by Crucible
3. Limited number of possible origin points.
“Peg, run every possible course based on the information provided and provide general possibility that craft originated from beyond the planet’s orbit, from within the planet’s orbit, and from the planet’s surface.”
Sark added, “Peg, also include possibility that the ships originated on either of the planet’s moons.”
Redfire had forgotten about that, but it made him consider another possibility. “Also, examine the possibility that the attacking ships originated on or within Pathfinder Ship Lexington Keeler. Display results in terms of probability.” Four seconds after he was finished, Peg displayed her results: Probability that attacking ships originated:
Beyond planetary orbit <1%
Planetary Moon
<1%
Planetary Orbit
5%
Lexington Keeler
4%
Planetary Surface
89%
“Kumba yah,” said Redfire.
Suddenly, Red Flashing bands reading “Tactical Alert” appeared at the top and bottom of each display. Redfire’s COM link chirped, and the voice of Shayne American came again. “All Tactical Personnel, Pegasus is at Battle Situation One. Lexington Keeler is under attack.” CHAPTER FOUR
Lexington Keeler—Flight Command Deck
In the back of the flight operations command center was a two-meter long holodisplay schematic of Keeler, it was mostly red, with multi-thousands of flashing warning flags showing hull-breaches, system failures, power disruptions, off-line systems, and long black areas where sensor contact had been lost entirely.
Technician Angelus, a handsome Sapphirean with dark eyes and waves of fine black hair, was trying to pull the recent flight data, to see if there was any record of the ship’s crew evacuating. “It looks like they erased the logs before they abandoned ship.”
“Probably to keep the enemy from getting them,” Duke guessed.
“No logs, and no way to status the rest of the ship. Pegasus isn’t going to like this,” Duke snarled. It wasn’t a mean snarl, just the snarl of a man who was used to snarling.
“They’ll like this even less,” reported Angelus, indicating a tactical display. A squadron of green triangles was moving toward Keeler.
Duke barely glanced at the data. “Put me on link, shipwide. ‘Attention Repair Crews. Brace yourselves and prepare for attack. Hostile ships incoming.’”
Pegasus — Deck 5
Max Jordan leaped from his transport pod and ran through the corridor of Pegasus’s primary flight control level, past the Flight Telemetry Center where Aves’ courses were plotted and tracked, past the Primary and Secondary Accipiter Control Station, to the Tertiary Control Center. He touched the Access Panel. “Emergency Over-Ride, Code Queequeg zero-one-zero.” The hatch slid aside, revealing a darkened room inhabited by vacant workstations and four Accipiter simulators. Max Jordan mounted one of these, straddling it like a hover-cycle, gripping the handlebars. “Peg, activate station Gamma-Four, Activation Code: Queequeg zero-one-zero.” Around him, holographic displays came to life. He saw the battle unfolding outside. He selected an Accipiter along the periphery. “Give me linkage to Accipiter 3417.
Direct interface control.”
“Affirmed ,” Pegasus answered him.
“All right,” he whispered. “There’s a party in my sector, and all of you are invited… to die!”
He squeezed the accelerator, and far away, the thrusters on the Accipiter fired. His sensors showed him an alien ship getting ready to open up on the Aves Prudence. “Pegasus, formation flight… add-in Shrieks 3425 and 3313.” Now, he was mentally controlling a trio of Accipiters.
The three of them bore down on the alien ship.
Closing to Weapons range, the ship informed him.
Max gave the fire command and the ion cannons at the front of his ships blazed. Charged particle death raged against the enemy ship, which lit up with sparks and lightning.
It was not enough to destroy the enemy ship, but the fighter broke off from the Aves and turned on the Accipiters.
“Eat missile,” Max Jordan growled. The Aves dropped a Hammerhead from its internal bay, which sprung to life and roared toward the kill. It slammed hard against the enemy ship and exploded, taking the knife-ship with it.
“Yeah… be dead and like it, you Aurelian suck-pig,” Jordan hissed. “Who’s next?”
Lexington Keeler—Deck Minus 10
Scout had never seen a mechanoid like Move-O-Bot before.
He ripped his way across the deck, humming a “doot-do-dooo” melody and throwing aside debris with a very un-mechanical style and panache, occasionally twirling the odd chunk of conduit or ruined piece of equipment on the tips of his three metallic fingers.
“Move-O-Bot,” Scout asked.
“That’s me!”
“What happened to Keeler’s crew?” Fangboner asked.
“Screw ‘em,” said Move-O-Bot, shoveling aside a man-sized pile of structural fill material.
“Did anyone survive the attack?” Lear asked.
“Maybe,” said Move-O-Bot. He fired some blue energy from his arms that cut a pathway through some debris too large to move aside. “I went down when the Secondary Command Tower blew out. I don’t remember anything after that… until you jerks showed up.”
“Could they have evacuated to the planet’s surface,” Lear persisted.
Move-O-Bot paused and turned. “What did I say my name was?” Lear wouldn’t say it, so Fangboner had to. “Move-O-Bot?”
“That’s right, not Answer-Stupid-Questions-O-Bot. Now, stop asking stupid questions and let me work.”
“But you’re right in front of the Hatch to SC-2,” Scout told him.
Move-O-Bot reached out a telescoping arm with a brush on it and gently dusted the last bits of dust from the handle to the hatch of SC-2.
“I’m done,” he reported.
“Open the hatch,” Lear ordered,
“Are you going to make me repeat what my name is?”
Lear sighed, “Never mind, Technician Fangboner, open the hatch.” Fangboner punched the hatch and it opened. What he saw on the other side made him say,
“Holy crap on a pancake.”
SC-2 was completely intact, not so much as a chair had been moved from its station. Not a speck of debris lay on its dark and silent monitors.
Everything around SC-2 was devastated.
A hyperdome had formed over SC-2, part of the ship’s auto-repair system, a hemisphere of clear millistrati ultra-crystalloid protected the secondary command center. It also permitted a panoramic view of the destruction across Keeler’s dorsal expanse.
The Command Tower was gone. 330 meters of tower simply obliterated. The Secondary Tower was three quarters gone, and its stump casting ever-shifting shadows over the wreckscape of the dorsal hull as Keeler twisted through the stormy and burning upper atmosphere of the planet.
“Can we get these workstations up and running?” Lear asked.
“I won’t know until I can…” She was cut off by a warning.
“‘Attention Repair Crews. Brace yourselves and prepare for attack. Hostile ships incoming.’” As he said so, a fast, faint shadow passed the repair dome at ludicrous speed.
Lear was angry. “Lt. Duke, is that you?”
Duke answered, “TyroCommander Lear, we have detected, and Pegasus has confirmed, no fewer than eight hostile…”
Lear huffed in frustration. “Lieutenant, I am in charge of this mission. I will order the crews when to take cover, is that clear?”
There was a space, before Duke’s flinty, hard-edged voice rejoined. “Absolutely clear, TyroCommander Lear. Now, get yourself into a secure area. The section of the ship you are in has suffered severe damage and is vulnerable.”
In confirmation, three blurry needles of light passed over the dome that protected SC-2.
Lear turned to order Scout and Fangboner to take cover, but they were
already strapping themselves into the high-peril alcoves behind two of the stations, inset areas in the wall, heavily shielded, with high-tensile straps to hold crew in place in the event of gravity or inertial damper failure during battle.
“Right,” said Lear. “I suppose I should find myself the secure station designated for the ship’s commanding officer.” She looked around for it.
“I think it was over there,” Scout told her. Indicating a High-Peril Alcove at deck center.
Lear began to step toward it.
Then, there was a terrible explosion.
Pegasus – PC-1/Main Bridge
As the third and final flight of repair crews had been launched toward Lexington Keeler, they were intercepted mid-way by a force of sixteen alien bladeships. The Aves had responded immediately this time, and broke formation to deny the enemy easy targeting. Then, the Accipiters then swooped in to defend the Aves.
Alkema examined the holodisplay. The enemy ships were concentrating their attacks on the Pathfinder ship, blasting it with white bolts of energy. Pieces of Keeler’s hull blasted free and joined the slipstream behind the great ship.
One of the bladeships got a lock on an unmanned Accipiter and blew it to pieces. Another Accipiter wheeled and tried to attack the bladeship, but was soon demolished in barrage of firepower.
“The Shrieks are buying time for the Aves,” Lt. Cmdr. Honeywell explained hopefully. He was standing in front of the largest tactical display, which filled the entire forward part of PC-1.
“They’re supposed to draw them away from Keeler, and toward Pegasus. ” In one corner of the display, a formation of three Accipiters ganged up on a blade ship.
There was a flurry of weapons fire exchanged, then the blade ship became a streak of light and vanished.
“Hammerheads armed and ready,” reported Tactical Lieutenant Bonneville.
“Helm, take us closer,” Keeler ordered Specialist Atlantic. “But not too close.”
“Aves Maud has been hit,” said the flight officer calmly. “Moderate damage to the port wingblade. Attempting to make final approach. Aves Winnie II and Titus III safely on board.” Another Accipiter exploded. Suddenly, three Aves came around from behind Keeler’s port wingblade. Amy, James, and Prudence bore in on the bladeships with guns blazing. Two disappeared under the assault. Four blade ships broke away to attack them from behind, and promptly discovered that Aves can fire missiles backward as well.
“Enemy ships at 10,000 kilometers,” Honeywell reported.
“Fire when they cross 5,000” Keeler ordered.
“Sir, you don’t want to do that!” yelled Tactical TyroCommander Redfire, running toward tactical from the entrance hatch to PC-1. “We can’t let them get close enough to assess Pegasus’s defensive capabilities. We have to take them out at maximum distance. Fire those hammerheads now.”
Keeler grunted an approval and a double brace of Hammerheads – twenty high-speed deadly missiles – blazed away from Pegasus’s forward missile hatcheries. The bladeships must have detected the missiles incoming and fired off their own weapons. The missiles dodged and bore down on their targets. The blade ships dodged, but eight hammerheads connected with four bladeships and ended their existence in horrific blazes of energy.
“Four left,” Alkema reported. One of the bladeships was tearing after the Aves Amy. Its guns blazed out, connecting with Amy’s wingblade, blasting a ragged hole. Amy dove hard to starboard. As she did so, Prudence and James came to her defense, flying head on toward the blade ship, guns blazing. They didn’t destroy the ship, but they wounded it enough that it turned back toward Keeler. Its flight ended a few seconds later with a dramatic crash against Keeler’s port wingblade.
“Prudence and James are breaking off to pursue the alien ships,” Flight Control reported.
Keeler marveled at their bravery.
“Neg, order them to get clear,” Redfire ordered. “I’m arming the Advanced Tactical Hammerheads.” At Chapultepec, Pegasus had received instructions regarding the upgrade of her Hammerhead missiles. Only a hundred had so far been upgraded to the new specifications, which made them faster, more maneuverable, and increased their explosive yield. Redfire primed a brace for launch.
Flight Control reported, “Aves Maud is unable to make Keeler’s landing port but has managed a combat landing on Keeler’s hull.”
The next brace of Hammerheads was superfast, flying through space in barely a second and connecting with deadly precision to the remaining bladeships; except for the one that malfunctioned and smashed head-on into Keeler’s nose section, which pitched sharply downward. Soon, the whole rest of the ship was pitching downward, and sinking fast.
“KUMBA YAH!” said Alkema. He ditched the tactical station and grabbed an open spot next to Shayne American. He sought and got an immediate telemetry update on the other Pathfinder ship. “Keeler just increased its rate of descent forty percent. At this rate, they’ll be in an unrecoverable dive in less than 14 minutes.”
Keeler looked up at the forward display. Keeler was nose-over, spinning harder, and sinking fast. “Nice going, Redfire,” he thought. He turned to Shayne American at Mission Ops. “No choice. Order the recovery crew to evacuate.”
“I don’t think they can, sir,” Alkema magnified the view of Keeler on the display. The ship was enveloped in fire from atmospheric friction, massive bolts of lightning generated by the ship’s passage through the charged upper atmosphere flashed across the hull, and bits of the ship streamed behind it in a comet’s tail of burning debris. A huge chunk of the afterdeck behind Flight Control came loose and slammed into the port wingblade.
“The ship is too unstable for them to evacuate,” Alkema explained. “The Aves, even the escape pods, would probably be destroyed on exit. That’s even if they could get to them.”
“You’re telling me they’re doomed?” Keeler barked.
“Sir!” said the Specialist at Flight Control. “Maud has lost contact on Keeler’s hull.” On the display, the Aves Maud had broken away from its hold just above the landing platform on Keeler’s afterdeck. The Aves spun perilously through the atmosphere, then fired thrusters and recovered.
Alkema shook his head. “We’ve got one shot. We were modeling a solution when the attack happened. It’s the only scenario with a less than 50% chance of destroying the ship.”
“How much less?” Keeler
“49 per cent,” Alkema answered. “It’s all we got.”
Keeler turned to Alkema. “Do it… nag, wait… tell me what it is, and then do it.”
“An explosion kicked them into the planet’s atmosphere,” Alkema began loading the simulation from the Visualization Laboratory. “An explosion can kick them back out.” Alkema narrated as the display opened. “We fire a Nemesis warhead into the atmosphere below Keeler. We set the yield high enough to blast several thousand cubic kilometers of atmosphere into space, carrying Keeler with it.” Redfire crossed his arms, looking fairly impressed. “You would have to calibrate it precisely.
If you use too little yield, or position the explosion even slightly off, it will have no effect. Yield too high, or too close, and Keeler will be destroyed.
“We didn’t have time to get the simulation exact, but we were close,” Alkema went on.
“Another half hour and we could have had it.”
“They don’t have another half hour,” Shayne American reminded them.
“We have one shot at this, Commander,” Alkema said. “Our best simulation was for an 800
megaton anti-matter burst 20 000 meters below the ship.”
“You know, a cascade molecular implosion would give you a higher yield, and vector the blast outward at an oblique angle, which would minimize hull stress,” Redfire suggested.
“A what and a what now?” Keeler asked. He looked to Alkema, who didn’t understand it either, for once.
Redfire explained, “You disrupt the molecules in the atmosphere at the quantum level, unleashing the strong force,
which starts a chain reaction that converts some of the atmosphere into plasma. Instead of being punched out by an explosion, Keeler would be pushed out by an extremely strong energy stream. Also, it should be very pretty.”
“We didn’t … test that one,” Nor, Alkema could have added, had they even thought of it.
“Trust me,” Redfire said. “It will work. I’ll configure the warhead now. I modified a few hammerheads while we were en route back to the StarLock from Aurora.”
“Did he inform me he was doing that?” Keeler asked Alkema.
Redfire answered. “It’s better if you just assume I did. Finished. Aiming point should be 700 kilometers in front of the Keeler’s course, and right down on the deck. Set for an airburst no more than 1,000 meters above the surface.
“What effect is this going to have on the ground,” asked Magnus Morgan, monitoring planetology.
Redfire told him, rather casually “Supersonic winds and firestorms for a radius of 300
kilometers around the detonation point, hurricane force winds beyond that.”
“That will kill everything on the ground,” Morgan protested.
“We haven’t detected any life forms on the surface,” American told him.
That was no comfort to Morgan. “And that blast pretty much guarantees there won’t be.”
“We have to take the shot,” Keeler decided. “There are 84 people on that ship who don’t have a chance otherwise.”
“82,” Alkema corrected.
“Warhead is ready,” Redfire announced.
Keeler gave him a go-gesture. “Ranking Shayne, send a message to the repair crews on Keeler. Brace yourselves, it’s about to get rough.” American relayed the message, although she was doubtful it would cut through the electromagnetic storm enveloping the ship.
“Missile primed,” Redfire reported. “Targeting coordinates laid in and confirmed. Ranking David, would you like the honor of firing the weapon.”
Alkema straightened, realizing the weight on his shoulder. Eighty-two people, probably more, a pathfinder ship that had taken twenty years and multiple fortunes to construct, all destroyed in fire if he was wrong. He gave a nod, and looked to the commander. “On your mark, commander.”