First Command kb-2

by Rodney L. Smith

  The Vigilant hovered just outside the Pleiades star cluster, where Alistair Bennett had lost the mysterious ion trail. Kelly had the gravimetric plot on his command display. He studied the readouts, then switched to the 3-D display. With some adjustment, a tunnel of low gravity fields appeared before him. He could see a clear path ahead into the star cluster.

  He and Alistair had agreed that one of the several Sol-type suns should be their first target of investigation. Kelly ran through his mental calculations for choosing this system over the other one more time. He couldn’t find any reasons to argue against that choice.

  Kelly called all hands to battle stations and ordered the helmsman to move ahead. The helm and navigator worked closely with the Exec and Chief of the Watch to keep them in the middle of the gravity channel, as they moved resolutely ahead at FTL Power 3. Kelly stayed on the bridge for the first few critical junctions then moved back to sensors.

  As Kelly walked by, Chief Johnson had his section at maximum effectiveness. They were monitoring external gravity, X-rays, and stellar radiation, in addition to the normal communications, early warning, and self-defense sensors. They had already detected terrestrial communications ahead.

  Kelly walked back to snag a coffee from the galley and returned to sensors. He watched over the operators’ shoulders as they monitored their screens. He had sat position beside them often enough, during work ups and in his previous job as Exec, that they no longer were nervous over his presence. Sensors and the galley were two areas of his ship he had yet to master. He had a deep respect for their capabilities.

  The sensor operator, Chief Johnson, and Kelly saw it at the same time. An indicator for a laser burst transmission ahead of them showed on one of the monitors.

  Chief Johnson spoke first. “Looks like we are on the right route, sir, and they now know we’re here.”

  Kelly replied, “I have to agree with you on that. Is there any chance you could break out what the message was?”

  “No, sir, we only got the indicator because there is so much dust in this area. It was facing mostly away from us.”

  “Chief, can you get a close up view of that thing?”

  Chief Johnson nodded at the sensor operator and he zoomed in on the early warning satellite. It looked like a rock with an antenna sticking out the top.

  “Let’s let this one go. Maybe if they only get one report they won’t react. Yes, I know it’s wishful thinking on my part. Good work, Chief, but keep your eyes open. I suspect we may see company soon.”

  Kelly walked back to gunnery and found Chief Pennypacker, “Chief, we just tripped a burglar alarm, it seems. Heat them up and keep your gunners fresh and focused. I suspect we may have some company soon.”

  “Nothing to worry about, sir, we’ll be ready for them.

  Irina adjusted to the work relatively quickly. Terri let her hair go dirty and kept a disheveled look about her. This kept the male foremen off of her. Irina found out one of the worst offenders of women was a captive himself. She arranged a meeting with him.

  When he arrived, three other women grabbed him from behind and held him while Irina approached him. She unbuttoned her shirt and knelt in front of him while undoing his trousers. He kept asking them why they were holding him — he would cooperate fully.

  When his trousers hit the ground, Irina pulled out a set of industrial scissors and menaced his manhood. He fainted. Irina brought him to and told him that if they ever saw or heard of him bothering another woman in the factory, he would see those scissors again. She also told him to pass the message to the other captive foremen. She scared him so much that he soiled himself.

  Treatment of the women improved dramatically at that point. If ever a man started bothering a woman, the scissors came out and a snick-snick sound echoed through the room. It had a very chilling effect.

  It was First Day. The weeks on Barataria were only six days long and were referred to by their order in the week. Logically, the first day of the week was First Day. The next was Second Day and so forth. First Day was important because that was the only day of the week the Ruin View restaurant was closed and was Sally’s day off.

  Sally taught One-Eyed Pete early on that her not having a day off resulted in a drop in the quality of food served in the restaurant. Complaints from customers made the point to Pete that Sally deserved a day off. Sally made sure that all the staff shared in this day of rest. Pete made the mistake of holding Russell back one First Day to help him with inventory. The next day saw so many complaints on the quality of food that he never made that mistake again.

  Before Russell literally fell out of the sky, Sally had spent her days off in her quarters reading or working on odd bits of needlepoint. She had been mightily bored. Now that Russell was in her life, First Day took on a whole new meaning.

  Plain old Sally had never thought that romance would ever intrude into her life, but Russell dispelled that silly notion. When Sally was with him, she didn’t mind she was a captive. She didn’t mind that another had bought her life and she was merely property in many people’s eyes.

  She was doing what she loved-cooking. She was the head chef in the best restaurant on the planet. The most important people on the planet respected her, so much so that she was almost offered her freedom. All of that paled in comparison to the love she felt from Russell.

  Theirs was not a great passion. Sex was not a great part of their love. Russell realized early on that Sally only engaged in sex to make him feel better, not because it gave her any pleasure. Russell soon figured this out and though he was gentle and patient, she never felt the pleasure he did.

  Russell couldn’t bring passion into her life, so he worked hard to keep romance in their relationship. He wanted to marry her, but marriage between captives was forbidden. He made sure she had flowers in her quarters at all times. He always treated her like a lady. When he was with her, she was the only woman in existence.

  Their main activities were walks in the parks and quiet times reading together. Theirs was a quiet, but intense love.

  Steven Maynard had concluded his visit with the Debran women. He was conferring with the House staff and enjoying the view of the two younger Debran women lounging by the pool below the housekeeper’s office window. He advised the housekeeper that in the future the Debrans would eat meals from the house pantry and there would be no more take out.

  His communicator went off and a text message appeared, informing him that one of the perimeter warning sensors activated. His Defense HQ requested permission to send Torpedo Squadron Six to investigate. Steven mentally reviewed which one was Torpedo Squadron Six. He remembered that Six was the squadron with six Scylla and six Charybdis. Yes, that was the one he would choose. He authorized the action.

  Maynard had been expecting this. He guessed now was as good a time as any to see if his plans for the defense of Barataria were any good. He jumped into his ground car and hurried to his defense headquarters.

  Chapter Eleven

  Twelve pilots and twelve torpedo men raced to their ships. They strapped themselves in, ran system checks, and reported their ships ready for take off. The squadron commander split the squadron into two sections, one he led, and the other by his XO. He gave three Scylla and three Charybdis to his XO’s section and kept the remainder under his control. He led the take off and ordered his XO to concentrate his initial attack by his section to the right and above the approaching target and he would concentrate on left and below. After the first shots were fired the two sections were free to engage as the situation warranted.

  Kelly was seated back on the bridge as sensors reported a second laser burst transmission ahead of them. Kelly ordered gunnery to take out the early warning satellite, and then watched with pride as one of the turret gunners put his first burst into the center of the target. The satellite exploded into pieces that hurtled off into the depths of the star cluster.

  Kelly was about to direct sensors to identify any further early warning satellites ear
ly enough to destroy them before they reported, when sensors informed them they had twelve hostile ships inbound port bow and starboard bow, high and low. Kelly authorized the gunners to engage all targets.

  Chief Johnson reported twenty torpedoes inbound in the forward hemisphere. The gunners expertly destroyed all these targets as they presented themselves. More torpedoes appeared on the sensors.

  Kelly noticed that three of the torpedo ships were bunched up and arrayed almost dead ahead of the Vigilant. He ordered gunnery to use the nose rail guns to take out these three ships.

  The gunner sitting in the bridge gunnery position lined up the cross hairs and took out the closest ship. In quick succession, he shifted point of fire and took out the second ship. The third ship turned away, but not in time to avoid the next rail gun burst. That made three down and nine more to go.

  There were still ten torpedoes inbound, although the gunners were doing well against them. Kelly was absorbed watching the battle unfold, occasionally redirecting fire or having the helm adjust the course and speed. At no time did he have the urge to grab the helm or take over the gunnery controls. His crew was doing their jobs extremely well; none of the ships or torpedoes got within his safety concern bubble.

  Kelly was watching his monitor and counting the torpedoes being destroyed when it dawned on him that one of the torpedo ships had disappeared from his scope. He called to Sensors that one was lost and to find out where it went. Gunnery reported they didn’t shoot him. Sensors was slow to find him. On a hunch, Kelly looked at the rear view and saw the ship trying to fly up their exhaust.

  Rather than hit one button and take over gunnery control for the rear firing guns, he ordered the bridge gunner to take it out. It only required a minute change in their course to line up the rear crosshairs on the target and there was one less bandit inbound. The top gunner and starboard gunner got one each and the port turret gunner got two, one cleanly and the second that flew into the debris of the first and took itself out.

  Kelly was getting tired of this game, as occasional plasma charges rocked the ship when they hit the Vigilant’s shields, and he thought he saw a way to bring it to a speedier conclusion. A brown dwarf was ahead to port. Kelly knew his engines could keep them from being caught in the gravity well of the dwarf, but bet the torpedo ships weren’t so well off. He ordered the helm to head directly for the brown dwarf.

  The torpedo ships, smelling blood in the water, followed, firing all their remaining torpedoes. There were now 31 torpedoes and eight torpedo ships in tail pursuit of the Vigilant. Kelly watched his gravimetric sensors, the gravity force numbers climbing higher as they neared the brown dwarf. This stillborn star with insufficient mass to ever erupt into a sun would be their masterstroke or their tomb.

  Kelly kept his eye on the gravity gauges, as he waited for his gut to tell him when to sheer away. The gravity gauges climbed until Kelly finally gave the order for the helm to slingshot around the brown dwarf. The helm matched velocity with the centripetal pull of the brown dwarf’s gravity. The Vigilant swung around the double Jupiter-sized dwarf and came back pointing the way they came. The torpedoes, way ahead of the torpedo ships, had engines too weak to pull away from the brown dwarf’s gravity and spiraled into the dwarf. The eight remaining torpedo ships suddenly found themselves in a head-on collision course with a very angry Vigilant. Six of them broke right and left, only to be taken out by the turret gunners. Two held their course straight at the Vigilant, firing their secondary nose guns to little effect. The Vigilant’s shields easily absorbed the hits. The bridge gunner lined up his cross hairs twice and the torpedo ship threat was no more.

  LTJG Cortez ordered all sections to report battle damage status. Negative reports came in from all sections, except engineering, which reported a minor temporary loss in shield strength. Kelly had just successfully prosecuted combat against a superior foe with no loss of life and no damage to his ship. He felt pretty good. He did feel bad about the torpedo ship crews, who were brave, but had picked the wrong occupation.

  Kelly looked around at his bridge crew and realized everyone was hunched over like they were expecting an explosion. He realized he was hunched over his console and straightened up. As he did so, he bumped into Alistair Bennett, who had been leaning forward over him watching Kelly’s monitor.

  Kelly smiled up at Alistair and asked him if he enjoyed the show.

  He replied, “In my ship, I don’t get shot at. This was a novel experience for me.”

  Kelly and the bridge crew laughed, breaking the tension. The crew sat up and stretched.

  Alistair let the laughter subside and then said, “They came at you uncoordinated except for the first salvo. You may have killed their leadership when you took out those initial three ships with your nose guns. The attack lost cohesion at that point. They still could have killed you, but they were firing their torpedoes almost at random, except for the end, where they salvoed their remaining torpedoes. I think you rattled them when you came right at them, but they rallied when they thought they had you on the run. Remember, these people are only in it for the credits. Dead men don’t get paid.”

  Kelly pondered Alistair’s analysis of the battle and admitted he agreed with him. He ordered the helm back to their position before the attack started and put them back on the base course. He thought about his order and lessons he had been taught back in the Academy. He remembered one of his instructors saying, “The easy path is always mined.”

  Kelly ordered the helm and navigator to plot a course along the 3G gradient toward their first target planet. That should get them some maneuvering space that wasn’t so well protected and covered by sensors.

  Steven Maynard arrived at Defense HQ to find the place in a state of chaos. No one knew what had happened. The torpedo squadron commander had made no contact report. All they knew was they had engaged a single ship and been destroyed in total. Maynard’s HQ staff had no idea who or what had destroyed the sixth squadron.

  A number of close explosions had knocked out many early warning satellites and a recon patrol of four torpedo ships could find only wreckage floating in the vicinity of where the battle took place. They found only debris of Torpedo Squadron Six. No wreckage could be found suggesting that any hostile ship had even been here. Maynard was on the comms, demanding that they find the ship or ships that had destroyed the torpedo squadron. In response, they made a maximum power active sensor sweep all the way back to Barataria and found nothing.

  Chief Johnson wanted to kiss the pirate in charge. He tracked the active sensor sweep all the way back to what had to be the pirate main base. He also tracked every identification friend or foe signal from the early warning satellites to the torpedo ships. He had a plot of all the satellites now. As long as they hadn’t seeded any out here in the higher gravity area, they should be able to sneak into the base’s back door. He went forward to brief his analysis to the captain.

  Kelly and Chief Blankenship took Chief Johnson’s collected active sensor data, Alistair’s energy data, the day’s gravimetric data, and overlaid them on top of each other. The result was a series of additional gravity tubes of various G-forces. Numerous travel tubes of similar gravity existed throughout the area and the Vigilant was probably the only ship aware of them.

  Chief Johnson’s weren’t the only set of eyes and ears out that day. Captain Ben Alden also intercepted and tracked the returning flight of torpedo ships. He filed this info away and thought about the best way to use this information. A sneak attack with massive firepower and shock action was his preferred mode of operation. If you could catch the other side asleep or off balance then half the battle was won. He retired his ship from the star cluster and prepared a message to all his fleet to rendezvous above Rigel’s southern pole in two days. He turned the conn over to his second in command and went to his cabin to plan his attack and rescue operation. He still laughed, because he got paid either way.

  Ben knew that he wouldn’t have a breakout of the planetary d
efenses, but he could always come in on the side opposite where the main settlement was. He pulled up a scanned hand drawn map one of his crew had drafted from the rum-soaked blatherings of a pirate crewman in one of the seedier bars of Rigel Prime.

  Captain Alden looked at the map and couldn’t figure out what significance the moon had for it to figure so prominently in the chart. Was it seeded with defensive weaponry or did it have another function? He pondered on this, but no revelation came to him. He’d just have to see if he could come at the planet from the side opposite the moon, if he could. He closed his terminal and lay down on his bunk, and within seconds was asleep, dreaming of what he would do with all the credits he would earn from this job.

  Shadow Lead Analyst G’Lon and Master Tactician B’Gotil completed their video briefing to the High Elders and awaited questions. The three elders conferred amongst themselves, then the center Elder looked up at them.

  “We thank you both for bringing this critical information to our attention. It is obvious that our show of force strategy along the frontier leaves us vulnerable if the Humans choose to use this avenue of approach into our space. We must move forces back into this sector immediately.”

  The Elder to the left said, “Master Tactician B’Gotil, perhaps we should give some consideration to an armed reconnaissance in force, to see what is within the star cluster and to let the Humans know that this pathway goes both ways.”

  B’Gotil answered, “Of course, Excellency, as soon as we recall sufficient forces to both conduct the reconnaissance in force and defend the sector, we will do so. We don’t want to alert the Humans until we can blunt any attack. We won’t know what forces are in the star cluster until we make contact. It would not do to have our recon force make contact with an approaching invasion force and not have our defenses ready to repel them.”