Strike Battleship Argent (The Ithis Campaign Book 1)

by Shane Black

  It was clear the crash engineering teams assigned to get the vessel back in shape after the battle had done a magnificent job. Doverly made a mental note to commend them at the earliest opportunity. Just getting from one place to the next aboard this ship took a fair amount of physical fitness and endurance. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like to repair her while underway.

  The vessel’s automation systems had been restored to the point where it was possible to navigate, build and repair shields, power the external armor appliques and target and fire the main batteries. Without a full crew, there was no way to run the vessel like a proper starship, but ultimately, Kingsblade’s current mission was to shield Strike Fleet Perseus from any unwelcome surprises at the edge of the asteroid field and the formidable mines it concealed.

  Captain Doverly held her breath and took her seat at the conn. She closed her eyes. After a moment’s hesitation she exhaled. She had her orders. She was also reasonably confident Jason would allow her to gracefully relinquish her brevet rank and go back to being an Executive Officer and Medical Officer once the emergency had passed. For now, with the exception of Jayce, she was the only command officer in the fleet eligible to accept a battlefield commission to Captain. Commander Hunter already had a command, and taking her off the bridge of DSS Fury, whatever the justification, would only weaken the Task Force. Jayce belonged on her bridge.

  And for now, Captain Annora Doverly belonged on hers. She keyed the intraship.

  “Attention all hands. This is the captain speaking. First watch report to the bridge. Stand by to disengage autosystems in exactly ten minutes. Mark.”

  Ninety-Nine

  “So I think we’ve got the navigational compu–”

  The only thing that saved Colonel Moody’s life was the delay while the black-suited humanoid tried to step around the fuel mixture station. Moo caught it by the wrist. A stark flash filled the room as the intruder’s weapon fired into the ceiling. The intruder suffered a broken back after Moo’s a violent shoulder throw. The next one through the door took a center of mass impact from Yili’s blaster. It screamed and wheeled back into the hall. The engineer scrambled down off the deck officer’s platform and drew her other weapon. By the time she arrived, the second intruder was down and surrounded by smoke.

  “They’re using the same technology we did to get over here,” Yili exhaled. “We can expect more of them.” A console on the platform began beeping insistently and Yili hurried back to her station. Moo relieved the two men of their weapons and commlinks.

  “Soon as we find Diamonds again I want her to run an analysis on these things.” He showed Yili what he had found. “If they’re broadcasting or receiving, I want to know who they are calling, where and why.”

  “We’re on final approach,” Curtiss said as she watched the readouts carefully. The hull cameras on the starboard side of the ship showed the shadow of Dunkerque’s hull gradually covering the station’s hard lock.

  “Sixty yards.”

  Moo looked up and around. Something was bothering him and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Fifty yards.”

  The colonel climbed down off the platform and went back to the fuel mixture station. A faint beeping sound was just scarcely audible over the hum of the strike cruiser’s maneuvering engines.

  “Forty yards.”

  Finally Moo found what he was looking for, and it wasn’t good news.

  “Lieutenant, we’ve got a problem over here!”

  “I can’t leave the deck station unless we abort, Colonel!”

  “It looks like an explosive device of some kind. My guess is it’s armed and on its way to detonating. These two knuckleheads must have been planting it when we weren’t looking.”

  “Describe it to me!”

  Moo was well aware of Yili’s orbital combat engineering training. If she could disarm it...

  “Aluminum casing. About the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. Control mechanism on one end. No markings. Looks like the case is designed to hold six cylindrical objects of some kind! Readout says eighty four seconds!”

  “Any wires visible?!”

  “Negative!”

  “Is it magnetically fastened to a surface or loose?”

  “It’s attached to the wall!”

  “Understood! Sounds like a kettle bomb! I can disarm it as soon as we dock!”

  “We may not have that much time, Yili! We’ve got 71 seconds left! We could be endangering the station! Can we abort and re-approach?” Moo rushed over to the deck platform to see if there would be time to get the Dunkerque away from the station before the bomb went off.

  “Even if I abort now we can’t get far enough away to save the station. I’ll have 30 seconds after we dock. More than enough time. I’ll disarm it.” Curtiss’ face was sincere. It wasn’t often the other Jacks saw her like this. Most of the time she was head down in some kind of crazy mechanism. But the look on her face now was different somehow.

  “I’m trusting you,” Moo said softly. “If that thing goes off in a room full of fusion reactors with us bolted to the hard lock it could blow this whole asteroid into a dust cloud.”

  “Understood, sir,” the engineer replied. “Our guests gave me 30 seconds, and 30 seconds is a long, long time for a combat engineer.”

  A moment later, the proximity clamps sounded their high-pitched warning alarms. A vibration in the Dunkerque’s hull armor caused a low pitched rumble to reverberate through the ship. A couple of seconds later, the sound of a bank vault door closing echoed, followed by eight slamming sounds as the metal clamps activated around the cruiser’s docking ring. Yili scrambled down the ladder and grabbed a portable toolkit and a pair of goggles.

  “Colonel! There’s an emergency egress airlock at the far end of reactor four! That’s where I’m running. Could you kindly hit the evacuation alarm? Black button, fourth from the right edge, console two, under the display for hull camera eleven!”

  Moo climbed the ladder in one bound and scanned the console. It seemed there were at least a thousand little knobs and switches all over it. He was suddenly overwhelmed by his lack of technical experience. Then he saw the display and quickly looked down. He rammed the heel of his hand against the black button and looked up as the deck alarm sounded. Red emergency lights began spinning.

  Yili caught a glimpse of the display. Nineteen seconds left. She lit her plasma torch and slipped the goggles on with her other hand. Like a surgeon on a battlefield, she went to work on the upper corner of the explosive device’s casing. The torch vaporized the thin metal instantly, exposing the hard chemical rods underneath. Pieces of red hot aluminum dripped to the floor as Yili reached inside the device with a pair of precision machine grips.

  Moo wiped his brow. He wasn’t used to being completely out of his element, but to be fair, there was absolutely nothing he could do except make sure another attack didn’t leave Yili with ten broken fingers.

  There was a snapping sound and a spray of sparks.

  “That’s it! Ten seconds!” Yili scrambled to her feet and yanked the device off the wall. She and Moo ran headlong across the engineering bay while the clock ticked down from nine.

  “Open it!”

  Moo slammed both hands against the activation bar. The door sprinted open and Yili tossed the smoke-trailing and sparking device into the outer airlock. The door resealed with three seconds on the readout. An instant later the hull door was torn into scrap metal by the pressure differential and the bomb rocketed into space at nearly 200 miles an hour.

  The cruiser’s deckplates rattled as the bomb detonated at a range of 150 yards. The firebloom filled the engineering section with orange light.

  Yili exhaled and handed Moo her goggles. “Engineering reports device neutralized, sir.”

  The colonel smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Nicely done. What do you say we power us up a gun?”

  “Don’t you have anything more challe
nging for me?”

  One Hundred

  “Captain on the bridge.”

  “What have you got?” Jason Hunter barked as he descended the steps towards the conn.

  “Exeter picked them up first, sir. Two unidentified inbounds designated Whiskey India Three and Whiskey India Four. Destroyer-class hulls. No recognizable weaponry. No emissions other than their navigational beacon.”

  “Life signs?”

  The sensors officer suddenly straightened in his chair. He wasn’t accustomed to being included in discussions about inbound contacts. “Uhh– sir! Yes, yes sir. SRS indicates life forms aboard.”

  “Human?” Hunter held the young ensign’s gaze.

  “N-negative, sir. Their atmosphere is poisonous to carbon-based life.”

  The bridge crew fidgeted but kept their bearing. Hunter stared at the screen. The tactical display had both vessels center screen with their course, position and velocity updating second by second.

  “Signals, get me the Kingsblade.”

  “Affirmative, sir. Coding your message.”

  Hunter rubbed his chin. Something just wasn’t right.

  “Kingsblade, Doverly here.”

  “Captain, what the hell are they trying to distract us from?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing, sir. There’s no chance those ships are actually on an intercept track. They’re a flamingo, alright. But aside from the minefield, I don’t see any ducks.”

  “You know something, doctor, I’ve just about had it up to here with this minefield. What do you say–”

  An alarm sounded at the tactical console. Then the SRS board lit up like a Las Vegas fire truck.

  “Report!”

  “I have an energy surge at three four four, range three megaclicks! Asteroid designator Scorpion One Three!”

  “Visual!”

  The Argent bridge was quite suddenly a bevy of activity. Voices shouted. Officers waited for orders. Consoles flashed and keened with various audible alarms. Hunter grabbed his famous black phone.

  “Paint it, Jayce!”

  Fury suddenly went active with her entire forward sensor suite. The source of the energy surge was practically drowned in electronic tracking noise.

  The Argent tactical officer watched in silent awe. It seemed like the Perseus captains had this all planned in advance and were all springing a trap on an unsuspecting burglar.

  “I have a Sentinel planetary defense battery bearing three four one. They are arming for proximity fire!”

  “Not this time, you bastards! Annora! Fire at will!”

  The heavy battleship reacted in record time. All four of her forward main battery weapons locked bearings and opened fire. Space around the rest of the battle group was shocked and pounded by the massive blasts from their new heavy’s guns. Violent impact reports flashed and shuddered in the distance while the crews of the Strike Fleet watched intently on their viewscreens.

  On the bridge of the Fury, Jayce was overcome by anxiety. “It’s not going to be enough. It’s not going to be enough! Tactical! Report!”

  “They’re fully armed, ma’am. Their weapons are behind a full power assault shield. We’re going to need time to knock it down, and only Argent and Kingsblade have the guns to do it.”

  Aboard Exeter, the third watch was about thirty seconds ahead of the rest of the fleet in terms of their predictions and evaluation of events. They were the first to notice the two-ship patrol squadron suddenly veer off and run for the minefield.

  “Why aren’t they requesting permission to fire?!” Hawkins complained. Only Ensign Jameson heard her and unfortunately, she didn’t have any answers.

  “They’re targeting the Kingsblade, sir. At this range, if they target her weak spots, it could be big trouble.”

  Hunter steadily pounded his fist on the arm of his command chair. “Helm, bring the Argent about. Give me a port roll of thirty five degrees heading seven zero mark. Tactical, sound battle stations energy. Arm railcasters one through six. Full power. Battle screens to maximum. Officer of the Deck, sound collision.”

  “Collision, sir?”

  “That’s affirmative lieutenant. Smartly, if you please.”

  Another thundering barrage let loose from Doverly’s big plasma guns. Bolt after bolt of explosive energy rocked the unexpectedly close asteroid-based battle station as they slammed into its screens. A wall of lightning-bright impact discharges crackled and strobed a half-mile above the station surface. Gradually and inexorably, the second Sentinel pivoted on its reflex base. It already had its bearings match. Another few seconds, and it would have its primary target locked for range.

  One Hundred One

  “Hold it, before we open that thing, I want to establish some kind of communications with the landing party.” Moo was at the main airlock controls, trying to figure out a way to route intership communications to his station.

  “That’s going to take a bit, unless we get to the bridge first,” Yili offered. “The closest universal control is in weapons storage.”

  “You know something? That’s not a half-bad idea!” The colonel stalked into the egress corridor, looked both directions and then headed aft. “Never served aboard a line cruiser. Where do they keep the muskets and cannon around here?”

  “Deck six, if I recall. The Pershing hulls moved all the provisions center-ship along with most of the organic storage,” Yili said as she worked with a portable sensor unit she had found. It was in mediocre condition primarily because Argent’s Chief Engineer had performed repairs on it in the sixty seconds since she had found it.

  Colonel Moody stomped and rattled around, climbing ladders, descending deck tunnels and opening and closing airlocks. Finally he strode up one of the central deck six corridors with Yili following close behind as she worked with her sensor device. He reached a hatch marked “Armory” and went inside. The engineer stopped in the open doorway.

  “Now we’re talking!” Moo shouted. The room was surrounded by powerarmor suits standing against all four walls. At one end was an open weapons locker stocked with three racks of TK-40s. At the other end was an automated sentry unit in standby mode. In the center was a rack of accessory modules for the powerarmor.

  Yili went to the universal console in the corner and pulled up the command computer interface. “I hope this thing isn’t permanently keyed to DeMay’s voice print, or I’m going to need a few minutes to re-route communications control to the universal.”

  “We need to get everyone in here and properly equipped,” Moo replied. “We’d have a much better handle on all this if we could get this ship manned and fully operational. At the very least we’d have no trouble running a complete set of scans on the station.”

  “Dunkerque to landing party. Come in.” Yili waited the regulation ten seconds and keyed the transmitter again.

  “Dunkerque to landing party. Come in.”

  “–hostile contacts. Do not approach the station! Repeat! Do not approach Barker’s Asteroid!”

  One Hundred Two

  Taser sat on the workbench, patiently waiting for Acey to ask the next question in the approved heuristic startup cycle. He knew she had left the room, but she would be back. At least, she was supposed to be back. Wasn’t she?

  He became confused when the shipwide alert system upgraded. There were no detectable emergencies. Why would the ship go to alert? Taser didn’t mind, of course. He just upgraded his own alert systems to match, which released control of his threat response and battle systems.

  His engine idled quietly. He did a quick scan of the room and logged the results for later analysis. His sensors produced a comprehensive physical map of the location, complete with magnetic, temperature, radiation, acoustical, barometric and thermal atmospheric gas analysis datasets. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. He was pleased all his systems were working so well. He knew Acey would be proud. The little blue badge indicator on his hood snapped off. He was no longer in communication with the Comma
nder. He concluded after a brief analysis it must have been because she moved out of range. A secondary explanation was that she had either deactivated her commlink or switched it to another channel.

  His cloaking systems activated and the little police car vanished from sight. He performed another analysis of his systems logs and realized it was because of his defense reflex system. Something had happened. He knew he wasn’t supposed to go active until he had evaluated the threat, so he used his visual pickups first to see if anything had changed in the room.

  It had.

  A few yards away, an alien probe roughly the size of a volleyball was floating in mid air over one of Acey’s fabrication machines. It’s hull was smooth silver with dark blue markings. Green indicator lights blinked ominously from its external panels. Two dangerous looking probes extended from one of its sides.

  Taser moved with battlefield precision. His top priority orders were to protect the ship at all costs. He crept across the length of Acey’s workbench with his cloak still active and all his systems at maximum alert level and power output. He stalked the little alien probe like a cybernetic metal housecat. Taser knew if he got to the end of the workbench before the probe detected him, he might be able to use his weapons to disable it and protect the ship. He didn’t activate his transmitters, however, as it would be easy to detect communications from such a short distance even with his cloak active.

  The probe pivoted in space, bringing its other instruments to bear. A conical blue laser-like light appeared and began to sweep the room from floor to ceiling.

  “Halt! Identify yourself!”

  Blinding white spot beams illuminated the probe from lamps on either side of Taser’s windshield. He had disengaged his cloak and powered up all his weapons systems. The little security vehicle was ready for just about anything.