Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “New ETA: ten minutes and counting,” reported Mr. Shepherd, breaking me out of my reverie.

  “Contact gunnery and tell them to keep their weapons charged,” Laurent ordered.

  “Have the droids responded to standard hails?” I posed the question, turning to the Comm. section.

  “No, Sir,” the crewwoman at Comm. replied.

  “We have sent out standard hails, correct?” I clarified.

  “Of course, Admiral!” the tech sounded affronted.

  “Just checking,” I waved her off and turned back to watch the action unfold.

  Behind me the blast doors slid open. Fearing the worst, I spun my chair and was relieved to see the face of Lisa Steiner. That it wasn’t Akantha or the rest of my family was immensely relieving. But my brow furrowed as I wondered exactly where my wife was located if she hadn’t followed me to the bridge as soon as she was dressed.

  “Can I be of assistance, Admiral?” Steiner asked, looking from me to the Comm. Section with a clear question.

  Pushing aside concern for my wife, I waved her toward the section. “By all means, Warrant,” I said in an easy, unconcerned voice and then turned the chair back around.

  “Sensors can confirm the ship’s configuration, sirs,” the Warrant Officer in charge of the Sensor Section reported. “It’s a twelve-sided configuration unique to our data files; there’s nothing like it in the other records. The computer is calling it a dodecahedron configuration.”

  “Interesting,” Captain Laurent remarked.

  I eyed the Captain. Stealing all my best lines now, Captain? I wondered and then had to smile at my silent, likely ridiculous, quip.

  Five minutes until it was estimated we would come into range and I was starting to stew, the tension was so thick. Here we had a small flotilla of warships all heading toward one cruiser-sized ship that had to know it was outnumbered and overmatched, and yet it continued to doggedly come straight at us. It made no attempt to flee until it could jump away, no desperate run in system to try a slingshot maneuver of some kind around an outer planet, or even a creative use of angles to least limit the number of our ships that could hit them at the same time. It made me wonder just what they had up their sleeves—or thought they had.

  “Where is Akantha?” I asked mildly.

  Laurent looked over at me sharply.

  “Admiral,” asked Steiner sounding concerned, “do you want me to page her?”

  “Yes. Do,” I said minimally.

  Steiner pressed buttons and spoke into her earpiece, which was a miniature, dual purpose receiver/transmitter.

  “Sorry, no response, sir,” she reported.

  I frowned dourly, not liking one of the most volatile members of my command team AWOL during an action. Normally my wife was either on the bridge watching me like a hawk, or more recently running this very ship as its captain or else she was…

  I felt so stupid I could have smacked myself in the forehead with the palm of my own hand and forced a courtly non-expression onto my face.

  “Contact the Lancer Contingent and inquire if my wife has decided to take it upon herself to suit up in power armor and join them,” I said with a mild look over at Steiner. Why this hadn’t occurred to me from the very beginning I didn’t know; all I could plead was that an extended time apart—including a mind numbing stay in prison—had dulled my instincts as it related Akantha’s death-defying displays.

  The answer, when it came, was entirely predictable.

  “The Lancer Captains confirm that the Hold-Mistress is with them and prepared to join them in battle,” she said with a nod.

  “The Lancer Captains confirm,” I remarked sardonically.

  “Sir?” she asked.

  “Never mind,” I shook my head. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. Barring specific orders from me—and maybe not even then—‘my’ warriors were always willing to have my beloved Sword-Bearer storm off into the breaches with them.

  There was a stir in the sensor pits.

  “The target ship has begun to fragment,” exclaimed the most antsy of the sensor operators as he jumped clear out of his seat.

  “I’m reading multiple pieces falling off the ship,” reported the Sensor Warrant cutting in.

  “Missiles?” Laurent demanded. “Track and relay targeting information to the Gunnery Section.”

  “The computer is also categorizing the fragments as a dodecahedron configuration,” cried the antsy sensor operator.

  “Which of the small ones are twelve-sided?” snapped Laurent.

  The Sensor operator hesitated looking back down at his console and taping a few keys before looking back up with wide eyes. “All of them, Captain,” he replied in surprise.

  Laurent leaned back as if under a force of powerful wind. “Relay that information to gunnery,” he said and then stopped.

  “A number of the fragments are now lighting off space drives!” reported the Sensor Officer and the screen started to blossom with dozens of new contacts, with more coming online every second, until the cruiser-sized mother-ship—or whatever it was—now more resembled a bee hive surrounded by an angry swarm than a single ship.

  When Officer Laurent still didn’t say anything I cleared my throat.

  “Inform the Sundered that if they haven’t done so already, they are to launch the gunboats and set them on anti-missile footing,” I said with a projected calm that can only be achieved after extensive combat experience where you didn’t know what you were doing, but had look like you were in complete control anyway. “It seems we are about to receive visitors.” In a way, I’d been training for this moment for almost two years.

  “Yes, sir,” Steiner said sounded hesitant at first but with growing confidence as she turned back to her console.

  “Admiral,” said the Tactical Officer turning toward me, “those fragments aren’t acting like any missiles I’ve ever seen and the computer is tentatively identifying them as gunboats, sir.”

  “Good work, Officer,” I said, too busy processing this new information to be upset at having just been told I was wrong. Things were moving too fast to worry about appearing the all-knowing, never-wrong fleet commander. Not that I would have been fooling this crew; they’d been with me through some real fur balls—not all of them on the winning side.

  However appearances are important and…My mind cut right back to most important thing: we now had upward of seventy ‘gunboats’ heading straight for us.

  I turned back to trap Steiner with my look and let her know this next part was for her, as well as the Tactical Officer.

  “Signal all Corvettes and Cutters they are to prepare themselves for an anti-gunboat defense, Tactical,” I nodded to that worthy Officer. “Relay assigned targets and positions in the defense grid for coordinated fire.”

  I’d been studying protocol lately, but my sources had been the same outdated midshipman’s online courses I’d had for a while, so I hoped I got it more right than not. I caught the Tactical officer’s eye, “Tactical?” I inquired mildly.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said coloring, “it’s just we haven’t run any drills against gunboats—at least not in these numbers,” he said, his eyes cutting to the side and my mouth tightened. I’d bet that any practice which had taken place had been against a hypothetical threat from the genetic uplifts. “We’ve been mostly practicing ship and fleet drills against capital ships. It’ll just take me a minute to bring them up and relay the new targeting priorities to the rest of the fleet—I’ve got this.”

  “Then it’s fortunate that the enemy has seen fit to give us three of them; work fast,” I said, giving him a cool look and referencing the three minutes remaining until we were within firing range. I wasn’t very impressed with this officer saying he wasn’t prepared. Fortunately for him the only thing worse than admitting you weren’t ready was pretending that you were and pretending otherwise.

  Laurent cleared his throat. “Shield status?” he asked.

  “Shields are fully
charged, Captain,” the Shield Ensign stated eagerly and for a moment I was surprised. The last time I’d seen a brave shield operator eager for combat…I couldn’t recall. But I liked it, and was glad we had retained Longbottom as our shield operator.

  “Still no response to our hails, Comm?” I asked sharply.

  “Not a peep, Admiral,” Lisa Steiner replied.

  “Although I doubt there’s any point in doing so, keep trying anyway,” I scowled, put out at facing an enemy who refused to so much as speak to me. Then the scowl turned to a frown at myself; was I so enamored of witty banter that the mere lack of it put me off my game?

  “Sirs, we’re getting some unusual readings over here,” Tactical reported.

  “Have you finished assigning targets?” I said brusquely.

  “Yes, Admiral,” the Tactical Officer said with a hint of impatience in his voice.

  “Then continue,” I said abruptly, I knew he wouldn’t be speaking if he didn’t think it was important but we were about to go into combat and he’d been less than sure of himself once before.

  “It’s the enemy cruiser, Admiral,” the Officer said urgently, “its shape is changing and it seems to be losing mass.”

  “What?!” I said with alarm. No one started launching gunboat-sized ships at an armed, prepared, enemy and refused to make contact unless they had hostile intent. And, of course, we were in the middle of a warzone.

  “It’s shrinking, Admiral,” the Tactical Officer replied, “not just in mass, but slightly in diameter as well.”

  “They must have strapped all those gunboats to the hull of their ship to be able to make a change like that,” Laurent observed darkly.

  I nodded and looking back at the screen I frowned.

  “Is it just me or do those gunboats seem to be moving slower than usual,” I asked.

  “Who knows how fast droid designs are supposed to move? It could be part of a plan to lure us in closer,” Laurent replied.

  “Even still…” I said with a frown.

  “The droids are beginning to spread out; it looks like they are dividing up their gunboats so as to make sure they are able to attack all available targets,” Tactical reported, and I could see what he was talking about.

  “That will leave only a few hand-full of their gunboats for every one of our warships,” I said, and then pointed, “what about the cruiser, or carrier, or whatever it is?”

  “The droid mother-ship is on a direct course for the Phoenix, Admiral,” tactical replied.

  “They have released just over eighty gunboats,” Laurent said grimly, “that’s more than enough to cause damage.”

  “But the way they’re spread out, that’s only like four or five gunboats per ship—less if they’re targeting our gunboats as well,” I said, perplexed. I then turned to Tactical, “What kind of readings are we getting on their weapon’s syste-” I started to ask but my question was cut short.

  We were within range of the enemy.

  Chapter 31: In the Clinch

  “Here they come!” yelled First Officer Eastwood from his station at Tactical as just under a score of enemy gunboats separated from the pack and started to close in on an attack run.

  “Weapons free and fire as she bears, Tactical,” Captain Laurent called out, and I could almost feel the whole bridge leaning forward, focusing on the droid—or, presumed droid—ships, “Mr. Eastwood, if you would be so good as to go over and give Tactical a hand?”

  “With pleasure, sir!” Eastwood said hurrying over and shifting an operator off his console. After grabbing up the microphone on his desk and barking something into the receiver he promptly slammed it back down on the table of his console.

  Moments later, turbo-lasers lashed out leaving an expanding wave of death and destruction in their wake. Each hit seemed to destroy an enemy gunboat, or knock it out of action.

  Within seconds the score of enemy ships on the screen was cut in half, and then disappeared entirely. Expanding my view to take in the entire fleet, not just the Phoenix’s location, I was pleased to see over half the enemy gunboats had been destroyed and more were falling every moment.

  “We have several enemy boats heading toward us on a collision course!” cried the Sensor Officer.

  “DuPont, turn the ship to port and begin evasive maneuvers,” Laurent barked. “And somebody find out where that ship came from; I thought we destroyed all the ones around us.”

  “The Rapid Ranger signals she’s about to cross beneath our bow,” Lisa Steiner over at communications exclaimed moments before the corvette came screaming across our forward bow, her relatively light lasers firing.

  “They’re blocking our short-ranged weaponry; we can’t fire the new plasma cannons without risking a friendly fire incident that could destroy the corvette!” cried the Tactical Officer.

  “What kind of hot-dogging is this?” Laurent shouted, even as the damaged enemy gunboat exploded. “Get me the Captain of that ship; I’m going to hand him his head.”

  “The Captain of the Rapid Ranger gives his apologies and reports the gunboat attempting to ram us was one that was damaged and knocked off course by one of their light laser mounts,” Steiner reported, “he says he was in hot pursuit and that it won’t happen again.”

  “He’s blasted well right it’s not going to happen again,” Laurent fumed, “tell him that Captain Laurent said—”

  I lifted a hand, cutting him off mid-rant. “The cruiser doesn’t seem to be much closer than the gunboats and is about to enter combat range, Captain,” I observed sharply.

  “Eastwood,” Laurent snapped, “target that mother-ship.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Eastwood said hungrily, and a fury of orders were passed down to the Gunnery section, emphasized at several points by the thump of his microphone.

  Amazed at the seemingly easy destruction of the droid gunboats, I took in the nearly empty space around my ships before turning to Steiner.

  “Get a damage report from the other ships in the fleet and forward it to the command chair when you get the chance,” I instructed her.

  “Yes, Admiral,” she said, bobbing her head and then leaned over to speak the tech next to her before working her console. The tech beside her quickly followed suit and within moments both were hailing the other ships and establishing com and data links for the updates.

  There weren’t many orders needed for the fleet right at the moment and I had to resist the urge to spit out orders just because I could and so that I felt like I was doing something productive. I reminded myself that sometimes the best thing to do was sit tall in the chair, keep the shoulders back, and look competent.

  The droid ship wasn’t trying to escape or maneuver for advantage but instead made right for the heart of our formation, in an apparent desire to come to grips with the Phoenix, which made things easier.

  There is one thing I could do, I realized with a flash of pleasure tinged with relief.

  “Helm, lets continue that turn off to port just enough to extend our turbo-laser’s time on target. The longer we can pound them while they’re out of range and they can’t respond, the better,” I ordered.

  Laurent flashed me a hooded look and I shrugged. Now was not the time to get into the whole ‘this is his ship and I command the fleet’ that he’d already made a point of in the past.

  “And Comm., relay to the other ships that they are to maintain position relative to the Flagship,” I said after turning to Steiner.

  “Yes, sirs,” echoed around the bridge.

  After the way the gunboats had gone down hard, going from almost a hundred to just a hand full that looked to be recent launches from the mother-ship, I would have expected the droids to try something different but I would have been wrong.

  “That’s either four hundred meters of stupid or else they’ve got one Murphy of an ace hidden up their sleeve,” Laurent said, leaning in close and speaking quietly.

  “Let’s find out,” I replied with a tight smile.

  �
��Enemy ship entering firing range,” reported Tactical his voice taut with emotion beside him the First Officer leaned forward in his chair as if waiting to pounce.

  “Weapons free on your command,” Laurent reported.

  “Gunnery, fire as she bears,” barked the First Officer into his microphone.

  Turbo-lasers lanced out, each one a pulsing death ray of destruction which stabbed into the mother-ship’s shields and lit them up.

  “Enemy shield flare,” reported Sensors, as shots continued to pound out from our starboard side lancing into the shields of the droid ship.

  “Helm, prepare to roll the ship on my mark,” Laurent ordered.

  “Aye, sir; rolling the ship on your command,” DuPont said.

  “Roll!” Laurent ordered as the turbo-lasers on the starboard side started to slack off, and the heavy lasers in the smaller ships around us began to fire.

  Mid-turn, the droid mother-ship opened up a powerful, spinal mount, firing an impressively powerful beam which actually rocked the deck beneath us.

  “Shields down to 62% and holding,” Ensign Longbottom reported crisply, “those shield modifications look to have taken some of the sting out of their antimatter siege cannons." I knew he was referring to a series of adjustments made to the shield grid designed to cope with the overwhelming firepower of the droid siege weapons. Those same weapons had nearly overloaded the Pride of Prometheus’ shields with a single shot, but had failed to even take ours down to half after acting on data gathered by Middleton’s crew.

  “The enemy ship seems to have an odd structure,” Sensors reported with obvious curiosity. “Most of it almost looks like some kind of lattice, or honeycomb, but there’s a large, skeletal superstructure running from stem to stern composed of what looks to be solid duralloy.”

  “And this is relevant how?” I demanded with irritation.

  “I don’t know, Admiral,” replied the Warrant.

  “It might mean we’re not going to do much damage to that ship unless we hit that ship in the spine or the engines area,” the Tactical officer observed, “refocusing lasers now.”