“What the hell?!”
CHAPTER 17
The Black Swan held its position, along with the remains of the Second Fleet and some assistance from scattered remnants of various Rotham flotillas. Together, they resisted a powerful thrust by a tightly organized enemy fleet, one that had broken off from the main formation, but nonetheless had more destroyers, frigates, battlecruisers, and battleships than Adiger could get a count of. The proximity of their ships allowed them to deploy a somewhat weaker, but still effectively impenetrable phalanx shield, although it also meant that whenever a human-fired missile did successfully strike one of the enemies, it often did damage to the ships closest to it as well. And that, perhaps more than anything, in this particular skirmish, had been the defenders’ saving grace.
“Continue to hold position,” commanded Adiger.
“Sir, our shields have collapsed and our armor is in tatters,” said the Defense chief.
Outside the windows, the flashing continued, as beam strike after beam strike hit the defenders’ starships.
“Sir, the enemy formation is coming around for another assault,” said the Ops chief.
“I don’t think we will survive much longer if we remain here,” said the Defense chief.
“Have some faith,” said Adiger, almost as much to reassure himself as them. Even a cursory glance at the tactical display showed the number of local blue and green lights outnumbered, and continuing to disappear, one by one, all the time. “More defenders are on their way.”
In fact, that was true, not just some vague hope to cling to out of desperation. Although the enemy’s assault on this position was heavily concentrated, ruthless, and quickly overpowering what few defenders remained, more were indeed coming.
Sir Arkwright understood the tactical implications of the portside flank collapsing again. Therefore, he could not afford to allow it, Adiger knew, which was why he had commanded Fleet Admiral Zeller, aboard the ISS Assassin, to immediately maneuver his starship and the rest of the Fifth Fleet, just over one-hundred capital ships, to help bolster the defenders’ position.
All that mattered, until Fleet Admiral Zeller arrived, was that the position remain held. Should the enemy overwhelm them first, and occupy this space, then they would simply destroy the Assassin and all its forces upon their arrival. It would also expose the ISS Victory to attacks along its weakest side, and probably result in the total collapse of the entire defensive formation.
All we have to do, thought Adiger, is survive and hold this position long enough for Fleet Admiral Zeller to arrive.
“Sir, the enemy formation is fast approaching. They are preparing their next attack,” said the Ops chief.
“Captain, based on the reports I’m getting…I do not believe it is possible for us to survive this attack.”
“And the other ships around us, our allies, are they not as beaten and damaged as we are?” asked Adiger.
“They are,” admitted the Ops officer. “Many of them in even worse condition than us.”
“And you would have us abandon them?” asked Adiger.
No one replied.
“How would it be for us if they abandoned us here, to save themselves, and only we remained to hold this position for Fleet Admiral Zeller?” asked Adiger.
Again, no one replied. Though, by the expressions on their faces, he could tell he’d given them something to think about.
“We all know how important holding this position is, no matter what the enemy throws at us,” said Adiger boldly. “Whatever the odds, no matter how grim, we must hold!”
“I agree with you, sir,” said the Defense chief. “I am only stating that, based on this information, an attack force of that size, utilizing their weapons like they have each other time they have attacked, well, frankly, this time we will not be able to resist them.”
“Then we find a way!” said Adiger.
“The enemy has arrived,” said the Ops chief.
Immediately after, the Defense chief spoke up, becoming instantly focused upon his terminals and what his staff was pointing out to him. “Sir,” he said. “We are taking fire. I detect multiple ships locking onto us.”
Flashes appeared and the Black Swan was struck, repeatedly, by beam weapons from the enemy warships. Without shields, and with minimal armor, the strikes did extreme damage to the Black Swan’s hull. Adiger looked at the damage display and noticed various spots of the ship had now lit up red, indicating a risk of hull failure.
Come on, you tough old bird, he thought, you’re the Black Swan, you can survive this!
The Black Swan returned fire; all his weapons crews were under standing orders to fire at will. And so the dreadnought opened fire at the formation of enemy warships, hitting them back with everything the Black Swan had—managing to destroy several of the smaller warships. When he saw some of the red lights disappear, Adiger clenched his right fist in triumph.
Atta Girl, he thought. I know you can take whatever they can throw at us and more, he tried to convince himself.
Still, the increased number of red warning lights appearing on the damage display—more and more every second—was alarming.
“How long before Zeller and his fleet arrive?” asked Adiger.
“By my best estimate,” said the Ops officer, “Accounting for their current speed, I would say they will be in firing range of the enemy in just under thirty seconds.”
“Then we shall find thirty seconds!” said Adiger.
“Sir, the hull is buckling; I do not believe we can withstand this attack for that long,” said the Defense chief.
But the reinforcements are so close; we cannot allow the enemy to take this position from us now…that would erase all that we have done and sacrificed to maintain it and keep the formation intact, thought Adiger.
“Somehow, some way, we shall do it,” he said.
“As you say, sir,” said the Defense chief, whose face looked ghostly white and the tone of his voice was clearly that of a dead man, walking toward his own gallows.
Maybe he’s right, thought Adiger. Maybe we cannot survive that long. But still, holding this position until Zeller arrives is more important. The entire defense depends upon it!
Suddenly, everything went dark, all systems offline. It only lasted for a second, and then power was restored, but for a moment there, the bridge and all its consoles and controls were rendered useless.
“That’s not a good sign,” said the Comms chief.
“We must have some kind of electrical problem,” replied the Ops officer.
More flashes of light appeared, blinking out the window. Adiger instinctively braced himself, as if expecting the enemy fire to strike the bridge itself.
The systems went offline again. This time remaining so for at least three seconds. When they came back, Adiger could see on the damage display that seemingly the entire Black Swan was covered up by bright red alert notices.
“Sir, we’ve experience a hull breach,” said the Ops officer. “Strike that, we have confirmed multiple hull breaches on the starboard side. Affecting decks ten, fourteen, sixteen, and nineteen, sir.”
“Yaw hard starboard,” commanded Adiger, intending to position their slightly stronger portside to face the enemy. That should buy them a few more seconds anyway. And Admiral Zeller and his forces would be in range imminently.
“I have no flight controls,” reported the helmsman.
“Sir,” said the Ops chief, “The breaches are not contained. I repeat, the containment systems did not deploy. We are losing atmosphere on those decks. Soon it will affect the entire ship.”
As he said it, alarms sounded and a voice repeated over the loudspeakers “Warning, uncontained hull breaches detected. Decks ten, fourteen, sixteen and nineteen are compromised. Please evacuate all affected areas immediately. Warning, uncontained…” the voice repeated itself, though the number of affected decks, and uncontained hull breaches was larger the second time around.
“Sir, Fleet Admi
ral Zeller and his forces are now with range to engage the enemy. They report they have commenced fire!” said the Comms chief.
A cheer filled the bridge. Although the Black Swan itself was still bleeding to death, and they all knew it. And, should they take any more fire, they were certain to be destroyed. This must have been obvious to Fleet Admiral Zeller also.
“Sir,” said the Comms chief. “Fleet Admiral Zeller says he has commanded seven of his capital ships to move directly between us and the enemy formation. Their mission is to draw the enemy’s fire and obstruct any further attacks against this ship.”
Good, thought Adiger, that should buy us some time to try to fix this mess and get flight controls back. Not to mention seal off the unaffected decks and preserve whatever atmosphere we have left.
The lights and systems went down again, filling the bridge with darkness. This time, it gave Adiger an ominous feeling.
“Not this again,” said the Defense chief. They waited for the systems to come back online again but, as the seconds went by, it soon became obvious that they had gone down for good.
“Now what?” asked Adiger, looking in the direction of his Ops chief, who might or might not have been able to see him, given the minimal lighting.
“This is a problem for the engineering department,” said the Ops chief. “I have no way of…” he paused as they all noticed more flashes out the window. And the question on each of their minds was, are those strikes directed at us, or did Zeller’s ships get into position in time?
Adiger broke the silence, “I suggest we—”
He never got the chance to finish his sentence.
In what must have been only a millisecond, everything came completely apart. Adiger had just enough time to realize that he was suddenly floating, no longer bound by any gravity. Immediately after having that thought, some kind of debris struck him. He didn’t even have the chance to see what it was before the blackness took him.
***
Calvin stared, completely frozen, gawking in disbelief at what he saw. The hatch was now open, but standing there, in the way, as if waiting for them, was, “Summers?” Calvin’s voice strained as he said her name.
Yet, somehow, there she was, in the flesh. As beautiful as ever. Although her uniform showed some signs of distress, and her hair was a jumble, not neat and orderly like she tended to keep it, he could even see what might have been soot on the left side of her face.
“Hello, Calvin,” she said. “What took you so long?”
Calvin shook his head, still in utter disbelief. “Summers?” he asked again. But you died on the Nighthawk, he thought. How was it possible that she was here, on a Hunter ship, a ship that belonged to either the Rahajiim or…the Dark Ones. Something clicked in Calvin’s brain.
He turned to Nikolai. “Dart her.”
“What?” Nikolai and Summers both asked simultaneously.
“I said, dart her,” Calvin repeated.
This time Nikolai understood what Calvin meant. This was not Summers. This was obviously a replicant, one of the Dark Ones. And he needed to dose her with equarius before he could believe otherwise. Nikolai drew his handgun and pointed it at Summers who, not quite sure how to react, covered her face and screeched.
There was a soft report and a needle shot from Nikolai’s handgun and struck Summers deep in the leg.
“Ouch!” she yelled, angrily. Then the equarius kicked in and she looked dizzy, perhaps even a little high, but certainly no longer in any pain and, as she did not shrivel up into a pile of disgusting goo, it meant she was the real Summers and not a replicant.
Calvin rushed through the hatch and caught Summers before she could lose her balance. After he entered the Hunter ship, his soldiers filed in also, each in turn, exactly as planned. Only there seemed to be no occupying force to challenge for control of the vessel. Everyone in the room, which appeared to be a converted cargo hold that now offered some limited seating for passengers, wore black-and-silver uniforms. Most looked distressed in some way or another; a few were weeping, either silently or openly, and the whole bunch of them, as a group, seemed collectively in shock. Calvin understood; part of him felt the exact same way.
He helped Summers over to a wall that she could lean against, just in case she should lose her balance, although she insisted repeatedly that she was fine now.
“Why the hell did you have your soldier shoot me with a goddamned dart?” she asked, her eyes narrowed angrily.
“You know why,” said Calvin. He then gave the people in the room a closer look. He saw many familiar faces; these were all people from the Nighthawk. In all, he counted twelve of them, including Summers. None of the other faces were people he knew personally to any real degree of familiarity. There were acquaintances and even some strangers, faces Calvin recognized, but whose names he had forgotten or else never bothered to learn. It was strange to think there had been a time when he’d known the name of every person on the ship, and now…he was ashamed to admit, so many of them were just crewmen to him. Junior officers, one no different from another.
“Is this everybody who made it off the ship?” asked Calvin, again looking at Summers, who, he noted, had decided to use the wall for support after all.
“Three more are in the cockpit, another is injured and resting in the aft storage unit,” she replied. She told him their names. As XO, she had overseen all the fine details of the personnel assignments, and therefore she knew who everyone was. Calvin, however, was at a disadvantage and, although most of the names sounded familiar, he could not put faces to any of them, except one.
“Rafael?” asked Calvin excitedly. “Rafael made it! Rafael is alive too!”
By then, all the soldiers were aboard and had done their best to squeeze into the open spaces left in the converted cargo bay. It was a tight fit, having all twelve crewmen in the area, including Summers, now in additional to all eleven that had come aboard from Calvin’s pod, including Calvin himself.
It forced everybody to stand or sit very close to one another. It reminded him of riding one of the short-range public railways on Capital World, people everywhere you looked and standing room only, for the most part.
“Rafael did make it and he is alive,” Summers confirmed. “You can go to the cockpit and see for yourself, if you like.
“So then…Nimoux?” asked Calvin, gingerly.
Summers averted her eyes and shook her head. The must also mean Jay, Cassidy, Andre, Dr. Andrews…the list went on. It hurt him deeply to know they’d died aboard the ship. So many young officers, so much talent and potential, what a waste, he thought.
“What about you?” asked Summers, giving Calvin a worried look. “I saw you come through, and a bunch of soldiers, but…she seemed hesitant to ask, yet asked anyway. “Miles?”
Calvin opened his mouth to respond, but found no words. Instead, he did like she had done and simply stared down at his feel and shook his head.
“Oh, dear God, I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Summers. She held each of his shoulders, practically forcing him to look down into her big green eyes. “Are you all right?”
Calvin let out a grim chuckle. “What do you care?” he asked, not really thinking about what he was saying. “I thought you hated him.”
“I did hate him,” she said, “But that doesn’t mean I wished him dead!” she seemed mortified by the very implication. “How could you possibly…how could anybody possibly think that?”
“I know, I know,” said Calvin, feeling ashamed. “I don’t know why I even said it. Of course you never wanted something like this to happen to him.”
“Never ever,” she said, fiercely.
Calvin nodded. “Understood.”
“So, you never did answer my question,” said Summers.
“What question?”
“Probably because you were too busy having your lackey impale me with a dart.”
Calvin noted that, at some point between then and now, Summers had removed the needle and there
didn’t appear to be any blood on her trousers, that’s how thin the needle’s point was.
“I’m sorry, I honestly don’t remember your question,” said Calvin.
“I asked you what took you so long.”
“You did?” he honestly did not remember that.
“Yes, I did. So?” she pressed him.
“So what?” he asked.
“What took you so long? Obviously.”
“What took me so long…what?” he asked, thinking she could be referring to any number of things, including the time he’d spent on the Forbidden Planet, among others.
“What took you so long to get here?” she asked.
“Well,” he replied, “We left the surface of the planet and got out into space, only to see the Nighthawk…well…you know,” they both looked sad at the mention of the destroyed ship. “Anyway,” said Calvin, “Eventually we realized that our only choices were to stay in that spot until we died, return to the planet until we died, or else attempt to capture this ship—and probably die. As soon as that idea came to us, we raced here as fast as we could.”
“Whose idea was it to try to take over this ship?” asked Summers.
“Mine,” said Calvin proudly, at first.
“I see,” said Summers. “So then the fact that I had the same idea, and did it faster than you, means that…?” she looked at him, obviously expecting a reply.
He shrugged. “All right, all right,” he said.
“It means that I think faster than you do,” Summers was obviously more than happy to say what Calvin wouldn’t.
He was about to argue, on the basis that she’d had a head start, but then he decided he didn’t really care that much. Let her have her victory, he thought. We could all use one today…
“So how did you do it?” asked Calvin.
“Do what?”
“Get all of these people off the Nighthawk and onto this ship. With, as far as I can tell, not a single casualty.”
“Well, it is impressive, when you put it like that,” she said. “Must have been good leadership.”
The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) Page 37