Strike Battleship Argent (The Ithis Campaign Book 1)

by Shane Black

  “Aye, ma’am. Stand by for counter-thrusters in five.. four.. three..”

  A few moments later, Nightwing One made contact at Fury’s aft soft lock. Mechanical systems spun the latches secure. Moments after that, the corvette was securely bolted to the side of the drifting strike cruiser like a rescue submersible latched to a submarine.

  “Secure from collision,” Annora said as she picked up the manual MC transmitter. “Medical team to soft lock. Prepare to board the Fury. Set your weapons on stun. Probes first. Look-bots second. If you find anyone who needs to be rescued, send an Angel third. I want you to stay back. Is that clear, lieutenant?”

  “As a bell, ma’am,” came the reply from sickbay.

  “Very well. Activate your cameras when you hit the deck. Bridge out.”

  Lieutenant Owens set the Nightwing’s airlock pressure system to clear the bubble and re-pressurize the access corridor between the smaller ship and the Fury’s egress deck.

  “Ten seconds.”

  Sixty-Two

  Engineer Yili Curtiss was well on her way to solving Argent’s power and artificial gravity problem on her own when the whole room seemed to collapse into a loud metal heap at once.

  One moment it was pitch black and Yili was working by memory and touch and the next everything was fully lit and the two Argent officers were on the floor amidst the scattered remains of relay access five and several dozen parts of the power monitoring mechanism.

  Zony sat up and brushed herself off dramatically. “Hi.”

  “How do you have power?” Yili asked. “The whole ship is dark.”

  “I’ll tell you all about my magic spells later. I have one charge left in this thing, but the only other place on this ship we can teleport is to the brig. I figured out how to get it to provide a room-sized gravity field just a second ago. Took me two tries to find you.”

  “Jumping into the brig isn’t very useful,” Yili replied, getting back to her feet and helping Zony up. “I wish you could restore power. We’ve got a big fleet full of big ships out there, and the last I heard they were headed our way.”

  “The only other places this thing can go that I recognize are Barker’s Asteroid and the Dunkerque.”

  “How about the bridge?”

  Zony shook her head. “My working theory is we can only go where its been before unless we come up with the proper coordinates. Without exact data, we would likely rematerialize in an unfortunate place.”

  “Well we don’t want to do that, do we?” Yili said, casting about for her field analysis scanner. “Can that thing maintain light for us for ten minutes before we go?”

  “I think so,” Zony said. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I think the skipper would appreciate it if we restored power before we fly off to some other planet. There it is.” Yili picked up the small device and opened the access panel next to the door. The manual system disengaged the track locks and the door slid to one side easily.

  “I’ve got a working theory...” Yili said as she dropped the battery out of the sensor unit and rammed a new one into the slot in its place. The device lit up and booted. “Our enemies are using a power transfer scrambling technology of some kind. It works very effectively against our ships because I think whoever is using it knows our ships rather well.”

  Zony followed Yili into the auxiliary power control room for Reactor Three. “The scrambler is a fleet technology?”

  “Yep.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I invented it. Hold this.” Yili handed the sensor to Zony. She put on a pair of thickly insulated black gloves and opened a large metal door. She clamped both hands around a set of thick black wires and began tugging at them. She planted one foot on the wall and tugged harder until they ripped loose. Pieces of plastic and metal skittered and bounced along the floor. Yili dropped the wires, removed one glove and reached into the circuitry, gazing at the ceiling and obviously looking by touch for something. She found it and pulled it loose.

  “Gimme.” Zony handed the sensor back to Yili. The engineer pondered the little device she had removed from deep inside Argent’s mechanism while she analyzed it with the sensor unit. “The good news is it doesn’t affect our batteries. So all we have to do is warm up the level three backups. These relays aren’t damaged at all.” Yili handed the sensor back to Zony and replaced the relay.

  “Ever see an engineer jump start a strike battleship with a standard shop battery pack?”

  “Nope, but there’s a first time for everything!” Zony said with a jaunty grin. Yili reached behind a metal frame on the opposite side of the room and retrieved a smooth, white device with rounded corners and edges about the size of a large gas can. She placed the device next to the relay console along the opposite wall and picked up two of the black wires she had yanked out of the access panel. In a few moments the relay console had booted.

  “Dominique, this is Senior Lieutenant Yili Curtiss, Chief Engineering Officer of DSS Argent. Identifier Ghost Two Nine Four Six. Match voice print and acknowledge.”

  “Affirmative, Yili. How can Argent help you today?”

  Zony’s face lit up with a delighted smile. “How did you do that!?”

  Yili smiled. “Dominique, I need to do a three-step cold start of Argent’s life support subsystems using only level three power sources. Advise on a thirty second delay and prepare to transfer power to intraship communications and activate the MC. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged, engineer. Standing by to activate life support at your command.”

  “Perform cold restart in sequence and transmit safety warnings at sixty second intervals until further instructed. Curtiss out.”

  Yili closed the cover on the relay console. “Argent will be back to full operation in about four minutes. I coded a message for the skipper in case any of our other ships are affected. Did you say that thing can take us to Barker’s Asteroid?” Yili was busy slapping new charger packs into her blaster pistols. She powered up a spare for Zony.

  “It got me here. I’m not sure how, but I think it can put us on that rock the same way.”

  Yili handed the signals officer a portable comm unit and a blaster. The intraship MC sounded an alert tone followed by Dominique’s pleasant voice.

  “Attention all personnel. Attention all personnel. Engineering has initiated a cold restart of all activated level three power systems. Emergency gravity protocols are in effect. Stand by for re-activation of life support. All personnel secure by physical handholds. Repeat. All personnel secure by physical handholds. Stand by thirty seconds. Mark.”

  “Take us to the big gun, lieutenant.” Yili said.

  “Gladly.” Zony activated the unit and both officers vanished again.

  Sixty-Three

  Echo shut down all of her running lights and moved forward towards Fury’s deck one access corridor. There were blast marks on the bulkheads and a small fire was still burning inside one of the circuit relay access bays on the far side of the opening. There was enough light in the corridor to see beyond the hatch. Alert indicators were blinking various shades of red and yellow all along the far bulkhead.

  The small vehicle pulled forward just far enough to train her visual pickups on the hatch. From the bridge it would have looked like a small ambulance was peeking around the bulkhead edge. There were several bodies on the deck. The hatch itself was torn and scorched and hanging from a single hinge. There was just enough room for Echo’s chassis to get through to the bridge.

  Echo did a micro-second sensor sweep of all visible space between her position and the forward bulkhead of Fury’s bridge. She detected life signs but no movement. All of the electronic wavelengths were dark except for the ever-present jamming energy that was being broadcast from outside of Fury’s hull. She still could not detect any of her minibot companions’ transponders.

  Nevertheless, there were life signs on the bridge, and that meant someone might need help. Echo knew Acey was here somewhere. Sh
e pulled forward carefully, turning to avoid the splayed limbs of the bodies in the corridor. She kept her lights off, maneuvering by visuals alone. Finally she reached the hatch and did a full sweep of the bridge. Two life signs.

  Echo rolled on to the bridge of DSS Fury. Acey had reminded her time and time again that although she was authorized to communicate with the other ships in the Perseus fleet, and although she could alert the other officers in Commander Hunter’s Task Force to danger, she and the other bots must never never enter the bridge without special permission from Acey herself. This was ostensibly to prevent a possible safety incident where bridge personnel could potentially stumble over the minibots. Ultimately, however, the regulations were rather specific with regard to bridge personnel. Anyone aboard would need permission from Jayce to be on the bridge in the first place. Hunter just formalized the instructions as far as the minibots were concerned. There was only one directive in Echo’s command table that could override the restrictions on entering the bridge: If something is wrong, go to Acey.

  As Echo pulled up alongside her creator, she realized just how wrong things actually were. The little trauma unit went straight to work. Her medical sensor sleeve extended and wrapped around Hunter’s arm and her little probes extended to positions in front of and beside Jayce’s head. The consoles on her dorsal section rotated to display her patient’s vital signs. Inside Echo’s chassis, powerful chemical synthesis facilities began analyzing Jayce’s blood. Sophisticated circuitry started to diagnose her patient’s condition. New plasma and blood were synthesized and added to Jayce’s intravenous circulation. Filtering systems kicked in. Small doses of epinephrine, pain medication, folic acid and thiamine were added at regular intervals. Echo didn’t detect any internal injuries, so she elected not to add clotting agents.

  Jayce’s pulse strengthened. Her respiration followed. Echo waited patiently. She performed another micro-second sweep of the nearby area. No movement. No sound. She knew Fury was tumbling and adrift, but even though many of the ship’s power systems were down, life support seemed to be functional, if erratic.

  Commander Hunter’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Hi.”

  Jayce moved a little. Her eyes finally focused. “Echo.” Her voice sounded hoarse.

  “I think you got a concussion. You should stay for a minute.”

  “How did you get all the way up here?” Jayce coughed and tried to move her arm. She stopped when she noticed the pressure sleeve. “Your battery level is down to eleven percent! What happened?”

  “I told the nurse I would get help ‘cause all we had in sickbay was a little generator and my batteries didn’t have enough power for all the intensive care machines. I tried to keep them all going but I couldn’t.”

  “You drained your reserves trying to run all of sickbay on just your own batteries?”

  “Uh huh. It would have worked too but Fury’s power is out so I couldn’t get any more and I couldn’t find the others, so I had to find you instead. Do you know where I can get more power to make the intensive care work again?”

  Acey smiled. “You don’t have to run all of sickbay by yourself, Echo. The ship will help you.”

  “‘Cause it has bigger batteries, huh?”

  “Yeah. Am I well enough to sit up yet?”

  “I think so but we gotta find a doctor for the concussion.”

  “We’ll do that next. Can you help Lieutenant Mallory for me?”

  “Okay.” Echo retrieved all of her treatment sensors and backed up a few feet so Acey could sit up. She rolled around the Commander’s feet and started treating Lieutenant Mallory, following the same steps as before.

  Jayce felt a wave of dizziness as she got to her feet. She used the tactical console for support and tried to access the ship’s command computer. All the consoles remained dark. She keyed her personal commlink. It activated, but dimly.

  “Hunter to engineering.”

  Static. Then a faint signal. Jayce keyed the filter controls. “Bridge. Hunter. Identify yourself.”

  “Commander? This is Lieutenant Walter Owens, DSS Argent Search and Rescue. We are on deck 18 starboard side aft. What is your condition?”

  “Good to hear your voice, lieutenant. I have the conn. We have several casualties here but that isn’t our top priority. There are hostiles aboard. I need a damage control party to engineering to restore battery power so we can recover maneuvering control. Can you assist us?”

  “Affirmative, Commander. We have two of Argent’s engineering crew aboard. Coordinate with Nightwing One on emergency channel C-5. Stand by.”

  “Skipper?”

  Hunter knelt by her CIC Officer. “Sabrina. How do you feel?”

  “Like I fell out of bed–about two stories. What’s our status?” Mallory coughed.

  Jayce looked over at Echo. She was completely dark and not moving. Mallory sat up.

  “Echo?”

  No response.

  Hunter put her hand on the little ambulance and sighed. “She did it again. Ran herself completely dark trying to save my crew. I’ll never understand this little creature I made.”

  “But you built her, didn’t you? Isn’t that part of her design?”

  “I built her to stop and go to minimal operation at five percent battery charge. She can keep running for hours in that state on five percent power. I built that in to her programming so she wouldn’t leave herself completely defenseless like this.”

  “But she does it anyway.”

  Hunter nodded. “She’s been doing this since I got my command. I’ve run thousands of tests, and I’ll never understand how she does it. She just won’t let anything stand between her and her duty. Even her own programming.”

  Sixty-Four

  “Raise the Spruance!”

  The third watch signals officer raced to open the hailing channel.

  “Does the conn have maneuvering control?”

  “Aye sir, pilot has positive control.”

  “Bring us about heading three two zero. Get me engineering!” The look on Jason Hunter’s face told the story. His ship was nearly crippled and had just barely started to recover.

  “I have Commander Teller aboard the Spruance, sir”

  “Francis! I want Spruance, Exeter and Revenge to take point until Argent is fully operational, acknowledge!”

  “Acknowledged, Argent. Spruance has the ball.”

  The two escort cruisers shifted their positions in the Perseus formation forward of their capital ship. There was very nearly an audible sigh of relief on the Argent bridge as the two powerful vessels’ brightly glowing side by side drive sections hovered into view.

  “Engineering, Madison.”

  “Olivia, where is Yili?” Hunter barked.

  “Unknown, sir. We’ve had some failures in our auxiliary couplers. My guess is she’s on deck 31 with damage control.”

  “How long to restore the mains?”

  “Auxiliary power is on line. I’ll have reactors one and four up in a minute.”

  “Very well. Divert all power to forward battle screens until further instructed. Bridge out.”

  Exeter came into view from below Argent’s position. The three heaviest ships in the formation were now on the point. The remaining five escort vessels took close-in supporting positions to defend against the oncoming threat.

  “Sir, I have a message from Lieutenant Curtiss. It’s pre-recorded, sir.”

  Hunter grabbed a headset and listened intently. He whispered to himself as the substance of his engineer’s message became clear.

  “What the hell?”

  The tactical officer waited patiently for orders.

  “Raise Skywatch. I want our fighter cover to break off pursuit of the Agamemnon fleet and return to their patrol stations. Raise Nightwing One on priority channel.”

  “Aye, sir. Coding your message.”

  “CIC, Briggs.”

  “Nathan, give me the bad news and do it quickly.”

  “Very w
ell, sir. We have two battle groups bracketing our formation. The first is headed up by the heavy battleship Kingsblade. The other is anchored by the Fleet Carrier Orca. Both groups have multiple capital escorts in the 300,000-ton range. They are all armed with long-range Lancer-class missiles. The Orca has ten squadrons of two-gen Jacks with echeloned shipkiller weapons.”

  Silence reigned on the bridge. “Tactical.”

  The forward screen switched to display the relative positions of Hunter’s group and the two approaching battle lines. The red indicator icons moved gradually closer to the center, where Argent and her clustered squadrons waited.

  “Ten thousand people are going to die in the next two hours if we don’t find a way to put a stop to this,” Hunter said quietly.

  “Sir, I have Commander Doverly on priority channel.”

  “Annora? Please let it be good news.”

  “Sounds like you’re losing your nerve over there, Captain.”

  Hunter sat up in his chair. “Jayce?”

  “What, you don’t recognize my voice? Fury is awaiting orders.”

  “I hope you’re ready for the biggest fight of our lives, Commander. We’ve got six heavies inbound along with a dozen escorts and over a hundred fighters.”

  “How are my archers and cavalry doing?”

  Jason smiled despite himself. “They’re drunk and asleep.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for hiring Irish mercenaries, Captain. The way I see it, we need to give our friends time to do their work. What do you say we make it a race?”

  “Risky.”

  “With all due respect, less risky than flying between those formations, sir.”

  “I’ll grant you that. What do you propose?”

  “Let’s take our group around the horn. Permission to keep Annora on our side of the fence for now. I trust you can coordinate CSP with a substitute. We’ll secure Nightwing One in Fury’s landing bay.”

  “Permission granted. Hunter out.” Jason swiveled his chair back to face forward. “Alright pilot, let’s coordinate navigation with Spruance and follow my sister’s suggestion. Bring the formation about. Course One Two Four mark Three Three Five. All excess power to aft battle screens. Prepare to engage the mains.”