Battleship Destroyer 2 (Battleship Destoryer)

by Larry Roberts

  The Comm window opened on the bulkhead. “Yes Captain Turner. What can I do for you?” Captain Glenn was a little baffled since they had just spent an hour going over what needed to be done to separate the two ships and make the repairs to get them both space worthy again. Her baffled look turning a little piqued. “I hear that you cut all my factory requests Captain. How the hell am I supposed to get these two ships separated and repaired without fricking repair parts?”

  “Sorry but the squadron will be showing up ahead of schedule and I have just gotten information that they plan on destroying the station and taking everyone prisoner. We don’t have time for you to pull the ships apart and repair refugee decks and bow. I need you to cut the damaged bow and stern section from both ships and weld the other ship’s forward ¾’s to the stern 3/4’s of your ship. Make the two into one long ship and get that other exslave engine installed as soon as possible for now. Shepperd will be your First Officer permanently for now. Tell her I am sorry but her time will come soon. I have another ship in mind for her later.” Taking a deep breath. “You only have two days but I have already assigned a bunch of Station crews to help on your original project, just use them on this and get it done and ready. We need to abandon this station and the other Battleship just in case they get destroyed and you are going to have to take most of the refugees without luggage. Out.”

  Jack got up from his desk as Pan slipped through the hatch. “Captain! What is going on?”

  “High Pan. How is Krump? Is he recovering Ok? Sorry that I just have not had the time to get up to Sickbay today.”

  “He is fine thank you. Now out with it. What is this about a squadron coming to destroy the station?”

  “Damn, Good news travels fast. Yes but I will take care of it. I need you to help get the Paprika cut up and welded back together in two days. I want that ship off the station before they get here with as many of the refugees on it as you can get and see if you can upgrade its guns if they are still any good while you are at it. Its 24 sixteen inch guns should be impressive even if you only have time to reduce the size of the bores of their barrels a couple of inches and add the Plasma power Generators while you are at it. I have already retasked some crews to help. See if you can get any more. That is without interfering with Factory production. That is just as important but nothing else is...”

  “No! Belay that.” Jack stopped for a few seconds as he frowned but then looked up and smiled. “Now that would be neat. The Paprika with the other hulk attached is going to be packed with refugees and would be a sitting duck if it tried fighting. Take the 16 inch guns and turrets off of it and I will design up a simple way to slap one of them under each Destroyer in place of a drop tank. It will not only give them some punch but make more room for refugees on the Paprika. Be easier as well not having to run power conduits all the way from the engines to the upper guns. Though I am going to have to figure out some way to add a generator so the destroyer’s point defense and 8 inch guns can still fire at the same time… No… A new plasma core and generator in a drop tank beside each gun... Yes… No… two drop tank generators. One on each side of the 16 inch gun drop tank should give it plenty of power…Damn something else that needs built, 48 cores with generators to stuff in drop tanks just in case we have to fight.”

  Shaking his head thinking. “And…Aaa…See if you can get the God weapon’s pods on the two Battleship hulks moving. I don’t need them to fire, I just need them to move enough to scare the shit out of a few people. They won’t know they can’t fire but it may make them a little more receptive to seeing reason. Oh and we will be docking the Battleship to the Station in less than 48 hours. Check on everything needed for the docking if you please.”

  Turning to the Hippie. “Well Hippie Chick. Where do I find some food?”

  “You are going to have to steel food Jack. No transport carrying food will be allowed to come here. The fleet approaching is an exception but then it is here to destroy you.” Looking at Jack with a frown shaking her head. “You are going to have to get the Destroyers upgraded to the point they can help you take on a small fleet and take one of the food transports on their way to The Rock. That includes getting them better engines that can handle the 16 inch guns without the additional generators you are planning to slap under the DD’s that only have the cruiser engines for power.”

  “Better engines you say?” Jack shook his head thinking. “It’s a shame the smaller massless engines I designed did not work. I am going to have to get back with the development people and see about ironing out the bugs but that will have to wait. I would have thought that at least the Cruiser engines would have been big enough to work without troubles. It was not that big of a reduction in size. Then we could have simply traded them out. Now I have to figure out how to put a single monster Battleship engine into the hull of a Destroyer that was designedusing engines half the size while adding 16 inch guns. But then we really don’t have the massless Battleship engines to spar either. Damn. But then it would mean tearing out half the ship with a major rebuild. We simply don’t have the time even if we put them back through the factory. God. That also means each Destroyer is going to have to use the new plasma generators and conduits to supply power for the engines and guns. What they have now is not going to be adequate. Damn, more things for the factories to produce. But then again it will be pretty much mute if we don’t survive the Vice Admiral but there is nothing I can do about that right now.” Jack headed for the sweat’s Sim room but stopped at the door. Looking over his shoulder at the hippie sitting in front of his desk. “See if you can find where the hell they are sending the Transports that are supposed to be here.” Shaking his head at her frustrated look. “Just do the best you can.” Then disappeared into the Sim room.

  The Hippie smiled shaking her own head as she turned to the watching Pan. “He does have a way of turning Disasters into opportunities doesn’t he?” She said to Pan staring at her. “I was afraid the Vice Admiral was going to be able to pull off a sneak attack like he had planned even after the scouts spotted us Since Jack had not been near the Red Pepper in 5 months where I could talk to him. By the time he showed up all I thought I had time for was to get him to run and he comes up with a plan that just may work if I read all his preparations right. Though 50, 50 is not that good of a chance, it is better than I could hope for. Not as good as running but then he is right, there is more at stake here than his life. I need to find out if he was right about a new God fleet approaching the Cloud. Not that we haven’t expected one long ago.” The Hippie smiled at Pan again still staring at her. “No I am not real corporeal bone and blood which is why you can’t read me.” Raising her hands to make the peace sign. “Love and peace to you mother.” Blew her a kiss and disappeared.

  Pan shook her head. “That is the problem little one. I could read you and you were as scared as any being I have ever seen. I should not have been able to read a projection hologram let alone a computer AI.” Turning she left the cabin, too much to do to worry about it at the time.

  --------------------

  Jack walked onto the bridge of the Battleship Hulk. The Ship’s Captain turned to Jack. “It is about time. I was just getting ready to start decelerating. Are you sure you want to do this? If even one engine malfunctions you could wind up slamming into the Station at hundreds of miles an hour and neither ship or station would survive Commodore Turner.”

  “I know Captain but if we are not docked on schedule, the Vice Admiral will be legally able to order the imprisonment of every ex-enemy ex-slave and crewman and blow up the station. I can’t allow that to happen.” Saluting the Captain. “I hereby accept full authority of this Battleship Captain. Thank you for your service. You can evacuate with the rest of the crew now.”

  “Thank you Captain Turner. The ship is yours. But I will stay for the show. The Red Pepper and Paprika are a bit full right now even after transferring a lot of the population to the mining sights and all the personnel and cargo barges you have pr
oduced in the factories.”

  Both the Station and the Battleship were manned by the barest of skeleton crews in reinforced sections as safe as most could be. Every ship, transport and shuttle that could fly was up. Every fighter, bomber, scout and flitter was out hiding in the cloud. Over three thousand marines and Apes were scattered around the station hiding amongst the rocks across the bubble waiting to pounce with their own extended flight packs Jack had ordered into production two days before along with almost a thousand armored heavy weapons flight sleds. Jack had been a little disappointed not quit reaching a thousand but he was still proud of the 910 they had produced. After all with everything else they had produced in the past 47 hours it was a respectable number. The only chink in the production plan had been the failure to get the 16inch guns mounted onto the Destroyers leaving them without 24 of their biggest guns if things came down to a shooting match and having to destroy the Republic Battleships. But then the 8 inch guns had been upgraded so they at least could do a number on the approaching battleships if or when they attacked.

  The crews had taken no time at all jerking the 16 inch guns off the Paprika and even manufacturing the drop tank sets with everything in both the gun tank and the generator tanks testing out fine but someplace along the line in the last minutes before the arrival of the Battleship squadron, they had realized that no one had bothered to produce the power and control lines to install between the generator pods and the gun pods. The guns had no power and they had simply ran out of time. All Jack could hope for was that the Vice Admiral did something stupid if it came down to having to slug it out with the Battleships having some 480 guns against the Red Peppers 12. Jack was confident that the Red Pepper with the Destroyers (even without the added 16 inch guns) and a couple hundred torpedo bombers could take out the 8 battleships if they had to. But the losses would be horrific with no why he could keep the Red Pepper filled with refugees from being hit multiple times. Though the Ex-slaves had assured him the armor they had added to the hull would deflect the Republic Battleships 24 inch laser gunfire. Especially after the ship was almost cooked to death with its crew inside the bubble before they had managed to escape some 6 months before. The extreme heat crystalizing and hardening the almost pure diamond armor coating. But then Jack really did not want to test it with the ship filled with refugees.

  The biggest hair pulling frustrating problem now was the time lost having to dodge the big Battleship Hulk around several planetoids that came out of nowhere delaying them on the last hundred thousand miles of the journey. Now Jack had no choice but to delay firing the Destroyer engines ringing the stern of the ship until the last possible second requiring them to blast the engines at full power riding it in hard into dock with the other Battleship Station, hoping they got stopped in time. Hoping he timed everything right and one of the 28 engines on the Destroyers strapped to the stern did not stop during the last few minutes or burp only seconds away, forcing them to crash uncontrolled into the station with nothing they could do to stop it no matter when it happened, Five minutes before docking or 5 seconds.

  The problem was that if Vice Admiral Ditzen boarded the Hulk Station before the second Battleship docked with the first Battleship, making what was just a Station into a Basestation (as dictated by mass), the Vice Admiral could become in effect by default, the Commander of the larger Basestation when the two battleship hulks joined. Leaving Jack just another Captain for Vice Admiral Ditzen to do as he pleased with. Ditzen would out rank everyone within half a light year and have full authority over everyone including the slaves and prisoners to do with them as he pleased. Even kill them. With no witnesses and all the paranoia the Vice Admiral and his backers had whipped up back on The Rock against Jack, the Spider Battleships and the enemy slaves. No one would question anything Ditzen did.

  The Vice Admiral with the secrets of the weapons he had read about in Jacks reports (that were somehow lost and not forwarded after being decoded) and even more secretes (they must be withholding) taken from the slaves with torture in the prison ship, he would easily win battles and soon be the Supreme Admiral of the Fleet. His plan could not fail. The fact that he had been at the bottom of his class in Battle school and lost every battle in the sims and in reality against even the Plebes just entering the academy as opponents when he was about to graduate, did not matter. With the weapons he saw Jack wielding, he could not loose. After all, he would never make all the stupid mistakes Jack had made and admitted to in his reports. All he had to do was wade in and kill enemy ships with those fantastic weapons without wasting time dancing around a cloud that kept getting in the way. What was so hard about that? A moron kid did it while bumbling around a cloud. He certainly could.

  But if the Vice Admiral did not arrive until after Jack was in command of the Basestation that then required a Vice Admiral to Command, making Jack a Temporary Vice Admiral. Jack would technically out rank Vice Admiral Ditzen until Jack was relieved by direct orders from The Rock and there was nothing Ditzen could do about it. Ditzen could not relieve another equally ranked Vice Admiral even though Jack was only a temp.

  All Jack had to do then was convince the rest of the Squadron that the two Spider battleship hulks that made up the Basestation, the ex-slaves and Jack were not the enemy. Before either the Basestation or the Squadron were destroyed and half or all the refugees killed. Simple.

  Jack looked at the 3D tactical screen and the Vice Admiral’s Squadron coming down the Corridor shaft made by escaping gas from the hole in the bubble. The corridor that now stretched light hours into the cloud that intercepted a river void in the cloud that was part of the network of gaps through the clouds making up the unmarked highways that had been surveyed long ago through the nebula. Jack had reported the connection months before with relief, hoping they would start getting supply transports since they no longer had to cross a section of cloud to get to the station.

  The corridor shaft the Squadron was coming down was on the other side of the station from where the Battleship hulk was coming from giving Jack the chance he needed to get the hulk docked and mated to the station before the Vice Admiral’s ship burst out of the corridor shaft in plain sight of the station. Jack was just glad the Squadron was not coming down the series of crevasses and voids that were a more direct route to the area of The Rock than the shaft the Vice Admiral was taking. The more direct route, (even though it was slower going) would have cut days off from the 2 week trip from the nearest assembly area. The scouts had discovered it some 4 weeks before and Jack had included the route in his weekly report leaving Jack wondering why the Vice Admiral had not taken the shorter route but damn glad he hadn’t.

  Luckily Jack had taken it for granted that any moron could see the new route was shorter even if you had to travel slower and had not specifically noted in his reports that it was faster. Ditzen had even told his navigator that the officer was crazy to even think the new route was fast after all the fleet could move twice as fast on the old route as the new one. Then spent an hour lambasting his navigator for being stupid enough to even think of such a moronic idea. Threatening to demote him if he every suggested such an idiotic route again.

  The Squadron was now only 30 minutes from the mouth of the shaft while docking time for the hulk was 40 minutes if Jack started the hulks deceleration now with all the safety time built in. With each minute he delayed firing the Destroyer Engines to start slowing the hulk down shortened the docking time by almost 2 minutes. The problem was that if he waited too long to light off the engines the hulk would crash into the station before it stopped even with the engines at full power. They had known since the last major course change around a rough rock they had to go around that the Hulk Battleship would have to decelerate at maximum thrust at the last possible second to dock with the station with only seconds to spare to make it in time. Something the Captain Jack had appointed refused to do. But Jack had to try. Otherwise the station and the refugees would be killed anyway. So why not try.

  But the
Captain, Jack had assigned to the Hulk Battleship simply refused to cut the arrival that close fearing engine problems forcing Jack to take over the Captaincy. As it was, he was not sure he could wait for the auto pilot to start the engines at the last millisecond as the fear inside him continued to build combined with his doubts that anyone could do what the AI’s had said the Vice Admiral was planning to do. Part of him kept saying no man could do what his gut said would happen. The fear of crashing into the Station at hundreds of miles an hour trying to force him to hit the firing icon as far ahead of the auto pilot’s last microsecond calculations. But knowing that if he did, he would not have an excuse to become the Station’s Commander and a temp Vice Admiral and the Station would be destroyed anyway with the ex-slaves and the Apes disarmed and imprisoned and tortured to get the secrets they were already giving him and the Republic voluntarily, just to make sure they were giving up all their secrets to a power hungry megalomaniac.

  “Captain Turner. The Bountyis entering the shaft (Captain Gregg had renamed her ship after a famous ship that had mutinied in the past, or so the story went, since it was technically neither or both of the previous ships now). The Battleship Squadron is on a collision course with the unarmed transport packed with Refugees sir.”

  “Shit. Order Captain Glenn to vacate the shaft immediately. The last thing we need is to risk the squadron colliding with or even shooting at the Bounty loaded with refugees.” Jack continued to watch the docking counter click down second by second.

  “Captain Turner, Captain Glenn says to mind your docking and leave delaying the Vice Admiral to her. The Bounty is moving up the shaft toward the squadron and the squadron is not increasing its deceleration rate. They are not slowing down any faster than they already are.”