"Err, plenty.” Huh. Johann's answer surprised Klaus. It looked like Johann was determined to see his idea through, and had actually done his homework. “Sort-of."
"Sort-of? What do you mean, 'sort-of'?'"
"They're used right now fer calculating the deflector fields, aimin' the guns, 'n whatnot."
Klaus blinked. "Now you want to rip out the ship's aiming computers, and the deflectors to boot? How much did you drink, again?"
"Not enough, mate. But aye, I'm telling ye it would work."
Klaus grinned wryly. Well, if it kept Johann distracted and out of trouble, maybe it would be worth it. Especially if he even got it to work. “Sure. Go ahead and see if you can write the code for all that. And have James and Murphy check it.” Johann might be able to come up with some pretty good ideas while drunk enough to faze a sailor, but there was no way that Klaus would trust his programming abilities under the same circumstances. “If you can get the QMP drive to work, that'll be—“ a damn miracle “—a good backup.” But who knew? By some stroke of luck, it might actually work.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Captain Conagher drummed her fingers on the armrest of her command chair. The reports out of the Tannenberg were sporadic, and not always coherent when they did arrive. With its main power down, everything had to be relayed verbally.
And there wasn't anything she could do about it. Not for—“Helm, what is our ETA to the Tannenberg?”
“Thirty-seven minutes, ma'am.”
—damn near forty more minutes, and that's if they used the deflectors solely for propulsion. And if the rebels fired any more of those giant mass-driver payloads, they'd have to either maneuver to dodge or block. That would slow them down. The loss of her engine really had crippled the Overlord.
And with it, doomed the Tannenberg. There were two possible outcomes of the fight underway on the smaller warship: either the enemy managed to seize control of the ship, or they didn't. If they did win the boarding action, then the whole battle was lost.
And even if the Marines repelled the boarders, their problems were far from over.
The Overlord was the strongest warship ever built, but she was not invincible. Not quite. If the enemy had more mass-driver ships and more ships to sling the projectiles, they could defend Podera from any further attack by the Overlord. The ship would have to limp away from the planetoid at her frankly embarrassing acceleration under deflector propulsion. And that's assuming that the rebels let her escape without following and harrying her with long-range fire.
And even if the Tannenberg's Marines successfully defended their ship, the situation would hardly be any better. The Tannenberg still floated right next to the cargo-transshipment station, and with her shields disabled, was completely unable to maneuver. Given that this all seemed to be one massive ambush, Conagher had to assume that the enemy still held more weapons batteries in reserve on Podera's surface. The only reason that they — or the Verdun, or the enemy mass-driver ship — had not yet destroyed the Tannenberg was because the rebels hoped to capture her. And once they decided that capture was no longer achievable...
She cursed the immobility of her ship. The situation was desperate enough, that even a long shot like the QMP technology touted by that crazy academic MacDougal would have been worth a try, but they had not been able to scale it up to anything useful.
Captain Conagher balled her hands into fists. When she got her hands on the saboteurs, the skulking rat bastards that had hamstrung her ship—
Her communicator chirped. She frowned at the caller ID. Dr. MacDougal? She shrugged. Quite a coincidence, but she did not want to hear anything more about theory. She reached for the 'cancel' button, and then stopped. At this point, she was grasping at straws. There was a lull in the battle at the moment, as the Overlord slowly moved towards her crippled squadron-mate. If anything important came up, the captain could just cut the call. She hit 'accept.'
“Captain Conagher here. Speak.”
“Cap'n! Err, ma'am. I've, ah—“ The physicist's voice was slurred – was he drunk in the middle of a battle?
“Out with it. You have fifteen seconds.” She couldn't waste time listening to some civilian's tongue stumble around his mouth. Drunk on a battlefield was no way to be.
“Aye.” He spoke faster now, but his words tripped over each other, overlapping slightly. “I can get t' QMP system workin', teleport the whole ship. Sir-ma'am, ah, sir.”
“Are you certain?” Her head snapped up, but she held her thoughts in check. With Dr. MacDougal, she wanted confirmation. “Has this been checked over by—“ She paused. Who would know enough to be sure? This could save the Tannenberg — save the battle — but if it was just the drunken ramblings of a civilian too far from his university classroom, then she wanted it shut down right away.”Did you run this by CWO Ericsson?”
“Yes, ma'am. He an' I worked on it, together!”
That was good to hear. Klaus Ericsson might have difficulties understanding the classified part of classified R&D, but he knew the technology — and its limitations — better than anybody else she trusted. “How soon can you have it operational?”
“D'pends. We'd need a few, ah, hundred quantum-capable computers.”
“We don't have that many to spare. Can you work with less?” The Captain didn't know off-hand how many such computers there were on-board, but it couldn't be more than three hundred. And almost all of them were sorely needed; fire control, reactor monitoring, deflector control, all depended on hyper-rapid computation.
“I canna' perform miracles, cap'n. I'm a physicist, not a miracle worker! I've run the calculations, and two-hundred fifty-two is the absolute minimum. That's the smallest number o' parts we can split t' ship into.”
“Split the—?" The sensor officer's warning called the captain's attention back to the sensor display. "Hold for a minute.” Two more red ship-icons had appeared, glowing dully on the far side of Podera from the Overlord. More rock-throwers, like the one that had hammered her ship.
These new ships had approached from a new direction — they could sling their huge projectiles close enough to Podera to hit the Tannenberg. Not very fast, of course, but they wouldn't have to. The smaller ship was a sitting duck. Hopefully they'd hold their fire as long as the enemy had boarders on that ship, but still a dangerous threat. The Overlord needed the Tannenberg alive in order to escape. Ironic that mining vessels were proving to be more of a threat than the Verdun.
For the moment, the new arrivals posed no threat. But she knew that the enemy was already making preparations to destroy the Tannenberg in case their boarding attempt failed.
The Overlord had the deflectors and the armor — her sheer bulk almost helped more — to survive a few hits from projectiles of that scale. The Tannenberg did not, and she had already been crippled by the barrage which disabled her reactor.
But for now, there was nothing that Conagher could do but keep advancing towards the Tannenberg. She re-opened the comm channel with Dr. MacDougal. “You said something about 'splitting' my ship?”
“Aye, we'd need ta move the ship in a few hundred pieces t' move it. Too big otherwise.”
“Is that even remotely safe?” Or sane? It sounded crazy, but then again combat command was just balancing levels of risk. If it let the Overlord reach the Tannenberg in time to save the battle, then it might be worth the risk.
“Aye, it is. Err, I think. I haven't got t' programming ironed out yet.” In a smaller voice, he added, “or tested for this sort o' scale." His voice rose again. "But there's no reason it shouldn't work and be perfectly safe, ma'am.”
Captain Conagher massaged her temples. The man really was an academic, not the person she needed to be talking to right now. “I'll contact you if the plan is approved.” She cut the call, and opened a new channel to CWO Ericsson.
Without preamble, she asked, “MacDougal has told me his plan for making the QMP drive useful. Is it realistic?”
“Yes and no, ma'am
. The theory behind it is solid enough. I'd say that it's a choice of last resort, though; it really should be tested under safe conditions first.”
“I see. And what would you need to get the ship ready to use it, now?”
“Now, ma'am?” She could hear him cursing over the comm. “If we absolutely needed it operational..." His voice trailed off, then came back stronger. "We'd have to start by checking the ship's osmium piping for leaks. The damage-control parties would be able to tackle that, themselves — no specialized equipment necessary, just a routine integrity check. Then I'd need one of the civilian repair crew — James O'Rourke — and as many quantum-core computers as possible.”
“The repair crew civilians are under guard in the brig.” she interjected. “At least one of them was involved in sabotaging the fricsim drive.”
“Him?” There was a pause. “Mr. O'Rourke wasn't involved in the fricsim crew at all, ma'am. He's been working with us on, ah, improving our QMP methods.”
“What?!” she shouted. Then her voice became quiet and menacing. “First you give him access to classified machinery, and now you tell me he's not in the brig?”
“He, ah, didn't actually touch anything classified, ma'am. We haven't shown him any, uh, restricted information. Ma'am.”
Oh, for the love of—
She growled softly. She should have known that putting the Ericsson and MacDougal team back together would have led to history repeating itself. MacDougal was drunk when he shouldn't be, Ericsson was discussing classified — classified with good reason! — materials with potential security leaks.
She'd handle that later. Wrestling her frustration back under control, she barked, “All right. I'll court-martial you later. What else do you need?”
He sighed. “We'll probably have to cannibalize half the fire-control systems, and maybe some of the deflectors, too. We'd have to get the computers distributed throughout the ship, one per compartment. If we press-ganged the damage-control parties, that'd give us enough spare hands.”
Captain Conagher rubbed the back of her neck to relieve the tension forming slowly but relentlessly. That was quite the shopping list that CWO Ericsson had laid out. Cripple the ship's weapons, possibly her defenses as well? As far as danger to the ship went, maybe O'Rourke wasn't the one she should be worried about.
“I see. Get teams working on checking the piping, then. Pull them from damage-control if necessary.” Nothing too critical on the Overlord needed repair at the moment. “When that's been arranged, go help Dr. MacDougal with whatever he needs.” She let some of her anger slip through into her voice. “I can't spare Li right now, so you have to see that he does things properly. I'm trusting you, of all people, to keep him under control.”
“Aye, ma'am.” Klaus' voice sounded almost meeker, with none of the bluster normally attributed to a veteran engineer addressing the officer who happened to be in command of the engineer's ship.
No sooner had she closed the channel, her finger over the button, when—
“Ma'am! Incoming fire coming around the planetoid!”
On the holo-display, a large orange blip was closing rapidly on the Overlord. One of the rebel rock-cracker projectiles, but they hadn't seen it coming until now. The enemy must be firing from the sensor shadow on the other side of Podera.
It was slower this time, but they still had very little time to react. “Helm, hard to starboard, vector high.”
They dodged the projectile easily enough, but each second they spent dodging was slowing their approach on the Tannenberg. If they reached the Tannenberg's position, they'd be shielded from most enemy fire, but to reach that location they would have to run the gauntlet of point-blank fire, where they would have much less warning of enemy shots coming around the planetoid.
She checked the ETA to the Tannenberg. Twenty-eight minutes, and counting backwards now. The QMP drive was looking like a better and better option. She opened a channel to Dr. MacDougal. “We have a crew checking the Osmium piping. What other resources do you need?”
“I could use some good programmers. Any you've got — this is a big bleedin' job here!”
The Captain checked the ship's roster. A few civilian contractors were still aboard from the shipyard, and eleven of them were marked as computer specialists. They'd have to do.
“I've got eleven to spare. Where do you need them?”
Chapter 17: Tannenberg
"Ha! Look at 'em come in, all fat n' happy." The helmeted Marine next to Antoniy on the Tannenberg gloated. He patted the heavy railgun which anchored the improvised defensive line across the corridor. "They won't know what hit 'em!"
Antoniy — like the rest of the Marines — watched the image relayed to his helmet HUD from the Tannenberg's exterior sensors: Rebel boarding craft slowing as they closed on the ship. Preparing to deploy their troops. Retro-rockets fired, slowing their approach, laser drills deploying to cut entry holes into the sealed outer hatches.
With the Tannenberg's main weapons disabled, only the low-power point-defense lasers had been able to engage the small enemy craft. Those were designed to destroy lightly-armored missiles, not dedicated assault shuttles! Barely a half-dozen of them had been neutralized before they reached the ship, their half-melted husks shattering upon impact with the warship's hull. That still left dozens.
Antoniy slammed his fist into his thigh-armor in frustration. The Navy tech geeks had fixed the IFF issue that the rebels had been taking advantage of, only for the insurgents to come up with yet another damn trick! What the hell had that even been, that hit the Tannenberg? The communications channels had been too crowded afterwards for him to ask anybody who might know.
Turning to face the Marine who had spoken, Antoniy growled, "Don't count on it, kid. They suckered us into this attack quite well, and timed the ambush perfectly - they have to know better than this."
"Not our problem. We just get to punish them for their mistake."
Antoniy shook his head. "Here's hoping you're right." He knew better, though.
The unit's Major broke in on his override channel. "Lieutenant Gureivich, looks like they'll hit your position first. You've got two minutes to prepare. Out."
Antoniy double-checked his defenses, wondering for the hundredth time if there were something he had missed. The heavy railgun commanded the center of the line, with the best arc of fire. Around it, whatever bits of scrap the troops could find – mostly service equipment from the nearby mess hall – provided reasonable cover. The line was emplaced just after a bend in the corridor, so that advancing rebels would meet his troops at point-blank range. All by the book.
The Marines' armor and barricaded position would be a massive advantage in that sort of slugging match. This time, at least, the entire Marine contingent were in full power-armor, heavy weapons ready at hand. Even if the enemy had more of the stolen heavy equipment they'd brought to the last boarding action, Antoniy's team were ready.
Of course, it should have been a more defensible position, but he had had to improvise. Closer to the outer hull of the Tannenberg had been compartments specially designed for defending against boarders: they were chokepoints controlling access to the interior of the ship, with hardened fortifications already built in.
But enemy fire — the same salvo that had cored the Tannenberg's reactor — had destroyed most of those specialized compartments. Including the one Antoniy and his troops had been heading for, in preparation to leave the ship to board disabled enemy ships.
He had been forced to fortify this corridor instead, one of the very few leading into the Tannenberg from the destruction out closer to the hull. The only chokepoint left.
"You reckon they believe that they caught us in the staging compartments, sir?" The same Marine asked. "I mean, if it weren't for the Major, we'd have been out there." He gestured down the corridor.
Antoniy nodded, grateful to have a CO with combat experience. Their mission, after all, had been an offensive boarding attack. SOP dictated that boardi
ng troops stage in the outer defensive chokepoints. These were large compartments, which sped up the process of getting troops out the hatch. The rebels were obviously evacuating: why not get the Marines in as fast as possible, stop as many rebels as possible from escaping? Daltry was one of the veterans they had picked up at Andromeda Station. He'd been fighting the rebels for years, and he had smelled a rat.
So instead of SOP, the combined Tannenberg - Overlord boarding party had staged in the corridors deeper behind the chokepoints. At the time, it had seemed a needless waste of time.
But now, it had been a stroke of genius. They were still breathing. Even if most of the perimeter defense was gone - including chokepoints, murder holes, cameras and everything - they still had almost their full complement of Marines.
A loud, sharp 'CRACK' echoed from around the corner, breaking Antoniy's thoughts. Shrapnel whirred through the air, harmlessly against the side wall in front of them. The first of the anti-personnel mines in the staging compartment had detonated. Contact.
He checked the sole remaining camera feed for confirmation. Nothing. What? He slapped his helmet, as if jarring the HUD would make any difference in the camera feed. Still nothing, a blank hallway. The image's timestamp stuck on ten minutes ago. Damn Murphy! Of course the only undamaged camera was faulty.
This would have to be an old-fashioned ambush, then. The whites of their eyes, and all that. He'd left the hand-thrown deployable camera pods behind in the armory, because their presence would have warned the rebels of the Marines' presence. His coilgun pointed down the corridor, finger on trigger, Antoniy waited for the first targets to appear. And waited. Nothing.
Come to think of it, there had been no sound since the mine had detonated. No screams of wounded soldiers, no breaking ordnance, nothing.
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