Strike Battleship Engineers (The Ithis Campaign Book 2)

by Shane Lochlann Black

  But the dominant new feature in the FCIC was located in the forward half of the new air-conditioned facility. It was as formidable-looking as the weapons it controlled, and stood out from the other features of the room due to its sleek black stylings and its smooth rounded edges.

  “This must be what the new reactors were for,” Mallory said. She was tempted to sit at the control console, but decided against it. There was no telling what might happen if she started experimenting, and she needed her sleep after pulling a 21-hour shift followed by parties and receptions filled with congratulatory officers and politicians. Nobody aboard had been trained for the new weapons yet, although there were credible rumors Commander Hunter had at least been briefed.

  “We’re not just a strike cruiser any more,” Huggins said. He took a seat at the new weapons station. “The Force Command Master Chief gave myself and Sutherland a heads-up last night. Our official designation now is ‘Advanced Strike Cruiser.’ Skywatch Command is apparently prepping plans to assemble a permanent task force around us after these upgrades are shaken out.”

  “SPECTRE main batteries,” Sabrina read from the boot sequence as the console glowed to life.

  Huggins nodded. “Shock plasma guns powered by unstable energy capacitors. Same punch as the smallest Havocs with a faster firing rate, less energy bleed and lower burst feedback requirements. Now that we’re an all-fusion ship, we won’t need to rely on outdated main batteries to engage long-range threats. But that’s not the fun part.”

  Mallory leaned closer to see the colorful schematic of the ship as Huggins rotated it and highlighted the large new additions to Fury’s starboard and port stabilizer structures. “Fusion torpedos?”

  “If SPECTRE guns are the kick, these things are the punch. In their direct-energy configurations, we can sustain a full power barrage of two rounds every four seconds for up to a full minute. They can also be overloaded in a proximity concussion mode. They’re essentially high-rate-of-fire explosive energy charges that double as particle beam weapons.”

  Mallory well understood the tactical ramifications. Leaving aside the fact the fission-to-fusion power system upgrades had added a third more energy output to the Perseus flagship, the weapons upgrades solved one of her major tactical weaknesses. The Pershing strike cruiser had originally been designed for space-to-surface gunnery support. Because of the vessel’s economy and versatility, it had taken on various new roles over the years until new ship designers had been charged with finding a way to bring the newer and more powerful weapons systems aboard without having to alter the vessel’s basic structure.

  The problem they were tasked with solving was the zone between optimum main battery and reflex battery ranges. A strike cruiser was quite capable of dishing out sustained heavy firepower at ranges of 500 to 200,000 miles, but the standard main batteries were terribly inefficient at closer ranges. They functioned, of course, but very often they would either be too diffuse to do enough damage or they would require impractical amounts of power from reactors designed to support more standard loads. The alternative problem of trying to stretch the range on a reflex weapon designed to engage threats at ranges of 300 miles or less was even worse. It just wasn’t possible to drive enough power through the smaller weapons mounts to achieve much, and at extended ranges, the reverse kind of beam diffusion would reduce yields to the point where it wasn’t worth the power in the first place. This was rarely a problem on an assault mission because the ship wasn’t expected to deal with spaceborne threats. But now, with specialized hulls being pressed into service as general warfare platforms, things had changed.

  If an enemy could engage a Pershing-class vessel at ranges of 300 to 500 miles, it would find itself able to attack without fear of being in range of the cruiser’s most powerful direct-fire weapons. Unfortunately for Fury, that was the exact problem she faced at Station 19. Until the battle was sufficiently “spread out,” she had no chance to defend herself adequately against the most critical threat. Her escort vessels weren’t much help either, given the relative ranges and vanishingly small time windows caused by ships suddenly appearing well within their engagement envelopes.

  “This changes our role quite a bit,” Mallory replied. “A short-range direct-fire heavy weapon? Now we’re not an underpowered battleship any more.”

  Huggins leaned back in the relatively luxurious weapons station couch. “The SPECTREs have longer range and a higher rate of fire than the old main guns with lower energy costs. But these things can engage at point blank range out to 1000 miles and further if we set them for proximity burst. Fusion torpedos close our direct-fire envelope. You can’t run. You can’t hide.”

  “Attention on deck.” Sabrina said quietly, straightening her posture. Huggins rose to his feet, but Commander Hunter gently held up her hand.

  “As you were.” Both of Jayce’s senior officers relaxed and Huggins took his seat again. “What do you think of our new digs?”

  “Like Commander Mallory said, ma’am, I’d trade it all for your wings.”

  Hunter took a sip of her coffee and made her way over to stand by the weapons station. “All in good time, as our quartermaster always says. I’m just happy we’re back to having three command officers in the watch rotation again. I’ve tried not to make a big deal out of it, but we’ve been short on regulation staffing now for months, and I’m still owed another set of gold leaves. I believe congratulations are in order, Sabrina.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Mallory replied with a smile. “I appreciated your commendation letter.”

  “The crew of the Constellation owes you and Fury’s damage control parties their lives. That’s what I came up here to talk about.”

  The expressions on Huggins’ and Mallory’s faces became serious. Commander Hunter dimmed the lights and called up the tactical real-time record of the Station 19 enemy attack against the Perseus formation and had it displayed on the central LCR panel. She allowed it to play until the unidentified frigate appeared already hurtling towards Fury’s position.

  “Hold.” The playback froze.

  “That thing just winked into existence out of nowhere,” Sabrina muttered. Commander Huggins noticed Jayce wasn’t looking at the display, but at her two senior officers.

  “Ma’am?” he asked.

  “Notice anything strange about the tactical situation 2.8 seconds after that unmanned frigate appeared?”

  Both Mallory and Huggins re-examined the tactical map, their faces bathed in the cool electronic glow of the display. Sabrina saw it first.

  “The range.”

  “Better be careful there, commander. People will start to think you’re some kind of starship combat expert,” Hunter quipped. Tom smiled.

  Sabrina rewound the tactical display playback to the moment the frigate appeared and pointed at the unidentified vessel’s position. “Four hundred twenty one miles. Just inside effective main battery range.”

  “And we know what the limitations of reflex weapons are now,” Huggins added.

  “We’re not the only ones who know,” Hunter replied. “Sabrina you weren’t privy to this, but right after we returned with First Marines, one of Exeter’s junior officers gave me a heads-up and it’s been on my mind ever since. Lieutenant Hawkins is the second watch signals officer on Exeter. She’s been known to be a little too gung-ho from time to time, but I’m told she has fine instincts. Her theory is the intruders we’ve been running into have Skywatch training.”

  Realization dawned on Commander Huggins’ face as Mallory turned back to the display with a look of shocked recognition. “Those bastards put that frigate inside our main battery range because they knew we wouldn’t be able to kill it in time with just reflex fire.”

  “And it was also too close for missile acquisition,” Hunter added. “If I wanted to mission kill a Pershing cruiser in one shot, having a suicide ship appear at 400 miles on a collision course is one hell of an effective strategy, and it was tailor made for us. If they tried tha
t with Revenge or Jefferson, they’d be ripped to shreds by deflection fire. And now that Rhode Island has been upgraded, it would be even less effective.”

  “What’s she got now?” Huggins asked.

  “They’re still putting the finishing touches on it, but Force Command tells me they’ve outfitted her with what they call ‘Ghost Killer’ weapons. Our baby destroyer has been turned into a vicious little shark. They swapped out her energy weapons for four banks of Mantid-class ASCONF missiles. Put that together with her new autonomous probes, and she is a stealth ship’s worst nightmare. Just like an old wet navy destroyer. Built for sub hunting.”

  “Skywatch Command has been getting increasingly nervous about stealthed attacks,” Mallory said.

  “Having the Perseus flagship almost taken out forced their hand,” Hunter replied. “That and the changing waveforms our tactical section recorded. We saw further evidence of Hawkins’ theory during the Agamemnon attack and when Colonel Atwell’s empty cruiser hull attacked Argent. The enemies that stormed our bridge were equipped with standard Skywatch tac-suit loadouts. Whoever we were fighting in Gitairn, they weren’t any alien race or overgrown insects. Either they were Skywatch or they were trained by Skywatch.”

  “What about the bigger issue?” Huggins asked. “Three full-size starships appear out of nowhere in the middle of our formation, and halfway through the attack, Fury was hit by a weapon apparently fired from outside our acquisition range!”

  “That or it was fired by a stealthed ship from a closer range that was doing a superior job of masking her position with sensor echoes. If Fury hadn’t recovered, it could have taken out more than just the Constellation in the confusion.”

  “Thus the stealth hunter upgrades for Rhode Island,” Mallory said. Hunter nodded and took another sip of her coffee. “Did either of you get a chance to read Lieutenant Curtiss’ and Lieutenant Tixia’s report on the Barker’s Asteroid mission?”

  “I really need to set aside more time for after-action reports,” Huggins sighed.

  “You’re talking about the scattering field technology they discovered?” Hunter asked. Mallory nodded.

  “I can’t say I understand all the details, but if what Argent’s Chief Engineer says is true, someone out there has the technology to move matter, energy and communications at multiples of light-speed anywhere they can establish one of their scattering fields.”

  “And that explains how they managed to crash a frigate into our dorsal hull,” Huggins said. “I can’t imagine how they have the power to do it, but we all saw what happened.”

  “Well, as usual, there’s more,” Hunter added. “Some variation on this technology can apparently put people in ‘different dimensions,' as our theoretical science section puts it. The thing is they end up occupying the same space, so if someone is slipping from one dimension to the next, they don’t know it because their surroundings look exactly the same.”

  “The Argent engineer reported that apparently happened to Captain Hunter,” Mallory said. “They were hearing false transmissions from Argent’s First Officer minutes before one of those dimensional anomalies separated the crew. They both ended up on the bridge, but couldn’t see each other until Lieutenant Tixia figured out a way to defeat the interference.”

  “This is almost too much to keep up with,” Huggins exhaled as he held a hand to his forehead. “This is a warship. I’m not sure how effective we’re going to be in some kind of interdimensional wild goose chase.”

  “We’re going to do it by the numbers, Commander,” Hunter replied. “I’ve been keeping tabs on our friends in Sector Two and I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion this thing is going to reach a boiling point in either the Bayone or Raleo systems. Whoever is out there with the interdimensional gizmo is after something, and orders or no orders, I’m going to make sure we’re there in time to see to it he or she doesn’t get it.”

  “Have you heard from Minstrel?” Mallory asked.

  “Yeah, they’re parked right outside playing cards,” Hunter paused just long enough to make her senior officers think she had grinned and then took another sip of her coffee.

  Thirty-Five

  “How are we doing, Mr. Boswold?”

  “Frankly, ma’am, I don’t know how you did it. Everyone ejects and soft lands and all on your own you go from steam power to interstellar travel in about two days. And half of that time you’re recovering in the medical bay?”

  Flight Officer Charles Boswold was seated at the Copernicus engineering boat’s conn and marveling at the repair log his section chief had compiled. “This reads like some kind of sports legend!”

  The finishing touches were being put on the hull breach, and with the reactors back to full power a containment screen had been established, allowing the boat to repressurize and re-engage life support. The team’s marine sergeant climbed up the short ladder to the flight deck.

  “Starhaven reports our guests have been secured, ma’am. No messages have been transmitted yet, but Argent assures me we can notify Skywatch Command to recover the prisoners with the next communique.”

  “Very well, gunnery sergeant. Let’s do a weapons check before we lift off,” Yili replied. “Make sure those power supplies on ‘B’ deck are secured and have Mister Todd do one more pass on those hull panels.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” sergeant Hall replied.

  “Copernicus secured for liftoff,” Ensign Boswold reported.

  “Very well, ensign. Your captors’ equipment was keyed to a repeater at the same location as the origin point of the blast that knocked out our propulsion. Surface coordinates indicate heading seven one degrees true at a range of 282 miles. I propose we investigate. What say you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Orbital Combat Engineering is en route.” Boswold activated atmospheric flight mode indicators and transmitted the alert tone to the rest of the boat. “Attention all decks. This is flight. Liftoff in twenty seconds. Secure for atmospheric maneuvers and report readiness to ‘A’ deck signal station one. Mark.”

  The corvette’s engines rumbled and thundered over the whine of its atmospheric turbines. Dust blasted in all directions as her magnetic field flattened the plants and swept the impact crater and ground clean of debris for several hundred feet.

  “Engines at cruise power.”

  “Open a channel to Argent.”

  Ensign Boswold activated the controls at his universal station and patched the voice channel to Lieutenant Curtiss’ headset. “Channel open.”

  “Copernicus to Argent. We are preparing to investigate the origin of the unidentified energy wave. Coordinates are on the board. Estimated time to arrival at the Lethe Deeps Planetary Defense Base seven minutes.”

  A pause. Then Zony answered.

  “Affirmative Copernicus. Maintain communications on this frequency. Argent standing by. Tixia out.”

  Lieutenant Tixia leaned back in the signals station shock couch and smiled. Aibreann had been sitting at the library computer station for almost an hour talking to Dominique. She was wearing an enormous pair of headphones and had Boots and Checkers both seated on the controls within range of the computer’s optical pickup. She had become considerably more interested in talking to Argent’s computer when it became clear the “version” of Dominique aboard ship could talk about almost anything instead of just playing guessing games and talking about “gunship stuff.” The current topic was “what’s your favorite kind of cookie?” Dominique had responded with an explorable archive of hundreds of recipes complete with pictures and demonstration videos, all of which delighted Aibreann beyond words.

  “Corporal, I know this is totally outside regulations, but to be honest I don’t have a choice. I have to take our new pilot home, because her parents are probably beside themselves wondering where she is and because the Captain will put us all in the brig if we go into battle with a civilian aboard.”

  It was gradually dawning on the tough-looking marine something truly unusual was about to take place.
Senior lieutenants never explained orders to marine corporals. Then again, senior lieutenants didn’t often have pink hair either.

  “I’m putting you in temporary command of the ship.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Don’t touch anything you don’t know how to use and maintain radio silence for the time being. I’ve set all our pickups to relay transmissions to my fighter and all of the ship’s security systems are at full operation. We should be hearing from Copernicus One in a few minutes. I’ll be back by the time they set up their ground operations. Everything else is running on autosystems.” The marine looked like he had just been entrusted with the princess, the castle and the King’s wallet.

  Zony knelt down beside Aibreann and her plush toys. “What do you say we go see your mom?” She took Aibreann by the hand and started for the lifts.

  “Don’t worry about it, corporal,” Zony said with a bright smile. “After this is all over you’ll have a story to tell nobody will believe.”

  Zony didn’t notice Aibreann had hidden one of Black Seven’s auxiliary commlinks in her new flight jacket pocket.

  Thirty-Six

  Nerves were beginning to fray aboard the command frigate Northumberland. Far behind her at the edge of the Bayone system waited the main body of Skywatch Task Force Ares. Lieutenant Commander Roderick Kent knew well how impatient the Ares flag could be when it came to indeterminate scanner readings, which was why he was taking the extra few minutes to confirm his suspicions before notifying the rest of his formation something wasn’t right along the far edge of the Raleo system.