Battleship Destroyer (111 page)

"Twenty seconds to target." Said the Weapons Officer. It would take another 20 seconds after that
for us to find out if anything hit.

The mass of beams continued to stream toward the Spider Battle
cruiser some 600 miles inside the cloud minus the God gun's monster pulses after the initial salvo. It was going to take the best part of another 3 minutes to recharge them unless he had to send the power back to the engines where it belonged.

Jack thought about stopping the gun
s after 15 seconds realizing that if even a portion of the beams had hit the target in the ass, the Battle cruiser was as good as dead but remembering the lost opportunity from the tunnel he let them continue. He did not want a Spider with weapons shooting at them as they passed.

Taking a sip of his steaming tea as the count clock hit 21 seconds a wave of nausea rushed over him as his head
seemed to short circuit for an instant. Turning in shock he could see the Ensign clutching her head as she slumped down into her chair.

Shaking his head. "Shit!"
Finally he was able to glancing up at the shot clock that said 26 seconds. "Cease fire! Wilson! Turn this crate around NOW and max thrust directly away from target Bravo."

The ship started turning
as the First Officer turned around and looked at Jack. Jack mouthed, "Now", but the ship continued to turn much to slowly as the seconds ticked by with most of the power still going to the weapons. "Shift all power back to the engines. Use life support as well." Jack looked to the side of the bridge toward the target. A bright wall of swirling bright waves rushed toward them washing out the bridge lights. "Number One get us out of here or we are dead!"

The ship started accelerating back the way they had come at 400 Gee's
. "Shit." Jack lunged forward but his seatbelt held him to the seat. Flicking the buckle he lunged again. "I said max!" Sailing over the First Officers shoulder he slammed the throttles forward to their stops. 

The Red Pepper's engines kicked into full power
shoving them ahead at over a thousand Gees.  Climbing back into the Command Chair he hit the comm panel. "Engineering, I need everything you can put into the engines now. We are trying to out run a nova explosion and have only seconds. Out."  Slapping the ship wide comm. "All personnel brace for impact."

"1400 Gees Captain."

"Grav sensors showing some kind of mass wave rapidly approaching from the stern Captain. The wave is doing 9/10ths the speed of light. What the hell happened?"

"The Spider Battleship's fusion
reactors blew inside the cloud. The shock wave will destroy the ship if we are close enough to the epicenter."

"1500 Gees Captain."

"10 seconds to impact."

"Engineering,
stern shields and damping fields to full, double up the power supplies with the auxiliary generators." Jack took a deep breath. "Damn I forgot. Number One, Engineering, CONE the drives! Punch a hole in the wave."

The engines burped as Jack watched the wave start to wash over them violently shaking the
ship sending Jack flying across the bridge and then the engine cones appeared behind them. A tunnel appeared around the ship as the ship stopped shaking. The cloud streaked past the ship for a good half a minute before it dissipated.

Jack picked himself up off the deck. Checking the dent in his helmet
and rubbing his shoulder, he sat back down in the Command chair, looking around not at the bridge. The shell of the explosion rapidly dwindling into the distance toward the enemy fleet.

Taking a deep breath. "Ok Number One
, turn this bucket around. We have another Spider to run down. Full thrust. The enemy fleet is going to be blinded for quite a while so pour on the power. We have a lot of lost time to make up."

Jack studied the hole blown in the cloud with its center where the Spider Battle cruiser had once been. The blast wave had blown out half the cloud mountain with a huge hole big enough to fly a fleet into punched through to the other side where the tunnel had once been. The valley around the blast had been obliterated with a hug crater in the side of the mountain. The entry point at the bottom of the valley had been collapsed leaving a half dozen cleared areas or gaps in the clouds instead of just one small entry point. "Well that could make it harder for the enemy to follow us down into the cloud with new cleared areas added to the maze but it allows them to get farther to start with. Also makes it harder to miss the entry point."

The sh
ip plunged past the blasted crater.  "Navigation, plot a course strait to intercept the transport. We will bore holes through the fingers and clouds the cleared path meanders around." Glancing again at the hulls temperature Jack frowned. Could they get up enough speed to reach the transport lagging behind the squadron before the Spider Battle cruiser caught up to it. If the transport maintained its speed they had 40 minutes. They were at least 70 minutes behind if they had to stay on the surveyed route through the cleared areas.

"Chief, there has to be something we can do to increase our forward shields.
We need more velocity in order to bore our way straight through to the transport."

"Sorry Captain but we are running them at 150% voltage now. We don't dare increase the voltage any farther. We will burn them out and we have no replacements for
even one of the coils."

"Well,
see what you can do to cool the coils and increase the voltage. We need the speed the added protection will allow in the next few minutes." Turning Jack looked around the bridge. "Come to think of it I have not seen Pan for quite a while now." Looking at the Ensign. "Parker, what happened to Pan? Maybe her people can help."

The Ensign turned from the screen she was studying and frowned. "She has been with the group you put to developing the new plasma power generators.
For a mere translator she sure gets involved in the working details and decisions."

"Ok, I
guess that is good. How are they doing?"

"Busy. They are acting like it is X-mas. They have already pro
duced a section of plasma cable. I don't know about the power generator. Do you want me to get her?"

"No. Leave her working on the generator. We will just have to take care of this on our own.
" Jack continued tapping on the air screens he had built around himself and finally stopped and sat back shaking his head. "We are going to have to do this in two stages. Number one, new course. Weapons, swing the Godguns back around facing aft. We will target the Spider directly with the Godguns as soon as we get close enough before it catches the transport."

"If you have a minute you may want to look at what happened to Target
Bravo when our beams hit." The Ensign said with some concern.

"Can't it wait Ensign?"

"No. Take a look. I already have it punched up for you."

"Very well Ensign. Put it on the main screen."

Target Bravo appeared on the main screen looking at it from the side. The Spider Battlecruiser had a haze around it. It shot one of its four god guns down the tunnel, fire blooming around the beam. "I am slowing it down so you can see it more clearly." The Ensign said as twelve 16(8)inch, some forty 5(3)inch beam and hundreds of pin point 3(2) fire wrapped pulses started peppering the Spider Battlecruiser from about 30 degrees off the stern. Pieces of hull and objects started separating from the ship as holes appeared in the stern.

"All right! Dead on!" The Weapons Officer almost shouted
as he watched.

Then 3 large beams
(from the Godguns), so close they almost looked like one, hit the back half of the ship just forward of the flattened stern. The 4th beam hit the ship well forward of the weapons section just aft of the first armored deck. The 3 beams hitting the very stern seemed to penetrate deep into the ship and then the back quarter of the hull below the weapons decks exploded out in a bright fireball that suddenly slowed even more until the recording had almost stopped. The fire ball that had been the back part of the ship seemed to freeze for a brief second and then an even larger brighter fire ball started expanding out engulfing the entire ship and kept growing until it hit the recon missile transmitting the image.

"My Godstar
, it worked." The Weapons Officer said in shock. "The damn beams converged and took out the stern section of the ship. But that was one hell of an explosion?"

"
That was the Spiders 3 Fusion cores going up together and all the fusion fuel in the main central storage tank between them if I remember the Battleship plans right. They must have had a thousand years' worth of fuel aboard to make an explosion as big as they produced."

"Actually Ensign Parker." Pan walked onto the bridge. "Only a hundred
years' worth. The Battleship cores are first generation cores and are extremely inefficient which is why they are huge. Their reliability is why they have continued to be built to equip what you call God Battleships for 10,000 years." Stopping next to Jack at the Command chair. "You ask for me Captain?"

"Captain, centered on new
course, 1200 Gees." The First Officer said.

"Very well Number One. Turn our ass around and start punching a hole
through the air at minimum thrust." Taking a breath Jack smiled at Pan. "Yes. I did not know you were busy working on the plasma generator. How is it coming?"

"We are having a few problems with the generator Captain.  We believe it should work but it does not. Please forgive us for building a full scale generator
believing that it would work. We should have produced a small prototype first to prove the concept and work out the bugs."

Jack turned and looke
d at the tactical screen for several seconds then smiled. "Exec, you have the conn. We are 27 minutes from the next open area transition where we will commence our attack. I will be back before then. I am going to take a look at this generator." Jack led Pan off the bridge with the usual announcement of Captain leaving to his irritation.

Jack walked down the passageway and to the core hull hatch and turned to step into the elevator platform next to it. The platform raised up 10 decks and into the open pipe chase between the tanks packed with large 3 foot diameter pipes for transferring reaction mass up
and down the ship. Expecting the chase to be empty with the crew in their acceleration bunks he was shocked to see aliens on every deck running around or working.

"Ok Pan
, what is going on? We are still at battle stations. Why are these people out of their Gee bunks?"

"My apologies Captain but they are running the new Plasma lines from the engine fusion generators to the God
guns plasma generators."  Bending over the rail looking at a group working on a grating as the platform passed them, then started scratching on her pad for a second before turning back to Jack. "We will have the Generators and plasma lines hooked up ready as soon as we have worked out the performance problem. We believe it is a programing problem and not equipment."

Jack looked around the chase and the quarter section no one was working at. A bright pair of lines jumped out at him running up from the engineering stern of the chase up past him
through the overhead far above them.  Jack suddenly realized that the 2 inch set of crystal pipes wrapped in wires had thread thin million degree plasma streaming through them, one streaming up and the other streaming back down toward the engines. "Ok. How hot is the pipe casing? Don't you need to put shields around them?"

Pan looked at where Jack was looking and smiled. "I was just about to tell you about the plasma pipes Captain. No need to worry, the casing is cool to the touch.
One pair of lines would be enough according to our calculations to power all 4 God guns but we decided for damage control purposes to run a separate line to each God gun with cross connects incase a line was breached. I hope that meets with your approval sir."

Jack started to say something about being a waste of time if they could not get the damn generator to work but held his lips. "Very good Pan."

The platform shot through the over head of the pipe chase through and into the lower gun deck of the main weapons and control section of the ship. Jack grimaced as they entered, dreading seeing all the damage he knew was there only to find what looked like a thousand aliens working, making the finishing touches to repairs on the deck. "Damn it Pan, these people are supposed to be in their Geebunks. Repairs to the ship can wait until after we take care of the enemy."

"Sorry Captain but the God
gun mounts needed reinforcing to handle the loads of continuous firing once the generators are installed." They started walking toward one of the gun mount basses protruding hundreds of feet into the ship from deck to the overhead.

"Well. They have another 30 minutes before we enter battle. I want them all in their Geebunks by then weather the deck is reinforced or not." 

"Yes Captain Turner." Pan led the way up the side of the gun mount base, then up a short ladder and through a 6 foot thick hatch a few feet from the hull. A one inch diameter crystal plasma pipe curved around too run through the thick bulkhead next to the hatch.  Inside they followed the crystal pipe to the center of the compartment where it curved around to enter a larger one foot diameter some 12 foot long crystal pipe that had 3 inch mettle cables running out of both ends next to the crystal plasma pipes. The 3inch cables ran to the main power box for the turret gun. "This large case has a million thin metal plates stacked from one end to the other with the plasma stream flowing down the center. The million degree magnetic plasma flowing through the thin metal magnetic plates in pulses at a significant percentage of the speed of light produces electrical power through simple magnetic principles used to generate power since electricity was discovered at the beginning of time. It cannot fail but it does. We do get power but only at a trickle of what it should be. We should be able to pull a million Amps at a million volts but we can't. As soon as any significant amperage is pulled the voltage jumps to a million-volts and stays there with the amperage spiking and dropping to zero."