And, he was sure that the Argonaut and Illustrious would do no better.
Chapter 37
Desperate Times
The whole of the rear half of the Derringer from section thirteen back was missing, and for all intents and purposes, the vessel appeared dead.
Its captain, Tony Crisp, shook his head in an attempt to stop the ringing in his ears. Then stumbled over what felt like a body in the darkness of the bridge.
“Look out, that’s my foot,” science officer, Lieutenant Pierce, grumbled.
“Sorry,” Crisp said in apology. Then he heard another voice call out.
“Captain. Ensign Hartnell here. I’m up at the bridge window, and it looks like all hell’s broken out, outside.”
“Hartnell, is anyone else up there with you?” Captain Crisp asked his damage control officer.
“Lieutenant Timborne, Captain.”
“And Ensign Carter, sir.” The other ensign added.
“Ok, I’m coming up to join you,” Crisp told them.
“The fighting seems pretty far away, Captain.” Ensign Hartnell said, peering out through the bridge window. “So we should be able to risk running the emergency systems.”
On hearing this, Pierce slowly got up, and felt himself all over, to check if everything seemed ok. Then, touching his face, felt what must be blood slowly running down his cheek. He shrugged, but otherwise he seemed ok. Certainly, now was not the time to worry about something trivial.
Even though he could just about make out images in the eerie light, he felt his way carefully around until he located the emergency systems. Then activated them, and a dull red light flooded the bridge.
Captain Crisp and his men, carefully checked everything on the Derringer’s bridge. Although most things appeared to be undamaged, there wasn’t any power.
‘Damn,’ he thought to himself. This meant they were going to be reliant on the emergency power unit for air and light. There were of course, food tablets and water sticks in a protected container.
Even so, these supplies would only last thirty days for the five of them, he worked out. If there were more survivors further back in the ship, that timescale could reduce significantly.
“Ensign Hartnell, see how far back through the ship you can go, without risking us,” Crisp ordered his damage control officer. “And check to see if the holding bay is still functional,” he added.
“Yes, Captain.” Hartnell acknowledged and headed for the bridge’s bulkhead door.
After looking through the door’s window to check that the next one was safe to enter, he manually opened the door and passed through. Then, closing the door behind him carried cautiously on and through each section heading towards the rear.
“Captain, if we can't access the Force-crafts, we might be able to use the forward steering thrusters to push us back towards Dpav4,” Lieutenant Pierce suggested.
“Yes, but that would only work if we can see directly behind us,” Lieutenant Timborne said.
“And, on how long the emergency thruster fuel will last,” Captain Crisp pointed out.
“Yes, Captain.” Carter agreed. “But the thrusters are manually steerable from here. So, once we start travelling backwards we may be able to steer the Derringer in the right direction.”
“Then, if that works, by the time the thrusters run out of fuel, we’ll be close enough to Dpav4’s space station for them to detect us. And their new space-tug to reach us, Pierce added.”
Ten minutes later Ensign Hartnell returned.
“It’s very messy back there, Captain. The heat and radiation have destroyed virtually everything from bulkhead six, back,” he reported then paused briefly.
“The crew members that weren’t vapourised… Well, I wouldn’t recommend you looking at them, Sir.”
“So, the force-crafts are definitely wiped out,” Lieutenant Pierce commented.
“Afraid so, sir,” Hartnell gloomily agreed.
“But, the bulkhead door between section six and seven, isn’t damaged. In fact, I was able to get up close and look through the spyglass section, and I’m sure I could just see Dpav4 right on the edge of vision,” he told them, his voice sounding more upbeat now.
“The good news is that section six has a hardwired intercom point. The point’s wired straight back to the bridge, and its backup power supply is here.
So, we’ll be able to position someone at the intercom point, to guide us towards DPav4.”
“Well, Ensign. We obviously don’t have any other options, so you’ll have to go back to section six. Set the system up and guide us onto a path that will intercept with the planet,” Captain Crisp ordered him.
“Yes Sir,” Hartnell replied, then made his way back to the section. Leaving the others to find the bridge’s manual steering and firing station, then activate the intercom.
Even though Captain Crisp was feeling reasonably confident that what they were going to attempt, would work. He knew it was risky, as they could only hope that Dpav4’s Space station sensors would be able to detect them.
Then, that they would be able to send out their only space-tug to the Derringer. And, more importantly, if they did send the tug, it would reach them in time.
-Ω-
The Jefferson’s protective force field was getting dangerously close to collapse, and Captain Garrett knew that, if the relentless weapons fire from the Garodens, continued, it was inevitable that they would lose some of their ships.
Even so, it hadn’t gone unnoticed by him, or by Admiral Winton either, that the Garoden ships were now putting more pressure on the Michigan than on them.
The data on their screens showed that the Michigan’s protective screen was lower than theirs. And, at fifty-six percent, nearing collapse.
The reason for this soon became apparent, as a cylindrical looking missile was fired from one of the Garoden’s Battleships.
Seeing this, the Michigan took a chance in deciding that this was the subspace limpet tracking torpedo that they had been waiting for.
So in an attempt to make it seem authentic they instructed their weapons AI to make a few miss-hits. Thus allowing the Garoden’s missile to pass straight through their protective screen, and attach itself to her hull.
“About time,” Admiral Winton exclaimed, and ordered the Michigan to Jump to the agreed location, or snare as some officers were calling it.
Winton knew that the snare was only twenty light-minutes out. But their AI had figured that the officer in charge of the Garoden ship that would be following the tracker, wouldn’t notice that the distance to the alien’s so-called home planet didn’t quite add up.
Then, the Michigan suddenly created its wormhole and was gone.
Seeing this, a Garoden Star Destroyer at one corner of their box formation moved well away from the rest. While the ship at the center, moved outwards to replace it.
The Star Destroyer hung stationary for a moment while it created a much larger wormhole. Then, as the swirling milky white ring of small vortexes formed the wormhole’s mouth, the vessel slid forward and vanished into its jet black center, in pursuit of the Michigan.
“Everyone prepare to Jump to the second rendezvous location,” Admiral Winton ordered.
“Captain,” Lieutenant Farrow called out. “What’s left of the Derringer has started moving back towards Pavonis station.”
“I see it. Thrusters are running,” Garrett agreed, having verified Lieutenant Farrow’s observations. He felt relieved knowing there were survivors, after all.
“Quick, send a message to Pavonis station that there are lives aboard that section.
“Done, Captain,” Lieutenant Pierce said, as he quickly sent the message.
Captain Garrett nodded to Admiral Winton.
“Admiral to Fleet, Jump now to the second rendezvous point.” Winton then ordered. And his ship, together with the Argonaut and Illustrious, were gone.
-Ω-
At Jump Twelve location. Andromeda and the Starship N
eutron, exited warp space, four hundred light years out from the on-going action taking place around Delta Pavonis.
Both ships were still locked together.
A precautionary scan of the area was then carried out. But this only detected the Garoden’s marker buoy twelve, which was just three light-minutes off to one side.
Frank requested his Solveron Gatherer to predict how much real time had passed at Delta Pavonis. Then waited for the information to come back via his transceiver implant.
Using the Gatherer on Commander Procard’s Crillon ship, his Gatherer estimated that the Andromeda and Starship Neutron’s combined warp power had actually folded space-time so much, that only one day at Pavonis had passed since their leaving.
The Gatherer also reported that Captain Sitrea’s Solveron ship was now only three jumps ahead of them.
Satisfied that they were alone, the Neutron’s Captain Sherman opened the ship-to-ship audio visual link.
“Hi, Chris. That was some Jump,” Frank said, pleased that they had been able to jump so far.
“It certainly was. It seems that both of our AI’s managed to work out a set of algorithms to combine and sync the warp generation pulse.”
“Yes, but I don’t understand why only a day has passed at Pavonis. The time element, just twenty-four hours from Pavonis, seems way out to me. What do you think?”
“I agree. But, it’s probably just a time shift thingy.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Uh-oh, I see Ned’s waiting to talk to me, Chris.
So, I’m opening our link to everyone. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes, oh and Tom and Stewart have some good news,” Sherman replied.
Ned Parker started speaking, as soon as Frank opened the link to everyone.
“Frank, we’ve looked at the elapsed-time component. And, even though it’s relatively small so far, we need to turn all of these warp crystal energy bubbles off right now. If we can.
Otherwise, Earth, Crilla, and all our ships, will be history long before we get to the Garoden’s home planet.”
“I understand. But let’s hear what Tom and Stewart have come up with, first.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“So, Stewart. How close are you to finding out how to send a shutdown command to the energy bubble?” Frank asked. Then heard his tactical pad beep as it refreshed and displayed a new set of diagrams, which he re-routed to the main display screen.
Straight after that, Frank felt Susanna’s presence as she entered Andromeda’s control room, come bridge. This distracted him, momentarily.
Then he realized that he hadn’t sensed Charlotte or Cindy. That’s strange, he thought to himself and searched for them both in his mind. But found neither.
Stewart then moved into view on his screen, bringing Frank back to the here and now.
“We’ve been very frustrated by the amount of time we’ve taken to find a mechanism or something else to shut the bubble down. And, the consequences of achieving this,” Stewart told them.
“For instance, assuming that what we do even works. Will it be too late to save anything?”
Just then, Tom thrust his head into view. Made a thumbs-up sign, then moved out of view again.
Stewart nodded, then said, “Okay… we can look at diagram one.”
The view on the screen then changed to show a large coffin-like object in the center of the lab. In it, sat a warp crystal that had been taken from the Neutron’s Crystal bank. Around it, were several plates that contained etched coils which provided the low-level magnetic field needed to keep the crystal stable.
“I thought it was the magnetic field that killed off the energy bubble, Stewart?” Susanna queried.
“Uh, yes… But the crystals turn their own bubble off when they’re first placed in their chamber.
We’re running it in safe mode now and using a weak magnetic field to keep the crystal in a dormant state. When the crystal’s being used for warp, however, we would drop the magnetic field even lower.”
“Then, a massive increase in field strength would trigger the shutdown pulse,” Ned added.
“Yes. Exactly Ned…And, the beauty of it is that we don’t actually need to be in Warp if our warp thread is new and vigorous, like the one we’ve just made to get here.
And, even though we stopped once, we think that the thread will still be continuous as long as the exit and entry points are the same.”
“We’d better not use the Skipper drive, then,” Tom joked.
Stewart ignored him and moved on to the next diagram.
“Therein lies the conundrum. Even though there are two sets of wormhole threads already, ours, and Sitrea’s. They are separate from each other.
We’re making our own connected thread, between our ship and Pavonis. So, that means our shutdown pulse would only go back to where we started from, in this instance, Pavonis.”
“Are you saying it’s not possible to get to the Garoden’s homeworld with what we have at present, Stewart?” Frank asked.
“Stewart, remember that Captain Sitrea is getting closer to the Garoden’s homeworld, all the time,” Ned reminded Stewart.
“I know Ned. But he’s generating a different wormhole thread. This means that while we can try and upset the Garodens at Pavonis, it won’t be possible for our energy bubble’s shutdown pulse to reach the Garoden’s homeworld.” Stewart stated. Then waited a moment, before continuing to detail their options.
“As we see it. We can use this crystal to severely damage the Garoden’s at Pavonis.
Then we send the Neutron off to follow Captain Sitrea’s ship to the Garoden’s homeworld.
The minus points are that we’d have to stop a couple of hundred light years out from their star system. Then, anyone who isn’t needed on the Neutron will have to transfer to the Andromeda.”
“Why?” Frank asked.
“Because we’d have to make the final exit as close as possible to the Garoden’s homeworld to do any good, Frank,” Tom answered.
“And, we don’t hold out much hope for the Neutron surviving that close to the Garoden’s homeworld. So basically it will probably be a suicide mission,” Stewart added.
“Well, we don’t have any other choice, Stewart. So, let's do it now,” Frank urged. “We’ll worry about the change around when we get closer to Garoden.”
“Agreed,” Captain Sherman confirmed.
“Stewart. Tom. The quicker you generate this shutdown pulse, the better,” Sherman ordered.
“Easy,” Stewart replied, as he entered the Execute Command. This, in turn, caused the crystal to jerk violently, as the magnetic field went to maximum magnetic flux.
Then, the Crystal slowly crumbled and was no more.
Frank and Susanna almost sensed the Crystal’s dying warp pulse. And, at that moment, they also knew that they were both alone. Charlotte and Cindy had gone.
Chapter 38
Game Changer
The Starship Michigan exited warp within the kill-zone. Then remained stationary for what seemed to be one long and agonizing minute for the crew. But, in reality, was just long enough to ensure that the Garoden ship wouldn’t have time to act on their tracking device’s next, and unexpected, positional change.
The StarShip then engaged her Sublight skipper drive, and quickly moved out of the kill zone, or snare, as some called it.
The Michigan’s Captain, Terrance Campbell, had quickly recovered from the familiar feeling of the negative four g-force everyone experienced when exiting warp space. Even so, for a few seconds, he’d felt as if his body was somewhere else.
The battle had also taken a lot out of him and his crew. So he was pleased they were to be out of the fight, at least for the moment. This would also give them a breathing space to enable his vessel time to recharge her weapons and shield generator grid.
Everyone got back to work. Then Lieutenant Clements, the ship’s science officer, suddenly looked up from his console.
“The Crill
on ships are already here, Captain. Four battlecruisers and one Battleship,”
“I see them. Pretty impressive,” Campbell commented. Then, looking at them again realized that they must be brand new ships and straight out of the Crillon’s primary Starship manufacturing facility on Tapin; Tapin being the larger of the two satellites orbiting Crilla.
He recognized some of the Crillon ships features. But, the coppery coloured hulls looked a whole lot darker than he remembered. And he was sure that there were more weapon blisters and field emitters than he’d seen before. In fact, some of the emitters seemed overlarge for their function, he thought to himself.
“They’ve just acknowledged us, Captain,” Lieutenant Clements told him.
“Hopefully, we’ll able to sit this one out, Captain,” Lieutenant Yuan, Michigan's weapons officer stated.
“Agreed, Lieutenant. Make sure we keep our protective screen up as high as we can while repairs are being carried out,” he ordered.
Yuan studied the ship’s constant status updates. “Screen’s back up to sixty-three percent, Captain.”
Although Terrance Campbell could see the ship’s repair progress on his own display. He still liked to hear how things were progressing from the crew themselves. So he called Damage control.
The Garoden War. (SpaceFed StarShips Series) Book 6. An action-packed follow-on story that sees the Earth's Space Navy in action.: ‘Into the Fire.’ Page 23