Frontline sf-4

by Randolph Lalonde

  “I can't, they've been hacked.”

  The propulsion system on the torpedo flared out and the drones turned the fusion weapon around.

  “That's coming for us, can we take two direct hits?”

  “With full shields, yes, but we're down to sixty eight percent and dropping. We're looking at possible hull damage.”

  “All guns and missile bays, focus on those torpedoes, ignore everything else!” Alice ordered as she focused the view of the main holographic display on both of the munitions. They each had drones attached and both were being guided back to the Triton from the half way point between it and the enemy carrier. They began to evade, dodging flak, beam and rail cannon fire.

  A group of missiles fired from the Triton's underside launchers and to Alice's surprise they all headed towards one of the captured nuclear torpedoes, not both. She glanced to Agameg then back to the main display in time to see one of the torpedoes explode as three of the seeker missiles struck it. One of the fusion torpedoes was destroyed, leaving the other to finish closing the distance between it and the Triton.

  “All hands, brace for impact!” Alice announced ship wide. The sounds of the inertial dampener systems powering up in anticipation of the massive explosion was nearly deafening. The main tactical display on the bridge pulled back to show the Triton, its guns still firing at the incoming torpedo while all the other drones fled in every direction at incredible speed.

  Many of the crew members closed their eyes in anticipation of the worst, or started to pray, but as the ship shook mildly and systems went down for a second, it became obvious that for the moment, they had survived. All the holographic representations of the absent crew members had disappeared while the systems that projected them reset.

  “Damage report!” Alice called out as she held the right side of her head in her hand.

  Agameg's systems began to come up first. “We're down eleven turrets, they took too much electromagnetic damage. The main emitter is still charging and is at forty nine percent, it should be completely charged up in twenty three seconds. All other stations are reporting ready so far, but only half the ship is online.”

  “Energy shields are down to six percent, gravitational shielding is gone. We're recharging but it's slow,” Laura reported.

  “Hangar decks reporting one small fire, other than that they're fine,” reported David Monroe. “No injured.”

  “Botanical Garden is fine, life support is good ship wide, the computer core was unaffected and is re-establishing its link with all systems,” reported the operations station at the rear of the bridge.

  The bridge returned to normal but to the crew's horror a new wave of drones were on their way from their enemy carrier to join their current assailants, which were already swooping in, firing at the Triton with renewed vigour.

  “Finn, get us a wormhole, now!” Alice ordered.

  “I increased the charge rate, I'll need Triton stationary in nine seconds,” replied Finn's flickering hologram.

  Alice looked to Laura, who was startled at the sight of her. “Shields?”

  “Trying to charge up, but they're almost gone. Your eye is bleeding,” she said as she managed the controls.

  Alice brought her hand back up to her right eye. She knew there was something wrong already from the stabbing pain that started the instant the fusion torpedo went off, but to see her hand come away covered in blood confirmed that something in the electronics had burned out and done damage to the delicate socket. “I'll live,” she said quietly.

  “We are stationary,” Ashley reported.

  “Several of the drones are making suicide runs against the shields, two have broken through and impacted our hull,” Agameg reported, trying not to sound alarmed.

  “Where? Show me.”

  Agameg brought up a second large hologram in the middle of the bridge and focused in on the dorsal section, right between damaged turrets. The two drones had attached themselves to the hull and as they looked on they were joined by three more.

  “This is Frost! The little buggers are drillin' inta the hull an' my gunners can't get a shot on 'em.”

  “Stephanie, get your people in there!”

  “Already on my way with four squads Captain,” Came Stephanie's reply, “If this lift would move faster we'd already be there.”

  “Wormhole ready!” announced Finn.

  “Open it and just go!” Alice ordered.

  The main emitters released all the energy contained within its capacitors and power cells at once, compressing the space in front of it and initiating a firing sequence of smaller energy emitters located across the Triton's hull as it crossed the wormhole threshold and began moving through compressed space.

  Ashley brought the engines up to full power gradually, adjusting their mass profile to accommodate for the five unwelcome guests attached to their hull.

  The bridge medic was at Alice's side before she could even think about doing anything else and as he drew her hand away from her face his professionalism held, but barely. “The EMP from the nuke must have burned the cybernetics out, I'm sorry Captain.”

  “Do what you can,” she said, trying not to cringe as her fears were confirmed. The eye would have to come out.

  Uninvited Guests

  Stephanie was already on her way to the gunnery deck with fifty six armoured counter-incursion team members. They stood behind her holding their heavy assault rifles across their chests, dispositions ranging from hardened and cool to jittery and nervous. The large express car stopped and the doors opened to a sight that she couldn't believe.

  A drone was finishing cutting a hole in the inner layer of the Triton's hull and through its transparent surface she could see the inhuman, featureless metal face and forward arms of whatever kind of machine hid inside its outer armour. Its angled surface looked eager somehow, as though anxiously awaiting its opportunity to get inside and wreak havoc.

  You're giving an object personal traits, psyching yourself out, stop it. She mentally chided herself. Stephanie tuned in to the gunnery deck's command channel while leading her people out of the car.

  “Armour! Make a circle round these bastards and pound 'em inta the deck before they know what hit 'em. I'll take down the first one, watch how it's done!” Frost ordered. “All unarmoured units clear the deck, we don't want ta be steppin' on ye!”

  “Frost! Keep your people back! We don't know what kind of weaponry they have and your loader suits are unarmed,” she argued.

  “Keep back lass, we've got this. Go get the one tryin' ta break into the hallway in section nine. It'll hit a main corridor and lord knows what else!” Frost argued as his black and red armoured suit crouched, waiting for the invader to break through the hull.

  “There are six teams on that incursion, we can take care of the gunnery deck!”

  “This is my deck lass, watch how it's done.”

  Stephanie shook her head in irritation as her men and woman took formation all around her, spreading out one meter apart at the shoulder to maximise their firepower. “Alpha, beta teams, take the other end of the deck. Watch out for falling loader suits,” she ordered.

  “Theta and delta teams, with me, we're taking the next incursion point, let Frost play with his new friend,” she ordered as she broke into a dead run across the deck towards the hole forming over thirty meters away from Frost. She couldn't help but bring up a secondary display on her visor and focusing in on the scene behind her.

  The three quarter meter wide plate cut from the inside of the hull fell to the deck with a violent crash, it would have been a colossal sound if there were an atmosphere to hear it through, and long metal arms stretched out from the drone pod as the machination inside pulled itself inside. Frost picked up a full flak magazine and his armoured suit leapt up, swatting the intruder so hard that one of its arms was awkwardly bent out of shape.

  As Frost's heavily armoured feet touched the deck the rest of the intruding machine fell out of its small hole. It pou
red out like a silver stream of struts and oval segments, landing and turning towards Frost. The edges of several plates across its front glowed blue and violet as though the insect like machine was just coming to life, and as its arms began to unfurl as though in preparation for a grand melee plasma blades across its arms and body lit up, jagged fingers clicked and scraped together.

  Frost turned around, grabbed it by the middle and picked it up off the deck, bringing it back down hard enough to dent and scrape the hardened metal floor. The machine took little visible damage, and as it was raised up to be smashed again all six of its long limbs wrapped around Frost's loading suit, crushing, cutting, trying to burst the armoured suit and kill whatever was inside.

  Stephanie stopped dead, spun around, raised her rifle and tried to take aim. Frost was struggling with the machine, pulling at its silvered, oval segments, staggering as the invader cut the main sensor array on the top of the suit cleanly in half. “Dammit Frost! I can't get a shot!”

  “Things all arms! Can't get my grip back! My armour's as good as done!”

  It began to saw into one of the armour's arms to great effect, she could see the metal beginning to part as the plasma blade sent sparks flying in all directions. Frost's armour lurched forward suddenly, hitting the deck face first and pinning the invader as it cut straight through the knee of his suit. Everyone on the deck heard Frost cry out before he could stifle his scream.

  The back hatch of the suit blew off and he hurriedly fell as much as climbed out.

  Stephanie set her automatic rifle to full power and opened up on the invader trying to scurry out from under the heavy armoured munitions loading suit. Half its efforts were spent on getting out from under it while its many tools cut it apart in a dozen places just to get free. The heavy metal of the automation heated under her steady stream of gunfire. In an attempt to move the machine ripped the softened metal casing of its body open and Stephanie continued her attack. The squads with her joined in, and in the space of three seconds Frost's armoured suit and the invader trapped beneath it was completely destroyed. The lights of its many sensors and tools faded out slowly.

  The deck beneath her feet rumbled and she turned around just in time to see an armoured suit flying through the air towards him, thrown by a pair of invaders working together. “Move!” she called out only too late as the armoured loader suit crashed into them. Her vacsuit took the impact of the suit's thigh, protecting her as she was thrown fifteen meters across the deck.

  Two of her squad members weren't so lucky and were seriously injured as the torso of the armour crushed into them and rolled on. It narrowly missed Frost as well, passing just over his head as he crawled as quickly as he could. He had lost his foot above the ankle and crawling for the nearest secure hatch to get out of the way.

  “Let the marines do their jobs, lads! Stay clear and if ye get caught by one o' those things, abandon yer armour! Anyone not in a loader get ta the emergency arms lockers an' get a rifle so you can lay down supportin' fire!”

  Stephanie got to her feet, dropped her empty particle rifle cartridge, replaced it with a fresh one and took sight on the pair of intruders. They had intertwined with each other, becoming a slowly moving object that reached out with deadly speed using any one of its dozen arms. Her visor informed her that it had erected an energy shield around itself. “Fire on my target, full intensity! Hurry before the other two get through the hull!” She activated the secondary barrel and emptied her cartridge of heavy explosive rounds, hoping the explosions against the invader's shields would bring the barrier down faster.

  As two of the machines arms got around another armoured suit and threw it effortlessly at the squad opposite them who reacted perfectly, dodging to the side and resuming fire the second they were out of immediate jeopardy a pair of oval pods separated from the machine, scurrying towards her men and women with blurring speed.

  She opened fire on the nearest, scoring one hit before it exploded, shaking the deck and instantly incinerating two of her team members. Stephanie picked herself up off the deck and resumed fire. “Those things have some kind of automated grenades or mines, aim for them while they're still attached!”

  The sprawling automation flew to pieces under the devastating firepower of thirty nine soldiers, and when the other two broke through the hull, they were ready.

  Stephanie tossed three hammer grenades at the ceiling right after the nearest invader broke through the hull and they affixed right beside the new aperture. The arms hesitated to extend out into the open air beneath the second before the grenades went off and she opened fire before the smoke cleared.

  The scene at the other incursion point was similar, only the grenades were ready and counting down on the deck as the invader made its appearance, trying to bend away from the explosion as it went off. They had just enough firepower left to take them out before they could injure or kill anyone else, and with no doctor aboard, no one had great expectations for the severely injured if they couldn't be treated with nanotechnology or placed in stasis in time.

  “Status report.” Alice ordered as she returned to the bridge. The biological portion of her eye had been healed by regeneration medication but with few medical specialists aboard there was no hope of having her eye repaired. Instead she allowed the bridge medic to use nanobots to separate it from her optical nerve and push it out of the socket under local anaesthetic in the ready quarters. As a temporary measure she had an eye patch materialized and placed her ocular implant into a small case she pocketed. She'd have something done about it later, the patch wouldn't do. “First person to say 'yar' or 'ahoy' will be the last,” she added.

  “We're three minutes from emerging from the wormhole, repair crews are already at work on the damage on the corridors and gunnery deck, we lost nine security staff in the fighting and our astronomers have found something interesting from the pure sciences department of the ship, Captain.” Agameg got out of the command seat and returned to tactical.

  “They were watching that?”

  “Aye, they were the first to notice our torpedoes getting hacked and they reported it to me straight away.”

  “Good job, and you made the right decision to target one of the torpedoes for a sure hit instead of lessening our chances by splitting your firepower Agameg. How are our defensive systems now?”

  “The rail cannons taken out by the nuke only needed a reset, and our shields can hold a full charge again,” Chief Grady's hologram reported. “Tell her the bad news, Finn.”

  “Right. Our primary emitters are working right now, but there will be no way to power them back up once they've lost their charge. That whole line of circuitry and half the control interface is fried, permanently fried.” Finn reported from the engineering station on the bridge.

  “There's no way to repair them?” Alice asked peevishly.

  “They have to be replaced and it would take weeks to fabricate the parts we need, some just can't come from a materializer and we need to train to machine them ourselves, then we'd actually have to make the tools to do it. When I say fried, I mean fried. If you can find a single cable down there that hasn't melted under the strain once the main emitter array and everything connected to it blows, well, you're more qualified than I am,” Finn answered peevishly.

  “Blows?”

  “Right, I had to run the bulk of the energy through the capacitors and power cells that sit right under the array and the power can only flow in one direction; in, through then across or out from the array. Right now those capacitors have about a hundred times as much energy running across them per millisecond than they're made to carry or discharge and I had to use the larger power cells as conductors, so the connectors have fused together to make a low resistance path to get power from the reactors straight to the emitters. When that wormhole closes the emitter systems will deactivate in the wrong sequence, leaving the capacitors and power cells over charged, so they'll burn out and we'll have about twelve tons of scrap. We'll have to replace t
he entire assembly.”

  “There's no way to prevent this?”

  “Nope. You asked me to give you a wormhole and you got one. Probably the last one.”

  “So about two weeks before we can generate a wormhole large enough for the ship?”

  “No. Three if you manage to buy an entirely new assembly and if not it'll be at least four weeks to rebuild the power systems and another six to rebuild the control room and emitter array. After that we'll have to calibrate it and that'll take at least two more weeks outside of drydock, a day if you can manage to find us a berth. Knowing how unlikely that is, I don't think you'll ever see this ship generate a wormhole again.”

  “Easy, Finn.” Chief Grady interjected quietly.

  “No, it's all right. He saved our butts, followed orders and I ignored his warnings; he gets a free shot,” Alice said with a nod. “Clean up as much as you need to in order to make that section of the ship safe. Oh, and Finn? Take a few minutes to cool down then get to the bridge. I need an Engineering officer here in person from here on out and you're it.”

  “Emerging into unaltered space, Captain,” Ashley reported from the helm.

  “Tactical, begin scanning, and get those astronomer's eyes looking too, I don't want to miss a thing.”

  The Triton emerged from the wormhole within a few hundred kilometres of their reconnaissance craft.

  Alice watched the engineering status hologram and a representation of the inside of the main emitter control room. She couldn't help but wince as it was filled with sparks and the feed was cut off entirely by an explosion that shook the entire ship. “There it goes, a fire suppression team is already in place to take care of it,” Finn reported from the hallway outside the control room. “I'll be on the bridge in a few minutes. I only wish there could have been another way.”