by Worth, Dan
The Crecy was going down under the barrage from Chen’s missile frigates. Her bow section and forward gun decks had been smashed and her superstructure had taken a terrible pounding. She began to slew to one side as another volley of kinetic rounds struck her and began to break her apart. Admiral Cox’s ship, the Germanicus, was now exposed.
‘Gunnery control,’ Chen ordered. ‘Target the Germanicus and fire the Arkari cannon on my command. Helm, adjust our aim.’
‘Sir,’ replied Goldstein and the ship swung fractionally. Chen’s HUD showed that her vessel was now tracking the advancing enemy carrier. Wait till you get a load of this, you bastard, Chen thought to herself and then barked: ‘Fire!’
The Arkari spatial distortion cannon that had replaced the Churchill’s main gun spat a stream of hyper-dimensional death at the advancing enemy carrier. It struck the Germanicus’s bows dead centre and collapsed them like wet paper, instantly blunting and shattering the wedge shaped nose of the craft. The impact travelled on through the vessel’s internal hangar bays, twisting the internal structure of the ship, breaking apart ammunition magazines and fuel supplies and crushing the fully fuelled and armed craft waiting on her bow catapults. A vast ripple travelled along the length of the two kilometre long warship in an instant, ripping off armoured hull plates, shattering view ports and tearing open the hull in a hundred different places.
The creature on the bridge of the Germanicus that had once been Admiral Cox roared in surprise and alarm. It felt the deck beneath it buck violently from the impact, felt the disorientating backwash from the weapon and then the awful shudder as the ship began to come apart beneath its feet. Through the bridge windows it saw the skin of the warship rip open along its length like a great blade had been thrust into the Germanicus’ guts to eviscerate her. A dozen alarms began to sound as the impact reached the bridge and instantly shattered the broad windows that Cox had been staring out of. A howling wind dragged him out of his command chair. His arms flailed, his hands seeking purchase on anything as the others on the bridge around him were similarly sucked towards the waiting vacuum in a howl of venting atmosphere.
As his feet flew through the shattered window into freezing darkness, Cox’s right hand caught the broken edge of the armoured pane. For a second he held on, before the emergency shutters detected the sudden decompression and slammed down upon his hand, severing it above the wrist.
Cox howled as he tumbled free of the ship, trailing a stream of blood from his shattered arm. He screamed Chen’s name in rage, but no sound came from his mouth in the vacuum. The creature inside him immediately attempted to filter out all neural messages from the pain receptors across his body as the sudden exposure to cold, hard vacuum began to wreak havoc with the body of the fragile human being it had chosen to inhabit, but the Shaper creature was overloaded with sensory data - sensations that it found new and fascinating. It knew now what it felt like to die, how it felt to feel the life being ripped from a fragile, biological body. Now it knew true pain. Pain like it had never known. Cox’s blood began to boil in his veins. His lungs burst. His bowels evacuated. The Shaper creature inside him was transfixed by this new experience for a moment.
Almost too late, the Shaper creature tried to regain control of Cox’s broken body as it tumbled away from the dying carrier in a cloud of debris and twitching once-human forms. The Germanicus was breaking apart below him as kinetic rounds hammered the dying vessel. The Shaper creature leapt into action, using the nano-filaments that it had spread throughout Cox’s body to repair the most critical damage: shoring up rupturing organs, sealing punctured arteries and siphoning off pressure. Below him, great plumes of plasma had begun to vent from the Germanicus’s port side as the engines began to disintegrate, the brilliant blue of the eruptions contrasting with the livid orange of the fires that consumed the vessel, fed by the oxygen rich atmosphere within.
All around, the battle raged. Ships fought and died. Cox looked upwards and saw a great squadron of loyalist torpedo bombers dive onto the renegade fleet, whereupon they unleashed a hail of deadly missiles onto their exposed and unshielded decks.
The Shaper creature cried out to its fellows for rescue. Through its remaining working eye it could see other struggling figures all around it. It had stopped the bleeding, for now, but it would repair this vessel in time, even though it could manage perfectly well without all these extraneous organs and tissues. The others would come for it soon enough.
The two fleets were approaching optimum firing rage. Ships on both sides began to open up with energy beam weapons, criss-crossing the void between the two fleets with brilliant spears of light.
The Germanicus shuddered and exploded.
There was a ragged cheer from the Churchill’s bridge crew as the Germanicus went down. Chen felt a grim satisfaction as the carrier blew itself apart, taking Cox with it, she assumed. The Germanicus’s group was been taken apart by the concentrated fire of her entire fleet. The considerable amount of defensive laser fire being thrown up by the unshielded enemy warships had not saved them from the hail of warheads that had rained down on them from her torpedo bomber squadrons nor from the barrage of missiles, particle beam and plasma fire from the massed loyalist warships that finished them off. A couple of the trailing frigates, the Boadicea and the Demosthenes had escaped the worst and now attempted to come about and jump away. The first, the Boadicea, was first disabled by a wing of Azrael bombers before a kill-shot from the Nelson’s plasma cannon took out the vessel’s power-plant just as she tried to jump. The resulting hyper-spatial collapse ripped the Boadicea apart and temporarily disabled her sister ship’s jump drive long enough for a barrage from the loyalist destroyers to collapse the Demosthenes’ wavering aft shields before a volley from the missile frigates impacted her engine block and detonated her reactor.
The Germanicus’ group had been destroyed in short order, but now a vast, spreading cloud of broken ships and scattered debris was drifting towards Chen’s ships. Whilst she had been busy destroying Cox’s command ship and its escorts, the Nimitz and Hector groups had assumed stand-off attack positions to either side of the loyalist fleet and were beginning to launch fighters and bombers, whilst the Marathon group had halted. Chen had to act quickly lest her ships be surrounded and their early success squandered. Meanwhile, the surviving half dozen Shaper ships were beginning to form up into a claw-shaped formation centred around one of the surviving larger vessels a thousand kilometres away. It wasn’t over yet.
Chen’s ships began to fire on the approaching debris, shattering the chunks of dismembered warships into more manageable pieces. She ordered her formations to spread out to allow the debris cloud to pass between ships, but even so, there were a number of glancing impacts on the hulls of the assembled vessels causing minor damage to external systems and armour plating.
Chen considered her next move. Cox had split his forces, presumably with the intention of getting her to do the same in response to make it easier for the more powerful Shaper vessels to destroy her fleet. She wasn’t going to take the bait. Cox was gone and his forces were scattered. She would take them apart piecemeal before they could regroup.
‘Ensign Andrews, send a message to all ships,’ she ordered. ‘Commence attack on the Hector and its group. All bombers are to return to base and re-arm, whilst fighters are to regroup to our rear to cover our advance against bomber strikes from the Nimitz.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Helm, bring us about to engage the Hector, ahead full and take us out of this debris field. Gunnery control, prepare to fire once we’re in range.’
‘Admiral,’ came the reply from gunnery as the Churchill changed course and accelerated. ‘Status of the Arkari cannon is thirty percent and charging.’
‘Thank you Commander Mitchell,’ Chen replied. ‘Save its use for now, we’ll need it against those Shaper ships. Use everything else at your disposal. Chen out.’
The medical team had, meanwhile, removed Haldane from the br
idge. Blackman’s men kept Haldane under heavy guard, even as the Churchill’s medical team tried to save his life. One of the medics had remained on the bridge to see to Chen’s wound. Luckily, it seemed that the bullet had only grazed her upper arm, cutting a deep gash from her left shoulder. Nevertheless, it hurt like hell and Chen’s uniform was quickly becoming soaked in blood. Chen winced as the young female medic carefully cut away a section of her bloodied uniform before she cleaned and dressed the wound.
The Commonwealth ships were moving out of the debris field now and heading for the Hector and its group. Ensign Andrews, manning the comms station, piped up:
‘Admiral, a number of ships are reporting boarding attempts.’
‘What?’ replied Chen, puzzled. ‘How is that possible? We saw no assault craft.’
‘I... I don’t know, ma’am,’ Andrews replied. ‘The Dowding, the Marlborough, the Blucher and the Bader have all reported that the enemy have successfully breached external hatches and have gained entry. They each have their respective situations under control. Only a small number of the enemy were successful in gaining entry in each case, but they have suffered explosive decompression in the affected compartments. Maybe it was an inside job, ma’am?’
‘We regularly screened the crews of those ships,’ Chen replied. ‘But it’s possible that Haldane wasn’t alone. How the...?’
Goldstein cried out in shock. Chen followed her gaze. There was a figure pressed against the bridge windows: a man dressed in a Commonwealth Navy uniform, or what had once been a man. One arm and half of his face were missing, burned away. The rest of his features were distorted, blackened and bloody from the effects of exposure to hard vacuum, but yet he still moved. His remaining hand beat madly at the armoured pane as he fixed Chen with a sightless gaze.
‘He’s still alive...’ muttered Chen in horror.
‘It must be the Shaper parasite,’ said Singh. ‘Any normal human being would be long dead by now.’
‘Agreed.’
See what awaits you...
It was there again, the whispering voice at the back of her mind.
There is no death within our embrace, only eternal bliss for the undying.
‘Anyone else hear that?’ asked Singh.
Chen shuddered and nodded. ‘Lieutenant Commander, order our marines to be watchful for any attempt to breach our external hatches. Andrews, warn all other ships to do the same. Someone get that thing out of my view.’
‘Gladly sir,’ replied Goldstein and worked her console. The armoured shutters designed to shield the bridge slammed down. When they were raised again, the crushed remains of the enslaved man could be seen drifting away from the windows, which were now smeared with blood. His head had been completely smashed, killing the horrible creature within. Slowly, he tumbled upwards out of sight.
Chen’s wound throbbed. They were coming up on the Hector group now. The carrier sat between its four principle Titan class escorts, as well as an equal number of cruisers and frigates in a text book formation. They were heavily outnumbered by Chen’s oncoming forces, but far from defenceless. As the loyalist ships approached, the renegade warships defending the Hector began to turn to present both fore and aft turrets to the enemy, maximising their firepower. It was a classic broadside tactic. A swarm of fighters and bombers hung above the enemy ships, poised to strike.
‘Enemy ships are preparing to fire!’ warned Singh. ‘The Hector is powering its main gun. They’re targeting us! Secondary beam cannons are still out of range.’
‘Brace for impact!’ Chen cried. ‘All carriers: target the Hector and take her down!’
‘Hector is firing!’ warned Singh.
Goldstein slammed the armoured shutters down once more, a split second before a terrific jolt threw Chen forward in her seat. She felt the ship shudder and flex from the impact.
‘Admiral, we have lost all forward shields!’ Singh reported hurriedly. ‘Forward sensors are offline, turrets one and two on our upper port side are out of action. We have also lost a number of defensive turrets across the forward portion of the ship. The hangar deck is reporting that the bow catapults are inoperative. We are venting atmosphere from our port bow section, decks five through eleven. Data links to other ships have been knocked offline by the EMP.’
‘Helm, reverse thrust and keep us out of range of their beam turrets until our shields come back up,’ Chen replied. ‘Mr Singh, order damage control teams to the bows, immediately.’
‘We can’t stop!’ cried Goldstein, frantically working her console. ‘Admiral, the port-side bow thrusters are not responding!’
As the carrier slewed to port, the bridge shutters began to raise once more, revealing a massive scar across the forward portion of the ship where the impact of the plasma bolt from the Hector had ripped across the port side of the bows and across the forward gun turrets, fusing and melting armour plating and slagging two of the turrets.
‘Bring us about so that our starboard side faces the enemy and use our starboard thrusters to reduce our speed.’ said Chen. ‘Gunnery, engage the enemy with all remaining fore and aft turrets!’
As they watched, the Hector went down. Repeated shots from the other four carriers collapsed its shields and armour and ripped a massive, gaping hole through the forward hull, the plasma bolts emerging from the far side of the vessel in a massive exit wound of shattered hull plating and bulkheads. The ship was burning inside from a hundred different fires fuelled from its internal atmosphere as well as ruptured fuel and power lines.
They were now within optimum firing distance for particle beam fire. Ships on both sides opened up with everything they could bring to bear. Chen was struggling to see exactly what was going on. With the forward sensors damaged and offline she was only getting information from one hemisphere around the ship. She peered out of the starboard windows to get a better view of the battle.
‘Mr Singh: what can you tell me?’
‘I’m rebooting our data link to the other ships’ sensors now, ma’am,’ Singh replied. ‘Engineering are sending teams to replace our sensor modules if possible. As far as the battle goes: we appear to be winning. Despite their defensive posture, we have the enemy outgunned.’
As if to emphasise his point, an enemy frigate, the Sitting Bull, exploded in a ball of nuclear fire. The remaining warships were being heavily battered by the combined fire of Chen’s flotilla. So far, Chen had lost no ships.
‘Excellent, Mr Singh.’
‘Also, our fighters have engaged the bombers from the Nimitz,’ Singh replied. ‘Some losses but they appear to have the upper hand. Reports from our wing leaders are that the Nimitz and the Marathon are... behaving oddly, they’re not advancing on our position or attempting to aid the Hector group in any way.’
Chen’s gut instinct told her that something was afoot. The Shapers must have something up their sleeve. The comm. crackled into life.
‘Churchill, this is Captain Diaz of the Leonides, we are detecting a large number of enemy fighters and bombers headed for your position. ‘I am detaching a couple of our anti-fighter cruisers, the Zama and the Isandlwana to assist.’
The Churchill’s sensors hadn’t seen those attacking wings! They must be approaching from their blind side. ‘Thank you Captain,’ replied Chen. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘Wait a second,’ replied Diaz. ‘Admiral, the Shaper ships are now advancing towards our position.’
‘Our data link is back on-line,’ reported Singh. ‘Confirmed, the Shaper ships are on an attack run towards the port side of our formation, the Nimitz and the Marathon are...’ he paused. ‘Sir, it looks like they’re preparing to jump away.’
‘They can’t possibly be retreating. We need to know where they’re headed! Andrews, signal all ships, they are to assume a defensive posture against the advancing Shaper ships as we complete our attack on the Hector group.’
As she spoke, concentrated beam fire leapt out from the remaining renegade warships and targeted the two fla
k cruisers moving to shield the Churchill. The Zama exploded almost immediately, its shields catastrophically collapsing, leaving the enemy beam fire free to rip through its superstructure into key power relays linked to its weapons systems. A series of explosions tore the ship open from within. The Isandlwana’s bow section and bridge took the brunt of the barrage of fire aimed at it, which killed the command staff instantly and left the ship drifting, but still able to defend itself.
Return fire from Chen’s warships was quickly wearing down the renegades. The Hector group was down to just three destroyers and two flak cruisers, but they were now choosing their targets more carefully, concentrating their defensive fire on individual ships. Splitting the carrier groups had been an enemy ruse and whatever they were up to, Chen knew in her gut that she had fallen for it.
‘Admiral, incoming enemy fighters and torpedo bombers!’ cried Singh. ‘They’re headed for our bows!’
‘Gunnery, open fire with all defensive turrets,’ Chen ordered. She could see the bright points of enemy squadrons diving towards them. The anti-fighter batteries of the other warships claimed some, turning those bright points into spinning, burning trails of fire, but the majority rushed onwards towards the Churchill, whose own, remaining defensive batteries began to put up a storm of laser fire. Enemy craft died in their dozens as they dived The forward shields were still offline. The enemy squadrons were well within the release range for torpedoes but hadn’t fired. Still they flew onwards towards the carrier. Chen realised with horror what they were doing.
‘All hands, brace for impact!’ she screamed as an Azrael torpedo bomber raced head on towards the bridge. Goldstein hit the bridge shutters.
There was a shattering jolt.