by James Rosone
“They’re maneuvering to dodge our incoming slugs,” called out one of the targeting officers.
Seeing their initial success, Hunt roared with rage and excitement, “Keep firing the magrails—pump ’em full of holes!”
“Enemy vessel is attempting to turn away and put some more distance between them and us,” called out Commander McKee from tactical.
“Missiles should impact in five seconds,” called out Lieutenant LaFine gleefully.
The continued thundering booms of the magrail turrets were music to their ears. The steady stream of slugs being thrown at the enemy vessel scored hit after hit. The enemy vessel became consumed with more and more fires and explosions as the slugs continued to find pay dirt. When the Zodark ship made a sharp maneuvering turn, a string of thirty slugs completely missed.
The gunners on the Rook adjusted to the course change and started leading the enemy vessel with their guns. Between the three turrets, they were able to blanket several possible locations the enemy vessel could maneuver into and still score some hits, especially now that the two ships had closed to less than thirty megameters.
Then the six Hammerhead missiles impacted, their dual-stage warheads punching right through the ship’s armor before the second stage of the warhead erupted inside the hull, spewing more flames and incendiary nastiness inside the vessel.
“Brace for impact!” called out the warning as another light beam arced out from the Zodark ship for them. It drilled into the Rook near the midsection of the ship for three seconds before the helmsman was able to get them out of the way.
A violent explosion shook the Rook. The lights and computer screens flickered off. When the power returned, the systems had to reboot themselves.
“What the hell happened?” demanded Hunt as he righted himself in his chair. Had he not been strapped in, he feared he would have been tossed about the room.
“Captain, Engineering, that last hit blew our power capacitors. We’ve got a three-meter hole on deck four, section eight,” Commander Lyons said over Hunt’s communicator.
“Damn it, Lyons, I need power. We need those magrails to stay operational. We need maneuvering thrusts!” barked Hunt angrily to his chief engineer.
“We’re on it, Captain. I’ve got a couple dozen Synths en route to the damaged areas now. Give us twenty minutes, sir, and we’ll be fully operational.”
“Some systems are coming back online,” called out one of the bridge crew members.
The main monitor flickered on, and they were starting to get an image of what was going on outside the ship again. Despite the damage they’d just sustained, the Zodark ship appeared to be in far worse shape. The steady stream of slugs the Rook had been firing continued to pummel them. They were still attempting to turn away and flee from the battle and put some distance between themselves and the Rook’s magrail guns.
Twenty painful minutes went by as they watched the distance that had been closing between their two ships start to grow as the enemy tried to limp away. Then the bridge lighting switched from their backup power to the primary power system.
Hunt’s communicator chirped. “Captain, we’ve got the relay switches back online. We had to reroute power through our auxiliary network. I’ve got things held together with duct tape and superglue right now. You can use the magrails, but the lasers are out of the question,” Commander Lyons explained.
“Great job, Commander. See what you can do to get us some power to the MPD thrusters. The enemy is trying to get away, and I’m not about to let them,” Hunt roared with excitement.
“Resuming fire with the magrails,” Lieutenant LaFine announced as the three turrets opened up. It was the only offensive weapon they had for the time being.
They watched as the magrail turrets sent a slew of projectiles at the Zodark vessel. The enemy ship was trying its best to evade some of the slugs, but it was clear the ship was in trouble. A handful of slugs tore into one of its engines and ripped it apart with a series of secondary explosions. Then the other engines winked out as the ship either lost power or lost propulsion. In either case, it was dead in the water.
Hunt unstrapped himself from his seat. As he stood, he looked at his weapons officer. “Tell the main guns to fire the remainder of their magazine and then cease fire. I think she’s had it, but I want to make sure.”
Moments later, part of the Zodark ship erupted as a series of secondary explosions and geysers of flame enveloped the front half of the ship. Then a series of smaller crafts began to disembark from the larger vessel—it looked like these were probably the escape pods.
The enemy was abandoning the ship.
It took another five minutes of fires spewing out the various holes in the ship before they finally went dark as the atmosphere feeding them was gone. The vessel exploded moments later, breaking apart in multiple chunks. Many of the life vessels appeared to have gotten outside the blast radius.
Looking at the debris and chunks of the destroyed ship before them, Hunt could barely believe what he was looking at. They had somehow survived Earth’s first significant space battle.
Suddenly, Hunt remembered they still had alarms going off on the bridge. He’d been so focused on taking the enemy out, he had forgotten all about the damage they had taken themselves.
“Ops, damage report,” barked Hunt. He felt his cheeks flush a bit as he realized he should have been checking on that throughout the battle. He’d allowed his focus to be solely on the enemy ship and not on the care of his own. That couldn’t happen again.
“We’re showing damage to the starboard forward and midsections of the ship. Decks one and two in sections alpha and bravo are venting oxygen and on fire. Damage control teams have the area sealed off, and we’re going to depressurize it to put the fires out,” Lieutenant Arnold said. “We also took some damage to section kilo on deck six. It doesn’t look like it penetrated the armor, but it damaged the starboard MPD thruster.”
“What about that hit we took to the midsection of the ship?” asked the XO.
Lieutenant Arnold pulled up a schematic of the ship. Multiple areas were showing yellow, and a few were showing red. “That hit to our midsection was actually pretty severe, sir—by far the worst damage we sustained. It looks like Engineering is still conducting a damage assessment, but as it stands, we have a three-meter gash in our midsection. It penetrated nearly halfway through the ship, some forty-eight meters deep.” He paused for a moment before adding, “I think if they’d held that laser for two or three more seconds, they might have cut completely through us.”
Blowing some air out his lips, Hunt realized they had really dodged a bullet. They had nearly been cut in half, or at least had a hole right through them. “What kind of hull damage are we looking at?”
Arnold shrugged. “That’d be a question for Commander Lyons.”
“How many casualties?” Hunt’s XO asked next.
“Right now, the medbay is reporting forty-two injured. Some of the sections and department chiefs are reporting in their numbers as well. It looks like sixty-three killed,” Lieutenant Arnold explained.
Hunt grimaced at the news. He’d known they had probably lost a few dozen folks, but sixty-three, plus another forty-two injured—he wasn’t ready to hear that a quarter of his crew had just been injured or killed.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Arnold. Are the damage control parties able to seal up the sections of the ship that have been hit?” asked his XO, Commander Johnson. “Make sure medical teams are getting the injured back to sickbay. Captain, if it’s OK with you, I’ll handle the damage control parties for you so you can finish handling the Zodarks.”
Hunt nodded, letting his XO take charge of those duties so he could focus on the task at hand. Turning to his Ops lieutenant, he ordered, “Arnold, tell the shuttle bay to get our shuttles spun up. I want them to go out there and collect up the life pods. We’ll bring them back to the ship. Tell the Deltas to be on standby to receive them. Also, send a message to the Voy
ager and ask them if they can help us collect some remnants of this Zodark ship. I think it’d be worth bringing some of it back with us for further study by DARPA.”
The next six hours were pretty busy. The damage to the Rook had been partially repaired, at least enough to carry on with operations while the damage control parties worked on the more critical sections of the ship. They could still run at full thrusters for the time being. The FTL drive was down, not that they could make a jump anyway until they got the gaping holes in the ship repaired.
The Voyager and the Rook managed to scoop up one hundred and thirty-two Zodarks from the pods. They were going to be locked up in a holding facility on the Voyager for the time being.
The two ships had also brought aboard several broken-up chunks of the Zodark ship in hopes that their R&D departments could analyze the structure and composition of the hulls and the armor. The more they understood about the enemy ship’s design and its flaws, the better off they’d be in a future engagement.
*******
Ten hours later, the damage control teams were still working on getting the ship repaired enough so they could engage their FTL system. The hole the Zodark ship had bored through their midsection had damaged part of the structural integrity of the ship. The more they examined the problem, the more they realized how close a call it was that they hadn’t been blown in half. The issue now was getting the ship repaired enough so they could get out of the system before another Zodark ship showed up. They were in no shape to fight.
As Hunt made his way down to inspect some of the damage, he had to take an alternate route to get there. Along the center spine of the ship was a transport system that allowed a person to traverse the ship pretty quickly. The system, however, had been heavily damaged by the laser blast.
When he got to the first sealed section, he saw two damage control workers explaining something to a handful of Synths, going over whatever they needed them to work on in the exposed section of the ship.
Just then, Commander Lyons came around the corner. “Oh, Captain. I was hoping I’d find you. The bridge said you were headed my way.”
Hunt grimly asked, “How bad is it, Jake?”
Lyons turned serious. “It’s bad, but it could have been worse.”
“Are we going to be able to jump soon? I’d really like to get out of the system in case another Zodark ship shows up.”
Lyons shrugged. “Right now, not a chance. I mean, we could, but I couldn’t guarantee the ship wouldn’t crumble under the pressure of the jump. We need a few hours to reinforce the superstructure and get a few more of the support areas shored up. We can’t put the entire stress of the ship on a key section that’s been damaged. We’ve got to get some of these other support sections repaired and sealed up. The Synths will get it done, and this is a repair we can make—but it’s going to take us some time. Probably at least the rest of the day, maybe two to make sure we’re OK.”
Hunt shook his head in frustration. He had to keep reminding himself they had just survived a major space battle. They were lucky to be alive and dealing with these problems.
“Do what you can, Jake,” he responded. “Just keep in mind if a Zodark ship arrives in the system, we may need to make an emergency FTL jump out. We won’t survive another engagement in our current shape.”
Commander Lyons nodded in agreement. “We’ll do our best, Captain. You can count on that.”
Two anxious days went by as they got the ship repaired enough to jump back to Earth. Finally, they felt confident enough in the repairs to use the FTL system. Now they’d travel back to Sol and hope the sacrifice they had just made was worth the sixty-two souls lost to test a weapon system and a few theories.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Terminators
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Walburg Industries
“I’m not comfortable with this, Admiral,” Dr. Alan Walburg said, reiterating his concern about this program.
Admiral Bailey sighed audibly as he turned to look at the richest man in the world, who also happened to have a conscience. “Doctor, you’ve been shown a classified video of these Zodarks—what they are capable of doing and, more importantly, how they view us humans. You saw what a lone Zodark did on the Voyager when it broke out of the brig—and that wasn’t even one of their soldiers. Can you imagine what they would do if they invaded Earth? This is a lot bigger than you or me.”
Admiral Bailey had been growing impatient with the man’s handwringing over what they were asking him to build. He kept going on and on about what had happened in the last war and not wanting it to happen again.
“I understand the threat this new alien species poses, Admiral. I’m just not sure if this is the best solution. It will take us years of development to even come close to training a combat Synth to have the same agility, alertness, and fighting capability as their human peers. Due to the legal and treaty restrictions on such weapons research, we’ve never looked into this. This isn’t something that we can rapidly produce, Admiral.”
“Doctor, I need you to understand something. If we have to attack the Zodarks with Republic Army soldiers, we’re going to lose a lot of people. You’ve seen how they fight. Their size alone makes them incredibly hard to handle, and the fact that they have four arms that apparently their brain can effectively independently control makes them even more challenging. I’m not asking your company to replace human soldiers. I’m asking your company to help augment our guys on the ground and give us a better chance of winning,” Bailey explained, trying to take a different approach to this impasse.
The doctor shook his head in frustration. “Admiral, I understand the problem, and I’m sympathetic. We can start the programming and training process now. But I need to set some expectations with you. It’s going to take the better part of twelve months before the first combat Synths will even be ready to start their test trials.
“First, we need to figure out the type of body and shell we’re going to give them. Then we need to test that shell for durability in combat. While that’s taking place, we have to program its AI to think, act, and perform as a real human soldier would. What I would caution you on, Admiral, is allowing the programming to become intuitive and self-learning. If we go down that route, we could end up creating a machine that will become a smarter and more cunning fighter than our own people. I do not want to see a repeat of the last war. Please let us at least control how far we let the AI develop.”
Bailey turned and looked out the office window at the factory floor for a moment. He hated to admit it, but Walburg had a point. The thought of being able to unleash a small army of super AI combat-trained synthetics on some Zodark worlds was appealing, but a repeat of the Synths going rogue—that was a risk not worth taking. It had nearly destroyed humanity the last time around. Technology and weapons had improved a lot since then. He didn’t need an army of Synths suddenly deciding they didn’t want to fight for humanity anymore and forming their own society.
Turning back to the doctor, Admiral Bailey nodded. “OK, Dr. Walburg, you’ve convinced me on that last part. I’ll detach a platoon of Deltas and a platoon of RASs to work here at your facility. You can use them to run as many virtual and real-world simulations as you want to help train the AI. You need to get this program ramped up rapidly, though. I have no idea how big the Zodarks systems are or how many planets they control, but I can tell you this—we’re going to do our best to liberate the human worlds and put an end to their barbaric rule and threat to humanity.”
*******
John Glenn Orbital Station
1st Fleet HQ
This feels like déjà vu all over again, Captain Hunt thought as he sat at the large conference table with half a dozen military and civilian officers on the other end.
“Captain, can you please tell us what happened to the enemy ship when you fired your pulse beam weapons?” asked one of the TPA admirals. He leaned forward as he waited to hear Hunt’s response.
Hu
nt tried to maintain a neutral expression. “Admiral, as you’ll see from the reports and the videos of the engagement, our pulse beams were not powerful enough to cut through the Zodarks’ armor. I can’t say for sure how thick their armor is or the composition of it to fully know why. From the videos, you can see our laser never made it through.”
The admiral appeared simultaneously pleased with the reply and alarmed by what it meant. He jotted a few notes down. Another admiral, this time from Space Command, asked, “Why did you engage the enemy ship with your missiles first, then the pulse beams, and then the magrails? What were you hoping to achieve by engaging them in this particular sequence?”
Hunt tried to hide his frustration at the question. He had to remember, none of these men had ever been involved in space combat. No one had. Despite all these weapon systems having been built into their shiny toys over the decades, they’d never actually had to use them against another ship. So no one had any idea how to really fight in their starships.
Captain Hunt sat forward in his chair to give the appearance of someone trying to convey something personal to them. “Admiral, this decision about which weapons to use and when was largely based on the effective distances of the enemy in comparison to our ship more than any tactical choice or decision on my part. The missiles are perhaps our slowest weapon, so we fired them first so they could maneuver into position.”
He continued, “We fired our pulse beams next. As you know, a laser weapon is almost instantaneous. When we fired, the enemy ship was roughly one hundred and ten megameters away. As you can see, the lasers had a minimal effect when they hit.