Hawk Flight (Flight of the Hawk Book 3)

by Robert Little

  He sat down at the console, activated the search function and asked it how to access the bridge controls. He scrolled through the information and punched in a string of commands, swore virulently, typed in another, very long string, and immediately hit the “Activate” logo. The ship shivered, his screen went blank and came back up. He commed the missile room and asked, “Can you tell me where we are?” She said, “We’re getting commed by the Bon Homme Richard.”

  He smiled grimly, “I jumped us back to our previous coordinates. Can you speak to them?” She said, “Yes.” He told her, “Tell them we were hit by a missile and had to jump to avoid getting destroyed. Our systems are down and we require assistance.”

  She asked, “What about the captain?” He quietly told her, “I haven’t been able to establish contact with anyone else on the ship. As soon as I’ve ensured that the power room is stable, I’ll attempt to go forward.”

  She said, “I can patch the Bonnie Dick through to you, is that all right?” He assured her it was and a moment later he was talking to the captain of the carrier. He succinctly explained, “We jumped into the middle of a running battle, and we got hit, or nearly so, by a heavy missile. The Vincennes was destroyed some time ago, but the Gresham, Tillotson and Fisk were attacking the enemy just before we were hit. One enemy destroyer has been killed. I have been unable to communicate with the bridge, so I don’t know the extent of our injuries or damage. I’ve shut down the port bottle, but we still have power and may have drive, but without communications with the bridge, I can’t tell you anything more.”

  He was told, “We’re sending two shuttles, should be roughly thirty minutes. Can you tell me about injuries?” Kana said, “Not yet. As soon as I’m free, I’ll attempt to get up to the bridge.”

  The captain asked, “Who executed the jump?” Kana said, “Sir, the missile room told me that we had seventeen missiles targeting us. I engaged the jump from the power room. I didn’t have time to program anything, so I simply set it up to return us to our previous position.”

  The captain snorted, “I didn’t know that could be done. Well, see to your crew, Comm me as soon as you find out anything. Um, who am I speaking to?” Kana told him, “PowPro Second Class Kana sir.”

  After a significant pause, the captain slowly asked, “You are a second class? Where is your power room officer?” Kana said, “Sir, he’s alive, but unconscious. I haven’t had any time to see to the injured.”

  The distant officer quietly told him, “Actually, you have. My commendations, and just as soon as you know something, please comm me.”

  Kana rechecked his console, ensured that the ship wasn’t going to explode, and began moving forward. He made it to within two bulkheads of the bridge before discovering telltales warning that the other side of the hatch was open to vacuum.

  He hoped everyone had sealed their suits.

  Most of the crew seemed to be alive and mobile, but the explosion had not only holed the ship, the violent shock caused a large number of broken bones, concussions and in several cases, broken necks.

  As soon as he was confident that the ship’s crew was beginning the task of moving the injured to the sick bay, he returned to the power room and checked again to ensure that the system was secure. Since the jump system had worked, he began the process of charging up its’ capacitors. He figured that the ability to jump had saved the ship once, it might be needed again.

  He felt a gentle shudder as the first shuttle made physical contact with the ship. He had already ensured that the shuttle bay door was able to open, and after warning the crew – he’d discovered how to make general comms – he’d evacuated the large space ahead of the shuttle’s arrival.

  Minutes later, a full lieutenant entered the power room. Kana had fully charged the jump system and was in the process of recharging the weapons capacitors.

  He saluted the officer, who asked for a report. He replied, “Sir, so far, we have twenty-two dead, forty-nine injured, ranging from mild sprains to severe concussions and broken bones. Of those, seventeen are mobile and able to function. Forward of bulkhead Seventeen, the ship is airless and we have not been able to enter the bridge or officer country. I’ve got power, the jump system is charged, and I’m recharging the energy systems. I’ve shut down the port bottle, but I now know that it will be a matter of just a few minutes to restore that as well, giving us full power.”

  The officer reached out and shook his hand, “Well done Kana, well done. We did a visual inspection before docking. The bow of the ship is caved in. As a guess, the missile detonated prematurely. We’re going to attempt to enter the forward spaces, but first I need to speak to my captain. The fact that the Défiance has power means we might be able to jump you back toward Nasser, where we can get a tow into one of the yards. Let me speak to my captain, and then I want you to show me exactly what you did. Frankly, I have never heard of anyone running the ship from the power room console.”

  He walked off a pace and passed on the information Kana gave him, and a moment later turned back and brusquely said, “Please show me what you did. We need to be certain that we can program the system to the proper coordinates.”

  Kana asked, “Sir, last I saw, the Fisk, Tillotson and the Gresham were attacking five second gen destroyers and the heavy destroyer. Are we going to be able to assist them?”

  The lieutenant smiled, “We expect to restore full power to the Bonnie Dick within the next few minutes. Right now, our fighters are docking and we will be departing within the half hour. That is also why we need to get the Défiance out of here. We ran into a large pack of armed shuttles and we believe some are still skulking in the planet’s ring system.”

  Over the next few minutes Kana walked the officer through the steps he’d taken, and demonstrated that as long as he had the proper coordinates, he could program the ship to jump. The officer simply shook his head, “You are not supposed to be able to do that from the power room unless the changes are activated from the bridge.”

  Kana shrugged, “Sir, I’ve spent the better part of a year studying this system, and…there are ways to trick the system.”

  The officer held up his hand and listened to a private comm, and said, “Here are the coordinates.” He repeated three strings of numbers and Kana punched them into the console, then repeated them back and waited while the officer verified that what Kana entered was correct.

  He still didn’t know the name of the man he was dealing with – his jump suit obscured his name tag – but he seemed to be highly competent, and turned back to Kana, “Those coordinates are good for the next fifteen minutes, just about long enough for us to finish getting your injured off the ship and undock. I’ll remain behind – you don’t seem to have one single officer who is capable of assuming command.”

  He asked Kana to show him the department, and he quickly took him through the bottle room, capacitor room and the small space holding the notorious cabinet that shuttled power throughout the ship. He seemed to know a lot about destroyers, because he specifically asked, “Kana, how is it that your cabinet survived? This has been the weak link of this series since…well, long before I was born.”

  Kana nodded, “Yes sir. We made a few changes to the controls. In the event that the cabinet senses an impending overload, it freezes the power settings and prevents the control circuits from burning out, taking with them the actual power circuits, while allowing for manual adjustments. As soon as power levels drop back down, it resumes automatic functioning. The modifications have been authorized and in fact the Fisk and Tillotson both adopted those changes.”

  The officer glanced at the bulkhead chrono and asked, “Who is responsible for this?” Kana flushed, “I am sir.”

  The officer froze, listened and said, “Both shuttles are clear. Make a general comm and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Ten minutes later the battered destroyer jumped to the region of Nasser. It took no more than five minutes for a very nervous fighter pilot to comm the ship
, “Unknown destroyer, this is the Federal Navy: initiate your IFF and shut down your drive system.”

  In the clear, Kana’s officer replied, “Lieutenant Garcia speaking, of the Bon Homme Richard. This is the Federal Destroyer Défiance. It has been severely damaged by enemy fire. We are declaring an emergency and request a tow into Nasser3. At present, the Fisk, Tillotson and Gresham are engaging six enemy destroyers. The Vincennes has been destroyed, along with one enemy. The Bon Homme Richard is preparing to jump and engage the enemy ships.”

  The fighter pilot wasn’t willing to take someone’s verbal statement, and the lieutenant simply said, “I understand. We don’t have to shut down our drive, since at present we don’t have one. The ship is also without one single functioning officer, which explains my presence. You are cleared to make a visual inspection of our ship, but while that is taking place, I request that you send for a tow – this ship is seriously damaged and we have twenty-seven dead and forty injured on board – the Bon Homme Richard took off the most seriously injured. Please expedite.”

  Since the IFF transmitter was located in the same section of the ship that was damaged, it took an hour for the very nervous federal fighters to identify the ship, and six additional hours for two tugs to arrive. The seeming paranoia was explained as soon as the tugs showed up. They reported that there had been numerous acts of sabotage throughout the system, and the three large naval orbital installations had struggled just to survive.

  During that time Kana was able to locate a fused junction box. Ten minutes later he restored power to the drive system. Lieutenant Garcia spoke to the tug operator, and decided that the trip would be much faster if the Défiance used its’ own drive system, utilizing the tug for navigation.

  Kana was able to cobble together a system utilizing the missile room’s radar to provide them with rudimentary sensor data on their position, and after demonstrating that it would work, Lieutenant Garcia simply laughed, “Let’s try it. Four G’s.”

  That happened to be the maximum sustained acceleration the tugs were able to achieve, and three G’s better than the acceleration they could provide towing the Défiance.

  Chapter 27

  Lieutenant Shin Ho Lee, the Federal Destroyer Fisk

  The three destroyers were now deep within heavy missile range, and had launched eight flights of missiles, to only two flights from the six enemy ships.

  He’d groaned in anguish as the Défiance was hit by the last missile from that flight. Much to his astonishment, before the next flight of missiles hit it, the ship jumped. He was overjoyed – the ship was still alive.

  Meanwhile, ninety-six heavy missiles were streaking toward the six enemy ships. This time around, they were targeting the elderly second gen ships. Captain Chavez had concluded, “If we can kill off enough of those destroyers, the heavy destroyer will break off the attack. It will also even the numerical odds, which is the same as giving us the advantage.”

  As their heavy missiles entered light missile range, the six ships began launching counter missiles, but once again, their response was ragged, and one of the ships actually launched four heavy missiles. Shin Ho assumed they had them in the queue and simply fired them off rather than try to change them out.

  The three Federal destroyers killed both flights of enemy missiles well before they represented any danger, and Shin Ho reported, “Sir, our missiles defenses are improving, but it appears that the enemy is experiencing difficulties.”

  Captain Chavez quietly asked, “Analysis?” Shin Ho said, “A combination of very old ships, poor maintenance and poor or limited crew training.” His captain nodded, “Recommendation?” Shin Ho took a thoughtful breath, “Continue to target the old ships; remain at least eight hundred thousand kilometers distance. We are running low on heavy missiles so we need to be able to retreat back out of range. As soon as we can verify that the Vickie’s fighters are on station, we need to resupply. At least one ship, whether a destroyer, fighter or scout needs to remain within visual range of that heavy destroyer.”

  Captain Chavez nodded, “Concur. I’m going to roll the dice on this run. We’ll need to reserve…eight heavy missiles and say twenty-four light. Plot a course that allows us to expend all the rest against the second gen ships. UC-6 seems to be the best handled of the lot, so let’s target her. Pass my instructions on to the Tillotson and Gresham.”

  The enemy ships launched repeated flights of light missiles and fired energy weapons at the incoming Federal missiles, trailing a line of explosions that walked up to and blotted out from existence two more enemy ships, leaving three second gen and the one new heavy destroyer.

  Fifteen minutes later the three Federal destroyers fired their final available missiles and soared away from the still lethargic enemy ships.

  The return fire was sporadic and one ship ceased launching missiles altogether, indicating either that it was empty, had targeting and acquisition problems or a mechanical issue. Shin Ho didn’t care what it was, as long as it meant it couldn’t kill him.

  The Bon Homme Richard appeared on radar. It had jumped into a position just outside the gravity limit, and five million kilometers inside the three Federal destroyers.

  Captain Chavez commed the carrier and said, “We’ve now destroyed three of the six second gen enemy destroyers, and we’ve still got nearly one hundred missiles targeting the remaining three. We have shot ourselves dry and request replenishment.”

  The captain of the Bonnie Dick answered, “Good shooting. Request that you remain in contact with the enemy until my fighters can take over. At that time we’ll arrange to refill your magazines. Were you able to pick up any survivors from the Vincennes?”

  Captain Chavez replied, “No sir. She jumped into close proximity of the enemy and we were neither able to support her nor pick up survivors.” What both men knew, and neither was willing to openly say, was that had there been survivors, they would have already died from loss of oxygen.

  The three Federal ships had by now built up a high velocity, relative to the four enemies, which were still slowly moving toward Nasser.

  Captain Chavez ordered their drives shut down, making it more difficult to track them, but mainly to extend contact.

  The targeted enemy destroyer was hit by three missiles and disappeared in an immense explosion.

  Over the next two hours the Bon Homme Richard sent flights of fighters forward to interpose themselves between it and the slowly moving enemy. Due to extensive damage to three launch bays – the one where the explosion took place plus the two adjacent - it was taking far longer than normal to launch fighters.

  Captain Chavez sat on the bridge, eating a hastily prepared meal. He had allowed some of the crew to leave their stations to eat, and over the course of two hours the entire crew got a short break.

  Finally, after nearly seventy hours of continuous sustained action, the three destroyers were relieved. There were now forty-two fighters on station, and they would remain until the three destroyers were able to rearm and return, a matter of possibly twenty hours.

  As it was, the fighters were enough of a deterrent to keep the three ships at bay, but probably not strong enough to defeat them. In fact, if they did attack, they would have to close to within one hundred thousand kilometers, exposing themselves to sustained heavy missile attacks before the survivors would be able to launch. The potential consequences of failure meant that everyone was being cautious.

  Over the next ten hours fighters from the Vickie began showing up, swelling the fighter ranks to over one hundred. Since some of the Bonnie Dick fighters had by then been on station for so long that they were close to bingo fuel, they still hesitated to attack., instead, allowing some of the crews to cycle back through their carrier for a little rest.

  They kept the new fighters well back and hoped the enemy would not be able to discern the additional numbers.

  For the first time, the heavy destroyer showed some initiative and began accelerating away from the planet and its’ d
efenders. The two older destroyers followed, but a gap began to open up. The Bon Homme Richard fighters were ordered to attack the older ships and began to close the gap.

  Thirty minutes later the heavy destroyer jumped out, followed by her escorts.

  Typically, when entering a system, a ship would jump to a point just outside the system periphery. After recharging and calibrating its’ sensors, it would then make a much longer intrasystem jump.

  Coming into a system, ships would jump to the periphery and while the jump system recharged, it would locate the system’s sun and planets, enabling it to make a jump into the system. A system was unimaginably immense, and by comparison planets very, very small. Space-going ships had very good databases of all inhabited systems as well as some that were devoid of human settlements, meaning that as long as the ship’s clocks were able to accurately compensate for time dilation, the effects of jumps and other, more subtle actions that tended to confuse the ship’s astrogation system, it was reasonably easy for a ship to determine where everything was.

  The Bon Homme Richard captain ordered the Fisk and Tillotson to jump to the periphery in an attempt to determine if the enemy left the system or was still somewhere inside.