Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (18 page)

Chapter 15

"She's giving everything she's got, Jack. Singh out."

Daya Singh was standing in the middle of the operations center for the Engineering Department, looking harried. So far the ship's powerplant and engines had responded to the call and the high-output they'd been running at for the last few days didn't seem to be straining any of the individual components. If anything, the techs swore the ship was running better than she had in years now that they were running her harder than any of them could ever recall.

"Chief Cullen," Singh called out. "Run over to reactor one and make sure they're installing that bypass correctly on the water jacket. They've never done this and I don't want someone getting their skin peeled off by high-pressure steam because they don't have the valves configured correctly."

"Yes, sir!" Cullen called, hardly believing his good fortune. He called over a specialist first class and told him to man the instrument-monitoring station. "Just keep an eye on these parameters," he told the young spacer. "If they start to creep up make sure you let the chief engineer know." Cullen clapped the specialist on the shoulder and darted out of the room before he could be asked any questions.

He practically ran down the corridor, stepping aside as pockets of traffic rushed by to one task or another. Pulling his comlink out, he selected a batch message to a list of thirty-eight addresses that simply said, "Check junction 117-3B." The innocuous message that looked to be in engineering jargon was a prearranged signal. That goddamn Earther was pursuing the alien ship
again
after they’d barely survived the last scrape. Cullen wasn't fooled by that doctored bit of video they were running on a loop that showed the mag-cannons shredding the alien at close range. If anything, he felt insulted they would attempt such a lame deception. How could guns that were so outdated even at the time of their manufacture be able to do so much damage to something that chewed up entire planets?

"Ormond," he said, popping his head into one of the main work centers. "You still good down here?"

"Yes, Chief," Specialist Ormond said, paling slightly as he knew exactly what Cullen was referring to.

"Good," Cullen said, ignoring the other spacers in the room. "Don't fuck this up." He stepped back out into the corridor and took a ladder up a deck and headed forward towards one of the security checkpoints to talk to a Marine corporal who was also instrumental to their plan. He hoped those idiots working on the bypass on number one didn't kill themselves or vent into the room before he could make it back down there.

****

"Captain, I think we may have an opportunity here," Lieutenant Barrett called out from the tactical station. Jackson walked over to stand behind the chair, resting his hand on the back.

"What've you got?"

"If you look here, the target has taken up a stationary position over the area where it's been deploying ground forces," Barrett said. "Given the rotation of Podere, that will put it in our direct line of sight within the next forty-five minutes if we bear a few degrees to port."

"I'm listening," Jackson said, intrigued where this might be going.

"I propose we purge the mag-cannon loaders and reload with solid core rounds," Barrett went on, talking more quickly as his enthusiasm for the plan started to peek through. "If we fire them dead ahead while the
Blue Jacket
is still at full power—"

"The rounds will be near relativistic speeds when they hit the target," Jackson finished for him. "Can you hit it at this range even if you know where it's going to be?"

"It will be close," Barrett admitted. "The system isn't designed for this type of long-range shot, but if we fire a full spread and space the shots out along this line—” his finger traced an imaginary line along the screen to illustrate his point, "we won't risk hitting the planet and we'll still have enough time to reload the high-explosive rounds and recharge the cap banks."

"Call down to Armament and have them change the load out for the mag-cannons," Jackson said, making the decision quickly as the clock counted down. "You stay here and check, recheck, and then check one more time to make sure your firing solutions are airtight. One stray round at that speed could wipe out an entire city on Podere."

"Yes, sir," Barrett said, turning to his console and beginning to enter he parameters so the computer could crunch the numbers for his plan.

"This is an interesting plan," Celesta said quietly as he retook his seat.

"It's solid," Jackson said more defensively than he needed to. "Kinetic weapons have been a tried and true staple for human warfare. They're just a bitch to aim at these ranges." The mag-cannon targeting actuators were designed to be able to target a fairly large ship at a relatively close range. Hitting something even as big as the alien ship at the distances and speeds they were dealing with would, on the surface, seem impossible. But Jackson was hoping they were due for some good luck, preferably a miracle, sometime in this mission.

"I'm not disparaging the idea," she said. "If it doesn't work we haven't lost anything but a few tons in useless solid core rounds. If it does work this could be quite spectacular."

"Yeah," Jackson said, mulling it in his head. "Twenty rounds ... that's not a lot of chances to hit this bastard at this range even as big as it is. If it sees them coming and just nudges itself to a higher orbit they all miss."

"Like I said, no harm done," she insisted.

"Maybe," Jackson grunted. "It does feel good to take the initiative though."

It was another thirty minutes before the armament crew had swapped the load out and Barrett had absolute confidence in his numbers. Jackson discreetly had Lieutenant Davis check them to make sure there wasn't any obvious error. He appreciated the effort Barrett was making to redeem himself, but his previous performance earned him a “trust, but verify” treatment until he proved otherwise.

"Helm, bear two degrees to port and pitch down three degrees, no change in engine power," Jackson said.

"Aye aye, sir," the helmsman said, "bearing to port and pitching down."

"Tactical, the stage is yours," Jackson said, flipping a switch on his own console. "You are authorized weapons release for upper and lower mag-cannon turrets at your discretion."

"Aye, sir," Barrett said. "Aligning cannons now and turning over fire control to the computer."

Jackson stood up and watched the barrels of the two upper cannons twitching as the fine correction motors adjusted the weapons a thousandth of a degree at a time. There would be a sweet spot where the
Blue Jacket
would line up with the moving alien ship and the computer would begin the firing sequence without waiting for him or the tactical officer to initiate.

Most of the bridge crew watched, transfixed on the barrels of the guns that were lit up by the ship's external running lights. The near hypnosis was broken when the first gun lit off with a mighty
boom
that shook the ship. The rest of the twenty shots followed quickly, the recoil of the guns shaking the ship. The bridge crew shielded their eyes as the trace amounts of trapped gas in the system ignited while escaping the barrels and flashed brightly on the main display.

"All shots away," Lieutenant Barrett reported, all business as he checked his displays. "Reloading with high-explosive rounds. All four mag-cannons still show fully functional."

"Very good, Lieutenant," Jackson said. "Prepare for your next volley as we close on the target. OPS! Monitor the enemy ship and check for impacts. How long?"

"Rounds will reach the enemy in thirty-three minutes," Davis said. Jackson just raised an eyebrow. If the
Blue Jacket
could achieve those speeds, at least without killing the crew during acceleration, he could have beaten the enemy ship to Podere and made his stand there.

Jackson forced himself to leave the bridge and head to the wardroom to grab a quick bite to eat and refill his mug with water. He'd had so much coffee the last couple of days his hands were shaking and he felt like it was eating a hole through his stomach lining. Although both of those could be attributed to stress. After the initial bout of panic had subsided when they first encountered the alien ship over Oplotom, he was somewhat surprised that he'd been able to hold things together as well as he had. While he would never say it out loud, he had always assumed that, save for a few exceptions, his crew was a collection of misfits and fuck ups. In those same moments of candor with himself he would also have to conclude that there was some truth to the rumor that he'd lucked into a command slot that he possibly didn't deserve.

But they were now steaming towards their third engagement with the enemy after bloodying its nose and, despite the fact they would almost certainly be destroyed if the thing gave chase, he felt pretty damn good about it. It'd been a long time since he, and likely any of the crew, had felt anything to be really proud about. The
Blue Jacket
may have left the Sierra Shipyards over forty years ago with much fanfare, but she'd been little more than a glorified messenger and a slowly rotting relic of a time nearly all humans thought long gone.

Jackson topped off his water again after that sobering thought. Humans had, by and large, eschewed warfare in all its forms over the last two hundred and fifty years or so. As a species they congratulated themselves on attaining the next step on their way to enlightenment and sat around pulling the scabs off old wounds as they talked about the barbarism of their ancestors. That, more than anything else, was probably why Earth was excluded from the conversation, her citizens looked upon as pariahs when they dared venture into the more civilized realms of man. Earth still bore the scars of past wars and the old, familiar landmasses reminded everyone that it hadn't really been all that long ago that the species had been killing each other by the thousands over reasons so obscure they no longer made sense.

That was all bullshit, of course. At least in Jackson's mind. The enclaves had largely been separated along the ideological and ethnic dividing lines that had existed when the serious colonization had begun, and they had remained separated from each other for the most part for all this time. Hell, Earth was now the most diverse place in the galaxy.

But either way, the rules had irrevocably changed when that alien ship had made orbit over Xi'an and launched an attack. He had no delusions that this could be some isolated incident. This was a probe by a single scout ship to test the waters. The fact it had played cat and mouse with the
Blue Jacket
and even tried to capture it only confirmed that fact in his mind. He hoped his species was ready for what was coming. No matter what the outcome with this single-ship incursion the die had been cast ... humanity would have to fight for its survival, or at least its right to exist among the stars.

****

"Report," Jackson said as he climbed back into his chair.

"Eleven minutes to impact," Lieutenant Davis said, her eyes not leaving her screens.

"New firing scripts are updated and loaded, Captain," Lieutenant Barrett said. "Armament crews are reloading the turrets now."

"Excellent," Jackson said, sitting down and forcing himself to remain seated. He passed the remaining minutes by idly scrolling through status reports from his department heads, wondering about what would happen to him should they actually survive the coming battle. He'd openly defied Admiral Winters and so had Celesta Wright. No matter how justified it had been, he had no doubt that they would both have the hammer dropped on them by a CENTCOM board of inquiry. The prospect almost made him hope the alien would make short work of him.

"Impact plus one," Lieutenant Davis said, indicating that it was one second after the expected time of impact. "Waiting for the light to reach us."

When it did, they didn't need her instruments to let them know. A bright flash lit up visibly on the main display from the direction of Podere.

"Holy shit!" Lieutenant Barrett exclaimed before looking at Jackson sheepishly, but the captain was out of his seat, staring at awe at the fading point of light.

"Sift through all that for me, Lieutenant," he said to Davis.

"Two impacts," she said, squinting at her display. "One round took a fair-sized chuck off the tip of the nose, the other ... the other—" she trailed off as she ran the optical data back a few more times and looked again.

"Lieutenant?" Jackson said impatiently.

"The second round punched all the way through," she said finally, putting the video up on the main display. "Large entry damage at the point of impact and then, as you'll see as she spins from the hit, there's an enormous area blasted out on the opposite side. The enemy ship is still spinning. Looks like it's beginning to stabilize."

"Holy shit," Jackson said matter-of-factly, mimicking his tactical officer. "OPS, keep updating Tactical with the new course projections for the target. Tactical! Adjust your firing sequence to take advantage of the gaping hole you just created. Arm up the Avengers too." There was some quiet cheering and high-fives going around on the bridge and Jackson let them have their moment.

"Captain," Lieutenant Keller said, "we're getting some calls from the surface. They want to know what we did. Besides the flash in the sky they say the ... let's just call them troops ... on the ground are being collected and taken back up."