ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 20 MINUTES
On the Adventurer, Ty watched the clock tick slowly by. This was the longest twenty minutes he’d ever lived through. A tickle of a thought began to brew in the back of his mind.
“Anderson, I’m going to look back at that Aatarr.”
“Ok, passive only. Keep it short. It’s on your main panel.”
Ty powered up the main panel. He punched in the coordinates for where the Aatarr would be. Only stars were visible. The drive flare was gone. He pondered the information and set the sensor to spread spectrum viewing to merge information not only from visible light, but from deep into the infrared and ultra-violet ends of the light spectrum. A bright dot appeared on the screen. Ty was certain it was the Aatarr and he could tell it had broken off the pursuit. He focused in on the dot and zoomed the magnification. A small cloud of sixteen flecks of barely discernible light appeared. They were on a different trajectory than the Aatarr.
“Missiles… stiletto’s. They’re the only ones that have a chance of getting us,” Ty said out loud.
Anderson came over to look at the screen. “How much of a risk are they to us?”
“You know what happens if they do hit us since we’ve been hit twice by them already. In our shape, another direct hit from just one will take us out.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah, it’s a desperation shot though. That Aatarr is apparently at his limit on his engine otherwise he’d still be burning towards us. You can see how he’s broken off the pursuit.” Ty pointed at the dot that was the large ship. “See how it’s starting to move off to the left here.”
“What about the missiles?”
“What we’ve seen of stilettos is they are incredibly fast, but once the motor finishes, they’re purely ballistic weapons. Their typical flight profile however is burn, coast, burn to close, and then they orient towards the ship and fire a self-shaping penetrator at the target ship. Some of the later versions use the EMP burst that shapes the penetrator to disrupt the shields too. Nasty stuff.”
“How nasty?”
“It was such a stiletto that took out the Devonshire last month.”
“Ouch! A stiletto did her in?” Anderson was incredulous.
Ty nodded in assent. ”Yeah, she had four centimeters of energy-reinforced, ablative-doped, spun-fiber armor. Older stilettos just bounce off of the stuff, but the EMP burst weakened the reinforcement enough that the penetrator made it through the armor at nearly full speed. Our best guess is that it ruptured a containment bottle as it banged around inside the ship. By comparison, we have three millimeters of energy reinforced nano-fiber armor. If we had our energy reinforcement working, it would still get through, but it wouldn’t have enough energy to get this far into the interior of the ship.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have the hull energy.”
“It doesn’t matter really, they’re coming towards us at nearly ten percent light just to get to us. Remember that first Aatrix we took out?”
She nodded.
“That’s what will happen to us if even one penetrator touches the ship.”
“Ever the proverbial fountain of good news,” she said with a slight smile.
“Right.”
“So what can we do?” asked Anderson.
“It’s a sure thing they’ve spread those missiles out to try and cover the entire section of the trajectory where we’ll jump. To be perfectly safe, we need to change our velocity enough to move our jump point outside of that area.”
“How much?”
Ty paused a moment to do the calculation in his head, “Probably about fourteen seconds of a level one push against Jupiter from the gravity engine, is the least I’d do.”
Anderson paused as she did some calculations of her own in her head.
Ty interrupted her by adding, “The longer we delay, the greater the velocity change will need to be to get us out of harm’s way. If we wait until the terminal attack of those missiles, we’ll need to make a level three or four push.”
“You made your point there. What other options do we have?”
“Jump now or before the penetrators hit us. As it is, we’re…,” he glanced at a chronometer that was counting down to the jump point, “we’re fifteen minutes and a few seconds from jumping.”
“How about those missiles, have a guess on their ETA?”
“The commander out there knows we’re trying to get to Beta Hydri. He also knows our trajectory. So he knows where to aim the missiles because the arc of the trajectory that actually points at Beta Hydri is pretty short… maybe a hundred-fifty clicks or so long. So, his aiming solution is simple. With fifteen missiles that’s about one per ten click stretch. Those shards from the warhead are wicked fast. If they get there a couple of seconds before we do, we’ll be lucky if no more than three missiles are close enough to engage us.”
“Well, he fired them so he must be pretty confident they will.”
“I’m not so sure. He shot nearly his full complement of missiles in one volley.”
Anderson interrupted him, “How do you know that? How do you know all this stuff about the Alliance weaponry?”
Ty paused and gave her a strained look before he continued, “I’m a tactician.” He offered no further explanation.
“Is that all? Do they all know this stuff?”
“The good ones do. The only way I can anticipate what the Alliance will do is if I know what they can do.” He emphasized the “can”. “We have pretty good intelligence on their weapons. They’ve shot enough of them at us lately.”
“That’s for sure, you were saying?”
Ty picked up his comment as if nothing had happened.
“He broke off pursuit. My hunch is he’s got a hurt ship, yet he’s desperate to get us. The Alliance rewards failure brutally and we handed them their heads on a platter today. He knows these missiles are his best chance to get us and he’s not too confident that they will. He’s rolling the dice on at least one of them getting to us before we jump.”
“What do you think?”
“I’d know if I could get a sensor sweep. As it is, my guess is he’s betting we can’t make any course correction and he spread them all along the jump arc.”
“Hence, jumping early is our only real escape option?”
“No, changing velocity now is. It takes less energy, but there’s still a risk if we don’t make a big enough change. Our velocity change needs to be a big change, like a level two push. Anything less and we may still be in range of some of those missiles. Everyone of them that can fire, will fire if they detect they have a firing solution. Then it’s up to the accuracy of the aiming gun.”
“How good is that?”
“That’s the stilettos’ one weakness, it’s so-so. A focused EMP burst shapes and drives the penetrator. The strength of the stiletto is it gets right up in your face before it fires. Remember the burn-cruise-burn. That last burn is a fine point aiming or a sprint to close firing maneuver. So they didn’t have to make it really accurate.”
“And you think they had to use that secondary burn engine to even make the intercept?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“You betting the survival of this ship on that assessment?”
Ty paused before answering, “Yes”.
“If you’re wrong?” She gave him a look.
He couldn’t tell if it was angry or just joking. His answer was flat and matter of fact. “Then we’ll die.”
“Then I hope you’re right one more time.”
Ty chuckled before answering. “Me, too,” is all he said. “I’m programming a twenty-second level one push to get us out of that corridor.”
She made the computation in her head. “That’s about fifteen minutes of containment power then,” she said.
“I can live with that,” said Ty. He keyed in the course change and committed the change. The drive came to life for twenty seconds as it pushed them forward.
The two modified stilettos observed the course change, computed new intercept courses and fired their remaining engagement motor.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
The Aatarr
ALLIANCE BATTLESHIP “AATARR” CLASS: T-PLUS 8 HOURS
Two million kilometers away the Aatarr continued to bear down on the ship. The commander of the vessel looked at the readout on his main drives. They were on the verge of failing, due to being pushed so hard in their attempt to capture the fleeing vessel. He weighed his options carefully. If they broke off the pursuit and saved the engines and his crew, he knew he’d likely pay for the choice with his life. The Jackal did not care about people or machines, only the accomplishment of the mission. Those who failed, paid dearly. It was that simple. Yet, if he continued the pursuit, he’d condemn himself and his crew to death with the failure of the main drives. As it was, he wasn’t sure they’d survive now. He hoped a long shot would suffice.
“Tactical, status of the fleeing Adventurer?”
“Sir, the vessel continues in a ballistic trajectory away from the fifth planet. It has not so much as made a single minor course correction in the past hour after making the trajectory change, sir. At our present course, we will be in range within twenty-five minutes.”
He walked over to the officer’s station. “You say, it hasn’t maneuvered at all?”
“Not a bit, sir. As near as I can tell, their main generator is in running at a high level since we transitioned into this system. Yet, they are completely silent in their emissions, sir.”
“So she was hurt badly?”
“Yes, if I were to guess, their power busses are damaged forcing them to rely upon their reserves. By now those are so depleted, they don’t have the power to shoot back, nor drive their shields, nor maneuver. I doubt they can even power a sensor. If they have any power at all, they’re hoarding it to make a jump.”
“A jump? How?”
“Their trajectory, sir, it’s a perfect shot at Beta Hydri or will be in about twenty minutes.”
“Have we gotten anything on Remora yet to indicate an exact jump coordinate?”
The man shook his head, “Not yet. Normally, Republic vessels transmit within the hour before jumping. This one hasn’t. But we can still identify where they must jump to hit the Beta Hydri system.”
“When will they be aligned to jump?”
The man studied his display for a moment. He keyed some data in and looked at the results.
“Beta Hydri is fairly close, so they have a fair amount of leeway in their jump zone.”
“I don’t need the lecture.” He smiled reprovingly as he spoke.
“Sorry, sir, they have about a ten second jump window. They’ll enter the window in about twenty minutes.”
“So, twenty minutes to cross two em-clicks?”
“Right, at this range, energy weapons will be too dispersed to be effective.”
“But a fast solid…”
“Yes, the Stiletto.”
“Can it reach them in that time?”
The commander nodded as he assimilated the data. He thoughtfully stroked the tip of his beard. The Adventurer’s condition was poor consolation for the vessels that had been crippled or destroyed fighting her. He’d never heard of a warship used like this. He marveled that a small fleet escort bested so many capital ships. He marveled even more that such a consummate warrior had been relegated to such a menial ship. He held any further thoughts along that line in check. That commander, no matter how gifted, was a member of the Republic and therefor an enemy of the Alliance.
“When’s the latest we can engage the Adventurer with Stilettos?”
Ker’rhoam glanced up at him from his station. He pursed his lips as he thought for a moment. A faint grin flashed across his face. He looked down and typed vigorously into a keypad for a moment. His brow furrowed in concentration. Then a smile appeared in his face.
“If the main drive holds up, we can launch in three minutes. Using its engagement drive as a booster, a Stiletto will then get to the Adventurer just before it jumps; however, we’ll only have terminal aiming of the penetrator so they could easily evade it.”
“True, but I’m willing to bet they don’t have the power to do it. Prepare a volley of… how many do we have?”
“Twenty, sir”
“This commander has done the unexpected repeatedly today. I think he knows what he thinks we’ll do, so launch fourteen of them configured as I’ve said. Stack the engagement drives of the other six into two missiles, so each of the last two have three engagement drives.”
“You want to have two missiles with the ability to respond to a course change on his part?”
“Yes, the extra engagement drives will be needed for the extra mass, but it should leave them with enough maneuvering capability to catch anything except a major velocity change.”
The old tactician nodded his head in agreement.
“Then launch all of them as soon as we can. Reprogram them for this different mission profile and then set them for a proximity burst, spread for maximum coverage of the Adventurer’s jump corridor.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered and repeated the order before leaving.
The orders were given. The minutes ticked by. The commander watched the number of ready missiles count up on the status panel. Ten-seconds before the time ran out, he gave the fire command.
“Weapons, fire when ready on the count.”
The remaining seconds ticked down.
The ship trembled slightly as sixteen missiles volleyed away from her. The flares of their drives showed as a cloud of rapidly fading stars on the display. Then, as their motors burned out, the stars winked out. The engagement drive of each missile flared for a moment and then all of them were dark.
“Helm, stand down from the pursuit. Engineering, you may begin repairs on the main drive.”
Two million kilometers away the Aatarr continued to bear down on the ship. The commander of the vessel looked at the readout on his main drives. They were on the verge of failing, due to being pushed so hard in their attempt to capture the fleeing vessel. He weighed his options carefully. If they broke off the pursuit and saved the engines and his crew, he knew he’d likely pay for the choice with his life. The Jackal did not care about people or machines, only the accomplishment of the mission. Those who failed, paid dearly. It was that simple. Yet, if he continued the pursuit, he’d condemn himself and his crew to death with the failure of the main drives. As it was, he wasn’t sure they’d survive now. He hoped a long shot would suffice.
“Tactical, status of the fleeing Adventurer?”
“Sir, the vessel continues in a ballistic trajectory away from the fifth planet. It has not so much as made a single minor course correction in the past hour after making the trajectory change, sir. At our present course, we will be in range within twenty-five minutes.”
He walked over to the officer’s station. “You say, it hasn’t maneuvered at all?”
“Not a bit, sir. As near as I can tell, their main generator is in running at a high level since we transitioned into this system. Yet, they are completely silent in their emissions, sir.”
“So she was hurt badly?”
“Yes, if I were to guess, their power busses are damaged forcing them to rely upon their reserves. By now those are so depleted, they don’t have the power to shoot back, nor drive their shields, nor maneuver. I doubt they can even power a sensor. If they have any power at all, they’re hoarding it to make a jump.”
“A jump? How?”
“Their trajectory, sir, it’s a perfect shot at Beta Hydri or will be in about twenty minutes.”
“Have we gotten anything on Remora yet to indicate an exact jump coordinate?”
The man shook his head, “Not yet. Normally, Republic vessels transmit within the hour before jumping. This one hasn’t. But we can still identify where they must jump to hit the Beta Hydri system.”
“When will they be aligned to jump?”
The man studied his display for a moment. He keyed some data in and looked at the results.
“Beta Hydri is fairly close, so they have a fair amount of leeway in their jump zone.”
“I don’t need the lecture.” He smiled reprovingly as he spoke.
“Sorry, sir, they have about a ten second jump window. They’ll enter the window in about twenty minutes.”
“So, twenty minutes to cross two em-clicks?”
“Right, at this range, energy weapons will be too dispersed to be effective.”
“But a fast solid…”
“Yes, the Stiletto.”
“Can it reach them in that time?”
The commander nodded as he assimilated the data. He thoughtfully stroked the tip of his beard. The Adventurer’s condition was poor consolation for the vessels that had been crippled or destroyed fighting her. He’d never heard of a warship used like this. He marveled that a small fleet escort bested so many capital ships. He marveled even more that such a consummate warrior had been relegated to such a menial ship. He held any further thoughts along that line in check. That commander, no matter how gifted, was a member of the Republic and therefor an enemy of the Alliance.
“When’s the latest we can engage the Adventurer with Stilettos?”
Ker’rhoam glanced up at him from his station. He pursed his lips as he thought for a moment. A faint grin flashed across his face. He looked down and typed vigorously into a keypad for a moment. His brow furrowed in concentration. Then a smile appeared in his face.
“If the main drive holds up, we can launch in three minutes. Using its engagement drive as a booster, a Stiletto will then get to the Adventurer just before it jumps; however, we’ll only have terminal aiming of the penetrator so they could easily evade it.”
“True, but I’m willing to bet they don’t have the power to do it. Prepare a volley of… how many do we have?”
“Twenty, sir”
“This commander has done the unexpected repeatedly today. I think he knows what he thinks we’ll do, so launch fourteen of them configured as I’ve said. Stack the engagement drives of the other six into two missiles, so each of the last two have three engagement drives.”
“You want to have two missiles with the ability to respond to a course change on his part?”
“Yes, the extra engagement drives will be needed for the extra mass, but it should leave them with enough maneuvering capability to catch anything except a major velocity change.”
The old tactician nodded his head in agreement.
“Then launch all of them as soon as we can. Reprogram them for this different mission profile and then set them for a proximity burst, spread for maximum coverage of the Adventurer’s jump corridor.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered and repeated the order before leaving.
The orders were given. The minutes ticked by. The commander watched the number of ready missiles count up on the status panel. Ten-seconds before the time ran out, he gave the fire command.
“Weapons, fire when ready on the count.”
The remaining seconds ticked down.
The ship trembled slightly as sixteen missiles volleyed away from her. The flares of their drives showed as a cloud of rapidly fading stars on the display. Then, as their motors burned out, the stars winked out. The engagement drive of each missile flared for a moment and then all of them were dark.
“Helm, stand down from the pursuit. Engineering, you may begin repairs on the main drive.”
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Escape from Mars
ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS
Waiting, not able to do anything to help was the hardest part of the ordeal so far. Ty knew at this point, there was nothing more he could do to help. He was forced to silently watch as Anderson’s engineers continued to shut down whatever circuit and system they could to reduce the power bleeding away from the containment batteries.
He thought also of the team of engineers working in the deck beneath them trying to repair the severed main power buss. There had been two. Anderson was certain they could repair it given time. Once repaired they would have the full output of their main generators. But that was at best an hour away.
In the mean time, they worked by the light of emergency light panels since they didn’t draw power from the power cells. It was unusual to have such subdued lighting in the engineering space. Like everything that happened up to now, what he thought would happen hadn’t and what he never thought would happen, did. Ty kept part of his attention focused on the readout that plotted the current and projected power level of the power packs. The power had unexpectedly fluctuated and dropped below the line McPherson had made. His team was working trying to conserve enough power for them to make the jump.
Unlike the freighters that had jumped, the Adventurer with its military grade jump targeting system could safely make a jump much closer to a star. But for the time, they still had to wait.
Ty suppressed the urge to say something, knowing full well that everything that could be done, Anderson was doing. Ty turned back to the other nemesis pursuing the Adventurer, the last Aatarr battleship. According to the last reading he’d taken, the gargantuan ship was now thirty minutes from being in effective firing range of its primary directed energy weapons.
Before today, he would not have worried about the ship because they would normally be long gone before it arrived. But after today, he dared not allow himself the luxury of thinking they were out of danger. He didn’t know how much more the Aatarr had to give with its engines. The drive flare of its electric drive was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from the Adventurer. From his perspective, it shown like a fingernail sized feathery wisp of light aimed above the solar ecliptic pointing away from the sun. He was in awe of the amount of energy it represented.
“Sir?” Anderson called out to him. She was feeling better and had resumed her post.
“Yes, chief,” he replied automatically.
“I’m suggesting we shut off gravity everywhere but where McPherson is working and in the infirmary. It’ll save us several kilowatts of power.”
“Sure. Do it,” he said.
“Ok, hang on.”
Nothing happened. He heard some muttered obscenities.
“What happened, Chief?”
“A lot of the gravity grid is not responding due to battle damage. About half the ship is shut down and the switching circuitry just failed. We can’t get the rest shut down soon enough to help out.”
“Is it working anywhere else besides here, that’s still inhabitable?”
“Charlie deck, above us. And the infirmary on Echo deck.”
He nodded his head in approval. Ty glanced at the power display, the level of power bleeding out of the batteries dropped a little. Knowing what it meant, he wished it were at zero.
“It has reduced the amount of power bleeding from the batteries. I’ll take it. I am going to need to look at that Aatarr soon. We need to know what he’s up to.”
She came over to his station. “I’m making a small change in the charts here,” she said. She entered a few changes into the chart properties. When she finished, the remaining power chart looked like a stack of thin rectangles.
“Each segment here,” she said as she pointed to the chart, “represents fifteen minutes of power to run the containment fields. Jumping is going to bring this graph down to here.” She pointed at the place on the chart showing about four hours of power would be left after the jump. “That’s all the reserve you have until we get the buss fixed.”
Ty nodded and Anderson walked back to her station. Twenty minutes and we’re out of this nightmare he thought. He smiled at the hope that they’d be gone ten minutes before the Aatarr could shoot at him.
Waiting, not able to do anything to help was the hardest part of the ordeal so far. Ty knew at this point, there was nothing more he could do to help. He was forced to silently watch as Anderson’s engineers continued to shut down whatever circuit and system they could to reduce the power bleeding away from the containment batteries.
He thought also of the team of engineers working in the deck beneath them trying to repair the severed main power buss. There had been two. Anderson was certain they could repair it given time. Once repaired they would have the full output of their main generators. But that was at best an hour away.
In the mean time, they worked by the light of emergency light panels since they didn’t draw power from the power cells. It was unusual to have such subdued lighting in the engineering space. Like everything that happened up to now, what he thought would happen hadn’t and what he never thought would happen, did. Ty kept part of his attention focused on the readout that plotted the current and projected power level of the power packs. The power had unexpectedly fluctuated and dropped below the line McPherson had made. His team was working trying to conserve enough power for them to make the jump.
Unlike the freighters that had jumped, the Adventurer with its military grade jump targeting system could safely make a jump much closer to a star. But for the time, they still had to wait.
Ty suppressed the urge to say something, knowing full well that everything that could be done, Anderson was doing. Ty turned back to the other nemesis pursuing the Adventurer, the last Aatarr battleship. According to the last reading he’d taken, the gargantuan ship was now thirty minutes from being in effective firing range of its primary directed energy weapons.
Before today, he would not have worried about the ship because they would normally be long gone before it arrived. But after today, he dared not allow himself the luxury of thinking they were out of danger. He didn’t know how much more the Aatarr had to give with its engines. The drive flare of its electric drive was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from the Adventurer. From his perspective, it shown like a fingernail sized feathery wisp of light aimed above the solar ecliptic pointing away from the sun. He was in awe of the amount of energy it represented.
“Sir?” Anderson called out to him. She was feeling better and had resumed her post.
“Yes, chief,” he replied automatically.
“I’m suggesting we shut off gravity everywhere but where McPherson is working and in the infirmary. It’ll save us several kilowatts of power.”
“Sure. Do it,” he said.
“Ok, hang on.”
Nothing happened. He heard some muttered obscenities.
“What happened, Chief?”
“A lot of the gravity grid is not responding due to battle damage. About half the ship is shut down and the switching circuitry just failed. We can’t get the rest shut down soon enough to help out.”
“Is it working anywhere else besides here, that’s still inhabitable?”
“Charlie deck, above us. And the infirmary on Echo deck.”
He nodded his head in approval. Ty glanced at the power display, the level of power bleeding out of the batteries dropped a little. Knowing what it meant, he wished it were at zero.
“It has reduced the amount of power bleeding from the batteries. I’ll take it. I am going to need to look at that Aatarr soon. We need to know what he’s up to.”
She came over to his station. “I’m making a small change in the charts here,” she said. She entered a few changes into the chart properties. When she finished, the remaining power chart looked like a stack of thin rectangles.
“Each segment here,” she said as she pointed to the chart, “represents fifteen minutes of power to run the containment fields. Jumping is going to bring this graph down to here.” She pointed at the place on the chart showing about four hours of power would be left after the jump. “That’s all the reserve you have until we get the buss fixed.”
Ty nodded and Anderson walked back to her station. Twenty minutes and we’re out of this nightmare he thought. He smiled at the hope that they’d be gone ten minutes before the Aatarr could shoot at him.
Defeating the Aatarr
ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 1 HOUR
Eleven hours later, the Adventurer caught up to the Dragon. Ty maneuvered the Adventurer to close formation with the fighter.
“Dragon, Command,” Ty called.
There was no answer.
Ty repeated the call. “Dragon, Command, Vince?”
“Dragon,” Vince finally answered. Ty tried to bring up telemetry from the fighter but there was no signal.
“SitRep Vince.”
“Ty? Took you guys long enough to get here. My sitrep is that I’m not good my friend. Got hit by a couple of railgun frags. Left shoulder is shot up. Got my suit patched though, so it’s not leaking, but I still am. Canopy and most of instrument cluster is shot away. Drive module took a hit. Main data leads and power busses are shot away, but the ship has switched to alternates. I’ve got engines and life support. Power cell is at seventy percent. I have a Plasma-Arc hung on the rail. It won’t launch.”
“Yeah, we decided to go for a stroll around the neighborhood while Anderson tried to put some of our now, not so shiny, ship back together. Looks like your telemetry lines are down too. We’re not getting anything from you.”
“Nah, works fine. I cannibalized the telemetry lines to restore data connection to the drive module. It’s my turn now, Command. How’s the ship? She looks pretty beat up from out here.”
Ty thought for a second before answering. “We’re going to be delayed a bit getting the ship ready for picket duty at Beta Hydri.”
“A bit, eh?”
“The fantail bay is shot up pretty bad. We’re out of ammo ourselves. Our power system’s been hammered pretty hard too. Plus, our high-link antennas are gone. No way to phone this one in any more.”
“Can we send through Mars Station?”
“Not a chance, that Aatarr vaporized it while we were getting back here. Two hundred civilian scientists and families lived there, all are dead.”
He could see the Alliance coming after him and his ship because of what he’d done to them today, but attacking a militarily insignificant science station made no sense. As much as anything, he wanted to teach the commander of the Aatarr a lesson just for that.
“You know, for your first day on the job as captain you sure trashed your shiny new ship,”
Ty chuckled. He could hear Vince give a painful chuckle too.
“Yeah, a pukin’ noob for sure.”
“Got that right. So what’s next boss?”
Ty shook his head. He looked over the ship status display. There were hardly any green lights showing and a lot of red and yellow lights. His map of the ship showed the aft third of the ship was still depressurized due to battle damage.
“We gotta get that Aatarr. But for the life of me, I don’t know what with, spit maybe?” Ty glanced at the mission clock over the display. The convoy ships were half-way through their deceleration maneuvers now. That’s where he would have gone instead of blasting a science station to plasma. There was a long moment of silence between them.
“I got another hair brained idea, Ty.”
“Sure, Vince, what?”
“Throw a rock at it, just like we did with the rail gun slugs on the first Aatrixx.”
“I’m out of slugs, Vince. Plus you can see the bay better than me. We can’t hold anything in there anymore.”
“Wrong. I got me a twenty ton boulder right now.”
Ty scrunched his face in concentration as he digested Vince’s words. The realization and import of his words registered. He shook his head no.
“Not gonna happen, Vince. There has to be another way. I gotta get you home, too.”
“I’m not as good as you are at the tactics thing, but I can tell that all you have in your hand is a pair and the house is holding a straight flush. I’m giving you an ace in the hole, Ty, so you can get everyone else home.”
Ty glanced around the engineering room. Aside from the noises of the generator and machinery, all conversations had stopped. Everyone was making a point to not look at him, but he knew they were all listening. Ty nodded to himself and then he shook his head.
Ty’s next words tore at him more than when he turned down the promotion, “Ok, you win this one, Vince.”
“I still get the patent, Ok?”
Ty chuckled and shook his head at the comment. “I’ll make sure your wife and kids get all the money.”
“Thanks, Ty. You do that. Now, how do we do this?”
Ty started to lay out the attack he had in mind. They waited until the Aatarr was on approach to Jupiter and about ready to decelerate into orbit around the planet.
Vince flew the Dragon into the shattered bay and then the Ops team chained the fighter to the wrecked cradle. Next the Adventurer jumped across the solar system to make the course changes she needed to make iy far enough from the Aatarr so that when she jumped back, they wouldn’t know until she jumped, in which direction she’d be coming from.
Once they made the jump, the crew in the bay removed the chains and pushed the fighter out by hand. Once clear of the bay, Vince lined up the Dragon behind the Adventurer and applied maximum power to his drive. The Adventurer, with its drive slaved to the Dragon kept pace in front of him. With nothing to serve as a point of reference, the two ships appeared to be motionless in space. The only indicator he had of anything changing was the steady drop in available power as the drive pushed the ship forward. He kept his attention focused on the mangled bay in front of him. He saw several suited figures in the bay. He couldn’t tell who they were, but he suspected they were his ops crew. One of them held up his hand to his helmet and then nodded. He extended the hand and blinked the flashlight at him. Two white flashes. It was the signal to go. In unison all of the suited figures in the bay stood at attention and saluted. They held it until Vance waved with his right hand. It was the best he could do. They then stood at attention as the Adventurer rotated around so it was moving backwards towards the Aatarr.
It wasn’t long now. Memories of being with his family flooded his mind. Especially moments when he was with his wife. He could see flashes of light silhouette the Adventurer. She was taking laser fire from the Aatarr. Then pieces of debris came flying up over the ship and past him. He forced the thoughts out of his mind and focused on peering forward. He grasped the flight control grip and waited.
The Adventurer’s thrusters fired white hot as they shoved her up and to his left. Directly ahead of him was a white dot. The Adventurer disappeared. Time slowed down for him. The distance indicator which till now had been counting down so fast he could barely keep track of the thousand digits, now seemed to be running slow enough that he could keep track of the tens. The ship soon turned to a speck and then took its familiar flattened elliptical shape. It began to swell quickly in size. He could see he was headed for the starboard side of the ship and that he was going to hit forward of where he wanted. He fired the starboard thrusters to push his trajectory to the left and at the flaring drive nozzles of the main engines.
Vince and the Dragon fighter flew into the drive plume of the engine. Both man and machine were vaporized instantly and lost nearly a third of their velocity before striking the ship between its two primary nozzles. The impact velocity was still in the hundreds of miles per second. The massive ship shuddered and pitched over from the impact. Chunks of its hull the size of a large house flew away from the impact point. Secondary explosions blew the drive bells apart and sideways from the stricken ship. They pirouetted slowly away as debris scattered in a cloud around it. After a couple of minutes, thrusters began firing to bring the tumbling under control.
In its final act before plunging into Jupiter, the Aatarr fired at the convoy vessels that were now in the middle of their turn around the planet. She scored direct hits on two freighters which converted them into expanding balls of plasma. Then she plunged into the planet’s atmosphere. From the convoy’s vantage point, the ship flared into a fiery point of light that burned steady for an instant, sputtered and then blossomed into a titanic explosion. A plume of gas and plasma, many times the size of the Earth was ejected from the planet only to fall back, most of it hours later.
On board the Adventurer, they had little time to celebrate. Using the wrecked fantail bay as a shield of sorts had worked in limiting damage from laser shots to just the aft section of the ship, but the Adventurer had taken a pounding by the Aatarr’s lasers. While the Aatarr plunged into Jupiter, the Adventurer’s surviving crew worked feverishly to repairing internal bulkheads, gathering up injured and killed crewmen and repairing damaged systems.
For a while Ty thought it was touch and go. Most of the time, he could only stand by and watch as McPherson and Williams directed the repair and damage control teams.
After a couple of hours of intense work, McPherson motioned to Ty to join him at his engineering panel.
“Just wanted to let you know where we’re at, sir. I think we got a handle on things now.”
“Sure.”
“Our biggest issue is power, both busses are either damaged or destroyed. Power cell three is a goner, two is severely damaged, and one is damaged but less so. The generator is running out of control and without the busses, of no help to us,” he said.
“Do we have enough power to make the jump?” asked Ty.
The man gazed at the power cell status and the navigation display before answering.
“That’s what I was getting to, sir. We’ve got enough juice in the power cells to line the ship up for a jump, if we turn around Jupiter, but once we do, we don’t have any to make the jump.”
“What about using power from the containment batteries?”
“That’s a problem, sir, that means hot-wiring the batteries into the ship’s power grid which is risky enough even when the ship is in good shape. Additionally, once connected, the internal shorts in the power cells will drain power from the batteries too.”
An alert sounded. “Alert: Alliance transition event detected.”
Ty started repeating along with it, “At radial two seven seven, point seven AU from solar center. Ship detected…” he paused while the controller concluded with the word, “Aatarr”.
Ty was ready to scream in frustration until someone in the engineering room spoke up, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Stupid A-tards! They aint got sense enough to know when to quit, Adventurer owns this system!”
Several others joined in the chorus of jeers. When they died down, Ty looked at McPherson then glanced down at Anderson. She was watching him. She gave a thumbs up.
I am left with just spit now, Ty thought. He said out loud, “Ok guys, we ran the house today and they know it. I’m done playing with these clowns for now. Let’s concentrate on getting to Beta Hydri. Open bar and pizza on me at ‘Tillies after we pull in to the station.”
More jeers and catcalls erupted.
Ty felt better as turned back to McPherson. “Is there enough power in them to make the jump?” he asked.
“Yes, but we’ll severely reduce the time they can power the containment fields around the generator core. You know what happens when they fail.”
Ty nodded. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Like that’s not enough right?”
Both gave dry chuckles.
“Besides power, our stabilization system is shot. We don’t have enough thrusters left to align the ship. All we have are the gyros and they require power to run.”
“We’re going to need them until we jump.”
McPherson nodded, then said, “I get that, sir. That’s what I was going to suggest. It means we’ll start tumbling once we jump.”
“All right, connect the batteries to the power grid. Let me know when you’re done. Let’s plan on disconnecting the batteries after we jump. I’m going to program in our escape course.”
The man nodded and walked back to his station, giving instructions to his team while Ty started working on a departure trajectory. As he did, he kept an eye on the sensor data about the Aatarr. It was burning for an approach to Jupiter. There was no doubt in his mind now as to who they were after.
After a few minutes McPherson walked over to him. He had a marker in his hand. He called up a display that showed two bar charts. He then drew a line through the shorter one on the left.
“This line, sir, represents minimum containment threshold. This chart,” he pointed at the power level indicator, “shows how much power we have until we fix the busses, this is all there is. When this drops below that,” he pointed at the line, “ we’ll have containment failure.” He made a small exploding gesture with his hands as he did. “This other bar chart on the right, shows how much power we’re pulling out of the containment batteries. The shorter it is the better. You’ve got the power now. I’m taking a team with me to try and repair one of the main busses. I’m leaving Cambridge here,” he pointed at a young crewman behind him. Cambridge turned and nodded then turned back to watch the panel. McPherson continued, ”to run the panel while we’re below working on the busses.” With that he walked back to his post.
Ty walked back to his station and keyed in the program and hit the commit button. Yet again, the Adventurer headed for Jupiter. Once the drive finished, the power indicator was one-fourth of the way down. Now they waited as the ship took an hour to swing over the North pole of Jupiter and down the far side of it from the sun towards Beta Hydri.
He slumped to the deck and sat at the base of the display, with his back towards the display, knees up and feet on the floor. He thought about the events of the past two days. He thought of Vince and what he’d tell his wife and children. He thought of the now two dozen people he’d have to tell about the death of a loved one. He thought of what they’d learned about the Alliance and their access to critical Republic technology. The next thing he knew, McPherson was tapping him gently on the shoulder with a gloved hand.
“Skipper, were in the turn. The controller just started squawking something about that Aatarr out there.”
Ty woke fully at that. He muttered a thanks and turned to the display. This second Aatarr was faster than the first one, but it was staying in the planetary plane and burning hard to get to Jupiter before the Adventurer jumped. His ship would finish turning, but not jump before the Aatarr arrived at Jupiter.
“Go save your Aatrix. It has survivors. The Frescos’ probably have survivors too. Leave us alone,” he said to no one in particular.
Time passed. The countdown timer to start the acceleration to jump speed hit zero. The drive thrummed again. It took longer to accelerate because he’d set it at a lower power setting to use as little battery as possible. The drive quit after ten minutes of running. The level of power available on the indicator now rested just above the line McPherson had made on the display. Now they just had to wait for Jupiter to finish pulling their trajectory into the jump trajectory for Beta Hydri.
Eleven hours later, the Adventurer caught up to the Dragon. Ty maneuvered the Adventurer to close formation with the fighter.
“Dragon, Command,” Ty called.
There was no answer.
Ty repeated the call. “Dragon, Command, Vince?”
“Dragon,” Vince finally answered. Ty tried to bring up telemetry from the fighter but there was no signal.
“SitRep Vince.”
“Ty? Took you guys long enough to get here. My sitrep is that I’m not good my friend. Got hit by a couple of railgun frags. Left shoulder is shot up. Got my suit patched though, so it’s not leaking, but I still am. Canopy and most of instrument cluster is shot away. Drive module took a hit. Main data leads and power busses are shot away, but the ship has switched to alternates. I’ve got engines and life support. Power cell is at seventy percent. I have a Plasma-Arc hung on the rail. It won’t launch.”
“Yeah, we decided to go for a stroll around the neighborhood while Anderson tried to put some of our now, not so shiny, ship back together. Looks like your telemetry lines are down too. We’re not getting anything from you.”
“Nah, works fine. I cannibalized the telemetry lines to restore data connection to the drive module. It’s my turn now, Command. How’s the ship? She looks pretty beat up from out here.”
Ty thought for a second before answering. “We’re going to be delayed a bit getting the ship ready for picket duty at Beta Hydri.”
“A bit, eh?”
“The fantail bay is shot up pretty bad. We’re out of ammo ourselves. Our power system’s been hammered pretty hard too. Plus, our high-link antennas are gone. No way to phone this one in any more.”
“Can we send through Mars Station?”
“Not a chance, that Aatarr vaporized it while we were getting back here. Two hundred civilian scientists and families lived there, all are dead.”
He could see the Alliance coming after him and his ship because of what he’d done to them today, but attacking a militarily insignificant science station made no sense. As much as anything, he wanted to teach the commander of the Aatarr a lesson just for that.
“You know, for your first day on the job as captain you sure trashed your shiny new ship,”
Ty chuckled. He could hear Vince give a painful chuckle too.
“Yeah, a pukin’ noob for sure.”
“Got that right. So what’s next boss?”
Ty shook his head. He looked over the ship status display. There were hardly any green lights showing and a lot of red and yellow lights. His map of the ship showed the aft third of the ship was still depressurized due to battle damage.
“We gotta get that Aatarr. But for the life of me, I don’t know what with, spit maybe?” Ty glanced at the mission clock over the display. The convoy ships were half-way through their deceleration maneuvers now. That’s where he would have gone instead of blasting a science station to plasma. There was a long moment of silence between them.
“I got another hair brained idea, Ty.”
“Sure, Vince, what?”
“Throw a rock at it, just like we did with the rail gun slugs on the first Aatrixx.”
“I’m out of slugs, Vince. Plus you can see the bay better than me. We can’t hold anything in there anymore.”
“Wrong. I got me a twenty ton boulder right now.”
Ty scrunched his face in concentration as he digested Vince’s words. The realization and import of his words registered. He shook his head no.
“Not gonna happen, Vince. There has to be another way. I gotta get you home, too.”
“I’m not as good as you are at the tactics thing, but I can tell that all you have in your hand is a pair and the house is holding a straight flush. I’m giving you an ace in the hole, Ty, so you can get everyone else home.”
Ty glanced around the engineering room. Aside from the noises of the generator and machinery, all conversations had stopped. Everyone was making a point to not look at him, but he knew they were all listening. Ty nodded to himself and then he shook his head.
Ty’s next words tore at him more than when he turned down the promotion, “Ok, you win this one, Vince.”
“I still get the patent, Ok?”
Ty chuckled and shook his head at the comment. “I’ll make sure your wife and kids get all the money.”
“Thanks, Ty. You do that. Now, how do we do this?”
Ty started to lay out the attack he had in mind. They waited until the Aatarr was on approach to Jupiter and about ready to decelerate into orbit around the planet.
Vince flew the Dragon into the shattered bay and then the Ops team chained the fighter to the wrecked cradle. Next the Adventurer jumped across the solar system to make the course changes she needed to make iy far enough from the Aatarr so that when she jumped back, they wouldn’t know until she jumped, in which direction she’d be coming from.
Once they made the jump, the crew in the bay removed the chains and pushed the fighter out by hand. Once clear of the bay, Vince lined up the Dragon behind the Adventurer and applied maximum power to his drive. The Adventurer, with its drive slaved to the Dragon kept pace in front of him. With nothing to serve as a point of reference, the two ships appeared to be motionless in space. The only indicator he had of anything changing was the steady drop in available power as the drive pushed the ship forward. He kept his attention focused on the mangled bay in front of him. He saw several suited figures in the bay. He couldn’t tell who they were, but he suspected they were his ops crew. One of them held up his hand to his helmet and then nodded. He extended the hand and blinked the flashlight at him. Two white flashes. It was the signal to go. In unison all of the suited figures in the bay stood at attention and saluted. They held it until Vance waved with his right hand. It was the best he could do. They then stood at attention as the Adventurer rotated around so it was moving backwards towards the Aatarr.
It wasn’t long now. Memories of being with his family flooded his mind. Especially moments when he was with his wife. He could see flashes of light silhouette the Adventurer. She was taking laser fire from the Aatarr. Then pieces of debris came flying up over the ship and past him. He forced the thoughts out of his mind and focused on peering forward. He grasped the flight control grip and waited.
The Adventurer’s thrusters fired white hot as they shoved her up and to his left. Directly ahead of him was a white dot. The Adventurer disappeared. Time slowed down for him. The distance indicator which till now had been counting down so fast he could barely keep track of the thousand digits, now seemed to be running slow enough that he could keep track of the tens. The ship soon turned to a speck and then took its familiar flattened elliptical shape. It began to swell quickly in size. He could see he was headed for the starboard side of the ship and that he was going to hit forward of where he wanted. He fired the starboard thrusters to push his trajectory to the left and at the flaring drive nozzles of the main engines.
Vince and the Dragon fighter flew into the drive plume of the engine. Both man and machine were vaporized instantly and lost nearly a third of their velocity before striking the ship between its two primary nozzles. The impact velocity was still in the hundreds of miles per second. The massive ship shuddered and pitched over from the impact. Chunks of its hull the size of a large house flew away from the impact point. Secondary explosions blew the drive bells apart and sideways from the stricken ship. They pirouetted slowly away as debris scattered in a cloud around it. After a couple of minutes, thrusters began firing to bring the tumbling under control.
In its final act before plunging into Jupiter, the Aatarr fired at the convoy vessels that were now in the middle of their turn around the planet. She scored direct hits on two freighters which converted them into expanding balls of plasma. Then she plunged into the planet’s atmosphere. From the convoy’s vantage point, the ship flared into a fiery point of light that burned steady for an instant, sputtered and then blossomed into a titanic explosion. A plume of gas and plasma, many times the size of the Earth was ejected from the planet only to fall back, most of it hours later.
On board the Adventurer, they had little time to celebrate. Using the wrecked fantail bay as a shield of sorts had worked in limiting damage from laser shots to just the aft section of the ship, but the Adventurer had taken a pounding by the Aatarr’s lasers. While the Aatarr plunged into Jupiter, the Adventurer’s surviving crew worked feverishly to repairing internal bulkheads, gathering up injured and killed crewmen and repairing damaged systems.
For a while Ty thought it was touch and go. Most of the time, he could only stand by and watch as McPherson and Williams directed the repair and damage control teams.
After a couple of hours of intense work, McPherson motioned to Ty to join him at his engineering panel.
“Just wanted to let you know where we’re at, sir. I think we got a handle on things now.”
“Sure.”
“Our biggest issue is power, both busses are either damaged or destroyed. Power cell three is a goner, two is severely damaged, and one is damaged but less so. The generator is running out of control and without the busses, of no help to us,” he said.
“Do we have enough power to make the jump?” asked Ty.
The man gazed at the power cell status and the navigation display before answering.
“That’s what I was getting to, sir. We’ve got enough juice in the power cells to line the ship up for a jump, if we turn around Jupiter, but once we do, we don’t have any to make the jump.”
“What about using power from the containment batteries?”
“That’s a problem, sir, that means hot-wiring the batteries into the ship’s power grid which is risky enough even when the ship is in good shape. Additionally, once connected, the internal shorts in the power cells will drain power from the batteries too.”
An alert sounded. “Alert: Alliance transition event detected.”
Ty started repeating along with it, “At radial two seven seven, point seven AU from solar center. Ship detected…” he paused while the controller concluded with the word, “Aatarr”.
Ty was ready to scream in frustration until someone in the engineering room spoke up, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Stupid A-tards! They aint got sense enough to know when to quit, Adventurer owns this system!”
Several others joined in the chorus of jeers. When they died down, Ty looked at McPherson then glanced down at Anderson. She was watching him. She gave a thumbs up.
I am left with just spit now, Ty thought. He said out loud, “Ok guys, we ran the house today and they know it. I’m done playing with these clowns for now. Let’s concentrate on getting to Beta Hydri. Open bar and pizza on me at ‘Tillies after we pull in to the station.”
More jeers and catcalls erupted.
Ty felt better as turned back to McPherson. “Is there enough power in them to make the jump?” he asked.
“Yes, but we’ll severely reduce the time they can power the containment fields around the generator core. You know what happens when they fail.”
Ty nodded. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Like that’s not enough right?”
Both gave dry chuckles.
“Besides power, our stabilization system is shot. We don’t have enough thrusters left to align the ship. All we have are the gyros and they require power to run.”
“We’re going to need them until we jump.”
McPherson nodded, then said, “I get that, sir. That’s what I was going to suggest. It means we’ll start tumbling once we jump.”
“All right, connect the batteries to the power grid. Let me know when you’re done. Let’s plan on disconnecting the batteries after we jump. I’m going to program in our escape course.”
The man nodded and walked back to his station, giving instructions to his team while Ty started working on a departure trajectory. As he did, he kept an eye on the sensor data about the Aatarr. It was burning for an approach to Jupiter. There was no doubt in his mind now as to who they were after.
After a few minutes McPherson walked over to him. He had a marker in his hand. He called up a display that showed two bar charts. He then drew a line through the shorter one on the left.
“This line, sir, represents minimum containment threshold. This chart,” he pointed at the power level indicator, “shows how much power we have until we fix the busses, this is all there is. When this drops below that,” he pointed at the line, “ we’ll have containment failure.” He made a small exploding gesture with his hands as he did. “This other bar chart on the right, shows how much power we’re pulling out of the containment batteries. The shorter it is the better. You’ve got the power now. I’m taking a team with me to try and repair one of the main busses. I’m leaving Cambridge here,” he pointed at a young crewman behind him. Cambridge turned and nodded then turned back to watch the panel. McPherson continued, ”to run the panel while we’re below working on the busses.” With that he walked back to his post.
Ty walked back to his station and keyed in the program and hit the commit button. Yet again, the Adventurer headed for Jupiter. Once the drive finished, the power indicator was one-fourth of the way down. Now they waited as the ship took an hour to swing over the North pole of Jupiter and down the far side of it from the sun towards Beta Hydri.
He slumped to the deck and sat at the base of the display, with his back towards the display, knees up and feet on the floor. He thought about the events of the past two days. He thought of Vince and what he’d tell his wife and children. He thought of the now two dozen people he’d have to tell about the death of a loved one. He thought of what they’d learned about the Alliance and their access to critical Republic technology. The next thing he knew, McPherson was tapping him gently on the shoulder with a gloved hand.
“Skipper, were in the turn. The controller just started squawking something about that Aatarr out there.”
Ty woke fully at that. He muttered a thanks and turned to the display. This second Aatarr was faster than the first one, but it was staying in the planetary plane and burning hard to get to Jupiter before the Adventurer jumped. His ship would finish turning, but not jump before the Aatarr arrived at Jupiter.
“Go save your Aatrix. It has survivors. The Frescos’ probably have survivors too. Leave us alone,” he said to no one in particular.
Time passed. The countdown timer to start the acceleration to jump speed hit zero. The drive thrummed again. It took longer to accelerate because he’d set it at a lower power setting to use as little battery as possible. The drive quit after ten minutes of running. The level of power available on the indicator now rested just above the line McPherson had made on the display. Now they just had to wait for Jupiter to finish pulling their trajectory into the jump trajectory for Beta Hydri.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
The Second Aatrixx
ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 10 HOURS
Forty minutes later, Ty said, “Sound general quarters. Code Blue.” As the klaxon reverberated through the ship, he donned his helmet. After he had his on, he checked with Anderson to make sure hers was properly seated. While he waited for the report to come back in that everyone was ready for Code Blue, he reviewed the attack program one final time.
Anderson interrupted him, “Command, the ship is at general quarters. We’re ready to implement Code Blue.”
He turned to her and nodded. She in turn gave the order over the engineering comm channel. In response Ty heard the pumps begin which pulled the atmosphere out of the living spaces of the ship. The din gradually decreased as the air pressure dropped. He felt the final faint pull at his legs as the last of the air was vented into space.
“Command, Engineering.”
Ty turned to Anderson, “Command,” he said.
He could see her speak through the faceplate of her helmet. “We’re set.” She leaned into him allowing her helmet to touch his. He could hear her distorted voice as it conducted through the material of the helmets. “Let’s kick it. I wanna get out of here.”
She stood back up and gave him a thumbs up. Then she walked over to the power management console. Ty took in a deep breath and thumbed the commit button on the main display. The engineering chamber brightened noticeably as the main generator ramped up to full power. He could feel the harmonics of the generator and drives coming up through his feet and legs from the deck beneath.
The timer started counting down to zero from two minutes.
The Adventurer leaped forward and began its streak across the Jovian system.
“Command, Dragon.” The call came at exactly thirty-seconds.
“Command.”
“Launching.”
“Good luck, Vince. Don’t get lost taking the Dragon out for a spin, Ok,” said Ty.
Vince clicked his mike in response. The timer reached zero. The cradle latches released. The Dragon, weightless, floated free in the fantail bay. The Adventurer began to accelerate again, leaving the Dragon behind, inert and dark. As she pulled away from the fighter, the space suited ops team began man handling the loader mockup into place. This time they set it in the cradle oriented so the missiles it would carry pointed out the open bay door. While one team began loading live Heli-arc missiles on the mockup, another team man-handled the Jersey generator into place between the missiles. Once it was in place they rolled their test rack for the missile guidance system into place and a ladder between the missiles.
As they continued their work, Ty watched them on a remote camera feed. After another thirty-seconds, he tapped the next button in the checklist he’d set up. The drive shut off and all power on the Adventurer shut off too. She was as close to being a hole in space as they could make her. Everyone on the ship hoped it would be enough. At Ty’s console, a new timer was counting down to zero again. Ty knew when this one reached zero a lot of things would start happening quickly.
The Adventurer came around Jupiter. The planet bent the trajectory of the ship towards the remaining Aatrix. The timer reached zero.
Ty tapped another button on the display. The power came back on and the Adventurer came back to life. They were now two minutes ahead of the Dragon that was still coming behind them, and less than a minute from the Aatrix. As sensor inputs started coming in, he saw that it was still in the same orbit. It was jinking now as he suspected it would be. The main projector began firing its pre-programmed sequence of shots. The first targets were the exposed sensor towers. While the shields attenuated most of the shots, enough still came through to overload the delicate receivers. Safety circuits shut them off in an effort to save them from being damaged.
Alerts sounded in the Aartixx’ command center. Automatic fire control systems began to acquire the attacker but were delayed vital fractions of a second as the sensor protection systems kept the sensors covered. The Adventurer continued on. In quick succession the two dorsal rail gun turrets were destroyed in blinding flashes as the slugs slammed into them. Not all slugs hit the guns. Some hit the armored hull of the ship and plowed thirty foot long furrows in the hardened ceramic and concrete.
Other slugs slammed into the base of the sensor towers. One tower was blown clear of the ship and tumbled away, trailing sparks and debris. The other tower fared better in that it stayed attached, but the data lines between the sensors and the rest of the ship were severed.
The Aatrixx gave chase. Powerful thrusters pivoted the ship so it could follow the Adventurer as it passed over head and away. Its main engine fired up and began burning to catch the fleeing ship. Its powerful lasers began lashing out at it.
Two shots hit the Adventurer’s shields in quick succession causing them to flash blinding white as they absorbed the energy of the shots. They failed after the second shot when the anodes overloaded and exploded in a shower of sparks. Arcs of electricity jumped from the interior components of the anode into the surrounding bulkheads. With the vacuum in the ship, there was no air to transfer any of the energy in the form of blast overpressure anywhere else in the ship, so all of it was absorbed by the Adventurer’s frame and deck plates. Several deck plates and frames surrounding the anodes buckled from the heat.
Ty started the flight-controller’s jinking routine. He could feel himself get lighter then heavier or sway to the left or right as the ship moved around him. He had to hold on to the display panel and lock his feet to the floor to keep his position in front of the display. The Aatrixx’ lasers continued to fire. Another shot hit the side of the fantail bay with enough energy to blow away several skin panels and cut through a support frame. A fourth shot cleanly entered the open bay door and slammed into the forward bulkhead. It punched through the bulkhead and caused an explosion when an oxygen bottle was hit and failed. Every member of Red-five was killed instantly by shrapnel from the explosion where they waited in the Goat Locker.
Ninety-seconds after they passed the Aatrix, Ty commanded the launch of the missiles from the fantail bay. All six fired at once, filling the bay with flame, hot gasses and debris as they did. The missiles quickly acquired the ship and altered course to intercept. With the dorsal rail gun turrets destroyed, the ship tried to engage the missiles with lasers. One by one the missiles guidance packages were destroyed by the lasers, but being little more than rods of tungsten with a motor strapped on to them, they bored in relentlessly. In a desperation move, the Aatrixx shut off its main engines so it could rotate the ship enough to bring the ventral rail guns to bear on the missiles. The aft turret, then the forward turret, began acquiring and firing on the missiles.
The Aatrixx was in this nose up attitude when the Dragon came in range. Vince smiled and shook his head in awe.
“You got it right again, Ty,” he said to himself. He squeezed the trigger on his control stick and volleyed all of the Plasma-Arcs. Number three failed to launch. It was on the same attach point where the other missile failed its check out. He scowled momentarily then watched with glee as all three missiles streaked into and detonated inside the drive bells of Aatrixx’ main propulsion system. Secondary explosions rippled through the aft section of the massive ship, throwing large chunks of hull and debris from the motors into space. The ship continued to pitch up and over as the Dragon passed over it. Vince fired the Dragon’s motor at full power and began aggressively jinking as it came into the field of fire of the ventral rail guns. A cloud of fragmenting pellets came swarming at the ship. Several hit the ship, one lanced through the cockpit, shattering Vince’s left shoulder and exploding the canopy. Another penetrated the drive compartment, severing power conduits and data lines as it did before exiting the ship. The drive motor quit and the Dragon tumbled away into the dark. Vince’s suit sealed itself, but could do nothing for his shoulder. His quick-check light, began to blink bright yellow and red.
When Ty saw the explosions wracking the Aatrix, he commanded a jump. The Adventurer jumped across the solar system.
“Command, Engineering,” said Anderson.
“Command.”
“We just jumped. We in the clear? We’ve got a lot of busted ship to fix.”
Ty nodded, “We’re clear. Set code green through the ship.”
“Roger that.”
They repressurized the engineering space first. The air was cold. Ty checked the atmosphere light on his right wrist pad. It had gone from black to yellow to green as air was pumped back into the room. Once it turned green, he began to remove his helmet. The first thing he noticed was the smell of burned circuits. But the room held the air. They began working their way forward then aft from the engineering space. Decompression alarms and warnings sounded when they tried to restore the air in the aft section of the ship.
“We took a real pounding back there from that Aatrix,” said Anderson.
“You want to lead the repairs back there? We lost another team in the attack.”
Anderson nodded, her face a mask of grim determination. “We’re runnin’ out of people to keep this ship going.”
She turned to two technicians. “McPherson, Williams, grab your tool kits, a port-a-wall and some power lines. Then come with me, we got a ship to fix.” They kept their helmets on, but worked with their face plates open. After they left the engineering space and headed down the main deck, McPherson spoke up.
“So, chief, what gives? We all thought this was just a convoy job. Guard a bunch of ships to Beta Hydri and we’re done.”
“Well, there is a war on you know.”
“But this?”
She stopped and turned to the man. “Listen, I don’t know more than you on that. For some reason I can’t fathom, the Alliance is determined to push us out of this system. But right now, we got a job to do and that’s get this ship fixed.” They continued walking down the passageway.
“I’m Ok with that, so what’s a tactician running the show from engineering anyway?”
“Are you really that stupid? Or did you take a stupid pill this morning?”
“No, chief I get the destruction of the command center. It’s just Weiss was always the skipper’s go-to guy when he needed a tactician, but not today. Just curious as to why he didn’t handle them LongBows from the git-go.”
“I don’t know,” she lied. “I’m just glad it worked the way it did. Drucker would’ve had us dead a long time ago.” They all nodded at that.
They came to the end of the passageway. Williams examined the controls on the door to the Goat Locker. The safety valves were all popped effectively sealing the door shut. They got to work. While working on restoring power and gravity to a berthing area on the port side of the ship, a junction panel exploded because of a shorted wire in the fantail bay when she tried enabling the circuit. She was thrown back across the room and into a rack that had fallen down during the earlier encounters. Her head hit the rack with such force it split the helmet in two. She dropped like a rock to the deck. Williams was with her in an instant.
“Medical, Red-Eight,” he called on his suit radio.
“Medical,” answered in his head set.
“Medical emergency on Echo deck at frame one eighty.”
“Medical copies, we’re on our way.”
Two corpsmen came into the room in a few minutes with a collapsible litter. They lifted her carefully and strapped her into the litter before taking her away.
Ty caught up to her in the infirmary.
“You can’t get out of work this way, you know,” he said as he stood beside her bed.
She smiled and shook her head, “I’ll trade you places, if you want.”
Ty shook his head no.
“Listen, Ty,” she continued. “I can’t be stuck down here in the infirmary. I’m already short manned with the loss of Red-Five. I gotta be in the engineering space to help keep an eye on things.”
“I’ll agree to that, provided you stay on your back. You’ve had a couple of hard bangs already.”
“Yeah, you can go to McPherson for anything power related. Williams is good for everything else.”
Ty nodded, “Ok, I’m walking the ship to get a feel for things. The Ardie’s a tough old girl. She’s given better than she’s gotten today and is still standing.”
Anderson smiled, “See you in a few then.”
Ty patted her arm and left the room. It was filled with several other people. Most of them had severe burns and were sedated with IV lines. He worked his way past them all and headed up to the main deck. As he walked towards the aft of the ship, engineering called him. “Command, Engineering.”
Ty recognized the voice as Svenson’s, the young woman who shot the LongBows. That seemed like another time, yet it was just a day earlier.
“Command.”
“Sir, we’re passing Earth to starboard. We’re close enough to see a disk.”
“Thanks Engineering.”
He suited up and walked back to the fantail bay. Once in the airlock , he closed up his suit, waited for the locks to cycle, and then entered the bay. The bay’s lights were not working, yet it was filled with a soft white light. He walked past the empty cradle to the edge of the fantail deck. The earth was a white pearl, big enough he could almost cover it with his outstretched thumb. The moon was also visible behind the planet. Are you still there, he wondered?
A profound calmness came over him and then in an instant, the earth was just a planet with oceans and land masses and clouds. He blinked and did a double take, but when he looked again, it was white as he’d always seen it.
“Engineering, Command.”
“Engineering.”
“Anyone up there watching the earth?”
“Yes, sir, just about everyone.”
“Did any of you see anything unusual?”
“Let me check.” He came back in a few moments. “No sir, just a plain white ball of light.”
“Ok, thanks,” he said as he pondered on what he’d just seen. Who’s going to believe this, he thought to himself.
Forty minutes later, Ty said, “Sound general quarters. Code Blue.” As the klaxon reverberated through the ship, he donned his helmet. After he had his on, he checked with Anderson to make sure hers was properly seated. While he waited for the report to come back in that everyone was ready for Code Blue, he reviewed the attack program one final time.
Anderson interrupted him, “Command, the ship is at general quarters. We’re ready to implement Code Blue.”
He turned to her and nodded. She in turn gave the order over the engineering comm channel. In response Ty heard the pumps begin which pulled the atmosphere out of the living spaces of the ship. The din gradually decreased as the air pressure dropped. He felt the final faint pull at his legs as the last of the air was vented into space.
“Command, Engineering.”
Ty turned to Anderson, “Command,” he said.
He could see her speak through the faceplate of her helmet. “We’re set.” She leaned into him allowing her helmet to touch his. He could hear her distorted voice as it conducted through the material of the helmets. “Let’s kick it. I wanna get out of here.”
She stood back up and gave him a thumbs up. Then she walked over to the power management console. Ty took in a deep breath and thumbed the commit button on the main display. The engineering chamber brightened noticeably as the main generator ramped up to full power. He could feel the harmonics of the generator and drives coming up through his feet and legs from the deck beneath.
The timer started counting down to zero from two minutes.
The Adventurer leaped forward and began its streak across the Jovian system.
“Command, Dragon.” The call came at exactly thirty-seconds.
“Command.”
“Launching.”
“Good luck, Vince. Don’t get lost taking the Dragon out for a spin, Ok,” said Ty.
Vince clicked his mike in response. The timer reached zero. The cradle latches released. The Dragon, weightless, floated free in the fantail bay. The Adventurer began to accelerate again, leaving the Dragon behind, inert and dark. As she pulled away from the fighter, the space suited ops team began man handling the loader mockup into place. This time they set it in the cradle oriented so the missiles it would carry pointed out the open bay door. While one team began loading live Heli-arc missiles on the mockup, another team man-handled the Jersey generator into place between the missiles. Once it was in place they rolled their test rack for the missile guidance system into place and a ladder between the missiles.
As they continued their work, Ty watched them on a remote camera feed. After another thirty-seconds, he tapped the next button in the checklist he’d set up. The drive shut off and all power on the Adventurer shut off too. She was as close to being a hole in space as they could make her. Everyone on the ship hoped it would be enough. At Ty’s console, a new timer was counting down to zero again. Ty knew when this one reached zero a lot of things would start happening quickly.
The Adventurer came around Jupiter. The planet bent the trajectory of the ship towards the remaining Aatrix. The timer reached zero.
Ty tapped another button on the display. The power came back on and the Adventurer came back to life. They were now two minutes ahead of the Dragon that was still coming behind them, and less than a minute from the Aatrix. As sensor inputs started coming in, he saw that it was still in the same orbit. It was jinking now as he suspected it would be. The main projector began firing its pre-programmed sequence of shots. The first targets were the exposed sensor towers. While the shields attenuated most of the shots, enough still came through to overload the delicate receivers. Safety circuits shut them off in an effort to save them from being damaged.
Alerts sounded in the Aartixx’ command center. Automatic fire control systems began to acquire the attacker but were delayed vital fractions of a second as the sensor protection systems kept the sensors covered. The Adventurer continued on. In quick succession the two dorsal rail gun turrets were destroyed in blinding flashes as the slugs slammed into them. Not all slugs hit the guns. Some hit the armored hull of the ship and plowed thirty foot long furrows in the hardened ceramic and concrete.
Other slugs slammed into the base of the sensor towers. One tower was blown clear of the ship and tumbled away, trailing sparks and debris. The other tower fared better in that it stayed attached, but the data lines between the sensors and the rest of the ship were severed.
The Aatrixx gave chase. Powerful thrusters pivoted the ship so it could follow the Adventurer as it passed over head and away. Its main engine fired up and began burning to catch the fleeing ship. Its powerful lasers began lashing out at it.
Two shots hit the Adventurer’s shields in quick succession causing them to flash blinding white as they absorbed the energy of the shots. They failed after the second shot when the anodes overloaded and exploded in a shower of sparks. Arcs of electricity jumped from the interior components of the anode into the surrounding bulkheads. With the vacuum in the ship, there was no air to transfer any of the energy in the form of blast overpressure anywhere else in the ship, so all of it was absorbed by the Adventurer’s frame and deck plates. Several deck plates and frames surrounding the anodes buckled from the heat.
Ty started the flight-controller’s jinking routine. He could feel himself get lighter then heavier or sway to the left or right as the ship moved around him. He had to hold on to the display panel and lock his feet to the floor to keep his position in front of the display. The Aatrixx’ lasers continued to fire. Another shot hit the side of the fantail bay with enough energy to blow away several skin panels and cut through a support frame. A fourth shot cleanly entered the open bay door and slammed into the forward bulkhead. It punched through the bulkhead and caused an explosion when an oxygen bottle was hit and failed. Every member of Red-five was killed instantly by shrapnel from the explosion where they waited in the Goat Locker.
Ninety-seconds after they passed the Aatrix, Ty commanded the launch of the missiles from the fantail bay. All six fired at once, filling the bay with flame, hot gasses and debris as they did. The missiles quickly acquired the ship and altered course to intercept. With the dorsal rail gun turrets destroyed, the ship tried to engage the missiles with lasers. One by one the missiles guidance packages were destroyed by the lasers, but being little more than rods of tungsten with a motor strapped on to them, they bored in relentlessly. In a desperation move, the Aatrixx shut off its main engines so it could rotate the ship enough to bring the ventral rail guns to bear on the missiles. The aft turret, then the forward turret, began acquiring and firing on the missiles.
The Aatrixx was in this nose up attitude when the Dragon came in range. Vince smiled and shook his head in awe.
“You got it right again, Ty,” he said to himself. He squeezed the trigger on his control stick and volleyed all of the Plasma-Arcs. Number three failed to launch. It was on the same attach point where the other missile failed its check out. He scowled momentarily then watched with glee as all three missiles streaked into and detonated inside the drive bells of Aatrixx’ main propulsion system. Secondary explosions rippled through the aft section of the massive ship, throwing large chunks of hull and debris from the motors into space. The ship continued to pitch up and over as the Dragon passed over it. Vince fired the Dragon’s motor at full power and began aggressively jinking as it came into the field of fire of the ventral rail guns. A cloud of fragmenting pellets came swarming at the ship. Several hit the ship, one lanced through the cockpit, shattering Vince’s left shoulder and exploding the canopy. Another penetrated the drive compartment, severing power conduits and data lines as it did before exiting the ship. The drive motor quit and the Dragon tumbled away into the dark. Vince’s suit sealed itself, but could do nothing for his shoulder. His quick-check light, began to blink bright yellow and red.
When Ty saw the explosions wracking the Aatrix, he commanded a jump. The Adventurer jumped across the solar system.
“Command, Engineering,” said Anderson.
“Command.”
“We just jumped. We in the clear? We’ve got a lot of busted ship to fix.”
Ty nodded, “We’re clear. Set code green through the ship.”
“Roger that.”
They repressurized the engineering space first. The air was cold. Ty checked the atmosphere light on his right wrist pad. It had gone from black to yellow to green as air was pumped back into the room. Once it turned green, he began to remove his helmet. The first thing he noticed was the smell of burned circuits. But the room held the air. They began working their way forward then aft from the engineering space. Decompression alarms and warnings sounded when they tried to restore the air in the aft section of the ship.
“We took a real pounding back there from that Aatrix,” said Anderson.
“You want to lead the repairs back there? We lost another team in the attack.”
Anderson nodded, her face a mask of grim determination. “We’re runnin’ out of people to keep this ship going.”
She turned to two technicians. “McPherson, Williams, grab your tool kits, a port-a-wall and some power lines. Then come with me, we got a ship to fix.” They kept their helmets on, but worked with their face plates open. After they left the engineering space and headed down the main deck, McPherson spoke up.
“So, chief, what gives? We all thought this was just a convoy job. Guard a bunch of ships to Beta Hydri and we’re done.”
“Well, there is a war on you know.”
“But this?”
She stopped and turned to the man. “Listen, I don’t know more than you on that. For some reason I can’t fathom, the Alliance is determined to push us out of this system. But right now, we got a job to do and that’s get this ship fixed.” They continued walking down the passageway.
“I’m Ok with that, so what’s a tactician running the show from engineering anyway?”
“Are you really that stupid? Or did you take a stupid pill this morning?”
“No, chief I get the destruction of the command center. It’s just Weiss was always the skipper’s go-to guy when he needed a tactician, but not today. Just curious as to why he didn’t handle them LongBows from the git-go.”
“I don’t know,” she lied. “I’m just glad it worked the way it did. Drucker would’ve had us dead a long time ago.” They all nodded at that.
They came to the end of the passageway. Williams examined the controls on the door to the Goat Locker. The safety valves were all popped effectively sealing the door shut. They got to work. While working on restoring power and gravity to a berthing area on the port side of the ship, a junction panel exploded because of a shorted wire in the fantail bay when she tried enabling the circuit. She was thrown back across the room and into a rack that had fallen down during the earlier encounters. Her head hit the rack with such force it split the helmet in two. She dropped like a rock to the deck. Williams was with her in an instant.
“Medical, Red-Eight,” he called on his suit radio.
“Medical,” answered in his head set.
“Medical emergency on Echo deck at frame one eighty.”
“Medical copies, we’re on our way.”
Two corpsmen came into the room in a few minutes with a collapsible litter. They lifted her carefully and strapped her into the litter before taking her away.
Ty caught up to her in the infirmary.
“You can’t get out of work this way, you know,” he said as he stood beside her bed.
She smiled and shook her head, “I’ll trade you places, if you want.”
Ty shook his head no.
“Listen, Ty,” she continued. “I can’t be stuck down here in the infirmary. I’m already short manned with the loss of Red-Five. I gotta be in the engineering space to help keep an eye on things.”
“I’ll agree to that, provided you stay on your back. You’ve had a couple of hard bangs already.”
“Yeah, you can go to McPherson for anything power related. Williams is good for everything else.”
Ty nodded, “Ok, I’m walking the ship to get a feel for things. The Ardie’s a tough old girl. She’s given better than she’s gotten today and is still standing.”
Anderson smiled, “See you in a few then.”
Ty patted her arm and left the room. It was filled with several other people. Most of them had severe burns and were sedated with IV lines. He worked his way past them all and headed up to the main deck. As he walked towards the aft of the ship, engineering called him. “Command, Engineering.”
Ty recognized the voice as Svenson’s, the young woman who shot the LongBows. That seemed like another time, yet it was just a day earlier.
“Command.”
“Sir, we’re passing Earth to starboard. We’re close enough to see a disk.”
“Thanks Engineering.”
He suited up and walked back to the fantail bay. Once in the airlock , he closed up his suit, waited for the locks to cycle, and then entered the bay. The bay’s lights were not working, yet it was filled with a soft white light. He walked past the empty cradle to the edge of the fantail deck. The earth was a white pearl, big enough he could almost cover it with his outstretched thumb. The moon was also visible behind the planet. Are you still there, he wondered?
A profound calmness came over him and then in an instant, the earth was just a planet with oceans and land masses and clouds. He blinked and did a double take, but when he looked again, it was white as he’d always seen it.
“Engineering, Command.”
“Engineering.”
“Anyone up there watching the earth?”
“Yes, sir, just about everyone.”
“Did any of you see anything unusual?”
“Let me check.” He came back in a few moments. “No sir, just a plain white ball of light.”
“Ok, thanks,” he said as he pondered on what he’d just seen. Who’s going to believe this, he thought to himself.
Attack Run
ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 11 HOURS
Ty figured that before the Aatarr joined the two Aatrixx in orbit around Jupiter, he needed to deal with them first. They were in a low orbit around the planet. The period and altitude of their orbit over the planet would put them within a few thousand miles of the apex of the convoy’s trajectory around it. Their sensor returns showed the two ships were just a couple hundred miles apart in the same orbit and that neither was taking any defensive maneuvering.
He knew from the outset of the attack that timing would be crucial. Using Junior to command the jumps would leave the Alliance ships in the dark about where the Adventurer was until the light from their location got to the ships. But that was just a few minutes. In that time, he had to jump in system, which was easy enough and then accelerate directly at either of the Aatrixx to maximum subliminal speed, a little more than twenty percent of light.
Ty began to program the attack run into the flight control and fire control systems. Lastly, he entered the jump parameters into Junior. After reviewing the information, he sounded General Quarters again. It was time. The attack run would take all of twenty-six seconds to execute. He commanded the jump.
T-Minus twenty-six seconds… The Adventurer jumped and began her run at the Aatrixx from nearly a million miles away. They were eight light seconds from Aatrix. Ty remembered as the ship began to accelerate all the previous times he’d done this in a simulator against the software doppelgänger of the ship he was now approaching. He wondered how close reality would be to what he’d practiced. He could tell from the sound of the generator that it was, for the first time in a long time, being called upon to put out close to its full combat rated output.
At T-Minus Twenty-Three seconds, the Adventurer had accelerated to ten percent of light speed.
At T-Minus Nineteen-seconds, light from the jump reached the Aatrix.
At T-Minus Seventeen-seconds, the Adventurer had accelerated to maximum speed of twenty percent light speed. The Aatrixx threat warning system detected the Adventurer accelerating towards the ship and began to sound alarms of an imminent attack.
At this point, the computers were flying the ship and doing the fighting. The reaction times were simply too short for a human to have any hope of firing the weapons and driving the ship safely. The seconds ticked down. Ty watched the targeted Aatrixx in a window that he’d set up on the main display panel. In reality, they would never be close enough to see it with their naked eyes. Nothing would happen down to two seconds prior to crossing. The Aatrix’s only hope of surviving the attack was to hit the Adventurer and destroy it with a laser shot. The Adventurer would jump away before any missile or rail gun slug got even close to it. To that end, he’d shut the aft shields off to give the forward shields as much power as they could muster. Everything would occur and they’d either survive or not, in what happened in a tenth of a second before they jumped past the ship at one second before crossing.
At T-Minus Twelve-seconds, the duty officer on the Aatrixx stabbed the button releasing the defense systems to actually fire at the oncoming ship.
At T-Minus Ten-seconds, the Adventurer’s laser began firing at the Aatrixx sensor towers in an effort to blind the ship.
By T-Minus Nine-seconds, the gun turrets and the laser batteries had extended and swiveled into position to face the ship. The fire control systems for the rail guns determined there was no workable solution and so didn’t fire the guns. The lasers on the other hand targeted the onrushing ship and began firing at it. While it was seconds away, the distance between the ships was still measured in tens of thousands of miles. Most shots missed, those that that hit were absorbed by the shields.
At the same time, the Adventurer’s rail guns began firing a mix of solid and fragmentation slugs at the ship. Those rounds travelled in their own trajectories towards the ship.
At T-Minus Five-seconds, the Adventurer rail guns stopped firing. The rounds, if fired, would have sailed passed the ship.
At T-Minus Four-seconds, the laser targeting systems began to detect the onrushing railgun rounds and recognizing them as the greater threat, aimed at the rounds to try and kill them. Several of the rounds were vaporized by the intense beams, but even the vapor continued on towards the ship at twenty percent of light speed.
At T-Minus One point two-seconds, just two thousand miles from the Aatrix, the Adventurer jumped using Junior to control the jump. The Adventurer jumped across Jupiter’s system of moons and rings and braked hard to drop down to a full stop. She took another nine-seconds to decelerate. The trajectory arced the ship behind the planet so that it was between them and the two ships.
During the encounter, all Ty or anyone else on board could do was stand and watch the displays and infer from the readings how the attack went. When the Adventurer slowed into orbit around Jupiter, Ty turned to Anderson, “Well we’re still alive. There’s some success there.”
“Yeah, but did we hit the Aatrix?”
“Let’s see what the sensors picked up after we jumped.”
Ty tapped on the display’s control panel. A new window appeared in the display. He sent the output of the sensor to the display. He found the Aatrixx and zoomed in on it. He set the playback to slow motion. A counter in the upper right corner of the screen, counted the time in hundredth’s of a second. For several seconds, nothing appeared to happen.
“What you’re seeing are images that were captured from a five light-second distance after we made the escape jump. The effects of our laser attack won’t manifest until we hit two hundred on the timer counter here,” said Ty. He tapped the counter in the window, “The rail gun rounds won’t arrive until the counter gets to five hundred.”
“Ok”
When the counter hit two hundred seven, the shield surrounding the Aatrixx began to pulse a blinding violet white flash every five hundredth’s count. After ten flashes, other secondary flashes could be seen at several places on the ship’s hull. Ty tapped a button to freeze the playback.
“Are those the shield generators failing?”
Ty nodded, “That’s the beauty of a pico-second burst. All the power of our one hundred megajoule beam is compressed into a thousandth of a second. That increases the energy level of the shot some, and it creates a very intense shock to the system.”
“How does that make a difference?”
“You like taffy right?”
“Yeah, who doesn’t,” she winked at him. Ty just smiled.
“Well, what happens if you apply a force over time on the taffy?”
“It stretches.”
“What happens if you apply the same level of force, but you jerk the taffy instead?”
“It snaps and breaks.”
“That’s what happens here. If the beam energy is spread over a full second, which is how we rate the power, then the system can absorb that energy input. But if the same amount of energy is applied in a very short time, the molecules of the ship’s hull or in this case the shield waves can’t absorb the energy fast enough. In the case of a solid material, that sets up shock waves which shatter molecular bonds. In the case of shield waves, it induces fluctuations in the wave form of the shield which the shield anodes can’t absorb fast enough and so shockwaves in the shield anode occur, with the same result.”
“So without the shield anodes, the shield collapses?”
“Yes, and you get this, those secondary explosions are the shield anodes failing. We’ve still got about ten more pulses before the laser stopped firing. From here on, the hull is going to take the hits from the laser pulses.”
True to his word, the shields no longer pulsed, instead a point on the hull near the aft sensor tower lit up in bright flashes of light. With each flash, increasingly larger chunks of the hull began exploding away from the ship. At four seconds in, the flashes stopped and the boulder and rock sized chunks of the ship’s hull could be seen floating away from the ship.
“When we get to six seconds, the rail gun rounds start hitting, if we aimed right that is. Mind you these are coming in at twenty percent of light. There is a horrific amount of kinetic energy in those slugs. If even one hits, it’s going to be spectacular. We’re talking twenty-one quadrillion joules of energy.”
At six seconds there were three blinding flashes away from the ship followed almost instantaneously after by the hull of the Aatrixx flashing a brilliant white. When the flash faded away, the Aatrixx was rotating along its long axis. It soon became apparent that the ship had been broken into three large pieces.
“Damn,” said Anderson. She was almost slack jaw in awe of what was being displayed. “What happened there?”
“I’d say that’s a kill. But to be precise, three slugs were hit by the lasers firing in point-defense mode. Our slugs were vaporized, but the matter of the slugs was still moving towards the ship, just in a plasma or gaseous form instead of solid. It still had most of the kinetic energy, it was just diffused over an area as the gas expanded in the vacuum. What you saw was the radiation and heat of the gas and plasma striking the ship, but that was enough to break it apart.”
“Powerful case for using kinetic weapons, don’t you think?”
Ty shook his head disagreeing with her. “No, they were just incredibly stupid. That other Aatrixx will start jinking now which will make this kind of an attack a lot more difficult if not impossible. Our next attack will be different,” he said with a smile.
“Besides, the next attack is designed to draw them away from Jupiter.”
“When do you start?”
“In forty minutes, as soon as we loop around the planet. This’ll be a conventional attack, so we need to get everyone suited up.”
Ty figured that before the Aatarr joined the two Aatrixx in orbit around Jupiter, he needed to deal with them first. They were in a low orbit around the planet. The period and altitude of their orbit over the planet would put them within a few thousand miles of the apex of the convoy’s trajectory around it. Their sensor returns showed the two ships were just a couple hundred miles apart in the same orbit and that neither was taking any defensive maneuvering.
He knew from the outset of the attack that timing would be crucial. Using Junior to command the jumps would leave the Alliance ships in the dark about where the Adventurer was until the light from their location got to the ships. But that was just a few minutes. In that time, he had to jump in system, which was easy enough and then accelerate directly at either of the Aatrixx to maximum subliminal speed, a little more than twenty percent of light.
Ty began to program the attack run into the flight control and fire control systems. Lastly, he entered the jump parameters into Junior. After reviewing the information, he sounded General Quarters again. It was time. The attack run would take all of twenty-six seconds to execute. He commanded the jump.
T-Minus twenty-six seconds… The Adventurer jumped and began her run at the Aatrixx from nearly a million miles away. They were eight light seconds from Aatrix. Ty remembered as the ship began to accelerate all the previous times he’d done this in a simulator against the software doppelgänger of the ship he was now approaching. He wondered how close reality would be to what he’d practiced. He could tell from the sound of the generator that it was, for the first time in a long time, being called upon to put out close to its full combat rated output.
At T-Minus Twenty-Three seconds, the Adventurer had accelerated to ten percent of light speed.
At T-Minus Nineteen-seconds, light from the jump reached the Aatrix.
At T-Minus Seventeen-seconds, the Adventurer had accelerated to maximum speed of twenty percent light speed. The Aatrixx threat warning system detected the Adventurer accelerating towards the ship and began to sound alarms of an imminent attack.
At this point, the computers were flying the ship and doing the fighting. The reaction times were simply too short for a human to have any hope of firing the weapons and driving the ship safely. The seconds ticked down. Ty watched the targeted Aatrixx in a window that he’d set up on the main display panel. In reality, they would never be close enough to see it with their naked eyes. Nothing would happen down to two seconds prior to crossing. The Aatrix’s only hope of surviving the attack was to hit the Adventurer and destroy it with a laser shot. The Adventurer would jump away before any missile or rail gun slug got even close to it. To that end, he’d shut the aft shields off to give the forward shields as much power as they could muster. Everything would occur and they’d either survive or not, in what happened in a tenth of a second before they jumped past the ship at one second before crossing.
At T-Minus Twelve-seconds, the duty officer on the Aatrixx stabbed the button releasing the defense systems to actually fire at the oncoming ship.
At T-Minus Ten-seconds, the Adventurer’s laser began firing at the Aatrixx sensor towers in an effort to blind the ship.
By T-Minus Nine-seconds, the gun turrets and the laser batteries had extended and swiveled into position to face the ship. The fire control systems for the rail guns determined there was no workable solution and so didn’t fire the guns. The lasers on the other hand targeted the onrushing ship and began firing at it. While it was seconds away, the distance between the ships was still measured in tens of thousands of miles. Most shots missed, those that that hit were absorbed by the shields.
At the same time, the Adventurer’s rail guns began firing a mix of solid and fragmentation slugs at the ship. Those rounds travelled in their own trajectories towards the ship.
At T-Minus Five-seconds, the Adventurer rail guns stopped firing. The rounds, if fired, would have sailed passed the ship.
At T-Minus Four-seconds, the laser targeting systems began to detect the onrushing railgun rounds and recognizing them as the greater threat, aimed at the rounds to try and kill them. Several of the rounds were vaporized by the intense beams, but even the vapor continued on towards the ship at twenty percent of light speed.
At T-Minus One point two-seconds, just two thousand miles from the Aatrix, the Adventurer jumped using Junior to control the jump. The Adventurer jumped across Jupiter’s system of moons and rings and braked hard to drop down to a full stop. She took another nine-seconds to decelerate. The trajectory arced the ship behind the planet so that it was between them and the two ships.
During the encounter, all Ty or anyone else on board could do was stand and watch the displays and infer from the readings how the attack went. When the Adventurer slowed into orbit around Jupiter, Ty turned to Anderson, “Well we’re still alive. There’s some success there.”
“Yeah, but did we hit the Aatrix?”
“Let’s see what the sensors picked up after we jumped.”
Ty tapped on the display’s control panel. A new window appeared in the display. He sent the output of the sensor to the display. He found the Aatrixx and zoomed in on it. He set the playback to slow motion. A counter in the upper right corner of the screen, counted the time in hundredth’s of a second. For several seconds, nothing appeared to happen.
“What you’re seeing are images that were captured from a five light-second distance after we made the escape jump. The effects of our laser attack won’t manifest until we hit two hundred on the timer counter here,” said Ty. He tapped the counter in the window, “The rail gun rounds won’t arrive until the counter gets to five hundred.”
“Ok”
When the counter hit two hundred seven, the shield surrounding the Aatrixx began to pulse a blinding violet white flash every five hundredth’s count. After ten flashes, other secondary flashes could be seen at several places on the ship’s hull. Ty tapped a button to freeze the playback.
“Are those the shield generators failing?”
Ty nodded, “That’s the beauty of a pico-second burst. All the power of our one hundred megajoule beam is compressed into a thousandth of a second. That increases the energy level of the shot some, and it creates a very intense shock to the system.”
“How does that make a difference?”
“You like taffy right?”
“Yeah, who doesn’t,” she winked at him. Ty just smiled.
“Well, what happens if you apply a force over time on the taffy?”
“It stretches.”
“What happens if you apply the same level of force, but you jerk the taffy instead?”
“It snaps and breaks.”
“That’s what happens here. If the beam energy is spread over a full second, which is how we rate the power, then the system can absorb that energy input. But if the same amount of energy is applied in a very short time, the molecules of the ship’s hull or in this case the shield waves can’t absorb the energy fast enough. In the case of a solid material, that sets up shock waves which shatter molecular bonds. In the case of shield waves, it induces fluctuations in the wave form of the shield which the shield anodes can’t absorb fast enough and so shockwaves in the shield anode occur, with the same result.”
“So without the shield anodes, the shield collapses?”
“Yes, and you get this, those secondary explosions are the shield anodes failing. We’ve still got about ten more pulses before the laser stopped firing. From here on, the hull is going to take the hits from the laser pulses.”
True to his word, the shields no longer pulsed, instead a point on the hull near the aft sensor tower lit up in bright flashes of light. With each flash, increasingly larger chunks of the hull began exploding away from the ship. At four seconds in, the flashes stopped and the boulder and rock sized chunks of the ship’s hull could be seen floating away from the ship.
“When we get to six seconds, the rail gun rounds start hitting, if we aimed right that is. Mind you these are coming in at twenty percent of light. There is a horrific amount of kinetic energy in those slugs. If even one hits, it’s going to be spectacular. We’re talking twenty-one quadrillion joules of energy.”
At six seconds there were three blinding flashes away from the ship followed almost instantaneously after by the hull of the Aatrixx flashing a brilliant white. When the flash faded away, the Aatrixx was rotating along its long axis. It soon became apparent that the ship had been broken into three large pieces.
“Damn,” said Anderson. She was almost slack jaw in awe of what was being displayed. “What happened there?”
“I’d say that’s a kill. But to be precise, three slugs were hit by the lasers firing in point-defense mode. Our slugs were vaporized, but the matter of the slugs was still moving towards the ship, just in a plasma or gaseous form instead of solid. It still had most of the kinetic energy, it was just diffused over an area as the gas expanded in the vacuum. What you saw was the radiation and heat of the gas and plasma striking the ship, but that was enough to break it apart.”
“Powerful case for using kinetic weapons, don’t you think?”
Ty shook his head disagreeing with her. “No, they were just incredibly stupid. That other Aatrixx will start jinking now which will make this kind of an attack a lot more difficult if not impossible. Our next attack will be different,” he said with a smile.
“Besides, the next attack is designed to draw them away from Jupiter.”
“When do you start?”
“In forty minutes, as soon as we loop around the planet. This’ll be a conventional attack, so we need to get everyone suited up.”
Monday, January 27, 2014
Chasing Down the Stilettos
Ty motioned to Svenson and Harris, the sensor operator, to come over to him.
“What’s up sir,” she asked as the stopped in front of him. Harris just stood quietly.
“We’re going after the Stiletto missiles. Either of you have any experience with them?” Both shook their head no. He took a deep breath before continuing. “They’re a long range fire and forget anti-ship missile. The Alliance loves the things.”
“Fire and forget?” asked Harris.
“Yeah, they shoot it in the general direction of a known target. Then it’ll find the target by itself and home in on it. The missiles talk to each other too. So if there are multiple targets, they’ll decide which missile goes after which target.”
“The Adventurer can take them out with its primary laser easily enough. But as soon as we start active tracking to aim the laser, they’ll wake up and someone will certainly shoot back at us.”
“How can they shoot back?” asked Harris.
“They have a self-shaping penetrator warhead. Its nasty stuff! They’ll rotate the terminal attack module, a one meter diameter silver ball. Then an explosive charge fires. The charge destroys the rest of the missile, but it also propels and shapes the penetrator. Our armor won’t slow it down much and the shields won’t do anything to slow it.”
“How do we avoid it?”
“We move out of the way by changing our course. Where we are now in the solar system means accelerating or decelerating. We can’t move radially.”
“Sounds easy enough,” said Svenson.
“It won’t be. When the terminal aiming charge fires, you’ll have just seconds to react. You might have some warning if Harris here detects the terminal module rotating to fire, but it’s a sphere, so there won’t be much of an indication. Our best defense is to keep moving around. Svenson, that means you’ll need to be really sharp to aim the beam.”
She nodded, “I can do that, sir.”
“Questions?” Neither individual said anything. Ty continued, “Remember, there are seventy-two missiles out there. They can kill this ship. So, we’ll take them one at a time. If we work quickly, we can get them all before they’re a threat to the convoy. Svenson, just start with the closest missile. Harris, you watch for counter fire shots. I’ll be moving the ship.”
They returned to their stations and Ty turned to face Anderson. “Here goes,” he said. “Sound general quarters with Code Blue, depressurization protocol.”
As the klaxon sounded through the ship, he donned his helmet and checked Anderson to make sure her suit was correctly installed. When the stations responded that they were ready, he aimed the Adventurer at the first missile. As soon as the sensors began illuminating the missile to refine the firing solution, the missile spun around and aimed its second stage motor at the Adventurer.
“Aspect change on target, it’s pivoting,” said Harris.
Svenson’s hands flew over the controls. The Adventurer fired. The missile exploded sending the warhead back at the ship. Ty powered the drive motor to push the ship out of the way. Seconds passed, then they heard a staccato tapping sound reverberate through the ship.
“What’s that?” asked Anderson.
“Just debris from the missile casing.”
They continued to the next missile. They got this one before it could fire, but another missile fired back at them. They avoided the warhead, but the EMP burst of the terminal firing charge blinded them for a few seconds. Half-way through the missiles, they encountered a new twist.
“Sir.” It was Harris. “We’ve got a globe of twelve missiles ahead. They’re all in one spherical formation. All of the missiles are pointing out from a common center.”
“Svenson, target a missile on the far side of the sphere, let’s see if that confuses them.”
“Aye, sir.”
When she fired, two of the missiles facing the Adventurer fired. As it tried to dodge them, several more fired. Ty commanded a more aggressive course change. More missiles fired. Soon a cloud of projectiles were coming at them. One hit the Adventurer in its forward sensor dome. The penetrator lanced through the electronic modules behind the sensor panel and into the spaces behind it. It struck and destroyed one of the main power busses in the ship before ripping a thirty foot long tear in the outer hull as it exited the ship. The Adventurer shuddered from the impact. Hull breach warnings began sounding throughout the ship. Red lights appeared across Ty’s panel indicating multiple system failures and faults.
Anderson gazed at the lights before speaking, “We just lost main buss B, the forward sensor array and primary targeting system. Looks like the forward thruster module is off line too. Decks Echo and Foxtrot, forward of frame twenty are depressurizing. We’ve got a major hull breach along deck Foxtrot between frames eighty and one-ten. No casualties indicated, so far.”
Ty joined her at her station. From the number of red-lights on her status board and the sections of the ship which had flashing red borders around them, he knew a lot more than what she’d told him had happened.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Just stay out of the way for now and don’t go after any more missiles until we can get things under control,” she said.
He nodded and returned to his panel. With the sensor array down, he could no longer see what the missiles were doing.
At least we’re down to twenty missiles, he thought to himself.
After a few moments, she motioned to Ty to have him join her.
“Ok, here’s where we are,” she started. “We lost our backup main buss. It was off-line at the time, so we’re OK with power as long as we don’t lose main buss A. We’ve lost deck F for the time being, damage is too severe. I’m having it evacuated and setting up an airlock so repair teams can get into it later. Forward tracking sensors are gone, no way to repair them. I can get targeting back but only by cannibalizing components from the aft sensor array.”
“Do we have laser link?” Ty asked.
Anderson nodded yes.
“OK, I’m going to launch the Dragon and slave our guns to it’s sensors and press the attack.”
“Sounds good. I gotta go now.”
Ty nodded and walked back to his display.
“Dragon. Command.”
“Dragon.”
Ty checked the Dragon’s status on his display before answering. The fighter was still loaded for an anti-ship mission.
“Vince, I need you to go missile hunting for me. That hit took out our forward sensors. We can still shoot, we just can’t aim.”
“Can you slave your guns to the Dragon?”
“Yes, between your missiles and our guns, I think we can get the rest. But we’re running out of time. Launch now and I’ll set things up on our side while you start acquiring missiles.”
“OK, I’m headed for the cockpit now. I’ll be out in thirty seconds.”
“Good, be careful, Vince. These missiles have cooperative attack AI in them.”
“Roger that.”
The Dragon launched shortly after. The small fighter spun around and moved away from the Adventurer so it could see all of the remaining missiles. Once they set it up, the targeting system in the fighter actually controlled the rail guns on the Adventurer.
Next they attacked a cluster of five missiles. They got the first one, and avoided the penetrators from the other four, but a sixth missile not in the cluster fired too. Its penetrator struck the Adventurer amidships.
The ship shuddered again and heeled to starboard from the impact. The penetrator punched through a crew berthing area and into a power cell before exiting the ship. The power cell exploded as it shorted out.
More alarms sounded in the engineering space. The power cell’s explosion threw most of the people to the deck. A power management console exploded as electrical shorts arced through the system. Then main power failed. Gravity and lights blinked for a moment then came back on as emergency circuits came on line.
Fire alarms and warning lights were sounding. Ty staggered back to his feet and looked at the ship’s status board. There were fire lights in three decks. Two sections of the ship showed de-pressurization warnings. He could see Red-One and Red-Five were moving to fight the fire. Smoke began to fill the engineering space. He saw several suited crewmen rushing to the power panel with extinguishers and first aid kits. Someone he couldn’t see was screaming in pain.
Anderson was sprawled on the floor where she’d been thrown by the explosion. Black scorch marks marred the gloves and sleeves of her engineering pressure suit. Her helmet’s faceplate was blistered and cracked.
As he knelt to help her, he tapped the intercom switch on his suit.
“Dragon, Command.”
“Dragon, Need help?”
He spoke as he examined her. The quick-check light over her right breast was yellow. “Negative on that. Do you still have a link to our guns?”
“Negative.”
“We’re out of the game for the time then. I need you to move further away from us and engage with your own missiles. When you use them, come back and rearm with more Heli-arcs and a gun pod. I’ll notify Dragon Ops. Command out.”
“Wilco.”
“Dragon Ops, Command”
“Dragon Ops.”
“Get another full load of Heli-arcs and a gun pod ready. When the Dragon returns pull those Plasma-arcs off. Got it?”
“Dragon Ops copies.”
Ty turned his attention to Anderson and glanced down at his right glove. The atmosphere indicator was green, so he reached for the releases on Anderson’s helmet. As he took it off he called out to her.
“Susan!”
She blinked her eyes. They went in and out of focus as she looked up at him. “Susan, can you hear me?” She blinked her eyes, then nodded her head. “You want to try standing?” She nodded again. He reached under her to help her up.
“I was over by the power panel there when we got hit. The arc went through my suit. It must have thrown me over here.”
“Looks like it.” Ty noticed there was no crying now. “Someone else got hurt though.”
She wobbled as she got to her feet and held on to Ty for a moment.
“Probably Dean, the arc got him worse than me.”
“Command, Red one.”
“Go Red One.”
”Sir, we have the fires out. The port side number three power cell is toast. We also found two fatals and three wounded in the crew berths. We’re moving the wounded to the infirmary now.”
“Command copies.” Ty glanced at Anderson. Concern was in her face too. “Red Five, command.”
He heard some heavy breathing before someone spoke. “Red Five.”
“Sit rep”.
“Sir, fire is out. We’re working the starboard side hull puncture at frame two-oh-seven, radial four-thirty. We’ve got a single wounded in the compartment with us, missing arm, sir. We’re doing buddy air until we can get a patch in place.”
“Command copies.” Ty pursed his lips and shook his head. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“Command, Dragon.”
“Go Dragon.”
“Splash three stilettos. Coming back to reload. Those suckers are nimble.”
“Good work, Dragon.” Ty turned to Anderson, “We’re down to eleven.” They both looked at the clock. “It’s gonna be close.”
“Well, we can’t shoot without main power. We have to get that power cell isolated before we can bring main power back up.”
“OK, that’s your specialty, just remember, each missile represents a freighter at this point.”
“I’m going to supervise isolating the power cell. Don’t break anything else while I’m gone,” she said. With that she walked stiffly towards the entry way. She motioned to one of the other technicians to accompany her.
An eternity later, a call came from Dragon.
“Command, Dragon.”
“Go Dragon.”
“Launching now. We’ve got a gun pod and twelve Heli-arcs.”
“Good hunting. Command out.”
Ty could only wait while others worked to repair the ship. The wait was worse than waiting to hear from the fleet about his promotion. Ten minutes later, Dragon called in.
“Command, Dragon.”
“Go Dragon.”
“Good news, we got eight more. Bad news, three launched before we could kill them. Three freighters lost, no survivors.”
Ty slammed the display panel with his open hand in anger. He took a deep breath to compose himself before speaking. “Command copies. Return to the ship.”
Vince double clicked his mic in response.
Ty looked at a display that showed the ships in the convoy. Red lines appeared through three ships, Tiny Maru a freighter carrying livestock, Trade Winds a freighter carrying spare parts for the fleet and October Harvest, another freighter carrying food.
He looked at the symbols representing the ships in the convoy. In another seven hours, they would need to be decelerating to make the turn around Jupiter.
He called out to the technician who was monitoring their communications systems on an adjacent wall panel, “Hey, Harris.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the man.
“We still being jammed?”
The man entered some information into a keypad on the panel. He studied the results before answering, “Yes, sir.”
“Ok, I’m going to rack out in the snooze tube over there.” He motioned with his head towards a glass half-cylinder wedged in between two panels and some conduits. “If I don’t wake up in three hours, wake me. Ok?”
“Sure thing, sir,” answered the man.
Ty walked over to the device. It looked like a test-tube cut in half along the long axis of the tube. The diameter of the tube was just wide enough to for a single person to stand inside. A small control panel was embedded at eye level in the inner face of the cylinder. Ty tapped in the number 180 then turned to face the room and stepped backwards into the tube. When he leaned his head back into the glass-like material of the tube, he felt himself grow weightless. Sleep came quickly after.
“What’s up sir,” she asked as the stopped in front of him. Harris just stood quietly.
“We’re going after the Stiletto missiles. Either of you have any experience with them?” Both shook their head no. He took a deep breath before continuing. “They’re a long range fire and forget anti-ship missile. The Alliance loves the things.”
“Fire and forget?” asked Harris.
“Yeah, they shoot it in the general direction of a known target. Then it’ll find the target by itself and home in on it. The missiles talk to each other too. So if there are multiple targets, they’ll decide which missile goes after which target.”
“The Adventurer can take them out with its primary laser easily enough. But as soon as we start active tracking to aim the laser, they’ll wake up and someone will certainly shoot back at us.”
“How can they shoot back?” asked Harris.
“They have a self-shaping penetrator warhead. Its nasty stuff! They’ll rotate the terminal attack module, a one meter diameter silver ball. Then an explosive charge fires. The charge destroys the rest of the missile, but it also propels and shapes the penetrator. Our armor won’t slow it down much and the shields won’t do anything to slow it.”
“How do we avoid it?”
“We move out of the way by changing our course. Where we are now in the solar system means accelerating or decelerating. We can’t move radially.”
“Sounds easy enough,” said Svenson.
“It won’t be. When the terminal aiming charge fires, you’ll have just seconds to react. You might have some warning if Harris here detects the terminal module rotating to fire, but it’s a sphere, so there won’t be much of an indication. Our best defense is to keep moving around. Svenson, that means you’ll need to be really sharp to aim the beam.”
She nodded, “I can do that, sir.”
“Questions?” Neither individual said anything. Ty continued, “Remember, there are seventy-two missiles out there. They can kill this ship. So, we’ll take them one at a time. If we work quickly, we can get them all before they’re a threat to the convoy. Svenson, just start with the closest missile. Harris, you watch for counter fire shots. I’ll be moving the ship.”
They returned to their stations and Ty turned to face Anderson. “Here goes,” he said. “Sound general quarters with Code Blue, depressurization protocol.”
As the klaxon sounded through the ship, he donned his helmet and checked Anderson to make sure her suit was correctly installed. When the stations responded that they were ready, he aimed the Adventurer at the first missile. As soon as the sensors began illuminating the missile to refine the firing solution, the missile spun around and aimed its second stage motor at the Adventurer.
“Aspect change on target, it’s pivoting,” said Harris.
Svenson’s hands flew over the controls. The Adventurer fired. The missile exploded sending the warhead back at the ship. Ty powered the drive motor to push the ship out of the way. Seconds passed, then they heard a staccato tapping sound reverberate through the ship.
“What’s that?” asked Anderson.
“Just debris from the missile casing.”
They continued to the next missile. They got this one before it could fire, but another missile fired back at them. They avoided the warhead, but the EMP burst of the terminal firing charge blinded them for a few seconds. Half-way through the missiles, they encountered a new twist.
“Sir.” It was Harris. “We’ve got a globe of twelve missiles ahead. They’re all in one spherical formation. All of the missiles are pointing out from a common center.”
“Svenson, target a missile on the far side of the sphere, let’s see if that confuses them.”
“Aye, sir.”
When she fired, two of the missiles facing the Adventurer fired. As it tried to dodge them, several more fired. Ty commanded a more aggressive course change. More missiles fired. Soon a cloud of projectiles were coming at them. One hit the Adventurer in its forward sensor dome. The penetrator lanced through the electronic modules behind the sensor panel and into the spaces behind it. It struck and destroyed one of the main power busses in the ship before ripping a thirty foot long tear in the outer hull as it exited the ship. The Adventurer shuddered from the impact. Hull breach warnings began sounding throughout the ship. Red lights appeared across Ty’s panel indicating multiple system failures and faults.
Anderson gazed at the lights before speaking, “We just lost main buss B, the forward sensor array and primary targeting system. Looks like the forward thruster module is off line too. Decks Echo and Foxtrot, forward of frame twenty are depressurizing. We’ve got a major hull breach along deck Foxtrot between frames eighty and one-ten. No casualties indicated, so far.”
Ty joined her at her station. From the number of red-lights on her status board and the sections of the ship which had flashing red borders around them, he knew a lot more than what she’d told him had happened.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Just stay out of the way for now and don’t go after any more missiles until we can get things under control,” she said.
He nodded and returned to his panel. With the sensor array down, he could no longer see what the missiles were doing.
At least we’re down to twenty missiles, he thought to himself.
After a few moments, she motioned to Ty to have him join her.
“Ok, here’s where we are,” she started. “We lost our backup main buss. It was off-line at the time, so we’re OK with power as long as we don’t lose main buss A. We’ve lost deck F for the time being, damage is too severe. I’m having it evacuated and setting up an airlock so repair teams can get into it later. Forward tracking sensors are gone, no way to repair them. I can get targeting back but only by cannibalizing components from the aft sensor array.”
“Do we have laser link?” Ty asked.
Anderson nodded yes.
“OK, I’m going to launch the Dragon and slave our guns to it’s sensors and press the attack.”
“Sounds good. I gotta go now.”
Ty nodded and walked back to his display.
“Dragon. Command.”
“Dragon.”
Ty checked the Dragon’s status on his display before answering. The fighter was still loaded for an anti-ship mission.
“Vince, I need you to go missile hunting for me. That hit took out our forward sensors. We can still shoot, we just can’t aim.”
“Can you slave your guns to the Dragon?”
“Yes, between your missiles and our guns, I think we can get the rest. But we’re running out of time. Launch now and I’ll set things up on our side while you start acquiring missiles.”
“OK, I’m headed for the cockpit now. I’ll be out in thirty seconds.”
“Good, be careful, Vince. These missiles have cooperative attack AI in them.”
“Roger that.”
The Dragon launched shortly after. The small fighter spun around and moved away from the Adventurer so it could see all of the remaining missiles. Once they set it up, the targeting system in the fighter actually controlled the rail guns on the Adventurer.
Next they attacked a cluster of five missiles. They got the first one, and avoided the penetrators from the other four, but a sixth missile not in the cluster fired too. Its penetrator struck the Adventurer amidships.
The ship shuddered again and heeled to starboard from the impact. The penetrator punched through a crew berthing area and into a power cell before exiting the ship. The power cell exploded as it shorted out.
More alarms sounded in the engineering space. The power cell’s explosion threw most of the people to the deck. A power management console exploded as electrical shorts arced through the system. Then main power failed. Gravity and lights blinked for a moment then came back on as emergency circuits came on line.
Fire alarms and warning lights were sounding. Ty staggered back to his feet and looked at the ship’s status board. There were fire lights in three decks. Two sections of the ship showed de-pressurization warnings. He could see Red-One and Red-Five were moving to fight the fire. Smoke began to fill the engineering space. He saw several suited crewmen rushing to the power panel with extinguishers and first aid kits. Someone he couldn’t see was screaming in pain.
Anderson was sprawled on the floor where she’d been thrown by the explosion. Black scorch marks marred the gloves and sleeves of her engineering pressure suit. Her helmet’s faceplate was blistered and cracked.
As he knelt to help her, he tapped the intercom switch on his suit.
“Dragon, Command.”
“Dragon, Need help?”
He spoke as he examined her. The quick-check light over her right breast was yellow. “Negative on that. Do you still have a link to our guns?”
“Negative.”
“We’re out of the game for the time then. I need you to move further away from us and engage with your own missiles. When you use them, come back and rearm with more Heli-arcs and a gun pod. I’ll notify Dragon Ops. Command out.”
“Wilco.”
“Dragon Ops, Command”
“Dragon Ops.”
“Get another full load of Heli-arcs and a gun pod ready. When the Dragon returns pull those Plasma-arcs off. Got it?”
“Dragon Ops copies.”
Ty turned his attention to Anderson and glanced down at his right glove. The atmosphere indicator was green, so he reached for the releases on Anderson’s helmet. As he took it off he called out to her.
“Susan!”
She blinked her eyes. They went in and out of focus as she looked up at him. “Susan, can you hear me?” She blinked her eyes, then nodded her head. “You want to try standing?” She nodded again. He reached under her to help her up.
“I was over by the power panel there when we got hit. The arc went through my suit. It must have thrown me over here.”
“Looks like it.” Ty noticed there was no crying now. “Someone else got hurt though.”
She wobbled as she got to her feet and held on to Ty for a moment.
“Probably Dean, the arc got him worse than me.”
“Command, Red one.”
“Go Red One.”
”Sir, we have the fires out. The port side number three power cell is toast. We also found two fatals and three wounded in the crew berths. We’re moving the wounded to the infirmary now.”
“Command copies.” Ty glanced at Anderson. Concern was in her face too. “Red Five, command.”
He heard some heavy breathing before someone spoke. “Red Five.”
“Sit rep”.
“Sir, fire is out. We’re working the starboard side hull puncture at frame two-oh-seven, radial four-thirty. We’ve got a single wounded in the compartment with us, missing arm, sir. We’re doing buddy air until we can get a patch in place.”
“Command copies.” Ty pursed his lips and shook his head. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“Command, Dragon.”
“Go Dragon.”
“Splash three stilettos. Coming back to reload. Those suckers are nimble.”
“Good work, Dragon.” Ty turned to Anderson, “We’re down to eleven.” They both looked at the clock. “It’s gonna be close.”
“Well, we can’t shoot without main power. We have to get that power cell isolated before we can bring main power back up.”
“OK, that’s your specialty, just remember, each missile represents a freighter at this point.”
“I’m going to supervise isolating the power cell. Don’t break anything else while I’m gone,” she said. With that she walked stiffly towards the entry way. She motioned to one of the other technicians to accompany her.
An eternity later, a call came from Dragon.
“Command, Dragon.”
“Go Dragon.”
“Launching now. We’ve got a gun pod and twelve Heli-arcs.”
“Good hunting. Command out.”
Ty could only wait while others worked to repair the ship. The wait was worse than waiting to hear from the fleet about his promotion. Ten minutes later, Dragon called in.
“Command, Dragon.”
“Go Dragon.”
“Good news, we got eight more. Bad news, three launched before we could kill them. Three freighters lost, no survivors.”
Ty slammed the display panel with his open hand in anger. He took a deep breath to compose himself before speaking. “Command copies. Return to the ship.”
Vince double clicked his mic in response.
Ty looked at a display that showed the ships in the convoy. Red lines appeared through three ships, Tiny Maru a freighter carrying livestock, Trade Winds a freighter carrying spare parts for the fleet and October Harvest, another freighter carrying food.
He looked at the symbols representing the ships in the convoy. In another seven hours, they would need to be decelerating to make the turn around Jupiter.
He called out to the technician who was monitoring their communications systems on an adjacent wall panel, “Hey, Harris.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the man.
“We still being jammed?”
The man entered some information into a keypad on the panel. He studied the results before answering, “Yes, sir.”
“Ok, I’m going to rack out in the snooze tube over there.” He motioned with his head towards a glass half-cylinder wedged in between two panels and some conduits. “If I don’t wake up in three hours, wake me. Ok?”
“Sure thing, sir,” answered the man.
Ty walked over to the device. It looked like a test-tube cut in half along the long axis of the tube. The diameter of the tube was just wide enough to for a single person to stand inside. A small control panel was embedded at eye level in the inner face of the cylinder. Ty tapped in the number 180 then turned to face the room and stepped backwards into the tube. When he leaned his head back into the glass-like material of the tube, he felt himself grow weightless. Sleep came quickly after.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Defeating the Aatrixx
ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 14 HOURS
A voice in the tube was telling him to wake up. He felt his weight on his feet. Anderson was waiting for him with a concerned look on her face.
“What’s up?” Ty asked as he stepped off the pad.
“Sorry to wake you early. It’s only been about an hour, but an Aatarr battleship transitioned into the system just a moment ago. It’s burning for Mars as we speak.”
“What?” Ty felt a pit in his stomach. “Why Mars? What about this system is so important?” he asked as he walked with her to the main display. “We need those sleep tubes in command centers by the way,” he said. “How do you guys rate this?”
“Well, we don’t have chairs,” Anderson answered deadpan.
Ty winced. “So, what else do you have for me?”
As she spoke his mind raced about this latest development. He shook his head and focused on what she was saying. She said, “We're matching course now with the convoy. There’s still about five hours before they need to decelerate for the turn. Those two Aatrixx are braking into orbit around Jupiter now. That Aatarr is damn fast, it’s accelerating faster than the Aatrix. It’ll arrive at Mars within the hour.”
Ty shook his head and held his left hand clenched in a fist to his mouth as he contemplated the news. She waited for him to look back at her before she continued.
”Repair teams have finished shoring up the bulkheads on bravo and charlie decks. The power cell has been isolated. We’re back on main power. I’ve got targeting back for you, but we’re blind aft now. I’ve got Red-Seven putting scabs on B-deck overheads so we can re-pressurize the deck. Red-four is sealing off portions of Foxtrot deck. That hole is too big for us to repair it all. I think we can get about half the deck space back.”
“What’s our casualty count?”
“Bad, twelve missing. I’m sure they’re all fatals. That’s the entire bridge team and Red-Team one. We have seven fatals, all of Red-six plus three crewmen in the berthing compartment. Three other serious injuries were caused when the power cell blew, burns.”
Ty wondered what that count would be by the time they got away from the system. “Can we fight?”
“Yeah, we’re still in the game. We can shoot, but without buss B, we can either move or shoot when the shields are up but not both. My biggest concern is the shields. The dorsal shield generators actually didn’t get touched when we lost the command center, so we have full hardness of our shields but just two-thirds of their capacitance.”
“Three shots, instead of four or five?”
She nodded.
“What else?”
Anderson checked her notes before continuing, ”The crew berth is pretty severely damaged. I’m using it as the morgue right now. We lost one of the pri-fli controllers in the run in with the LongBow, but we’ve got the other two, plus Junior. The bee-bee stackers wanted me to tell you the Plasma-Arcs launch initiator was replaced. It benched bad so they replaced it from stores.”
“What does the Dragon have left?”
“Vince shot off twenty Heli-arcs and seven hundred rounds of thirty-mike rounds taking out the Stilettos. We’ve got four Plasma-arcs, five Heli-arcs, and a thousand rounds of thirty-mikes left.”
“Anything else?” Ty asked.
She shook her head no.
“Well, the Aatarr changes things. I felt confident we stood pretty good odds of handling the two Aatrix, but I think we need to have the convoy divert. If the Alliance knew how close they came with that volley of stilettos to taking out all of the convoy, they would be tempted to try again. I know we’d be hard pressed to stop them if they did.”
“Well, here’s hoping we persuaded them to not try it again.”
“Yeah,” Ty said as he stopped a moment to think. “There’s no finessing this. At this point, if the freighters can’t leave now, we’re likely gonna lose some, if not all that stay behind. We could escape pretty easily if it weren’t for the convoy.”
“Well, let’s get them all on the line. We need to talk.”
It took a few minutes to set up the conference. Ty had the Adventurer take up a position in the center of the convoy. After a roll call of all the ships, Ty spoke.
“The situation in system is pretty grim. There are two Aatrixx heavy cruisers in orbit around Jupiter. They’re orbiting the planet in easy weapon range of the apex of our turning trajectory. Additionally, a third Alliance capital ship, called an Aatarr has entered the system. It’s more powerful even than the Aatrixx that are already here. Currently it is burning for Mars. It’s intentions aren’t clear yet.”
A voice spoke on the call, cutting Ty off, “Feather Wind here. If it’s going to attack Mars, what are your intentions?”
Ty rubbed his forehead with his left hand. “My orders are to get the convoy safely through to Beta Hydri. We have been cut off from the Fleet by Alliance jamming, so standard fleet doctrine applies. I can render assistance to Mars only after I know you are safe.”
“Good, although it didn’t do Trade Winds much good.”
“Understood Feather Wind, but be advised, we can’t stop another attack like the last one. A lot more missiles will get past us if they attack again.” He continued, “Now, the briefed pre-turn escape jump is to Delta Pavonis, it’s still a good option, but you have to make a forty degree free turn there to jump to Beta Hydri and you need to make a five degree free turn here to escape to Delta Pavonis. Let me know your intentions either way.”
Ty paused to let the ships answer back.
“Maru Tau here.”
Ty found the name on the ship list. It was the fuel carrier, the most valuable freighter in the convoy. He cringed inside waiting for the captain to speak.
“We are unable to make the free turn, Adventurer,” said the captain.
“Adventurer copies. We will do what we can to escort you through the system.”
In the end, all but nine ships could make the escape jump. Ty watched the ships on the display intently as they began emergency braking to decelerate enough to change course with just their maneuvering thrusters. It took them fifty-two minutes to decelerate, a few minutes to change course and another hour to accelerate back to jump speed. Then they were gone. During that time, the crew of the Adventurer continued to make repairs as best they could. After the last ship jumped away, Ty turned to Anderson.
“Nothing is going to happen for the next eight hours, let everyone catch up on some sleep. I’m going to talk tactics with Vince and Stan before I rack out myself. You need to get some rest too.”
She simply nodded. Ty left the engineering room and headed to the fantail. He could see the midship section of the passageway where it had contained the fire burning below. The flooring was discolored and warped from the heat that had existed on the other side of the deck. The lights in the section weren’t working either.
It was silent in the fantail. Ty noticed all of the snooze tubes were occupied by mechanics. Vince was crashed out on the old sofa. He walked over to it and jostled Vince’s leg which hung over the end of the sofa. The man sat up, looked at Ty, and blinked.
“Kill-joy. Don’t you know I need my beauty rest.”
“Heh, it wouldn’t help.”
Vince rolled on his side. “Not what my wife says.”
“Well, I’m not your wife. I need to talk tactics. Since you and Stan are the only other guys on board who know anything about Alliance ships, you’re elected… even if you’re just stick actuators.”
Vince shook his head and chuckled, “No argument from me on that. You’re the guru on that topic, Ty. All we could do is smile and agree with whatever you say.”
“So agree with me or tell me I’m full of it.”
“You are full of it, but I’ll listen anyway.”
Ty smirked, “Yeah, well, here’s the situation. There are two Aatrixx camped out at the apex of our turn around Jupiter. There’s an Aatarr headed for Mars for who knows what reason. While the rest of the convoy is gone, I’ve still got nine ships, including a fuel carrier that have to make this jump. My job is to see that they survive.”
“So, how do you like command now?”
Ty shook his head, “Vince, I never wanted command. Certainly not like this.” He waved at the darkness around them. “I certainly didn’t want to end up in command with the captain dead and bodies in the morgue. I just wanted to stay in the service. I like being a tactician.”
Vince laughed. “You crack me up sometimes Ty. I’ve flown against you in the simulators and I wouldn’t want to fight you. I’ve never been able to come up with any attack that stops you, so I don’t think I could offer you a helpful idea. For what it’s worth, I actually think we have better odds of surviving with you calling the shots than with the captain.”
Ty chuckled, “Humor me.”
“Knowing you, you want something way outside the box. Something they’re not going to expect.”
“That’s the only way to fight in my book.”
“Mine too, Ty.” Vince reached up and placed his hand on the blunt snout of the Dragon fighter. He looked at the space and then at the bay doors and then back at Ty. “Well, near as I can tell, we’ll have to bag the Aatrixx the old fashioned way.”
“Blind them by taking out their sensor towers, then kill them with Plasma-Arcs,” said Ty, though it was more of a question.
Vince nodded, “Timing and getting in the correct jump lane will be tough, what with their proximity to Jupiter. You’ll have to stay around long enough to acquire the towers and shoot at them before you jump out.”
“Yeah,” said Ty. “The topography of the gravity field means our escape jump is going to be towards Jupiter so we’ll be jumping to a place in range of their energy weapons.”
“So, let’s assume, I can pull this off enough times to disable and or kill both Aatrixx. I still have that Aatarr to deal with. I do have a couple of ideas on how to deal with the Aatrixx, but not that Aatarr, not yet at least.”
“I’ve got a wild idea for you on that one, throw rocks at it.”
Ty cocked his head and scrunched his face in a quizzical look.
“Look, the fleet hasn’t used kinetic weapons besides light rail guns in decades. The Alliance is all about defeating energy weapons since that’s all we use on them.” Ty nodded in agreement. “So, grab some boulders. The asteroid belt out there is loaded with them. Get enough to fill this bay here. Jump out however far you need. Make a run at that Aatar, fast as the engines will go, release them, or just shove them out the bay here. Jump away and see what happens.”
Ty contemplated the concept of several tons of ice and rock slamming into the armor of an Aatarr at a thousand miles per second. It made him cringe and smile at the same time.
“That’s a stupid, fabulous idea,” he said at length.
“Glad I could help. If it works, I get the patent,” said Vince. They both laughed.
“Well, if it works, it’ll work just once.”
“Yeah, but there’s just one of them,” Vince added.
Ty rolled his eyes, “Not the way my luck’s been going. Every time I defeat a ship, another bigger one comes to take its place.”
“Good for you then that the Alliance doesn’t have anything bigger than an Aatarr.”
Ty headed back out of the room. Over his shoulder Vince called out, “If it doesn’t work, it’s not my idea.”
Ty waved behind him as he entered the airlock into the rest of the ship.
A voice in the tube was telling him to wake up. He felt his weight on his feet. Anderson was waiting for him with a concerned look on her face.
“What’s up?” Ty asked as he stepped off the pad.
“Sorry to wake you early. It’s only been about an hour, but an Aatarr battleship transitioned into the system just a moment ago. It’s burning for Mars as we speak.”
“What?” Ty felt a pit in his stomach. “Why Mars? What about this system is so important?” he asked as he walked with her to the main display. “We need those sleep tubes in command centers by the way,” he said. “How do you guys rate this?”
“Well, we don’t have chairs,” Anderson answered deadpan.
Ty winced. “So, what else do you have for me?”
As she spoke his mind raced about this latest development. He shook his head and focused on what she was saying. She said, “We're matching course now with the convoy. There’s still about five hours before they need to decelerate for the turn. Those two Aatrixx are braking into orbit around Jupiter now. That Aatarr is damn fast, it’s accelerating faster than the Aatrix. It’ll arrive at Mars within the hour.”
Ty shook his head and held his left hand clenched in a fist to his mouth as he contemplated the news. She waited for him to look back at her before she continued.
”Repair teams have finished shoring up the bulkheads on bravo and charlie decks. The power cell has been isolated. We’re back on main power. I’ve got targeting back for you, but we’re blind aft now. I’ve got Red-Seven putting scabs on B-deck overheads so we can re-pressurize the deck. Red-four is sealing off portions of Foxtrot deck. That hole is too big for us to repair it all. I think we can get about half the deck space back.”
“What’s our casualty count?”
“Bad, twelve missing. I’m sure they’re all fatals. That’s the entire bridge team and Red-Team one. We have seven fatals, all of Red-six plus three crewmen in the berthing compartment. Three other serious injuries were caused when the power cell blew, burns.”
Ty wondered what that count would be by the time they got away from the system. “Can we fight?”
“Yeah, we’re still in the game. We can shoot, but without buss B, we can either move or shoot when the shields are up but not both. My biggest concern is the shields. The dorsal shield generators actually didn’t get touched when we lost the command center, so we have full hardness of our shields but just two-thirds of their capacitance.”
“Three shots, instead of four or five?”
She nodded.
“What else?”
Anderson checked her notes before continuing, ”The crew berth is pretty severely damaged. I’m using it as the morgue right now. We lost one of the pri-fli controllers in the run in with the LongBow, but we’ve got the other two, plus Junior. The bee-bee stackers wanted me to tell you the Plasma-Arcs launch initiator was replaced. It benched bad so they replaced it from stores.”
“What does the Dragon have left?”
“Vince shot off twenty Heli-arcs and seven hundred rounds of thirty-mike rounds taking out the Stilettos. We’ve got four Plasma-arcs, five Heli-arcs, and a thousand rounds of thirty-mikes left.”
“Anything else?” Ty asked.
She shook her head no.
“Well, the Aatarr changes things. I felt confident we stood pretty good odds of handling the two Aatrix, but I think we need to have the convoy divert. If the Alliance knew how close they came with that volley of stilettos to taking out all of the convoy, they would be tempted to try again. I know we’d be hard pressed to stop them if they did.”
“Well, here’s hoping we persuaded them to not try it again.”
“Yeah,” Ty said as he stopped a moment to think. “There’s no finessing this. At this point, if the freighters can’t leave now, we’re likely gonna lose some, if not all that stay behind. We could escape pretty easily if it weren’t for the convoy.”
“Well, let’s get them all on the line. We need to talk.”
It took a few minutes to set up the conference. Ty had the Adventurer take up a position in the center of the convoy. After a roll call of all the ships, Ty spoke.
“The situation in system is pretty grim. There are two Aatrixx heavy cruisers in orbit around Jupiter. They’re orbiting the planet in easy weapon range of the apex of our turning trajectory. Additionally, a third Alliance capital ship, called an Aatarr has entered the system. It’s more powerful even than the Aatrixx that are already here. Currently it is burning for Mars. It’s intentions aren’t clear yet.”
A voice spoke on the call, cutting Ty off, “Feather Wind here. If it’s going to attack Mars, what are your intentions?”
Ty rubbed his forehead with his left hand. “My orders are to get the convoy safely through to Beta Hydri. We have been cut off from the Fleet by Alliance jamming, so standard fleet doctrine applies. I can render assistance to Mars only after I know you are safe.”
“Good, although it didn’t do Trade Winds much good.”
“Understood Feather Wind, but be advised, we can’t stop another attack like the last one. A lot more missiles will get past us if they attack again.” He continued, “Now, the briefed pre-turn escape jump is to Delta Pavonis, it’s still a good option, but you have to make a forty degree free turn there to jump to Beta Hydri and you need to make a five degree free turn here to escape to Delta Pavonis. Let me know your intentions either way.”
Ty paused to let the ships answer back.
“Maru Tau here.”
Ty found the name on the ship list. It was the fuel carrier, the most valuable freighter in the convoy. He cringed inside waiting for the captain to speak.
“We are unable to make the free turn, Adventurer,” said the captain.
“Adventurer copies. We will do what we can to escort you through the system.”
In the end, all but nine ships could make the escape jump. Ty watched the ships on the display intently as they began emergency braking to decelerate enough to change course with just their maneuvering thrusters. It took them fifty-two minutes to decelerate, a few minutes to change course and another hour to accelerate back to jump speed. Then they were gone. During that time, the crew of the Adventurer continued to make repairs as best they could. After the last ship jumped away, Ty turned to Anderson.
“Nothing is going to happen for the next eight hours, let everyone catch up on some sleep. I’m going to talk tactics with Vince and Stan before I rack out myself. You need to get some rest too.”
She simply nodded. Ty left the engineering room and headed to the fantail. He could see the midship section of the passageway where it had contained the fire burning below. The flooring was discolored and warped from the heat that had existed on the other side of the deck. The lights in the section weren’t working either.
It was silent in the fantail. Ty noticed all of the snooze tubes were occupied by mechanics. Vince was crashed out on the old sofa. He walked over to it and jostled Vince’s leg which hung over the end of the sofa. The man sat up, looked at Ty, and blinked.
“Kill-joy. Don’t you know I need my beauty rest.”
“Heh, it wouldn’t help.”
Vince rolled on his side. “Not what my wife says.”
“Well, I’m not your wife. I need to talk tactics. Since you and Stan are the only other guys on board who know anything about Alliance ships, you’re elected… even if you’re just stick actuators.”
Vince shook his head and chuckled, “No argument from me on that. You’re the guru on that topic, Ty. All we could do is smile and agree with whatever you say.”
“So agree with me or tell me I’m full of it.”
“You are full of it, but I’ll listen anyway.”
Ty smirked, “Yeah, well, here’s the situation. There are two Aatrixx camped out at the apex of our turn around Jupiter. There’s an Aatarr headed for Mars for who knows what reason. While the rest of the convoy is gone, I’ve still got nine ships, including a fuel carrier that have to make this jump. My job is to see that they survive.”
“So, how do you like command now?”
Ty shook his head, “Vince, I never wanted command. Certainly not like this.” He waved at the darkness around them. “I certainly didn’t want to end up in command with the captain dead and bodies in the morgue. I just wanted to stay in the service. I like being a tactician.”
Vince laughed. “You crack me up sometimes Ty. I’ve flown against you in the simulators and I wouldn’t want to fight you. I’ve never been able to come up with any attack that stops you, so I don’t think I could offer you a helpful idea. For what it’s worth, I actually think we have better odds of surviving with you calling the shots than with the captain.”
Ty chuckled, “Humor me.”
“Knowing you, you want something way outside the box. Something they’re not going to expect.”
“That’s the only way to fight in my book.”
“Mine too, Ty.” Vince reached up and placed his hand on the blunt snout of the Dragon fighter. He looked at the space and then at the bay doors and then back at Ty. “Well, near as I can tell, we’ll have to bag the Aatrixx the old fashioned way.”
“Blind them by taking out their sensor towers, then kill them with Plasma-Arcs,” said Ty, though it was more of a question.
Vince nodded, “Timing and getting in the correct jump lane will be tough, what with their proximity to Jupiter. You’ll have to stay around long enough to acquire the towers and shoot at them before you jump out.”
“Yeah,” said Ty. “The topography of the gravity field means our escape jump is going to be towards Jupiter so we’ll be jumping to a place in range of their energy weapons.”
“So, let’s assume, I can pull this off enough times to disable and or kill both Aatrixx. I still have that Aatarr to deal with. I do have a couple of ideas on how to deal with the Aatrixx, but not that Aatarr, not yet at least.”
“I’ve got a wild idea for you on that one, throw rocks at it.”
Ty cocked his head and scrunched his face in a quizzical look.
“Look, the fleet hasn’t used kinetic weapons besides light rail guns in decades. The Alliance is all about defeating energy weapons since that’s all we use on them.” Ty nodded in agreement. “So, grab some boulders. The asteroid belt out there is loaded with them. Get enough to fill this bay here. Jump out however far you need. Make a run at that Aatar, fast as the engines will go, release them, or just shove them out the bay here. Jump away and see what happens.”
Ty contemplated the concept of several tons of ice and rock slamming into the armor of an Aatarr at a thousand miles per second. It made him cringe and smile at the same time.
“That’s a stupid, fabulous idea,” he said at length.
“Glad I could help. If it works, I get the patent,” said Vince. They both laughed.
“Well, if it works, it’ll work just once.”
“Yeah, but there’s just one of them,” Vince added.
Ty rolled his eyes, “Not the way my luck’s been going. Every time I defeat a ship, another bigger one comes to take its place.”
“Good for you then that the Alliance doesn’t have anything bigger than an Aatarr.”
Ty headed back out of the room. Over his shoulder Vince called out, “If it doesn’t work, it’s not my idea.”
Ty waved behind him as he entered the airlock into the rest of the ship.
The Frigates
ADVENTURER: T-MINUS 21 HOURS
While Ty reveled in the having the ship back up and running. He began to take stock of the situation and to see just how badly the Adventurer was hurt by that first blast. He pushed thoughts of Commander Roper out of his mind. The damage indicated the weapon that had hit them was a high energy laser with power comparable to the main battery of an Aatrix.
It would have still done some damage with the shields up, but as it was it had ripped open the Adventurer like it was made of foil rather than ceramic armor.
As Ty examined and analyzed this, an alert sounded from his console.
"Alert. Multiple translation events detected. Six Fresco class frigates and an Aatrixx class battle cruiser has emerged at solar three-twenty-seven blue two. Point seven AU's from solar center."
"What?" asked Anderson. She stepped over to the console and punched up the solar system display. A cluster of flashing red triangles just inside the orbit of Venus indicated the other ships.
"Ty," she looked at him with a concerned face. "What are we up against here?"
Ty didn't need to look anything up. “If a battle lasts just a few seconds, we can go toe to toe with one, but they’ve got much deeper energy reserves than we do and they have feet of armor to our millimeters or armor. Fortunately for us, they maneuver like barges compared to what we can do, or could do with a healthy outer hull. But, can we take them in a fight? I did it all the time in simulators. The frigates are going to make it tough. If they act as a cordon around the Aatrixx, we’re in for a really long afternoon.”
She nodded. “What are they up to?”
“I need to get a trajectory, which won’t take the controller long to figure out. That Aatrixx is here just to finish us off. It’ll never catch the convoy. Those frigates on the other hand have the speed to intercept the convoy and destroy it.”
As he spoke the controller spoke again. It was another Aatrixx transitioning into the system.
"They're serious aren't they?” Anderson commented. "How well did you do against two Aatrixx in the sim? Did you ever fight so many frigates?”
“When it comes to Aatrix, I always got one, it was fifty-fifty on the second one. Depends on what they do. For the frigates? I don’t know. I’m not a miracle worker.” He let out a heavy sigh.
“Why do you think they sent so many? Can Mars station help us?"
"Not a chance, it's just a science station. No weapons to speak of."
As he watched the display of the two groups of ships, their trajectory quickly became apparent. They both emerged near Venus and had executed a tactical split. The frigates were burning hard for the jump point to Beta Hydri. The two Aatrixx were coming straight to Jupiter after the Adventurer.
Ty watched the formations split. The Aatrixx stayed in a tight trail formation with one ship following after the other. The frigates formed a sphere where each ship was completely protected on one side by other ships.
“They’re forcing me to go after each formation individually,” said Ty out loud.
Anderson came over to him thinking he’d called out to her.
“You rang?” she asked.
Ty looked up at her, “Sorry no. Just thinking out loud. It’s something I do.”
She turned to go back to her station when Ty, holding one hand up stroking his chin called back to her.
“Change that. Can you come and talk?”
“Sure,” she said as she walked back over to him.
“I need to bounce some ideas off of someone. Stuff doesn’t add up.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like the timing on the arrival of the Longbows. That was right after we jumped into the system. And then there’s the Longbows when they came after us when we jumped away. They were moving towards us before the light of our jump reached them.”
“You know what you’re saying right?” asked Anderson. He looked at her, cocked his head to one side as the awareness set in.
“They know where we jump? That’s the only thing that makes sense!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and with both arms shook her with great intensity.
“Whoa there,” she shot back.
He released his grip and began pacing back and fourth as he spoke.
“They know where we jump? How do they know where we jump? How in the world does the Alliance know something we don’t?” he asked.
“The rules governing jumping while complex are very consistent,” answered Anderson. She ticked off the following points with her fingers as she spoke: “If you know jumping object’s vector at time of jump, the gravitational gradient at the point of jump and the time of jump, then you can make a pretty precise guess where the landing point of the jump will be.”
Ty continued to pace back and forth as he talked. “However they do it, they do it well enough to predict, accurately enough for a firing solution for that matter, where we’re going to exit a jump, when we jump. The question is how? Since they know where we’re going to jump, their defensive solution is pretty easy to set up. Hence the blatant lack of any kind of defensive attitude in their tactical choices.”
“What?”
“They know where we’re going to be, whenever we jump. It’s not a surprise to them. They feel pretty confident that it’s not a tactical advantage to us any more. And…,” he tapped his finger on the console in front of him as he spoke, “they’re certain we don’t know nor that we can do anything about it.”
“So far, they’ve been right.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He thought of the gaping hole in the ship a couple decks above them that had been the command center. “I’d like to know what else they know besides exit and entry points.”
Anderson picked up the conversation, “You familiar with the jump process?”
“Superficially, I know the physics behind it and the general physics involved, but not much more than that.”
“Well, the hole in your theory is that we don’t even know where the exit point of a jump is going to be. We know the physics governing where it must be, but beyond that we can only approximate where the exit point is.” Where upon she went into a quick summary of the process.
Ty listened intently. “So, the only thing that really matters is the gravitational flux, right?”
“Yes, they have to be identical.”
“And energy is conserved. We have the same motion vector exiting that we had when jumping. Right?”
“Yes.”
“So, if the Alliance doesn’t know, because we don’t know where our exit point is. How do they know where it is close enough to hit us?”
“Well, if they knew our jump point and vector when we jump, it wouldn’t be hard to extrapolate our trajectory to a region of space with a matching flux density.”
Anderson’s face went ghost white. “We broadcast the jump every time we jump.”
“What?”
“The jump engine has an integral comm routine in it. As part of the firing sequence, every jump engine sends its position to the fleet via secure high-link a millisecond before onset of transition for fleet tracking purposes. We give spatial coordinates, gravity flux reading of the jump point and our energy vector along with ship ID and overall status. It takes, just the tiniest fraction of a second to send.”
“You’re saying if they had that transmission, they could anticipate our exit point?”
“Easily, but there are several good reasons why they can’t, that code is so highly encrypted, no human knows the cypher. Even Fleet-Prime, the fleet’s computing center, would need several hours to crack one cypher, let alone a normal day’s worth of them. And… they’d need to be able to match the ship code to the one they’re tracking. Those codes change often too. Additionally, even if they could match the cypher sequencing, they’d still need a high-link communication system to receive the message.”
“Yeah, two of our most highly guarded technologies. How else could they do it?”
Anderson looked at him and shook her head slowly, “No other way fits the evidence.”
Ty glanced at the tactical plot and considered what had happened in light of Anderson’s conclusion. “I’m assuming there’s no way to disable that is there?”
A smile appeared on his face, “Junior doesn’t phone home.”
The realization struck Anderson too. “You’re right he doesn’t. But don’t think about ripping code out of the controllers. We did our work in an environment where we could start over if we screwed something up.”
“Yeah, and we did that a lot,” Ty answered.
“Then compromise. We use both. Telegraph our jump with the controller and do the real jump, somewhere else, with Junior.”
“Now, that’s a tactician speaking,” said Ty.
They spent an hour programming the new instructions into the controller. When they were done, the two Alliance groups were wide apart. When they finished, Tye said, “We’re going after the frigates first. Here’s how we’re going to do it,” he said.
An hour later, the Adventurer burned hard to match trajectories with the frigates. After letting the power cells recharge after the course change, the Adventurer jumped into the center of the sphere using the jump commanded by Junior. She pivoted, aimed and fired her main projector in a rapid sequence of pulses at one of the trailing frigates. Immediately after, she fired a volley of railgun slugs at the ship. As soon as the rail guns fired, she jumped out using the controller’s jump system to a position a light minute away from the formation. Their total time inside the formation was less than a second.
From their vantage point, Ty and Anderson watched the minute old light of the encounter. They saw the Adventurer appear in the center of the formation and pivot. The first couple of pulses hammered down the ship’s shield. They saw the shield generators’ energy dissipation busses explode in a ball of sparks and electric fire as they absorbed more energy than they could handle in such a short amount of time. A few seconds later, the volley of slugs ripped through the ship. A corona of sparks and flashes marked the entry points of the slugs where they slammed into the thin armor of the frigate. Several other larger, less energetic puffs on the far end of the ship showed where the slugs exited the ship. It’s drive flare winked out immediately. Clouds of vapor and mist began expanding away from it. The ship quickly fell out of formation and began to tumble end over end due to the thrust effect of the venting atmosphere.
As they watched, an alert sounded. “Incoming fire,” it said.
“Anderson, decelerate the ship. Let the weapons pass in front of us,” said Ty.
“Decelerating,” she answered. The generator thrummed as it pumped energy into the linear accelerator. “We’re pushing against Jupiter, level four deceleration.”
One of the technicians who was manning a sensor panel, called out. “Three stilettos sir. They just fired their terminal aiming motors.”
Without hesitation, Ty answered, “Immediate lateral acceleration on heading red two-seven-zero, four seconds at level two”.
The generator thrummed again as it provided the energy the drive needed to push them out of the way of the warheads. They missed.
“Which ship fired?” asked Ty.
“Looks like lead ship sir,” answered the technician. “Sir,”
“Yes?”
“Detecting multiple missile launches from all of the frigates now sir.”
Everyone in earshot of the man, stopped what they were doing and looked at him.
“At us?” Ty voiced the question everyone was thinking.
The technician shook his head. “No sir, at the convoy. Or at least in the general direction of it.”
“At this range?” asked Anderson. “Seems like a ‘Hail Mary shot’ to me.”
“It is, but those are stilettos. They’re pretty good at Hail Mary shots.” Ty stepped over to the panel the technician stood at. “Good job on detecting the launch. Show me the missile tracks.”
The man worked the panel’s controls for a moment. A wireframe representation of the frigates, the Adventurer and the missiles appeared. The frigates were red cubes. The Adventurer was a green cube. The missiles were red dots. Every object in the display had a small arrow sticking out of it showing its motion vector on the display. At the scale of the display, the motion of the missiles and ships was not visible.
“Zoom back out to show the convoy.”
In response the scale of the display changed. The symbols for the frigates, missiles and the Adventurer collapsed into a single mass of lines and shapes. A string of white dots appeared. They formed a line aimed at Jupiter.
“OK. Show the trajectory of the missiles.”
The technician worked the controls again. A single red dashed line appeared on the display angling up at the convoy.
“Now, show me the convoy’s trajectory.”
A dashed white line extended down towards the planet.
“Show me the closest approach for the two based on time. Zoom in.”
The screen zoomed in until two lines were all that displayed.
“Put a one-k scale on the display.”
A solid white line with two ticks on it appeared across the bottom of the screen. Ty shook his head. He knew the missiles would see the freighters and that if they weren’t stopped, they’d destroy every ship in the convoy.
He turned to the technician, “Tag these missiles. If they change coarse let me know. OK?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ty nodded and walked back to Anderson.
“They’ll take out the convoy if we don’t stop them. But while we’re here, we’re taking out the frigates.”
For the next hour, one by one, the Adventurer took on each frigate in the squadron. In the end, nothing remained but a formation of derelict ships headed on a one-way trajectory at ten percent of the speed of light, out of the system.
“That was easy enough,” said Anderson. “A lot easier than I thought it would be for sure.”
Ty nodded in agreement, “I’m not complaining. Now we need to take out those stiletto’s. That’ll be trickier. They can retarget themselves autonomously.”
He began programming in a course change maneuver to get the Adventurer behind the missiles. After several minutes he finished and stepped back from the wall console and stretched. He went through several contortions pulling his back and arms.
“We’re on a pursuit trajectory that’ll get us in firing range in half an hour. I’m going to sit for a few in the wardroom to figure out the safest way to destroy those missiles.”
“Fair enough. See you in a few.”
Ty turned and left the engineering space. After climbing two sets of ladders to get to the wardroom he found an empty lounge chair and dropped into it. He glanced at the comm-booth where he’d made the call, what seemed an eternity ago. Instead of the stilettos, he thought of his wife who was probably in the middle of her day now tending to his kids and cleaning up the house. He tried to imagine laying close to her for a minute. He recalled the fragrance of her and the softness of her skin. He yearned to be close to her.
An announcement over the PA disturbed his reverie. “Attention all hands.” It was Anderson. “We’re standing down from general quarters for the next thirty minutes. Watch chief’s rotate your positions. Give your people a chance to rest. We’re not out of this yet.”
Ty got back up. He knew he should be thinking of the missiles, but couldn’t get his head around them yet, so headed down the passageway to the fantail to get a feel of how the crew was doing. Adhering to an age old tradition, the Adventurer’s main deck was the longest deck running through the centerline of the ship. A passageway that ran from the engineering space to the fantail split the deck evenly in two, with a port and starboard side. At the aft end of the passageway, Ty could hear laughing coming from the Goat Locker. He paused at the entry way and smacked the outer wall with his palm of his hand.
“Request permission to enter,” asked Ty.
The laughing stopped immediately and a crewman answered, “Enter.”
Ty poked his head in the door. “As you were gentlemen,” he said with a smile.
One of the crewmen in the room answered almost hollering, “No gentlemen here, sir. Just a bunch of Alliance ass whippers. Sir!” He ended emphatically. Everyone in the room broke out laughing again.
Ty smiled and backed his head out saying, “Carry on,” as he did.
Everyone in the room cheered, then shouted, “YES SIR,” in reply.
He shook his head and palmed the control to the hatch at the end of the passageway. As the inner hatch slid into the wall, Ty stepped through the opening into the airlock that separated the fantail from the rest of the ship. He waited in the room while the inner hatch resealed itself. Once it did, the outer hatch slid into the wall allowing him entrance into the fantail.
It was the largest open space inside the ship. The space was large enough to hold two Dragon fighters, even though just one was assigned to the ship at the time. The fighter sat in its launch cradle. Several umbilical lines snaked from the ship to the fighter. The cockpit canopy was raised and an access ladder hung off of the canopy rail. Ty noticed a couple of technicians had taken an access panel off of one of the two large Plasma-Arc missiles that were attached to the fighter. In the other cradle was the load trainer this team had used to spoof the existence of the Dragon. It still had a full complement of missiles hung on it. The drive calibration stand and Jersey generator sat nearby.
The room was brightly lit from overhead and wall lights so there was little if any area of the space which had any significant shadows. It made the space appear smaller than it was. Vince noticed Ty as soon as he entered. Vince had been sprawled out in a beat up old sofa that had been smuggled onto the ship long before Ty joined the crew. He hopped up off the sofa and jogged over to Ty. He had to duck under the nose of the fighter.
“Hey, Ty, Welcome to our lair.”
“Hi, Vince, I had a few moments to get away from engineering to stir some blood.”
Vince nodded in understanding. “Nice work by the way handling those two LongBows and those Fresco’s.”
“It was easier than you think. The Alliance has figured out a way to intercept and decode our jump parameters.”
Vince blinked and shook his head at that.
Ty could tell he was angered at the fact. He continued, “I entered a fake jump coordinate in the main controller and then made the real jump using Junior. It’s worked every time so far.”
Vince harrumphed, “Serve’s ‘em right. Live by cheating, die by cheating. Have you gotten this intel back to Fleet?”
Ty shook his head. “Can’t. We’re being jammed pretty hard. Hey, by the way, what’s with the Plasma-arc there?”
“Oh, that?” Vince turned towards the technician working on the missile. “The missile’s launch initiator failed. We’ll need to pull it off and repair it before we can use it. Alvarez there is buttoning it up before him and his loaders pull the missile. We’ll be ready to go before you get back to engineering.”
“Ok, keep me posted. FYI, we’re chasing down a bunch of stilettos that got launched at the convoy. We engage them in about twenty minutes. I don’t think we’ll need the Dragon, but have her loaded for an anti-missile mission OK.”
“We’ll be ready. Just give the word.”
“Thanks, good luck.”
Ty headed back out of the room and waved behind him as he entered the airlock into the rest of the ship. As the hatch sealed, he could hear Vince giving orders to change the load out on the Dragon.
Back at the engineering section, he felt a little more refreshed. He noticed Anderson wasn’t in the space so he walked over to the panels displaying the sensor data. The two Aatrixx were just about to Jupiter. No additional Alliance ships had entered the system.
While Ty reveled in the having the ship back up and running. He began to take stock of the situation and to see just how badly the Adventurer was hurt by that first blast. He pushed thoughts of Commander Roper out of his mind. The damage indicated the weapon that had hit them was a high energy laser with power comparable to the main battery of an Aatrix.
It would have still done some damage with the shields up, but as it was it had ripped open the Adventurer like it was made of foil rather than ceramic armor.
As Ty examined and analyzed this, an alert sounded from his console.
"Alert. Multiple translation events detected. Six Fresco class frigates and an Aatrixx class battle cruiser has emerged at solar three-twenty-seven blue two. Point seven AU's from solar center."
"What?" asked Anderson. She stepped over to the console and punched up the solar system display. A cluster of flashing red triangles just inside the orbit of Venus indicated the other ships.
"Ty," she looked at him with a concerned face. "What are we up against here?"
Ty didn't need to look anything up. “If a battle lasts just a few seconds, we can go toe to toe with one, but they’ve got much deeper energy reserves than we do and they have feet of armor to our millimeters or armor. Fortunately for us, they maneuver like barges compared to what we can do, or could do with a healthy outer hull. But, can we take them in a fight? I did it all the time in simulators. The frigates are going to make it tough. If they act as a cordon around the Aatrixx, we’re in for a really long afternoon.”
She nodded. “What are they up to?”
“I need to get a trajectory, which won’t take the controller long to figure out. That Aatrixx is here just to finish us off. It’ll never catch the convoy. Those frigates on the other hand have the speed to intercept the convoy and destroy it.”
As he spoke the controller spoke again. It was another Aatrixx transitioning into the system.
"They're serious aren't they?” Anderson commented. "How well did you do against two Aatrixx in the sim? Did you ever fight so many frigates?”
“When it comes to Aatrix, I always got one, it was fifty-fifty on the second one. Depends on what they do. For the frigates? I don’t know. I’m not a miracle worker.” He let out a heavy sigh.
“Why do you think they sent so many? Can Mars station help us?"
"Not a chance, it's just a science station. No weapons to speak of."
As he watched the display of the two groups of ships, their trajectory quickly became apparent. They both emerged near Venus and had executed a tactical split. The frigates were burning hard for the jump point to Beta Hydri. The two Aatrixx were coming straight to Jupiter after the Adventurer.
Ty watched the formations split. The Aatrixx stayed in a tight trail formation with one ship following after the other. The frigates formed a sphere where each ship was completely protected on one side by other ships.
“They’re forcing me to go after each formation individually,” said Ty out loud.
Anderson came over to him thinking he’d called out to her.
“You rang?” she asked.
Ty looked up at her, “Sorry no. Just thinking out loud. It’s something I do.”
She turned to go back to her station when Ty, holding one hand up stroking his chin called back to her.
“Change that. Can you come and talk?”
“Sure,” she said as she walked back over to him.
“I need to bounce some ideas off of someone. Stuff doesn’t add up.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like the timing on the arrival of the Longbows. That was right after we jumped into the system. And then there’s the Longbows when they came after us when we jumped away. They were moving towards us before the light of our jump reached them.”
“You know what you’re saying right?” asked Anderson. He looked at her, cocked his head to one side as the awareness set in.
“They know where we jump? That’s the only thing that makes sense!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and with both arms shook her with great intensity.
“Whoa there,” she shot back.
He released his grip and began pacing back and fourth as he spoke.
“They know where we jump? How do they know where we jump? How in the world does the Alliance know something we don’t?” he asked.
“The rules governing jumping while complex are very consistent,” answered Anderson. She ticked off the following points with her fingers as she spoke: “If you know jumping object’s vector at time of jump, the gravitational gradient at the point of jump and the time of jump, then you can make a pretty precise guess where the landing point of the jump will be.”
Ty continued to pace back and forth as he talked. “However they do it, they do it well enough to predict, accurately enough for a firing solution for that matter, where we’re going to exit a jump, when we jump. The question is how? Since they know where we’re going to jump, their defensive solution is pretty easy to set up. Hence the blatant lack of any kind of defensive attitude in their tactical choices.”
“What?”
“They know where we’re going to be, whenever we jump. It’s not a surprise to them. They feel pretty confident that it’s not a tactical advantage to us any more. And…,” he tapped his finger on the console in front of him as he spoke, “they’re certain we don’t know nor that we can do anything about it.”
“So far, they’ve been right.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He thought of the gaping hole in the ship a couple decks above them that had been the command center. “I’d like to know what else they know besides exit and entry points.”
Anderson picked up the conversation, “You familiar with the jump process?”
“Superficially, I know the physics behind it and the general physics involved, but not much more than that.”
“Well, the hole in your theory is that we don’t even know where the exit point of a jump is going to be. We know the physics governing where it must be, but beyond that we can only approximate where the exit point is.” Where upon she went into a quick summary of the process.
Ty listened intently. “So, the only thing that really matters is the gravitational flux, right?”
“Yes, they have to be identical.”
“And energy is conserved. We have the same motion vector exiting that we had when jumping. Right?”
“Yes.”
“So, if the Alliance doesn’t know, because we don’t know where our exit point is. How do they know where it is close enough to hit us?”
“Well, if they knew our jump point and vector when we jump, it wouldn’t be hard to extrapolate our trajectory to a region of space with a matching flux density.”
Anderson’s face went ghost white. “We broadcast the jump every time we jump.”
“What?”
“The jump engine has an integral comm routine in it. As part of the firing sequence, every jump engine sends its position to the fleet via secure high-link a millisecond before onset of transition for fleet tracking purposes. We give spatial coordinates, gravity flux reading of the jump point and our energy vector along with ship ID and overall status. It takes, just the tiniest fraction of a second to send.”
“You’re saying if they had that transmission, they could anticipate our exit point?”
“Easily, but there are several good reasons why they can’t, that code is so highly encrypted, no human knows the cypher. Even Fleet-Prime, the fleet’s computing center, would need several hours to crack one cypher, let alone a normal day’s worth of them. And… they’d need to be able to match the ship code to the one they’re tracking. Those codes change often too. Additionally, even if they could match the cypher sequencing, they’d still need a high-link communication system to receive the message.”
“Yeah, two of our most highly guarded technologies. How else could they do it?”
Anderson looked at him and shook her head slowly, “No other way fits the evidence.”
Ty glanced at the tactical plot and considered what had happened in light of Anderson’s conclusion. “I’m assuming there’s no way to disable that is there?”
A smile appeared on his face, “Junior doesn’t phone home.”
The realization struck Anderson too. “You’re right he doesn’t. But don’t think about ripping code out of the controllers. We did our work in an environment where we could start over if we screwed something up.”
“Yeah, and we did that a lot,” Ty answered.
“Then compromise. We use both. Telegraph our jump with the controller and do the real jump, somewhere else, with Junior.”
“Now, that’s a tactician speaking,” said Ty.
They spent an hour programming the new instructions into the controller. When they were done, the two Alliance groups were wide apart. When they finished, Tye said, “We’re going after the frigates first. Here’s how we’re going to do it,” he said.
An hour later, the Adventurer burned hard to match trajectories with the frigates. After letting the power cells recharge after the course change, the Adventurer jumped into the center of the sphere using the jump commanded by Junior. She pivoted, aimed and fired her main projector in a rapid sequence of pulses at one of the trailing frigates. Immediately after, she fired a volley of railgun slugs at the ship. As soon as the rail guns fired, she jumped out using the controller’s jump system to a position a light minute away from the formation. Their total time inside the formation was less than a second.
From their vantage point, Ty and Anderson watched the minute old light of the encounter. They saw the Adventurer appear in the center of the formation and pivot. The first couple of pulses hammered down the ship’s shield. They saw the shield generators’ energy dissipation busses explode in a ball of sparks and electric fire as they absorbed more energy than they could handle in such a short amount of time. A few seconds later, the volley of slugs ripped through the ship. A corona of sparks and flashes marked the entry points of the slugs where they slammed into the thin armor of the frigate. Several other larger, less energetic puffs on the far end of the ship showed where the slugs exited the ship. It’s drive flare winked out immediately. Clouds of vapor and mist began expanding away from it. The ship quickly fell out of formation and began to tumble end over end due to the thrust effect of the venting atmosphere.
As they watched, an alert sounded. “Incoming fire,” it said.
“Anderson, decelerate the ship. Let the weapons pass in front of us,” said Ty.
“Decelerating,” she answered. The generator thrummed as it pumped energy into the linear accelerator. “We’re pushing against Jupiter, level four deceleration.”
One of the technicians who was manning a sensor panel, called out. “Three stilettos sir. They just fired their terminal aiming motors.”
Without hesitation, Ty answered, “Immediate lateral acceleration on heading red two-seven-zero, four seconds at level two”.
The generator thrummed again as it provided the energy the drive needed to push them out of the way of the warheads. They missed.
“Which ship fired?” asked Ty.
“Looks like lead ship sir,” answered the technician. “Sir,”
“Yes?”
“Detecting multiple missile launches from all of the frigates now sir.”
Everyone in earshot of the man, stopped what they were doing and looked at him.
“At us?” Ty voiced the question everyone was thinking.
The technician shook his head. “No sir, at the convoy. Or at least in the general direction of it.”
“At this range?” asked Anderson. “Seems like a ‘Hail Mary shot’ to me.”
“It is, but those are stilettos. They’re pretty good at Hail Mary shots.” Ty stepped over to the panel the technician stood at. “Good job on detecting the launch. Show me the missile tracks.”
The man worked the panel’s controls for a moment. A wireframe representation of the frigates, the Adventurer and the missiles appeared. The frigates were red cubes. The Adventurer was a green cube. The missiles were red dots. Every object in the display had a small arrow sticking out of it showing its motion vector on the display. At the scale of the display, the motion of the missiles and ships was not visible.
“Zoom back out to show the convoy.”
In response the scale of the display changed. The symbols for the frigates, missiles and the Adventurer collapsed into a single mass of lines and shapes. A string of white dots appeared. They formed a line aimed at Jupiter.
“OK. Show the trajectory of the missiles.”
The technician worked the controls again. A single red dashed line appeared on the display angling up at the convoy.
“Now, show me the convoy’s trajectory.”
A dashed white line extended down towards the planet.
“Show me the closest approach for the two based on time. Zoom in.”
The screen zoomed in until two lines were all that displayed.
“Put a one-k scale on the display.”
A solid white line with two ticks on it appeared across the bottom of the screen. Ty shook his head. He knew the missiles would see the freighters and that if they weren’t stopped, they’d destroy every ship in the convoy.
He turned to the technician, “Tag these missiles. If they change coarse let me know. OK?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ty nodded and walked back to Anderson.
“They’ll take out the convoy if we don’t stop them. But while we’re here, we’re taking out the frigates.”
For the next hour, one by one, the Adventurer took on each frigate in the squadron. In the end, nothing remained but a formation of derelict ships headed on a one-way trajectory at ten percent of the speed of light, out of the system.
“That was easy enough,” said Anderson. “A lot easier than I thought it would be for sure.”
Ty nodded in agreement, “I’m not complaining. Now we need to take out those stiletto’s. That’ll be trickier. They can retarget themselves autonomously.”
He began programming in a course change maneuver to get the Adventurer behind the missiles. After several minutes he finished and stepped back from the wall console and stretched. He went through several contortions pulling his back and arms.
“We’re on a pursuit trajectory that’ll get us in firing range in half an hour. I’m going to sit for a few in the wardroom to figure out the safest way to destroy those missiles.”
“Fair enough. See you in a few.”
Ty turned and left the engineering space. After climbing two sets of ladders to get to the wardroom he found an empty lounge chair and dropped into it. He glanced at the comm-booth where he’d made the call, what seemed an eternity ago. Instead of the stilettos, he thought of his wife who was probably in the middle of her day now tending to his kids and cleaning up the house. He tried to imagine laying close to her for a minute. He recalled the fragrance of her and the softness of her skin. He yearned to be close to her.
An announcement over the PA disturbed his reverie. “Attention all hands.” It was Anderson. “We’re standing down from general quarters for the next thirty minutes. Watch chief’s rotate your positions. Give your people a chance to rest. We’re not out of this yet.”
Ty got back up. He knew he should be thinking of the missiles, but couldn’t get his head around them yet, so headed down the passageway to the fantail to get a feel of how the crew was doing. Adhering to an age old tradition, the Adventurer’s main deck was the longest deck running through the centerline of the ship. A passageway that ran from the engineering space to the fantail split the deck evenly in two, with a port and starboard side. At the aft end of the passageway, Ty could hear laughing coming from the Goat Locker. He paused at the entry way and smacked the outer wall with his palm of his hand.
“Request permission to enter,” asked Ty.
The laughing stopped immediately and a crewman answered, “Enter.”
Ty poked his head in the door. “As you were gentlemen,” he said with a smile.
One of the crewmen in the room answered almost hollering, “No gentlemen here, sir. Just a bunch of Alliance ass whippers. Sir!” He ended emphatically. Everyone in the room broke out laughing again.
Ty smiled and backed his head out saying, “Carry on,” as he did.
Everyone in the room cheered, then shouted, “YES SIR,” in reply.
He shook his head and palmed the control to the hatch at the end of the passageway. As the inner hatch slid into the wall, Ty stepped through the opening into the airlock that separated the fantail from the rest of the ship. He waited in the room while the inner hatch resealed itself. Once it did, the outer hatch slid into the wall allowing him entrance into the fantail.
It was the largest open space inside the ship. The space was large enough to hold two Dragon fighters, even though just one was assigned to the ship at the time. The fighter sat in its launch cradle. Several umbilical lines snaked from the ship to the fighter. The cockpit canopy was raised and an access ladder hung off of the canopy rail. Ty noticed a couple of technicians had taken an access panel off of one of the two large Plasma-Arc missiles that were attached to the fighter. In the other cradle was the load trainer this team had used to spoof the existence of the Dragon. It still had a full complement of missiles hung on it. The drive calibration stand and Jersey generator sat nearby.
The room was brightly lit from overhead and wall lights so there was little if any area of the space which had any significant shadows. It made the space appear smaller than it was. Vince noticed Ty as soon as he entered. Vince had been sprawled out in a beat up old sofa that had been smuggled onto the ship long before Ty joined the crew. He hopped up off the sofa and jogged over to Ty. He had to duck under the nose of the fighter.
“Hey, Ty, Welcome to our lair.”
“Hi, Vince, I had a few moments to get away from engineering to stir some blood.”
Vince nodded in understanding. “Nice work by the way handling those two LongBows and those Fresco’s.”
“It was easier than you think. The Alliance has figured out a way to intercept and decode our jump parameters.”
Vince blinked and shook his head at that.
Ty could tell he was angered at the fact. He continued, “I entered a fake jump coordinate in the main controller and then made the real jump using Junior. It’s worked every time so far.”
Vince harrumphed, “Serve’s ‘em right. Live by cheating, die by cheating. Have you gotten this intel back to Fleet?”
Ty shook his head. “Can’t. We’re being jammed pretty hard. Hey, by the way, what’s with the Plasma-arc there?”
“Oh, that?” Vince turned towards the technician working on the missile. “The missile’s launch initiator failed. We’ll need to pull it off and repair it before we can use it. Alvarez there is buttoning it up before him and his loaders pull the missile. We’ll be ready to go before you get back to engineering.”
“Ok, keep me posted. FYI, we’re chasing down a bunch of stilettos that got launched at the convoy. We engage them in about twenty minutes. I don’t think we’ll need the Dragon, but have her loaded for an anti-missile mission OK.”
“We’ll be ready. Just give the word.”
“Thanks, good luck.”
Ty headed back out of the room and waved behind him as he entered the airlock into the rest of the ship. As the hatch sealed, he could hear Vince giving orders to change the load out on the Dragon.
Back at the engineering section, he felt a little more refreshed. He noticed Anderson wasn’t in the space so he walked over to the panels displaying the sensor data. The two Aatrixx were just about to Jupiter. No additional Alliance ships had entered the system.
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