by Shane Black
“Alright, we didn’t fly all the way out here to watch the paint dry. I want the Dunkerque found and right now the prime suspect in her disappearance is Kilo X-ray One bearing three-one-nine.” Hunter fell into his command chair and punched the intraship. “Alert Three, this is Charlie Oscar. I want a loud ID pass on target Kilo X-Ray One. Acknowledge.”
“Yes sir,” came the confident reply.
Hunter switched the transmitter. “Nemesis Eight, blanket the sector. I want everything dark.”
A moment later the tactical display went haywire. Ships began appearing and disappearing all over visible space. Zony indicated loss of contact with the Barker Asteroid radio signal. As the tiny EW Corvette began filling the spectrum with noise, the Argent bridge crew watched carefully as the trio of attack vessels designated Alert Three veered towards the unidentified contact.
Fourteen
Yili was engrossed in her work. The Argent engineering section had to be seen to be believed. Reactor Seven towered over the assembly chamber where the Chief Engineer had set up shop. Lieutenant Yili was seated at a workstation observing changes in the chemical residue from alternative fuel mixtures and absently poking at a salad.
After her quiet and unheralded arrival as the new officer in charge of the entire engineering staff aboard the Argent, the other crew members weren’t too sure what to make of her. It took some time to get her to mention her last name was Curtiss. Some of the junior officers suggested a nickname of “Annie” while others preferred “girl with a gun” as she seemed to be permanently armed with a heavy blaster/disruptor pistol in a low holster on one side. Engineers were almost never armed. For one thing, they had enough tools and equipment to carry around. For another, most of the engineering crew had long since let their rifle and pistol skills wither. As crew aboard a Skywatch starship, they were required to pass basic training, but once they got their ship and assignment, most found themselves far too involved in their work to worry about regular visits to a rifle range for training. Besides, there were always sentry marines posted.
During the first few shift changes and especially during the battle drill, Lieutenant Curtiss had started a habit of wandering around the section and arriving on the scene of less-than-successful efforts by other engineering crew members precisely when the raised eyebrow of a senior officer would do the most good. She would rarely speak. She would only observe, add a quiet “mmmm” and then leave. At first, the engineering crews thought she was being critical, but she never followed up. After a few rounds of this they weren’t quite sure what she was doing.
The results, however, could not be argued with. Engineering crews would start obsessively checking their own work to avoid the nod and the “mmmm” from the Chief Engineer and in the process, in the space of scarcely a day, both efficiency and productivity had started to climb. Without a word, the OCE officer had turned the sprawling department into the beginnings of a self-checking, self-supportive team. All this was just fine with the Lieutenant, of course. What she really wanted was peace and quiet so she could learn the ins and outs of the Argent’s reactor array and power systems as quickly as possible. One thing her new ship was not was a Yellowjacket fighter.
The assembly bay for multi-axis laser-activated (MALA) fusion Reactor Number Seven was appropriately spacious. Most of the atmosphere exposed surfaces were coated with white anti-static paint to help prevent charge buildup from the ionized coolant mixture. The Von Mansfried design reactor chamber resembled the base of an enormous grain silo surrounded by waist-level control consoles and the emergency isolation shield mechanisms. Two levels of gantry walkways were constructed overhead, each designed to grant crew members access to the baffles, electronics access panels and emergency facilities at assembly levels two and three. Each was thirty five feet higher than the one below it. A ladder extended from gantry three to the chamber escape hatch at the ceiling level more than 12 stories above the deck.
It was impressive enough on its own. What Yili and all other chief engineers knew was politicians and press were always humbled when they learned Citadel-class capital ships like the Argent had seven more just like it, each one capable of a sustained maximum output of 40 megawatts and theoretical burst capacities of up to half a gigawatt. Reactor Seven was currently quietly operating at a fairly reserved 1.5% of full capacity, with most of its energy being used by Flight Deck Three to cycle fighter and gunship battle screens for testing.
Other engineers occasionally wandered through the Reactor Seven assembly room, most carrying man-portable pieces of testing equipment from one place to the next. Some of the heavier stuff was mounted on wheeled trucks for convenience, and some of the really heavy pieces of equipment and tools were transported by driven vehicles.
Unfortunately, none of those crew members, engineers or patrols noticed the shadowy humanoids gathering on gantry three. Their plans had been underway for several minutes without detection. Some of the marine guards had been lulled into a false sense of security by the formidable nature of the automatic intruder alert systems and as a result, they had allowed their powers of observation to become rusty.
The fact that everyone would later agree saved the ship was that Reactor Seven was also being guarded by Major Moody’s low-key guards for Lieutenant Yili Curtiss.
“Intruder!”
Yili looked up with a start and saw one of the incognito marines dive towards the deck alarm. The soft sounds of beam weapons fire filled the chamber and blinding lances of white light rained down from the overhead gantry. The young marine never made it to the alert console. The boarding party knew they had only a few moments delay before the entire ship would know they were there, so they put those moments to deadly use. The other of Lieutenant Curtiss’ undercover guards actually managed to return fire before he was driven behind an auxiliary power generator to avoid being vaporized where he stood.
The next group of crewmen to enter Reactor Seven’s assembly chamber came under immediate attack. The one leading the truck carrying oil and fuel residue from Paladin landing mechanisms was instantly vaporized by a center-of-mass shot to the chest. The others had more fortunate cover positions behind the truck and managed to escape the chamber altogether.
The Lieutenant moved quicker than most would have believed she could. She ducked under her workstation and swiftly moved towards a cover position behind Auxiliary Power Two. She was only three yards from safety when one of the intruders confronted her at deck level. All Yili could see was a dark humanoid form of some kind wearing what might have been an all-black tac suit. Whatever it was, it seemed equally surprised to find anyone so close.
The intruder drew a bladed weapon and lunged, driving the point down towards Yili’s back. Argent’s Chief Engineer ducked into the motion and slammed both her fists down on her opponent’s instep. She actually felt at least two bones break. There was a muffled cry of pain before both of them crashed to the floor in a rolling struggle.
The Lieutenant’s combat training took over and in moments she had driven the intruder’s knife into his chest. She dragged the body with her behind Auxiliary Two and activated her commlink.
On the bridge, Zony was busy punching a hole through Nemesis Eight’s interference to establish a solid channel with Alert Three. When the indicator for an intraship hail directly to her designator came through, she answered it right away.
“Bridge, Signals.”
Yili’s voice was an urgent whisper. “Zony, this is Yili in Reactor Seven. Intruder Alert. I say again, Intruder Alert. They’ve shot two of my men and wounded a third. I need Moo to deploy assault teams at all the strike points on the port side of Reactor Six. Acknowledge.”
“Affirmative, Jack Five. Hold the fort. We’re sending the cavalry.” Zony switched intraship communications over to wired channels and activated an EM communications blackout. Dominique responded with a series of security options, which the Signals Officer activated on her own authority.
“Captain, we have an intruder alert
in Reactor Seven. Communications are black. Engineering is requesting backup.”
Hunter turned to Moo and shouted “Go!” The Major scrambled back down the Deck One corridor towards the magneto-lifts, activating his commlink as he ran. It detected the ship’s communications blackout and shifted to one of three pre-selected frequencies not affected by the electronic noise the rest of the ship’s repeaters were broadcasting at maximum power.
“This is Tango Charlie! Repel boarders Reactor Seven! Repel boarders Reactor Seven! Assault Armor to all strike points Gamma!”
“Annora, sound General Quarters all decks. Intruder protocols. Stand by environmental defenses. Neek, let’s start with protocol one.”
“Affirmative, Captain. Signals has already activated all automatic security protocols.”
“Three cheers for efficiency,” Hunter said. “Zony give me a tactical view of Deck Twenty Nine, port side aft. Overlay locations of all biological life signs and then subtract anyone wearing a commlink.”
“Acknowledged. Tactical on screen.”
The Captain had just gotten out of his chair to take a closer look when intraship wired communications channels sounded the alert tone. “Bridge, this is Skywatch. Kilo X-Ray One is on an intercept course bearing three-two-one range seven million kilometers and closing!”
“Zony, scrub Alert Three’s ID pass! Scramble formation and stand by for attack orders.”
“Bridge! CIC! Missiles in space and tracking! Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!”
Fifteen
Aboard the Alert Three gunship, Junior Lieutenant Maxwell Abee successfully ordered an evasive maneuver that rocketed T-Hawk Six into a diving roll. The rest of his five-man crew breathed a machine filtered sigh of relief as they silently thanked him for not listening to the steady stream of complaints about orders to keep their shock harnesses threaded and fastened.
Moments later a formation of lethal warhead-tipped missiles ripped through space directly through their previous course. Right behind them was the still-unidentified Kilo X-Ray contact.
“Target acquisition! We’re being lit up!” Flight Specialist Katsa shouted.
“Pivot on your bearings and bring our forward screens to double power!” Abee replied. The relatively tiny gunship turned to face the enemy cruiser’s starboard edge like a vicious little insect ready to take on a cat. “Take your best shot, you sonofa--!”
Red and white beams exploded from the emplacements on the cruiser’s upper hull. Each shot pounded and ripped against T-Hawk Six. Her overloaded battle screens glowed angrily. But, like an experienced prize fighter, the gunship took the punches, absorbed as much of the energy as she could, and struck back.
The Tarantula Hawk hunter-killer gunship was second only to the Paladin multi-role hull in its formidable array of combat abilities. Among the many things a T-Hawk could do was convert a limited amount of enemy weapons energy to capacitance potential, and then feed it back into its own short-range defenses. In other words, the more you shoot at a T-Hawk, the more ammunition you’re giving it to shoot back at you.
This, among other things, was one reason the little gunships were so damn annoying. They were built like little bricks of ablative armor and bristling with nasty weapons. Absent a truly overwhelming center-of-mass shot with a hypervelocity shipkiller missile, they were virtually impossible to disable completely much less destroy outright. T-Hawks were roughly three times the mass and volume of a fighter, but could bring as much as four times the equivalent firepower to bear.
T-Hawk Six lived up to its reputation moments after being staggered in space by the enemy cruiser’s short range energy weapons. The tiny gunship opened up with its brawler cannons and pounded away at the much larger vessel’s shields. The cruiser shuddered with the punishment, and an alarming number of its armor plates buckled under the first barrage. For a few moments the two ships traded punches like it was the 12th round of a mismatched and unsanctioned bout in a speakeasy basement.
What the enemy ship didn’t realize was T-Hawk Six was only one part of a three-ship alert group. Long before grappling with the gunship, enemy fire control had completely lost track of the two Yellowjacket fighters that had peeled off evading the cruiser’s missiles. With the Nemesis corvette blasting EM interference all over the sector, by the time their point defenses recovered, it was too late.
The rest of Alert Three came screaming in on the cruiser’s ventral Z-axis like diving peregrine falcons. The angry-looking little ships were no match for the cruiser in a toe-to-toe fight, but that wasn’t what made Yellowjackets threatening. These two second-generation fighters were armed with the most advanced torpedoes ever deployed aboard a Core ship of the line. Their technical designation was the “Mark Five Gravity-Activated Rail-launched Oxygen Compression Torpedo.” Jack pilots called them “Fives.” In keeping with the traditional playing card metaphor of the Yellowjacket fraternity, the saying went that “a pair of fives beats anything.”
The reason these particular weapons were so devastating was they took full advantage of the pressure differential and consequential energy potential between the vacuum of space and the pressurized interior of a starship. Any ship with a combustible element in its atmosphere mix was vulnerable to a “Five” torpedo. Given the traditional realities and requirements of biology, there were few species with ship atmospheres without at least one energetic element, and that’s all the torpedo’s warhead needed to unleash a fiery vengeance on everything exposed to that atmosphere.
Twin “fox fives” separated from their launchers and locked targeting frequencies with identification data pulled from all five Core ships in the vicinity. In a space of a few nanoseconds, the onboard logic systems confirmed to six decimal places of certainty the big enemy cruiser in front of them was the correct target. At that moment, acquisition alarms were likely sounding a hellish din on the ship’s bridge, but at this range, such a sound was only useful to warn crew members their world was about to literally turn upside down.
Both torpedo's went hypermach in the same instant and slammed into the ventral hull of the enemy cruiser just forward of her main engine cowlings. The dense points of the torpedo's punctured the coated metal frame and buckled the ship’s support structure in several places. Twin deck-shattering explosions ripped twisted chunks of scorched metal out of the vessel’s interior and covered everything visible with a light-absorbing grayish paint-like substance. From outside the ship it looked like someone had popped a huge black bubblegum bubble all over the inside and outside of the ship. The pause lasted for about four seconds. Then the ship began to bleed atmosphere, and what started out as black goo very rapidly turned into what appeared to be molten white-hot glass.
Plasma began to stream from the enemy cruiser’s aft section as its energy dampeners and shields fought mightily to control the unusual chemical and magnetic reactions taking place both inside and outside its primary hull. Had the proper equipment been present, it would have registered the perfect conditions forming in the breach between the inner atmosphere and the hard vacuum of space. At the point where the hull had been punctured, a highly compressed combination of a temperature inversion and a bubble of pure oxygen had formed, with all the other trace elements drained out of the atmosphere and into the chemicals left behind by the armor-piercing explosions.
The molecular clock ticked until finally the ionization reached a tipping point and a small bolt of lightning arced across the enemy ship’s deck, igniting a dangerously compressed oxygen hypernova. Almost exactly five seconds after impact, twin explosions lit up space for two million miles.
Staggered, off course and bleeding from nearly a dozen hull breaches, the enemy cruiser somehow miraculously righted itself and bore down on DSS Argent. T-Hawk Six pursued, engaging the larger vessel’s aft point defense in a running firefight towards Captain Hunter’s command.
Sixteen
“CIC, report!”
“Point scanners are tracking 68 inbounds with harmonics up the range to five
frequencies. At least a quarter of those birds are track-on-scan and another 20% are likely track-on-signature. Forty seconds to impact.”
“Helm, all engines reverse, full power. Give me a course 170 by 180 and reorient our heading seventeen degrees starboard to bring port heavy point defenses to bear on the inbounds.”
“Aye sir, helm answering all engines reverse. New course one eight zero orienting heading to one-seven-zero relative.”
The autosystems opened up, spitting sixty high-energy superhot bolts of plasma energy a second at the rapidly approaching missiles. Half the incoming wave detonated, filling space with plasma disruptions, debris and interference patterns. The remaining missiles screamed out of the fireballs and continued to accelerate, dodging and swerving to avoid the Argent’s formidable screening weapons.
By all modern battle protocols, Hunter was playing it by the book. His biggest problem was his big ship. Citadel-class vessels were designed to direct maximum firepower at big enemy targets. While they were no slouch in a stand-up fight, they were three times as powerful in a battle group, where smaller, more specialized vessels like anti-missile frigates and escort destroyers could sweep the battlespace clear of missile barrages and fighters and leave the capital ships free to do what capital ships do best.
If any criticism could be directed at the young captain, it would have been his choice not to launch a larger combat space patrol. A properly formed strike squadron might not have been able to replace a battle group on a one-to-one equivalency, but it certainly could have provided Argent with far more effective screening.
Hunter wasn’t worried. Three dozen missiles were a concern, but even with X-ray or anti-matter warheads, they shouldn’t be able to overcome the mighty battleship’s heavy shields or magnetic armor belt.
“Tactical, launch countermeasures. Maximum power to heavy point defenses. Reinforce port side battle screens and stand by to sound collision.”