A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) (2 page)

They were close now, with all three ships in formation. Athena was thankful for small favors that both devils had survived and were still fully armed. Each of the Eagle-type gunboats carried six Mk-92B Anti-Ship Missile-Sprint (Mk-92B ASM-S.) This version of the venerable Mark Ninety-Two missile had extremely short legs, but they were highly maneuverable, and carried a devastating 74MT thermonuclear warhead. A direct hit would destroy anything man had built in space, but even a near-miss could be devastating. The shielding could stop a large amount of radiation, but even that had its limits.

Roberts
was no longer receiving volley fire. Instead, as it became clear she was boring directly in on
Shanghai
, the big battleship and her escorts were subjecting
Roberts
to continuous fire. The ship was under constant bombardment, with her gravetic repulsion field straining and sometimes failing. When they did, the PRC railgun round impacted
Robert’s
hull with only the secondary repulsors to slow it down. This had a devastating effect, ripping through multiple compartments and fragmenting into hypersonic pieces within the ship. Athena knew she was losing crewmen, but most of the forward sections had already been evacuated from the damage taken on the way in and the artificial gravity plating reconfigured by the DC parties to aid the task of the repulsors, however poor a substitute that was. The forward portion of
Roberts
now absorbed damage to protect the rest of the ship and the devils following in single file behind her.

Well
, Athena thought mischievously,
following was one way to put it
. She was sure that Eagle Two would have had to shut off her collision alarms at the distance she was following. That and her forward hull was probably heating up from
Roberts’
drives. If
Roberts
slacked off in her thrust by even a small percentage, the gunboat would have no time to react before it rammed the larger ship. That’d be catastrophic to them both.

“Sir, enemy targeting is shifting. They are moving their fire to concentrate on our aft section.” Ensign William Underwood at sensors reported the change, but there was no surprise in his voice.
Roberts
ECM suite, normally used to spoof enemy sensors into seeing two or three ghost
Roberts
, Countermeasures had reconfigured them to create a dozen ghost Eagles. That, combined with the interference from
Roberts
’ drives, was making it a near impossibility for the enemy to target the gunboats with them hiding behind the cruiser’s bulk.

“Approaching Point Green, Sir.” Tactical reported.

“Alright.” Athena turned to Ensign Daniels. “Eagles on my comm please, private line.”

“Connecting now, Sir… you’re on.”

“Eagles,
Roberts
Actual, are you still mission capable?”

“Affirmative”

“Yes sir.”

“Very well gentlemen, get them for us.” Athena spoke softly but there was a steel in her voice.

“We’ll get them.” Eagle Two’s response was equally soft, but carried a tone of sadness.
Roberts
was still taking a pounding, it was only a matter of time before she lost her drives, and then there’d be no way to reduce her large intrinsic velocity. The ship, and her crew, would be lost to deep space. Athena cut the line.

“Point Green in ten…five…execute!” Tactical’s voice rose in volume, but under more control than Athena might have expected.
Roberts’
pitched up dramatically, exposing even more of her battered hull to railgun and missile fire. The three still functioning drive units flared with the increased load, receiving power from Fusion One and Two which were both running well beyond the engineering staff’s most liberal limits. The Engineering crewman in Aux Con had already silenced the containment alarms for Fusion Two. Athena didn’t need much longer.

“Alright, Comms, Priority One Evacuation. All Hands, abandon ship.” Athena turned to face the tactical display. It showed Eagles Two and Five splitting port and starboard of
Roberts
while diving slightly below her previous line of advance. They were less than one-hundred thousand kilometers from
Shanghai
now.

“Sam, assume control of all functions. This is a Command Authority Authorization.” Athena’s voice was remarkably calm, at least in her own mind. She settled into the command chair, having accepted her fate. “Continue on course, full-point defense spread. Preference defensive fields of fire to protect Eagles Two and Five. Maintain full gunboat ECM and counter-interdiction jamming.”

“Yes Sir.” Sam responded with a total calm, unaffected by its own pending destruction.

“Sir, we need to go!” It was Ensign Daniels, but she wasn’t alone. Standing behind her were two Marines in their power armor. Marine armor was a formidable thing to behold, especially the shipboard units since they were jet black. The black paint job helped to hide them from optical sensors when executing a boarding action or fighting on the hull of a ship.

“Ensign, get yourself out of here, that’s an order.” Athena couldn’t bring herself to abandon
Roberts
after all they had been through. She knew it was an emotional and irrational decision, a bad one at that, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Ensign Daniels looked resigned to her commander’s decision. Clearly she had hoped that the presence of the Marines would help her to convince her commander. Athena would have thought that Daniels knew better than that. That was when Athena noticed that the Marines were not armed with their typical assault rifles. They utilized a distinctive bull-pup version of the standard rifle, chambered for either the normal high density round for fighting armored troops or the ceramic round with metallic core to be used to engage unarmored personnel without puncturing the ship’s hull. Instead they were carrying the equally distinctive sonic stunners. Those were generally only issued in cases of crew mutiny or… “Stand down Marines. That’s an order!” Athena practically yelled over the open comm. Daniels visibly stiffened through her pressure suit but the Marines didn’t hesitate. The Marine to Daniels left snapped up his stunner and fired a single pulse at Athena. Almost instantaneously, the second leapt forward, reaching Athena a fraction of a second after she was hit, preventing her from falling unceremoniously to the deck. The Marine scooped her up into his arms, displaying a gentleness and grace that one unfamiliar with the armor would find amazing.

“Let’s get going boys, we can submit for Court Martial later. I’d be glad to stand before the tribunal board, so long as Athena sits at its head.” Daniels headed out of the compartment with the Marines in tow.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Outside the ship, oblivious to the happenings within the battered cruiser, Eagles Two and Five had reached their launch points.
Roberts’
deceptive jammers had been taken offline by enemy weapons fire, as had the last of her engines, leaving the dying ship to cruise along flat and level with no hope of stopping for many thousands of years. The ship was spent, but she had shepherded her charges to point blank range.

As one, the two gunboats flushed their Mk-92Bs at the big PRC behemoth. Even with the degraded point defense from her escorts, the big battleship had a formidable point defense array of its own. Of the twelve ASMs launched, four died quickly to well-placed barrages of tiny sprint anti-missile missiles. The eight that struggled through were engaged by sophisticated ECM attacks, as well as attempts to breach their data sharing protocols and overcome their onboard AIs. These attempts were thwarted primarily by the fact that Athena had ordered the gunboats to set the ASMs to not receive in-flight retargeting, leaving them only communicating with point-laser comms. The missiles couldn’t be given new targeting instructions if the original was destroyed. The missiles had one task and that was to kill
Shanghai
. Still, the ECM overloaded one missile’s seeker, forcing it off course, while another was lured away from the
Shanghai
and vectored onto a ghost target. After passing through the ghost, the missile re-engaged its own target, which happened to be one of
Shanghai’s
badly battered escort destroyers. The missile scored a direct hit, an extreme rarity, and the destroyer ceased to exist as a miniature sun flared bright for a full second, before collapsing on itself and making space black once again. The particles and radiation thrown off by the detonations blocked any further ECM utility and the final six missiles pressed on. Close range point-defense guns destroyed another three on their final approach, but the distances were simply too close and the Chinese AI could not get them all. The surviving three Mk-92Bs detonated in a rough triangle around
Shanghai
, bracketing her at less than one kilometer with three massive explosions.
Shanghai
bucked and spun, surrounded by more than two-hundred megatons of thermonuclear fury.

Even though she had previously sustained only light damage, her armor couldn’t handle such a bombardment. All across the ship’s hull, shielding failed, systems sparked and blew up, and crew perished instantly from a massively lethal dose of radiation. Sections of superheated hull and compartments within ruptured, adding to the destruction. Near the aft lower port quarter, a team reloading the anti-missile missile battery was caught with a blast door open. When the hull shielding failed, the missiles added to the conflagration.
Shanghai’s
entire after section was opened to space, with secondary explosions ripping through her defensive magazines. Finally, she couldn’t handle the torture. The drive section turned 25 degrees relative to the rest of the hull, flaring out quickly as the drives unit sheared its connections to engineering. The combination of power fluxuations from this event, the shock pulses from the Mk-92s, and smaller secondary explosions had the effect of starting a containment failure in the fusion reactors. The combination was a death knell for the ship as she came apart in space as a ball of white light, magnificent and ghastly.

Sigma Zeta Alpha System: Xi Beta Delta Slip Gate

USS
Guadalcanal
(ASO-65)

Guadalcanal
had been waiting on the far side of the Slip Gate from Sigma Zeta Alpha to Xi Beta Delta for the better part of two days, holding just over 500,000 km from the gate at a complete standstill. Now, they had the word, transit.

“Attention all ships, begin transit now.” Vice Admiral Raymond Thompson spoke with a commanding voice, one he had developed during his 25 years of service in the USN.

“Attention all hands, prepare for Slip Gate insertion.” The announcement was on ship-wide, letting everyone on
Guadalcanal
know they were about to transition with a slip gate. Slip gates, while the fastest way to travel the stars, were a little uncomfortable for even veterans of the service. The instant transition over dozens of light years, sometimes upwards of 200, tended to cause nausea, severe migraines, and even disorientation. For people less suited to handle a Slip Gate transit the symptoms also could include hysteria, slipping into a coma, and for one specific genetic pre-disposition, death. The service had to screen potential candidates very carefully and then monitored everyone throughout training. The Marines, by nature of the force being a space-borne force, performed the same process to their inductees.

“Lieutenant Smith,” Admiral Thompson turned his helmeted head slightly to face his Flag Lieutenant, a pointless gesture since he could hear Thompson over the comm or the speakers built into the suit equally well. Some habits were just hard to kick. “the fleet will come to battle stations, ship-to-ship. Can’t be too careful now.”

“Yes sir, issuing order now.” Lieutenant Andrew Smith had been Thompson’s aide when Thompson had commanded a squadron from USS
Saratoga
, a battlecruiser. When he was promoted to flag rank, he brought Smith with him.

“ATTENTION ALL HANDS. GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS. SHIP-TO-SHIP. ATTENTION ALL HANDS. GENERAL…” The AI continued to announce the order throughout
Guadalcanal
, Flag Captain Hannah Ledger bringing her ship to readiness as the Admiral had ordered. Even though he’d been in command of Orbital Assault Group (OAG) 4 for more than a year now, Thompson was still struggling to not command the ship he was on. He knew his place was to fight the fleet and to leave the ship handling to Captain Ledger, but it was still a hard urge to quell. Not that Thompson felt he had much to do. OAG-4 was just too valuable to actually put on the line against an opponent, so Thompson spent most of his time behind the battle, then entering a system and handing over operations to the Marines so they could conduct their landing. Overall he felt quite useless.

“Both of the lead gunboat squadrons have transited Admiral. Waiting on confirmation before we transit.” Lieutenant Smith informed him. “There is Eagle 43 sir, they indicate we are cleared to transit.”

“Very well, let’s get this done.” Thompson glanced at the tactical plot, noting with amusement that
Guadalcanal
among the first ships to transit.
No, not among the first, first.
She was the first of the group by a wide margin. Captain Ledger knew that her admiral hated waiting in the rear and would want to be there as quickly as possible. Thompson also figured that Ledger’s highly competitive nature had something to do with it. She would want to execute this mission flawlessly, second to none.