Then Commander Rabinowitz stepped into the ready-room, and behind her were Commanders Silver and Newton.
I called out, “Officers on deck, attention to orders!”
All came to attention and saluted. The new arrivals returned the salutes.
None of the Marines and none of the midshipmen said anything further. My own reason for saying nothing additional was that the situation was so unusual. I flat-out didn’t know what to say. Something like, Congratulations, you escaped the brig occurred to me, but it didn’t seem right.
We all remained at attention, though, until Rabinowitz said, “As you were.”
At that point, Waters, who had made certain their cells had remained unlocked, said, “Glad to have you here, Ma’am.”
Rabinowitz said, “What’s Captain Jefferson’s status?”
Waters summarized the situation.
Rabinowitz said, “That simplifies things. With the captain on the tranquilizers, I’m simply filling in for him while he is indisposed, or absent. No formalities needed.”
Waters said, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Rabinowitz took a seat at the table and said, “Anyone who wants to sit, feel free.”
Newton and Silver sat. So did Lennox, Nash, and I. A few of the Marines sat, and a few remained standing.
I took that opportunity to tell the new arrivals about the flag. They all approved.
I said, “Talos, tell me something.”
“Just ask.”
“You’ve said that the Kerleegans are in a ‘boarding mode’ now, right?”
“Yes,” Talos said, “and that is based on the makeup of this task force, their tactics so far in this battle, and their tactics overall in this war.”
I drummed my fingers against the tabletop. “And they’ll keep trying to board us until they defeat us, or until they decide that their losses are too great?”
“Correct,” Talos said.
I asked, “Then how do we bring about that second situation? Is it based on damage to their equipment, loss of personnel, loss of leaders—what?”
“We don’t have much data on this,” Talos said. “But the pattern I see is that they depart when they experience massive personnel losses. And that’s about as detailed as I can make it.”
I asked, “Talos, you have some kind of built-in strategy for implementing decompression, right?”
“Well,” Talos said, “not specifically for decompression. I figure it out on the fly, to the best of my capabilities.”
I asked, “Which sections of the ship can be decompressed suddenly and violently? The fighter bays, I assume, but any others?”
Talos said, “The fighter bays are the principal areas that fit that description. Any hatch that we open will quickly decompress connected compartments. But since most of the exterior hatches connect to airlocks, the process is not a simple one, if you want to decompress a large area.”
Rabinowitz said, “What would the process be for decompressing the fighter bays?”
“We open the outer doors,” Talos said, “and leave the forcefields in place to maintain pressure. We seal the hatches leading into the bays. Then at the right time, we disable the forcefields.”
An idea was rattling around in my brain, but it would not crystalize. I asked, “Which compartments and corridors have wall-mounted pressure-gauges?”
Talos said, “All have at least one pressure-gauge. Almost all airlocks have three or more, one for pressure inside the airlock, and one to show the pressure of each adjoining compartment or corridor.”
Everyone was quiet. It was as though we saw some kind of a useful tactic buried in that information, but couldn’t quite put our finger on it.
But a plan began to form in my head. I said, “What if we leave all of the airlocks operational? If they scan for life forms, they’ll see that no one is in the front two-thirds of the ship. Then they’ll want to use the airlocks to move into one or both of the fighter bays, if they want to gain control of the engines and reactors. We seal off the bays, then decompress them—violently.”
Waters shook his head and said, “There are a lot of uncertainties. I don’t like it. But I guess we have nothing to lose.”
Talos said, over 1MC, “Attention, all crew. Four Kerleegan boarding craft and twenty fighter craft are now five minutes out.”
I said, “Four boarding craft? What happened to the fifth one?”
Talos said, “It is cloaked and undetectable.”
36
The Gratifying Explosion
Then, over 1MC, Rabinowitz said, “This is Commander Rabinowitz. All crew who are now forward of the fighter bays are ordered to move to positions aft of the bays. All likely points of enemy boarding are forward of the fighter bays. I’ll see you all after the fight.”
I said, “Let’s see. After the gunners vacate the forward turrets, only the two port-turrets will be manned.”
Rabinowitz said, “Are you suggesting something?”
I said, “I don’t know, Ma’am. Does Talos have protocols for ship rotation to take full advantage of the two remaining port guns? Or we could bring all five remaining side-turrets to bear, if we maneuver the Valley Forge so that either the dorsal face or the ventral face is turned toward the enemy. Talos could operate the unoccupied turrets remotely.”
Rabinowitz said, “Talos? If you can accomplish that, do so.”
Talos said, “I don’t have programming that deals with this scenario, but I’ll do the necessary calculations.” After a brief pause, Talos said, “Calculations complete. I’ve instructed the two remaining turret-gunners to vacate their turrets, and to stand by to help with reloading. I will operate all five guns. That will ensure that all turrets will be working cooperatively. I am maneuvering the ship to create the smallest possible theoretical silhouette consistent with bringing all five guns to bear. I will continue to use the reaction-control thrusters to maintain the most favorable position throughout the attack.”
Rabinowitz said, “Very good.”
Waters said, “Yes, that’ll provide the maximum protection against whatever comes at us. If they want to amass a large number of troops at any time during this operation, the logical places are the bays. If they do that, then Talos blows the forcefields, and they lose a lot of troops. If they want to trickle the people through little by little, we eliminate them a few at a time—with our shotguns, hopefully from behind the barricades.”
Waters looked over at me. I think he wanted to gauge my reaction.
I smiled weakly. Moments earlier, Waters had expressed misgivings regarding my idea of decompressing the bays. Then he gave the concept a coat of paint and stated it in different words, and all of a sudden he’s Copernicus.
Then Rabinowitz spoke up. “Lieutenant Waters, help me out. How is that different from what Midshipman Amundsen suggested?”
“I guess it’s not,” Waters said with a sheepish smile.
I was about to say something in Waters’s defense, because I hated to see him put on the spot. But before I could open my mouth, the sounds of battle began again.
The main noise at first was the horrendous racket of the Valley Forge’s guns. The guns were behemoths with multiple barrels, and with an aggregate rate of fire of ninety rounds per second, per gun.
Since there were no flares, and indeed no lights of any kind, our viewing was limited to the representations of the output of the sensors, as displayed on our monitors. There wasn’t much that could be made out. Again, it was like watching bees swarming.
But we could see the boarding craft as they maneuvered insidiously to make contact with the ventral area, which was the optimum side for their activities.
Inwardly I was slightly amused at the difficulty they were having in attaching themselves. Talos’s constant partial rotations of the Valley Forge gave them a difficult time.
Using the RCS thrusters, Talos could rapidly change the orientation of the Valley Forge, and more than once this resulted in our ship actually “batting” the boarding craft while t
hey maneuvered for position. We could see this represented on the screens, and whenever the contact was made, there was a terrible crashing sound. The noise was such that you would have thought that the Valley Forge was being ripped open, but it was nothing to the Forge, which was built to absorb massive impacts.
Not so, the boarding craft, however. There, the contacts were colossal and potentially back-breaking.
Talos didn’t narrate any of this, but I think he knew well that this was turning out to be effective.
Of course, on board we didn’t even notice the changes in the ship’s orientation, other than on the monitors. The artificial gravity within the Valley Forge always pulled us toward the deck, and the inertia dampeners covered most of the other effects.
The damaging force of Talos’s blows became more evident when one of the boarding ships, having suffered a particularly brutal clubbing, drifted away from the Valley Forge in a straight trajectory, and in a tumbling fashion.
Waters remotely adjusted the one of the cameras to isolate that particular craft. I think all of us were transfixed by the strangeness of what had happened.
I was staring at the monitor from four feet away, and I sucked in my breath in surprise when that boarding ship exploded in an enormous detonation of—I assume—its fuel supply. I imagined the terror of the boarders as the propellent and oxygen tanks ruptured, and their contents made contact with the ship’s rocket-blast.
It was highly gratifying.
“Commander Rabinowitz,” Talos said, “the Kerleegan fighters are now beyond the effective range of the guns. Moreover, I am no longer able to acquire any boarding craft as targets for the guns, because of their location.”
Rabinowitz said, “Can you make any other recommendations?”
Talos said, “Ma’am, allow me to offer a tactics alternative. You may wish to light the engines. I can then impart a spin to the Valley Forge. I can, in fact, bring about a rapid rotation, so that we will move through space, spinning, like a bullet does. Under those conditions it will be impossible for the boarding craft to attach themselves.”
That suggestion had a nice flavor to it, but it would never work. It basically relied on the Kerleegans to give up and go away. So, when I heard that I didn’t like it. Then the only course of action available to the Kerleegans would be to pursue us.
There were plenty of Kerleegan fighters still in the vicinity. With our engines lit, the nozzles wouldn’t be shielded. Right now we not only had the forcefield shielding the engines, but temporary armor plates were in place over the nozzles to offer further protection. In short, if we tried what Talos was suggesting, we were goners. There were no two ways about that.
Rabinowitz said, “Talos, is that what you’re recommending?”
“No, Ma’am,” Talos said. “It’s just an idea. There is a downside, as long as the Kerleegan task force is in the vicinity.”
Rabinowitz said, “That’s what I thought. I’m rejecting that suggestion.”
Then an announcement came over 1MC. It was Talos’s voice again. “Attention all crew, enemy boarding craft are attaching. Prepare to repel boarders.”
37
Defending Section ‘N’
I suppose it had been inevitable that sooner or later the Kerleegan ships would manage to attach. After the first one attached, the remaining other two of the original four managed to do so as well, in short order.
We soon heard the enemy drilling, as the sounds were carried through the hull. It was hard to tell precisely where the sounds were coming from, but images on our monitors pinpointed the activity. The attached ships were not relying on stealth technology at this point.
There were three boarding craft accounted for, all on the ventral surface of the Valley Forge. The sounds were horrible beyond imagination. They were howls, screeches, roars. And I heard repeated booms as though colossal hammers were hitting the hull.
I said, “Talos, where is the fifth boarding craft? And is there still a fighter escort? Our monitors here show nothing.”
Talos said, “The fifth craft is cloaked. The fighter escort is staying far back. The fact that they are keeping their distance tends to confirm my view that if you can destroy all, or nearly all, enemy personnel from all five boarding craft, the Kerleegans will depart.”
Commander Rabinowitz said, “Keep us informed.”
Talos said, “Aye aye, Ma’am.”
The Kerleegans had several different types of tools for penetrating enemy hulls. Ordinarily they would change drill bits, depending on the makeup of each layer of the hull, and they also used drilling torches, which generated great heat. Penetrating a hull was a time-consuming process, and it could take five or ten minutes, or more, to establish an opening. It was a nightmarish position for us to be in, waiting for the hair-raising sounds to stop, and knowing that when they did, it simply meant that the ship was going to be taking on scores of enemy troops.
There were now fourteen of us in the midshipmen’s ready-room—the eight Marines, the three commanders from the bridge, and the three midshipmen, including me. Our current inability to do something, to take action of some kind, was frustrating and maddening.
I said to Waters, “What about taking out the Banshees again?”
Waters said, “I’ve been thinking about that myself. But there isn’t any circumstance I can imagine that would allow us to do that. We fooled them once, but they wouldn’t let us get away with that again.” Then Waters looked upward and said, “Talos, your thoughts?”
“Lieutenant Waters, my analysis is the same as yours,” Talos said. “Although several Banshees are available, none have missiles mounted. They do have their guns, but then so do the boarding craft. Also, the Kerleegan fighters are still out there, and we do not want to draw them back in.”
Waters said, “Okay,” and I gave up on that plan. For several seconds, no one said anything.
Then Talos said, “Enemy boarding ship attempting hull penetration in section N.”
That was in our stern area, which we had thought was safe from boarding attempts.
I said, “I guess we now know where the fifth boarding ship is.”
Commander Rabinowitz said, “Midshipman Amundsen, take your people and go back to section N, please. Make them regret trying to penetrate our hull there.” The she turned to Lieutenant Waters. “Lieutenant Waters, how do you view the role of the Marines at this time?”
“For the sake of a unified approach, the Marines will cooperate with you in every way.”
Rabinowitz said, “Excellent. I won’t give you orders. I’ll make recommendations.”
Waters said, “Go ahead and give orders, Ma’am. The Marines will carry them out.”
Rabinowitz nodded. “For now, I want the Marines to accompany Midshipman Amundsen and her people to section N.”
Waters said, “Thank you. That gives me exactly what I wanted.”
38
The Unofficial Leader
For the first time, I accepted the fact that I had become the leader of the midshipmen. There was nothing official about it. We were all precisely the same rank. It all started when Captain Jefferson called me to the bridge earlier, at the beginning of this ordeal. From there on, I was pushy and bossy, an officious intermeddler. I tried to deny that I was the leader, but now that was difficult.
The ready-room was not in immediate danger of decompression, and a few of us had not been wearing our helmets. But as soon as the attack on section N was announced, we began to remedy that situation. Most of us already had our shotguns in our hands. Those who didn’t, grabbed theirs. By the time Rabinowitz issued her orders, we were all set.
Waters and I, and our people, moved toward section N with a sense of high urgency.
The fictitious phantasm that haunted my thoughts now was a supernatural drill-bit that could cut through our hull like a red-hot poker thrust into cottage cheese. And I pictured the enemy soldiers, like a swarm of hornets, pouring through the opening.
The reality wa
s different, more predictable, more real.
In accord with normal procedures, the Valley Forge crew had decompressed section N, in preparation for the fight against the anticipated boarders. Even though all members of the crew were wearing EVA suits, rapid decompression could be disastrous for those in the compartment. All this being the case, the Marines and midshipmen had to enter through an airlock.
When we arrived inside, we found four crewmen, each armed with a shotgun. Several more shotguns, about ten, were leaning against bulkheads and machinery.
The crewmen had cleared an area of about ten feet in all directions from the projected point of penetration. There wasn’t any doubt as to precisely where the entry was to be.
I walked to the center of the cleared area, and from that place, the racket was ear shattering, even though there was no air to aid in sound transmission. I could feel the vibrations of the deck, which were more like a violent rattling of the surface. A continuous high-pitched whine provided background noise for the sounds of the drill bit, and I could see the deck bowing slightly inward and vibrating. The shields and armor had been penetrated, and all that was left was a bit of open space, and the deck.
I stepped back, since I realized that their drill bit soon would be punching through. I moved to a place near Lennox. We looked briefly at each other, then turned back to watching the cleared area.
Then, with a bang, the huge drill-bit punched through and thrust upward about four feet into the compartment. Then it withdrew completely.
Standard procedure called for us all to conceal ourselves, since the next thing to make its appearance was likely to be a periscope or a camera. Our training was to allow as many boarders to enter as possible, and when we were spotted, to open fire. Accordingly, we all hid as well as we could, and the last words anyone said were from Waters.
He said, “Wait for my command to fire.”
Astrid's War Page 11