Starship Tomahawk (The Hive Invasion Book 2)

by Jake Elwood

  Running the ship with such archaic technology was going to be … interesting. Kaur knew her people were up to the challenge, though. She looked at his bridge crew one by one.

  She saw only one familiar face, Benson at Navigation. Most of the crew had rotated out during the refit, making her reduction in status less awkward. Ramirez at Communications was an old hand, a man with a dozen years of experience on corvettes. Sanjari was the only woman on the bridge. She sat at the Operations station.

  Tolstoy was brand new. He'd been a cadet a week before, serving on the Alexander under Hammett. Strictly speaking he hadn't finished his training, but the admiralty had decided a couple of months of combat experience counted for more than the few weeks of classroom time he was missing.

  Tolstoy was impossibly young, barely out of his teens, but he had the eyes of a seasoned veteran. If he lacked experience, well, no one had much experience with manual systems. If half the stories about the Alexander's last voyage were true, Tolstoy was going to do just fine.

  Benson looked up. "What's the word, Ma'am? Did you find the new captain?"

  Kaur nodded. "He's on board. He's giving himself a bit of a tour."

  Benson nodded, then lowered his voice. "What's he like?"

  Kaur glanced at the entrance to the bridge. "I'll let you draw your own conclusions. You'll be meeting him soon enough."

  Footsteps echoed on deck plates, and Hammett appeared in the hatchway. He walked to the front of the bridge, stood for a moment looking at the bridge crew, then spoke. "Hello. My name is Hammett."

  As if anyone doesn't know, Kaur thought.

  "We'll be getting underway almost immediately," Hammett continued, "so I'll be getting to know each of you during the voyage. We're nine days from Naxos, so we'll have plenty of time to get familiar with each other and with the ship's new systems."

  He looked at each of them in turn, and Kaur found herself envying his casual confidence. He was comfortable with command in a way Kaur could only aspire to. They made the right choice when they put him in command. The thought tasted bitter in her mind, but she couldn't deny the truth of it.

  Hammett looked at Ramirez. "Specialist Ramirez?"

  Ramirez nodded.

  "Benson?"

  Benson inclined his head.

  "Tolstoy. Congratulations on your promotion."

  Tolstoy turned pink. "Thank you, Sir."

  "You must be Sanjari. You served on the Falstaff, didn't you?"

  Sanjari said, "Yes, Sir."

  "I've already met Commander Kaur, of course." Hammett stepped past Kaur and took the captain's chair. He gave Kaur a single sympathetic glance, then said, "What's our status?"

  "All departments report ready, Sir," Sanjari said.

  Hammett nodded. "Last chance to run ashore if anyone forgot their toothbrush." When no one spoke he said, "Ms. Kaur. Take us out, if you please."

  "Aye, Sir." Kaur felt a thrill of excitement run through her, along with not a small amount of fear. The Hive held Naxos, and help would be nine long days away. She touched icons on her console, heard a warning chime as the hatch to the station slid shut, then a friendly ping as the computer verified the ship was sealed and airtight. We won't have that after our first encounter with the Hive. What else won't work? What have the refit teams overlooked?

  "Undocking," she said, and instructed the station to release its clamps. There was no sense of motion, but Port Kodiak trembled ever so slightly through the starboard window. "Mr. Benson, bring us around. Mr. Ramirez, please inform Bayonet and Achilles we're leaving and invite them to join us."

  Ramirez smiled at her phrasing. The three ships would be travelling in convoy. His hands moved in the air before him, and he tilted his head. "Bayonet is uncoupling from the station," he said. "Achilles says she'll need five more minutes. They're doing a last-minute supply check."

  "Take us spinward, please, Benson. Not too fast. We'll let the others form up behind us."

  The ship badly needed a shakedown cruise. They needed time to find problems with the new systems, time for the crew to get familiar with the ship. The little fleet needed practice working together, too. But the Hive was out there somewhere, regrouping. And twenty thousand colonists lived in the Naxos system. It was six weeks since the Gate to Naxos had gone offline. Six weeks since the Hive had overrun the system.

  Two corvettes had gone to Naxos since that time. Neither ship had come back. The fate of Naxos was unknown. For all Spacecom knew, they could all be dead.

  But if they lived, they had to be in desperate need of aid. The fleet couldn't wait.

  Kaur checked her screens, uncomfortably aware that she likely wouldn't have them once the ship encountered the Hive. The Bayonet was a kilometer astern. Achilles was catching up quickly.

  Hammett seemed busy familiarizing himself with the screens and controls around the captain's chair, and Kaur was grateful for the implied vote of confidence. "Maintain this course," she told Benson. The area of a sphere quadrupled when the radius doubled, which meant that every kilometer of distance from the Earth vastly increased the area of a theoretical sphere where another ship might pop out of a wormhole and cause a collision. She wouldn't open a wormhole until the chance of a collision was vanishingly small.

  Thirty minutes later she glanced at Hammett and said, "Shall we jump, Sir?"

  "By all means."

  Kaur turned to Sanjari. "Shut down the computer. Let's make sure we can jump without it."

  Sanjari gave her an uncertain glance, then nodded. Her fingers moved across her console, and screens went blank all around the bridge.

  "Opening a wormhole," Benson said.

  A buzzer sounded on the console in front of Kaur, and a light glowed above a label that read, "Forward Lookout". She picked up the phone handset added during the refit and said, "Bridge."

  "Wormhole forming directly ahead."

  "Copy," Kaur said, and hung up. "The wormhole is there. Take us through."

  Internal force fields kept her from feeling acceleration, but she knew the Tomahawk was surging forward. For just an instant she saw the wormhole through the windows on either side of the bridge. It was just a quick impression of swirling black and gray, and then the stars were back in their familiar places. A bulky supply ship had been floating just below the buckle of Orion's belt. The supply ship was now gone. Other than that, there was no way to tell they'd jumped.

  Benson twisted around in his seat. "Shall I start a manual check of our position?" It was possible, though far from easy, to calculate exact position by checking the angle of several stars relative to Sol, which would now look like nothing more than a bright star in the sky behind them.

  "That would be silly," Kaur said. "Restart the computer, Ms. Sanjari. Let's see if we popped out where we expected."

  Her screens flickered to life, and Benson said, "On the button, Ma'am."

  "Good." She thought for a moment. The wormhole generator needed fifteen minutes to cycle before they could jump again. It was enough time for a quick drill. "I'm launching the fighter." She hit a newly-installed button on the side of her chair, a physical button guaranteed to work without electronics. She could just make out the distant echo of a buzzer that would be ringing in the mess hall, aft lounge, and in Juanita Baca's bunk. Somewhere Baca would be cursing, dropping whatever she was doing, and running for the hatch on the top of the Tomahawk's hull.

  Kaur activated her implants and broadcast to the entire crew. The only two people on the ship without working implants were Hammett and Tolstoy, and they were both on the bridge with her, within earshot. "Weapons drill," she said. "All hands to battle stations." That was mainly to let Baca know she didn't have to break her neck getting to her fighter.

  Footsteps echoed outside the bridge as crew scrambled to weapons stations. An icon on the panel in front of her turned red, indicating the launch of the fighter. She opened a link to Baca. "Take a couple of loops around the ship. Then dock again."

  "Aye, Ma'am."

>   She turned to watch as the sleek shape of the fighter plunged past the starboard window, then rose again a moment later on the port side. Corvettes didn't normally carry fighters or even drones. The Tomahawk, Bayonet, and Achilles had one fighter each, training craft refitted in the feverish week since the war had reached Earth. Each fighter was controlled by a control stick, some dash buttons, and foot pedals. All three pilots were green as hell. There wasn't anyone with actual experience flying such a bizarre blend of modern and archaic technology. They would need every minute of practice they could get.

  Too late she wondered if he should have cleared the drill with Hammett first. She'd been the commander of Tomahawk for too long. Old habits had taken over. Hammett was gazing out the port window, though, looking entirely unconcerned.

  Kaur said, "We should coordinate some drills with the other ships. Get the fighters dogfighting, that sort of thing. Practice some manual targeting of the weapons."

  Hammett nodded. "Good idea." They discussed the particulars while the timer spooled down and the ship prepared for the next jump.

  What are we doing? The thought, unwanted, crept into Kaur's brain like a thief coming in through an unlocked window. We're three tiny ships launching an insane attack on an enemy that nearly overran the entire fleet. Running drills to prepare makes as much sense as practicing your spitting technique before you plunge into the sun. This is insane.

  But the job had to be done, and it was Kaur's privilege and burden, her honor and her punishment, to be one of those who tried to move a mountain. It was not in her power to change the odds. She couldn't conjure up another hundred ships for the little fleet. She couldn't wish the Hive out of existence. All she could do was prepare for the coming war to the best of her abilities.

  She nodded to herself and set her despair aside. It wouldn’t help, so she let it go. She turned her attention to things that would help. She would practice, she would drill, and she would pray that somehow it would be enough.

  Chapter 3 – Hammett

  A klaxon woke Hammett from a deep sleep, and he sat upright, banging his head on the low ceiling of his sleeping shelf. Muttering a curse, he waved a hand to bring up the lights as he swung his feet to the floor. It was a drill, he knew – he'd scheduled it, after all – but it wouldn't do for the crew to see the captain not taking the drill seriously. And besides, there was always the tiny chance the ship had encountered real trouble.

  So he pulled his uniform on quickly, jammed his feet into his shoes, and stepped into the corridor. Hurrying sailors rushed past in both directions. He was on the same deck as the bridge, no more than twenty running paces away, one of the advantages of serving on a small ship. He didn’t run. Good captains never ran. But he didn't dawdle, either.

  Kaur looked up as Hammett stepped onto the bridge. The two of them were standing opposite watches, and hardly saw each other except at shift change. "What's our status?"

  "Attack drill," Kaur reported. "The computer shows a dozen enemy ships lying in ambush where we came out of the wormhole." She rose from the captain's seat and took the Tactical station, displacing a sailor named Touhami who moved to Navigation.

  There were no simulations of Hive vessels. No one had quite found the time to program any in the week since the battle for Earth. Instead, Hammett's screen showed a fleet of wireframe corvettes, glowing blue to show they were simulated, and a wireframe destroyer.

  The three corvettes were already in combat formation, he saw, grouped close together with their noses toward the enemy fleet. All three fighters launched as he watched, and he tilted his head, trying to check the time on his implants. It hadn't worked in a couple of months, but the habit was still with him.

  "All departments report ready," Kaur announced, sounding pleased. "Total time, less than two minutes."

  "That's good," Hammett admitted. "Simulate an EMP hit, please."

  Every single person on the bridge except Hammett reacted the same way, a tiny head tilt as their implants went dead. Every screen went blank.

  "We're making an attack run on the last known position of that destroyer," Hammett announced. "Signal the fleet."

  Ramirez was at Communications, and he said, "Aye aye, Sir." His fingers moved on his console, pressing buttons that would illuminate signal lights on several places on the Tomahawk's hull. A buzzer sounded, and he snatched up a telephone handset. "Both ships acknowledge," he said.

  We need a more efficient system. Like a few colored lights that the spotters can illuminate from their stations. Then Ramirez won't need to grab a handset. He made a mental note to suggest the idea to Spacecom.

  Benson spoke into a handset and the stars shifted as the Tomahawk moved forward. Hammett caught a glimpse of the nose of the Bayonet through the starboard window, keeping pace.

  "Tell Hansen to prepare for missile launch." Each of the corvettes carried a solitary nuke, nearly the entire nuclear arsenal of Spacecom. In a few months the fleet would be bristling with brand-new nuclear weapons. For now they had a tiny handful of dusty relics, taken from storage and hastily refurbished for this mission.

  "Hansen reports ready," Sanjari announced from the Operations console.

  "Good. Tell her to stand down." There was no practical way to drill missile launches. Corvettes didn't have missile bays, a gross oversight in Hammett's opinion. The solitary nuke in its cradle under the hull was the only missile each ship had, and he sure wasn't going to fire one for practice. "Turn the computer back on, and pass the word to the fleet."

  Screens came to life all around the bridge, and he saw shoulders slump in relief as implants started working again.

  "Have fighters One and Two pay the role of bogeys. Fighter Three can play defense."

  "Aye aye," Kaur said, and murmured into her implants.

  Hammett swivelled his chair and watched a fighter streak past the window. A stream of rail gun rounds sparkled behind the ship, a good five seconds too late to score a hit. The rail guns would be firing empty canisters, too light to cause damage, and the laser turrets would be on low power. The computers on all three corvettes would keep track of hits, but they wouldn't aid in targeting or maneuvers.

  For five minutes the mock battle raged. Hammett winced as a barrage from the rail gun on the Achilles rattled against the window in front of him, then winced again as a laser from Fighter Two painted a red bar across the roof of the bridge. That was one significant disadvantage to windows, he realized. It made the ship terribly vulnerable to laser fire. The Hive hadn't used lasers so far, but the risk of a friendly-fire incident, especially without computer targeting, was high.

  "Bogey Two destroyed by laser fire," Kaur reported. A moment later she said, "Bogey One destroyed as well. A combination of rail gun rounds and lasers."

  "Good," said Hammett. "Bring them in. How's the formation looking?"

  Kaur waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. "Achilles is a bit wide. She went after Bogey One pretty aggressively. Tagged it pretty good, though."

  "That’s fine," said Hammett. "I don't mind a bit of chaos so long as it's deliberate." It was five days since they'd left Port Kodiak, and the crews of all three ships were getting competent at maneuvering with manual thrusters and spotters on telephones. "How's the jump clock?"

  "We can jump as soon as the fighters dock."

  "Do it," said Hammett. "I'm going back to bed."

  Chapter 4 – Janice

  The crowd outside the Parliament Building in Nova Roma was loud and boisterous. The building itself was sober and imposing, a faux-marble edifice with all the grave dignity appropriate to the seat of the United Worlds government. The gardens around the building stood nearly empty. Just outside the wrought-iron fence, though, thousands of people thronged in a raucous mob, some chanting slogans, some waving placards. A few people had brought holo projectors, and stylized images of Acton and his opponent, Charlene Saretsky, loomed above the crowd.

  Janice Ling stood on the edge of the crowd, a trio of camera bots hovering around h
er. The little robots, each the size of her two fists, took vid footage of the crowd. If Janice moved or began to speak, two of the bots would switch their cameras to her. For now she was content to watch, however.

  Other reporters moved around the fringe of the crowd, along with amateur historians and vid enthusiasts. The election results would be announced any minute now. Janice, contracted to a wire service called Pan Galactic, was here to put a dramatic scene in the background while she gave a talking-head recap of the breaking election results.

  Closing her eyes, she used her implants to instruct a bot to swoop into position in front of her. She turned her back on the Parliament Building, then checked the framing of the shot. She nudged the bot up and over until she filled most of the projection, with the crowd and the gleaming golden dome of the Rotunda in the background.

  She didn't try to include the holo projections in the shot. They were dramatic, but the angle was all wrong. Besides, she didn't want her viewers distracted.

  Satisfied with her camera setup, she turned back to the crowd, careful not to stray from her spot on the grass. She surveyed the seething mass of people, then looked up at the giant politicians floating above.

  Acton looked magnificent in the projection, broad-shouldered and heroic, and Janice felt her lip curl. The man was a fear-monger of the worst sort, the kind who needed a massive crisis to have any chance of power. While Saretsky, the freshly-deposed Statsminister, was pleading with the population to set aside their differences and unite, Acton was doing his best to whip his followers into a frenzy of hate.

  He seemed less concerned with the Hive than with assigning blame here on Earth. The heart of his message seemed to be that he was angry, and his anger would somehow make everyone safe. He was promising to strike at the aliens, and to strike with equal zeal at anyone who failed to rally behind the flag. He spoke of taking back control of Earth's colonies so all of humanity's wealth and resources could be united against the alien threat. He talked of putting troops in major industrial centers all over the Earth, to make sure everyone really was doing their share. The aliens were his excuse to seize humanity in an iron fist, and billions of voters were eating it up.