The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  Even if it doesn’t save us, we’ll go down fighting, Ian thought. And we’ll be damned sure we take the Feddie with us, even if it’s only a frigate and not something larger.

  Ian stared at a monitor that showed the view in front of the ship. At the moment, the frigate looked as large as a dreadnought, and the gap between the ships was shrinking with appalling rapidity.

  At the same time, the seconds seemed to stretch out forever, as if Hull were in a Q-space bubble that distorted time as well as space. There was no way that Ian could tell, just by watching that monitor, whether or not it would be possible to avoid the collision. There were updates being posted on another screen, changing constantly, showing the progress. With fifteen seconds left before impact, it was still marginal. Then the system picked up the first slight change in course by the frigate. It was working to avoid the collision as well, and it was moving in the right direction, accelerating as rapidly as it could at the same time. Their actions postponed the possible crash for an extra four seconds and indicated that—at worst—it would not be direct, but a glancing blow.

  Ian blinked once. Hull might well survive a sideswipe, if not unscathed, then with at least most of her gastight sections intact. Crew could be saved even if the ship were too badly damaged to continue the fight.

  Then the red alarm lights muted to amber. The two-note sequence of the warning horns dropped in pitch and volume. Ian let out his breath and eased his grip on the chair. Unless one of the ships altered course now, there would be no collision. As the safety margin increased, the lights went green. The audible alarm ended. And, as the two ships passed each other—with less than fifty feet clearance—even the green lights went out.

  “Continue firing everything we have at the frigate,” Iansaid. “CIC, where is everyone else? Give me an update now.”

  Data flowed onto two monitors. A third screen displayed a chart with all of the Federation and Commonwealth vessels pinpointed, showing course and speed. That monitor appeared impossibly cluttered, even to eyes accustomed to making sense of complicated displays. A voice from CIC gave Ian an oral update at the same time, pointing out salient features.

  Sheffield had already launched her Spacehawks. Hull had been scheduled to launch immediately upon arrival as well, but the proximity of the Federation frigate had made that impossible. Apart from the danger of collision between the two ships, the Spacehawks and their launching cylinders would have been easy targets for the frigate at point-blank range.

  One of Ian’s monitors seemed to erupt in flames. He had been concentrating on the update from the Combat Intelligence Center, and the sudden burst of flame startled him. He needed a second to realize that it was just the image on the screen, not the monitor itself. The enemy frigate had exploded.

  The voice from CIC faltered, then stopped. When it returned, the first comment was, “We’re taking hits from debris, sir.”

  “Damage control, keep me posted,” Ian said, keying a switch on the panel at his right side. There were audible echoes of the debris impacts reverberating inside the battlecruiser.

  “Aye, sir. No hull penetration, no report of any damage yet,” the officer manning the damage control hub reported. No more than ten seconds passed before she spoke again. “We’ve been breached, Captain. Two penetrations, sections C-117 and C-118.”

  Ian keyed in the numbers to see where they were, and what functions they served. Both compartments were in engineering, far back along the ship.

  “The breach in C-118 has been plugged by the crew in that compartment,” damage control reported. “No casualtiesthere. We have no response from inside C-117.”

  “How many crew in that section?” Ian asked.

  “Four, sir.”

  “Get someone in there.”

  “Yes, sir. The last debris is past us now.”

  “Operations, get the birds launched as soon as possible, once we know there’s no damage to the LRCs.” (Launch and Recovery Cylinders.) “How do we stand with the rest of the enemy ships?”

  There were multiple targets available, and Hull was under attack from most of them, one way or another. The captain of a battlecruiser was not required to make every tactical decision in combat. A battlecruiser was too large and complicated for that to be possible except under the most ideal of conditions. Combat rarely provided those. There were three primary weapons control centers, each with their own backup stations, and in many respects they could operate independently of the bridge, particularly in defensive counter-fire. Incoming missiles or other weapons did not always allow time for consultation. The response had to be instantaneous or it would be too late.

  Before exiting Q-space, the weapons control centers had been given the authority to take all available targets under fire. Even while the captain and much of the crew had worried about whether or not the ship would collide with the Federation frigate, and were doing their best to avert that, weapons that could be brought to bear on other targets were. Missiles were launched. Beamers were fired. The hulls of ships were hardened against lasers, but particle beam weapons could be effective within a limited range. Ship-to-ship fighting relied mostly on missiles. The fighters, the Commonwealth’s Spacehawks and the Federation’s equivalent, were mostly delivery systems for missiles, attempting to launch too close to the enemy for antimissile missiles or other weapons to destroy them all.

  Ian scanned the available data, trying to assemble a picture of the developing battle. The fighters were launched, one flight to remain as a defensive screen, the rest sent out to attack enemy ships. One Commonwealth frigate had beendamaged seriously. Sheffield was engaged with two enemy ships, a battlecruiser and one of the dreadnoughts. The rest of the Commonwealth frigates were trying to move to Sheffield’s aid.

  “All of the enemy shuttles appear to have grounded,” CIC reported. “The transports have moved out of effective range of our weapons, but they have not retreated to Q-space.”

  Sheffield disappeared from Ian’s monitor as she ducked into Q-space to get out of harm’s way. Sheffield was impossibly outclassed by the dreadnought—a twelve-mile-long behemoth that mounted nearly three times the weaponry. Ian glanced at the time. He doubted that Sheffield would be gone for much more than the few minutes her Nilssens would need to recycle—ninety seconds before leaving Q-space, and ninety seconds before each of the two jumps, in and out of Q-space, coming back. She might appear from any direction, at any point in near space. That minimal tactical surprise was her only advantage. But she would not stay away long, not while they were still waiting for the new Commonwealth task force to arrive with the Marine reinforcements.

  Several Federation ships also vanished. There was no visible transition as they entered Q-space, no fancy visual effects. A ship was either in normal space or in Q-space. The transition was instantaneous.

  “Keep a close watch for those Feddies,” Ian said. “I don’t want them popping up in our knickers.”

  “The second dreadnought is changing course, sir,” the OD announced. “It looks as if she’s trying to intercept us.”

  “Are our Spacehawks out far enough to be clear of the turbulence if we have to jump?”

  “Aye, sir, all clear of the bubble zone.”

  “We’ll give this Feddie plenty of time. Let her waste effort trying to get to us. Navigation, when we jump back in I’ll want our exit calculated to put us well away from any intercept. We don’t want another close shave. One shave a day has always been enough for me.” Ian had not been consciously trying to make a joke. The words were out beforehe realized that he had. But the jest, poor though it might be, did relax him a little. It had the same effect on most of the bridge crew.

  “Once we jump out, any Spacehawks not immediately engaged should be diverted to help the Marines, if they’ve called in any requests,” Ian said, savoring the scattered laughs. “No, make that half of the Spacehawks. Keep the rest up here attacking ships. And for us, it’ll have to be in and out and back to rendezvous with them. Navigation, y
ou’ll have to take that into account when you plot our return from Q-space.”

  “Aye, sir. It was already in the mix.”

  Ian took another quick scan of his situation monitors. It would be another three minutes before the dreadnought could get close enough to pose a threat—if Hull stayed around. Beyond that leviathan, there were no Federation ships within eight minutes of being a serious threat. Ian relaxed a little more. Finally, there was time to think, to make better plans.

  “Operations, do you have suggestions?” he asked.

  “Sheffield has returned,” CIC announced before Ian received a reply. “Signal already coming in from the admiral, sir.”

  “Give it to me on my number three monitor.” Ian leaned forward a little.

  “Well done, Shrikes, both the shooting and not ramming the Feddie.”

  Ian enjoyed the compliment, but he was vaguely disappointed that there wasn’t more to the message, specifically some new battle plan. But his disappointment faded almost at once. He had scarcely looked up from reading the admiral’s words before there was another message—this one shouted—from CIC.

  “The new fleet’s here, sir! They’ve just popped in. Seven ships, including two battlecruisers.”

  24

  “The Marines aren’t going to get to our wounded out there anytime soon,” Reggie Bailey said. “It looks as if you were right, Joseph. We’re going to have to help them.” Reggie had kept returning to the rear of the Evans house to look out at the bodies strewn between the line of houses and the forest. The couple of times he had opened the door a little, he had heard the cries of wounded people calling for help. The Federation aircraft had not returned, but there was fighting on the ground now, across the road and stretching north and south.

  Joseph nodded. “We’ll have to try to bring in any who are still alive. Maybe if the neighbors see us out there, some of them will get the idea and help. The two of us certainly can’t get to all of them.”

  “You have a first aid kit, sticky plasters, anything?”

  “Not more than the little we might have had for our own use, certainly not enough to make a difference now. I’ll have Mary see what she can whip up with the replicator. I don’t know that we’ve got the right raw materials for much.” Mary was his wife.

  “Even just cloths we can use for bandages would help.”

  “I’m going with you,” Al said, moving toward the rear door.

  “No,” his father said. “You stay in here.”

  “I’ve got to do something to help.” Al planted his feet wide as if he expected his father to try to knock him down to keep him inside. “If I can’t help fight the Feddies, at least I can help take care of some of the people they’ve tried to murder.”

  “Your mother won’t allow it.”

  “She doesn’t have to know until we’re out there. Look, I’m big enough to help carry people back—some of them anyway. There are a lot of people out there.”

  Joseph returned from talking to his wife about preparing bandages and anything else their home replicator could manage with what they had to feed it. She would be able to get recipes through the complink’s database, and the replicator would tell her what it could make from the materials in its supply hoppers.

  “Let’s go,” Joseph said. He appeared not to notice that the Bailey father and son had been arguing.

  Reggie conceded. “Yes.” His look included Al in the group.

  As soon as Al opened the door, the sounds of battle grew considerably louder. The house was not completely sound-proof, but it had dampened most of the intrusive noise. Outside, the three stood close to the wall for a minute, looking out over the rear lawns, trying to spot people who might still be alive. There was no one too close, dead or alive. The nearest casualties were fifty yards away, and they were not moving at all.

  “We should check all of them, shouldn’t we?” Al asked. “We can’t tell for sure about people unless we get right with them, can we?”

  “I guess not,” his father said.

  “Start where we can and work from there?” Al suggested.

  Neither of the adults had a better plan.

  “Stay low,” Reggie said. “When we’re out there, get down on the ground until we know what we need to do.”

  Joseph Evans led the way by only a few steps, running toward the nearest group of casualties. Before they had covered half the distance, Al was a little in front of the adults. When he got close, Al slid to the ground.

  It was only at that moment that Al really thought about what might come next. He had never been close to a dead person, had certainly never touched one. But if he hesitated it was so briefly that the others could not have noticed—even if they hadn’t been fully occupied with their own thoughts. Al moved next to the first person, got up on his knees, and rolled the man over on his back, getting blood on his hands as he did.

  Green eyes stared sightlessly at him. Al’s hand trembled, but he reached for the side of the man’s neck to feel for a pulse. He had studied enough first aid to know that much. He pressed his fingers against the artery and held his breath while he waited—hoped—for evidence that the man’s heart was beating. But there was no pulse. After seeing those eyes, Al had not expected to find one. He stared at the face for a moment. The man might have been someone he had seen, but he did not recognize him.

  “He’s dead,” he whispered. His father and Joseph Evans were checking others. There were seven people close together in the group. Two of them were children, younger than Al’s sisters.

  Al almost crawled over the dead man to keep from getting too high off of the ground as he moved to the little girls. One of them had just stirred, and groaned. Al bent over her, his face almost touching hers. The girl’s eyes were closed, but he could see that she was breathing, hard, rasping breaths that seemed to cause her pain. Al glanced at the other girl, who was even younger, perhaps no more than three or four. Both girls were covered with blood, but alive.

  “Dad! I’ve got two little girls who are alive.”

  “We’ve got a live one here too,” Reggie said. Al glanced that way. The other one was a very large man.

  “If it’s gonna take both of you to carry him back, I can get both of the kids,” Al said. “If somebody will just hand the second one to me after I stand up with the first.”

  Reggie came over. Al stood, picking up the larger of the two girls as he did. Once Al had her adjusted in his left arm, her head on his shoulder, his father gave him the other girl.

  “Be careful,” Reggie said. “Don’t fall with them.”

  The older girl continued to moan, louder than before. Al walked as quickly as he could, afraid that the movement was hurting the girl. He had fifty, maybe fifty-five yards togo to the rear door of the Evans house. His mother was standing in the doorway, holding the door half open, holding on to it as if she were restraining herself from running out to help.

  Al was surprised at how heavy two very small girls felt after he had traveled less than a third of the way. His legs felt weak, as if he had just run a mile at top speed, and he began to worry that he might trip and fall, perhaps finishing the damage that the Feddies had done to the girls. But he stayed on his feet, though he nearly stumbled into the door at the end. His mother was there to steady him.

  “Take this one, Mother,” he said, turning his right side to her. “I’ll bring the other in.”

  Mary Evans was in the kitchen. She took the other girl.

  “Look at you,” Ida said. “You’re covered in blood.”

  “Their blood,” Al said, looking down at his shirt. “Take care of them. I’ve got to get back out there.”

  His father and Joseph Evans reached the house, carrying the man between them. Al only hesitated for an instant. If he waited for the others to go out again, his mother might try to keep him from going. He ducked through the doorway and started running toward the next group of bodies.

  “Where should we put him?” Joseph asked his wife.


  “Anywhere. I guess we’ll have to put them all on the floor. How many will there be?”

  Joseph shook his head. “I don’t have any idea. We’ll just have to do what we can, for as long as possible.”

  Tell us to get back inside our lines the best we can, then send us out again straightaway. Somebody ain’t thinking with both halves of their brain. But Alfie kept his complaints to himself. He didn’t have energy to spare, and this wasn’t the best time for levity in any case. He did know the difference—usually.

  The I&R platoon had barely managed to get through before the two Feddie units linked up. They had sneaked through the narrowing gap, worried that the Feddies would open up on them from behind. There had been no time to crawl through the most dangerous stretch. The Feddies weremoving toward them from both sides, and if the Marines didn’t move fast, they wouldn’t be able to move at all. They had to get across to their own lines before the shooting started.

  They had drawn a few shots from the Feddies, but not until they had almost reached their own lines—close enough for covering fire. The I&R men had been running by that time, and once they got behind other Marines, they had all collapsed on the ground to get their wind back.

  “Time for a spot of leave,” Alfie had said once he had air to spare for a jest. No one had responded, not even with a groan.

  Ten minutes later, they had been back with the rest of H&S Company, on the far end of the half perimeter that the three companies had established. And five minutes after that, before they really had a chance to recover from their earlier exertions, they were on their way out again, moving south, past the hook end of the Commonwealth positions.