by Britt Ringel
The engineering compartment, housing an enormous Kanata Split power plant, was easily the largest area on the ship. The compartment was divided into the general engineering section and the reactor room which housed the actual power plant and the highly volatile power cells that provided the fuel for the hungry engines. The penetrating laser fire struck the engineering section, specifically the machinist’s workshop and the electrical generator room.
The workshop was unmanned during battle stations and the cacophony of its decompression went unheard. As per regulation, any tool light enough to be moved by a decompression event had been secured, preventing the tools from being launched as the atmosphere was blown through the fist-sized breaches in the hull. Finished with the workshop, the laser burst continued its path of destruction into the electrical generator room. Able Spaceman Vaughn’s abdomen disappeared in an instant as the pulse laser burned through him and his operator’s panel which erupted into a shower of sparks that rained down embers of burning metal onto Vaughn’s curled body. The electrical panel’s dying command to the ship’s generator was a kill command to avoid a dangerous power surge inside Anelace’s electrical systems. The command proved unnecessary as the laser pulse had already burned a killing blow deep inside Anelace’s main generator fractions of a second earlier. The two remaining crewmembers in the compartment looked around in confusion as the compartment’s atmosphere began to rush out through the rupture in the bulkhead. Closing their helmet visors when the decompression alarm sounded, they rushed toward their stricken comrade. Anelace’s life support sensor suite detected both breaches and swiftly erected containment fields in the two compartments.
Lieutenant Jackamore saw the warnings on his system’s status board from the engineering command room and ordered battery reserves to compensate for the loss of the ship’s main electrical generator. While not a permanent solution, he was confident the emergency procedure would provide enough electrical power to get Anelace through the fight.
Ketch-One’s second salvo of pulse fire arrived two seconds after the first and struck much further aft. One shot burned a hole through the enormous mount of the second drive and due to the roll angle of Anelace, the laser burst continued through the hole and hit the corvette’s topside hull near her twelfth frame. The duralloy armor, however, easily absorbed the energy from the now weakened laser bolt. The second shot hit the drive itself. Armor flash boiled once again and the laser pulse played havoc inside the delicate internal structure of the Allison T-22 drive. Pieces fused together or fell away entirely, throwing the engine out of balance. The vibrations quickly grew and automatic safeties cut the power to the engine in an effort to avoid major structural damage to the ship.
The hits were neither felt nor heard inside the bridge. All Heskan could do was draw conclusions as to the effectiveness of his opponent’s laser fire by watching the ship’s status display blink warnings about affected systems. Judging by the warnings, he knew that Engineering had been hit but was unaware of the severity.
“Number Two Drive is offline,” Selvaggio called out.
They are definitely focusing on the rear of our ship, Heskan noted. Why can’t the enemy be stupid?
Heskan asked himself the rhetorical question just as the ketch’s third burst arrived at Anelace. The first shot struck the highly sloped armor just two meters from the front of the bridge. Due to the extreme angle of the blow, the charged energy deflected off the duralloy armor and carried deeper into space. The second shot struck slightly aft of the first burst and hit the bridge sidewall bulkhead at nearly ninety degrees. The armor protecting the bridge evaporated and the laser punched through the bridge walls. Heskan swore he saw a flash for an instant; just a hint of a strobe of light before chaos erupted around him. The bolt flashed between Vernay and Heskan. First, it drove through Vernay’s weapons console, exiting the station a half meter from Vernay’s hip. The panel’s surge protectors kept the panel from bursting into a shower of sparks but it died instantly. The laser bolt then crossed the bridge behind the captain’s chair and burned through the rear bulkhead and into the sensor compartment. Air from the bridge escaped to space in a high-pitched whistle more audible than the decompression alarm blaring in the background. Everyone on the bridge slapped their helmets closed but Anelace’s quick reactions had already constructed a containment field for the bridge’s starboard bulkhead and only the rhythmic honking of the decompression warning pervaded inside the compartment. Lieutenant Vernay sat in unmoving astonishment as the ketch’s next duo of pulse fire scorched their way into Anelace. Her shock saved her from witnessing Anelace’s first pulse fire shots directed at Ketch-One miss by a mere two kilometers.
The Kanata Split power plant was designed completely with system defense ships in mind. The smaller layout of the SDS simply did not have the space to hold multiple power plants. The Brevic military, refusing to compromise on redundancy, enlisted Kanata Mil-tech Engineering to devise a power plant small enough to fit in a corvette-sized ship yet with some redundant capability. Four years later, the split power plant was born. With the ability to maintain two separate reactions simultaneously inside each half of the power plant, the design gave Anelace redundancy in the event that part of the power plant needed to be shut down. As laser fire from the pirate ketch blasted into the starboard side of the power plant, the fueling systems were destroyed along with the induction fuel lines. The weakened laser continued inside Anelace’s heart and evaporated the coupling equipment of the A-side invertor mechanisms before being absorbed by the plant’s robust reaction containment field.
Engineers in the reactor room scrambled to secure their suits even as containment fields snapped into place to stop the ship’s bleeding atmosphere. In the engineering command room, Lieutenant Jackamore felt a surge of panic as he watched his station light up several warnings ranging from critical power plant temperatures inside the A-side reactor to uncontrolled power fluctuations flowing out of it. Jackamore immediately punched the main A-side cut-off button and stopped the reaction completely. His hand was moving for the core jettison controls but stopped short when he realized the A-side containment field, while severely reduced, had not been breached. The accompanying pulse fire shot struck the corvette once more in the second drive. The T-22, already shutting down due to earlier damage, had her main rotary drive shaft melted under the intense heat of the laser bolt but took no other significant damage.
On the bridge, Heskan had recovered enough to realize the bridge had taken a direct hit. He looked around to check his crew and to his great relief, saw nobody had been struck. Only afterwards did he think to check himself. Vernay had likewise recovered, reporting that her weapons panel was dead. She now noticed that her first shot had missed and could not prevent the blush she felt overtaking her cheeks. Even as she silently cursed herself, she watched her second salvo tear into the Fearson-class ketch. Her turret fire had struck the first third of the ketch and she smiled cruelly as twin streams of debris flowed from each side of the ship.
The final salvo reached Anelace as her second drive’s main shaft fused permanently in the frigid space environment. The first pulse missed aft while the second pulse struck the last four meters of the corvette. It cut cleanly through the ship, striking no manned sections but destroying both emergency reactor core jettison tubes.
Heskan’s commlink chirped as he watched Anelace’s third burst slice into the pirate ketch amidship. One burst pierced her sides completely as the other cut a path of destruction just above the ketch’s port B-pack turret.
“The reactor’s been hit, Captain. We stopped the A-side core reaction but we still have fifty percent power,” Jackamore cried out. His voice was hard to hear over the shouting inside the engineering command room.
Heskan leaned toward his commlink and answered, “Acknowledged, Brandon. Keep her together for just a little longer.” His eyes refocused on the deceptive beauty of the ketch’s death throes as their fourth salvo tore into the tiny ship. He raised his fis
t in triumph when he saw the ketch’s exterior running lights flash twice and then blink out in surrender.
“Cease fire, WEPS!” he ordered, not realizing that Anelace had partially ceased fire seven seconds ago with the loss of control over S-Two. Vernay relayed his command to Pruette even as Ensign Truesworth called out that the ketch had signaled its surrender via voice message. An instant later, Anelace’s lone GP laser went silent.
Even though Anelace had stopped hostilities, the pirate ketch had to endure multiple barrages from the S-One turret, as those shots had already been fired before Heskan had accepted the surrender. The civilian yacht staggered from blow after blow as large pieces began to break off from her. The pirate captain had waited too long to capitulate and his command disintegrated under the last burst. Anelace limped noiselessly past the expanding debris cloud of her final opponent.
* * *
“I guess we won,” Truesworth said flatly, breaking what had become a preternatural silence on the bridge after the battle.
I guess we did, Heskan thought. He checked the atmosphere inside the bridge and once he was sure the containment field was holding, slipped his visor up. He pressed his commlink and called Chief Brown in Engineering. “Boats, how is Ana?”
He waited for a response and after what seemed an eternity, the chief’s voice came back to him. “We’re still figurin’ that out, Capt’n. We lost another engine an’ the reactor took a beatin’ but she’s still givin’ us power and Drive Three is functional.”
Heskan took a long, hard look at the ship’s system status as the chief continued, “Still, Capt’n, if you want Ana to stop, you’re goin’ to have to seriously plan ahead.”
“Thank you, Chief. Get back to me when you know more. Heskan out.” He looked around the bridge. “Good work, people, but let’s not let our guard down yet. Jack, full scan of the area, I don’t want to be surprised by another ketch.”
He looked at Ensign Selvaggio next. “Diane, start a very slow rotation so we can decelerate and come to rest by the RALF. Let’s keep the Gs to a minimum if you please.”
Selvaggio grimaced and began to enter the commands into her console as Heskan turned to his right to face Lieutenant Vernay.
“Stacy, keep the GPs hot just in case.”
Vernay shook her head. “Can’t do that from here, Captain.” She pointed at the blackened hole fifty centimeters from her shockseat.
Heskan stared at the weapons station’s exit wound and then followed the path the laser had taken through the bridge. He unfastened his shockseat restraints and turned completely around to inspect the back of his chair. Sure enough, a long scorch mark was etched along its back. Heskan felt dizzy as the implication sank in. How did that not hit one of us… or both of us? After letting out a long exhale, he asked, “Stacy, can you command your—” Heskan almost said “crew” but given that her crew of eight had only one functioning survivor, he thought better of it, “—section from the bridge?”
Vernay was down on her knees, peering into the station console. “Probably not, sir. I think this panel is shot, no pun intended.”
Heskan activated his commlink again. “Boats, I need you to send someone to the S-Two turret to meet up with Lieutenant Vernay and help move Spaceman Thomas down to the medical bay.”
Heskan motioned Vernay toward the bridge door as the chief’s acknowledgment came over the communicator. He leaned back into his command chair and pondered what his next actions should be when Ensign Truesworth’s console beeped audibly.
Voice laden with concern, Truesworth called out, “Sir, we have a tunnel drive disturbance at the Narvi point.”
Heskan tensed up and replied, “At the beacon? Was there a freighter scheduled?” If whatever is diving out of that tunnel point is unfriendly, we’ve had it, he thought sullenly.
Truesworth’s expression erupted into a wide grin and his voice filled with relief. “I’m picking up a ship’s beacon thirty light-minutes distant. Her beacon is green and IDs herself as the destroyer, BRS Repulse. Ana’s SnapShot confirms a ship at the tunnel point but there’s too much interference from the Beta Field to know if it’s a DD.”
Heskan returned Truesworth’s smile and said, “I guess that’s the cavalry.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he questioned, “But to get here now they would have had to left days ago. Why would they have done that?”
“Incoming message, Captain. It’s for you.”
This will be interesting, he thought. “Put it on screen, please.”
Lieutenant Durmont’s face appeared on the main screen. He was standing at a side station on the bridge of Repulse and Heskan could see the ship’s captain in the background. “Lieutenant Heskan, what the hell is happening in this system?” His expression was furious and voice thick with irritation. “Get away from that missile boat, Lieutenant! I say again, break contact and make way to rendezvous with us.” In the background, the ship’s captain looked toward Durmont, said something and the message immediately cut off.
Heskan shook his head in disgust. The message was, of course, time-late. When Repulse entered the Skathi system, thirty minutes ago, the first light from the battle they saw was also old. At the time Durmont had sent the message, he had been watching Anelace make her nearly suicidal charge against Blackheart. Durmont saw that engagement and his first reaction was to jump in and countermand me. He sent the message before stopping to consider that, first, the light he was seeing was thirty minutes old and the battle was already over; and second, any message he sent would also require thirty minutes to travel the distance between us to reach me. Heskan shook his head again. The idiot second-guesses me and then sends one-hour late orders. Anger began to build up inside him as he thought about how to phrase his reply.
“Captain,” Truesworth said, “another message coming in now, on screen.”
It was Durmont again. This time his countenance had resumed its calm arrogance. “Lieutenant Heskan,” he stated, “you will break off any current engagements and proceed at best speed to Repulse. We’re coming in-system and will coordinate efforts with you against the outlaw ships. I want a full report as soon as practicable.”
The jerk still refuses to call me Captain… he probably resents that all of his ship commanders get the honorific “Captain” title and he doesn’t. Heskan rubbed his eyes slowly as he thought. It would be so gratifying to call out Durmont for his initial botched, hour-late orders but that’s not going to win me any congeniality awards… Heskan looked at the laser hole burned into Vernay’s console. To hell with it.
Smiling as he looked at the main screen, Heskan then assumed an expression of confusion and recorded his message. “To Lieutenant Durmont, I don’t understand your orders, sir. We’ve been out of battle a short time now and our battle with the pirate missile boat ended over half an hour ago. Your orders are very confusing unless…” He trailed off and then let his expression transform from confusion to understanding. “Oh… you must not understand the basic principles of time lag in a hyper-distance environment. You see, sir, comm messages travel at the speed of light but—”
Heskan cut himself off and stopped the recording. “Send that, Jack.”
Truesworth burst out laughing while Selvaggio’s expression was one of pure horror. “Message is away, Captain.”
Heskan worked hard to stifle his own laughing. I’m going to pay for that but I don’t care. Now that I’ve had my ship shot up, it’s not like I’ll be working under that moron for long anyway. He breathed out hard in an attempt to regain his composure for his second message. After several seconds, he started recording but his stern expression immediately collapsed into riotous laughter, which cascaded to both his bridge officers. A full minute later, Heskan wiped his tears from his face. Okay, gotta get through this. He forced himself to a somber expression and tried not to rush through the message. “To Lieutenant Durmont, second message received and provided necessary clarification. Orders are understood and we will set an intercept course for you. I est
imate our rendezvous time in one hour and forty minutes. We’re still compiling our after-action report and I will send it to you as soon as it’s ready. Heskan out.”
Chapter 23
The after-action report was all Heskan needed to regain a somber mood. If the damage to Anelace was catastrophic, the casualty list was horrific. Of Anelace’s crew complement of fifty souls, sixteen had been killed in action and another eight wounded, four seriously. Including the five KIAs when the freighter, Orphan, self-destructed, Heskan had lost twenty-one crewmembers, nearly half of the men and women under his charge. The numbers bothered him almost as much as the disgust he felt at himself for surviving unscratched.
He was not the only one. In the medical bay, Lieutenant Vernay was relieved that she had had to keep her helmet’s visor down as she traveled in and out of pockets of vacuum inside Anelace. She had set the normally transparent visor to a darkened state, ostensibly to protect her eyes from glare but in reality, to mask the tears rolling down her face. Moving Spaceman Thomas past the wreckage of DC-One and the AIPS control room had been difficult but at least Thomas had been mercifully unconscious and blissfully unaware of the arduous trip to the medical bay. Captain Heskan’s 1-MC announcement that a Brevic destroyer had entered the system and was coming to assist helped set her mind at ease from the immediacy of combat but it also allowed her thoughts to linger on the aftermath. With Repulse in the system, it looked like the nightmare was ending. In the back of her mind, she knew the real nightmares would be just starting— tonight.
“On three, ma’am,” Able Spaceman Rowe said.
They counted down together and set Thomas onto an available medical bay bed. The bay was eerily quiet. Only two other injured crewmembers were present along with Spaceman Bonner, who was under heavy sedation. Both of the injured were engineers with broken legs whose duties required them to stand.