“Spare us any more of your notions,” snapped Glenda, “and ejecting one of this ship’s two primary generators? Are you mad!? That’d be the next best thing to shooting ourselves in the head and letting them finish us off, assuming we lived long enough to survive the blast. What do you really have cooking up in that Swiss cheese you have masquerading for a brain?”
“Swiss cheese?! Why, that’s a violation of patient-doctor confidentiality—and besides, the holier bits have been filled back in,” cried Spalding.
“I’m your commanding officer. I have a right to know just how unstable you’re likely to get,” shouted Glenda.
“Why, the next time I see that Doctor Presbyter, I’ll give him a good piece of my mind,” fumed Spalding, fingering his plasma torch.
“Th-the Ccccommand Carrier is moving!” reported Shepherd at Navigation.
“They’re trying to throw off our targeting solution,” Spalding snapped, getting out of his chair and heading back toward the tactical console. “Well they should have known better than to try and confuse the likes of Terrance P. Spalding,” he declared throwing his right arm high and wide.
“One minute until we’re ready to fire again, Sir,” reported Tactical.
“They want to play with fire, is it?” Spalding fumed. “Well, we already fired the ranging shot!”
“Uh, Sir, just how many hits do you think it’s going to take to drive them off?” asked the Ensign.
“Drive them off?” he asked blankly, realizing the poor lad was at least an order of magnitude more hopeless than he’d originally suspected. “Drive them off?!” bellowed the Chief Engineer, throwing his hands in the air. “Just what kind of outfit do you think this is? ‘Drive them off.’ Ha! We’re aboard the greatest, rebuilt, Super Battleship this galaxy has ever seen—we’re going to destroy them, not drive them off,” he sneered and then thrust his finger down at the console.
“Maybe if this ship was finished—” started Baldwin.
“No more of the hundred kilo rounds. Now that we’ve already got the range and our Tactical computer calibrated, we can use something heavier,” he said fiercely. “What we need here is to hit her with something…something like…” his eyes lit up, “load her with a one ton bunker-buster! That’ll slow the grav-coil down and hit her where she lives. Aha! Hahahahah! Even with all the wasted energy for firing a slug—I mean ‘jet of plasma’ that size,” he hastily corrected, “that’ll slow down the acceleration just enough that she’ll feel it when we reach out and touch her this time,” he laughed uproariously.
“Loading round now and recalibrating the HPC,” reported the Ensign.
“What are you up to now, Commander?” Baldwin asked suspiciously.
“Time for a little semi-solid, superheated plasma!” grinned Spalding as the time counted down, and when it finally reached zero he gleefully howled, “Fire!”
Chapter One hundred eleven: On the Command Carrier
“They’ve fired again, Admiral!” reported Tactical.
“I’m reading a plasma wake on this one, Sir,” reported Commander Stenson from Sensors, “it looks different from the last supercharged plasma ball they fired at us…I’m detecting a surge of strange particles which coincided with the weapon’s launch!” Stenson added with no small measure of alarm.
“Evasive Maneuvers!” Janeski barked, uncertain just what type of weapon could use strange particles. For the first time in many, many years, Arnold Janeski felt a measure—however small—of genuine fear as he literally stared down the barrel of an unknown weapon. It was, if he was being honest, somewhat exhilarating.
“Helm: acceleration to maximum,” Goddard relayed promptly. “Re-route all available power to the starboard shields.”
The Invictus Rising flared her engines for all they were worth and tried to dive down, even if only by the slightest amount, considering just how hard it was to maneuver a super-giant like an Imperial Command Carrier.
“Particle cannon will be ready to fire in another ten minutes—unless we divert everything over to recharging it, in which case we can cut that in half. And those fighters should be there in another three minutes,” reported Tactical.
“Instruct our fighters and bombers to ignore the other ships and finish that cannon platform,” ordered Janeski. He paused for a moment and then nodded, “And set all power to recharge the main cannon. That plasma cannon of theirs is the biggest threat to this flagship in the entire star system—it must be destroyed.”
“For what we’re about to receive—” started one of the staffers on the bridge as the plasma round slammed into the stern of the ship.
For the longest moment it looked like the evasive maneuvers had worked, and the Command Carrier was going to slip by the rapidly moving enemy attack.
But contrary to the Imperials’ assumption, the plasma jet was not, in fact, a ‘ball,’—and, contrary to Commander Spalding’s vocal protestations, neither was it entirely made of plasma. The front edge of the peculiar projectile was indeed plasma—but the bulk of this particularly huge projectile’s mass was locked up in a semisolid core which trailed just a few seconds behind the tip of the ‘projectile.’
When the plasma tip of the projectile struck the extreme starboard rear of the ship, the massive Command Carrier—the mightiest battle platform ever constructed and deployed by humans—actually shuddered. Her crew exchanged nervous glances as the Invictus Rising rocked gently beneath their feet. Then, just a few seconds after the initial impact, the vessel gave a violent lurch as the nearly light-second-long stream of semisolid material slammed into—and through—the peerless warship’s shields like a geyser of lava splashing against a pane of ordinary window glass.
The entire bridge lost gravity for a pair of seconds before the backup generators came back online. “We’ve been hit,” reported Damage Control frantically, “damage to engine housing!”
“Starboard shields down to 20%! We have punch-through,” reported the Shields Officer.
“Something’s wrong…I don’t care how powerful it is, we shouldn’t been hit that hard by a plasma round,” reported Tactical.
“Helm, use thrusters to compensate and roll this ship!” commanded Captain Goddard. “What the blazes was that?” barked Captain Goddard as the Command Carrier abruptly lost main engine thrust, two of the three engines were down and the third was flickering badly as the Carrier went into a majestic, ponderous spin under the tremendous force of the blow.
“Engines one and two are down! Engine three is out of control; Engineering is trying to shut it down before it tears itself apart, but Main Engineering has been hit and has massive casualties,” Damage Control continued rattling off the litany of broken and damaged things onboard the Command Carrier.
“This is the most powerful class of warship in existence, with the absolute best armor and shields in the galaxy. I refuse to believe that a half-built freighter with a plasma cannon and a crew of yokels can cause this kind of damage,” roared the Supreme Admiral. “Captain, ignore the pests around us and use the thrusters to turn toward that buzzing little bee. I will have that warship destroyed. Do you hear me? Destroyed! If the fighters can’t handle the job, we’ll use the main cannon to finish that scrap heap off with one shot!”
“Aye aye, Sir,” replied Goddard.
On the hull of the ship was a sixty meter-wide area of crushed and pulverized mono-locsium, with flames and air still belching out of it as the internal blast doors tried to compensate and stem the bleeding.
“This is impossible. Mono-locsium is specifically designed to be almost twice as strong and twice as resistant to laser and plasma fire as duralloy,” protested the Tactical Officer. “Just what kind of plasma weapon are they using?”
Chapter One hundred twelve: The Tide Turns
“Ha! Hahahaha!” Spalding danced around the bridge with glee and pumped his fist in the air. “Take that, you Imperial tyrants! Thought you could withdraw from your treaty obligations just like that?” he asked, snapp
ing his fingers in the air. “Well I have news for you: all are equal under the law—Spalding’s law of rapid acceleration, that is!”
“How is that possible? How can this funky plasma cannon you built do this much damage?” Baldwin breathed with surprise as the extent of the damage to the Command Carrier came to light. “You just took out their main engines with one hit…you just one-shotted an Imperial Command Carrier!?”
“Fortune and glory, love,” Spalding said, avoiding a direct explanation. It was all a matter of acceleration. Mono-locsium was strong—incredibly strong, especially against lasers—but it was brittle too, at least against kinetic impacts. The rounds he was firing, when fired fast enough, turned to flaming plasma—but if you increased the size of the round, made a small adjustment to the acceleration coil running from one end of the ship to the other, and sprinkled in a few strange particles…
Well, it still looked like a plasma ball—at least to whoever was being fired at—but unlike its lightweight brethren, the bunker buster had a molten metal core trailing it. And, as was clearly shown just now, mono-locsium wasn’t nearly as good against solid shot as it was against beam weapons.
“Fortune and glory,” he repeated.
They thought that they could make the laws. Banning this weapon system, suppressing this or that (duralloy II for instance) and outlawing anything that might put a dent in their nice and shiny crystal-hulled warships.
Well Terrence P. Spalding wasn’t on the same page. They should have thought about what an engineer with a shipyard, a dream, and a burning fire in his belly was capable of doing back when they were pulling out of the Spine and letting it—his home—fall into chaos and disaster.
“Welcome to Spalding’s house of horrors. Imperials can enter but they can’t go back,” he muttered as the Command Carrier continued to spin, finally regaining attitude control with thrusters before beginning a lumbering turn to point its nose at the Lucky Clover.
“If you want a war…I’ll give you war, Admiral!” Spalding coldly vowed, remotely racking the next round into his HPC.
On the screen. over one hundred fighters were almost within weapons range. It was far too many for the Clover to deal with on her own—at least too many in her current state. Although someday, once she was finished—if she was finished….
“Signal the Phoenix and tell them we’re going to need some help keeping those fighters off us unless they want us to eject our antimatter generators,” barked Spalding, “in which case, they’ll have to finish up with the Imperials on their own.”
“Message sent,” reported the com-tech after a few seconds.
Chapter One hundred thirteen: The Furious Phoenix
“Alright, it’s our turn now,” Captain Laurent said, looking at the disposition of enemy forces.
There was a hungry growl throughout the bridge.
The decimated gunboat forces had done the best they could to stop the fighters, but from a grand force of over three hundred boats there were, as of this latest clash, only 78 survivors. The heroic little boats had done their best to thin out a good fifty fighters before the fleet Imperial fighters had gone too far, being too fast to be caught. That left a force of one hundred strike fighters barreling straight at them
“If they know what’s good for them, they’ll be heading straight for the Lucky Clover 2.0,” Laurent said with a hint of a growl in his voice, “that’s why it’s going to be our job to stop them. Communications, get on the horn with the North Hampton. We’re going to need to coordinate our point defense fire with the Battleship. Helm, push us out ahead of the 2.0 and then turn our broadside to those fighters. Tactical, get with Gunnery—let’s make those fighters bleed,” he paused and then clapped his hands together. “Let’s go, people!”
“Aye aye, Sir,” said his Executive Officer, turning around to growl orders at the rest of the bridge.
As the fighter moved into range, the Furious Phoenix—belatedly followed by the much more lumbering squadron mate, the Battleship North Hampton—smoothly turned to present its port broadside.
“Gunnery is to fire at will, Mr. Huffington,” instructed Laurent.
“Fire at will, aye aye, Sir,” replied Senior Lieutenant Huffington from his post at Tactical. He picked up the microphone down to the gun deck and began to relay orders and fighter approach vectors down to the deck.
Like a horde of angry hornets, the Imperial fighters rushed the squadron of reinforcements from Gambit.
The gun deck of the Furious Phoenix spat laser fire in response.
Ten seconds later, the North Hampton followed with a ragged volley.
Like moths to a flame, the Imperial fighters jinked and dodged but ultimately kept coming closer and closer. In ones and twos and threes, fighters were swept by medium and light lasers, disappearing in flashes and puffs of shattered metal. But not enough fell—never enough.
“Twenty five enemy fighters confirmed destroyed. Recommend we roll the ship,” said the ship’s XO.
“Make it so, Helm,” Captain Laurent nodded toward the helmsman.
The Battleship continued to fire on the fighters with, Laurent noted, much less accuracy than his own still-green gun deck. He felt a flash of pride at how well the extra training, in all departments, but in this case specifically gunnery, was working out and showing results as the Furious Phoenix completed its roll and got back into the action.
“Enemy fighters on close approach,” reported Tactical.
“Take them down,” Laurent instructed.
“I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t ripped out all those plasma cannons the first chance you got, right about now,” remarked his XO, “excellent anti-fighter defenses, those.”
“Bite your tongue, Senior Lieutenant,” Captain Laurent growled, “Commander Spalding transferred those plasma cannons to up-gun the Royal Rage.”
“Which you were only too happy to—” started the other man, even as the North Hampton began its own roll.
“And!” Laurent said, lifting a finger to cut the other man short. “It’s not like we don’t have any plasma cannons whatsoever. I kept a reasonable amount in our broadside in case they were needed for anti-fighter duty.”
“Only because it was impossible to fully arm up the Royal Rage with just the plasma cannons in our broadside…unless you’re now trying to say that you think our currently ‘reasonable’ compliment is going to be enough,” said the XO with a mocking lilt to his smile.
“Alright, so maybe I should have been more aggressive in keeping the short ranged, ineffective-against-pretty-much-anything-but-fighters, things,” he said with a sigh. “Live and learn, I guess.”
“There’s a reason the Little Admiral put the things on us,” the XO said sagely.
“It was Commander Spalding who’d put them on, but enough of that,” Laurent said as the first of the fighters screamed into short range just as the North Hampton completed its roll and opened fire on the fighters at point blank range with a fully-charged gun deck. At the same time, the Furious Phoenix opened up with their close-range plasma cannons.
“Look at them burn!” chortled the XO as an entire swath of fighters was burned out of space while the others bobbed and weaved for their lives.
Despite the incredible damage, other than a pair of fighters who may have lost engine control and slammed into the Phoenix’s shields, the rest of the Imperial strike fighters swarmed down and around the Battleship and Medium Cruiser.
“They’re going after the Clover,” reported Tactical in a clinical voice, “messaging the starboard gun deck to prioritize them as they come around the other side of the ship.”
“I’m sensing a major power buildup,” reported Sensors.
“Yes, the Clover should be ready to fire again in another two minutes,” nodded Laurent, glad for the reminder to keep his ship away from the front of the 2.0 but not really—
“No, I meant the Invictus Rising, Sir. She’ll be ready to fire in another minute and fifteen seconds,”’ corrected t
he Sensor Pit Boss.
Laurent went rigid.
“What’s the time until the Lucky Clover is ready to fire?” he demanded.
The other man ran the calculations and then turned pale. “The Rising will fire at least thirty seconds before the 2.0,” he reported urgently.
“Quick—notify the other ships!” Laurent shouted at the comm. section.
The bridge flew into furious action.
Chapter One hundred fourteen: Heroic Measures
“Is it confirmed?” I asked tightly.
“Unless they pull out a miracle, the Invictus Rising is going to fire before the Lucky Clover 2.0 can recharge her main plasma cannon,” Lieutenant Hart reported worriedly.
“Blast,” I said with a sinking sensation in my gut.
“Sorry, Admiral,” Hart sounded regretful.
“It’s not your fault, Lieutenant,” I said, turning to the com-pit, “message the other ships and the Marines. It’s now or never—if they’ve got anything up their sleeves, this is the time,” I then turned back to see Captain Hammer. “Take us in as close as you can manage Captain. It’s balls-to-the-walls time.”
“We’ll manage it, Admiral—even those of us without the, ah, particular protuberances,” Hammer said seriously and then started barking orders at her bridge, causing me to smirk.
I wasn’t smirking when a trio of Cruisers smashed our last engine and sent us into a tailspin as they pounded us with laser fire while our thrusters desperately attempted to compensate.
“Take us in,” I said, impotently furious at the Cruisers for stopping us.
“We’re doing our best but we’re not going to be going anywhere fast,” Hammer said as the Cruisers hammered our outer hull.
“I have movement! It’s the Metal Titan, Captain,” reported a sensor operator down on the main bridge. I only heard through the open channel to the Captain’s command chair.
Admiral's War Part Two (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 10) Page 41