Salazar looked at the viewscreen, the projected chart of the battle displayed upon it. Normally, the tactical computers were forced to some level of guesswork, of interpretation, if only because of the light-speed limit, but most battles were fought at ranges that made that only a minor factor, the ships usually thousands or tens of thousands of miles apart, flashing past each other at speeds that made them dependent on the battle computers.
That he didn't have any concrete idea of what the enemy ships were doing was unnerving, to say the least. He'd done his best to compensate for contingencies, knew that both Major Moran and Senior Lieutenant Francis were seasoned combat commanders, but one midshipman standing by an airlock with an image intensifier couldn't compensate for the loss of Alamo's powerful sensor array. He was going into battle blind and dumb. There hadn't been any time to rig up realistic alternatives to the internal communication system, and the only way any messages were going to reach him from the lower decks were on foot.
More, he had no way of finding out what was happening down on the sphere. He could guess that Harper was still wreaking havoc, and heard mad reports of Clarke and his team slashing their way through the outer layers of the Hegemonic defenses, but until he had some sort of confirmation, he couldn't know for certain whether or not any of his people were still alive.
He couldn't dwell on that. Didn't have the time. He looked back up at the viewscreen, thirty seconds still remaining until combat could begin, and started working out contingency plans in his mind. They'd be in the jamming field for five minutes, a little more. If they survived the passage, they could come around for a second pass, hours in the distance. Assuming that the enemy couldn't prepare another surprise for them.
Still, it worked both ways. They didn't know what Alamo was doing, couldn't monitor the evasive flight path that was sending the battlecruiser lurching through space like a drunkard, or spot the fighters that were hopefully settling into an attack pattern right now. The trajectory plot on the screen might merely be guesswork, but it was at least informed guesswork.
“Firing range!” Scott said.
“Execute battle plan,” Salazar replied. “Fire at will.”
Alamo rocked as eight missiles raced from her launch tubes, turning back on their flight path to aim towards the projected track of Roanoke. They lost contact with the missiles instantly, only a brief flicker from the image intensifiers to make it clear that they were on the way to their target. Salazar switched to the feed from Petrova, the stars jerking around as the midshipman swept the sky, trying to make out the dots of the enemy ships in the sky, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the starfield.
“After we get through this,” Salazar said, turning to Carpenter, “I want Chief Santiago to work on a real auxiliary system based on visual scanning. I never want to be caught out like this again, and it would be a useful backup system to have.”
“Aye, sir,” she replied. “I guess nobody ever thought that we'd face this sort of a problem.”
“Incoming!” Scott said, gesturing at the screen. Salazar's hands gripped the armrests of his chair tight enough for his knuckles to grow white, bracing himself for the expected impact. Quesada's hands were furiously dancing across the helm controls, but there was far too little that he could do, lacking the information he needed about the approach vector. All they could do was wait, and hope.
Alamo's hull growled as one of the kinetic warheads slammed home, sirens blaring across the bridge as the ship lurched, the rush of escaping atmosphere tossing the ship to the side as Quesada struggled to bring her under control, playing the thrusters against each other.
“Damage report,” Salazar said, turning to Fitzroy.
The engineer shook his head, then said, “Aft, sir. Sensor array and hendecaspace drive, as far as I can tell. No combat-critical damage, but we've got hull breaches somewhere down in the lower storage bays. I presume Chief Santiago will send someone up with a more detailed report.”
Frowning, Carpenter said, “This jamming field is pretty damned selective.”
“At a guess, designed to force a surrender to a boarding party,” Salazar replied. “Maybe we're fallen foul of a customs inspection. Quesada, can you keep us stable?”
“Trying, sir, but we're really on a random evasion pattern now. I keep getting pulses of atmospheric release from the lower decks. Stress fractures, I think, sir.”
“Ride it out, Sub-Lieutenant,” Salazar ordered.
“We've got a hit!” Scott said. “Just picked up a couple of flares! I think they must be Roanoke.” Tapping controls, she added, “That gives us more material for a course projection. Updating plot to match.”
The image on the viewscreen jumped as the brief influx of real-world data flickered into view. Roanoke abruptly jerked a thousand miles to the right, and Salazar nodded in satisfaction, the course remarkably close to that which the tactical computers had projected. Scott looked across, fingers poised on her controls.
“Second salvo ready.”
“Let 'er rip.”
Alamo rocked once more, the second wave of warheads shooting into the sky, again targeted at Roanoke. Salazar looked at the pinpoint on the screen, frowning. There was no way to know how much damage they had caused, whether they had taken out any critical systems or simply ripped into unimportant components. By now, a second wave of kinetic projectiles were almost certainly on their way, and there was nothing they could do about it. Quesada struggled to maintain control, trying to keep the ship on course, holding trajectory past the sphere, its gravity field dragging Alamo down towards it.
“Impact in thirty seconds minus, sir,” Scott said.
“I think we've spotted the fighters,” Ballard added. “Adding data to projection.”
Two more dots appeared on the screen, elements of Alamo's fighter formation moving into position, setting themselves up for an attack run on Darlan. The computer guessed that they were Hurricanes, part of Red Flight, but Salazar held little reliability in that assessment. At extreme range, one small ship looked very much like another.
“Point-defense impacts, I think,” Scott said. “Close aboard. Might have been missiles or shuttles.” She turned to him, and said, “We might have just stumbled across their master plan.”
A boarding action from the Hierarchy ships would have been a desperate gamble. Attacking an unprepared ship with no internal communications could provide a strong initial advantage, but it wouldn't take long for Alamo's crewmen to rally, using their knowledge of the ship to maximum effect to force the invaders away. That was the hope, anyway.
“Sir, if they're trying that with us, they're probably trying with Endurance,” Scott said.
Carpenter nodded, and added, “There's no way to warn them. We'll just have to hope that they can fight them off.”
“There is a way,” Salazar said, “but the message will have to be hand-delivered.” Turning to one of the figures standing by the elevator, he said, “Spaceman, go down to the Hangar Deck, and inform Ensign Rhodes that he is to take his platoon and proceed to Endurance in support, on the assumption that there is a hostile boarding action in progress. He is to act as he thinks best.”
“Aye, sir,” the young man said, stepping into the elevator, the doors closing behind him.
“We don't know what sort of battlespace we're sending them into, skipper,” Carpenter said.
“No, but we can make a guess, and with all the chaos and confusion out there, I think it's realistic to hope that we can sneak three shuttles through. They won't be expecting it, and those mass drivers will struggle to hit anything that small anyway.”
“Wow!” Fitzroy said. “Hull temperature just went through the ceiling!” Alarms sounded, and Alamo spun on its axis, outgassing tossing it around. “Damage to the outer hull in nine areas. I think we just sustained a laser impact, sir.”
“A laser shot?” Salazar asked. �
��How the hell did they manage that?”
“They had a chance to prepare for this battle, months, in fact,” Scott replied. “We didn't.”
“Information from Endurance suggests that they'll be ready to fire again in less than a minute, sir,” Carpenter said, running to the engineering station. “It's bad, skipper. Lots of damage to the outer areas, sensor arrays, two of our launch tubes. They managed a hell of a good shot.”
“It could have been a lot worse,” Fitzroy said. “A few meters to the left, and they'd have gone right into our oxygen reservoir.”
“We can't take much more of this, Captain,” Scott said. “We've got to retake the initiative.”
“Come on, Kris,” Salazar muttered. “What's the damned hold-up?”
Chapter 23
Harper looked over the pictographs carved onto the column, worry lines etched into her forehead as she struggled to interpret them, trying to blot out the battle that was raging in the corridor, the echoes of gunfire running down the tunnel. Beside her, Sekura implacably poked at the console, finally turning and gesturing her to his side.
“I believe I have found an access code,” he said. “Look.”
The screen flickered, symbols replaced with images, a display of the sphere, strangely deformed, appearing on the display. Belatedly, Harper realized that she was watching the construction progress, streams of material thrown across interstellar space to be assembled by teams of robots, the greatest engineering project in all of history, laid out for her to see.
Then the view flashed away, and she saw a ship passing through a stylized wormhole, racing through space towards the non-completed sphere, then strange-suited figures disembarking onto a wide-open plain, the history of a colonization mission displayed in a matter of seconds. She looked across at Sekura, wonder in her eyes.
“This is a learning tool,” she said, nodding in understanding. “Designed to feed this information into any approaching ship, taking over its sensor and communication systems to make sure that there is no chance of the material being ignored. Somewhere, buried in all of this data, is the information we came here to find. They did build the wormholes, or at the very least, understood them. If I'm right we've found our way home!”
Frowning, Sekura said, “It would appear that the Hierarchy has struggled to assemble this data. It appears to me as though this is suitable for a child, not an engineer or a scientist.”
“What else are we, to the builders of this sphere?”
“There is perhaps wisdom in that thought, but how can you be sure that the information you seek is truly within? And even if it is, it might be buried deep in the database. How can you duplicate the work of decades in a matter of seconds?”
Looking around the room, Harper frantically raced to the connectors, checking the contacts, and saying, “They've got good equipment here, but I think I can make better use of it than them.” Reaching across to the controls, ignoring the stabbing pain from her leg as she brushed against the floor, she added, “Given time, I should be able to download everything in this column. I've seen something very like it before. Holographic memory crystals. We found fragments of them, a few years ago. With a quantum computer...”
Turning to the corridor, Sekura said, “I'm not sure that our attackers will give us that much time. Our people are pinned down, and I can see heavy armament bring brought forward, into the fight. Before much more time passes, they will have control of this facility once again, and the mission we came to complete will have failed.”
“I just need a few minutes,” she said, frantically tapping buttons, her hands dancing across the controls. “Don't you understand? This is what I was born for! And I can't pass up the chance to find a way home. The secrets of the wormholes could be right here! Even if we can't work out how to create them for ourselves, there must be a star chart.”
“Perhaps so, but will you not require a starship to reach it?”
“Get to the door,” she said, her fingers moving swiftly across the controls. “Watch for attack, and cover me. I'm going to be vulnerable while I'm working through this.” With one quick glance at the Neander, she said, “Go on!”
“As you say,” he replied, drifting to the entrance to the room, while Harper frantically continued to work, dumping data into every spare scrap of storage space she could find in the systems, easing fragments of information from the ancient repository, images flashing on the screen as she worked. Maps of unfamiliar worlds, diagrams of strange chemical compounds, brief glimpses of alien cities under strange, green skies. Knowledge that must have been gathered over the course of centuries, dumped randomly into her files for later analysis.
She watched the images dance across the screen, entranced by what she saw, the roar of battle fading into the background as her hands continued to work, digging deeper into the holographic memory of the column, seeking anything Alamo could use to find a way home. More than that. The secrets of the construction of the sphere, information on the builders, all of it would be accessible, the answers to all the questions posed by this place.
Two years ago, at the onset of the Xandari War, she'd discovered fragments of a holographic memory crystal, with hints that it could contain terabytes of information, stored for centuries, longer. They'd never found enough to complete the device and decode its contents, only sufficient to know that the bulk of the data was astrographic. Now that mystery was solved, at least. This was the same technology on a far larger scale, and those crystals had been markers, designed to show the way to this sphere, millions of light years away.
With one hand, she continue to gather the information, struggling to distribute it along the memory storage on the base, wiping everything she could to create more room, more room, knowing that every scrap of data was critical, that the holographic nature of the storage meant that everything had to be collected, or none of it would be legible.
“Lieutenant,” Sekura said. “Lieutenant, they're breaking through. We've only got minutes, at best. And Alamo will be deep into the jamming field by now.”
“Just a little longer,” she insisted. “We're so damned close. One more push and I'll have it all. If I interrupt the sequence before the download completes, we won't get anything.”
“Can you deactivate it?”
She glanced up at the panel, and said, “I don't see how. Not without finishing the sequence.”
“Are you saying that because you cannot, or because you will not?”
“Don't you realize how important this is?”
“Perhaps better than you,” Sekura replied. The diminutive Neander had picked up the discarded laser cannon, swinging it around as though he'd always wielded it, lining up on Harper for an instant before turning towards the column. Realizing what he was about to do, she pushed towards him, arms flailing, desperately trying to stop him, but he squeezed the trigger before she could reach him, one pulse of laser energy burning into the crystal matrix, ripping angry gouges down its side. All the panels flicked off, then returned to their default settings, no longer able to access the power of the destroyed computer.
“What have you done?” she said, looking up at the Neander. “What have you done? That column could have held the secrets of the universe, and now we'll never know what it contained.”
“The forgotten knowledge of my ancestors was hidden inside,” he said, sighing, a tear running down his aged cheek. “Do you think that I would destroy it easily, without knowing the cost. It had to be done, Lieutenant, and once you have a chance to consider it calmly, I think you will agree with the wisdom of my decision.”
A beam of light crashed into the wall ahead of them, instantly melting the rock into dull, glowing slag, and Harper replied, “But we were so close. We could have had it all.”
“And now, perhaps, we have something more,” he said, looking over the patterns on the wall. “That is a textual map. I recognize some of the land
marks. Given time, and access to high-altitude data, I might be able to tell you where it leads.” Gesturing at the console, he added, “And incidentally, the jamming field is down.”
Harper's eyes widened, and she reached for the controls on her wrist, bringing her communications system back online, a roar of conversation filling her ears, the sounds of the battle being waged only meters away.
“Harper to Alamo,” she said. “Harper to Alamo. Come in, please.”
“Alamo here,” Salazar said. “I'd almost given up on you. Is it down for good?”
“Smashed to pieces, Pavel. You won't have to worry about it any more. How's the ship?”
“Battered and bruised, but now we can really begin to show them what we're made of. I'll try and get some people down there as fast as I can. Help is on the way. Can you hold until then?”
“We'll manage. Good luck. Harper out.”
“Clarke to Harper,” the disbelieving voice of the young officer said. “Nice to get the tactical network up and running again. The enemy is retreating in order, ma'am, pulling back to what I think is the prisoner's quarters. Do I hold or follow?”
“Get after them, Sub-Lieutenant,” she said, looking back forlornly at the shattered column.
“Aye, ma'am!” he said.
“And Sub-Lieutenant,” she said. “Rifles, not swords, if you please.”
“If you insist,” he replied with a chuckle. “We're on the way. And may I speak freely?”
“Of course.”
“Might be best if you stayed behind to guard the room.”
“There's nothing useful anymore.”
“Ma'am, he's right,” Fox said. “I saw that leg of yours, and your suit must be beginning to run out of tranquilizers. If your wound is as bad as I think it is, you'll only slow us down.”
“You don't believe in pulling punches, do you, Sergeant.”
“Not my job, ma'am, and leading this charge isn't yours. Leave it to Captain Kid.”
Battlecruiser Alamo: Shadows in the Sky Page 19