by Shane Black
“Aye, sir. Launching countermeasures.”
A swarm of more than 100 tiny rockets packed with electronic warfare circuitry exploded in all directions from Argent’s hull. They all went live at once, pouring millions of watts of power through transmitters designed to scramble everything from short range ultrawideband to two cans and a piece of string. Some were set to pretend they were entire ships. Others were simply set to blast noise on a wide frequency range as long as possible until their tiny capacitors were drained of their energy.
“Zony?”
“Nemesis can’t punch through all this at once, sir. Some of those missiles are going for the countermeasures, but most aren’t. We’re just too big a target and we’re too close.”
“Then we’ll do it the old fashioned way,” Hunter said rhetorically. “Helm, bring us up on the Z-axis and stand by port heavy point defense.”
“Aye, sir, heading Z now zero four zero true.”
“Sound collision.”
The alarm sounded on all decks as the first missiles broke threat range. The entire bridge crew watched and waited for their heavy point defense batteries to obliterate the missile barrage.
Nothing happened.
Seventeen
Heavily armed marines from Second Paladins advanced two-by-two down the darkened reddish corridor leading to the loadlane for Auxiliary Power Seven. Internal sensors had confirmed more than two dozen distinct signatures of humanoid life forms at various locations in and around the engineering deck, but by now the intruders were doing a more than adequate job of concealing their locations with man-portable sensor scrambling equipment.
What was clear was the boarding party was heavily armed and highly motivated. They weren’t attacking or trying to advance and capture larger sections of the ship. For reasons unknown they seemed to be content to fortify Aux Con Seven, Reactor Seven and one of the coolant systems overload control mechanism chambers aft of the Assembly Room where the initial attack had taken place.
They seemed to be waiting for something.
“Left and right, Sanders. Left and right.”
Major Moody’s mic pickup thumped as he closed the transmitter. The three marines nearest the point of the squad were armed with Tennerith-Klivers 40/40 Assault Guns. They were two handed weapons designed for short-range punch. The TK40s could fire concussive bolts of energy with ranged burst capability and do so as part of any pattern of fire. This eliminated the need for over-under designs with two kinds of ordinance. Like a grenade, a conc bolt could be set to detonate at range or detonated at range with another shot from the same gun.
At ranges under twenty meters, they were the equivalent of combat shotguns, if such weapons were being wielded by fifteen-foot-tall gorillas. One marine could lay down enough suppressing fire to pin a small company if he got far enough out in the open and really let his weapon get the bit in its teeth. Sustained fire from six marines could rip the first floor out from under a six story building in a matter of a few seconds.
Vital to the Argent’s marine units were the ship’s own defensive systems. All of the Second Paladins’ weapons were tuned to the deck battle screens such that any shot fired by an Argent marine would be absorbed by directional shielding around the decks, bulkheads, ceilings and doors. Properly configured, they prevented the assault teams from blowing holes in their own ships with their guns. The systems could also be tuned in reverse, allowing Argent forces to fire their weapons unimpeded while blocking enemy fire.
Unfortunately at the moment, the shielding on the port side of the ship was operating on reserve power at only 40% capability.
First Squad Corporal Benjamin Sanders stopped at the loadlane and peered around the corner. His tac systems performed a half-second analysis of the sixty foot corridor and reported no targets. He made a quick hand gesture and waited for instructions.
“Set ambient and advance. Two by two.”
Sanders crept quickly down the hallway and stopped, back to the bulkhead. The two marines following his lead silently arrived at his side a moment later. His tac suit alerted on the door, and the signal was transmitted to the rest of the squad instantly.
“Major, I have hostiles inside Aux Con Seven. Hatch is sealed. No damage visible to decks or bulkheads.”
Moody keyed his commlink. “Zony, this is Moo in Engineering. Confirm hostiles only in Aux Con--”
The hatch opened, and one of the hostiles casually emerged. When the lights from the assault team’s tac suits hit him he tried to scramble back inside and ran directly into the face of the rifle-armed intruder behind him. A shot punctured the ceiling and sparks showered all over the deck.
One of the marines behind Corporal Sanders fired a single shot form his TK40 which flashed down the hall and detonated, nearly overloading the battle screens and causing the deck to buckle and shudder. More intruders ran to the door and an all-out melee ensued. Sanders pulled one of the black-suited humanoids into the hall and slammed him back-first against the opposite bulkhead. Another marine struggled with the armed intruder over his weapon, causing another shot to go off. This one blasted a foot-wide hole in the opposite bulkhead. The overpressure from the explosion knocked Sanders off balance and he fell, pulling his opponent with him.
This left the armed intruder alone in the middle of the hall. He leveled his weapon and aimed at Major Moody before the marine officer punched three blinding white conc rounds into his midsection. He wheeled back over the other two and landed hard. His rifle clattered on the deck.
“Say again Assault Team. Say again!” Zony’s voice was modulated by static and harmonics over the intraship channel.
“Confirm hostiles only in Aux Con Seven, Zony. We’ve got weapons fire down here. You! On the floor! Hands where I can see ‘em or you’re next!”
Sanders and the intruder’s struggle abated somewhat, and finally the unidentified humanoid raised his hands in a gesture of surrender with Corporal Sanders’ arm tight around his throat.
“Confirmed, Assault Team. Six hostiles only in Aux Con Seven.”
“Private! Seal that hatch.”
“Sir?” the private replied. Unsure why they would close the door on the bad guys.
“Seal it!” Moo replied. “Sanders. Bring him and pull back. Let’s go.”
Sanders pulled the prisoner to his feet and shoved him down the corridor towards the Major.
“Zony, patch me to intraship, but only inside Aux Con Seven.”
“Affirmative, Major. You’re on.”
“Attention unidentified personnel! You have exactly fifteen seconds to put down your weapons and surrender your position or we will depressurize the chamber and take it by force! Acknowledge by knocking on the hatch three times with a weapon!”
Five seconds passed.
“Major, I’m getting odd readings from Aux Con Seven, are you sure--?”
The deck alarms all went off at once. The lights shifted to a painful bright yellow.
“Explosive alarm! Everybody out! Move! Move! Move!”
Moody grabbed one of the marines by the scruff of the neck and the prisoner with the other and charged back up the corridor away from the loadlane.
The explosion surrounded everyone and everything with a flaming gale force wind before the shockwave shattered the deck and bulkheads.
Eighteen
Lieutenant Yili Curtiss knew what the intruders had done. She knew what was happening to her ship and she had to admit it was a beautifully executed act of pure sabotage. Argent hadn’t taken the enemy cruiser seriously enough, and it was about to pay a heavy price for being last across the line.
None of that stopped her from frantically trying to re-route the power systems she knew were about to go up like a volcano full of gunpowder. Her hands flew over the controls at Aux Con Four, one of the power matrices constructed closer to the center axis of the ship. She had activated the blast hatches around her little mechanical sanctuary and taken the extra few moments to rig up a triple-redundant wired ch
annel to the bridge in the event radio communications were cut off.
Unfortunately, so far she hadn’t heard a sound over that channel.
The lights went out for the fifth time. She grabbed her shock couch harness with both hands and braced herself. The subsequent crash and metal-tearing lurch in the deck plating shook the small chamber she was in like she was inside a flimsy aluminum storage cabinet being thrown down a flight of steel stairs. Alarms sounded everywhere. Alert signals were being transmitted throughout the ship’s systems, and her contact boards all shifted to various shades of red.
“Engineering to Bridge.”
Nobody answered.
“Engineering to Bridge, Lieutenant Yili here. Acknowledge.”
Still nobody answered.
“Dominique, this is Yili Curtiss, Chief Engineering Officer of DSS Argent. Identifier Ghost Two Nine Four Six. Match voice print and acknowledge.”
“Acknowledged, Yili. How can Argent help you today?”
“Report status of this vessel.”
“DSS Argent is at general quarters. Vessel is currently operating at 81% combat effectiveness. Reactors Seven and Eight are off-line. There are hull breaches port side on decks eleven, fourteen, sixteen and twenty-one. There is a magnesium fire on deck thirty-one in section seventy approximately--”
“Stop. Report status of Bridge personnel.”
“Deck One is currently on emergency life support. Medical personnel are responding to reports of casualties. Systems failures prevent any direct contact with the Bridge.”
“Who is in command of this vessel?”
“Captain Jason Hunter was last known to be in command of DSS Argent.”
“What is his status?”
“Unknown at this time.”
A cold shot of adrenaline landed in Lieutenant Curtiss’ hips. She knew the risks of war better than most personnel aboard, but she also knew what the dreamy detachment of experiencing the worst felt like. It didn’t help she was practically isolated in one of the smallest rooms on the ship.
She keyed her commlink.
“Yili to Moo.”
Static.
“Yili to Moo, come in.”
Silence.
Lieutenant Curtiss’ cursed through gritted teeth.
“Dominique, are you in contact with any of the senior officers?”
“Negative.”
“Understood. Since I cannot establish contact with any of the senior officers either, I am assuming command of this vessel.”
“Acknowledged. Senior Lieutenant Yili Curtiss now in command of DSS Argent.”
“Note the time in the ship’s log and raise Skywatch on Flight Two.”
“Affirmative. Coding your message.”
Yili took a moment to reconfigure the engineering command system to feed her console with the relevant status updates from the other subsystems in and around the Argent. Primary among her priorities was life support, which she discovered, to her considerable relief, was still functioning at 95% capacity.
“I have Skywatch on subchannel J-Nine, switching comm nets.”
“--affirmative. Skywatch to Engineering. Come in--”
“Engineering, Lieutenant Yili here. What is your status, Skywatch?”
“Aye, ma’am. About a dozen missile strikes impacted Argent’s port quarter. The first wave knocked out our screens. The second wave inflicted critical damage on our transmitters and point defense batteries. Alert Three reports they have engaged Kilo X-Ray One bearing two-niner-zero, range two million kilometers.”
“Very well, Skywatch. Does bridge have control of the helm?”
“Negative. The independent navicomp activated and put the Argent at station keeping when the bridge went dark. We’re stopped in space, ma’am.”
“Understood. I’m engaging emergency overrides. Engineering has the helm. Stand by for a starboard pivot maneuver. What is the status of our main batteries and flight decks?”
“Main batteries are operational. Flight One reported a fire on deck approximately four minutes ago. We haven’t been advised of their status. Flight Two and Flight Three are both fully operational.”
“Very well. Prep emergency alert squadrons from both rails. Energy weapon loadouts. Advise me on jets request.”
“Acknowledged, Lieutenant. Skywatch out.”
“Dominique, raise Nemesis Eight on scrambled datalink.”
“Affirmative. Coding your message.”
Yili switched her console to navigational control and pulled up a tactical view of Gitairn Sector Eight. It was just as she suspected. Kilo X-Ray One had veered off following its successful missile attack and in the process had drawn Alert Three out of position. Nemesis Eight was still on station and doing her job, which was likely the only reason Argent hadn’t been hit with a second salvo.
She quickly combined the tactical report with the firing arcs of Argent’s weapons and confirmed her pivot maneuver just might work. Now all she needed was the power. Fortunately, she just happened to be sitting near four rather large fusion reactors, none of which were damaged or offline. After a few seconds of re-routing power, she had two fully-energized rail cannon with both forward and starboard firing arcs. Now she needed a target.
“Lieutenant, I have Nemesis Eight on sub-channel K-5.”
Perfect.
“Nemesis Eight, this is Lieutenant Yili in Engineering, acknowledge.”
“Affirmative, Argent. We copy.”
“We are about to perform a reverse starboard pivot and bring our main rail cannon batteries to bear on hostile target Kilo X-Ray One. Our battle computers are offline. I need a firing solution and I need you to paint my target.”
“Affirmative, Argent. Stand by.”
Yili watched as the chaotic real-time tactical display suddenly went from a snowy distorted mess to a crystal clear view of everything in the sector right down to the designation on Argent’s hull. Apparently Nemesis Eight had launched a couple look-down probes when nobody was paying attention. This gave the fleet little ship a bird’s eye view of everything happening in and around the action. And, since Nemesis Eight was on Argent’s side, it gave the battleship crew an equally clear view of local space.
One thing any electronic warfare ship always made provision for was its own view of the battlespace. Jamming the enemy is generally a good idea. Jamming yourself in the process was almost never a good idea, since there weren’t many advantages to having an effective fighting force if nobody knows what the hell is going on or where anything is.
The Nemesis corvettes were designed to produce asymmetric interference. They were practically invisible to enemy vessels. They could just about make themselves look like a three-ring circus tent at ranges as close as half a kilometer if they had the power available. They were also equipped with everything they needed to defeat their own signals so they could keep their motherships in the loop with real time updates on where the bad guys were and how fast they were moving.
And if a Nemesis ship was tough to find, their look-down probes were nigh unto impossible. The little winged cameras were quasi-intelligent automatic evasive action machines. Tracking them down was like trying to catch a greased chicken with a cloaking device and a camera to take unflattering pictures of you while it runs you ragged.
By the time they were called on by Lieutenant Curtiss, Nemesis Eight had deployed a half-dozen such probes. If what was going on in Sector Eight was a sporting event, the EW corvette was basically controlling enough automatic equipment to turn the battle into a Monday Night Football telecast. The only thing missing was Howard Cosell.
Meanwhile, what was immediately apparent to the Argent’s Chief Engineer was that Alert Three was distracting enough to the enemy cruiser that it wasn’t going to be in position in time to fire a second salvo. But that was going to be true only if Yili was able to pull off her pivot maneuver in the next twenty seconds. The battle looked and felt like three small dogs chasing a carnivorous giraffe, but it was the best Argent could m
uster at the moment.
“Nemesis Eight has your target bearing two-eight-six mark seventeen, relative range 2.12 million kilometers. Synchronize manual targeting to key Baker Echo Papa Victor One Four Four Eight. Acknowledge.”
Lieutenant Curtiss scrambled to pull up the manual targeting interface in time to copy her spotter’s directions. She hesitated a moment, trying to remember how to manually synchronize the targeting system. Somehow she managed to recall the rusty instructions from memories of late-night hacking sessions at her Yellowjacket controls, driving her squadron commanders crazy with unauthorized re-configurations of the flight deck computers. Finally after a half dozen rejections and errors, the manual system synchronized and began following Nemesis Eight’s telemetry.
“Acknowledged, Nemesis Eight. Targeting control at your command. Stand by for weapons lock.”
Yili pulled up a more familiar interface: her engines. In a matter of moments she had engaged the engineering overrides and taken a crude control of Argent’s helm by simply alternating engine power. The mighty ship nudged itself into motion, backing away from the enemy contact. Yili throttled the port engines in reverse and engaged the starboard engines forward.
Gradually, the firing arcs for the two main weapons batteries she had energized had rotated far enough to bear on the enemy target. When the overlay for the second rail cannon switched from amber to green, she keyed her sub-channel.
“Nemesis Eight, Rail Cannon are bearing on hostile target Kilo X-Ray One. Lock weapons and stand by.”
A moment passed. The enemy cruiser continued to bank, exchanging fire with the bobbing and dodging little craft chasing it.
“Affirmative, Argent. We have a waveform lock and a bearings match on target Kilo X-Ray One. Fire control at your command, ma’am.”
Far from Yili’s station on Deck 29 next to Aux Con Four, the enemy cruiser was turning back in Argent’s direction with a second barrage of deadly anti-ship missiles locked on the enormous battleship. For reasons none would have been able to explain, all the interference in the sector had disappeared in a split-second, leaving the enemy vessel with a wide open five by five frequency lock on the larger ship’s space traffic ILS beacon. There were some anomalous readings, but the enemy fire control mistakenly concluded it was due to residuals from the previous interference. It didn’t realize it was an invisible electronic warfare corvette providing range and position data to their target.