"Mass driver! Shit. I want all available power converted to the upper level SIFs now!" the CO shouted. "Engine room!"
The goddamned Seppy bastards are adept; I'll say that about them.
Yes sir. Teleporters, mass drivers. What next? Timmy replied.
"Eng here, sir."
"Get me more power to the upper-level SIFs, now!"
"Working it, sir. We've got some loose nuts and bolts rattling around down here. Whatever hit us seems to have been aimed at Engineering. Fireman's Apprentice Ranes, lock that shit down there now! Sorry, sir. We're working it as fast as—"
"Just get me that power to the SIFs." Captain Jefferson cut the channel before the Eng could respond.
"CO, CDC!"
"Go, CDC."
"Sir, we've got a track on the impact. It's coming from the moon planetoid, sir."
"STO concurs with that track, CO!" Freeman agreed. His calculations had just completed and were telling him the same thing. A petty man might have been upset that the CDC had beaten him to the discovery by a millisecond, but Freeman was more concerned with not getting killed. Besides, it was always better to have two separate studies lead to the same conclusion.
"Roger that, CDC." Jefferson expanded his battleview out to the little planetoid above the facility and overlaid the track data sent up from the Combat Direction Center. The bright red line track went in a straight path from the hull of the ship right into the side of a jagged crater in the upper right-hand quadrant of the face of the pale gray planetoid.
"Gunnery Officer Rice! Target that spot and start pouring the DEGs there!"
"Aye sir!"
"Why'd they stop firing again? Anyone?"
"They shot twice, then paused, and then shot twice again," the STO added. "Hmmm . . ."
"Got any other useful analysis there, STO?" the XO said gruffly. "They shot twice, then waited, how long? And then they shot twice again."
"Let's see, there was thirty-one seconds almost precisely between shots within each of the two volleys so far," the STO said, answering the XO's challenge.
"Maybe they only have a double barrel, sir," the COB said. "I mean it follows with the STO's assessment."
"If that's the case, let's hope it takes a lot longer goddamned time to reload this go around," the CO replied. "Start a clock, STO. When do we expect the next hit?"
"On it, sir." Commander Freeman tapped away at his console again and conferred with his AIC. "There have been three minutes and fifty-seven seconds between volleys. Precisely, each time, so that implies a recharging, not a reloading process. That is about forty-two seconds frommmmm, now. Mark ticker! Clock is now transmitting to all the senior staff DTMs." His AIC synchronized the clock to the data to within a millisecond.
"Like I didn't have enough in there already." The XO grinned at the STO. A countdown started in the upper right-hand quadrant of his DTM in bright red numbers. The clock overlaid the several layers of DTM data continuously streaming through EndRun's mind. He acknowledged the countdown and went back to his previous display.
"Our casualty rates are getting worse by the second, CO," the air boss said.
"Ground boss still concurs, sir," Army Lieutenant Colonel James Brantley added.
"CO, we've got system failures across the boards." Colonel Chekov scanned through his DTM on the mission status to discern how this new threat was going to impact the second run of troop deployments. "And as the air boss and ground boss have mentioned, the clock says it's time for run two, sir. We better make it while the cats are still functioning."
"Hold a minute, XO. We need to take out that gun first. Gunnery Officer Rice, status?"
"We're pumping energy into the spot, sir, but the data is not that accurate. We might be hitting them, or we might just be hitting an empty crater hundreds of meters away from it," the lieutenant replied. "They're a long way off, sir."
"Keep firing on a standard dither pattern until you hit pay dirt. You see smoke; keep hitting that spot." He thought briefly about missiles, but at that distance, they would be sitting ducks for AA. The missiles only traveled about a tenth of light speed and would likely get shot down long before they got there. DEGs were the only choice for that range, even if they were too precise to take out such an ambiguously located target.
"Aye."
"Okay, XO. Let's set up for the second run. Nav, give me as random a damned path as you can. Let's all pray that goddamned mass drivers can't track on a rapidly moving target."
"All sorties and drop tubes, prepare for a second deployment run through the engagement zone," the air boss ordered over the air wing net.
"AEMs, AAI, and drop tank squads, prepare for ground deployment," the ground boss ordered.
The Sienna Madira had passed over the teleporter facility planetoids at a high rate of relative speed, deploying hovertanks, AEMs, and fighter support, while splattering the facility with directed energy blasts and cannon fire. In order for the ship not to be a sitting duck and to pull the AA fire and SAMs with it, the ship continued past the engagement zone and then out of range. Then, according to the battle plan, the supercarrier would make a second pass to deploy an overwhelming number of forces. The first deployment was a smaller portion of the overall blue force number. Using a small force at first was a standard tactic used when intelligence on an enemy force was sketchy at best. The first attack was used to draw out the enemy forces and get a better assessment of what they had. Then the supercarrier would make its second pass, dumping out the full contingent of its fighting force. The tactic had been used for centuries. The CO, being a student of twentieth-century ancient warfare, had taken this play from an ancient battle in the South Pacific over an island known as Iwo Jima.
The waiting was over, and it was time for the second pass. So far, the plans had been going mostly according to the simulations, except for the fact that there were about thirty percent more enemy fighters—and there was the other thing about the enemy's secret weapon. The sims had not accounted for their being a gigantic mass driver on the little moon.
Jesus Christ! A mass driver. How in hell did intel miss that? The clock in his head counted down to ten seconds.
Good question, sir, Uncle Timmy replied, just as perplexed as the CO was.
Sound the warning, Timmy.
Aye, sir.
"All hands, all hands! Brace for impact! Multiple hull breaches. Emergency crews standby! Expect two hits thirty-one seconds apart. Repeat, two hits in five, four, three, two, one."
The ship rang and screeched again and shook hard enough that the CO had internal bruising from his seat belt. The inertial dampening fields throughout the ship were taxed to the limit, and in several cases on the middle decks, the fields gave out, leaving hundreds of sailors suspended in microgravity for a few seconds. Jefferson's DTM buzzed massive damage and hull breaches. The Madira listed sideways, and the gravity generators wavered slightly, sending a wave of microgravity across the ship. A wave of nausea likely followed right behind the microgravity for most.
"Shit, they've most certainly reloaded. Right on schedule, STO."
"Captain, we've got SIF generator failures on multiple decks. Coolant system is overwhelmed and ruptured on multiple decks. Hull breaches reported," the XO exclaimed. "It must be a double barrel, sir! Good work, STO."
Timmy, sound a brace for impact! Captain Jefferson dug his fingernails into the armrests of his chair and watched the seconds tick down in his mindview.
Aye, sir.
"All hands, all hands! Brace for impact! Multiple hull breaches. Emergency crews standby! Second hit imminent in five, four, three, two, one . . . ."
"Rice! Knock that goddamned thing out!"
"This is so gonna suck, sir," the COB slammed his magnetic coffee mug into its holder, gripped his chair, and then pushed his feet against the underside of the station for extra support.
The second shot of the mass driver pounded right on top of the previous spots. The severely sublight evasive maneuvers were of littl
e effect to an object traveling twenty-five percent photon speed. The projectile poked through the nanocarbon composite metal hull, vaporizing two decks before it completely disintegrated with the violence of turning several tons of slag metal to vapor instantaneously. Four decks deeper, the rupture stopped. Unfortunately, that deck was where the all-important space-time dragging sublight propulsion system was.
The power system to the sublight engines exploded like a mini- nuke, destroying decks all around it in every direction for at least thirty meters. A violent orange fireball swept across the decks, hot enough to turn solid metal to molten lava. Hundreds of sailors were vaporized almost instantly, and hundreds more were dumped into space. Fortunately, the vacuum of space extinguished the fireball almost as rapidly as it formed, leaving a gaping hole in the back of the now listing and propulsionless supercarrier.
"Sublight propulsion system is gone, CO!" Larry shouted. "They knew right where to hit us too! Jaunt drive took serious damage."
"Auxiliary propulsion?" the CO asked.
"Not sure, sir. The flow loops for the power were so disrupted, who knows," the STO shrugged.
"Engine room! When will I get my propulsion back?"
"Working it, sir. We've got massive casualties down here. I need every fire crew you can get me to reroute the systems. The aux prop is out too, for at least thirty minutes, until I can get power to it."
"You have three minutes and fifty-two seconds, Eng!"
"Aye, sir!"
"What about the sorties, sir?" the ground boss asked. "My guys are getting chewed to all hell and gone down there."
"Comm! Get the Blair in here now!"
"Yes sir!"
"Air Boss, launch all the sorties now!"
"We're waaay out of range, CO." The air boss did some quick math in his head via the help of his AIC. The fighters were typically rated as having a top speed of two thousand kilometers per hour. That wasn't true, actually. In an appreciable atmosphere that was mostly true, but in space the fighters could accelerate as long as they wanted to and eventually reach an extremely fast velocity. The problem with that was slowing down. In order to slow down, the fighters had to decelerate just as long as they had initially accelerated. And, the inertial dampeners could only handle so many g-forces and the SIFs, and hull plating could only handle so much impact. A micrometeorite at speeds much faster than the max rated safe speed put the pilot and aircraft at much greater risk.
"CO."
"Go, Air Boss."
"The fighters at double the rated safe speed would still put them about ten minutes from the engagement zone. Engineering might have aux prop up by then."
"They might. Deploy all sorties now. Pilots have volunteer's discretion for approach speed." The CO suspected that allowing the jocks to volunteer to push their planes beyond the limits might encourage them to push the performance envelope of their systems. Hell, the air boss was all the time writing up the pilots for violating the speed protocols, and now he was giving them free reins. "Air Boss, make certain to reiterate the suggested safe speeds."
"Aye, sir."
"What about the ground, sir?" the ground boss asked.
"Sorry, James. Unless we get prop of some sort or the other, they're gonna have to do the best they can. Relay that message."
"Air Boss."
"Sir?"
"Pull the Gods of War from high-altitude engagement, and tell DeathRay to help out the ground troops."
"Aye, sir. That might prove difficult, as they are covered up more than three to one right now."
"Pull them down. It might force the Seppy bastards into a more confined engagement zone and shrink the bowl." The "bowl" was what fighter jocks had called the engagement zone for centuries. In space, the engagement zone was a full three-dimensional sphere, or "ball." But over a surface, it was a hemisphere or an upside-down bowl. By pulling the fighters in closer to the ground, the ball became a bowl, and the closer they could pull down, the smaller the bowl got. This made turns tighter and maneuvers harder, giving better pilots and more advanced technology the biggest advantage in the dogfight.
"The goddamned bowl is too big for certain," the XO added. Being a marine mecha jock in his earlier career, EndRun understood the tactics of dogfighting firsthand. The captain was glad that his XO agreed with him.
"Roger that, sir."
"XO, make certain that all power is put on the SIFs. We're sitting ducks out here." The clock had reset after the last mass driver round hit the ship and started counting down again. Two minutes thirty- eight seconds to go. "Rice! Tell me you are going to hit that thing before it hits us again!"
"Firing, sir. The DEGs are dithering the target area, but spectral analysis doesn't show anything other than ice or rock being hit yet, sir. They may be too deep in the ground."
"Keep firing, son."
God help us now.
Agreed, sir.
"Engineer's Mate Shah, hit that motherfucker right there with this BFW until I tell you to stop!" Main Propulsion Assistant Lieutenant Joe Buckley II shouted over the whistling and crackling of the raging fires and hissing flow system leaks as he hefted a really big fucking wrench toward the EM1. The meter-long tool clanked against the deck near Shah's feet, and the EM1 grunted as he picked the heavy thing up.
A crackle of electricity broke free from the hyperspace-lensing system and reached out across the gas vapors in the air, finding a path to electrical ground through the lieutenant's coveralls. The high-voltage shock knocked him a good six meters through the foul, vapor-filled air into the bulkhead on the aft side of the Engine Room. The lieutenant landed back first against the metal plating with his arms and legs akimbo. His head hit with a crack, sending a wave of stars across his vision to go along with the white lightning arc still there from his saturated retina.
"Lieutenant!"
"Keep fucking hammering on that stress valve, Shah!" Buckley blinked hard and pulled himself up to his feet, shaking his head. More arcs were jumping free of the projector power grid and had to be brought under control. Buckley ran to the control board for the power system, looking for any visual clues as to which systems could still be used, for anything, anything useful and which ones absolutely had to be turned the fuck off.
The power conduits had been fried all over the goddamned ship, and the board was lit up like a Christmas tree. The sublight prop was completely gone. It had been literally smashed to hell and vaporized with several decks of the ship above them. The aux prop was out, too. But the CHENG thought that he could get it back online in a few minutes.
According to the clock that the CO had just put into the entire engineering crew's head, Joe could tell that he had about two minutes and thirty seconds to figure something out. Sitting around and waiting for the Eng to get the aux prop online didn't seem like a good idea to him.
The power couplings between the vacuum fluctuation energy collectors and storage system and the hyperspace projector and fluctuation field shields were intact, and the tube was swirling a perfect pink and purple hue. The problem was that there was no way to get the energy from the storage units to the projector so that it could generate the hyperspace vortex in front of the ship. That took a lot of energy. There was energy stored away in the collector and storage capacitors and there was a hyperspace projector, but there was a gulf between them that might as well have been light-years. Another finger of high voltage leaped across the room into the bulkhead grounding out, and a relay on the board went red as the arc died. There was a faint puff of smoke and some foul, burned-plastic smell coming from within the power-grid couplings.
"Well, that solves the random arcing problem," he said to nobody in particular.
Buckley ran through the standard training for such a situation. The supercarriers were designed so that all the plumbing and power conduits could be interspersed in "worst-case scenarios" according to the training manuals, but there was always a mess to clean up afterward, so the manuals emphasized the worst-case-scenario bit. Buckley con
sidered his situation and decided that imminent death from a relativistic mass driver round qualified as a worst-case scenario, and he also recalled the way his father had rerouted coolant systems for the DEGs on the Madira during the battle at the Martian Exodus. He hoped like hell that this wasn't "déjà vu all over again."
"Sir! The valve broke off, and this thing is getting goddamned heavy," EM1 Shah shouted.
"It broke?"
"Yes, sir! Broke off! What do I do now?"
"Nothing, Shah! That's exactly what I wanted. Now get the fuck away from that thing. It's gonna blow ethylene glycol all over the fucking place in about five seconds."
"Shit, sir!" EM1 Shah shagged his ass across the engineering section over debris and to the propulsion station with Buckley.
"Let me see . . ." Buckley rubbed at his chin, smearing soot across it as he did. "Shah, get the biggest fucking power cable you can find and tie it off to the coupler box on the projector power intake."
"You're the boss!"
Debbie, find me an alternate route for the power between the collector bank and here. I'm gonna plug into this tertiary cooling loop.
I'm looking, Joe. That flow goes down two decks, then over seven. There is a DEG system across the hallway there. Then there is a . . . His
AIC explained the route as highlights along the ship's engineering schematic appeared. At each new highlight, Joe authorized a valve, a switch, a relay, or even a door in a few cases to be opened, closed, thrown, or cracked as needs be. In another instance, he sent a fire crew down a deck with a laserwelder to weld a hatch door across a hallway, connecting two separate flow loop conduits. He had emphasized that they needed to fucking hurry.
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