“Thank you.”
“Wasn’t a compliment,” Pike said. “Fine, I’ll let you ride along. You’ve got time to go pack a bit more thoroughly. I’ll have to put a call in to provisioning and have more food, water, and air brought aboard before we leave. I only allotted for one passenger for a short-duration trip.”
Essa stared at him for a moment, no doubt trying to detect if Pike was being straight with him or not, before turning and heading back the way he came at a run.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Pike said to the NOVA’s departing back before keying in his security code.
22
“Shit! Contact!”
“Calm yourself!” Jackson barked. “Where is it?”
“It just appeared off our port flank, coming in fast!” Ensign Dole reported. “Range is ninety-two thousand kilometers and accelerating … it looks like a standard Darshik cruiser.”
“Coms! Alert the Icarus we have been engaged,” Jackson said calmly. “Tactical, bracket that ship and stand by on all laser cannon batteries; make sure the computer is continually tracking and updating. We’re too close for missiles so don’t even bother plotting a firing solution.”
“Aye, sir,” the shaky voice of a lieutenant J.G. that was filling in for Commander Simmons came back. Jackson recognized her from CIC but had never spoken to her before she was tossed onto the bridge watch rotation.
Jackson took a moment to look at the updated tactical display and realized what had happened: once he’d lit up the sky with his active sensors the Darshik were able to accurately pinpoint his location and jump in on him. He also saw that the Icarus would not likely arrive in time to stop the enemy ship from opening fire on the Star and his lasers had an effective range just barely greater than the enemy’s plasma lance. They were more for point defense than anything else and were wide-focus, underpowered cannons.
“Helm! The instant I give the order roll the Star eighty-two degrees to starboard,” Jackson said. “No confirmations, just shove her over. I want our keel facing the incoming.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Captain, the Icarus is coming toward us at full power, but Captain Wright says she won’t be within range to fire a Shrike before the enemy ship will be too close to risk it,” Lieutenant Epsen said.
“Tell Captain Wright that she should be able to take her shot once it passes beneath us,” Jackson said. “Tactical! It’s very important you keep tracking that ship no matter how rough the ride gets. The moment it crosses into range open fire immediately, don’t wait for orders. Just stay calm and focus on the small part you can control in this, Lieutenant. We have a matter of minutes so I don’t have time to get Simmons up here to relieve you.”
“Yes, sir,” she said more confidently this time. He saw that she was setting up firing scripts on her terminal so he stopped worrying about her freezing up.
“Helm, I’m going to be giving you corrections fast and furious,” Jackson said as the enemy inexorably closed on them. There was no avoiding this engagement. “Just do what I say, when I say, and we’ll come out of this fine and the Icarus will clear this nuisance from our flightpath. Remember to listen for the order to roll the ship.”
“I’m ready, Captain,” the helmsman said.
“OPS, sound the alarm,” Jackson said, sitting back into his own seat and pulling on the restraints. “I want everyone strapped down for this.” Dole didn’t reply but Jackson could hear the harsh klaxon blaring in the corridor beyond, three sharp blasts to let everyone know to strap in and hold on.
The enemy was at such close range that all the updates he was seeing on the main display were in real time. It was still coming in under full power … good. Jackson felt a calmness settle over him as he knew exactly how he would counter the mad rush. Either it would work or it wouldn’t, but his path was set and along with that certainty was an absence of panic. He still felt fear, of course. Anyone staring down an enemy warship that wasn’t afraid was either a liar or clinically insane.
“Helm! Thirty degrees inclination, all engines ahead emergency!” Jackson barked as the enemy crossed to within fifteen thousand kilometers. The ship pitched up relative to the ecliptic and the engines slammed past full power. Unfortunately the assault carrier didn’t make course or speed changes all that quickly and they wouldn’t even come close to clearing the enemy before it was well within range, but Jackson had expected that.
“They’re within range of their—”
“Helm! Roll!” Jackson shouted, cutting off his OPS officer. The Star ponderously rolled to starboard, exposing her ventral surface to the incoming ship. For a few seconds nothing happened … and then all hell broke loose.
The deck heaved as the ship was hit full on with the enemy’s primary weapon. The sound was horrendous as the Star bucked and shook. Alarms were blaring at every station and a few screens winked out completely. There were harsh thumps felt throughout the deck and a moment later the lights on the bridge went out and Jackson felt himself go weightless in his harness.
“Main Bus B is out!” someone shouted. Dole? “Starboard main engine is venting and shutting down!” Mercifully, the buffeting subsided and Jackson didn’t hear any decompression alarms amid the cacophony so he forced himself to remain calm and tried to focus on the main display, which was miraculously still functional and feeding data. The icons representing the Star and the enemy ship merged briefly as they passed each other.
“Tango One is ranged! Firing!” a clear, confident voice rang out amid the chaos and Jackson looked up as his relief tactical officer, her face almost serene in the soft light of her terminal, worked the starboard cannon batteries up and down the Darshik cruiser as it flew by.
The closure speed had been quite high so the engagement was over in the blink of an eye, but it had been costly. Jackson could tell the Star had been badly damaged in the exchange despite his best efforts to minimize it, and the enemy may very well have flown through their degraded laser fire with nothing more than a scorched hull finish. How many spacers did he lose in that skirmish? He closed his eyes for a moment, not wanting to know.
“Damage control!” he barked out when he opened his eyes again. “OPS! Start taking stock of how badly we’re hit.”
“Target destroyed!” the tactical officer called out. She’d never taken her eyes off her instruments. “Icarus took it out with a single missile shot. Telemetry shows it was a Hornet.”
“Impressive,” Jackson said absently. “Keep tracking local space, Lieutenant. Coms! Convey our gratitude to the Icarus, if you please. OPS!”
“Damage control reports coming in now, sir,” Dole said. “Engineering reports Main Bus B will be back up in minutes, artificial gravity in less than twenty once the bus is up, and no estimate on starboard main engine.”
“Casualties?”
“Three dead in Forward Launch Control,” Dole said in a tight voice. “There are also a handful of minor injuries ranging from burns to bruising.”
“What the hell was anyone doing in either of the launch control rooms? We’re not even close to the planet?!” Jackson was struggling to control his temper. The Vega-class had three launch control rooms that were located just in front of each of the main launch bays. It allowed them to keep watch over the shuttles leaving the ship, but they were right up against the ventral hull plating.
“That was their duty station when at general quarters, sir,” Dole said, glancing around at others on the bridge.
“Please have those compartments vacated,” Jackson said quietly. “Tell Commander Chambliss that nobody is to be down there until we’re actually beginning launch ops. Understood?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“And tell Lieutenant Commander Sharpe he has twenty minutes to start getting me a total status on the condition of this ship,” Jackson said. He wished he could get up and walk around, but he didn’t feel like creating a hazard by bouncing off the walls in zero g. He felt sick to his stomach. He’d lost people before in
combat and it was never something one got used to, but to have them die because he was too incompetent to make certain that nobody was needlessly in harm’s way was almost too much to bear. Those spacers had trusted him to do the right thing and he’d lined up the ship so that they took the brunt of the shot. Had he been thinking clearly when he devised his strategy he would have also ensured that any compartments close to the ventral hull armor were evacuated. So stupid.
“Captain,” Epsen said quietly. “The Icarus is coming up alongside us. They said they’ll fly close formation until we’re underway again and then they’ll continue on to Juwel.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Jackson said. A few minutes later and there were some thumps and bangs of load contactors engaging throughout the command deck. The lights blinked on and off twice before coming back on for good, and the terminals that had been knocked out all flicked on, the affected subsystems rebooting now that power was restored. It wasn’t long after that Jackson began to feel the gentle pull of gravity as the generator started and the field came up in strength. As soon as he could he popped off his restraints and stood up, coming off the floor a few inches before bouncing back down in the weak gravity.
“Coms, get the XO up here on the double,” he said before turning to the tactical station. “Lieutenant … Quintana, your performance during the engagement was exemplary. I’ll be sure it’s noted in your record.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Quintana said, a flush creeping up her neck. Simmons burst onto the bridge just then, also flushed but not from having had his CO compliment his skills under fire.
“Captain … I … Sorry I wasn’t—”
“You weren’t supposed to be up here, XO,” Jackson held his hands up, palms down. “Just review the sensor logs and see if there’s anything new we learned from this scuffle. That bastard jumped right in on top of us so there wasn’t any time to swap out personnel.”
“Yes, sir.” Simmons still looked chastened despite Jackson’s assurances.
Once the final reports trickled in they could see there was surprising little damage other than right at the point of impact. Unfortunately the heat from the plasma lance had liquefied the armor in that area and the result was that Launch Bays Five and Six had their hatches welded shut along the leading edges. They didn’t really have the time to try and cut through the cooling alloy so Jackson sent out engineering crews with explosive charges to blow the edges clear. It seemed counterintuitive to intentionally light bombs off on the hull of his ship, but he was banking on the hope that the plasma hadn’t penetrated too deep. Hopefully the relatively small charges could blast the gaps clear enough for the doors to open.
The starboard main engine restarted without trouble although Engineering was at a loss as to why it shut down in the first place. With Main Bus A and the emergency backups still operational there should have been plenty of power to maintain plasma containment and the nozzle constrictor fields. But, for reasons unknown, the engine had performed an orderly shut-down after venting its plasma chamber harmlessly into space. Jackson told Lieutenant Commander Sharpe to put troubleshooting the engine on low priority and to concentrate on getting the ship ready to fight as quickly as possible.
“Why did you roll the ship when you did, sir?” Commander Simmons asked as the two of them ate from boxed meals that had been delivered to the bridge.
“The Vega-class has unusually thick armor on the ventral hull,” Jackson explained. “It’s an especially dense alloy as well. It’s made to resist the friction of skimming through an atmosphere during launch operations as well as protect the ship from ground fire coming up. I’m dubious about that second part since the launch doors would be wide open, but it was the most logical place on the ship to allow that cruiser to hit us since we couldn’t get away. Sort of like a boxer leaning into a punch he knows he can’t duck.”
“I see.” Simmons chewed his sandwich, looking off for a moment. “How did that compare to other times you’ve exchanged fire with enemy ships?”
“Other than when that first Phage Super Alpha blew the prow completely off the Blue Jacket that was the hardest hit I remember taking,” Jackson said honestly. “I’m genuinely shocked she held up so well after taking a beating like that.” He didn’t bother to tell his XO that the hardest hit he’d actually taken was the one he didn’t remember; when he’d rammed that same Phage with what was left of the Blue Jacket and intentionally sent her reactors super-critical. He’d taken so much punishment he had no memory of the incident afterwards. He self-consciously flexed his artificial lower left leg, his remaining souvenir of the encounter.
“Sir, Engineering is clearing us to get underway,” Dole reported twenty minutes later. All total, the ship had only been adrift for six hours.
“The launch bay doors?” Jackson asked.
“Clear, sir,” Dole nodded. “They’re not as quick as they were, but they open and close smoothly.”
“Good enough,” Jackson nodded. “Coms! Tell the Icarus we’re coming back on course for Juwel and they are clear to range ahead. After that send a message to the 508th ships and alert them to our revised schedule. It shouldn’t affect them, but let’s keep them in the loop.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Seems strange after an encounter like that to not be limping home,” Simmons said quietly. “But here we go, right back at it.” Jackson glanced over but couldn’t read his XO’s expression.
“It’s what we do, Commander.”
“Yes, sir, it is,” Simmons agreed and slid into the seat at the tactical station after relieving Lieutenant Quintana.
Captain Ed Rawls had just allowed himself to relax a bit as the Relentless and Resolute flew hard down into the system towards Juwel. Watching the Icarus easily take out two Darshik cruisers along with his own ships’ success with the other two had allowed a thread of confidence to worm its way into that icy ball of fear he’d been carrying around. He’d been afraid since they left the DeLonges System if he was completely honest with himself.
Combat with starships hadn’t been anything like he’d imagined it would be. He’d read all the firsthand accounts from the Phage War, of course, and had tried to put himself in the heads of Wright, Lee, and even Wolfe though he had mixed thoughts on the Earther. Sometimes he thought he seemed to show genuine brilliance despite his heritage, other times he seemed like the bumbling, lucky, unlikable halfwit some had said he was. He’d also spent the requisite time in the simulators on DeLonges before taking command of the Relentless when he’d been told that he was being transferred to Starfleet from Merchant Fleet, but none of these things had prepared him at all for the first time he squared off with an enemy ship.
The problem with simulators was that instructors weren’t willing to tie up the machine for weeks, so the timetables were always compressed to mere hours and it was the same with reading accounts of other commanders. He finished Wright’s accounts of the war in a day, but single battles would take up to three weeks. What he found in reality was the distances involved, and thus the time, could almost break you. When a target was located and the ship was put on course for an intercept the adrenaline automatically started pumping and there was an almost unbearable anxiousness to get to it … but the target could be thirty-six hours away at full acceleration. You can’t stay on an adrenaline high that long, you really can’t even stay awake that long and be of any use once you get within weapons range.
When he’d read Wolfe’s official account of the war from the Archives he’d thought the man a fool. A lucky fool, but a fool nonetheless. Instead of insights into his strategy or his thought processes during critical decisions, the man rambled on and on about making sure he was rotating his crew out for rest and down time as often as he could and making sure he was also taking care of himself. He talked about forcing himself to remain calm and cool even once the first shots had been exchanged instead of the thrill of battle or his philosophy on war in general.
But now, after his first taste of battle a
nd having not accorded himself with honor or courage, Rawls began to understand what the Earther was talking about. Battle in space was an endurance contest. Could you wear your enemy down before your own stamina gave out? He also finally understood what made the implacable Phage so very terrifying compared to these impulsive Darshik.
“Captain I’m getting … something … in the returns from our aft-starboard quadrant.” His tactical officer broke into his thoughts and caused his heartrate to spike again.
“Define something, Mister,” Rawls snapped, instantly regretting his tone and taking a deep breath to reset himself. He saw how his XO looked at him out of the corner of his eye and had an irrational burst of anger towards him too.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the lieutenant commander said. “It could have been a false radar return, but it was something that the computer wasn’t able to classify. Normally it would filter out ghosts like that.”
“Okay, what was it doing? Was it pacing us, closing, or flying away? Did we at least get that much?” Rawls asked.
“It appears it was closing tangentially, but it’s almost impossible to tell since there’s no frame of reference for the object.”
“What about thermals?” Rawls asked. “If there’s something near and closing we should see its engine plume easily.”
“Nothing at all on the thermals during that time,” the tactical officer said. “OPS?”
“Confirmed,” the ensign at the OPS station said. “Thermals, visible spectrum … neither picked up anything where the radar image was.”
“Bundle everything during the event and put it on the Link,” Rawls said, breathing easier. “I have a feeling we were seeing a false echo from the Resolute. Let’s stay sharp, though, we’re flying deep into enemy-held space. Good call bringing it up, Tactical … take nothing for granted.”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant commander said.
Iron & Blood: Book Two of The Expansion Wars Trilogy Page 21