So It Begins (Defending The Future)
Page 22
“Negative. Get them out. Get everyone out.” Decala stared at him again. “Not just nonessential personnel. Everyone. Abandon ship. Now! Those heavy cruisers are going to tear this ship apart and I don’t want my crew dying when they can’t fight back!”
She passed on the orders and then shouted “get out of here!” at the remaining personnel on the bridge. As the others left at a run, Decala faced him, pale but determined. “I’m staying. I can handle the remaining working systems on the ship from the bridge.” Another Syndic missile hit rocked Merlon, and both Decala and Geary had to grab for support as more damage alerts blared urgently.
“No, you’re not,” Geary insisted. “I’m the commanding officer. It’s my responsibility to stay. I’ll keep her fighting as long as I can. You don’t need to be here.”
“I won’t leave you alone, Captain! Merlon is my ship, too!”
He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “Cara, if this is really the start of a major war, the Alliance is going to need every experienced officer it’s got. My duty requires me to stay here and keep Merlon fighting as long as possible, so the convoy and you and the rest of the crew can get clear. When the last combat systems go dead, I’ll set the power core for self-destruct and I’ll abandon ship, too. I promise. But if I don’t survive this, then you have to. Because you’re going to be needed. The rest of the crew needs you at this moment. Thank you for being an excellent officer and a friend. Now get out of here!”
She wiped an angry tear from one eye, then saluted. “Yes, sir.” Decala appeared about to say something else, then turned and ran.
He sat down, then carefully checked the seals on his survival suit. The well-protected bridge in the heart of the ship still had atmosphere, but according to the readouts which continued to function on Merlon, most of the rest of the ship was in vacuum. A flock of escape pods was accelerating away from the heavy cruiser, carrying those of her crew who hadn’t died already, a few more escape pods following at irregular intervals.
He hadn’t had time to be scared before this, caught up in the fighting and responding to events, but now he was alone on the bridge, there was a brief interval before the rest of the Syndic warships got within range, and Geary had to fight down a wave of dread as he faced the reality that he and Merlon might die together.
But he still had a job to do. He had to keep the Syndics focused on Merlon, and not on the escape pods carrying most of her crew. He wouldn’t let his crew be captured, to be made prisoners or even hostages on the Syndic warships heading to attack T’shima. The Syndic heavy cruisers and corvettes were ten minutes from firing range as Geary entered maneuvering orders. Merlon staggered in a wide, slow loop, trying to come onto a course facing the enemy.
He checked on the convoy. Almost to the jump point. The lone operational Syndic HuK had veered off, and Geary realized that it was trying to lure the convoy ships into chasing it. But Commander Lagemann could be trusted to use his head and follow orders.
More alerts, warning of the oncoming Syndic heavy cruisers. Geary targeted Merlon’s last functioning hell lance on the leading cruiser, setting it to fire automatically as the Syndics raced past. Outnumbered four to one, with his cruiser’s shields down, almost all of her weapons knocked out and her armor already breached in many places, Geary had no illusions about his chances.
Syndic hell lance fire tore through Merlon, riddling the cruiser from one end to the other. Every remaining combat, life-support, and maneuvering system was knocked out, atmosphere rushed out of the bridge where holes had been punched through consoles and bulkheads, and the stricken Alliance warship began an uncontrolled tumble off to the side. The final hell lance battery was dead, but Geary felt Merlon tremble as more Syndic fire ripped through her. It must be the nickel corvettes making firing runs now, the scorned nickels able to pound the stricken Alliance cruiser with impunity.
He pulled open a special panel on his command seat, accessing the emergency self-destruct system. Geary punched in the authorization code with trembling hands. As far as he could tell, Merlon’s power core still had enough left to blow the ship apart. The Syndics wouldn’t capture her intact. Though whether he needed to blow the heavy cruiser to pieces was a good question with the Syndics continuing to pound the Alliance warship into fragments. Why not just take her apart with a volley of missiles? But the Syndics probably wanted to save those missiles for the attack at T’shima, and perhaps hoped that prolonging Merlon’s death throes might entice the convoy to try a despairing rescue.
Code in and acknowledged. Enter confirmation code. Confirm again. Accepted. He had only ten minutes before the power core overloaded and Merlon exploded. More Syndic hell lance fire and grapeshot pummeled Merlon, and the local backup systems for bridge functions failed, the last virtual displays fading into the darkness.
He had no time to lose, but Geary hesitated before he left the bridge, gazing around at the deserted, ruined compartment. His ship. His command. Merlon had died fighting, but now he had to leave her and he hated it, cursing the Syndics who had reduced his beautiful ship to a hulk which would soon destroy itself.
Moving through the ship was a nightmare of another kind, the uncontrolled tumble making the bulkheads, decks, and overheads rotate erratically and seem to swing in and out as Geary propelled himself through passageways choked with wreckage and in some cases the heartrending remains of those of his crew who hadn’t lived long enough to abandon ship.
But it got worse, as he found every escape pod access showing either a pod already ejected or the red glow of a status light indicating the pod had been too badly damaged to launch.
Finally he found a pod with a yellow status light over its access. It was damaged, but with less than five minutes before core overload Geary couldn’t be picky even if he had known whether or not any other functional escape pods remained aboard. He pulled himself inside, sealed the hatch, strapped in as fast as he could, then slapped the ejection control.
Acceleration pinned him to his seat as the pod raced clear of Merlon. The pod lurched wildly, more damage lights blazing to life on its control panel, and Geary realized it had been caught in the edges of the blast from Merlon’s core overload.
The pod’s propulsion cut off abruptly in the wake of the additional damage. It should have kept going a lot longer. Geary, feeling numb, tried to read the status display. He had ample power reserves still functional, but no maneuvering controls. Communications were out. The life-support systems on the pod were damaged too and, while still working, wouldn’t hold out long.
Maybe he hadn’t escaped after all.
Then his seat began reclining and Geary realized the pod was activating the emergency survival sleep system. He’d be frozen, kept in a state where his body needed only the tiniest amount of life support.
The panel which should have displayed an image of the outside was dark, not that he could have physically seen any of the ships already far distant from his pod. Surely the convoy had jumped by now. Lieutenant Commander Decala would be assembling the other escape pods from Merlon, keeping them together, heading for the emergency station orbiting Grendel. His crew, those who had survived to abandon ship, should be safe.
The lights on the panels above Geary were going out one by one or dimming into dormant status. He hadn’t noticed the injections preparing his body for survival sleep, but felt lethargy stealing over him as his metabolism began slowing down.
He hated being cold. The idea of being frozen was far worse. But it would only be for a little while. Pommel would bring to T’shima the news of the Syndic attack here. The Alliance would counter-attack, resecure Grendel star system and rescue everyone from Merlon.
A war had begun, though he had no idea what had led the Syndics to launch surprise attacks. How long would it last? His last conscious thought as the cold took him was that surely it couldn’t last too long. Sanity or the firepower of the Alliance fleet would prevail. Maybe by the time he was picked up, the war would already be over.
He slept, while more battles raged in Grendel, one side then the other prevailing, the emergency station long since destroyed, larger and larger fleets clashing, then for a long time no ships at all. Around Grendel nothing orbited but the wreckage of earlier battles and one badly damaged survival pod, its power sources slowly draining.
Until one day another fleet came, the largest of all, and a destroyer spotted a suspicious object amid the leavings of battles. Electing to investigate rather than simply obliterate the object, the destroyer picked up the pod and delivered it to the fleet’s flagship.
Geary’s mind drifted back to partial awareness. His body felt like a block of ice and he couldn’t see. Perhaps his eyelids were still frozen shut. Vague noises around him resolved into a few words. “Alive,” “miracle,” “Black Jack,” and “war.” He struggled to make sense of the words, finally feeling some emotion as aggravation at the nickname came to the surface.
“He’ll save us!” That sentence came through clearly just before Geary began passing out again. He caught one more word as he drifted back into unconsciousness; “Dauntless.”
His body shivered and for a time he knew no more as warmth returned.
Cling Peaches
An Alliance Archives Adventure
Mike McPhail
“The truth is what you make of it.” William Kriegherren
The year was uc104—2065 A.D. by the terrestrial calendar—the Scout Frigate Garryowen, NDF-1867, was inbound for the AeroCom Squadron Base, Brooklyn Yards, Heartland/Luna America. Damaged by a ground-launched Firemoth missile during the opening phases of the invasion of Demeter, she was running with only a skeleton crew, tasked with ferrying her home for repairs. Now some four-plus hours out from the planet, their next challenge rapidly approached: Transition to hyperspace.
Floating through the last set of opposing hatches, acting Chief Engineer William Donovich entered the drive section’s service module. “By any other name it’s still engineering,” he stated. “A magical land traditionally ruled by mad Scotsmen and techno-fetish women.” The very though brought a smile to his face.
In truth it was his love of science fiction that had drawn him to study engineering; he always seemed to have a need to find out the facts behind the fiction. Eventually this led him to apply to the National Space Agency where, after months of evaluations, he was rejected on the grounds that he was physically unfit to be an astronaut; whereas the AeroCom recruiter welcomed him with open arms.
Despite the mundane crap of life in the service—and the occasional megalomania of its civilian overseers—there were moments like this; when his daydreams of crewing an all-powerful starship across interstellar space came true.
“It’s just a shame it doesn’t look the part,” said Donovich, looking down from the main hatchway platform; he often felt the ship’s SM was less of a grand starship’s engine room—one capable of governing the drive field generators that boosted the ship to the higher energy plane of hyperspace—and more akin to a padded, cold-war missile silo, with its lack of interior walls to divide its circular decks into compartments; this in addition to having equipment platforms bridging parts of its central gangway.
Looking back, Donovich could visualize the platforms being lowered through the central hatchways alone the gangway’s cargo rails, then locked into place and connected to a myriad of pipes and cables by engineering specialists wearing orange MAC suits just like him.
“Wow,” he said, a feeling of excitement washing over him. “Now the fun begins.” He maneuvered himself to the platform’s hatch control station. With a practiced push and heel snap, he locked his foot into one of the station’s boot-docks; he activated the controls, which came to life with a myriad of color-coded icons. Looking up, he could see the hatchways, their passage indicator lights both showing steady-green.
“Why can’t real life come with its own sound track?” he asked, thinking back and failing to come up with any score or song he could run through his head that would be appropriate to the moment. “I’ll just have to wing it,” he concluded.
With a quick look down, he placed his gloved finger between the protective side loops of the “Lock All” sequence button. With a gentle press and a confirming click, his world became filled with pulsating yellow lights and the chirp of alert tones.
With the ten-second time count for hatch closure running through his mind, Donovich once again looked up. “The CM’s connected to the pod-bay . . .” he started singing as the first hatch swung into place, to be shortly joined by it’s pod-bay counterpart, “ . . . the pod-bay’s connected to the SM . . .,” he continued as the hatches just above his head swung one by one into place, with a steadfast motion and an accompanying mechanical whirr, the SM’s main two-meter access hatch pressed into its frame and locked. Its pulsating, yellow warning lights then switched to a steady red.
After checking the status display on the consoles, he looked over the platform and down the length of the SM, “ . . . the SM’s connected to the DS; the DS contains the TL Drive, the reactor, and some other stuff.” He paused before concluding with a boom in his voice, “OH HEAR. . .THE WORD . . . OF THE LORD!”
“Nice little tune,” said a familiar female voice.
Donovich turned to see who had intruded on his moment. There was no one. “Duh,” he whispered to himself. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said into his comm-hood’s pickup mics, “I was just running through the hatch checklist.” He felt foolish at being caught acting so cavalier about doing his job.
“That’s alright, Chief, I’m glad you’re not stressing about the situation,” reassured Major Ware, the ship’s CO. “So I’ll take it to mean that the drive section is secured?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Donovich, as he snapped his foot free from the restraint. “I’ll just need a moment to get into my station.”
“Understood, Chief. Ware out.”
With a tap on his arm control pad, Donovich switched his primary comm channel to standby and then opened the squad-band. “Patterson,” he called, as he pushed off toward the ramp at the side of the platform; grabbing the handrails with both hands he redirected his momentum down the ramp.
“Patterson here, go’head, Chief,” replied a voice with a slight southern drawl.
Donovich passed quickly over the life-boat deck and was now holding on to the top of the handrail loops for the ladder well. “What’s your status?” he asked as he looked down through the two stories of wire mesh tubing that surrounded the access ladder.
“Everythin’s green, Chief; we’re good to go.”
“Understood,” replied Donovich, while still debating his next course of action. “Go strap in; I’ll give the All-Go as soon as I hit my station and get some coffee.” With that he pulled himself head-first down the ladder-well; an experience that is visually not unlike diving into a cheese grater.
“Yes’ir,” then there was a pause, “Um, did ya’ll say coffee?” asked Patterson.
Donovich waited until he had cleared the ladder before answering; free-falling down a ladder-well was just something no sane Starman should do, so getting stuck and having to explain himself as someone came to fished him out was definitely on the top of his “things-not-to-do” list. Now over the main deck, he maneuvered to his station. “Do you remember that guy Tony from the Vandenberg?”
“Yeah, I think so; but there were a lot of techs floatin’ around, tryin’ to glue us back together for the jump home,” he remarked.
Grabbing the handhold next to his station’s jump-seat, Donovich pulled himself into place below the rack holding his MAC’s pressure helmet and its adjoined environmental chest pack. With a snap, he locked his heels into the boot-docks, and reached for the five-point harness handles. “Well, while we were talking, I mentioned that fluid-loading didn’t
work to keep down the nausea during Transition.”
The feeling of the seat’s restraining straps snuggling up, and then locking down, was always comforting, and in its own way sort of creepy. “So he recommended a hot cup of strong coffee instead of that citrus-flavored electrolyte stuff,” he continued as he reached for the self-heating pressure-mug. “I love a ship with cup holders,” he added as he pulled the mug free from its mount below the console. Depressing the top, he took a long, hard draw from the mug’s mouth piece; a satisfying warmth spread through his chest.
“I take it ya’ll still got your bag with ’n arms reach?” asked Patterson.
Locking the mug back down, Donovich opened the top pocket of his suit’s utility jumper and pulled up the open end of a red biohazard bag. “Aye,” he confirmed. “Okay, Patterson, I’m about to give the flight deck the All-Go, you set?”
“Yes’ir.”
“Understood, Donovich out.” A beep signaled that the channel was now on standby. Looking up he could see the underside of his suit’s pressure helmet. “Regs state that I have to wear it . . .” he said doubtfully, “. . . but after last time. . . Nope,” he concluded and turned his attention to his station’s console. All status lights were green, except for the few that were blacked out from the missile strike. He depressed the “All-Go” button and waited for the flight crew to do their part; on this trip that would be just Major Ware and the XO, Lieutenant Koenig.
The two-minute warning klaxon sounded. “Attention all personnel, prepare for Transition,” announced the ship’s computer over the intercom. It was clear the CO was just waiting for his signal.