“It’s the right decision, sir,” Zebrova said. “I know your father…”
“That’s not it. There are wounded men out there running for safety, and we can’t do a thing to help them. All we can do is sit here and watch the show while they fight for their lives.” He looked at the screen again. “That’s not my idea of a battle.”
“Nor mine, sir.”
They looked up at the screen, watching the course tracks of the fighters splitting up; six of them were aiming for Hercules, three of them for the shuttles. Alamo’s missiles slowly weaved their way into the battle zone, one by one exploding as the combined countermeasures of their targets took their toll.
“I hope Maggie’s estimation of Hercules’ battle readiness wasn’t too optimistic,” Caine said.
Marshall nodded. “I think we’re about to find out.”
Chapter 24
The flight deck of Hercules was in total chaos; technicians running about, frantically clearing up debris and attempting to get the second shuttle ready to launch. A swearing Wilson was frantically working at the elevator airlock mechanism, struggling to clear a jam, while lightly wounded crewmen helped those worse off than themselves into the passenger lock.
Over in a corner, Orlova and the remaining bridge crew were frantically trying to make the launch operations room serve as a makeshift bridge, scrambling to clip in additional control systems and re-task monitors, crewmen trying to get the data feeds from the remaining external sensors fed into the displays.
Cooper, drifting through all the chaos and attempting not to knock into anything, made his way over to the passenger airlock, smiled, and pushed over to the pilot’s airlock at the front, where an anxious Barbara was rapping her fingers against the panel, waiting to be given clearance to launch. She turned with a scowl as she saw him.
“I thought you were supposed to go on the first shuttle.”
“I didn’t like the pilot,” he replied.
Shaking her head, she said, “I’m too damn busy for this…”
“Perfect,” Cooper said as he pushed his way inside. “That means you need a co-pilot.”
“What?”
“I’m not just a simple damn grunt; I’ve flown shotgun before.”
Waving her arm at the displays, she said, “Do you know how any of these instruments work?”
“I think I have a vague idea what the major buttons do.” He looked back at the wounded men at the rear, “Besides, I’d rather be up here helping than sitting back there waiting.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
“Probably, but only after we get back on Alamo.”
“Fine,” she said, ducking out of the way of his lumbering figure as he slid over her and into the co-pilot’s seat. Shaking her head at his hastily-prepared bandages, she continued, “How many painkillers are you on, anyway?”
“Enough that this pleasant little joyride should pass in a sweet, gentle haze.”
“Great. I’m about to fly through the middle of a combat zone with a doped up trooper as my co-pilot.” Tapping a button, she said, “Damn it, Wilson, are we clear yet? I’d like to get moving before I die of old age.”
“Thirty seconds. The Old Man isn’t on board yet, anyway.”
Leaning out of the airlock, Cooper saw Major Marshall strapped to a stretcher, Orlowski – whose foot was invisible under huge layers of padding – trying to get him into the airlock. He had an arm outstretched, his hand locked in a death grip on one of the handholds.
“I’m not leaving my ship,” he said, gritting his teeth.
Orlowski looked over at Cooper, “I’m going to end up breaking his damn arm at this rate.”
“Do what the hell you want, Private. I’m not leaving my ship.”
Orlova drifted across, glancing back at her team as it finished up reading the makeshift control center for use. She looked down at the Major, shaking her head, then gestured at Orlowski to get clear. With a shrug, the private obeyed, drifting into the airlock and strapping himself in.
“What the hell are you doing, Major?”
“This is my ship. I’m not leaving her. Not again.”
“I don’t have time for this, Major, not if I’m going to save your ship.”
“I’m in command here, you insubordinate…”
“Not right now, you aren’t.” She sighed, and said, “If we don’t get you to a medical facility – one with a real doctor, not an espatier medic with a blasted foot – within twenty minutes you are going to die, sir. And in that twenty minutes you will not contribute anything to the survival of this ship.” She looked around, then said, “Don’t worry. She’s strong. She’ll live through this fight.”
With a curt nod, the Major said, “You keep my girl safe. Do you understand me? You keep my ship safe.”
Saluting, Orlova replied, “I will, sir. I promise.” She looked up at Barbara, and said, “You should be clear now. Try to give them a nice smooth ride, and good luck.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” she replied, as Orlova gave the Major a sharp push into the airlock. The door closed, and the lights all finally flashed green. Barbara reached up, threw a lever, and the shuttle began to descend, seeming to sink into the deck. Cooper looked around his control, struggling to remember his all-too brief training course last year; he’d received a month’s training on shuttle systems, but all of it seemed to have disappeared into a haze.
He turned to Barbara and flashed a smile, trying to show a confidence he didn’t feel, and rested his hands on the controls, hoping that his fingers would retain a memory that the rest of him had lost. Slowly, as the shuttle rested on the bottom of the airlock, he began to remember a few things, and started to set up the countermeasure systems, experimentally tapping a few buttons.
“Don’t think you have to impress me,” Barbara said, glancing across at his work. “If you just want to sit there and watch with the occasional wisecrack, that’s fine by me.”
“It’s fine, I basically know what I’m doing. If I can help us live through this, that’s enough for me. Though I reserve the right to a wisecrack.”
The shuttle lurched as the lower doors opened, and with a quick play of the thrusters, the shuttle turned around and started its full-speed burn towards Alamo. Glancing at the sensors, Cooper frowned, double-checking the distance measurements as the navicomputer hastily updated its course projections.
“Alamo just accelerated!”
“They’re in as much of a hurry as we are to get the hell out of here, can you blame them?” Barbara replied. “We’ll catch them.”
“I hope so,” Cooper replied, looking down at the sensors again. “We’ve got incoming. Three fighters, and if this readout is correct, two of them are heading right for us.”
“Damn,” she said. “What does the warbook say?”
“Warbook? Oh, hold on.” His eyes frantically roved across the display, trying to work out where the relevant controls were. Finally he found the right button, “Alamo updates indicate they are Cabal fighters. Two missiles each.”
“Just four to play with, then. Anything else in the sky tonight?”
“Six fighters going for Hercules, another for the lead fighter.”
“Let’s have some fun, then,” she said, tapping a pair of controls. Abruptly, the engine stopped, Cooper thrown forward in his straps as the acceleration died. Before he could say anything, she turned them on again, running the throttle as high as it could go, and then tapped a sequence into the thrusters that sent the stars wobbling on the screen. Cooper had received a year’s worth of low- and zero-gravity training, given by the best in the Confederation, and through medical screening to prove his constitution. Nevertheless, he was getting space-sick.
A light beeped on the console, tapping it, Orlowski’s voice barked, “We’ve got wounded back here, remember! Keep on joyriding like that
and these people won’t live to see Alamo’s sickbay.”
“They won’t live through a missile impact either, Private,” Barbara replied, her eyes fixed on her controls. “Nurse them as best you can.” Turning to Cooper, she said, “Turn that off, and don’t hit it again unless I tell you. The last thing I need is a distraction.”
“Fine,” Cooper replied. He looked up, his eyes widening, “How about two missiles as a distraction! We’ve got an energy spike from the lead fighter, two missiles bearing directly.”
“Start your countermeasures run, I’m going on random walk.”
Nodding, he began to work, tapping at the controls. His training in this field had been rudimentary at best, and he relied on the computer’s on-board systems, throwing a few quick probes at the missiles before shaking his head in frustration. Barbara looked over.
“No, no, no. There’s a reason we need a human sitting at that station. Don’t just do what the computer tells you, improvise! They’ve got computers too, remember!”
The two missiles continued to home in on them, the tracks converging with a countdown running over the sensor screen. Each missile was designed to do significant damage to a capital ship; one of them would rip the shuttle apart into pieces too small to identify. Sending two fighters to take them down felt like overkill.
Lacking any other ideas, Cooper began randomly pushing buttons on the countermeasures station, throwing wave after wave of hacks at them. Oddly enough, it briefly seemed to work; one of the missiles stuttered on its course, its engine failing for a second before turning back onto its previous trajectory. He tried it again, but this time it didn’t work; the missiles were better able to adapt than he was.
Looking over at the physical countermeasures, he activated that station as the missiles ranged ever nearer. This was rather simpler to understand, and it took little work to get them activated for deployment, but whether they would actually do any good was another matter. With nothing to lose, he worked the electronic screens again, pressing down three buttons at once in a chord of hacking.
That actually seemed to work; one missile stopped altogether, going dead in space, shaking from side to side on its maneuvering thrusters as if it was trying to hunt for him. The other hove in, closer and closer, locked down on the shuttle’s engine as if with a clamp.
“Hold on, I’m going to try something,” Barbara said; she turned the engines off again, then started to work at her controls. Alarms began to go off as the number of seconds remaining before impact dropped down into single digits; Cooper wrapped his hand around the side of his chair, a futile gesture if the missile actually hit. The physical countermeasures detached on cue, but the missile simply dived through them.
With a single second to go, Barbara poked a button and the engine fired, alarms sounding louder than ever, and the missile vanished from the track. Cooper looked at the rear view, and saw debris in the wake of the shuttle; she cut the engine again and started to reset controls.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Ran the engine up to five hundred percent for a few seconds. Try that game for long and it’ll explode, but the missile certainly didn’t enjoy the energy bath.”
Cooper looked up at the screen again, “How long until we’re on the move? Alamo isn’t waiting for us, and even that other shuttle’s beginning to look awfully far away.”
“Just a few seconds. There we go,” she replied, and the acceleration began again, the navicomputer recalculating its course track with silent resignation. Cooper breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing in his chair a little, only for his eyes to widen again. He’d almost forgotten about the second fighter, but the fighter pilot had evidently not forgotten about them.
“Energy spike from the other fighter! We’ve got two more missiles in the air.”
“Not again,” she said. “Get back on those countermeasures of yours. See if you can reproduce some of that blind luck of yours.”
“I though I was doing the wisecracks,” Cooper replied as he began to work the controls again. Gradually the little training he had received began to come back to him, the practice of combinations of programs. His instructors had given him a few tricks, first and foremost that the same pattern would be unlikely to work twice.
Bearing that in mind, he decided to try something different. Rather than trying to batter down both missiles at once, he opted to focus on only one, the lead warhead. He skipped over the array of sensor manipulators, instead going right for the core programming, by far the hardest part. These were at the heart of the missile’s defenses, but he began to unleash wave after wave of hacks at them, the computer making suggestions that he occasionally took, but more frequently rejected.
This time, he left the physical countermeasures alone; they were an act of desperation in any case, and he suddenly wasn’t feeling quite as desperate. Barbara continued to throw the ship from side to side, but was looking with alarm at her fuel indicator; it had dropped markedly after she’d done the trick with the engine, and now it was looking suspiciously as though that might become a problem.
Less than thirty seconds to impact, and suddenly he had broken through the defenses. His first thought had been to simply blow up the missile, but there wasn’t enough time now for him to work on the other one. Instead, he slowed it, bringing it back towards its counterpart, a finger hovering over the destruct control, waiting for it to get close enough. Finally, with a sigh of relief, he tapped the button, and both missiles disappeared from the track.
“Nice work,” Barbara said, shaking her head.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Cooper replied. “We should have a straight run for Alamo now. How’s our fuel?”
“It’ll hold out. What else is going on?”
Cooper looked down at his screen, then took a deep breath before saying, “It’s looking bad for the other shuttle. Two missiles on their tail and they can’t dodge them. Piper’s slowed himself all the way down, but they over-ran and are coming around for another pass.”
“That trick only holds them off for a while. Damn fool.”
Cooper looked across at Barbara, saying, “We need to do something, don’t we.”
“I guess we do. Brace yourself.” She slammed on the throttle again, jamming it down and running the engine hot, kicking it over the red line for a sustained burn. It even sounded frustrated, incomprehensible readouts on Cooper’s console streaming down the monitor screens, lights winking from green to amber.
“This isn’t good for the engines, is it?”
“They’ll hold.”
“I’m glad you think so. I’d rather hear them say it.”
They were closing on the other shuttle rapidly; the internal communications light was blinking again, but Barbara’s quick stare prevented him from acting on it; Orlowski was going to have to manage as well as he could for the present. At least they were getting closer to Alamo, and the battle that Hercules was waging was now far to the rear; they weren’t likely to get caught up in that skirmish.
Cooper was still out of effective range for his countermeasure programs, but he had a couple of ranging probes out anyway, just on the off-chance that he might manage something. He didn’t want to just sit there waiting as the clock counted down. The three fighters, evidently satisfied with their work, turned back towards their carrier, getting clear of any possible retribution from Alamo.
“We’re almost there,” Barbara said. “Get on your controls.”
“Random hacking strikes again.”
“Not this time,” she replied, sharply. “I need something specific. Go for their sensor controls, I want them as fogged as you can possibly manage. Anything it takes.”
“Whatever you say, skipper.”
“That’s the attitude that’ll make you go far in my navy.”
He’d wanted to try the other panel anyway, and he started to focus on the sensor foggers,
shaking his head as he struggled to interpret the controls. An experimental probe seemed to work, and he began typing in a series of commands, following the computer instructions for a few seconds then working beyond them, overriding them to follow his own hunches and judgments. He was fighting a battle against a computer – against whoever had written its control software.
“I don’t know how much good I’m doing,” he said. “I think I’m getting somewhere, but they’re still running true.”
“They won’t in a second,” she replied, punching down a pair of thrusters to send them diving towards the missiles. For a heart-rending second, the two tracks converged, and Cooper thought that she had managed to put them onto a suicide run, but they separated out again to place the two shuttles at roughly the same length. Now he realized what she was trying, and he worked twice as hard to help it work.
“Closest approach,” Barbara said, and the missiles wavered, briefly shaking, and then started to tumble, seeking a new target
“They’re out, but not for long,” he said. “Nice try, though.”
As the shuttle cruised on, the two missiles found new locks – now each shuttle had its own missile, slowly and relentlessly closing on them. Cooper was out of tricks, and looked down at the sensor screen, shaking his head.
“Impact in thirty seconds,” he said.
“No it isn’t,” Barbara replied. “Look!”
To his surprise, the missiles both wavered off their tracks, spiraling off into space before self-destructing. For all his focus on the battle, he’d missed Alamo up ahead; now they were in an electronic screen run by someone who actually knew what they were doing. Closing his eyes, Cooper bowed his head, and took a deep breath.
“That was too damn close.”
Barbara turned to him with a smile, “Hell, with a little training you might make a mediocre co-pilot.”
“Next time I’ll ride tourist.”
Grinning, she replied, “Better give them a call.”
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