“Is there anything we can do?” Bryce asked nervously.
William shook his head.
The bridge felt like a cocoon. The still air grew warm as the body heat from the four occupants and the dead computers, warmed the space. Normally the UC built ships with redundancy, but not this time. Centralization allowed for specialization.
“How long ‘til the air goes?” Shay asked.
“I think we’ll be hulled before that happens,” William replied.
Bryce shifted in his seat and stood quickly. He pushed up against the wall and looked around wildly. “But, what can we do?”
“Sit, dammit. Huron’s working on it,” William said.
“But what if he can’t?” Bryce asked.
“Then we hope they take prisoners,” Shay whispered.
William strained to see Bryce’s eyes. The blue gave everything a deceiving tone of clarity. But in the moment he knew he had clarity, clarity into a moment where Bryce was tested. A dark place for anyone, he knew it himself. “Bryce, sit down.”
Bryce began to sob lightly and slid himself back down into his seat. A few steps away, Grgur cracked his knuckles, stifled a yawn, and relaxed against the door. The hefty Marine seemed unfazed by it all.
“It’s a matter of faith,” William said. “Huron’s got this under control.”
The booming stopped as suddenly as it began. The artificial gravity was almost totally wound down. The room felt cramped and tight as the air grew warmer. Without external heat sinks functioning even a few bodies could overwhelm a room.
Shay wiped her forehead and smeared her hand against her trousers. “Fuck,” she said. “Want me to check on him?”
“No,” William replied. “If he needs the help, he’ll ask. The last thing he needs is a few officers looking over his shoulder.”
Shay sighed. “Fuck, it gets to you—right, Captain?”
William wondered if it did. He felt a sense of urgency, but little regret or fear. If the reactor came back online, it was because of the competence of another, not because of some inner willing or longing. He had a cruiser to kill, a ship to save, and a crew to get back before the ship disassembled. “Yes,” he lied. “It hits us all. But once we’re online, get that railgun rolling.”
Bryce sat up and nodded. The midshipman straightened his rumpled shirt, smoothed out his pants and cleared his throat.
It started as a low whine. A subtle tingling that danced on the edge of the audible range. A moment later it rose higher, deeper, richer, like a drum that was beaten too fast. It paused and the sound ebbed into the stone of the asteroid.
“What was that?” Shay asked in barely a whisper.
A console winked on and flashed through sequences of code. Startup code. A second later the artificial gravity settled back in like a rigid cushion.
“Get ready! We’re going live!” William yelled.
A second, and a third console flickered to life. Lights rebounded above spreading out a sweet yellow light. A moment after the ventilators kicked on and blasted cool air inward.
William felt some tension drift away. He reached over and gently patted the wall next to him. His eyes drifted across the panels and watched the startup count down. A click in his ear told him that the comms were online. “Huron! About damned time,” William called over the mic.
“Hoo! Well, a few bugs yet, I think,” Huron replied.
“No more surprises,” William called back.
The displays stabilized and the starfield expanded outwards into a near planet view. They had swung around through two thirds of an orbit. Maintenance and damage alerts were past yellow and into the red. Automatic repairs were progressing on a pair of mass drivers and the missile launcher.
“Railgun?” William asked.
Shay clicked and looked back over her shoulder to William with a smile. “Primed and ready, Captain.”
That, at least, made him feel better. They had taken a beating and he knew it. He looked down to Bryce and saw the young man’s hands shaking, uncertain. “Bryce?”
Bryce’s head snapped around and nodded. “Sir?”
William looked him in the eye and nodded. “We’ve got this.”
Bryce nodded and smiled nervously.
William’s fingers flew over his console as he mashed together bits and pieces of weapons programs. He pushed the mass drivers to the edge. The railgun program he left as Shay had laid it out. Two shots, he thought, they’d need two more. He tried to ignore the nanite rating, which hovered painfully high. They had some serious damage on the outside. He wondered how exactly he was supposed to repair an asteroid hull. “Bryce, halt the roll and alternate between mass drivers. Don’t expose both pairs at once.”
Bryce nodded and leaned over his console. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
He debated changing course and drifting lower or higher. But he was going to play dumb. Let ‘em think he was still drifting. “Get ready.”
The words were barely out of William’s mouth when the displays lit up with gunfire. Mass driver slugs pushed through the void and smashed against a wave of incoming missiles. The Hun cruiser opted for an early launch of multiple waves of missiles and let them all coalesce into a ball. Bryce slammed the console and the Garlic rolled between both quadrants. The thudding rumble of the mass drivers was unceasing.
“Bingo!” Shay cried out. The Hun cruiser appeared from a different angle, the missiles had been launched early to confuse them.
“Hold! Wait until they’re closer, then roll the rail towards action. Got it, Bryce?”
Bryce nodded quickly without taking his eyes off of the console.
Mass driver rounds cracked into the Garlic, followed by a massive shock from a railgun. A resounding boom racked through the bridge. Shay hunched her shoulders up with every sound. The range came closer but the icon showed the cruiser to be decelerating.
William looked up and watched the plots converge. The bait was too much for them, he thought. They were coming in close. A straight on course that would snuggle the two ships. His eyes snapped to the clock and back to his console. If they fired now... they’d get one more point blank. “Roll and fire!”
Bryce slammed his hand onto the console and the starscape shifted. A moment later the weapons program stitched out a path of mass drivers followed by the whining sing of the railgun.
William’s heart felt relieved as he saw the stream of plasma mark the path. He dared not think of another reactor failure. He watched, satisfied, as the railgun punctured another wicked wound into the cruiser. Another spray of atmosphere billowed out from another sector of the ship. “Huron! We got another shot in us?”
The comms crackled and fizzed. The voice on the other end sounded patched up. “We uh, yeah, one more Captain.”
He was about to ask about the sound when he saw the vacuum alerts. The engineering area was breached. Huron must’ve been in a suit. He had focused too tightly on the railgun and had neglected to tend to his ship. Too much for one man, too much information, delegation. Delegation. “Shay. You’ve got weapons.”
Shay leaned over and nudged Bryce on the shoulder. “Here we go, fancy pants, keep me clear!”
The pair sent more rounds back and forth. Missiles collided against the hull with a roar that was louder than before, the sound of expanding plasma vaporizing rock. Vibrations shook through the entire ship. The Hun cruiser didn’t waver, its nose was leveled straight at the Garlic with the deceleration continuing.
“Are they coming in?” Shay asked.
“It’s too late, if they tried to break away we’d keep smashing ‘em with the railgun. All they can hope for is to lock on,” William said.
He scanned through the alarm lists and saw that they’d taken a helluva beating. As soon as they were clear, he needed camera drones outside. Systems were missing, he needed to know if they were offline or simply gone. Vacuum alarms showed throughout the ship, Engineering was the only one with a full breach. His eyes snapped up to the display and bac
k down again. So much to take in, so many details. The information overload was staggering. He pushed it behind him and took a breath. Focus on the essentials, win the fight, fix the ship. “Kill it, Shay, quit screwing around.”
Shay looked back over her shoulder and grinned.
The cruiser’s icon changed, and instead of reading a negative acceleration, it showed a positive value. A value that continued to grow. The cruiser was not just coming on, but charging.
William saw it and took a second glance. He was about to be rammed. His gambit to smash ‘em at close range just backfired. Now he couldn’t run. Worse, the entire nose of the cruiser was dead. Now it was just the brunt of a battering ram. “Shit, burn it!” he cried out.
Shay looked back and then leaned forward onto the console. Her voice was low as she called to Huron. “I need it full power, dump the reactor and burn the rails.”
Power meters spiked and capacitor banks showed heat alarms. Shay looked back at William for acknowledgment.
“Fire,” William said simply. He knew it was now, or get smashed by a few hundred tons of alloy. As it was, he didn’t know what was going to happen. He doubted they’d blow up conveniently. This was going to be rough.
The Hun cruiser was close, a few hundred meters away and then grappling lines fired out. Thin diamond strong tendrils sparkled in the dim sunlight and locked onto the ragged edges of the Garlic. The lines cracked like a silent whip and began to pull.
The railgun fired with a whizzing and popping sound. Dull explosions trembled through the floor. The capacitor banks had exploded under the shock. But it didn’t matter, not then, the stream of plasma burned through the nearest group of tendrils and tore a scene of havoc through the side quarter of the cruiser. Luck was with the shot as it tore a rift that sprayed vacuum for a brief moment. But every section looked hulled. The weapons on the cruiser stopped, but the derelict came closer.
“Bryce! Roll and burn,” William said.
Bryce worked the console with his entire body but the ship was sluggish to respond. The combined power of the railgun had taken the reserves designed for the grav drives. On top of it the tendrils were still attached and guiding the hun cruiser in closer.
William saw the inevitable, but knew of nothing more to call out other than “Brace!” He tensed his guts and waited for it.
The two ships came together, locked by the diamond grapples. The Hun cruiser’s nose collapsed on the edge of the Garlic and plowed through the stone like a rusty farm implement. Sparkling tendrils snapped under the forces but not before spinning the two into each other. The rear of the cruiser tumbled and rolled while the nose pirouetted on the rocky outside of the Garlic, spraying bits of alloys and chondrite into the darkness.
The roll stopped as suddenly as it began and the Hun cruiser drifted with the final tendrils, snapping silently. Bits of gray frost and debris followed after the Hun cruiser as it descended, broken and dead, into the minuscule atmosphere of the planet below.
William opened his eyes and felt the blood rolling down his nose. He wiped one eye free and stood on shaky legs. It felt like a little man had smashed him in the head with a mining pick. He gingerly touched his scalp and felt the sticky tang of blood and hair. “Shay? Bryce? Grgur?”
Blue lights flickered to life and the consoles began booting back up. Shay stood slowly and slumped back down onto the floor. One arm hung at an odd angle before her with the ball of the shoulder a bulge through her shirt. Bryce was slumped across his console. Grgur sat back onto his butt and looked around with his mouth open.
“Holy fuck,” Shay kept repeating in a low voice.
William walked over to Bryce. Every step felt disorientating, like he wanted to fall over. The beginnings of an epic headache were growing. He tapped Bryce and felt the muscles tense under his hand. “Bryce? You okay?”
An animal like moan came from Bryce as he pushed himself off the console. A string of saliva and blood peeled itself off of his chin and dropped onto the console. His nose was pushed in and the front of his mouth devoid of teeth. A pair of black eyes were already forming. The pretty boy look was no longer in style.
“Relax,” William said. “Grgur? Are you okay?”
Grgur spat on the floor and grinned. “I’ve had hangovers worse than this, Captain,” he said.
The consoles settled into a steady state and William slid himself back into his chair. He sent a request to all stations for an update and waited. It took him a second to realize he could ask. “Stations, report.”
The response brought any exuberance about a victory and slammed it into the gutter. Engineering was huddled up in suits and working to seal the breaches. The other Marines were locked into the galley while the whereabouts of three more crew members was unknown. Atmosphere alarms sounded everywhere.
“Did we kill it?” Shay asked, sitting down.
William glanced at the screen. “Yes, I think we did.”
Shay nodded and scowled, rubbing her arm. “Fuck.”
The first camera drone launched and hovered fifty meters off the Garlic. Underneath was an asteroid ripped, torn, and gouged. The immense furrow that the cruiser had dug showed alloy and crew quarters beneath. The mouth of the railgun was caved in and only a single mass driver battery was operational. The missile launcher in the rear hung oddly. But it was, for the most part, still a functional starship.
William drifted a hand onto the rocky wall and patted it gently. He felt a strange sort of reverence for the ugly little potato. Now, only a troopship. “Huron, take anyone you need and seal us up, we’ve got one more ship to take on.”
“Message from the Gallipoli, Captain.” Shay said. “He says, ‘Good work, see you at the troopship.’”
William felt a touch of relief. He’d take all the help he could get, especially given the shape he was in. “Well, I guess I judged Mustafa wrongly.” He looked to Bryce. “Plot an intercept, Mr. Bryce. We’ve got another ship to kill.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The monastery smelled nothing like Emilie thought it would. She expected it to smell musty, old, with a touch of incense. Instead it smelled like beer.
It wasn’t like an old tavern with stale smells and still air. The aroma was rich, hearty, malty, and sweet. Beyond the smell of beer, it was the smell of a brewery. The smell of Lent.
She followed behind the monk and stared at his rich brown robes. Whatever it was she was expecting, this was not it. Her mind was still on the departure of the asteroid frigate. The Hun were here. In her system. Thoughts of the additive weapon library came back to her. At the very least she could leverage some minerals and sell some weapons. If she could get back to Winterthur, she thought, and if the Hun were stopped.
The monk in the walnut brown robes turned and smiled warmly. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
She smiled sheepishly and felt even worse when she realized she’d forgotten his name. “I’m sorry. I was thinking.”
He let out a deep sigh of relief and smiled widely. “Oh boy! Don’t I know that feeling.”
“Harwell!” a voice boomed from down the hall.
That’s right, she thought. Harwell. She stopped and turned.
At the end of the hallway a short man with a stout belly stomped closer. One hand was out in front of him as if warding something away, while the other held a metallic stein. Both of his eyes were milky white like old balls of glass.
“Brother Devereux,” Harwell said in a low voice.
“A woman? Is it a woman?” the blind man spouted out. He stopped at the end of the sentence and took a sip. Brown frothy liquid rolled down the creases in his chin. “You know better!” He shook a stubby finger at Harwell.
“The Sisters asked me to—”
“Excuses! Now get her to Sister Dandalaza!” Brother Devereux burped.
Emilie had no desire to get into it with the burly monk. Her eyes drifted to his hands and saw massive scars on his knuckles. The sort of scars a man gets pummeling something. Who were these monks?
“I’m sorry, Brother Devereux, I wasn’t aware of the protocol.”
Brother Devereux’s face melted into a smile that was braced by a deep set of dimples. He twirled his hand and bowed slightly. “You have my apologies as well. We do not receive guests often, and normally just the Core delivery.”
“Well, I now have the Core contract.”
Brother Devereux nodded and smiled. “A pleasure, I’m sure. Now, we’re sorry, but Lent is a special time.” He pointed a finger down the hall. “Now please, Brother Harwell. Go.”
Harwell gently grasped Emilie by the elbow and steered her down the hallway. The ship had the feeling of something old. The wall panels were long gone, now showing the lifeblood of conduit, piping, and wiring beneath. A thin patina brought every detail out and placed it firmly in the realm of the antique. They passed through a troop loading area, now a simple chapel. The space was large enough to hold a full landing force, but now held pews and an altar. Entrances to the drop capsules flanked the entire chamber. Brother Harwell focused on getting them to the rear of the ship as quickly as possible.
Harwell stood next to an ancient bulkhead and beat on the edges with a wooden mallet. He stood nervously and shuffled in place.
A moment later the bulkhead peeled back and revealed the rest of the ship. The other side of the bulkhead was brighter, more alive, and there was even greenery sprouting beneath the ships lights.
A woman waited, round cheeks dimpled with a smile.
“Thank you, Brother Harwell,” she said in a rich accent that had inflections on the edges of words that were hard, unique. She beckoned for Emilie to enter.
Emilie entered and smiled at the nun. “Sister Dandalaza?”
“Yes. Now, not to sound brief, but we’d like to get you back to Winterthur.”
“I understand.”
Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) Page 10