Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga) (14 page)

He glanced at the navigation display. Sergeant Higgs had done a perfect job, bringing them in behind the pirate without waiting for further instructions.

“Well done, Pilot! We’re exactly where we need to be.”

“Thanks, Sir. What next?”

“Stay on this course, but edge out to port just a hair so that Shuttle Two, behind and to starboard of us, is on the target’s centerline. That’ll give us line-of-sight on any laser cannon turrets on her port side, and Shuttle Three on those to starboard. We’ll come in about twelve clicks below her, as near as I can tell. That’s close enough for the cannon – its bolts won’t be affected by atmospheric diffraction, so they’ll be effective over a longer range than planetside. It’s also far enough away to protect us if her reactor lets go. Take us straight and level from their stern to their bow, and leave the shooting to the battle computer. As soon as we’re past and the cannon’s ceased fire, we’ll turn around and head for her docking bay.”

“Got it, Sir.
Give ’em hell!”

“I intend to.” He twisted around, looking at the Marines behind him. “Are you ready, Marines?”

Abha spoke for them all from her seat beside him. “We’re ready when you are, Sir!” Her Marines growled their eager assent, echoed by their Rolla understudies.

Steve’s fingers ran over the WSO console controls. He brought the active electronically-scanned radar arrays on all three shuttles to standby, ready for instant transmission as soon as he gave the order. The plasma cannons’ control programs would take their final input from the radar returns to align the weapons precisely on their targets.

They streaked closer to the pirate ship. Steve flicked up the safety cover over the radar activation switch, poised his finger over it, and waited. As soon as the display, taking its information from passive sensors and OrbCon’s radars, showed a range of twenty kilometers, he jabbed the switch. Instantly all three shuttles began to emit a flood of electromagnetic energy. Part of it was from their active radar arrays, focusing on their target, gathering data, passing it to their fire control systems, displaying it on their consoles. Another part was from their electronic warfare systems, preemptively blinding all radar and lidar wavelengths except those they were using. They couldn’t blind optical sensors, but the pirates’ standard fire control sensors would be rendered useless.

Steve could vividly imagine how alarms must be screaming on the pirate ship’s bridge right now, as her sensors detected the powerful transmissions from such desperately close range. Her crew would be jerking upright, scanning their consoles frantically, trying to locate and track the shuttles
. His display suddenly flickered. On the diagram of the pirate ship’s hull, a red light illuminated on the port side of her keel. A laser turret was spinning to face them!

Just over a second after he’d activated the radar, the fire control system solution light on his console flickered from red to green
, even as the enemy weapon locked on. Instantly the battle computer triggered Steve’s programmed firing sequence. The plasma cannon above their heads fired with a sudden
blurt
of sound, muffled by the heavy breech mechanism. The barbette mechanism whined momentarily, turning the second of the three barrels into firing position and adjusting its aim, then the cannon fired again. Whine –
blurt –
whine –
blurt –
whine… Steve had deliberately selected the slow firing speed, directing the fire control system to place accuracy ahead of rate of fire, so that the cannon systematically destroyed precisely-calculated targets rather than simply hitting the hull.

As the first bolts struck the pirate vessel, a flickering line bloomed between
the laser turret and Shuttle Three, on the far side of the formation. A flash of light erupted from the shuttle’s mid-section, and its gravitic drive and electronic sensors all went off-line instantaneously. In the next split-second a plasma bolt from Shuttle Two struck the laser turret, smashing it as Shuttle Three tumbled out of formation, shedding debris.

Steve
swallowed hard. He knew the pirate laser cannon must have been aimed under the control of an optical sensor to avoid their jamming. To stop himself staring at the stricken shuttle, he looked up at the tips of the shuttle’s cannon’s barrels through the viewport. They were beginning to glow red as more blink-of-an-eye streaks of lethal energy left their muzzles. He lost sight of them as they lifted towards the vertical, then trained around as the shuttle zoomed beneath the pirate vessel, the barbette swiveling to keep the cannon aligned as it fired its final shots into the now-receding target.

As the last bolts slammed into the pirate ship, Steve saw on his screen the blip of
Brooks’ shuttle curve outwards and race towards
Mauritania
, by now less than twenty kilometers to starboard. He nodded somberly. Brooks was, quite correctly, going after the enemy. He’d leave the rescue of the damaged shuttle’s crew in Steve’s hands.

The firing stopped, and the weapon console beeped at him, displaying: ‘FIRING SEQUENCE COMPLETE’. Above their heads, the barbette remained trained on the pirate ship, the cannon ready to fire again at his command as soon as it was reloaded.

“Sergeant Higgs, take us round! Get us to their docking bay as quickly as possible, while they’re still disorganized.”

“Aye aye, Sir!”

The barbette whined around as the shuttle turned beneath it, keeping the cannon locked on the target. As its barrels came back into view, Steve could see they were glowing a faint, dark red for almost half their length, despite the near-absolute-zero cold of space. He didn’t care if he had to burn out those barrels. Replacements would be infinitely cheaper than the failure of this mission. He reached into the locker for another twenty-round cartridge and reloaded the cannon, ready to deal with anything that might arise; then he turned to his console. He shut down the electronic warfare suite, sending instructions to the other shuttles to do the same and switch on their radar transponder beacons. Other traffic would need to track their movements now.

He activated the radio on the emergency channel.
To port, the Orbital Control Center was about fifty kilometers away. “Outpost One-One to Rolla Six, OrbCon,
Mauritania,
elements of Task Force Maxwell and all other stations on this frequency. The initial strike on the pirate ship has been completed, so there’s no further need for radio silence. One shuttle under the command of Marine Captain Shelby is on its way to
Mauritania
to deal with the pirate boarders. I’m taking my shuttle to board the pirate vessel, to neutralize her and any surviving pirates. Orbcon, have you organized your boarding parties? Over.”

“Orbcon to Outpost One-One, affirmative
. We have ten cutters and cargo shuttles ready to go, each with an armed boarding party, over.”

“Outpost One-One to Orbcon, thank you.
Send a cargo shuttle to rendezvous with our damaged assault shuttle. They’re to retrieve it in their cargo bay and return it to you. Have an ambulance cutter accompany them with a medical team, to recover casualties and get them to hospital ASAP. Assign a second cargo shuttle to retrieve your customs boat, and also get its casualties to hospital as fast as you can. Send half of the remainder of your boarding parties to rendezvous with me aboard the pirate ship. They’ll operate under the tactical control of Lieutenant Sashna. The rest are to rendezvous with Captain Shelby aboard
Mauritania
and operate under his tactical control to neutralize the pirates aboard her. Over.”

“Orbcon to Outpost One-One, understood
and will comply, over.”

“Outpost One-One to all stations,
proceed, out.”

Steve
forced down dark thoughts about the probable fate of his comrades aboard the damaged assault shuttle. He knew it was likely that most were dead or injured… but there was nothing he could do for them right now, except send help. He had to deal with the remaining pirates.

He
brought up a visual targeting grid on his console. He aligned the shuttle’s cameras on the after third of the pirate ship, where the docking bay was usually located. Sure enough, the gaping hollow in the ship’s side came into view as they approached its far side. The pirates hadn’t bothered to close its doors after sending out their boarding parties. He made a rough alignment of the targeting grid’s crosshairs on the docking bay. If anyone tried to interfere with the shuttle’s docking maneuvers, he was ready to teach them the terminal error of their ways.

“Holy
shit
, Sir, will you look at
that!”

Sergeant Higgs’ awed comment made him look up from the console, and his jaw dropped. He knew that plasma cannon were devastating short-range weapons inside planetary atmosphere, but he’d never before had the opportunity to see what one could do to a spaceship. As they drew nearer, the destruction became horrifyingly clear through the viewscreen.

Unlike a laser, which cut a relatively clean entry hole, the slamming explosive power of the plasma bolts had left great blackened indentations where they’d punched through the plating up and down the pirate ship’s hull. Three laser cannon, each in a retractable turret protruding from the hull, had been hammered into scrap metal. A fourth turret had been blown out of the ship altogether, leaving only a gaping hole. Some plasma bolts, encountering fewer internal structures than others, had bored upward through every one of her decks, smashing out through the top of her reinforced spine. Fragments of wreckage floated near the holes, blasted loose from the fabric of the ship. The last of her internal atmosphere shimmered as it vented to space.

“I never knew a plasma cannon would wreck a spaceship as badly as that!” Abha exclaimed in astonishment. “Even laser cannon don’t do that much damage to hull plating. They cut a clean hole and penetrate very deeply, but they don’t have that surface blast effect.”

“You’re right, although lasers deliver much more energy than plasma cannon and have a much longer range.” Steve glanced at his sensor displays, then looked around. “People, she’s dead in space. All her emissions have shut down – gravitic drive, radio, radar, the lot. Her reactor must have gone into emergency shutdown. It looks like most of her internal atmosphere is gone, too. Those pirates who weren’t wearing spacesuits will be in a world of hurt. Her artificial gravity will be down for sure, so you’ll be fighting in free-fall if it comes to that.”

“No problem, Sir,” Gunnery Sergeant Bradshaw replied. “With any luck, most of those who weren’t wearing spacesuits will have been in compartments vented to space by our cannon fire.”

Steve shivered involuntarily. “Those who were are dead by now, or wishing they were.”

“My favorite kind of pirate, Sir!”

Steve snorted with laughter, and the others roared at the quip. He turned back to his console as they closed on the ship, ratcheting up the magnification of his visual sensors.

“I don’t expect anyone will try to interfere with our docking,” he advised. “Still, anything can happen, so don’t get complacent. Pilot, reverse ship and take us in backwards. Recover internal atmosphere while you’re doing that. We’ll go in with the ramp down.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

As the air-pumps whined, drawing as much as possible of the shuttle’s atmosphere into pressurized tanks for future re-use, Bradshaw said, “Sir, I’ve got a bead carbine for you, plus a belt with four
one-hundred-round chargers and half a dozen blast/frag grenades with a four-second delay. Unfortunately they’re meant for use with armor, so their lethal radius is ten meters. Don’t use ’em too close! I’ll leave them by the rear ramp.”

“Thanks, Gunnery Sergeant. Hopefully I won’t need them.”

Sergeant Higgs called, “Internal atmosphere recovered, Sir. Request permission to lower rear ramp.”

“Wait one, Pilot. Everybody, check your straps again
. Make sure you’re securely fastened into your seat. We don’t want you drifting out ahead of us as we go in, and getting squashed to strawberry jam between the shuttle and the ship.”

The Marines chuckled, but double-checked their own and each other’s straps. In a moment Abha confirmed, “All checked and secured, Sir.”

“Very good. Pilot, lower rear ramp, take us in.”

The ramp whined down, the remnants of the shuttle’s atmosphere escaping into space. The light inside was now flat and dull, no longer having any air molecules to spread its radiance. Through the gaping doorway at the rear of the shuttle, the docking bay loomed closer.

As the shuttle moved towards a vacant docking bay, Bradshaw called, “Designated shooters, take out that airlock!” Immediately two Marines sitting at the end of the rows aimed their beam rifles through the doorway at the airlock at the rear of the docking bay, and pressed their triggers. Beam after beam lanced out and smashed into the delicate electronics and metal framework. The airlock bulged at its seams, then disintegrated – but no air puffed out from inside. Clearly, the atmosphere in that part of the ship had already exited through the holes carved in the hull by the plasma cannon.

With immaculate skill, the pilot brought the shuttle to a quivering halt under gravitic drive, the ramp projecting over the lip of the docking bay’s jetty.
“In position, Sir! I’ll need to have the shuttle secured before I leave the controls. The bay’s docking arms would normally do that, but they don’t seem to be working any more.”