by Peter Kenson
“All right, Commander,” Mikael tried again. “I realise you’re upset but there’s no reason why we can’t behave in a civilised manner.”
“Civilised,” the prisoner snarled. “You won’t be so civilised when the New Vostovian Fleet rips your Imperial Navy to pieces and destroys your homeworlds. Then you’ll be driven back into the dark ages where you belong.”
“You can’t seriously believe that a handful of Vostovian frigates is going to threaten the Imperial Navy,” Frank intervened.
“I believe it… and you’ll believe it too. You’ll be forced to believe it when you kneel before your Vostovian Masters.”
“And when exactly, is this spectacle of military domination due to occur?” Mikael inquired.
The prisoner lunged forward again and then checked himself. “You’ll get no more information from me,” he spat. “You can torture me if you want but I won’t talk.”
“An interesting offer,” Mikael replied thoughtfully. “But one which I regret I am unable to accept under the Imperial Rules of Engagement.”
Mikael looked at the guards. “Take him away and secure him,” he ordered. “But isolate him from the rest of the crew.”
“You can’t do that,” the prisoner shouted. “I’m the captain of this ship and I demand to see my men.”
“Wrong Commander, you were the captain of this ship. Now you’re a prisoner of war and, on the evidence so far, a troublemaker. As the captain of His Imperial Majesty’s frigate Dominator, I have a responsibility to protect both the ship and my crew. You will be held in isolation until you are prepared to offer us some civility if not co-operation. Take him away.”
The former captain of the Dominator started struggling violently again as the bosun’s mates dragged him away. Mikael looked across at Frank and indicated with a slight jerk of the head that they should move away to the other side of the bridge.
“There’s a Lt. Freihaft in with the prisoners, Number One,” he said, leaning in so that he could speak softly. “Don’t make a fuss about it but cut him out from the herd and bring him up to my ready room. We may get more co-operation from him but I don’t want to make it obvious to the rest of his crewmates. In fact, thinking about it, it might be sensible to isolate all the officers providing we’ve got enough cells. Minimise the chance of them organising any resistance and it will cover our tracks with Freihaft.”
“I’ll see to it, sir.”
As Frank hurried off, Mikael did the rounds of the bridge stopping at every station for a quiet word.
“Engineering to Bridge.”
Mikael hit the connect button on the nearest console. “Go ahead, Chief.”
“We’ve traced that excess power supply, sir. Some of it is run through the weapons systems and some runs through that control panel that Barnes found on the bridge.”
“Any clue as to the purpose?”
“Not yet sir. We’re checking out the weapons systems but my guess there is that it’s some sort of power boost. The other circuits I don’t recognise but there’s some complex circuitry built in to that control panel. I can’t do more than guess at the function at this stage.”
“Okay, so what’s your opinion? Is it safe to ignore it or can we isolate it in some way?”
“I can’t isolate the control circuits without understanding their function. That could compromise the whole control system. However, it’s not feeding the main engines or the subspace jump controls, so I think we’re safe enough to move off. In my opinion you’ve got normal mobility and then some. On the weapons side – without Guns to check it out, it’s just pure speculation.”
“All right, Chief. I’ll try to stay out of trouble. Stand by to get underway.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Comms. Any word yet from Juno or Jupiter?”
“Nothing yet, sir. And no sign of them on the scanners either.”
“Very good. Helm, lay in an intercept course for the Arctic Fox. Quarter impulse power.”
“Helm answering aye. Quarter impulse power aye.”
As the frigate nosed away from the shadow of the asteroid, the external screens showed the devastation caused by the final destruction of the Cleopatra. Debris had radiated out in a sphere centred on the seat of the explosion. Apart from a cone of clear space in the shadow of the asteroid where the Dominator had been sheltering, the immediate region resembled a still expanding junkyard and the proximity warning system started shrilling an alarm.
“Deflector shields to full power,” Mikael ordered. “Helm, steer the best course you can through the debris and somebody override that damned alarm.”
Silence abruptly filled the bridge as the proximity alarm was cut off in mid-shrill and all attention focussed on the main viewscreen showing the Dominator cautiously threading her way through the field of debris. The collective sigh of relief was almost audible as the frigate passed the outer perimeter of the expanding wreckage and headed into clear space.
“Well done, Helm. Good work,” Mikael acknowledged the pilot. “Now we’ll see just what this baby’s capable of. Run her up to full power. Switch the shields to automatic and maintain the long range scans for incoming warships.”
“Full power aye, sir.”
“Comms, can we raise the Arctic Fox yet?”
“No sir. She hasn’t changed course and there’s no response on any channel. I’d say the systems are still down at her end, sir.”
“Helm, how long will it take us to catch her?”
“Hard to say, sir, until we get a better idea of how the main drives perform. On the Cleopatra it would have taken us about four and a half hours. Based on what we’ve seen so far, I think we can probably do it in about two.”
“Make it so, Ensign. You have the bridge. I’ll be in my ready room.”
***
The captain’s ready room on the Cleopatra had been little more than a cubbyhole tucked away on the side of the bridge. The equivalent on the Dominator was on a somewhat grander scale, providing sufficient facilities for a conference with all officers and technical specialists. Each position around the conference table had an individual monitor and the walls were covered with repeater screens allowing the occupants to view anything shown on the main bridge screens.
Inside the ready room, Mikael found Frank and Lt. Freihaft waiting for him. There were traces of blood and some obvious bruising on his face. He had made an attempt to straighten his uniform but one of his shoulder epaulettes had been ripped off and he no longer resembled the smart young bridge officer of a few minutes earlier.
“Thank you for coming, Lieutenant,” Mikael said, seating himself at the conference table and indicating that they should join him.
The young officer raised an eyebrow at the greeting. “Did I really have a choice, Captain?”
“Probably not,” Mikael admitted with a grin. “But it appears that you have been roughly handled. I trust that was not at the hands of my men.”
“No, not your men, Captain. I’m afraid some of the other bridge crew resented my surrendering the ship.”
“But surely they could see you had no choice?”
“Some of them have always resented my appointment because I am not like them. They think I deliberately betrayed the Federation and they took the opportunity to get even.”
“Then I apologise to you, Lieutenant. I heard the hostility on the bridge but, with everything else going on, I’m afraid I ignored it. I should have isolated you straight away.”
“Thank you, Captain, but you did what was necessary at the time. Now tell me. Why am I here?”
“Well to start with, after dealing with Commander Grafint, it is nice to hold a civilised discussion.”
That provoked an answering smile, hastily suppressed. “The captain can be a little difficult at times,” he admitted. “But he is still the captain.”
“Technically no, Lieutenant. Commander Grafint may still be your superior officer but he no lo
nger holds a position of command on this ship. The Dominator is now a part of the Imperial Navy and I am her captain.”
“I accept that, sir but I am not a part of your crew.”
“No you’re not. Which is why I am requesting your help rather than ordering you around.”
“A nice distinction, Captain, but the crew already believe that I have betrayed them once. I cannot give you any help without betraying them again.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Lieutenant. Nobody’s asking you to betray anybody. But there’s some equipment on this ship that we don’t recognise and we don’t know the function of. Now that represents a risk to the ship and to my crew which, as captain, I cannot ignore. If one of my technicians misuses some equipment through ignorance of its proper function, he could cripple or even destroy the ship. And if that happens there will be very few survivors from either of our crews.”
The young lieutenant hung his head and looked unhappy. “I cannot help you, Captain.”
Mikael stopped and sat back in his chair, studying the man in front of him.
“Why do they resent you so much, Lieutenant? Why do they think you are not like them?”
“Because I was not born in the Federation, Captain. I was once a citizen of the Empire, or at least, my parents were.”
“What happened?”
“They were crewing a freighter that was captured by Vostovian pirates. They killed my father but they took my mother and myself back to Vostov. They put me into an orphanage to be raised as a son of the Federation.”
“And your mother?”
“They put her into one of their breeding programmes. When I was older, I tried to find her but I was told that she had killed herself.”
“So how did you end up here?”
“I was never popular in the orphanage. The other children hated me because of my birth. So I compensated by throwing myself into my studies. It did nothing to improve my popularity but I graduated top of my class and was accepted into Space College. From there, I worked my way up to my current position but my progress has always been resented.”
“Well, under those circumstances, I find your loyalty to the Federation, admirable even if somewhat surprising. But the situation is that I have taken a lot of casualties from my original crew, I am commanding a warship with which I am not totally familiar and I have some unknown technology on my bridge.
“If you’ve got information that you withhold and someone gets injured or killed because of it, you’re going to have to live with that on your conscience and I am going to be exceedingly pissed off. I’m not asking you to betray your men. When this ship reaches the nearest Star Base, technicians are going to rip it to pieces and we’ll have all the answers anyway. All I’m asking for now is some information which may help us reach Star Base with minimum risk to both my men and yours.”
“And if I do help you, Captain. What position does that put me in? If I help you, I can’t then go back to my crew and pretend nothing happened.”
“Then don’t go back to them, Lieutenant. From what I’ve seen, you are a competent and trustworthy young officer and your loyalty is exemplary. But you were born a citizen of the Empire and you owe them some loyalty as well. Did your parents have any relatives that you know about?”
“My father had a brother on Timet in the Alba system. If he is still alive, he would be my uncle and I believe there are some cousins as well.”
“Then you also owe some loyalty to your father’s family, Lieutenant. But I will tell you this for a fact. To the Vostovian Federation, you are now dead. They will not support you, negotiate for your release and even less attempt any sort of rescue. You are looking at spending a substantial portion of the rest of your life in prison or at best, in an internment camp.
“Now I am not in a position to make you any sort of offer on behalf of Star Fleet Command but I could certainly use some extra help on the bridge right here, right now. If you agree to help us get back to Star Base then, when we get there, I will speak to the admiral for you.”
The young lieutenant looked at Mikael in amazement. “You’d really do that for me?”
“You have my word on it.” Mikael glanced across at Frank who nodded in agreement. “Obviously I can’t guarantee what the admiral’s reaction will be but, if you do as well for us as I think you’re capable of, then I do have some credit with the admiral at the moment.”
Lt. Freihaft thought about the offer for at least a nanosecond before his face broke into a broad smile. “All right, Captain. You’ve got a deal.”
“That’s excellent,” Mikael said warmly, offering his hand. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant. Now what can you tell us about this control panel and all this extra power?”
“There are two modifications to the weapons systems and one to the shielding that you should be aware of. I don’t believe any of them will affect the normal operation of the ship but the shielding system is highly experimental and not particularly reliable.”
“Okay, let’s start with the weapons systems,” Mikael asked.
“Well, the phasors have been boosted with a binary transmission system that virtually doubles the power throughput. They have also been modified with an agile frequency module that seeks out the resonant frequency of the target’s defensive shielding and effectively neutralises it. It allows virtually the full power of the phasor to pass straight through the shields to hit the underlying armour.”
“That explains why we took so much damage from just one hit as you shot past us,” Mikael said. “And the shielding?”
“That system is much more experimental and its operation is not 100%. But it uses the same type of technology on our own defensive shields to phase shift them to a range where they and, therefore, the ship, are virtually undetectable.”
“Is that why we didn’t pick you up on our sensors when you were hiding in that asteroid cluster? It’s some sort of cloaking device?”
“Yes, but it’s still under development and we only have a trial version fitted. The phase shift switched itself off as soon as we started to move. It shouldn’t have done that. It has to be switched off to enable the weapons systems to fire but by that time we should have been right alongside you, giving you no time to react.”
“Nevertheless, it appears that Vostov is a couple of steps ahead of our research guys and that surprises me. I didn’t think they had the capability to do this level of research. How many ships have they got equipped with this technology?”
“I’m not sure, Captain. The phasor mods are complete and all Vostovian warships are being recalled for refit on a rolling basis but I honestly don’t know how far they’ve got. The cloaking device, as I say, is experimental and has been installed on only 2 or 3 ships for trials. The Dominator was one of the trial ships.”
“Right,” said Mikael standing up. “Thank you for that, Lieutenant.
“Frank, can you take Lt. Freihaft…. I can’t keep calling you that. What’s your name Lieutenant?”
“It’s Dag Freihaft, sir.”
“Frank, take Dag along and find the senior weapons technician. Introduce him as an acting lieutenant until we reach Star Base. On my personal authority.
“We lost our weapons officer in the assault,” he added for Dag’s benefit. “Talk the technicians through the phasor mods first and then look at the shields. And when you’ve done that, report back to the bridge. We’re expecting company any time now.”
Mikael led the way back onto the bridge and the other two officers headed off to gunnery control. The atmosphere on the bridge was still excited but the level of activity looked to be no more than normal. Ewan Targa came bustling over to report.
“We’ve raised the Arctic Fox, sir. They’ve restored the comms at their end but they’re still struggling with the navigation controls. I’ve told them we’re on our way and if they haven’t got it sorted by the time we get there, then we’ll send a repair team over.”
“
Thanks Ensign. Have we managed to raise Star Fleet yet?”
“No sir. Every time we get through to them, they break the contact because they don’t recognise the transmission type. I’m trying to modify the comms gear to reproduce a fleet signal that they’ll recognise but it’s not easy.”
“Well keep trying. I’d like to get word to Juno and Jupiter before they turn up here with all guns blazing. Anything else?”
“Yes sir. That pirate’s back under control again. They’re obviously more on the ball than the Arctic Fox but then they’re carrying a much larger crew. She’s turned round and is heading back towards us. She’s too far away to be a threat but she’s hailing us on all channels, sir.”
“Hailing us as what? Does she think this ship is still under Vostovian control?”
“I believe she does, sir. She couldn’t see what went down in the asteroid cluster so she’d have no reason to think otherwise.”
“Right. Find Lt. Freihaft – he was heading towards gunnery control with the Exec – and get a list of Vostovian codes from him. Send them a routine acknowledgement code but nothing more. And keep trying to raise the Admiralty.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Helm, reduce speed to three quarters impulse and lay in a course that will bring us round in an arc to the same course as the Monteparnassus. Gradually reduce our speed as we swing round. I want to make it look as though we’re waiting for her to catch up.”
“Helm aye, sir.”
“All stations. Report operational status and readiness time for combat.”
As Mikael waited for the reports to come in, he watched the situation developing in the Vostovian equivalent of the Stellar Display Tank. It was basically the same model as had been installed in the Cleopatra but because nobody had had time to reprogram it yet, the Dominator and the Monteparnassus were identified as friendly and the Arctic Fox was shown as hostile. In the time since the initial attack, the Arctic Fox had been racing away under full power, unable to change either her course or speed. The main drive of the Monteparnassus, however, had been knocked off-line by the blast from the pulse weapon and the freighter had only been coasting along before the crew regained control. Consequently, she had not travelled as far before they turned her round and started heading back.