by Tori Harris
“Shields offline!” Lau yelled. He had been forced to wait what seemed like several seconds until the deafening sound of hull impacts had subsided somewhat before making his announcement. Even now, the sound of multiple alarms as well as energy weapons fire slamming directly into the ship’s hull continued at such a frightful pace that it sounded as if she could literally fly apart at any moment.
Prescott struggled to push forward in his restraints so that he could lean quickly over to the side opposite Commander Reynolds and vomit, his stomach finally overcoming his best efforts at maintaining control. “Stay on target!” he bellowed, wiping his mouth with his sleeve before straightening in his Command chair once again. “Continue the attack run!”
“Firing, Captain,” Schmidt reported, “but we missed the window for a coordinated attack. Our missiles are still in flight. The AI belayed their C-Jump.”
With multiple weapons offline and the ship well past the point of optimum weapons range, Theseus’ AI struggled to compensate for the damage while still salvaging the attack — hitting the designated point location target with three plasma torpedoes as well as roughly half the beam weapons and railguns that had been used during the previous attack on Charlie 4. Not surprisingly, the Baldev’s shields maintained their integrity, dutifully channeling the incoming fire as glowing waves of energy traveled along the entire length of the enormous ship’s hull.
“The weapons pods that hit us have been destroyed, but the attack on Bravo 1 was ineffective, sir,” Schmidt reported. “Their supplemental aft shield field strength dropped by about twenty percent, but it’s already back to normal levels. No significant change in their primary aft shields.”
“Did we at least destroy some of their shield emitters with the railguns?”
“Yes, sir,” Lau answered, “but several of our beam emitters and railgun turrets went offline when we got hit, so we didn’t get as many of them as we did on the first run.”
“Helm, take as much evasive action as you can while you put us back in position for another run,” Prescott ordered.
Fisher turned around in his chair to confirm what he was hearing, an unmistakable look of fear mixed with confusion on his normally confident face.
“NOW, Ensign!”
“Sir, we can’t —” Reynolds began.
Prescott turned to his XO with an expression leaving little doubt that further discussion was not an option. “Lieutenant Lee, damage report.”
“Those weapons pods effectively shot-blasted most of the surface area of our hull, Captain. We have mostly superficial, ablative damage where the fragments impacted, but the hits from the Baldev’s energy weapons are doing much more significant damage — every one of those is penetrating a meter or more into our armor.”
“The shields, Lee, why are the shields offline?” Prescott asked impatiently.
“Best guess, sir, there were just too many fragments for the system to intercept them all. All those additional hull-mounted gravitic emitters that make the shields work are not very heavily armored. Quite a few of them are offline and most likely destroyed.”
“So they’re not just temporarily down, they’re not coming back at all, right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Tactical,” Prescott continued, still raising his voice over the tremendous sound of his ship’s hull being pounded by the Baldev’s energy weapons fire, “have any of our inbound missiles been intercepted?”
“No, sir,” Schmidt answered. “They remain outside of Bravo 1’s energy weapons range … she may not have even detected them yet.”
“Can you keep them in a holding pattern of some sort until we get another opportunity?”
“Yes, sir. The AI did that automatically when we missed our first time on target. As long as they don’t get destroyed, we can re-task them at any time.”
“Helm, how soon will we be back in position for another run?”
“Uh …” Fisher hesitated, struggling to focus in spite of the incessant noise and violent shaking, “six niner seconds, sir.”
“Right. Tactical, this is probably your last shot. Get your missile strike coordinated again and make this one count. Fisher, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to run like hell after this next pass and C-Jump as soon as possible … assuming we’re still able.”
“No, sir, you definitely do not, and as far as I can tell, the C-Drive is still working so far.”
“Glad to hear it. Engineering, bridge,” Prescott called.
“Commander Logan here. Go, Captain!”
“Any chance we can get the shields back online … or at least some of the weapons that didn’t fire on that last run?”
“The shields are mostly a no-go, sir. We lost too many emitters. I might be able to replace enough of them to get some of their functionality back without a depot-level maintenance facility, but it’s going to require quite a bit of EVA work. It does look like the system is still active from about the leading edge of our ‘wing’ section aft, though.”
“That’s better than nothing, I guess. And the weapons?”
“You should have most of them back now. The AI had all but decided that we were about to be destroyed, so there was a lot of automated rerouting of power going on. I’ve tweaked those settings, so it shouldn’t happen again. Other than that, we’ve got quite a bit of hull damage, so I wouldn’t count on everything working. I know for sure we’ve lost a couple of railgun mounts and two of our forward plasma torpedo tubes.”
Prescott scowled and swore to himself. Having lived through the previous attack, he now felt oddly at peace with the prospect of ultimately not surviving the current battle with the Baldev. But with such a significant reduction in available firepower, could he even justify the risk of one more run?
“Anything else I need to know?” he asked, making a conscious decision to push the lingering doubts from his mind.
“No, sir. Just keep in mind that it’s only a matter of time before they do enough damage to hit to something we can’t do without … or breach our inner hull, God forbid.”
“Understood. Just one more run, Commander. Prescott out. Alright, everyone,” he shouted, addressing everyone on the bridge, “we’re only going to get one more shot at this —”
“Contact!” Lieutenant Lau interrupted.
On the tactical plot, the new contact, which the AI had immediately classified as a probable Sajeth Collective cruiser due to its size and emissions characteristics, was initially displayed with the yellow icon reserved for unknown contacts. A moment later, the icon’s color changed to green, indicating that the AI now recognized it as a known neutral vessel — or one manually designated as a noncombatant.
“It’s Charlie 3 again, sir, the Hadeon!” Lau announced as the accompanying block of identifying text appeared on the screen, then immediately began flashing to indicate that a live video stream was available.
“Commander Takkar is hailing us, Captain,” Lieutenant Dubashi reported from the Comm/Nav console.
“On-screen, please,” Prescott replied, hoping that he wasn’t about to receive another recommendation that he surrender to Captain Yagani and the Baldev.
Seconds later, a vidcon window displaying an earnest-looking Commander Yuli Takkar opened in the center of the bridge view screen.
“Hello again, Captain Prescott,” he began in his rather formal style. “My sincerest apologies for leaving your ship alone to face the Baldev and the Keturah earlier. On behalf of my entire crew, I would like to pledge the Hadeon in support of Admiral Naftur and his house. Until he returns to his duties, we will assist you and your crew to the best of our abilities.”
Prescott paused momentarily, unsure of what to make of the Wek officer’s proclamation of support. Was this type of “defection” from the Resistance movement what Admiral Naftur had hoped would happen on a larger scale? As he struggled to process the implications of what Takkar was saying, a particularly savage jolt — one that would easily have thrown him from his
chair had he not been restrained — vividly reminded him of the urgency of the current situation.
“We have taken quite a bit of damage, Commander, and are in the process of preparing for another attack. Are you truly willing to fire on your own vessel in order to help us?”
“We pledge our lives and our ship to Gracafürst and his house,” Takkar repeated. “Once this conflict has concluded, we will submit ourselves for whatever disciplinary action he deems appropriate. We have, all of us, behaved in a dishonorable fashion and see this as our only path to atone for our misconduct.”
Prescott stared directly into Takkar’s huge gray eyes, incredulous, but detected no hint whatsoever of deceit or false pretense. “We welcome your assistance,” he replied, thinking darkly to himself that if the Wek commander were lying it would probably do little more than hasten their demise at this point anyway. “You will receive targeting information shortly. Can you be in a position to fire on the Baldev’s stern in … Fisher?”
“Three eight seconds, sir,” he replied instantly.
“We have a firing solution from our current position,” Takkar answered, “but will close to improve it as best we can during the time remaining. Please do not alter your approach flight path in our direction to ensure that you avoid our incoming fire.”
“Understood. Good luck, Commander.”
“To us both, Captain. Takkar out.”
“Missile launch!” Lieutenant Lau reported from Tactical 2 just as the vidcon window closed on the bridge view screen. “Two four … correction four eight missiles fired from Bravo 1 — both her ventral and dorsal launch cells this time. Time to impact, one niner seconds.”
“Countermeasures again, Lieutenant Lee. All weapons to point defense mode,” Prescott responded. “No matter what happens, I want every weapon we have available back in normal mode in time to execute our attack.”
“Aye, sir,” Lee, Lau, and Schmidt responded as one.
“Countermeasures away,” Lee announced shortly thereafter.
“Beam and kinetic weapons firing in point defense mode,” Lau added. “Sea-whiz is tracking … sir, the Hadeon is firing!”
At this range, the BD cruiser’s fire control AI had easily detected and locked on to all forty-eight missiles fired by the Baldev before they had even completely cleared their launch cells. Just as the two groups of missiles reached the point where they were beginning to alter course in the direction of their target, the Hadeon had opened fire. With her starboard side facing in the general direction of the Baldev, Commander Takkar had positioned the cruiser to present her entire broadside of energy weapons banks to the battleship, thus creating a very nearly ideal case for an anti-missile barrage.
“Whoa,” Lieutenant Lee remarked in awe as what looked like two distinct, fan-shaped groupings of orange-tinted energy weapons fire streaked both above and below Bravo 1’s hull to engage the two groups of departing missiles simultaneously.
With cold, methodical precision, the Hadeon’s AI worked through its list of targets, initially designating each one to receive as many as three separate impacts from its heavy beam emitters. As the list of targets quickly dwindled, each was assigned progressively more weapons fire until the list was reduced to zero. Within eight seconds of the anti-ship missiles leaving their vertical launch cells — and well before any had reached the curtain of kinetic energy rounds being laid down by the Theseus — the Hadeon had destroyed all forty-eight of Bravo 1’s anti-ship missiles.
“All inbound missiles destroyed!” Lau reported excitedly.”
“Securing all weapons from point-defense mode,” Schmidt added. “Optimum weapons range in one one seconds.”
“Well, I guess that settles the question of whether or not Commander Takkar was serious about helping us,” Reynolds said without looking up from her touchscreen.
“Maybe so,” Prescott replied. “I guess I’ll be more convinced when I see them open fire on their own ship.”
Even with much of her once proud hull now scorched and marred by a combination of the damage inflicted by the Carrada weapons pods and the relentless pounding from the Baldev’s energy weapons, TFS Theseus still managed a graceful, sweeping turn to begin her final attack run on the distant battleship.
“Point location target acquired and locked,” Schmidt reported from Tactical 1. “All seven two HB-7c missiles confirming re-task order. Firing all weapons.”
Before Schmidt had even finished executing the required commands at his console, the Hadeon opened fire on the Baldev’s drive section with all of her starboard energy weapons banks — now configured for an anti-ship strike and converged on the point location designated by her new ally. The center of the targeted area blazed forth with brilliant, white light surrounded by an angry, orange glow as massive amounts of energy were delivered to a roughly four square meter area of the battleship’s aft shields. Milliseconds later, Theseus added her diminished but still powerful salvo of three plasma torpedoes along with focused fire from twenty-three beam emitters and seven railgun turrets.
The barrage continued for what seemed like an eternity to the crews aboard both attacking ships, each of which continued to take a ferocious pounding from the Baldev’s powerful aft and starboard energy weapons. In reality, however, only a few seconds passed before the battleship’s already weakened supplemental shields lost several additional emitters to kinetic energy weapons fire, leading to a localized failure in the targeted area. The opportunity was immediately detected by Theseus’ AI, which commanded all seventy-two of the inbound HB-7c missiles to strike the now-vulnerable area — calculating that at least a few would manage to transition inside the battleship’s primary shields.
Chapter 10
SCS Gunov, Location Crossbow
(5.93x1011 km from Location Dagger)
“We will reach optimal energy weapons range to the remaining Terran vessel in just under two minutes, Commodore,” the Gunov’s tactical officer reported.
With nearly six minutes now having elapsed since most of the enemy warships had transitioned to hyperspace, Sarafi was growing increasingly anxious that he was either running out of time, or, worse, being led into a trap by the fleeing Human ship.
“This is taking far too long,” he said gravely. “We need to finish off this last target and return to the confines of our defensive perimeter as quickly as possible.”
“If their damage is significant, perhaps a spread of anti-ship missiles might finish them off before we are forced to engage with energy weapons,” Commander Freyda suggested. Although still not comfortable with the idea of destroying damaged enemy vessels that were clearly no longer a threat, this one was attempting to leave the area rather than surrender. In her mind, the simple act of failing to yield and face capture rendered them fair game for additional attacks.
“Do it. And make it a spread of eighteen — six from each ship,” Sarafi growled, chiding himself for being so distracted that he had not considered this simple tactic several minutes before.
“Six missiles from each ship, aye, sir,” his tactical officer repeated. “Both ships acknowledged — firing.”
Atop each of the three Gresav-class destroyers, small sets of doors above six vertical launch cells swung open. Immediately thereafter, bright plumes of fiery exhaust gas escaped from the adjacent vents as anti-ship missiles climbed silently above each destroyer atop a pillar of flame.
“Missiles away,” the tactical officer reported. “Time to impact, twenty-nine seconds.”
“Should we risk a turn back towards our perimeter now?” Freyda asked.
Sarafi considered her question momentarily. It was certainly not a foregone conclusion that the missile attack would destroy the remaining Human vessel, especially given that they were equipped not only with shields, but also formidable point defense weaponry. Continuing this seemingly endless pursuit of a single, damaged enemy ship while potentially endangering the most critical remaining members of his own task force, however, was beginning to fee
l very much like the errand of a fool.
“A wise question, Commander,” he replied, “and I am of your way of thinking entirely. Helm, set a course back to the point where we began the previous engagement — directly above our remaining cruiser, please.”
“Contacts!” the tactical officer announced yet again. “I have two of the Terran vessels dead ahead, sir, to either side of the damaged ship. They appear to be laying down defensive fire.”
“Helm, belay my previous order. Continue on course towards the damaged vessel. Tactical, if they succeed in shooting down our missiles, concentrate all of our formation’s energy weapons fire on the damaged vessel first. Once we eliminate that one, we will move on to the other two. XO, I suspect the remaining Terran vessels will resume their attack on the Rusalovs momentarily. Be prepared to —”
Before Sarafi could complete his sentence, the Gresav-class destroyer immediately to port and slightly aft of his ship exploded in a brilliant white ball of fire as fifteen HB-7c missiles transitioned from hyperspace inside her aft shields, penetrated her hull, and detonated their compact antimatter warheads.
“Helm, break left!” he roared with a level of fury beyond anything the members of his bridge crew had ever experienced from their Commodore.
Thrusters all along the Gunov’s starboard bow blazed into life and immediately began pushing the huge warship to port, even as her gimbaled sublight engine nozzles vectored the tremendous thrust required to bring her stern around while simultaneously increasing to maximum power. Even before the destroyer was fully established on her new course, the second volley of fifteen anti-ship missiles — originally intended for her vulnerable drive section — transitioned from hyperspace where their target had been located just moments before. The missiles continued ahead harmlessly for a few additional seconds before being automatically targeted by the Gunov’s AI, which quickly dispatched the entire group with murderously accurate energy weapons fire.