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.
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