“Nine hundred thousand kilometers to the edge of the interdiction field,” Zane reported.
“The incoming wave of missiles will impact in ten seconds,” Lee said.
They’d got all the speed they were going to from the engines now. No need to expend any more power on useless thrust.
“Shutdown the engines,” Aaron said. “Re-route power to maneuvering thrusters.”
Flaps wiped his brow. He glanced over his shoulder. Aaron gave him a reassuring nod.
The forward wave of missiles approached. Two hundred in total. Point defense wouldn’t save them from that. Not two hundred missiles at once, closing a target which in turn, was closing on them.
Aaron braced himself on the helm. “Now, Ensign. Ventral thrust, full power!”
Maneuvering thrusters were just that. For reorienting the ship along a new vector. Rotating on its axis. Now, an overpowered burn from those same thrusters pushed them up one thousand kilometers in less than a second.
The incoming missiles never had a chance to correct for the sudden evasive.
The hostile ordnance would soon begin the necessary alterations to thrust and propulsion to reacquire Phoenix. So long as they had fuel, they would pursue.
But before the enemy missile computers could even compute the necessary changes, Phoenix’s own computer executed a timed command to coincide with the evasive maneuver.
The enemy missiles were traveling on a dorsal plane relative to the pursuing vessels. The kinetic barrier discharged a burst of gravitic charges at a pre-calculated angle and exploded, pushing the missiles off course and on a ballistic course towards the pursuing ORA ships.
The resulting gravitic effect seemed to scramble the hostile missiles’ computers. Whereas they should have detonated—because they were now dangerously close to allied targets—they continued.
Two hundred missiles detonated across twenty hostile vessels. The bewildering outcome wrought heavy damage across some of them. The others escaped with minor damage. Unsure of what occurred, they immediately began a hard deceleration.
Phoenix surged past the enemy ships attempting to corral her from the front. As she passed, several parting railgun bursts and havoc heavy missiles crippled three of them and severely damaged the others.
She was beyond the interdiction field. Her bow facing port relative to her vector. Six minutes had seemed like forever.
Aaron slapped Flaps on his shoulder. “Punch it.”
He didn’t have to tell him twice. Flaps, engaged an emergency jump to light-speed.
And Phoenix was away.
Chapter 19 – That Looks Painful
“Pretty sure I felt that hit from the bridge” – Aaron Rayne
Engineering
Phoenix
Aaron stared at a visual feed of the damage in the starboard section.
Where there was once a hull, now opened to space twelve meters in diameter. The surrounding compartments were a mess. Bent and broken bulkheads, scatterings of debris, smashed internal components. That was the hardest hit section.
The sudden image of a giant, wild, indestructible elephant rampaging through the ship formed in his mind.
The residual damage scorched and hammered the adjacent sections. One of which housed a power matrix that controlled the flow of power to starboard ship systems. A jagged piece of bulkhead painfully wedged inside the main assembly.
Max stood next to Aaron.
“That looks painful,” he said.
Aaron gritted his teeth. “Pretty sure I felt that hit from the bridge.”
Aaron and Max were in engineering. Flaps and Lee remained on the bridge. The rest deployed throughout the ship, visually inspecting damaged sections the computer highlighted.
Garrett—as chipper as ever—listed his repair schedule like he was ticking off a grocery list. “—then half a day to clear this section. Meanwhile the fabricators are printing a new unit. That’ll be ready in a day. Another half-day to install the system.”
Fabricators were just a fancy name for twenty-fifth century 3D printers. All industrial manufacturing was carried out by these large machines. The fledgling technology in the twenty-first century used to print pieces of everything from cars to planes and marine vessels. If the raw materials were available, it could be printed. All Fleet ships carried a finite number of resources to build replacement parts, railgun munitions and generally any piece of Fleet equipment.
Phoenix also carried twelve mk-82 repair drones. These heavy-duty drones carried out external repairs along the hull. After the nanites re-sealed and reformed the damage surfaces to a point the mk-82s took over.
Each ship also carried a set of mining drones. If a ship didn’t have the raw materials to create spare parts or whole components, the drones could mine the necessary materials, and the fabricators would process it. The entire engineering deck was devoted to processing and manufacturing.
For larger parts, the fabricators would build them in smaller components, and the repair drones would take them outside the ship. From there the nanites and the repair drones would work in tandem.
Garrett tapped his personnel device as he continued. “All four starboard point defense batteries are wrecked. Some completely blown off. It will take the repair nanites a week to bring the hull to a state of readiness in those areas to receive new batteries. Then we’ve still got this breach here,” he nodded toward the image on the monitor, “and several other spots to shore up.” Garrett looked like he wanted to say more.
Aaron felt deflated. Starships didn’t carry spare point defense batteries. The fabricators could assemble them with the raw material they had aboard, but it would take days. Days they didn’t have. Garrett was still looking at him, like he wasn’t done with the bad news yet. Could this really get any worse? He dreaded the answer.
“What is it, Master Chief?”
“The kinetic barrier is out of commission. The hit we took in the ventral section damaged the interface between the dark-matter reactor and the entire system. The good news is we still have a full complement of gravitic charges which the reactor already prepared, but we won’t be able to charge more. What’s there is what you have left to work with for now.”
Aaron had his fingers crossed hoping this was the worst of it. When Garett looked like he was finally finished, he breathed a sigh of relief. “Very good, Mr. Garrett. Your priority is the power matrix, focus all your efforts there first. After that, start replenishing our railgun munitions. Then, get the fabricators started on some point defense batteries. And then the hull breaches. We’ll use the emergency seals on them for now. We’ll have to improvise without the kinetic barrier.”
The engineer nodded and sauntered off to begin the monumental task ahead. Unfortunately, the ORA wouldn’t wait until they repaired their ship. And the longer they held Endeavor and her crew—there was no way to know what horrors Vee and his crew faced at the hands of the ORA.
***
Aaron took the lift to the bridge. Max was still with him. There’d been no bad news from Rachael or the others inspecting the rest of the ship.
“What are we going to do now? Can we even complete the mission?” Max asked.
“We’ve mainly sustained structural damage. Aside from the power matrix, the ship is fully combat capable.”
“What about what he said about the starboard point defense?”
Aaron cut his eyes at Max. “Aside from the power matrix and the starboard point defense, we’re fine. We’ll get the matrix up before we reach Indri. Yes, I’m worried about the starboard vulnerability without the point defense in place, but it can be mitigated. So long as we aren’t surrounded on all sides again.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ll be more cautious the next time they see this ship.”
“It’s possible. But there’s something about this Outer Rim Alliance that’s not sitting right with me. Who starts a shooting war right off the bat for no reasons—or at least, for no reasons they’ve cared to inform us about
.”
The lift doors parted to the bridge before Max could answer.
Lee was at his station. He turned when the lift doors parted. “Commander.”
“Lieutenant, status please.”
“We’re on our projected course. Gravity wave dispersion functioning. No sign any of the ships we’ve detected at range have changed course to attempt an intercept. There’re three ships on the same course as us from the wormhole. But I don’t think they’ve detected us. It’s more they’ve assumed it’s the first place we might go, or they have something valuable there.”
“No doubt. Tactical status?”
“We’ve got forty havoc missiles left. Eight reloads of tungsten ammunition for the guns. I’d be more comfortable with the maximum twenty. But I understand the fabricators have other priorities. The starboard armor plating is severely compromised. There are minor gaps in some sections, other sections are severely stressed, and of course there’s that new observation port the enemy gave us. The entire starboard quarter is a lost cause for now. I wouldn’t want anyone shining anything hotter than a flashlight on it.”
Forty havoc missiles left. The things were so expensive to produce. Bottlenecked by the fact that dark matter powered the missiles’ propulsion. Aaron would have laughed at the part about the “new observation port” if it hadn’t been his ship.
Thinking about the reloads left for the railguns, he wasn’t surprised they’d fired so much tungsten. A ship firing projectiles couldn’t have infinite amounts of ammo. Where would they put it? Along the corridors and decks?
The munitions stored aboard one ship simply weren’t designed to take on a hostile squadron itself.
Phoenix had fired enough slugs to destroy one ORA ship a hundred times. It’d been necessary to force her attackers to back off. Normally it was a more precise affair. Phoenix was a rabbit which had just run through a field pursued by a pack of wild dogs.
Except this rabbit had razor sharp claws and fangs the size of an otter. Something the ORA wouldn’t soon forget.
“Zane, any progress?” The scientist had been working on ways to detect the antimatter mines.
“I’ve got several working theories, Commander. I don’t want to give you any false hope. But I hope to have more to report in a few hours.”
Aaron nodded and leaned next to Lee. “What have you been able to discern about the enemy vessels, Lieutenant?”
“In my analysis so far, I’ve detected three distinct classes, and something else.” He called up the images and analysis on his console while he explained.
“The ships which pursued us appear to be armed with close range plasma cannons. Which is what they fired at Endeavor and Pilum. Their missiles are standard heavy missiles. Not unlike our old hornet types. I would class these ships as destroyers on the smaller scale. They are quick, though not as quick as us, and decently armed. The ships we charged at, the happy-missile goon-squad—we didn’t record any other ordnance besides missiles from them, so definitely missile cruisers as suspected. The missiles they fired, however, were different from the ones fired by our pursuers. The explosions registered fusion reaction in shaped explosive charges.”
He adjusted the console, and it displayed a different ship schematic. “These ships are frigate sized. Far superior acceleration to the others, again still not as quick as us. But they were able to close to pointblank range on our starboard because of the shallow vector. They were about sixty degrees off our starboard relative on arrival and about two hundred thousand klicks.”
The screen flashed a new image. “There’s a huge space station under construction. We got a basic read on it. It’s sitting about thirty light minutes from the wormhole. Can’t tell you much more about it from the distance we pinged it. The last thing . . . we got a hit on something nearby in deep space. It was traveling at high warp towards the wormhole. The gravity waves are pushing forward at an extreme intensity. Only something huge in mass at high warp could push powerful gravity waves of that magnitude. Far beyond the norm even for our biggest battleship. Initial returns suggest something with a length of three kilometers. Not even sure I want to find out more.”
The screen now displayed a planetary mass.
“I got a sensor return on a small structure orbiting Indri-3. The planet itself is tundra and habitable. Immediately, the computers registered what I was looking for.”
“What is it?”
“Endeavor’s beacon piggybacking on a gravity wave. It seems like Vee left us a bread crumb.”
Indeed.
***
The crew had assembled in the briefing room. Time was short.
Aaron made sure everyone was on the same page regarding the ship’s status and repair efforts. He filled them in on all the new tactical data regarding the enemy ships, the behemoth they detected, the planet, the orbiting space structure, and Endeavor.
“Our primary mission has always been to learn the fate of Endeavor and bring the crew home. Our secondary mission is to gather intel on this Outer Rim Alliance. If they plan to continue waging an undeclared war, whatever we learn while we are out here, could mean the difference between a successful defense of our sector and the alternative. Hopefully, we’ve given them cause to pause, and re-think what it is they hope to accomplish.
“Over extending ourselves is always a risk. As a covert operations crew we were meant for quick operations, get in get out, hit fast, hit hard. But we’ve got to play the hand we’re dealt. Lieutenant Delaine and Reyes will take Reliant and head deeper into the sector. Beginning with an area of high traffic and a colonized planet. She knows her role.
“Sergeant Dawes, his men, and Lieutenant Lee, will deploy aboard Hammerhead with Ensign Miroslav at the helm. They will execute a covert insertion onto Indri-3. Their goal will be to establish whether Endeavor’s crew is there, and if not, determine a possible location the ORA might be keeping them. If the crew is planet-side, Dawes and his team will proceed with an extraction. Once back in orbit, we’ll commandeer Endeavor and ex filtrate the system. The individual teams will hammer out additional strategies. This is more to brief you all on the way forward. Any questions from anyone?”
There were none.
“Dismissed then.”
Chapter 20 – The Man
“Silent treatment? I’ll just nap then” – Avery Alvarez
The air escaped again. Avery had another visitor.
There was a scraping sound which scrawled his skin. Something dragging on the floor or deck. He still didn’t know which.
The noise stopped.
How much time had passed? In this dark place a minute could feel like a day, and a week could sometimes feel like a minute.
Finally, the light flickered.
A man sat staring at him. He didn’t say anything.
His new interrogator’s head was shaved clean. He wore a dark uniform with a strange red symbol above his left breast. A circle with straight lines extending to the center pointed to something resembling a planet.
“Did James figure out where the sun doesn’t shine yet?” Avery really wanted to know.
The man didn’t answer. He sat on a chair he’d apparently dragged into the room and just stared.
“Silent treatment? I’ll just nap then. Nothing else to do.”
Avery closed his eyes.
Moments later he felt something press against his neck. A stinging sensation burned his neck. He still couldn’t so much as flinch in these restraints. Against his will, his eyes reopened. He no longer had control of them. Whatever the silent man hit him with, he couldn’t even shut his eyes now.
The man continued staring. Avery wanted to say something but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
He didn’t know how long the man sat there staring, it could be five minutes, it could be five weeks, he lost all sensation of time.
***
Alpha Centauri
Twenty-five years earlier
Avery Alvarez gave the candidates a final prep.
“Remember, this program has never been about winning. This exercise isn’t about winning. It’s about leadership. How do you get young men and women to follow you? You have to be their beacon. In their eyes you have to be larger than life.”
The candidates enrolled in the command training program assembled on the line for the final event of their training. A triathlon.
The instructors would watch the event from monitors beamed to them by drones following the participants. He’d been assigned to watch Lieutenant Aaron Tyler Rayne, a promising if troubled command candidate.
The triathlon was grueling. It was more a test of will than physical endurance. Without a will, you couldn’t grind your way through the necessary training to compete, or hope to finish it.
First, they’d swim for eight kilometers. Then they would ride antique pedal cycles forty-four kilometers through hazardous terrain and finally finish with a twelve-kilometer run.
The start signal discharged and off they went. Avery moved inside the mobile monitoring post with the other instructors. He followed his candidate closely.
Nearly four hours later, Rayne and his team of six commenced the ride. Their group was in fifth place. They didn’t have the strongest swimmers. They’d have to make up during the ride and the run.
Avery and the other instructors carefully balanced the teams to give them challenges they’d have to overcome. Swimming just didn’t come naturally for some people. It just wasn’t much of a recreational activity like he’d read about in the history books. Another reason they’d decided to include it in this final exercise.
The candidates spent a lot of time learning to swim. No one was born a fish. And swimming wasn’t exactly an everyday activity for people from a diverse set of worlds.
Pedal cycles had once been a form of transport until replaced by automated anti-grav boards which could safely whisk the user anywhere. Again they were perfect for the training. Taking the candidates far outside any comfort zone they’d ever known and forcing them to adapt.
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