Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10

by Randolph Lalonde

  A heavy strike by all there of the destroyer’s main beam weapons landed squarely on their forward shields, and Minh-Chu strafed the ship sideways then turned to the side.

  “Our main gun is offline,” Carnie said.

  “Forward shields are down to nine percent and recharging, we can’t take another hit like that for at least ten seconds,” Finn announced. “Sixty three thousand kilometres from the destroyer.”

  Minh-Chu almost flinched as he saw his tactical screen light up with the flash of one of their torpedoes as it blasted the starboard side of the destroyer with an electromagnetic pulse then struck and exploded. “Small miracles,” he said as he took a gamble, crossing the front of the destroyer to get to that side of the ship. A beam weapon struck them on their port side, he could hear the warping of metal and the popping of circuitry somewhere behind him, deeper inside the ship for an instant before they moved out of that weapon’s arc.

  “Major hit on our port side airlock, one turret is down,” Finn said. “Probably other damage on that side of the ship too but our hull saved us from most of it.”

  “How did they hit us so hard?” Carnie asked.

  “We had almost no shields on that side, everything is focused forward.”

  “Sorry, I’m betting that the port side of this destroyer is still recovering,” Minh-Chu said.

  “Looks like it, they’re not firing their main weapons on this side,” Finn said. “Twenty eight thousand kilometres. Ready to open the missile doors when we’re in your range.”

  “Here we go,” Minh-Chu said as he pushed the ship’s engines as hard as he could, the roar of them nearly drowning all other sounds out.

  “Missile doors open!” Finn said, “Within five thousand kilometres of the destroyer and closing fast.”

  Minh-Chu didn’t realize he was smiling until he activated the missiles in rapid fire mode, sending twenty eight heavy missiles towards the most vulnerable side of the destroyer. He swore he could see through the portholes before he pulled up, nearly skimming the hull of the enemy ship. “Launch torpedoes,” he said, knowing that the heavier munitions would loop around and head back for the destroyer.

  The first eleven missiles exploded against the enemy ship’s shields, the rest struck directly, most landing right against the side of their sensor suite and main antenna array. “Stop jamming, let’s see if they can broadcast.”

  “Stopping jamming,” Hot Chow said.

  “Torpedoes away,” Carnie reported. “They’re heading back towards the destroyer, I marked the same area we just hit as the preferred target.”

  “Good, now we can risk talking to the Nafalli,” Minh-Chu said.

  Chapter 24

  Countermeasures

  Ayan was on her feet seconds after the alert sounded throughout the ship, Jake was out of bed a moment later. “You can go back to bed, I’ll call you if I need you,” he told her as he straightened his uniform and opened the door.

  She was fixing the bun her hair was bound in. “I’d rather make sure I’m there.”

  A realization struck him then. She was the most important person in the fleet. “Before you fell asleep, did you tell me that you figured out the fundamentals of the Dimension Shift technology?”

  “Fundamentals? That’s one way to put it.”

  “You could build the technology from scratch?” Jake asked.

  “I couldn’t build a whole drive here, but back home, sure,” Ayan replied. “Why?”

  Jake kissed her briefly then walked through the door. “You have to go back,” he said.

  “What?”

  “As soon as possible, I have to put you in a fighter and send you back to Tamber so you can continue working in a safe place.”

  “I can send everything I know back instead, it’ll get there faster,” Ayan countered.

  “It’s not the same. In a week or two you solved problems that not even Agameg could get through and you presented the results in a way that even I could understand given time and concentration. There’s a lot more to learn, and even more to teach.”

  “We’ll talk about this later,” Ayan said quietly but forcefully.

  The pair entered the bridge, and Agameg left the captain’s seat so Jake could sit down. “Sir, we’ve been spotted by an advanced type of Order of Eden destroyer. I started the ship on a course that keeps asteroids with heavy metals and ice between us, but they mean to engage. They sent a burst transmission through a wormhole and began jamming before we could send an alert to the Triton. By the way, congratulations Captain Anderson, I studied your most recent breakthrough, it is amazing,” he said as he moved to the tactical station.

  “Thank you, Agameg,” Ayan replied as she took the lead position at engineering.

  Jake took a look at the enemy’s status as soon as he finished checking the Revenge’s ready status. The enemy destroyer featured a heavier hull, had more power in reserve than any Order of Eden destroyer he’d ever seen, and featured five beam weapons that looked like a new design as well. “We’re starting to see their best,” Jake said as he verified that they had the thickest part of an asteroid belt between them. The enemy was following, cutting between large obstacles ahead of them to meet the Revenge nose to nose. It was a bold move, the destroyer was massively outclassed by the Revenge, a modified battlecruiser. “We can take that ship,” Jake said. “But it’s moving like it expects to win, like there are three more ships right behind it. Begin calculating a jump back to our fall back point and execute an evasive course away from that ship, through a thin portion of the asteroid belt.”

  “Aye, calculating,” the lead navigation officer for that shift, Teller Rosen, reported. He had shaved his head at one point, but had dark stubble instead of a smooth dome and was an excellent pilot with the relatively low rank of Able Crewman Trainee.

  “Checking emitters, emitters are clear and charged,” Agameg reported form Tactical. “All weapons are ready to fire.”

  “We’re not friends here,” Jake said as he watched the destroyer’s course take a turn that brought them near enough. “Program our torpedoes to navigate near the asteroids as they close the distance then fire.”

  “One moment,” Agameg said, his fingers dancing over the tactical controls. “Torpedoes programmed, fourteen torpedoes away.”

  “Three wormhole exit points located,” Rosen’s co-pilot, Wendy Chatham reported. She was an older woman of the same rank as Teller. Jake remembered her record clearly, she had been a civilian navigator for twelve years before the Eden Virus struck.

  “I’m scanning a total of five Order of Eden ships, one heavy carrier, four destroyers,” reported the Sensor and Sciences station.

  “Frost reporting, ready to fire our main guns,” he said over Jake’s comm.

  “All fighters report ready to launch,” Stephanie Vega reported from a hologram that appeared at Jake’s left hand. She was settling into her station in Flight Control.

  “Main batteries, all fire on the emergence point of that carrier. Expose missile racks and split fire between the other wormhole emergence points. Helm, get those asteroids between us and them. We are leaving.”

  “Aye,” replied Rosen.

  “Commander Vega,” Jake addressed. “Prepare one Uriel fighter for a long range mission. It needs to be a two-seater.” Jake turned to Agameg. “Can you operate the new shields and calculate D-Drive jump points?”

  “With the new software and Ayan’s notes, yes,” he replied.

  “Don’t do this to me, Jake,” Ayan warned quietly.

  “This is a tactical decision,” Jake said as he watched the carrier and four destroyers finish emerging from their wormholes. The destroyers flanked the carrier in perfect formation and began firing long range torpedoes immediately. An alarm went off and a red aura began growing from the first destroyer they saw. “That’s a suppression field,” Jake said. “Tell me about it, quickly.”

  “It’s an energy wave, once it overtakes us we won’t be able to engage hypersp
ace or make any kind of wormhole, including dimension travel,” Chatham reported. “It is only coming from that new type destroyer.”

  “The carrier is launching fighters,” Stephanie reported. “The special loadout you requested is ready.”

  The Revenge turned to port suddenly, into the disruption wave and in the general direction of the carrier. The thrusters fired at full power, and Rosen attempted to fire the solid Xetima charges for even more speed. “What are you doing?” Jake shouted.

  With only a quick glance over his shoulder, Rosen attempted to unlock the Xetima charges to add to their thrust and send them into easy range of the enemy even faster several times before his navigator attempted to push him out of his seat. Rosen elbowed and punched Chatham, who only redoubled her efforts, standing up and shoving him out of his seat hard, taking his position and trying to counter the ship’s momentum at the controls.

  “Security!” Jake called as he locked Rosen’s vacsuit so he couldn’t move. “Take him to the brig.”

  “This ship is finished, I’ll be with my Order brothers within an hour, I’ll be a hero,” Rosen said as he was dragged from the bridge.

  “Where is Ashley?” Jake asked.

  “Still in her bunk, I’m sending security to her now,” Stephanie replied.

  “All weapon posts except point defence, fire on the nose of that carrier. Launch all but three fighters, including my special request.”

  The Revenge’s eighty-four smaller rapid fire point defence turrets came to life, firing at the first wave of enemy fighters, the missiles they launched, and several torpedoes that powered towards the ship. The beam weapons struck the front of the carrier’s shields as four of the slower firing four hundred twenty millimetre triple turrets added to the hell storm of direct fire on the enemy ship. The fifth, newly completed automatically loading four hundred twenty millimetre triple railgun turret turned and opened fire. The roar of it firing ninety shells per minute above the people on the bridge was almost too loud to speak over. “Close the hatches,” Agameg ordered, and the security guards at both of the heavy bridge doors closed them, reducing the noise and sealing the bridge from outside interference. “Torpedoes away,” he announced as another fourteen torpedoes erupted from the front of the ship.

  The Revenge closed to within a hundred kilometres of the carrier, and the two ships exchanged so much weapons’ fire that one side of each of them disappeared in clouds of light and exploding munitions. “Keep us close to that carrier, one of us will break,” Jake said as he watched the enemy’s shield power levels drop. They hadn’t broken through yet.

  “Our shields are holding,” Ayan announced. “We can do this for another forty two seconds, but then we will have to recharge.”

  “Our fighters have engaged the enemy, drawing them away,” Stephanie said.

  “Using power reserves on a focused Electromagnetic beam burst,” Agameg announced.

  The beams fired, illuminating the space around the pair of ships for thousands of kilometres, and the carrier’s forward shields collapsed, letting the barrage of solid and energy attacks through.

  “Antimatter alarm,” the science station announced. “Five missiles.”

  “All fighters, get clear,” Jake ordered. “Beam weapons, fire on those.”

  “We can’t take that kind of damage with the condition our shields are in,” Ayan said. “Recharging, rebalancing, it’ll take too long.”

  “Three down,” Agameg announced as the rapid fire point defence weaponry shredded two and their beam weapons disabled a third. “The antimatter rockets have two stages.” Just as he finished explaining, the rear half of the two remaining rockets burst apart, revealing a solid fuel engine that sent the antimatter missiles in to a wild spiral that evaded the Revenge’s countermeasures just enough so the first exploded behind them.

  “Aft shields down!” Ayan reported.

  The second antimatter missile exploded, the ship jostled hard enough to rattle the bridge despite the inertial damper systems, and several systems went dark on his status panel. “That carrier is still launching fighters,” Stephanie announced, her hologram image flickering. “Three waves of fourteen, incoming, our support is responding.”

  “Both port turrets are down,” Frost reported from gunnery control, his voice crackling through audio. “Our automatic turret is still running, resuming fire.”

  “Beam weapons are no longer functioning,” Agameg said. “All but three point defence weapons are destroyed, only two damaged on the port side, four on the dorsal side, and three on the starboard side.”

  “Helm, keep us close to that carrier, so most of those destroyers can’t get a shot,” Jake ordered. At a glance he could see that the enemy carrier was listing in space, but the hangars seemed to be functioning, they were launching as many fighters as they were escape pods. The destroyers stalked them like prey, trying to fire as the Revenge hid beside the ravaged carrier. Even through all the decks and armour between the bridge and the outer hull, Captain Valent could hear explosions against their unprotected hull as fighters launched small, rapid-fire missiles and the destroyers launched a storm of torpedoes. The newer destroyer hung back and kept projecting the energy waves that stopped them from escaping.

  “Five more wormhole arrival points, Order of Eden signals coming through,” announced the sciences station. “We’re picking up nine more ships; five destroyers, two battlecruisers, one carrier, and a new class we haven’t seen that has the mass of an armoured station. They are approximately three minutes away.”

  “Where are my shields?” Jake asked as he watched alerts from three outer compartments as they were ruptured. He felt an unusual calm settle on him. He had a perfectly clear plan for what had to happen next.

  “Manually reconfiguring, drawing energy from everything that can spare it,” Ayan said.

  “Shut down life support, use the surplus,” Jake said as he replaced Chatham at the helm, gesturing for her to take her place in the co-pilot’s seat. “General order, seal vacsuits, Condition Red One combat status.”

  “Aye, signalling crew,” Agameg said.

  With a few touches of the controls he added the Captain’s status holograms to the pilot station and looked up to Stephanie. “Where’s Ash?”

  “She’s coming,” Stephanie replied. “Deck three.”

  “Tell her to brace somewhere safe.” Jake adjusted the pilot controls so the Revenge would move into a parallel position with the half-wrecked carrier, which had stopped firing. Readings indicated that the reactor was heating up, they were going to sacrifice that ship to destroy the Revenge. “If I take that new type destroyer out, can we jump out of here?”

  “Yes,” Ayan said. “We will have to get some energy from somewhere though.”

  “Red line all but reactor one, now.” Jake ordered.

  “Aye,” Ayan replied. “Shields charging, at three percent.”

  “Attention, all hands,” Jake said as he punched his code to unlock the xetima thrust enhancements into the helm. “Brace, we are taking extreme manoeuvres that will stress this ship to design limitations. If you are in the nose of the ship, from frames one to twenty one, you have a minute to retreat into the main body of the ship.” He closed the ship wide channel. “All weapons, target Destroyer One, my target, and fire. Focus ninety percent of our shield power forward.”

  Jake engaged the thrusters at full power, guiding the Revenge away from the carrier and directly at two of its companion destroyers. “All fighters, prepare to disengage and jump to fall back position three,” he ordered calmly as the Revenge picked up speed at a rate so alarming that he saw his co-pilot cringe through the corner of his eye. Torpedoes and smaller munitions exploded against the nose of the ship, reducing their shields to less than one percent before they passed within one hundred metres of the first and second destroyer. Jake saw that they were recharging quickly. “Sciences, charge the main scanner array capacitors by connecting it to main power node fifteen.”

 
“Sir?” asked Ensign Sexton.

  “Now.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she replied. “Charged.”

  Jake pointed the nose of the Revenge directly at the new type destroyer he’d marked as Destroyer One. He made an activation control on his station with a few gestures and dragged its hologram to the right of the control stick. “Shields,” he asked.

  “Fore are up to forty-two percent, general shields are at nine percent. We are no longer taking hull damage,” Ayan replied.

  “Any chance we could get a burst from any of our beam weapons?” Jake asked.

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” Agameg replied. “Power is connected again, but the emitters are too badly damaged. I’m diverting everything I can to shields.”

  Jake watched as their remaining railgun turrets hammered Destroyer One, Frost’s team was aiming the three remaining emplacements expertly. He waited, guiding the ship straight at the enemy ship. The nose began to turn and he couldn’t help but chuckle. “You’re not getting away that easy,” he muttered under his breath as he made course corrections.

  “You will burn out the main antenna if you put that charge through it,” Ensign Sexton protested.

  “I know what he’s doing,” Ayan reassured. “Shields are up to ninety percent on the front, altering the shaping to a wedge.”

  That was what Jake was waiting for, the forward shields to recharge. Destroyer One was still over a hundred thousand kilometres away, they were closing, but not fast enough. He checked his navigation path, making sure that he would hit his mark, directly in the centre of the enemy ship. “Cease fire, all weapons. Cease fire,” he announced before activating the solid xetima fuel assist for the rear thrusters. They pushed forward over three hundred percent faster, Jake had to fire the rotary thrusters at their limit to keep the ship moving along the right trajectory. He split his attention between the ship’s speed relative to Destroyer One, the ships’ forward shields, which were reading at one hundred percent, sending excess energy to the rest of the ship’s surface area, and their trajectory. When they were within ten thousand kilometres away, he shut the rear thrusters down, any faster and they would have no chance of surviving the impact. He made a few minor corrections to their trajectory and activated the charged forward scanner array as soon as they were within three thousand kilometres.