by Britt Ringel
Approximately twenty seconds after the channel had been closed, Truesworth declared, “Paragon is pivoting toward us… she’s braking hard, sir. Incoming message.”
A man’s panicked voice came over the bridge’s speaker, “BRS Anelace, we are heaving to. Don’t fire!”
Vernay swiveled around in her chair and stared at Heskan with a questioning look.
We can’t stop or the ketch gets away and, when I continue pursuit on the ketch, will Paragon then resume course toward the tunnel point? What if the ketch starts leading me away from the tunnel point? Would Paragon stay stationary or try to run again for the tunnel point? I can’t take that chance.
“Fire, Lieutenant.”
A predator’s smile broke out on Vernay’s face as she acknowledged the order.
Paragon was still braking as Anelace shot past her. The freighter was cruising at .04c but still decelerating when Lieutenant Vernay lightly touched the command-accept-execute button on her weapons console. Vernay and Selvaggio had coordinated on the strike and the navigator had rolled the corvette twenty-three degrees to port to allow all four of the GP lasers to bear on the freighter. Such minor maneuvers were considered within the purview of the weapons officer and navigator during a battle and could be executed without a direct order from the captain. Both the first officer and captain were courtesy-copied the command on their consoles and could either confirm or reject the order before it was carried out. If neither took any action, assent was assumed and the command would execute. Usually the captain was too busy during a combat situation to read each command, so it was customary for the first officer to monitor them and bring any questionable commands to the captain’s attention. In this case, Lieutenant Riedel had confirmed the coordinated efforts of the junior officers.
Charged energy spit from each of the four lasers and the bursts covered the distance between the two ships in four seconds. All four shots were direct hits on Paragon’s main drive. The laser fire burned through the freighter’s light titanium-16 hull as if it were so much paper. Each burst then fried and melted machinery in the delicate drive system. Finally, the shots burned through the opposite side of Paragon’s hull and continued a short distance into space before dissipating. Paragon’s drive system ceased to function three seconds after the impact. Her drive went cold and she was left to drift at .04c toward the Narvi tunnel point, which, at her new speed, would now take over eleven and a half hours to reach. Even if she did reach it, she would drift passively by the tunnel point as her hopelessly destroyed drive could never generate the tunnel effect required to dive into t-space.
Anelace streaked onward toward the ketch, 2.5lm away. “Nice shooting, WEPS.”
“Thank you, sir. One down, one to go.”
“Estimated time to intercept is twenty-nine minutes,” Truesworth announced.
Heskan lowered his voice as he exchanged looks with his first officer. In a hushed voice he said, “It’s going like clockwork, Mike. Makes me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.”
“Things will be trickier with the ketch if she fights,” Riedel cautioned. “She’s so small that if she keeps fighting until we’ve disabled her drive and her lasers, the ship will be mostly uninhabitable.”
“True,” Heskan agreed, “but I won’t take any chances with my ship. As much as I want to take some of those guys alive, I’ll just order center mass hits before I let that pirate ketch fire at Anelace.”
“That will make it easier for Vernay,” Riedel pointed out. The targeting of specific systems on ships was out of the ordinary during most naval engagements. Unless a weapon was aimed at the center of a ship’s mass, the chance of a clean miss increased. In a contest to stop the incoming fire of an opposing ship, any hit was better than a miss, so while aiming for the bridge of a ship or for certain weapon mounts made for great holo-movies, it was a recipe for disaster when fighting a ship that was firing back.
“Not that she needs the help,” Heskan replied in a near whisper. “Did you see where those shots hit Paragon?”
Riedel nodded, “All four, dead on. Stacy belongs behind the weapons console of a dreadnaught.”
Heskan nodded and then looked back to the tactical plot. “Well, let’s give the ketch one last thing to think about.” Heskan spoke normally again, “Jack, comm message to that ketch, please.”
Truesworth keyed the proper commands and motioned to Heskan.
“Unidentified ketch, you are in violation of several ISC Rules. You will heave to within five minutes of receipt of this transmission. Your ship will be boarded and impounded. Failure to comply will result in your ship’s destruction. This is your final warning. Anelace out.”
“Simple and effective,” Riedel noted.
“Yeah, I don’t want a running, thirty-minute long conversation with this guy while he tries to finagle some advantage. This way they have about ten minutes to make the choice: obey or be destroyed.”
To Heskan’s surprise, they received a reply seven minutes later. “This is the captain of the Raptor. There’s room to negotiate here, Anelace. I’m sure that we could come to an arrangement that benefits us both economically. Be reasonable, Captain. Why risk your ship and crew to fight us when you could reap some vast rewards if you happened to look the other way in this system?”
Riedel laughed loudly when he heard the message. “Are you going to reply, Captain?”
Heskan smiled, “Nope, I think we’ve made our position clear.” He then returned to his console to review his battle plan, which was the essence of simplicity. Without missiles, he would have to close to within 10ls of Raptor. At 15ls, Heskan would order Anelace to pivot ninety degrees to starboard in an effort to keep some lateral distance between his ship and the ketch. Even if Raptor pivoted to face him, which she would surely do, the change in direction would keep the corvette inside mass driver range but away from the pirate’s lasers. Of course, there was a good chance the pirate captain would anticipate Heskan’s maneuver, pivot his own ship and use its drive in an effort to reduce the range but Raptor’s captain would have to guess the correct direction to succeed. Heskan flashed his plan over to Riedel’s station and attached the text message, “MIKE, TAKE A LOOK AT THIS.”
Another minute passed and Heskan received a reply on his console, “LOOKS GOOD, CAPT.”
“Fifteen minutes to intercept,” Truesworth counted down.
Heskan manipulated the controls on his console and the right-side optical image of the pirate ketch was replaced with Heskan’s attack plan. “Okay, folks, this is how we’re going to make our run. Stacy, you’ll have about ten seconds of firing time with the mass driver. How many shots can you get off?”
“I can hope for three but will probably only get two, sir.”
“I’ll take what you can get, center mass shots, Stacy. Kill that ship.” Vernay bobbed her head up and down. “Have the lasers ready, I’m hoping to stay outside their range but you never know.” Vernay again dipped her head. Okay, Heskan, stop mother-henning her. She knows this stuff and you’re making yourself look bad, or worse, showing you don’t have confidence in her so just cut the nervous chatter.
“Another message from Raptor, Captain,” Truesworth said as he played it.
“Captain of Anelace, this is Captain Jonathon Montgomery of BRS Raptor. We are a deep cover ship on assignment to infiltrate a pirate organization. Do not fire upon us. You are ordered to reduce speed and discontinue pursuit. I say again, cut your engines and end your pursuit. You’ve already risked our cover and wasted unimaginable resources spent fighting criminal activity. I warn you, don’t add insubordination and disobeying an order from a superior officer to the list of your offenses.”
Heskan saw stunned looks from his junior officers but heard boisterous laughter coming from the operations station. Chief Brown stifled his laugh with great effort.
“Ping their IFF, Jack,” Heskan ordered.
The IFF, Identification Friend or Foe, was a military system designed to avoid firing u
pon a friendly ship in the middle of a chaotic battle. With dozens of ships and hundreds of missiles, the “vastness” of space could quickly become very crowded during an engagement. In order to reduce the chance of killing a friendly, each ship could electronically query its target. The targeted ship would then reply with a carefully guarded code. If the response returned the correct code, the target was deemed friendly and was denoted as such on tactical displays. Heskan assumed any Brevic infiltration ship would be equipped with an IFF system for exactly this type of situation.
Truesworth typed into his console and after a minute said, “No return.”
“So, foe,” Riedel stated.
“Gotta admit that was a nice try, Capt’n,” Chief Brown said.
“It kind of threw me for a second, Boats,” Heskan admitted. “Jack, send this: Raptor, IFF returns you as a foe. Heave to or be destroyed.”
Neither ship had reduced its speed as Anelace’s time to intercept drew within six minutes. The ships were just under 30ls apart when Truesworth warned, “She’s pivoting, Captain. Raptor is turning to face us, velocity is still constant at point two-five light.”
That’s to be expected. Heskan took one last glance at his attack plan. Picking a simple turn to starboard was a mistake. I should have done something using all three dimensions but it’s too late now because changing the plan in the final minutes will just throw the bridge into disarray.
No additional messages were sent as each captain had resigned himself to their final actions. After closing the distance to 15ls from Raptor, Anelace’s thrusters fired violently and she yawed hard to starboard. At nearly the same time, Raptor began to brake hard in an effort to close the distance to laser range. The closing speed of the two ships, which had been a mere .08c, grew rapidly to .18c. The pirate captain had also waited patiently instead of blindly guessing a direction to pivot his ship. However, in the time it took the captain to see Anelace’s new vector, to command his ship’s helmsman to execute a corresponding turn to port and for Raptor to respond, twenty-two seconds had elapsed. During that time, Anelace traveled an additional 3.96ls. However, due to her new facing, perpendicular to the ketch, her momentum carried her only 3.1ls closer to Raptor.
Lieutenant Vernay began to sweat although she was unaware of it. Heskan could see her focus on her console screen was absolute as she watched Anelace skid closer to her mass driver’s maximum range of 10ls. The lieutenant’s left thumb operated a miniature thumbstick used to assist the targeting computer to keep her target reticule securely on her quarry. The index finger of her left hand was lightly pressing the pressure sensitive rocker button underneath it to further assist the weapon’s lock, while her little finger had already depressed the input mass driver fire command key. Vernay’s right index finger rested lightly over the command-accept-execute button that would actually initiate the input command to fire the mass driver.
Raptor’s main drive protested as it operated over the maximum of the manufacturer’s recommended output. It was winning its fight against Newton’s first law of motion but too slowly. The range between the two ships was not dropping fast enough and the sleek corvette looked as if it would skirt safely around the pirate ketch.
Forty-four seconds after Anelace initiated her “hard right” maneuver, the range had finally dropped to 10ls. During the entire pass, the two ships would actually close to within 8.8ls before parting again. The total elapsed time the two ships were within mass driver range was 4.3 seconds, less than half the time of Heskan’s estimate. During those seconds, the two ships raced past each other with Anelace belching mass driver rounds and Raptor unable to return fire.
Anelace’s Kruger Mk 237 mass driver drew upon railgun concepts that had been in existence for hundreds of years. The basic theory had been around since the dawn of man; take a solid object and propel it as fast as possible at an enemy. Improved upon over time, the Mk 237 used five barrels. The largest was the center barrel from which the actual projectile was launched. Made from carbon-treated titanium-32, the barrel’s caliber was 0.762 meters, or roughly an arm’s length wide. The remaining four barrels were located around the center barrel in a box-like arrangement that when looked at head-on, looked like the face of a die showing a roll of five. The smaller barrels generated the electromagnetic pulse that would push the projectile through and out the center barrel. As with railguns of the past, the heat it produced was incredible. Consequently, the five-barrel design was adopted so that each smaller barrel would divide the brunt of the heat generated by the pulse, while the center barrel would absorb the heat from the friction of launching a projectile from zero to two-thirds the speed of light inside the eleven meter long barrel. The heat created was still so great that it was easily possible to warp any of the barrels, resulting in a catastrophic misfire on the next shot. To prevent this, multiple sensors were installed that monitored each barrel and triggered an automatic shutdown of the weapon system in the event a barrel reached an unacceptable temperature or began to change shape. However, the best preventative measure taken to avoid a heat-related misfire was to decrease the mass driver’s rate of fire.
In theory, a mass driver could generate a push pulse multiple times in a second. Coupled with a sophisticated enough reloading mechanism, a mass driver could fire as fast as the next round could be loaded into the center barrel. In reality, firing a mass driver more than once every five seconds would almost guarantee a misfire immediately. As a result, the design and installation of a loading mechanism that took five seconds to safely load the next round became industry standard.
Anelace’s center barrel temperature rose from a frigid -455 degrees Fahrenheit to a scorching 2,438 degrees Fahrenheit with its first shot. Lieutenant Vernay had pre-loaded the first round so her second shot at Raptor came five seconds later, just outside the driver’s maximum effective range. As the second mass driver round cleared the now brightly glowing orange barrel, the temperature inside it spiked to 3,444 degrees Fahrenheit.
The first iridium-treated projectile took fifteen seconds to reach Raptor. On the bridge of the ketch, the pirate captain was staring at his view screen in mute rage over his ship’s inability to defend herself. Raptor was a good ship. She had been heavily modified for the piracy she excelled at but she was not an enforcer ship and she could not stand toe to toe against a military vessel. His ship’s optics had detected two breakaway objects from the corvette, undoubtedly shots from the damn thing’s mass driver. The second shot had surprised him as his ship’s technical data on the Dagger class corvette had told him they could not have fired accurately that fast. Maybe the corvette’s gunner had rushed both shots. If his ship survived the incoming salvo, he promised himself he would surrender before the corvette’s second pass.
Iridium was one of the hardest, naturally occurring metals in the known systems. A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum family, finely divided iridium dust was also flammable. While too brittle to penetrate a military ship’s thickly armored hull, iridium was the perfect choice against a pirate ship. The first shot struck Raptor amidship, one meter aft of the ship’s middle structural support frame. Behind that frame was originally a luxurious yachtsman’s compartment, now converted into the weapons station controlling the ship’s two B-pack lasers. The mass driver round broke apart as it penetrated the ship’s hull, creating a buckshot pattern of fragments inside the ship that disintegrated anything in their paths. Three crewmen never knew their ship had been hit. As the fragments passed through machinery and material inside the weapons room, they reduced further into dust. Sparks from shorted out equipment supplied the ignition source for the dust and Raptor’s middle compartment became a short-lived inferno as it vented its fiery atmosphere into space.
Vernay’s second shot hit further forward. The round impacted five meters behind the bridge, annihilating the galley and living quarters. Had this been a normal shot, the bridge would have been spared; however, when the iridium projectile broke apart, dozens of
fragments shredded the bridge’s rear wall. The bridge’s atmosphere was promptly blown through the crew’s quarters and out the gaping holes in Raptor’s hull. With no pressure suit, the captain’s last thought before suffocation was about broken promises.
Heskan watched the events play out in front of him on the tactical screen and through Anelace’s optics. His first feeling was the immediate relief that his attack run had allowed his ship a couple of shots while preventing any return fire. Once the range was opening again, he concentrated on the right side of the view screen. The main screen was still split, the left showing the tactical plot, the right once again showing an enhanced optical view of Raptor.
The ketch was still turning in a vain effort to face them and close the distance. That opportunity lost, Heskan thought it was likely it would continue its run away from Anelace but he was unsure if the ketch would continue sailing toward the tunnel point. I’ve never heard of a ketch having a tunnel drive but if I have Ana do another flyby attack, I’ll probably only get one more pass before it reaches the tunnel point. However, I have something much better in mind now that we’re ahead of her, he thought. Glancing at tactical, he saw the two solid dots representing the mass driver rounds nearing the ketch. He felt his body tense up even though he knew that whatever had happened to Raptor had happened eight seconds ago, the amount of time it took for the light from Raptor to reach his ship. The first shot looked like it would be a sure hit; the second, maybe not. He had given Vernay only the extreme range of the Kruger’s firing envelope to work with and would be grateful for a single hit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vernay’s left thumb still twitching her thumbstick as if still trying to guide that second shot into the ketch.
A flash of light on the ketch amidship heralded the first shot’s impact. Heskan heard collective gasps around the bridge as the explosion inside the Raptor’s weapons compartment occurred and then the oddly beautiful venting of the flames into space could be easily seen on the screen. Five seconds later, Raptor took her second hit and Heskan watched more atmosphere and debris blow from her ruptured hull. Seconds after that, Raptor’s ELTI launched and began transmitting its distress signal.