“Sir?” Laurent asked cocking an eyebrow.
“The trillium, Captain,” I said shaking my head in disgust, “I thought arriving this far out would not only render us undetectable and avoid any potential enemies, but that we would avoid the jump distorting effects of Tracto’s rich trillium deposits. It looks like I was wrong on both accounts.” I couldn’t believe our poor luck. Not only did we arrived jump-scattered, but our particular ship showed right in the middle of a squadron sized Bug Harvester group.
“Roll the ship,” Laurent commanded in a loud, steadying voice which broke my train of thought. Seeing the way the bridge-staff was looking at the two of us with quick glances over their shoulders, I suppressed a jerk and self-consciously stiffened my spine as I smoothed out my features. It was important that I appear every inch the confident Admiral at this particular juncture. At least appearing confident in the middle of battle was something I’d had a fair bit of practice lately…well, before I was tossed in a prison cell, that is.
“Communications,” I said in a loud carrying voice, “contact the nearest warship and instruct them to relay the message: the Fleet is to converge on our position.” I hesitated for a second before continuing and did my best to project an unthinking confidence in our chances, “But while they are to proceed at full speed, I don’t want anyone to blow out their engines getting here to help us. We can deal with anything the Bugs choose to throw at us. A Harvester Squadron is nothing the Flagship can’t handle by herself.”
I could tell the very instant the combination of Laurent fighting the ship and my confident words regarding our success began to penetrate. Back stiffened and men and women turned back to their consoles with renewed focus as they began to overcome the chaos and uncertainty of showing up right smack in the middle of bunch of Bug warships. The Sensor picture of our immediate arrival was still less than clear.
Of course, that was the exact moment the next Bug barrage pounded into our newly-presented, fresh side of hull.
“Shield strength at 3% and falling, all power rerouted from the secondary generators; tell Engineering I need more power!” shouted the Shield Officer.
“No,” countermanded the First Officer, “full power to the broadside. We’re just starting to punch through!”
“Hit the Bugs as hard as you can, XO,” Laurent ordered firmly, making it clear to everyone that the priority was the Bugs, not self-defense.
“Ensign Longbottom,” I drawled as loudly as one can get away with it and still qualify as drawl, “divert whatever remaining shield power you have over to the engines; you can’t cover the rest of the ship and the last thing we need is to lose our ability to maneuver.”
Laurent looked at me in surprise and then gave me a short nod.
“Re-routing, Admiral,” the Shield Officer replied quickly, clearly glad to have a confirmed order to carry out during the chaos; I knew from long experience that having something, anything, to do in the middle of a crisis was infinitely better than just sitting still and doing nothing. How could I not? After all, that was what comprised the majority of this Admiraling business: sitting up here looking confident while other people fought the ship. Their actions, as they fought the ship, decided whether or I would live or die. It was nerve-wracking at first, but eventually I just learned to accept it.
From the way our new Captain was shifting from foot to foot, he was clearly a little too eager to ‘get his hands dirty’ down in the pits. I pulled myself up short, remembering that our new bridge didn’t actually have any pits; its layout was quite different from our beloved Clover. Still, while his face was impassive, his body betrayed his eagerness.
“Eagerness is fine,” I muttered to the new Captain, “just remember you can’t let them see you sweat, ever.”
Laurent glanced at me in surprise, asking, “What?”
“You’re squirming,” I chided him in a low voice with a confident near smile plastered on my face as I sat there doing my best to appear unflappable.
Laurent immediately stilled, and glancing down at his hands and feet colored slightly. He immediately placed his hands behind his back and stopped shuffling his feet as he had been.
“I didn’t notice…thanks,” the Captain muttered.
I started to bob my head in acknowledgement when a cheer broke out in the Tactical section. On the screen, one of the small Scouts that had been skimming around behind us broke into pieces, while another Scout had gone dead-ballistic as it experienced fatal decompression through the holes our turbo-lasers had ripped through its hull.
“Yes!” said Officer Eastwood triumphantly. “Relay my compliments to the starboard gunnery crew.”
“Mister First Officer,” Captain Laurent called out, causing Eastwood to look up at him in surprise, “an extra ration of mead for Starboard Gunnery at the next meal for good shooting.”
“I’ll pass it on, Sir,” Senior Lieutenant Eastwood smiled.
While they were slapping one another on the proverbial backs, I was staring at the main holo-screen. I was dismayed to see that, unlike most of the Bug ships I’d encountered in the past, the Large Harvester was only misfiring off randomly into space about once every minute or so.
“The Bugs seem to have improved their gunnery since our last encounter,” I said tightly, not liking this new development in the least.
Laurent looked over at me in surprise and then glanced at the screen. His face hardened. “According to the historical records, the larger Bug ships always have a better gunnery hit ratio than the smaller ones,” he explained tightly. “A few have even had some semi-inspired tactical maneuvers.”
“Semi-inspired,” I echoed, completely surprised and more than a little incredulous.
“Well, they are Bugs,” Laurent smirked right before another hail of Bug fire landed home. This time it lanced through our non-existent shield over the port side of the ship (as those shields had been rerouted to cover only the Engineering section) and bored straight into the duralloy hull.
The lights flickered and then failed temporarily as something crashed inside the ship. The darkness lasted only a split second, but the crew weren’t the only ones that gasped or called out and I quickly looked around to make sure no one had noticed their Admiral’s unthinking cry of concern. I was just about to open my mouth when the gravity failed.
“Roll the ship, Mr. DuPont,” Laurent roared, “on the hop!”
“We can’t take much more of this,” I said fatalistically. If only we hadn’t arrived unsupported in the midst of a Bug task group!
“We only have to hold out another minute or two, Sir,” Laurent said,
I looked over at him in shock. “But they’re all around us, we’re surrounded!” I countered, rejecting his false comfort.
“No, really—” he started, only to be cut off by another cheer from the Tactical section.
“Pour it on, Gunnery,” Eastwood snarled into his new solid metal microphone down to the gun deck, “don’t stop until your barrels melt and your crystals shatter!”
Unable to hope for the best, my disbelieving eyes watched as the nearest Harvester jerked and shifted, firing its engines to try and present a facing to us that wasn’t pierced with turbo and heavy laser fire, or leaking atmosphere and fluids out the rents.
A sudden flurry of aimless shots fired all around us and a swarm of missiles erupted from every side and facing of the Large Harvester before it suddenly broke apart amidships, spewing Bugs, air, and other unidentifiable biomass from the large rent in the underside of the vessel which ran from one side to the other.
“Good call, Captain,” I grinned, punching the other Caprian man in the arm.
Not even bothering to look away from the screen, he gave a short negative shake of his head, “Not what I was talking about,” he said, clenching his fists as the last of the fight went out of the still-decompressing Large Harvester and a final glut burst out the middle of the Bug ship before its weapons stopped firing.
“Switch all weapons t
o point defense only, if you would, First Officer,” Laurent ordered, cutting through the commotion.
The First Officer did a double take and then glanced back at the main screen before giving a sharp nod, “Of course, Sir,” he said, snatching up his microphone. “All available weapons are to reorient for anti-missile duty. Priority power to point defense,” he ordered through the microphone.
“What about those other ships?” I demanded pointing to the main screen, but my finger was slowly wilting and going limp as I saw the remaining bug ships slide past our position with disbelief.
“They’ll be back on us in a few minutes, but inertia was against them,” Laurent explained his fingers digging into each other behind his back even as he leaned forward, “even though Bugs go fairly slow to conserve on mass and fuel for their long journeys between the stars, they still had too much forward momentum to just stop when we appeared right in front of them,” he said with satisfaction as the Bug engines went to full burn to come about and reengage us.
“We’ve got breathing room,” I sighed as the last of the Bug ships—that Large Harvester—slid around to the side and went out of easy attack range.
“They’ll be back on us soon enough, like white on rice,” Laurent demurred, “but it should give us some time to rebuild our shields; a few minutes at least.”
Time slid by with frantic activity as ‘a few minutes’ turned into five, and then almost ten before the Bugs were estimated to come roaring back by our Navigator.
“What kind of shield power can you regenerate in that time?” the new Captain barked at the Ensign in charge of the shield section.
“Without the drain from the weapon banks, maybe twenty percent, Captain Laurent, sir,” the Ensign reported with sweat breaking out on his forehead, which he dabbed at quickly with a white handkerchief to keep it from falling into his eyes.
“Not good enough,” Laurent said sternly, “do better.”
The Ensign opened his mouth but must have seen the same steely glint in the former Tactical Officer’s eye because his mouth snapped back shut, “Aye, aye, Sir,” he said faintly and then whirled back to his section to castigate his pair of techs and encourage them and himself to greater effort. “We have to get better at load balancing our two secondary generators with our lone primary, people,” the Ensign instructed, overly loudly if I was to be any judge in this smaller bridge we found ourselves stuck with, “we need more power and we need to not waste time shifting energy between shield nodes!”
“Possibly we could increase the recharge if we routed more power through the backup lines running into the secondaries,” hazarded one of the timorous Shield Techs I knew from the Clover.
“Good, let’s check with damage control,” said the Ensign, leaning forward and putting his head together with his techs, and their noise level soon lowered to the point I couldn’t hear them anymore.
Meanwhile, there were other sections calling out for attention. “Captain, we’re down a pair of turbo-lasers and a quad of heavies,” reported the First Officer.
“Bug fire was that good, Clinton?” Laurent inquired with a frown.
The First Officer grimaced and then shook his head, “We lost part of the Quad to counter fire but the heavies overloaded their focusing arrays. They’re still trying to get them out,” he said grimly.
“I assume the emergency release system failed to eject the arrays?” Laurent pursed his lips.
“The gunners on those turbo-lasers overrode the safety cutoffs,” Eastwood said sourly, “the crystals expanded when they cracked, and now they won’t come out.”
“Blast,” Laurent cursed, “get me their names.”
“In fairness, Captain, they overrode the safety lockouts so they could help finish off that Harvester,” the First Officer said mildly.
“I’ll still want those names,” Laurent said shaking his head.
“Captain,” Officer Eastwood protested.
“Our Chief Gunner’s as green as a cucumber and we’ve just lost 20% of our combat punch,” Laurent said in a hard voice and then allowed his tone to gentle, “but you can give them to me after the post-battle review.”
Possibly to decide whether to punish or reward those men, I wondered idly. Either way, it didn’t sound like something the Admiral either needed to—or even should—involve himself in. Especially since the Admiral in question didn’t know any of the men involved. I suppressed a grimace as I realized that, like most everything else on this ship, that particular circumstance was very much unlike it had been on the Clover.
My heart twisted. Oh, I didn’t feel for our old ship the same way our eccentric—some might say ‘crazed’—Chief Engineer did, but all the same I missed her…and the camaraderie that we’d been building, which was now shattered to pieces. The only question was whether I would be able to put enough of them back together to keep going on.
I was banking on the fact that I could.
“Any other problems I need to know about?” Laurent demanded of the bridge staff.
“Well…” the watch stander at Damage Control slowly raised his arm.
“Yes, go on,” Laurent said irritably.
“Well, the Hydroponics section took a couple hits and we lost two of our three bays when they vented to space,” the Damage Control technician said diffidently, “one of them might be recoverable, but the other’s thrashed and—”
The Captain cut him off irritation flashing across his face, “We’re about to go back into combat and you’re bothering me with the loss of our green, leafy vegetables?” he said with rising disbelief, his hands clenching at his side as he stared at the watch stander who seemed to shrink inside himself.
“Well, the ship’s long-term survival has just been cut in—” the Damage Control tech said in a small voice.
“Captain,” I said sharply, cutting Laurent off before he could say something someone would regret.
“Yes, Admiral,” the former Tactical Officer said, his head snapping around to face me. I could see the hint of red around the corner of his eyes.
“Since I seem to be short a fleet to direct at the moment, I’ll deal with this,” I said mildly, “you can focus on what you do best: our weaponry and tactical situation.”
“Right,” Laurent said after a moment and then paused again, “right.” He gave the watch stander a shake of his head before heading over to confer with our navigator and helmsman.
The stander looked at me with equal parts hope and dread.
“Has our life support system been damaged to the point we’re going to need to evacuate the ship either before, or even a few hours after, the next battle?” I asked, arching a brow at the engineer.
“No, Sir, I mean Admiral Montagne, Sir,” the Engineer stumbled over himself, “the air scrubbers should be able to keep up, but if we can’t get that second hydroponics bay back up and running we cut down on our ability to recycle our food. Less greens and less output from the algae tanks will not only decrease meal satisfaction, but we’ll have to get into our hard rations sooner and…”
I cut him off with an upraised hand. “I see,” I said, suppressing the urge to indulge in an eye roll. We could be dead in the next couple minutes, and I was stuck dealing with an engineer possessing the soul of a bean counter, “Is there anything else,” I paused, “other than the damaged hydroponics sections?”
“Uh, we lost one of our two secondary power relay systems that were installed in the ship in case the primary grid was damaged,” the Engineering Technician said, his eyes shifting left and right as he visibly tried to remember, “but the primary’s okay and we still have one back up, while with the hydroponics…as you already know, they’re down to just the one functional bay,” he finished with a hopeful expression.
“I see,” I repeated, and I did. This was a man who was so mono-focused on a lack of redundancy that he couldn’t see the flowers from the weeds. If it didn’t matter to our surviving the upcoming battle, then it should have waited. Instead, however,
he’d gone on and on about something that could cause us trouble months down the road and neglected to mention a compromise to one of the ship’s more critical systems.
“What should I do, Sir?” the man asked, clearly waiting for orders.
“I believe it’s imperative that you personally inspect the compromised hydroponics section that might be salvageable and prepare to lead a team in its repair as soon as the battle’s over,” I said with a grave nod. This man had to go—preferably before the next battle started.
“But what about my damage control station,” the Watch Stander said rearing back in surprise, “I can’t leave it unattended.”
I paused as if considering the situation. “Summon your replacement,” I said with a serious expression, “I’m afraid that this is a situation that can’t wait.” I made sure to glance at his name tag.
“Aye, aye, Sir!” the Engineering Technician acknowledged, turning back to his station and speaking rapidly into his com-link.
With the slightest shake of my head, I pulled out my data slate and made a note. It was imperative that that man stayed as far away from the bridge as possible, for the safety of all concerned.
Half a minute later the Engineering Tech was striding for the lift system and his replacement exited the doors of the very same lift, striding purposefully toward the Damage Control station.
When I saw the new tech had arrived and was looking for someone to report to, I made sure to catch her eye. With a relieved expression, the Tech quickly approached.
“Engineering Technician Arienne Blythe reporting for duty, Admiral,” said the stern-faced woman in an engineering department uniform complete with tool belt, jacket, and head bag clipped to the back of her belt.
“Are you ready to handle damage control on the bridge, Technician Arienne?” I asked gravely.
“I’m fully trained in damage control operations and a certified watch stander,” the crewwoman said with a no nonsense voice. Unlike the last man, she both looked and sounded professional. I briefly wondered why we’d been stuck with the other guy and then shrugged, since it didn’t matter. We’d soon find out if she was up to snuff.
Admiral's Revenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 11