Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (10 page)

"Very well," Jackson said. "Helm, ahead one-half and coordinate with OPS and Tactical to make sure the debris doesn't drift onto our course."

"Ahead one-half, aye," the helmsman said, pushing the throttles up to fifty percent, telling the computers to engage the mains at half power. The telltale rumble and surge of inertia told Jackson they were on their way. He still held out the irrational hope that somehow this was all a series of bizarre errors within his own equipment, but he knew that was the least likely scenario.

"We have a flight time of over thirty hours until we reach Xi'an," Jackson told Celesta. "Rotate the watches as you see fit, but I want the first watch bridge crew on duty as we make our approach to the planet. Find an actual tactical officer while you're at it. Unfortunately we only have two onboard. Also, make sure Master Chief Kazenski is presentable and on duty. If he fails to report, notify me immediately." Celesta had to look up Kazenski to even see what position he held on the ship. When she realized he'd been missing the entire time they'd been underway, her eyes widened a bit.

"It's complicated," Jacksons said simply. "Just know that things have changed a bit since we departed Jericho Station. You have free reign to make sure everyone is doing their jobs. I'm going to take the first down time. Feel free to have Ensign Davis take the watch if you need to leave the bridge."

"Yes, sir," she said, sliding into his seat as he moved to leave the bridge. Once he had gone, she pulled up Chief Kazenski's personnel record and began reading. After ten minutes she wondered how many more cases like him were roaming around the ship and, if so, did she really want to know?

****

Jackson sat down at his desk and began pulling up any information on Xi'an the servers had that might begin to explain what had happened to make the system appear deserted. He also requested the latest com logs from the planet's com drone platform, a massive, automated construct that was now apparently gone.

The information was sparse. Xi'an was a fairly unimportant world in the AU save for the fact that it had a naturally stable environment that could support humans. In recent years they had begun to move some ship construction projects to the planet to encourage their citizens to move to the remote world and to take advantage of the slightly lower gravity. There wasn't any sort of political discord as the planet had less than two million people total and most of them were temporary workers setting up the shipbuilding facilities.

The com logs were equally unhelpful as the last drone from the planet had been captured and downloaded only a week ago. Nothing in the package it carried would indicate the planet was suffering some sort of calamity. As best as he could tell, everything on Xi'an was normal as of eight days ago.

On a whim he pulled up a local area star chart and began looking at the corridor that ran between the Asianic Union and the Warsaw Alliance. There was certainly no love lost between the two enclaves, but an overt and unprovoked act of war seemed almost unthinkable. He saw that Xi'an was close to the accepted border, but still well within AU space. Besides, after centuries of relative peace would the Warsaw Alliance really launch such a devastating attack without even approaching the Confederate Senate first?

Following that line of thought, he pulled up the nearest Alliance planet: Oplotom. Like most Alliance worlds, this one showed evidence of heavy industrialization and resource mining. The CIS synopsis he had on Oplotom said that it was a world that developed most of the weaponry for the Eight Fleet and, more disturbingly, weapons for another fleet of warships that the Alliance had begun to field with no affiliation to the Confederacy or any ties to CENTCOM's command structure. Many of the enclaves had small defense forces for internal security, but the class of ships coming out of the Alliance shipyards would give anyone pause. What in the hell were they arming up for?

Jackson had stretched out on the couch in his office with the intent of only resting his eyes for a few minutes, but the stress of the day caught up with him and the next thing he knew his comlink was chirping to let him know he would be needed back on the bridge in an hour. He stood up with a groan, irritated at himself for falling asleep for hours when the ship was in potentially hostile space. Straightening his uniform, he hustled down to his quarters to get cleaned up and change uniforms so he could make it to the officer's mess before being stuck on the bridge for what would likely be a very long watch.

****

It was six hours after Jackson walked onto the bridge when they began to get their first view of Xi'an on the long-range optics. Unfortunately they couldn't garner any real details from that distance. There looked to be increased cloud cover, but nothing wildly out of place.

"We're close enough that preliminary sensor sweeps are indicating that the atmosphere is ten degrees above normal on average," Ensign Davis said. "The surface temperature appears to be more uniform than normal, even at the polar regions."

"Whatever it is that’s creating that cloud cover could explain that," Jackson said. "Our sensors can't see past that down to the surface. Tactical, begin another series of high-res sweeps. Map out the debris field and then start trying to figure out what it's all from."

"Aye, sir."

"We'll be entering our first transfer orbit in three hours," Celesta said. "Decel burn will begin in ten minutes."

"Understood," Jackson said. "Ensign Davis, you have ten minutes to finish collecting thermal data before the mains reverse thrust and distort your optics."

"Yes, sir," Davis said, seemingly unconcerned.

Each MPD nacelle actually housed two engines, a forward and reverse thrust motor capable of equal amounts of power. While most starships simply spun around and used their aft-mounted main engines to decelerate, a warship had to be able to keep her sensors and weapons on a target no matter their acceleration profile. To accomplish this the designers gave the
Raptor
-class four engines that could direct their thrust fore or aft, the plasma being routed to whichever magnetic constrictor and nozzle that was needed to provide power. One drawback was that when slowing down to make orbit the hot exhaust coming forward from the mains could distort the thermal sensors on the nose if the engines were run up past thirty percent power. Anything above eighty percent would completely wash them out.

"Ten seconds to decel burn," Celesta called over the shipwide intercom. "All crew brace for reverse thrust." Shortly afterwards the rumble of the mains died away for a second before building again, increasing in pitch and intensity as the massive engines began to slow the
Blue Jacket's
descent towards Xi'an. The sensation of being thrown forward was fleeting as the gravimetric generator adjusted to compensate.

They had now gotten close enough to the planet to see that the cloud coverage was actually made of particulate matter, not water droplets. Jackson's mouth formed a thin line as he considered the possibilities. Something had either exploded on the surface with tremendous force, or something had struck the planet from orbit. As he looked through the revised data from Tactical he could almost postulate that maybe both the orbital construction platforms had fallen to the surface simultaneously, but even that astronomically unlikely event didn't explain the disappearance of all the other orbital constructs nor the com drone platform deeper into the system.

"Standard orbital insertion," Jackson ordered. "The debris appears to be sparse enough that we shouldn't have any issues. I want us at an altitude of six hundred and thirty kilometers with an orbital inclination of forty-six degrees. Nav, get the necessary adjustments to the helm."

"Aye, sir."

"OPS, that's going to give us a full orbit approximately every two hours," Jackson said. "I want to be recording the entire time, full spectrum."

"We're still not receiving any transmissions from the surface and we're not detecting any power sources," Celesta said quietly. "Could this possibly have been a natural disaster?"

"No," Jackson said mostly to himself, ignoring the looks from his crew. "Xi'an was attacked. I'm certain of it."

"Attacked? By whom?" Celesta asked. Jackson ignored her and continued looking at the main display as the planet began to grow in size and detail and the horror of the situation began to sink in.

"Sergeant!" he barked without warning. "Lock down the bridge! Ensign Davis, cut all telemetry and sensor data streams to the lower decks, all data comes here and
only
here. I want all the servers locked out and local terminals disabled in the data center. Coms, disconnect all internal links to the bridge and deactivate all bridge personnel comlinks."

"Captain?" Celesta said, seemingly in shock as the heavy blast doors to the bridge entrance slammed shut.

"We are on lockdown until further notice," Jackson said to his stunned crew.

Chapter 8

"Xi'an had four major cities in the northern hemisphere and dozens of smaller support settlements in the south tied to their new manufacturing and production facilities," Ensign Davis said, reading off her screen after the
Blue Jacket
had completed her second orbit.

"Had?" Jackson asked.

"Yes, Captain," Davis said, swallowing hard. "They're gone. There's no trace of them left on the surface."

"That's impossible," Chief Kazenski scoffed. Jackson turned to glare at him, but had to admit he agreed with the man.

"One would think so, Chief," Davis said, still pale and her voice unsteady. "But the images we've captured from orbit don't lie. There is no trace that this planet was ever inhabited."

"Put the images up on the main display," Jackson said, climbing out of his chair and walking towards the front of the bridge. "See here, and here," he said, pointing to two separate images. "Look at the scarring on the surface. This isn't consistent with any type of known weapon. It's as if someone simply scraped the cities from the crust."

"Radiation levels in the atmosphere are normal," Davis said. "We're unable to determine if a biological agent was used from this altitude, but we can say with certainty that nukes weren't the cause of the damage."

"Recommendations?" Jackson asked.

"Send a drone down to the surface," Celesta said without hesitation. "We're carrying ten fully equipped recon drones capable of dropping into the atmosphere from orbit. I think we should collect as much data as we can while we're here."

"Agreed," Jackson said. "OPS, coordinate with Commander Juarez and prepare two recon drones for immediate deployment. Tell him I want them loaded with a full sensor suite. We're still on lockdown protocol. The drone data stream will be encrypted and routed directly to the bridge. We'll bring up additional analysts as we need them. This is a standing order until further notice."

"Aye, sir," Davis said as she slipped her headset back up to talk to the flight operations center that was located just aft of the engine pylons.

Over the next two hours the
Blue Jacket
launched a pair of sensor-laden drones, each on opposite sides of the planet, and waited as the data came scrolling in. The close-up images of the sites where the major cities had stood were horrific. Chunks of what looked like either building concrete or roadbed were sticking haphazardly out of some sort of viscous substance that glistened as if still wet. The oddest thing was that, other than a slight rise in mean temperature and a measurable rise in methane levels in the atmosphere, there wasn't any evidence of a massive bombardment or any type of battle at all, even a hopelessly one-sided one.

"Drones are at bingo fuel," Ensign Davis reported.

"Wipe their onboard memory, disable their sensors, and send the recall command," Jackson said in frustration. "Once they're out of the atmosphere, hand them off to flight ops."

"We're not much closer to finding out what happened here than we were four hours ago, Captain," Celesta said. "What's our next move?"

"Listen up!" Jackson said, not answering her directly. "We're going to continue orbiting Xi'an and collecting data for the foreseeable future. Obviously I have to unlock the bridge so everyone can eat and rest, but the blackout on information is still in place. Until we know what happened here I can't have rumors running rampant on this ship. You will be allowed to take meals in the wardroom and rest in the ready room one deck down, but none of you are to return to your quarters or mingle with your departments. Am I understood?"

A chorus of affirmative responses and head nods met his directive as he moved about the bridge, making eye contact with each one of them.

"Very well," he said. "Sergeant, you may unseal the bridge and resume your post outside. Ensign Davis, you have the hot seat. Maintain our orbit and continue recording. Coms, have Lieutenant Commander Singh report to my office and tell Major Ortiz I want his Marines controlling access to and from the command decks. Commander Wright, you're with me." She turned and followed him off the bridge, nodding to Ensign Davis as she did. Captain Wolfe didn't say a word until they reached his office and he gestured for her to enter before him.

"What a fucking mess!" he exclaimed as soon as the hatch shut, causing her to jump.

"It is indeed, sir,"

"Have a seat, Commander," Jackson said wearily. "We'll need to figure out what the hell to do so don't stand on formality. If you have an idea, even a bad one, toss it out there."

"Do you really think this is an attack?" she asked.

"I'm certain of it," he said. "The problem is, I'm not sure who could have done it." They discussed what little they knew until a Marine from Major Ortiz's detachment escorted the chief engineer in.

"Thank you, Corporal," Jackson said. "That will be all."

"Yes, sir!" the young man said crisply before keying the hatch shut and taking up post just outside.

"They're certainly excited," Singh noted carefully as he took a seat.

"This is the first time they've had anything to do other than ferret out illegal booze stills and break up lower deck fight clubs and gambling rings," Jackson said.

"So what's going on?" Singh asked. "I assume there's a reason the command deck is locked down other than a drill."

"Oh yes, and you're not going to believe it when I tell you," Jackson said.

Over the next forty minutes they brought him up to speed on everything they knew while supplementing the briefing with data from the drones and the
Blue Jacket's
sensors. Singh seemed to accept everything on face value, only stopping them a few times to ask questions but otherwise staying quiet.

"That's what we know," Jackson said, splaying his hands out. "It isn't much. What do you make of all this, Daya?"

"I'm still trying to process the fact that so many civilians are apparently dead. Slaughtered, in fact," Singh said. "I suppose my first question would be why am I here? The ship is running fine and I'm not an investigator nor a tactician."

"Because I'm going to need the ship ready to fight," Jackson said. "Let's be honest ... the old girl's guns haven't been fired in over a decade and even then it was low power laser blasts for marking purposes during that ridiculous exercise with Fourth Fleet." 

"
Theoretically
, as per Seventh Fleet and CENTCOM directives, all weapons are ready to be employed in a combat situation in under sixty seconds," Singh said with a straight face.

"And realistically?"

"The expendable munitions haven't been checked in over fifteen years other than to make sure they're accounted for," Singh began, ticking points off on his fingers. "Which is fine, because the loaders that move the missiles to the launch tubes haven't been checked in ten years for functionality. The mag-cannons
might
fire, but I'm certain the accelerator rails are degraded after so many warp transitions without being inspected, and the turret actuators are likely going to cause issues with accuracy.

"The forward lasers were fired in that exercise you mentioned, but at five percent power. I know for a fact the power transmission lines on four of the projectors have deteriorated to the point that it would actually be more dangerous to us than the enemy if we attempted a full power beam. So, other than our nuclear complement, we don't have much that I would be willing to hang my hat on."

"We don't have any nukes," Jackson said quietly.

"What?!" Daya exclaimed. "We most certainly do. They've been sitting in the amidship magazine for decades."

"They were removed and replaced with training units six years ago when we put in at the Sierra Shipyards to have the plasma generators on engines one and four replaced," Jackson said. "CENTCOM has quietly taken all strategic weapons off of Black Fleet ships over the last decade or so. The initiative is highly classified and the dummy weapons will pass inspection when the specialists go to perform maintenance. Even the trace amounts of radiation are there, with no two being identical."

"Why in the hell would they do that?" Celesta asked before remembering whom she was addressing. "Sir."

"Given the nature of the crews assigned to Black Fleet lately, CENTCOM didn't feel comfortable with live nukes aboard the ships given the fact we fly through all the enclaves unimpeded," Jackson shrugged, unconcerned with her outburst. "I was personally happy to see them go. Until now, of course."

"So where does this leave us?" she asked.

"In a mess," Jackson said. "Just from a self-preservation perspective we have no idea if whoever did this is still around or if they're coming back. From a tactical standpoint I'd like something to threaten a potential enemy with that doesn't include harsh words or obscene hand gestures."

"No offense, Jack," Singh said, the familiar use of the captain's first name again causing Celesta to flinch, "but shouldn't we be steaming towards a jump point and transitioning to warp on our way back to Haven?"

"We're not leaving," Jackson said.

"Why not?" Singh demanded.

"Because I said we're not, and that's the only reason you need, Lieutenant Commander," Jackson said, raising his voice and leaning forward. "We have no idea who attacked this world. Or why. Until we have something firm to report we are not running back to Haven with our tails tucked. Now, Chief Engineer, all I need to hear from you is that you have a plan to get the weapons on my ship in at least some semblance of working order. Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir," Singh said, jaw clenched.

"Good," Jackson said, leaning back. "I'd like a report from you within the hour that includes a time table for the necessary inspections and repairs. Dismissed."

Singh opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and let himself out of the office.

"Was it a good idea to anger him before asking him to tackle such a daunting task?" Celesta asked carefully.

"Daya?" Jackson asked. "He'll be fine. I needed to break his attention away from wanting to weigh anchor and dash for the nearest jump point. He'll be focused on being insulted and indignant and in the meantime will accomplish everything I asked him to."

"I mean no disrespect when I say this—"

"Commander, as a new standing order, whenever we're alone you have permission to speak freely," Jackson said. "I'm going to need your best in this situation and you can't deliver that if you're tiptoeing around customs and courtesies even when nobody is around."

"Yes, sir," she said. "How is it that Lieutenant Commander Singh was aware of all the problems with our armament yet has not addressed them for what I understand to be over a decade?"

"Budget," Jackson said. "Each ship's expenses are tracked carefully and the
Blue Jacket
is an aging ship. If I turned in requisitions for the raw material or fabricated parts for every single thing on this ship that needed it CENTCOM would recall us to be decommissioned. Ninth Squadron has been running under an informal agreement between the captains to keep essential systems running and to whitewash those that aren't. So, things like power lines to weapons and replacement actuators for mag-cannon turrets take a back seat to drives and life support systems. I'll admit it seems absurd, but when most of our tactical systems haven't been used since the ship was built it appeared to be a viable solution at the time."

"At the time?"

"I'll admit to having some regrets in the last twenty-four hours," he said. "While Daya is flogging his engineering crew to get the ship ready to shoot back if necessary, you're going to have to stay on top of making sure the full scope of what's happened on Xi'an stays need-to-know."

"That will be impossible to do indefinitely," she said. "How much longer do you want to keep this under wraps?"

"Until we're breaking orbit would be ideal," Jackson said sourly. "But I know how fast rumors start and travel on a starship. Eventually we'll have to release the information because otherwise there's sure to be a rumor started that's actually worse than the truth.

"I'm not hiding things from the crew arbitrarily. I need them focused on their jobs and something like this has never happened in any of their lifetimes. Not even a terraforming failure has ever been this devastating. Up until now this ship has simply been a place for them to live and work. The term 'warship' isn't even in their lexicon."

"I think I understand, sir," she said. "Will that be all?"

"No. I need to you to prepare an eyes-only brief for all the section chiefs and department heads," Jackson said. "Keep it fairly vague. You can let on that we suspect Xi'an was attacked, but let's not divulge just how bad it is on the surface right now."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."