Aurora: CV-01 (17 page)

Nathan looked at the middle hole, the larger one. It looked like they were going to strike just forward of it. Suddenly, he had an idea.

“Time to impact?” the captain asked.

“Five seconds,” the XO answered.

Nathan grabbed the joystick for the docking thrusters and pushed it hard to starboard. It wasn’t much, but the bow inched over just slightly, redirecting them towards the hole.

The captain saw what Nathan was doing and smiled as he put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. He knew he had picked the right man for the job.

CHAPTER 5

Nathan’s head hurt, really bad. He couldn’t remember it ever hurting this bad before. And his leg, something in his left leg also hurt. He started coughing, the smell of smoke wafting into his lungs as he tried to take in a breath. He tried opening his eyes, but everything started spinning.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to concentrate and stop the spinning. There were noises all about him. Crackles, pops, and fizzles. And there were muffled explosions in the distance. And the moaning, someone was moaning. A woman suddenly screamed, causing Nathan’s eyes to snap open. Again his head began spinning, but not as bad as before. The room was dark, except for a faint glow from the back of the room, and the occasional flashes of blue-white light that coincided with the crackles and pops.

He rolled onto his right side and found he wasn’t laying flat, his feet were lower than his head. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out where he was, until it all started flooding back to him, through the pain, the spinning, and the coughing.

He looked around, realizing he was laying on the long, angled cowling between the backside of the helm console and the bottom of the main view screen, which was dark.
I must’ve been thrown over the console
.

He could hear the woman who had screamed, sobbing and saying something unintelligible to him, something in another language. He managed to slide off the cowling onto the floor, and crawl between the edge of the helm and the sensor operator’s console. After squeezing between the consoles, he looked to his left and found that the sensor operator was slumped forward, his head crushed by the side console that must’ve torn free and fallen during the collision. A pool of blood was forming below the dead officer, as it ran out of his head and down the console, finally spilling onto the floor below.

Nathan crawled out from between the consoles and onto the floor, coming face to face with Captain Roberts. He was lying on his back, and his right eye was bleeding. His shoulder looked odd, and his uniform was stained with blood on his abdomen. Nathan thought he was breathing, but couldn’t be sure in the poorly lit room.

There was another sound, one that Nathan couldn’t quite identify at first. Then he realized it was the sound of screaming, and yelling, and of weapons fire, coming across an open comm-line somewhere. It occurred to him that somebody ought to be looking into that sound. Someone in command.

He grabbed hold of the seat back at the helm station, using it to pull himself up. He winced in pain as he first put pressure on his left leg. He looked down at his leg, bending over and grabbing his left calf—it was wet, bleeding. He wondered if it was broken.

He looked around through the smoke and haze, looking to see who was in command. The captain was unconscious, probably still alive, but definitely in no condition to command. He looked about for the commander, but could not find him.

Nathan made his way up the step onto the main bridge level and limped around to the back side of the tactical station. Lying on the floor behind the console was Commander Montero. His back was severely burnt, and his head had taken a severe blow from a beam lying on the floor next to him. Nathan bent down and turned him over. But he too was dead.

Nathan managed to get to his feet, and looked around the bridge. The only steady lighting came from two emergency lights located over the exits in the back corners of the room. In the back starboard corner, Doctor Sorenson was sobbing uncontrollably over the mangled body of her dead father. One of the marines was starting to move behind her as he regained consciousness. In front of her, the ECO was dead, his console having exploded in his face.

Nathan looked to his left, the ensign at the science station was just waking up, and below her, Cameron was also starting to show signs of life.

The sounds of weapons fire and yelling again came across the open comm-line. It was coming from the tactical station directly in front of Nathan, which for all intents and purposes, appeared to still be functioning. Again, he knew something had to be done about the sounds. That’s when he realized that
he
was the most senior officer on the bridge. And he suddenly realized that he had to take action.

Nathan stood at the tactical station, and switched the comm to ship-wide “All hands! Prepare to repel enemy boarding parties! Repeat! We are being boarded! Find a weapon and defend yourself!” Nathan looked over at the marine who had just woken up. “We’ve been boarded!” he barked.
Where?
he thought,
Where are they?
He looked down at the tactical display and saw that the open channel was in the forward section. “Forward Section! Repeat! Forward Section!” Nathan spun around to the face the marine. “Secure this bridge! No one in or out without my orders!” The marine said nothing, just nodded and checked his weapon to make sure he was locked and loaded before moving to check on his fellow marines. Nathan glanced over the tactical display, trying to assess the ship’s condition. Their bow was rammed deep inside the enemy vessel, and there was a large hull breach on the port side about twenty meters back. He assumed that the enemy troops were entering through the hull breach.

Finally, Cameron began to open her eyes and cough.

“Cameron!” Nathan hollered. “Cameron! Wake up!”

Cameron rolled her head from side to side as she woke, trying to make sense of what was going on around her.

“Help her up!” Nathan ordered the ensign at the science station, who had only become conscious herself a moment ago.

The ensign stepped down and helped Cameron to her feet, holding her steady until she could focus and get her balance.

“Cameron! Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she responded in between coughs. “I think so?”

“Take the helm!” he ordered.

“What? Why? What’s going on?” she asked, looking around. “Where’s the captain?”

“He’s injured.” Nathan continued checking systems on the tactical display.

“What about the XO?”

“Dead.” Nathan called up engineering. “Engineering, Bridge! Can you hear me?”

“Dead? Then who’s in command?” she asked, still not fully coherent. Suddenly, she remembered the chain of command, and the impossible dawned on her. She looked around the room, seeing only two marines, Doctor Sorenson, herself, and the ensign at the sciences station. She turned her head back to look at Nathan in disbelief.

Nathan’s voice came blaring through the ship’s comm-system for all to hear.
“All hands! Prepare to repel enemy boarding parties! Repeat! We are being boarded! Find a weapon and defend yourself! Forward Section! Repeat! Forward Section!”

Jessica and the master chief ran down the corridor, jumping through hatchways as they passed through each section. Jessica was still in her EVA suit, but had dumped her life support pack, helmet and chest piece. The suit was a bit on the heavy side, but she figured the extra armor it provided would be worth it in a firefight. She held her automatic close-quarters weapon in front of her as she ran behind the master chief, who carried one of his own and was wearing a flak vest.

“What the fuck is going on!” she demanded after hearing Nathan’s voice over the loud speakers. “First we’re slugging it out with warships, then we’re boarding them, then we’re slugging it out again, and now
we’re
being boarded? I mean, what the hell? Last I heard we were orbiting Jupiter!”

“You know what your problem is, Ensign?” the master chief said as they ran down the corridor.

“No, but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me!”

“You talk too much!”

The master chief turned the corner and suddenly found himself face to face with the enemy. Having never seen the Jung before, he hadn’t known what to expect, other than the fact that they were human.

“Whoa!” he cried, ducking as the enemy swung the butt of his rifle at the master chief’s face. The master chief hit the enemy soldier low, right in the upper abdomen with his left shoulder, driving him back against his friends. With his gun hand, the master chief reached around the first soldier and sprayed the ones behind him with automatic fire, sending at least three of them to the floor in a bloody pile.

“Get Down!” Jessica yelled as she brought her weapon to bear.

The master chief hit the deck as Jessica emptied her entire clip at the rest of the soldiers, killing not only the first one, but the remaining four as well.

“You okay!” she yelled, dropping her empty clip and slapping in a fresh one as she ran past him toward the sound of weapons fire.

“Fuck me!” the master chief exclaimed, stunned that not only had they just taken down eight enemy combatants, but that he had made it through the encounter without a scratch. He immediately started looking himself over for wounds, still in disbelief.

“Come on! It ain’t over!” she hollered, her voice full of excitement as the adrenaline coursed through her veins. All that combat training she had been through was finally coming in handy.

At the next corner, she came to a group of three shipmates trying to hold the corridor with small arms. There had been five, but two of them were dead, holes burnt in their bodies by energy weapons fire.

“How are you guys doing?” Jessica asked as she knelt down beside them and began to return fire. The smell of the burnt bodies was nearly overpowering.

“Better than them!” the first one answered.

“I don’t know what kind of guns they have, but they do some serious damage!” the second one exclaimed.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she answered as the master chief dropped down behind her.

“Here!” the master chief told his shipmates, offering a few of the enemy’s energy weapons. “Thought you could use these!”

The first crewman looked at the weapon in disbelief. “Where did you get these?”

“Took’em off the fuckers we just wasted back there,” the master chief bragged, pointing back down the corridor the way they came. “Figured they didn’t need them anymore!”

“From back there?” the crewman asked, turning slightly paler.

“Yeah, figure they were tryin’ to flank ya!”

“Shit! Thanks, Master Chief!” The crewman looked at the weapon. “How do they work?”

“Hadn’t thought about that,” he admitted. “Let me see it,” he added grabbing the weapon back from the crewman. The master chief looked at the weapon for a moment. It looked like an over-sized flare gun, with a longer barrel, and a large battery looking object situated just forward of the trigger. The master chief pointed it down the corridor and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. After looking at it again, he flipped a switch, then pointed down the corridor and pulled the trigger once more. This time the weapon discharged and a bright red bolt of light shot down the corridor, striking one of the status lights along the ceiling, obliterating it into a mass of molten plastic and metal.

“Like that!” the master chief smiled, handing the weapon back.

The other two followed the master chief’s example and joined their friend on the firing line.

“Me, Nash, and three crewman are holding this corridor for now, Sir!”
the master chief’s voice reported over the comm.
“But if they get reinforced, they’ll mow us down right quick!”

“Understood!” Nathan answered. “Standby,” Nathan turned to Cameron. “Cam, I need you to take the helm!”

“Sure,” she answered, resigning herself to the situation. As unbelievable as it was, Nathan Scott was legally in command of the Aurora. At least until a more senior officer from elsewhere on the ship assumed the role. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you back us away from them?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted as she started checking to see what was working.

“Engineering! Bridge! Respond!” Nathan called.

“Da! Engineering here! Nathan! Is that you?”

“Yeah! Vlad! It’s me!” Nathan could hear all manner of commotion coming through the comm from engineering. People were yelling in the background, alarms were sounding, and he was pretty sure he heard the sound of portable fire suppression equipment being used. Above it all, Vladimir was yelling instructions to someone.

“
What are you doing on the command channel, Nathan? You can get in big trouble for this!”

“I’m in command!”

“Shto?”

Nathan had learned a few words in Russian just from sharing a cabin with Vladimir for a few weeks, and he knew that ‘shto’ meant ‘what’. “I’m in command!”

“Oh bozhe moi!”

Nathan knew what that meant too.

“Listen, Vlad, can you get maneuvering back online?”

“I don’t know, Nathan! Everything is crazy here! Let me call you back!”
Suddenly the line went dead.

“All I’ve got is braking thrusters, Nathan!” Cameron announced. “And docking thrusters! But nothing else!”

“Master Chief!” Nathan called over the comm.

“Yeah, go ahead!”

“What side of the primary forward bulkhead are you on?”

“Aft side!”

“Damn it!” Nathan cursed.

“Can you drive them back behind the primary forward bulkheads?”

“With a few more guys, maybe!”

Nathan spun around to face the marine guarding the port exit. “You two go down and help. I need them pushed back behind the primary forward bulkheads. Then lock those hatches and I’ll flush the bastards out into space!” he ordered.