approximately sixty two percent functional,” Majel said. “It remains a threat to the planet.”

  “Agreed. We need to destroy the thing. But we need a better way,” John said.

  “What about micro-jumps?” Dan asked. “If we could use jumps to get in and out, rather than flying through that mess every time…”

  “If you were off by even a little bit…” John began.

  “We’d be splattered all over their ship,” Dan finished for him. “Majel, how precise can we make the jumps?”

  There was a moment of pause. Dan figured she was running simulations or something. He was less of a calculate-the-odds person, and more of a ‘go with your gut’ kind of guy. He always had been. Right now, his gut said this would work. It was the best idea he had, anyway.

  “We can ensure accuracy with roughly a five percent margin of error, less if we are…lucky.” Majel said. “That’s a problem. If we are jumping the ship from outside the fighter orbit to inside it, then we’re jumping at least three or four hundred meters, which gives a margin of error of fifteen to twenty meters per jump. If we are off by much more than that, we could crash into the cruiser.”

  “That’s if we jump in and out through the orbiting fighters, right Majel?” Andy asked.

  “Correct.”

  “What if we close to knife distance…and use the wormhole drive as the knife?” he asked. “Stay inside the fighter orbit with multiple very short jumps?”

  Dan spun his chair around. It was a damned good idea. They’d used the wormhole drive as a weapon before. Whatever was in the wormhole area of effect was transported to the destination. Effectively, it disintegrated whatever it touched. They’d torn up the first Naga cruiser they’d fought, using the beam that way, but…

  “It didn’t do much against the cruiser we used it on last time,” John said. “Damaged the armor, but didn’t disable it.”

  Dan’s mind was working on the problem. There was a germ of a good idea in there. “That was before we had such detailed information on where to hit them,” he said. “Now that we know their weak spots, we can target those.”

  “At knife distance, their fighters won’t be able to stop us,” Andy said.

  “It’s worth a shot,” Dan said.

  “You’d have seconds to emerge from the wormhole, target something vital, fire up the wormhole drive again, and hit them with it before vanishing into it and emerging again,” John said. “Over and over. Can you do that, Dan?”

  “By myself?” Dan said. “Maybe. But with Majel and I working the problem together? Yes. I think we can.”

  “Affirmative,” Majel said. “The plan should work. It’s risky. They’ll see our wormhole entry and exit points and might be able to better target the ship. But it should work, and we’ll be close enough to the cruiser that their weapons will have difficulty targeting us.”

  Dan could see John was about ready to give the plan a green light. He just needed a shove. “You have a better idea, John?”

  “No. Do it.”

  Dan whirled back around to face forward. “OK. Hang tight everyone. This is going to be a very bumpy ride.”

  Majel plotted the first three sequences of jumps for him. He’d have to trust that she was able to keep ahead of him on the calculations. He fired up the wormhole drive and…

  …they were elsewhere. Very specifically, they were a few meters away from the Naga ship’s starboard engine and closing fast. He corrected their course slightly, bringing the nose into alignment directly at the plume of engine exhaust and fired the drive again. The wormhole stabbed into the engine mounting, and the metal where it touched simply disappeared. A tap on his thrusters and the Satori jumped forward into the wormhole as well.

  And they were directly in front of the mammoth ship, facing several of its main guns. Dan fired lateral thrusters and activating the wormhole again. Metal vanished, an entire gun mounting exploding as parts of it disappeared into the wormhole beam while the Satori slid sideways across the nose of the cruiser, raking it with the wormhole drive. There was a steady thrum from the wings as the railguns pounded spots already weakened by the wormhole.

  “They’re targeting us,” Majel warned.

  Dan tapped the thrusters again, and the Satori shot forward into the wormhole, to appear alongside the port side of the ship, the stabbing beam of the wormhole punching deep inside to damage generators housed there. Before the enemy could hit them he jumped the ship again.

  They’d barely exited this time when the entire ship shook. A whistling noise filled Dan’s ears, and then they popped. Another massive shake as the ship took a second impact. This one tore part of the deck apart directly behind Dan’s chair. Bits of metal went pinging around the inside of the bridge, bouncing off walls. One zinged past his face close enough that it scratched his cheek, and he shuddered. Another couple of inches to the left and that thing would have embedded itself in his skull.

  “We’re losing pressure!” Andy shouted. He was jumping up from his chair, dashing to the hole in the floor with something in his hands. Hopefully something to patch the tear.

  Dan didn’t have time to worry about the fix. He needed to get the ship out of there before they were hit again and destroyed. “Majel, jump us clear!”

  They sped into another wormhole and emerged half a kilometer distant. Dan flew them away from the emergence point. It was clear that the Naga were targeting the flash of matter emerging from the wormhole. They might not be able to see the Satori through her cloaking device, but they could guess about where she was coming out of a wormhole. After that it was all a matter of luck, and theirs had finally run out.

  Seventeen

  Beth staggered from her seat as more tremors shook the ship. Her engineering console was showing hull breeches in just about every compartment. Doors had slammed shut to stop the air escaping, but it wasn’t doing much good. They were hurt. The ship was bleeding air into space. She only hoped that was the worst of their trouble.

  A quick system check later revealed that wasn’t the worst of it after all. They’d sustained critical damage to their life support. That had been one piece of tech which hadn’t survived on the original alien craft they’d found. Whether the aliens who built it didn’t need life support, or it had simply been destroyed or degraded into something unrecognizable over time was anyone’s guess. They’d had to make do with human-built carbon dioxide scrubbers and oxygen recyclers. Both of which worked extremely well - Beth had rebuild them herself, after all - so long as they were not full of holes. She tapped the comma unit, which was thankfully still working.

  “Folks, we’ve lost life support. We’re going to be breathing vapor when what’s in the tanks runs out,” she said. “Get yourselves into suits right now.”

  “On it,” Linda replied. “We’ve got issues up here. Big hole, but Andy’s got that more or less under control. John’s…hurt…too.”

  Beth felt like the floor was falling out from beneath her. It took a moment for her to find words to speak. “How bad? What happened?”

  “Shrapnel from the impact,” Linda replied. Her voice was muffled by the rustling sounds of her working to get into a space suit. “Charline is seeing to him.”

  “Tell her she’s got maybe ten minutes before the air in there gets unbreathable,” Beth said.

  “Got it.”

  Beth found her own suit and put it on. Their ship suits would integrate with the helmets to give them air in a real emergency, but it seemed to make more sense to go with the full suits. Just in case they ended up with more exposure to the outside than they already had. Once she was suited up she went about finding the holes in engineering. It didn’t take long.

  Ther
e were two, each about the size of a golf ball. The shot had gone straight through the hull, in one side of the ship and out the other. She shuddered to think what that impact would have done if she’d been unlucky enough to be in the way.

  A quick blast of her sealant did the job. They had canisters of the stuff in every compartment. She aimed the nozzle at the hole, squeezed, and a burst of grey goop spewed from the device. The goop was an epoxy resin, mixing with a catalyst in the front of the nozzle so that it would harden almost instantly as soon as it sprayed out.

  Once she had good seals on the holes she tapped the door controls. They didn’t want to open, at first. The hallway section was mostly in vacuum. Beth cycled the air in engineering back into storage tanks. Once the pressure was low enough in the engine room, the door allowed her to pass without problems.

  The delay was killing her, though. No only was the ship continuing to hemorrhage critical air while she was stuck back there, but John still needed her. Beth wished she had some idea how he was doing, but the rest of the crew was probably as busy as she was.

  The doors snapped open, and revealed a massive mess. Multiple shots had torn through the corridor connecting the fore and aft of the ship. The deck and port walls were full of multiple holes. The Naga blasts had hit them hard. It was a miracle that the ship had held up through the blasts as well as it had.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The enemy hadn’t just been firing energy bolts at the Satori. It seemed like they’d been firing missiles as well.

  The missile was huge, a couple of feet in diameter. It must have just fired when they were hit. It couldn’t have built up much speed yet before it impacted, because it had lodged itself in the outer hull. Now it was sitting there, a hulking mass penetrating the Satori’s hide.

  “We have a serious problem back here,” Beth said into her suit radio.

  Dan came back to her instantly. “What’s up?”

  “Are we still flying away from the Naga ship?” Beth asked. There might only be seconds left, if they were.

  “Yes, putting some distance so…”

  “Stop. Reverse course now!” Beth said.

  She stared at the missile. The only such weapons she’d seen the Naga use were nuclear warheads. They’d fired a number of them at a city and annihilated the entire thing. If this thing went off the ship would be obliterated.

  “What?” Dan asked. “But…”

  “No time! Turn the ship around now!” Beth yelled at him.

  She felt the ship changing course, and hoped she’d realized the threat soon enough.

  It was a logical safety precaution. Any big warhead would have a proximity safety, something to keep the thing from blowing up too close to the ship which fired it. If a big nuke went off a kilometer away from the Naga vessel, it might take damage as well. But they’d been cunning. They’d tucked it into the Satori. If Dan kept flying away, eventually they would pass the safe zone, and then…boom.

  Another half minute went by without the ship exploding. Beth figured they were likely safe, at least for the moment. She heaved a sigh of relief.

  “They tagged us with a nuke, Dan,” she said over her radio. “Betting it has a proximity safety.”

  She heard his sharp inhalation. He knew what that meant. “Can you defuse it?” Dan asked. “We need to get John medical attention.”

  “Maybe. If Majel can spare me some help,” Beth said. She stared at the weapon dubiously. This wasn’t her field. She knew engines, not explosives. If she did the wrong thing, the missile might go up anyway. “Andy too. He’s our weapons guy.”

  “On my way,” Andy chimed in over the net.

  Beth glared at the device, the ticking time bomb in their midst. How long did they have before the Naga figured out where the weapon was and decided to just detonate it and take their chances? Not long. They needed to dump the thing fast. Or maybe they could find a way to turn the weapon against their enemies?

  Eighteen

  Andy had his suit on already. The air was beginning to grow a little thin in the cockpit, despite his patch. He’d filled in both obvious holes, but either he had missed something or the recycling was already in full failure. He grabbed a portable toolbox from where it was strapped to the wall and strapped it to his leg, certain it would be useful in dealing with the missile.

  John still lay on the deck where Charline was working on him while Linda struggled to get the suit pants pulled on over his legs. John was still conscious, but his face was white and pinched with pain.

  He’d taken a scrap of metal to the gut. Charline wasn’t sure how much damage had been done. He was going to need medical attention as quickly as they could get it. She’d gotten the metal out, at least, and had the bleeding mostly stopped.

  Andy slapped the panel to open the hatch into the hall, but it wouldn’t budge. The outer hallway must be in complete vacuum. He could override the panel, but that would vent all of the rest of the air out of the bridge into space.

  “Beth, I can’t get out to you directly. Hatch is sealed,” he said. “I’m going to come around and take a look at the missile from the outside.”

  “OK. Not like I can go anywhere,” she snapped back.

  They didn’t have much time. The Naga clearly couldn’t get a good lock on the missile. Whatever the technology was that gave them their cloak must be blocking any sort of homing or tracking the missile had. That didn’t meant the Naga couldn’t figure out another way to blow the thing remotely. They needed to get it off the ship, fast.

  The bridge had an airlock. He stepped in and cycled the atmosphere. The outer door opened after just a few moments, and he was out in space. Andy swallowed hard. His last EVA hadn’t been that much fun. He’d almost died, removing bombs from the bottom of the ship before they blew. This was close enough to the same thing that he had a massive sense of deja vu.

  Nothing about this job was going to be improved by waiting. He tapped a button on the suit’s wrist console to activate the magnets in his boots and stepped outside the ship. Walking along the surface was easy, so long as he kept his sense of ‘down’ oriented right. The gravity field the Satori’s engines generated was strange though, and it kept trying to shift his ‘down’. It felt like he was flipping around every few steps, and he had to stop twice to quell the growing nausea.

  It was impossible to miss the weapon, though. The hull had been torn up all around the impact site. Multiple holes decorated the port side of the ship. The missile had inserted itself about halfway into the ship. It was roughly as long as he was tall, and wide enough around he would have trouble wrapping his arms around the thing. He came in close, inspecting it carefully. There didn’t appear to be any seams. No screws or bolts he could remove to disable or dismantle it.

  “Beth, is there any sort of access panel on the part that’s inside the ship?” he asked over the radio.

  “Not that I can see,” she replied.

  “Not out here either,” Andy said.

  “Damn.”

  That was trouble. He was hoping the alien tech would be similar enough to their own that he could open a panel, cut some wires, and be done with it. But nothing was simple when it came to the Naga.

  “Majel, you listening in?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Any chance you can hack this thing?” Maybe there was a computer system on board that she could override.

  “I already did,” she said. “I have a temporary lock on its control systems, but there are fail-safes I can’t touch. They’re designed to go off if they’re tampered with.”

  “So you can set it off whenever you want, but there’s a limit to what you can do to stop someone else from setting it off?” Andy asked.

  She paused, then replied. “Yes. It’s inert - for now. But the Naga might be able to set it off remotely the same way I can, by tampering with the fail-safes.”

  Andy grunted. That made it a little simpler. If Majel could keep the thing from blowing for a little while they co
uld drag it back out into space, fly away from it, and she could blow it up. He grabbed the missile and gave an experimental tug. It was wedged in pretty solidly. That wasn’t surprising. He’d figured it would have to be.

  He pulled out the tool set, carefully laying it against the hull so that it would magnetically lock in place. He popped the kit open and pulled out a small hand torch.

  “Sorry Beth. I’m going to have to trash some more of your hull to get this thing off,” he said.

  “Do what you have to,” she replied with a theatrical sigh. “We’ve already made swiss cheese of the ship. It’s going to need a complete overhaul.”

  She paused, then went on. “Again.”

  He grunted in reply, keeping the chuckle to himself. Then he started cutting away the metal around the missile, careful to keep the torch away from the weapon itself. The heat from his torch might not set the explosives inside off. Probably would not, in fact. But he wasn’t willing to bet all their lives on it.

  While he cut, an idea came to mind. What if they could do more than just shove the missile away from the ship? Was there some way they could turn the weapon against the Naga ship?

  “Majel, can you show me an image of the enemy ship, with damages?” Andy asked.

  “Of course. Anything in particular you are looking for?”

  “Highlight any spots where our wormhole blasted a hole through their armor,” Andy said.

  Majel posted an image of the enemy ship to the HUD inside his helmet a moment later. Andy whistled softly under his breath. They’d hammered the thing. The passes with the wormhole drive had done massive damage, ripping through the armor and damaging the interior. Even now, he could see from Majel’s imagery that the Naga ship was venting air from multiple sites, and one section of the ship looked like it was still burning.