The commander paused, as if waiting for something. Jacob, not knowing what to do, nodded. “Yes, sir. Rodgers, 542-695-AGU47. Just stay awake, sir.”
Rodgers reached out a weak hand and put it on Jacob’s forearm. “Your…command, Jacob. Get…the ship…home. Get them back…home.” Through the pain, Rodgers managed to meet Jacob’s eyes and smiled. “Good luck.”
Then, as Jacob watched, the light faded from the commander’s eyes. Rodgers’ head fell back against the wall, and the tension the pain had brought to his body faded away.
“Sir? Sir, stay with me. Commander, please!” Jacob barely kept himself from shaking the man to get a reaction. Deep inside he knew it was already too late.
Chapter Eight
Moments later, the others arrived.
The bridge swarmed with chaos, filled with the armored bodies of the Marines and the shouting of petty officers and medical teams. One of them—Ensign Mensah, he remembered dimly—pulled Jacob away and checked on Rodgers, trying to rouse some sign of life from him. Jacob watched numbly as the man failed and moved on, looking for survivors.
“Ensign! Were you the one on the comm?” Jacob turned and nodded absently at the question. His interrogator was a broken-nosed Marine sergeant named Ashford. At first, his face showed the belligerent control most Marine enlisted officers displayed. Seeing the shock on Jacob’s face, however, the Marine's expression softened, and the sergeant pulled Jacob out to the antechamber. He continued his questions in a quiet, iron-hard voice. “Why were you here?”
“I was delivering a letter to Ensign Schroder. They were already all dead when I got here.” Jacob paused looking over at the pile of dead pirates that included Lieutenant Morris. “He was with them. I managed to take them out. Used the rifle over there.” He made a motion to the rifle lying on the floor near the entryway.
The sergeant put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “You did good, ensign.” The alarms went silent as one of the soldiers found the switch. Ashford paused. “Did they say anything about any more bombs?”
Jacob shook his head, the numbness clearing slightly as fear began to reassert itself in his jumbled mind. “Bombs? No. They were going to hijack the ship.” He paused. “What bombs are you talking about?”
“They set one up in the officer’s mess. The lieutenants who weren’t up here were meeting down there, along with a few of the petty officers.” The sergeant shook his head. “Turley said there was a second blast on the outside, one he thinks took out our communications array, but we aren’t going EV to check until we are sure there won’t be any more blasts.” Ashford paused. “The arrogant bastards. Going to hijack the whole ship by themselves?”
Jacob shook his head. “Morris said something about a rendezvous. Schroder mentioned replacing the crew. There’s probably more coming. More ships maybe.”
“Damn. You’re right. Corporal!” One of the armored Marines looked up from where she was studying the command console. “What’s the situation with the bridge controls?”
“They’re locked down sir. They won’t respond to anything without the command code to unlock them. Rodgers must have done it before they got him.” The words brought Jacob back into focus with a rush. He remembered Commander Rodgers gasping for breath, fighting to give him his code. Your command.
“Damn it.” The sergeant shook his head. “We have to be ready for them to try and board. Get your squad down to the boarding hatches and tell Corporal Espinoza to get down there as well.” As the corporal ran to collect her troops, Ashford turned back to Jacob. “Ensign, you should probably report to your battle station. Get your crewmen ready to do what they can to fix the communications relay. We’re going to need help.”
“No, sergeant.” Jacob felt a sudden resolve settling on him. I’ll get them home for you Rodgers. I promise I won’t let them get any more of us. “By Article Thirty-nine of the Celostian Naval Code, I am taking command of this ship.”
There was a sudden stunned silence. The sergeant’s face went from shocked and pale to an enraged purple in less time than Jacob could have imagined possible. “What? You’re just an ensign—”
“The lieutenants are all dead, and Commander Rodgers gave me his command code. He also gave me orders, sergeant.” Jacob gave him a steady stare, trying hard not to let the insecurity that was tearing through his insides show on his face. “We don’t have time to argue. I need the remaining ensigns and petty officers called to their stations, and the gun decks, escape pods, and bridge need to be secured in case there are still some pirates onboard.”
Without giving Ashford time to respond, Jacob walked over to the command console. He was partway through entering the command code when the sergeant exploded.
“Now wait a minute!”
Jacob spun to face him. “In one minute the enemy could already be here, sergeant. We have no damn time for your hesitations. If you have complaints, we’ll deal with it after this is over.” He took a deep breath and released it. “If there is an after.”
There was a sullen pause, and Jacob turned away to finish entering the code. He touched a button, and the siren that called the ship to battle stations suddenly filled the room. The moment of hesitation was over. Jacob stepped up to the seat. A stab of guilt went through him as he sat and fastened his restraints. This wasn’t how I wanted to get to the bridge. He ran his eyes over the controls, making sure to note the differences between them and the helm simulators.
Unlike the Helm, the command station was designed to allow the commander to oversee and, if needed, perform many of the other duties of the bridge officers. There was an expansive communications console to his left, allowing him to monitor or communicate any message he wanted throughout the ship. In front of him, there was a miniature projector that mirrored the one at the Helm, along with a small, foldout flight wheel for basic maneuvers. To the right, another projector showed a larger hologram of the Wolfhound, with the ability to shift the image to view any damage done to the ship.
At the moment there were two bright points of light marking the destroyer, one located in the launchers for the long range communications drones, and another where the officer’s mess had once been. A third streak of light, bland yellow, marked the immobilized elevator to the bridge. He traced that yellow line along the power grid to the launchers and realized with sudden horror that the Marines had all arrived from the access ladder. The bomb that hit the launchers must have had a feedback that shorted the elevator. If the bomb in the mess had the same mechanism…
He tapped the personal communicator in his collar and brought up Turley’s line.
“Petty Officer Turley reporting.”
“Turley, I need some information—”
“Ensign Hull? Where the hell are you? There’s a battle alert on, and—”
Jacob broke into the tirade. “I know, Turley, I’m on the bridge.”
“Why the hell are you up there? We need you down on Engineering for this.”
“Turley, I had to take command. The other officers are down.” He overrode Turley’s shocked exclamation and bulled ahead with his questions. “Turley, did you and the others clear the guns?”
“Yeah, sure. Why does that matter?” Turley’s voice was still full of shock.
“Because I think the bomb in the mess had a switchback built in. When it went off, it would have created a feedback pulse…”
“That would have fed into those branches and shorted out half our guns and point defense turrets.” Turley’s voice had gone low and deadly with understanding. “I think I need to do some research on the name of the contractors who built the mess.”
“Yeah, I’d say you do. Try to work on damage control now, and let me know what you find out later. Hull out.” He tapped the communicator again, shutting down the link. Then he brought up the Helm portion of the console.
The small projector lit up to display the surrounding space. The chaotic storm of dark energy currents filled it for a moment, and then the projection zoomed out, h
ighlighting a quartet of blips several thousand kilometers ahead of the ship and approaching at high speed. When Jacob used the controls to select them, they glowed a foreboding red. Pirates. Already closing fast. He looked up as an argument erupted behind him and found the Marine sergeant blocking the way of the Communications and Sensor ensigns. For a moment, he fought to remember names. “Sergeant…Ashford. Let them in please. We have incoming contacts, and I’m going to need their help.”
Ashford glared at him. “Fine, you bastard. Just let me know when you decide to get us all killed.” He moved aside, and the two ensigns rushed as one onto the bridge. They came to a dead stop at seeing Jacob in the chair, but he shrugged and motioned them to their stations. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”
The Sensor officer, Ensign Singh, simply nodded and rushed to his console, but Ensign Al-shira simply stared at him in confusion. “Why are you here? Where is…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze swept over the blood spattered everywhere, and her face grew pale.
Jacob didn’t let the shock set in. No time. I’m sorry. “Ensign Al-shira.” Her attention snapped back to him, and he could see her teetering on the edge of panic. “I need you at your post. Move.”
Al-shira jerked into motion, Academy-instilled instinct taking over. She stood over the console, looking over the instruments with a half-dazed eye. Jacob kept talking, hoping to keep her with him. “I need to get a new communications setup to reflect our losses. Act like Isaac’s the Gunnery Lieutenant, Laurie’s the Countermeasures Lieutenant and Carver’s the Engineering Lieutenant. Support can go through Mensah, whenever he’s not too busy in the medical bay. Can you get me that?”
“Yeah, sure.” Al-shira sat in the seat as if slowly being dragged down by gravity, and tapped a few keys. He looked over to where the other ensign had settled into his seat. “Ensign Singh, what can you tell me about the incoming ships?”
Singh stared at his console in a blind panic. “I, I can’t… Identification just takes a little longer than—”
Jacob shook his head. “Don’t worry about putting names to them, just tell me what we’re fighting here. How bad is it?”
The Sensor ensign snapped out of his paralysis then and tapped a few keys. The projection of the Wolfhound to his right vanished and was replaced by a wireframe hologram of an unfamiliar vessel. It had a central body built like a curved hawk’s beak with two cylindrical attachments out and below the main body. A single railgun turret was grafted onto the underside, while defense turrets were scattered over the hull. “Three of them are corvette size. Each one has an identical layout. I don’t see their DE rig setup from this angle, but odds are that small craft like that are going to be fast and maneuverable.”
The ship vanished as Singh touched more keys. It was replaced by a larger craft, one with two flat wings which curved forward from the central bulb of its body, almost as if they were claws or talons clutching at prey. The bulb in the center was covered with docking pods and grapples, and the entire thing had layers of heavy armor sprinkled with defense turrets. “This ship’s in the center of the formation. It’s larger, about half our size. I make it as an assault transport, meant to carry boarding troops rather than heavy weaponry.”
Jacob glanced back at the Helm projection. The four blips were already in combat range, and as the ships continued to close on them the distance vanished rapidly. “How many troops could that transport hold?”
Singh shrugged. “Hard to say without knowing the work they’ve put into it, but if I had to guess…Maybe three hundred. Four?” He shook his head. “If that thing latches onto us, we’re done.” He looked back at the command station, and Jacob could see the desperation and fear in his eyes clearly.
He nodded. “Then we’ll just have to avoid that possibility. For now mark the closest corvette as target Alpha. The port corvette can be Beta, the starboard one can be Delta, and that frigate class transport can be Epsilon. Al-shira, are the comms up yet?”
“Yeah, they’re up, Ensign.” Her short reply seemed resentful somehow, but Jacob ignored it.
“Can you tell if they’re talking to each other? I know the long range drones are down, but even if we could hear what they are saying it might help.”
Al-shira growled before responding. “I can pick up little pings of information on some of the bands, but they're narrow-focus. They aren’t broadcasting on a standard communication frequency, and it seems to be coming in intervals, so it’s probably automated.” She nodded to herself. “I’d say they’re fleet position reports they can use to coordinate their maneuvers, keep themselves from crashing into each other.”
“Can you mimic one and send it out to them? Make it seem like we're part of the group?”
Al-shira’s mouth worked. “Yes, but then I’d be giving away our position and speed, Ensign. They could target and hit us easily.”
“Just see if you can get them to give us a response. If so, relay the information to the gun crews, and tell them not to use any active targeting at all for the first salvo. That way Sensors can focus on target identification.” Al-shira nodded.
A moment later, information appeared under each of the images of the enemy ships, giving precise speed, direction and mass for each. Jacob felt a hard smile grow on his face, and he gave Al-shira an approving nod, though she didn’t acknowledge it.
“Alright, let me have the communication links, if you have them.”
“Yes, Ensign.”
Jacob blinked at the hostility in her tone. He wanted to respond, but then the communication board on his left burned to life, and he had more important things to worry about. He tapped the first of the links and half-smiled to himself as he heard Laurie’s voice come over the comm.
“This is Ensign Laurie in the Countermeasures control room. My lieutenant is out of action. What are my orders, Commander?” She sounds about as good as I feel. He cleared his voice a bit and tapped a button on the screen to respond.
“Sorry, Laurie, we’re all ensigns at the moment. The commander’s down.” Jacob let a heartbeat pass so she could deal with the shock, then continued, trying to ignore the surprised look the other ensigns gave him. “We have incoming hostiles, three corvettes and a frigate-size transport. I want your point defense turrets checked out and ready to take on shots that come at us from the bow.”
“The bow?” The uncertainty in her voice made Jacob grimace. “We’re not running?”
“We have nowhere to run. They’re faster, and they probably have more boarders than we have crew.” He turned the Wolfhound slowly toward the approaching pirates, steering the ship to close with them gently, slowly. “They don’t know we have the bridge, though, and they probably think we aren’t going to be ready to fight. That should give us at least one good salvo before they know what’s going on.”
“Hull, this is crazy!”
“Laurie, don’t fight me right now. We have enough problems without you adding to them.” Jacob drew in a careful breath. “If you can’t deal with this, turn Countermeasures over to a petty officer and relieve yourself.”
A short silence followed, and Laurie’s voice came back a little harder and more resentful. “Countermeasures stands ready to intercept attacks from the bow. Any other orders, Ensign Hull?”
The cool formality made Jacob wince a little, but he tried to ignore it. “Can you still use the sail-jammers? I want them to hit target Epsilon on my mark.”
“Yes sir. I’ll get Ensign Delarouge on it. Countermeasures out.”
Jacob tapped the next link, hoping the next conversation would go a little bit better than the first one had.
“Ensign Isaac reporting, Gun deck four.” Jacob nodded. He doesn’t sound too shaken at least. “We don’t have our lieutenant to relay central communications. Who do you want guiding us, sir?”
“I think you’ll do, Isaac. Have the other decks reported in?”
“Jacob? What the—nevermind. Yeah, they’re in place, just waiting for me to get mine together. Wha
t are our targets today?”
Jacob studied the screen and thought for a moment. “You’ve got three corvettes and one frigate to deal with. For the first salvo, I want gun decks two and three to hit targets Beta and Delta respectively. Gun decks four and one will both hit Alpha. After a five second burst or so, all batteries will target Epsilon until the ships are past us. Your shots have got to be dead on and need to happen right on my mark. Don’t use active targeting until you can’t avoid it. Okay?”
Isaac’s voice came back a moment later. “Yeah, we’re all set. Five seconds might be a bit much on the first salvo though if we fire again soon after. Can we go for three instead?”
“Fine by me.” Jacob paused. “Isaac, this is live ammo. Make sure the gun crews know that.”
The pause before Isaac answered was almost palpable. “This isn’t a drill, is it?”
“No, Isaac.” Jacob sighed. “Hit 'em hard for me, and make sure everyone waits for my mark or we’ll blow our chance. Bridge out.” He hit the screen with a jab of the finger. He turned his attention back to the communications screen, watching the pirate ships draw closer. He tapped the last link quickly.
“Ensign Carver here. Engineering is awaiting orders sir.” The nervousness in the ensign’s voice was clear, but Jacob didn’t have time to wait for Carver to collect himself. He cleared his throat.
“Carver, we’re about to head into combat. I have orders for you.”
“Hull? What are you doing on the bridge?”
“Nevermind that.” Jacob shook his head and glanced at the display again. The ships almost seemed to loom over the Wolfhound now, their formation closing in like a flight of hawks on a wounded pigeon. “I need you to get the crews ready for battle damage. Make sure everyone’s at their stations and everything’s working.” He paused. “Carver, I need you to keep the rad masts out until just before we fire, then reel them in as quickly as possible.”
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