Strike Battleship Engineers (The Ithis Campaign Book 2)

by Shane Lochlann Black

  “Acknowledged, Buck Four. You are weapons free. Good hunting.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Zony replied with an ominous tone. Buccaneer Four’s atmospheric engines whined as its pilot powered up to flight level. The ground and air around the fighter rumbled as its ventral running lamps rotated. A blast of loose dirt and debris exploded in all directions. Once she reached an altitude of 100 feet, Zony banked her fighter around and punched her sprint thrusters.

  Buccaneer Four exploded into the Bayone Three atmosphere. Moments later, the quick little fighter peaked at an orbital target velocity of 92 MPS and banked into an approach tangent to Argent’s command area. From ground to space, Zony’s chronometer counted 31 seconds. Once free of the planet’s atmosphere, she calmly activated main power and shoved both throttles forward. In moments, she was screaming through Bayone Three’s magnetic field at a velocity of 510 miles per second. She armed her fighter’s weapons and locked her battlecomp and LRS on the inbounds.

  Zony set an intercept course for the lead Sarn destroyer.

  Nineteen

  “She’s out here somewhere, lieutenant.”

  Nightwing Six silently crept through space. The Skywatch Search and Rescue (SAR) corvette was outfitted with the latest counter-track and counter-detection systems. She was essentially an electronic warfare vessel built around a highly advanced surgical trauma unit. She was under the command of Argent Executive Officer Commander Annora Doverly and six highly trained members of her Search and Rescue team.

  “Sixteen beam sweeps, ma’am. Negative contact on the specified transponder,” Lieutenant Anders replied from the sensor station.

  “Very well. Advance the point and put us in the next survey pattern, Joss.”

  “Aye, ma’am. Shifting all control patterns to point control delta. New parabolic course one seven degrees and orbiting.”

  “Tactical, report all contacts.”

  “Negative contacts, ma’am,” Anders replied, wondering why the XO would ask to report all contacts moments after a negative transponder report.

  “What is our distance to the frontier, Joss?”

  “By standard reckoning, the closest point inside the Sarn Frontier is 1.12 million miles bearing zero four zero.”

  “Lieutenant, your equipment isn’t tuned correctly. There is a contact on the board that you’re missing. Run a harmonics reflection test on all channels and do it quickly please.”

  “Aye.. ma’am?” Anders replied. How does she know all that? The junior lieutenant got to work running tests on all of his systems’ equipment.

  “Okay Joss. Argent Skywatch picked up a disaster buoy two weeks ago with the Saratoga’s transponder code. Let’s get the scanners tuned correctly. She’s a Kovacks-class cruiser with missile racks in place of the Blaine-class’ particle beam batteries. Crew of 211. If she’s out here, she must have run into an over-the-line patrol of some kind, which means we need to stay dark and quiet. No abrupt maneuvers, understand?”

  “Aye, ma’am. Slow and steady.”

  “No active signals, lieutenant. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Test cycle will complete in 40 seconds.”

  Doverly got up and walked across the relatively spacious corvette’s bridge to the forward viewscreen. Nightwing command decks were reminiscent of those built into 21st century wet navy attack submarines. “Joss, put the sector up on the screen and give me a centered view on the closest point inside Sarn space.”

  The reactive crystal display switched to a “top down” view of the Nightwing’s patrol area. Not far from the edge of the Frontier there was a cluster of asteroids off by itself. Sarn space was bordered at the edge of the Gaelphos Star System, so any experienced tactical officer would expect to find a certain amount of debris at system’s edge. There was also the little matter of the Raleo and Bayone systems, which each posed unique problems of their own.

  But for Annora, there was something about that particular cluster of rocks in space.

  “All stop, all quiet.”

  “Aye ma’am,” Joss replied. The Nightwing slowed and then stopped in space before all but her emergency life support systems powered down to minimal station-keeping levels.

  “Lieutenant, tell me a happy story about those sensors,” Doverly said quietly. The red glow from the alert lights illuminated her face from below, making her expression appear rather ominous.

  “Navicomp is recommending we re-tune the base harmonics by zero point zero seven one, ma’am.”

  “Very good. When you do, you’re going to catch a picket formation in that asteroid cluster at zero four three. Don’t panic and don’t go active. Turn your auto-targeting systems off and stand by.” Doverly took her seat in the center chair and quietly lashed up her shock harness.

  Anders completed his re-tune of the system and almost immediately it lit up with new contacts. A quiet jangly little alarm went off. He silenced it and spoke with as much self-control as he could muster. It didn’t stop his voice from trembling just a little, however.

  “New contacts bearing zero four six. Battle computer reports a Sarn battlecruiser and two escort destroyers. Stopped in space and maintaining station six miles inside the Frontier.”

  “Joss, take us to general quarters, quiet alarm. Disengage all engines and cut power to maneuvering thrusters.”

  “We’ll drift, ma’am.”

  “Affirmative. We don’t want to take any chances of an energy emission signal. Anders, set your RF ambient to plus or minus point five. Half a watt of power. Set your passive motion sensors to watch that asteroid cluster. Turn everything else off.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Anders replied. He struggled to follow the Commander’s orders. It was a lot easier to say all those things than it was to do them in the proper order without making a mistake.

  “Range to hostile contacts,” Doverly said.

  “Point nine megaclicks,” Joss replied.

  “I have the Saratoga, ma’am. Off our starboard quarter bearing one seven one mark forty. Range two megaclicks. She’s stopped in space and appears to be drifting. She’s off her axis as well. No active emissions or signals. Reactor signature is a match with four nines confidence,” Anders reported.

  “Are we active, lieutenant?”

  “Negative, ma’am.”

  “Very well. We’re going to need to maneuver, Joss. We’ve got to recover the Saratoga, whatever the risk. Quietly re-engage our thrusters and prepare a phantom probe. Match the lieutenant’s RF signature and stand by to launch. Plot an intercept course to the Saratoga and stand by to come about.” Doverly keyed her intraship commlink.

  “Sickbay, Bridge.”

  “Tyran here.”

  “Ensign, we may have wounded. Stand by for emergency triage operations. Report readiness in two minutes. Bridge out.”

  “Maneuvering thrusters engaged, Commander. Standin–”

  “Belay that order,” Doverly snapped. “All quiet.”

  Nightwing One’s main screen told the story. The passive signatures of another battlecruiser were registering now. She was moving on an oblique course relative to Doverly’s ship, and for that she was more than thankful. It appeared the SAR corvette had detected the EM signatures and drive fields first, then had used the SRS systems to confirm. The contact icon blinked, faded and re-appeared as the navigational and battle computers struggled to keep up with the sudden barrage of new information.

  Commander Doverly returned to the center chair. Her crew just stared at the ferocious silhouette of death moving through space.

  “This doesn’t look like an exercise to me,” Joss exhaled.

  “Agreed. Two ships of the line moving at once only means one thing. Alright, we’ll come at it from the other direction. Plot a parabolic course to the Saratoga. Don’t let us get closer than a megaclick to either formation. Maneuvering, all ahead slow.”

  Joss carefully nudged Nightwing One into motion. The sleek black ship silently banked away from the oncoming vessels and faded into the
starry darkness.

  Twenty

  To a casual observer, the stunning young woman sitting at a dingy table deep into the crowd at the Sinisish Taphouse would have looked roughly as appropriate as a princess of the realm shoveling hog slop into wooden buckets. She was almost ethereal in her bearing. Flawless white skin and hair combined with an outfit that would likely have fetched a higher price than the girl herself, even among the wealthiest members of the Frontier’s criminal element. She wore a glowing miner’s stone around her neck on an impeccably filigreed triluminum chain.

  The wheezy, rat-like man sitting on the opposite side of the flimsy pot-metal table, on the other hand, would more likely have been paid rather handsomely to go away. He was dressed in what for all of known space looked like an emergency weather tarp secured by coarse brown twine. He was literally covered in tattoos, the most prominent of which made the skin appear to be missing on one side of his face. At frequent intervals, he shoved more and more money of varying origins and denominations across the table while the angelic girl ignored both it and his leering words.

  “I will soon be coming in to a small fortune, my dear. Best for a future noble to seize opportunity while it is available.” He unrolled a map, which only made the girl shift her weight to try and get further away from him. She exerted considerable effort to look the opposite direction. “These are my claims. The largest belonged to my late partner. Even the Frontier patrols have conceded my paperwork is all in–”

  Without warning, an enormous hand reached over the rat-man’s shoulder, grabbed him by his grubby garment and yanked him into the air. His feet banged into the table. The young woman rescued her drink as money clattered all over the room. In seconds it was pounced upon and vacuumed up by the crowd.

  Lucas Moody dropped the scrambling little man on the floor, lifted him back up by the nape of his neck and shoved him through the bar. Rat-man turned and weakly attempted to kick the imposing marine officer, only to be roughly pushed backwards. He stumbled and fell. Moody picked him up by his hair again and continued shoving him forward.

  The mismatched fight continued until the severely dressed officer reached a slightly more inviting booth where Captain Jason Hunter was seated. Moo slammed the cowering little man down on the seat, then folded his enormous arms.

  “Top of the morning to you, Mumph,” Hunter said without looking up. On the table was the Captain’s blaster, a whiskey on the rocks and a reading pad.

  The alternately terrified and angry little wretch drew a small gun. Moo reacted with lightning speed, nearly broke rat-man’s wrist disarming him and then whacked him across the mouth with the blaster’s grip. Moo holstered the weapon in his belt and remained standing, looming over the table.

  “Mumph? Are you angry with me?”

  Rat-man wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, then spat his reply. “If I seen with Skywatch, I die!”

  “That would be a shame,” Hunter replied after calmly taking a sip from his drink and turning the page. “Problem is, you were seen with another Skywatch officer less than a year ago. Somehow all that information showed up in an Inspector General’s report, but they didn’t bother to explain what brought you two together. So I thought I’d follow up. I’m going to make you my game show host.”

  Ratty looked up at the marine officer with his upper lip twitching. Moo glared. “He means you’re the man with the answers.”

  Mumph lunged across the table. Moo yanked him up by the hair and slammed him back in his seat. Ratty gasped for air. The marine officer calmly folded his arms again.

  “See, here’s the thing,” Jason said, taking a moment to replace the napkin under his glass. “The last time we saw Colonel Atwell, he was telling stories about evil aliens coming to eat us all. Thing is, we ain’t seen many aliens yet. What I do have is a dead admiral, nine destroyed starships and a lot of missing men and women. Those are the big questions, Mumph. And I expect to walk out of here with my prizes.”

  Mumph drew a knife. The resulting struggle ended with the varlet’s upper body being rammed into the table at least twice. The pieces of the broken knife clattered on the floor before Moo grabbed Mumph by the face and shoved him back into the booth.

  “You’re free to speak up any time you like, my friend,” Jason said. “Otherwise my wingman here will be more than happy to hammer this table into a set of flatware using your teeth for tools.” The look on Jason Hunter’s face was much darker than Mumph remembered ever seeing it. He wasn’t quite sure if the captain was serious or not.

  “I never met with Atwell,” Mumph wheezed through a golf-ball-sized contusion. Jason’s eyebrow rose. That answer implied a mysterious someone had met with the renegade ground forces officer, not to mention the fact Mumph identified the colonel by name. Instead of inviting a stonewall, Hunter approached the subject from a non-threatening angle.

  “Whatever was discussed required a huge amount of coordination, my friend. The bomb he dropped into Argent’s lift shaft was built at the opposite end of this street.

  “How can you possibly know that!?” Ratty spat.

  “Let’s just say I have some friends in the engineering field. The device was part of a set of four identical handheld explosive devices made by one of those bug-faced mercenaries. Unfortunately for your friend, they were sabotaged before delivery. That gave my friends a chance to inspect them. Surely you’ve heard the story by now? The builder was offed by a bounty hunter because you tipped off his rivals. There’s a couple of his friends on their way here right now, and they’re looking for you. Your whole operation is blown. How many more days you walk on this rock depend on how much truth you tell me in the next sixty seconds.”

  “The instructions were transmitted anonymously!” Mumph sneered. “My client only told Skywatch what they wanted to hear. I provide hardware!”

  Hunter squinted. The next question didn’t even need to be asked.

  Ratty looked up at Moo. He knew he had already said too much, and he also knew there was nowhere to run. The clock was ticking. If what Hunter said was true, just sitting at the table made him a convenient target. If he ran, he would have two rather dangerous Skywatch officers after him as well.

  “I want a deal.”

  “Mumph, I make one call, and I’ll have the best-dressed pirates north of Scatoon waiting in your hideout before you get out the door. There’s nothing they love more than the smell of nuceline and pressurized karbunck, except maybe the smell of money, and there’s big money in making things go boom. But then I suppose you already know that since you’ve been supplying Gitairn triluminum smugglers with munitions for years. That means there’s even bigger money in making you go boom. Are you with me?”

  The more Hunter talked, the more exaggerated the look of horror became on Mumph’s bruised and bleeding face.

  “Last chance.” Moo growled.

  “Exile. Let me go into exile in Sarn territory. I’ll stay out of Core space for good.”

  Hunter’s expression looked like a man with a handful of good cards and a hell of a lot of checks stacked nearby.

  “I’ll give you a two-day head start. But understand this, my friend: You hoo-rah me and I don’t care how far into enemy territory you run, I’ll muster a pursuit fleet you’ll feel before you see. Clear?” The light caught Hunter’s gleaming eagle insignia as if to emphasize to the angry smuggler his counterparty was anything but a no-rank wannabe.

  Mumph swallowed hard, then nodded.

  “What is going on between you and Atwell?”

  Twenty-One

  Sneaking through an abandoned ship of the line was something Lieutenant Islington never thought she would experience. She had taken a moment to note there were corridor junctions aboard Argent with more square footage than her own bridge, but some things were to be expected when a ship had to support a crew of more than 800 people divided between operations, pilots, marines, deck crews, engineering and scientific specialists.

  And even though the enemy boardin
g party on the flight deck had been neutralized, there was the ever-present possibility of other Sarn hostiles aboard Argent. In fact, Islington mused, they could be around the next corner, and there were a lot of corners between Deck 29 and the bridge. Islington and her tactical officer ducked into the botany lab and quietly activated the manual door lock. Minimal lighting came to life as the deck systems registered movement in the formerly abandoned facility. The captain keyed her commlink.

  “Islington to engineering.”

  “Engineering, Brogan.”

  “Where are we, chief?”

  “Everything is where it’s supposed to be, ma’am. There wasn’t any kind of a fight down here that I can see. Wherever the crew went, they just left. They weren’t attacked.”

  “How does that help me get main power online?”

  “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

  “You know the drill.” Islington cracked the door and peered down the corridor.

  “The bad news is if anything down here is even jostled a little, you’re down across the board and there is absolutely no hope of even attempting damage control. It would take an hour just to do the running back and forth between stations. I can’t kick in auxiliary power either, because that would require me to dampen reactions in all eight of the mains at once and that’s an all-day job for one person.”

  “Acknowledged. I can live with that if I get navigation.” The captain and Grant slipped out of the lab and moved towards Argent center-deck 29 facility.

  “The good news is nothing’s damaged down here. We can power up by the checklist. If you and the ensign can man the pilot and tactical stations on the bridge, we can fly this beast and maybe even turn it a little. But that’s all. We’re going to need every single person aboard just to do that much.”

  Islington and Grant arrived at the center-deck lift. “If we can make the Sarn think twice, that’s all we’ll need, engineer.”