Hawk Flight (Flight of the Hawk Book 3)

by Robert Little

  Kana was strapped in to a shock station. It was a unique arrangement that allowed him to move between the secondary power console and three cabinets that contained additional controls.

  The fleet had been locked for hours in a major engagement with the Bugs. Captain Padilla had reported the destruction of the fifth and last Bug mother ship, but while the federal fleet had split into multiple formations to take the Bug fleet from several directions, some of that same enemy fleet had previously separated to attack a location in space that up until recently had been occupied by the human craft.

  They had been shadowing the fifth Bug fleet for weeks, and under the leadership of Captain Speer, the Hawk crews had become exhausted with a nearly constant tempo of sorties. As a result, they’d begun to experience problems with both the craft and their crews.

  Fortunately, Admiral Lee arrived, bringing with him the Fleet Carrier Brezhnev, some additional Kestrels and almost even better, Fast Fleet Cargo ships, full of spares and fuel.

  The admiral immediately assumed command of the newly enlarged fleet, and his first order of business was to move well away from the Bugs, who for nearly a year had been coasting along at a fairly large percentage of the speed of light, heading almost directly toward a solar system that happened to possess a planet that might just be their goal.

  That move possibly saved the life of thousands of personnel, for the Bugs had somehow detected their presence and had managed to send a formidable array of fighters and destroyers to attack them.

  If they could have closed to missile range, they would have been able to launch a massive missile attack, and some of those deadly weapons would have gotten through.

  As it was, about the time that the Federal missiles slashed through desperate defenses and destroyed the immense colony ship, the returning force was located, and what had started out as a very well-planned and coordinated attack began to fall apart.

  Even as the mother ship was turning into an expanding ball of gas, the remaining destroyers, battle cruisers and fighters that had been shielding it began moving, most of them toward the Grant and the Lee, who suddenly found themselves between two very large opposing forces. The second force moved to attack the Brezhnev, the closest Federal carrier.

  They had standing orders not to jump, and in any event, their assigned task was the destruction of all of the Bug capital ships. They knew that any remaining fighters were doomed to eventually run out of fuel and air, but those Bug pilots also knew that and seemed determined to spend their final moments in an attempt to destroy the Federal forces.

  As the two ships raced back toward the Brezhnev and her large complement of fighters, they sent off the last of their heavy missiles and prepared for the first group of Bug fighters to come within light missile range.

  Kana’s battle station had largely been his to choose. He’d decided that the best fit for his skills was the power room. He monitored the equipment that powered the energy weapons and main engines.

  In addition, he was in charge of the Engine Room damage control team.

  Every few minutes Captain Padilla would personally comm the ship and talk to the crew. It would have been a relatively easy task to simply patch some of the immense amount of battle data throughout the ship, but like virtually every other ship captain in the fleet, he’d decided that it would be more distracting than informative.

  At one point Captain Padilla commed Kana, “Chief, the Lee has lost her targeting systems. We’re going to pull as close as possible to her and assume control of her energy weapons. We’ve got a large flight of incoming missiles and I’d like you to monitor the transfer of control.” Kana acknowledged.

  On his monitor he watched as the Lee passed a complex set of codes to the Grant, allowing her to take control of the Lee’s energy mounts. The ship’s computers computed the offset and resumed discharging intense bolts of coherent light at the fast-approaching missiles. Boils of ugly explosions crept up their stern as the energy weapons repeatedly struck home, either causing a large chemical explosion or an enormous nuclear detonation.

  As the missiles slashed under seventy thousand kilometers, the amount of energy transfer went up along with the number of missiles destroyed.

  In the next three minutes the two ships hit an amazing one hundred missiles, leaving fifty-three, now down to forty thousand kilometers.

  Kana heard the captain of the Lee report that the Brezhnev had just destroyed the last three Bug fighters that had attempted to kamikaze it, losing one Federal fighter.

  Thirty missiles remained at twenty thousand kilometers, less than thirty seconds away from impact. Kana reported, “Sir, our targeting system algorithms are controlling the Lee’s weapons at ninety-five percent efficiency, and getting better as the range closes.”

  Without any announcement the Grant moved in front of the Lee, shielding her from the fast approaching missiles. Moments later the ship captain announced, “Brace for impact.” Simultaneously, nonessential systems all over the ship began shutting down.

  All but two missiles were destroyed by energy weapons. One detonated a tiny fraction of a second too early, doing no damage. The last missile turned into a miniature sun, just three kilometers off the Grant’s port quarter.

  The Grant staggered from the massive shock wave. Virtually every system on the ship went off line before emergency lighting came back up.

  Dust particles floated in the dim lighting, as did everything else, as the gravity system was also down. Kana could hear a combination of swearing and screaming coming from some of the other personnel, both reactions undoubtedly caused by injuries.

  Kana’s harness prevented him from getting thrown into a bulkhead, but he was still stunned. As the lighting came back up he looked around. His suit was sealed, but the ship retained hull integrity. He pulled himself back to the console and verified that the mag bottles were completely offline and weren’t running away. He shook his head, thinking that the ship was an absolute tank.

  He swam over to the main console, finding that the lieutenant in charge hadn’t been strapped in to his chair. His neck was broken and there was a huge smear of blood on the console.

  Kana tried resetting the system, but while the new power systems had been well designed, the original ship power controls hadn’t been able to contain the huge power surges. The breakers were fried.

  The main console was lit up with an amazing array of emergency alerts. He knew that there were going to be many injuries and deaths on the ship, but his first task was to restore power. The ships that fired those missiles were still approaching, along with a large number of fighters. Despite hearing calls for help, he focused on the ship.

  He opened a locker and retrieved four large blocks. He carefully slid them into a sack, draped it around his neck and pushed off, heading for a small console on the other side of the bulkhead from the main console.

  He caught a handhold and while bracing himself with one hand and both feet, opened up a large cabinet. Dim lighting came up, allowing him to identify the two main breakers. He keyed in a code, releasing them, pulled them out of their sockets, nudged them out of the cabinet, allowing them to drift away, and awkwardly retrieved the first replacement. He slid it in, removed the second and replaced it. He sealed the blocks, closed the cabinet, and using handholds moved back around to the other side of the bulkhead.

  The dead officer was floating up off the floor, and there were blobs of blood drifting in the air.

  He checked the board and verified that the gravity system was now getting power, but still offline.

  With that out of the way, he began comming his people. One PowTech was dead, two injured, but the others were able to function. He assigned tasks to everyone, and within moments environmental came back up while one technician worked on radar.

  He commed the bridge, “Sir, it’s going to take us a little time to get all our circuits back up. Our mag bottles seem to be in good shape. I know that to be true because we’re still alive. I’ve got one
crew working on getting our engines back up, and another on our energy weapons. I’ve got one Etech working on getting our radar and guidance systems back up. We’ll probably have to manually replace most of the circuit breakers, so it’ll take perhaps ten to fifteen minutes to get us some juice.”

  Captain Padilla asked about the gravity system and Kana said, “Sir, we’re ready to power up the system.” The captain reminded him to do it slowly.

  A few minutes later the captain commed him, “Chief Kana, just as suspected we’ve got some bug fighters inbound. Can you estimate how long it will take to restore power to our engines?” Kana said, “We’re replacing those breakers as fast as possible sir. We’ve got a lot of injuries down here and I don’t have as many personnel as I’d like. Can you send some down to us?”

  Captain Padilla said, “Sorry chief. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Just a minute later the captain commed him again, “Kana, you’re getting some help in just a few moments. Let me know if there is anything we can do from up here.” Kana said, “Sir, we’re not going to have power to navigation for a bit, so we’ll need some help from the Lee, but we should have power to the engines in ten minutes.” Captain Padilla said, “Thank you chief.”

  His people were well trained but he had a serious problem. So many breakers had been fried that they didn’t have enough spares. Kana knew that the first priority was the engines – they still had twelve powerful destroyers plus a large number of enemy fighters to contend with.

  Chief Kana called the bridge, “Sir, we’ve restored power to the engines and repaired the final issue with internal gravity. I’m going to first restore that system and then slowly power up the main engines. I’ll have to perform that task from here as the control runs to the bridge are still out. We will have only partial power available. Nav has a long way to go – apparently some of the junction boxes got badly fused when we got hit. Weapons should be up momentarily, but it will take us a little longer to get radar back up. Five minutes more, possibly ten and we’ll be able to defend ourselves.”

  As he talked, the last G warning disappeared from the console and he brought the gravity system online. That alone would make it easier for everyone.

  Kana was able to restore the original power system and began adding power to the engines. He called the captain and said, ‘We’ve still got some problems down here, but I think I can give you eight G’s, maybe a little more. I’ll have to control the engines from here. We’ll know in a moment sir.”

  He had enough spares to bring a fraction of the new mag bottles online. Actually, he had full power, but he was only able to get a portion of it to his engines and the weapons.

  As soon as the ship began to accelerate, the captain commed him with course corrections. Kana performed the changes and watched as the ship edged up to nine G’s.

  Over the next twenty minutes Kana’s people restored radar and weapons. He knew that enemy fighters were now very close, but the captain hadn’t been providing his usual updates.

  Kana made a private comm call and learned that the bridge damage control crew had been having difficulties getting external comms back up. He also learned that the captain had a broken arm but was still on the bridge.

  Moments late the captain made a general comm and said, “This is your captain. As you probably know by now we destroyed all but two of the inbound missiles. One detonated at approximately sixteen kilometers, too far out to do much damage, but the second one went off very close, three kilometers or less, causing all the damage you are presently trying to fix. We are now back under way, heading towards the Brezhnev, who is sending some help our way. We have about fifty fighters closing on us and they will be within energy range prior to the arrival of help. We have all our energy weapons back on line, and the Lee is undamaged, sitting right next to us, so we’re in pretty good shape. I’m sorry to report that we have four dead, and approximately thirty injured. I’d like all energy weapons personnel to return to their battle stations ASAP and begin running diagnostics, as we still have some fighting ahead of us. Report any problems to your weapons officer. I would like the missile techs to report to the galley and prepare some sandwiches for the crew, although you’ll have to eat at your stations. That’s all for now.”

  Captain Padilla commed Kana, “Chief, we have power to navigation but the system is still off-line. Can you make that a priority?” Kana said, “Yes sir. At present, we are only able to transfer about forty percent of rated power to weapons. We’re still working on that, but we won’t be able to return full power to either drive or weapons until we can borrow some spares from the Lee.”

  If he used the remaining spare breakers to restore full weapons power, he wouldn’t be able to send power to the drive. Either way, they had problems.

  In a way, the continuing emergency was a Godsend – he’d been through this scenario once before, and it was bringing back some suppressed memories. At least all the injured had been moved to the sickbay and mess deck – he no longer had to ignore the wounded.

  He put two techs to work running diagnostics on the damaged breakers. This had been one of the areas where the Chamberlain library had been a big help, and they began reprogramming the blocks with software to replace the original hardwired programming. In some cases, the blocks were complete write-offs, but some of them could be reprogrammed and used in non-critical areas, freeing that breaker for the engine or weapons systems.

  The design of this ship was very similar to the Hawk, not a suprise since the same company built both. Part of reason for it’s large cost had to do with components like those circuit breakers. They were unique to the Dresden, and any single block could be used in any particular circuit, greatly easing the supply chain headaches, but even more importantly, it meant that during an emergency the crew didn’t have to worry about part numbers, they could just throw a new block into the slot.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough.

  The captain sent a repair crew forward to the missile tubes. Two were jammed, and they still had seven light missiles.

  Kana commed the bridge, “Sir, at present, we can fire one energy weapon every two to three seconds. Navigation is not responding and I believe the problem is somewhere between the bridge and the radar emitters, but I don’t have anyone I can send up to help you.”

  The captain ordered, “Provide the Lee with the codes so she can take over our navigation.”

  One of Kana’s ComTech’s reported, “Chief, we’ve isolated the comm system problems, and in about...five seconds we’ll restore all the remaining communication systems.

  His two PowTechs rebuilt five more cubes and Kana commed the bridge, once again getting the captain, “Sir, we now have seventy percent power.” The captain said, “Good timing, the enemy fighters are now in missile range. Kana asked, “Sir how many?” He said, “Fifty-two.”

  That, plus the twelve destroyers was a lot for just two small Dresdens to handle.

  The ship began lasing the approaching fighters while they were still technically out of range. Kana figured the captain didn’t care if the fighter was only damaged.

  Captain Padilla reported, “We’ve killed one fighter at a distance of seventy thousand kilometers, the Lee has hit eleven, with forty to go.”

  The Grant’s accuracy improved as the fighters closed, but by thirty thousand, there were still twenty-two left, and their own weapons were now hitting both Dresdens.

  As the ship swung back and forth to unmask its energy mounts a Bug fighter hit the Grant from a distance of ten thousand kilometers. An environmental alarm shrilled. Kana looked at his board, but the compartment that had just been opened to space had been unoccupied.

  Moments later the ship’s power system fluctuated as a laser hit an energy mount, destroying it and shorting out two others, causing light to moderate burns to ten more personnel.

  The captain commed, “Crew, we’ve destroyed the last enemy fighter. We’ve lost three energy mounts but the ship is still operatio
nal and underway to get within the protection of Brezhnev’s fighters. We’ve got twelve destroyers still to contend with, and they have a fairly large overtake velocity. In addition to the twelve attacking the Grant and Lee, three other destroyers are approaching the Brezhnev. We’re getting some fighter support, but for a limited amount of time we will have to defend ourselves.”

  Kana sent two people forward to see if they could bring the second and third energy mounts back online. He suspected the problem would be tied to more circuit breaker issues. He’d already begun a “Things To Do” List, including looking into enlarging the capacity of the ship’s basic power transmission system; he also wanted to double the number of spares. In a battle the ship might not have enough time to change out fried components, but he thought it preferable to having the time but not the parts.

  Kana’s board lit up with the information that three of the twelve enemy ships carried missiles. Twenty were now powering toward them.

  At one hundred thousand kilometers, the two battered Dresdens began weaving back and forth again, allowing them to fire both banks of energy weapons.