by Andrew Beery
Within moments the Yorktown was enveloped in what appeared to be an antimatter popcorn explosion. The bridge was thrown into darkness as power systems failed and overloaded. Ken was tossed from his chair and landed halfway across the bridge. Before he could get up another series of explosions tossed him across the room again.
This time he both heard and felt his arm break from the impact. His medical nanites immediately suppressed the pain and began knitting the bone. He was thankful for the state of GCP medicine… his ship was in trouble and he didn’t have time for a personal injury. The emergency lighting flickered on.
“Status report!” He barked.
There was no answer.
“Status report!” He barked a second time.
“Ah… sir primaries are down. We are venting air from several locations. Automated repair systems are coming online but we lost ‘atmo’ in engineering.” It was Lieutenant Zimmerman who reported.
Ken looked over at the First Officer’s station and knew immediately why Commander Martinescu wasn’t giving the report. What was left of him was pinned against the bulkhead by a fallen support beam. His friend and First Officer now held the record among his senior staff for the most gruesome death. Fortunately, death didn’t mean the same thing in today’s world that it had even a scant decade ago.
“What’s the status of our engineering staff?”
“I’m trying to get clarification on that sir but it appears that most of the engineering team is down… including Commander Thais… down as in dead,” Ziggy reported.
Ken hit his comms… “Med-bay report.”
“We’re a little busy down here Captain. I’ve got radiation burns and blunt-force trauma wounds coming through my doors by the dozens. The bio-generation chambers are all online and beginning the first of what promises to be a series of runs,” Doctor Janice Pulaski answered a little curtly.
“Understood Doctor. I know you’ll do what you can. I need you to prioritize the bio-generators… Commander Figarero and her staff as well as Andrew Martinescu.”
“Already done Captain. Doctor Pulaski out.” Before she could cut the channel, Ken heard her yell across the room, “Damn it Jim! I said put him on a cot… not the floor! I’m a doctor not a brick layer!”
Ken cut the channel. The woman was on top of her game… the last thing she needed was a Captain trying to micro-manage her. She probably thought he was a cold-hearted bastard.
Commander First walked up to his captain. “Sir, your arm needs some attention.”
Ken looked down at it. The angle was off. There had been a time when that would have bothered him but right now he was more concerned about his ship.
If this had occurred a couple of days ago… before Thais had managed to get the active shielding working in this region of space… the ship would have been destroyed. As it was, eighty percent to the shield emitters were overloaded and several decks suffered explosive decompression or fatal doses of radiation or both. The bio-generation chambers would be busy for several days.
“My arm can wait,” Ken said drily. “Ben, I know you report to the Admiral but right now I need you in engineering. I’ve got a ship that’s been knocked to hell and back and nobody overseeing the repairs.”
“On my way sir. Priorities sensors, shields and weapons?”
“Exactly right. I’m not asking for miracles… just the impossible.”
“One impossible miracle coming up Captain.”
Chapter 9: Mine Field…
AG watched the chaos enveloping the Yorktown from the cockpit of his Scorpion fighter. His call sign, Rubble Maker, was emblazoned on the hull just below the transparent aluminum canopy. Captain Kirkland had been right. The ship was taking a pasting. The only good news was the minefield was effectively neutralized.
AG opened a channel to the Yorktown’s AI, Yorky.
“Yorktown, I’m going to assume your sensor net is down and you are blind. I’m instructing all fighters to feed you their active scans. Please confirm you can integrate them.”
“Feeds confirmed Charlie actual,” Yorky responded immediately. “Yorktown actual is occupied but I will relay your information as soon as the Captain is in a position to receive it.”
Yorky then proceeded to give AG a rundown of the ship’s status and defensive capabilities or lack there-of. Bottom-line, the ship would be next to helpless for at least another hour and it would be a day or more before the bio-generation chambers could cope with the fatalities that had occurred. Without a full crew compliment, especially in engineering, there was only so much automated repair systems could do.
“Thanks, Yorky. Advise the Captain we will provide cover for as long as needed. Stone out.”
Next AG opened channel to his flight commanders.
“OK guys. Yorky gave me a heads up and the news is not good. We are going to have to be the Yorktown’s eyes and claws for the better part of a day. That means we are going to deploy as one massive CAS surrounding the ship. I want all sensors focused outwards and their feeds routed through Yorky. Launch your recognizance probes and have them extend our sensor net an additional two thousand kilometers. Once I’m satisfied we don’t have any incoming threats I want to establish a sleep-in-place rotation. We are going to be out here awhile.”
***
Twenty minutes later the CAS, or Close Air Support protective shell, was in place and all was quiet. AG was content for the situation stay that way. Unfortunately, fate had other ideas.
A Nester armada was fast approaching the ring-gate. The Nesters had analyzed the data from their previous encounter with the Yorktown around a star the humans were calling Beta-2. They had concluded the GCP vessel represented contact with a new society. Nester psychology was such that such encounters mandated a forceful response. The concept of equal but different was virtually impossible for their caste-based society to grasp. Theirs was a ‘conquer or be conquered’ mentality. Coexisting was possible, and even desirable… but only within the context of the caste system.
Groups that had been subjugated had two choices in Nester society. They could honor their superiors with a contribution to the larger society… usually in the form of a specific high-value technology or service… or they could function as slaves.
Those that chose the first option were honored members of Nester society and could expect a range of protections and rights commensurate with the contribution their honorarium made to the larger Nester society.
To complicate matters, however, advancement between castes was all but impossible. So, if a subjugated species chose poorly in providing an initial honorarium; they could expect their descendants to suffer in perpetuity.
The level of technology demonstrated by this new race was intoxicating. Assimilation would bring much honor to those who conducted the assimilation. For this reason, the expeditionary force was massive by Nester standards.
***
“Multiple bogies on an approach vector! Thirty-eight minutes out.” Lieutenant ‘Wolverine’ McMurry barked over his command channel.
“Damn it,” AG thought. He had just gotten to sleep. He scanned the sensor feed the Lieutenant had sent him. Wolverine was right. It looked like something on the order of one hundred fighters and some type of battleship on an approach vector to the ring-gate. That meant they were not heading straight for the Yorktown but he expected that oversight would change once they detected the disabled ship with their sensors.
He was tempted to just let the ships pass in the hopes they would not be aggressive but the sensor data coming back confirmed these were the same types of ships that had attacked them earlier. Had the Yorktown been fully functional he might have deferred the decision to Captain Kirkland but as it was he made a judgement call. The Yorktown had to be protected.
AG toggled the general alert. “Wolverine, take Delta to intercept. Punch them just hard enough to get their attention and then retire to 234.6 mark 78 and continue to harass. The other wings, form up on me. I’m sending instruction
s to your AIs.”
“Roger that, Rubble Maker. We’ll give them a black eye and then work real hard to keep them pissed off,” Wolverine acknowledged.
***
AG had to admit… when it came to ‘pissing somebody off’, Wolverine had a real talent. A good two thirds of the fighters that were escorting the Nester battleship peeled off and pursued his delta wing. It was amazing what a couple of dozen low-yield nuclear missiles could do by way of grabbing somebody’s attention.
Meanwhile AG and his wings and formed an EM shield that would make targeting the Yorktown nearly impossible. The Yorktown had managed to launch several score of shield drones that effectively doubled the size of the sensor shield.
Unfortunately, the shield itself was highly visible which meant the Nester battleship was now vectoring to intercept what appeared to them as a sensor anomaly.
AG had anticipated this and positioned his wings so that the Yorktown was covered by only a remote edge of the shield. The Nesters were heading towards the shield’s center mass which meant, at least for the moment, the Yorktown was safe. He also used roughly twenty minutes before the ships entered engagement range to seed the area in front of the advancing Nester ships with cloaked mines. These were sandies and would literally tear the opposing ships apart if they could coax them close enough to the minefield.
Sadly, the best laid plans rarely survived contact with the enemy. Space is a very big place. The chances of a cloaked mine impacting with a solid object, in this case a Nester fighter, were so small as to almost be beyond calculation… and yet that is exactly what happened.
The mines had been set to detonate after the battleship’s CAS, close air support, had passed them. The idea was to disable the battleship itself which was the major threat to the Yorktown.
Somehow, despite the incredibly unlikely odds, one of the Nester fighters managed to physically plow into one of the stealth mines. The force of the impact alone would have destroyed the small craft. The nanites, released in the aftermath of the collision, finished the job.
Whoever was commanding the battleship was on the ball. No sooner had he lost the fighter then the massive ship was attempting to revector. Fortunately, fundamental physics doesn’t change just because a ship is from an alien race. A big massive object in motion… tends to remain in motion. Before the ship could complete its turn, it ran into the leading edge of the minefield.
The battleship seemed to be protected by electro-reactive armor that was surprisingly effective against the sandies. A strong electrical discharge along the surface of the ship effectively turned most, but not all, of the deconstruction nanites into plasma. Those that remained operational continued to chew away at the outer layer of the ship’s armor. The moment they penetrated that layer, however, the reactive armor converted them into plasma.
“OK guys,” AG yelled over the comms, “It looks like we are going to have to do this the hard way. Charlie wing remains on CAS. Everybody else let’s form a bombing run and see how good their point defenses are… And boys and girls… play it safe. The med-bay’s pickle jars are overloaded right now. If you get sliced and diced… there is no telling how long before you can pull a regen. Stone out.”
AG opened a private channel to his friend JJ Hammond. “Rogue Nation, you up for some fancy flying?”
“Does a dog go into heat?” was the quick response.
“I’m not sure I even know where you are going with that one buddy,” AG answered. “I want to find a soft spot near their engines. I’m going to direct the other fighters to concentrate on the landing bays.”
“Aye, we can hammer away but nukes pretty much make everything a soft spot on a ship with old-style shielding.”
“Good point.” AG reopened a fleet-wide channel. “Boys and girls… I’m amending your orders. Target the holes in her outer armor. Non-nuclear kinetics only. We want to disable her if we can. No point in taking lives we don’t need to,” AG said.
“Ah now you’re making this a lot tougher,” JJ responded on their private channel. “Can I assume you have a plan? Kinetics are barely going to make a dent in that thing. Its built like a tank.”
“I have a plan,” AG confirmed as he eyed the special weapons system installed on his scorpion. “I just need a small hole to get past their EM shielding.”
***
AG let JJ Hammond, a.k.a. Rogue Nation, take the point on the first run. Somebody had to test their point defenses and frankly JJ was a better pilot. Besides, his fighter, with its special weapons system was not as nimble as JJ’s. As it turned out he needn’t have worried. The sandies may not have penetrated the Nester battleship’s inner armor but they had effectively burned away most of the point defense nodes, even in the rear of the ship. They had also effectively neutralized her external sensors. As far as AG could tell, the Nester behemoth was flying blind.
While Delta wing kept the Nester CAS busy, Alpha and Bravo savaged their landing bays. This left Rubble Maker and Rogue Nation free to circle to the rear of the battleship. The lack of point defense batteries was an encouraging sign. AG had been concerned the battleship’s flank might be better protected. Much to his relief it was not.
“Beginning my run,” JJ announced.
AG’s own fighter was only about two hundred kilometers behind JJ’s Rogue Nation. At these speeds, that was only about fifteen seconds.
JJ’s first kinetic round impacted on the Nester battleship’s remaining armor. It was a testimony to the durability with which the Nesters built their battle-wagon. The impact had almost no effect. JJ’s second round hit a softer target and the ship vented tiny puffs of quickly cooling atmosphere.
“OK, Rubble Maker, she’s all yours”
AG instructed his scorpion’s AI to deploy his special nuclear pulsed EMP generator. The weapon detached from its special mounting bracket and proceeded on a guided course that would aim its massive electromagnetic pulse directly at the breach JJ had torn in the side of the battleship… near what he hoped was its engine room.
His AI counted down the thirty seconds until the thermonuclear explosion that would power the pulse fired. AG had the Rubble Maker do a highspeed burn away from the Nester Battleship. The last thing he wanted was for his scorpion to be disabled by the backwash from his own weapon. For one thing, JJ would never let him hear the end of it.
As the EMP went off, the massive battleship shuddered. Its running lights flickered out. Seconds later its engines shut down. The easy part was done.
Chapter 10: Den’L…
Cat motioned the others forward towards Den’L. The outskirts of the small town were peaceful at dusk. The Nester population was bedding down for the night. Anyone looking at her would have seen a startling sight. She was covered head to toe in a form-fitting metallic sheen. Her Heshe nanites had harvested a supply of scrap metal to form a flexible metallic skin that acted as active body armor. Her internal AI controlled the nanites and had them reconfigure the metallic exoskeleton to exactly match her movements on the fly. From her perspective, it was like wearing a metallic skin.
“The depot is two blocks over,” Cat whispered over the old-style walkie-talkie. “I’ll take bravo team with me and we’ll create the diversion we discussed at camp. We’ll keep the squirrels busy.”
The Hedgemites, a squirrel-like race that climbed trees and raced through their branches like sprinters guarded most Nester military facilities… including the weapons depot the resistance was seeking to raid. As a race, the Hedgemites were very intelligent and very aggressive. They were one of the first races subjugated by the Nesters. The rumor-mill had it that they had been technologically very advanced when they encountered the Nesters. A failure in leadership more than anything else had led to their defeat and subjugation.
Not understanding how Nester society worked, the Hedgemite military leaders offered their own children to the victors, as an assurance of their continued good behavior, as was their custom. The Nesters, not caring about Hedgemite cultural norms, ha
d taken the offer of children as the Hedgemite’s honorarium. All Hedgemite children were henceforth raised to be warriors. The arts and sciences, that had been a hallmark of Hedgemite society, fell by the wayside.
Mike Penfield, a burly man in his mid-fifties, paced Cat as she moved forward. He was almost as quite as she was. Cat had learned the man was a retired United States Marine. He had served twenty years in the Corps. If he was surprised by Cat’s metallic appearance, he kept it to himself beyond a single raised eyebrow. Whether that raised eyebrow was because of the armor or because it was… very… form fitting she couldn’t say.
She stopped moving forward when she spotted a pair of the man-sized Hedgemite squirrels about three hundred feet ahead. They had just walked out of a side street that led to a series of drinking establishments near the depot they were targeting.
Cat knew the Hedgemites had better eyesight and hearing than an un-augmented human but she suspected her Heshe enhancements were more than a match for the Nester guards. These two were twittering to each other… completely unaware they were being watched.
The resistance had been ratcheting up their battle with the Nesters for the better part of two years. The level of conflict was closer to an all-out war at this point with resistance cells active in three separate star systems.
The result of all this activity was that the Nesters were now utilizing bondservants from multiple subjugated societies to meet their increasing security needs. This included humans for expeditionary forces like the one to Beta-2; Hedgemites for urban patrol and garrison guard duties; and finally, lower-caste Nesters for the officer corps.
Cat was thankful that she was not facing a human contingent. Humans were adept at controlling the spider mechs. It turned out, despite their greater agility, the squirrels were not able to handle the big robotic exoskeletons. That meant that the forces she was accompanying today would likely be facing unenhanced Hedgemites.