Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (13 page)

Chapter 11

“Report!” Jackson barked, waiting as the main display came back up.

“All departments have reported in,” Ensign Davis said. “Successful transition. Nav is verifying position now.”

“Position is verified,” the spacer sitting at Nav reported. “We’re sitting in the outskirts of the Oplotom system just outside the orbit of the seventh planet.”

“Secure the warp drive and get the mains started,” Jackson said. “Coms, what do you hear?”

“Nothing, sir,” Lieutenant Keller said tensely. “I don’t have any intersystem chatter or the clock signal from the con drone platform.”

“This can’t be happening again,” the helmsman said loudly enough to be heard by everyone.

“Focus on your jobs, everyone,” Jackson said. “Coms, same drill … have your shop verify that the gear is working correctly, but do not transmit any signal from this ship. Internal loopbacks and visual checks only.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Keller said, getting his department started verifying the equipment even though everyone was certain there was nothing wrong with the ship.

“Warp emitters are stowed. Mains are coming up now,” Ensign Davis said. “Main thrust available in ten minutes.”

“Begin visual scans of the system with the high-power optics,” Jackson said. “I know the light is old, but maybe there’s something there to give us a bit of a heads up.”

It was a tense couple of hours as the ship sat on the outskirts, watching and listening. The mains were vibrating the ship softly, pushing the ship at minimal thrust, just enough to clear them out of the area of the jump point. Even though the flash from their transition would be clearly visible to anyone looking, Jackson didn’t want the
Blue Jacket
roaring into the system, engines lit up and transmitting on every band, without at least getting some passive recon of the surrounding space.

“This seems to shoot some holes in your theory about the Alliance being responsible for Xi’an,” Celesta whispered, her lips barely moving.

“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “You know when I said I hoped to be proved wrong about that? Now I’m not so sure. Could this possibly be Tsuyo Corporation?”

She only shrugged, not speculating on the wild theories put out by a CIS operative.

“Captain, initial scans of Oplotom with long-range optics didn't look good,” Davis called out. “We’re approaching their dark side and there are no visible lights.”

“This is a planet of over one billion people,” Jackson said. “There’s no way every city lost power at the same time on one-half of the planet.”

“What do you want to do?” Celesta asked.

“Coms, ping the drone platform and then ping the orbital traffic controller,” Jackson said. “One challenge each. Let me know when the response is overdue.”

“One ping each, aye,” Lieutenant Keller said. They all waited another tense few hours until it became obvious they weren’t going to receive a response to their challenge.

“No response, Captain.”

“Helm, set course for Oplotom,” Jackson said. “All ahead three-quarters.”

“Ahead three-quarters, aye,” the helmsman answered, pushing his throttles up and eliciting a harsh rumble from the engines. The
Blue Jacket
surged ahead and everyone on the bridge looked at each other with varying degrees of dread, knowing there was likely another dead planet ahead of them.

“We’ve crossed the fifth planet’s orbit,” Davis said some hours later. “Oplotom is coming up.”

“Anything on the optical scans?” Jackson asked.

“Nothing yet, sir,” she said. “We’re chasing the planet around its orbit, so we’ll be able to see the terminator soon and then the daylight side.”

“Keep looking,” Jackson said. “We stay silent until I’m convinced we’re alone out here.”

“Might it not be prudent to bring the weapons online?” Celesta asked quietly.

Jackson just shook his head. “The projectors on the forward beams will leak when sitting at full power,” he said. “It’s not much, but there is a detectable source there if someone is looking.”

“I’m surprised that’s an issue,” she said.

“It’s an issue on this ship,” Jackson said sourly. “The projectors are decades old. It’s a matter of decay, not design.”

“Budget?”

“Budget.”

“We have … something … coming up over the horizon,” Ensign Davis said. “It’s big.”

“General quarters!” Jackson said sharply. “Set condition 1SS.”

“General quarters, general quarters, set condition 1SS,” Ensign Davis’ voice could be heard throughout the ship. Crewmen who were already loitering near their work areas on alert sprinted for their battle stations and began to configure the destroyer for ship-to-ship battle.

“Tactical, go active,” Jackson was saying. “Get me resolution on that target. Bring all available weapons online and be prepared to fire.”

“Target and scanning radars going active,” the tactical officer said. “Weapons are going live … status is on the board.”

Jackson looked up on the main display and saw their list of available weapons come up and begin to populate with percentage and readiness statuses. He was more interested in the radar scans that were coming up, displaying in a window that popped up on the display in front of the looming shape of Oplotom.

It was enormous. It was also irregularly shaped, so much so that Jackson thought it might have been an asteroid or other natural formation that had been caught in the planet’s gravity.

“Sir, target is maneuvering,” Tactical reported. “It’s coming about to face us.”

Never mind.

“Bracket that target, main beams only,” Jackson ordered. “Coms, begin transmitting all Confederacy challenges simultaneously along with the first contact package.”

“You can't think—” Celesta’s voice trailed off as she stared at the monstrosity on the display turning slowly to face them.

“I don’t know what to think,” Jackson snapped. “All I know is humans don’t build ships like that. Range?”

“Six hundred thousand kilometers and closing,” the tactical officer reported. “Target is not moving to break orbit. It’s now station-keeping and facing our approach.”

“Helm, braking thrust,” Jackson said, staring at the display. “Cut our velocity by half.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said, reconfiguring the engines to reverse thrust. They were all pitched forward momentarily as the ship began dramatically decelerating; the object in orbit simply kept rotating to keep them both aligned.

“Range?”

“Still over five hundred thousand kilometers,” Tactical reported. “Given our deceleration curve we won’t be within heavy beam range for another seven hours.”

“That gives us some time to think, at least,” Celesta said.

“It also gives them time to scan us with impunity,” Jackson said. “They’ve not answered any challenges and they’re in orbit over a Confederate planet that also isn’t answering any challenges. Not even an automated reply. Tactical, update the target's status for the computer. It is now considered a hostile.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “Updating target status now. Weapons are now locking on and calculating range.”

“Load four Avenger missiles into the forward tubes,” Jackson ordered. “Target the hostile and put the range countdown on the main display.”

“Are you really going to fire without any provocation, sir?” Celesta asked.

Jackson looked over and saw the fear in her eyes and could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

“I have two dead planets, Commander,” he said to her quietly. “Over a billion provocations between the two. This is what being a captain is all about: the hard choices. I can either sit back and see if they’ll fire on us, which would likely destroy us given what we’ve seen so far, or I can hit first. My first responsibility is to the crew. If I’m wrong I will deal with the consequences.”

She swallowed hard, but nodded and settled back into her seat.

“Captain, the target is beginning to drift toward us. Direct course,” Tactical reported.

“Define ‘drift,’ Mister,” Jackson snapped. “You mean it’s changing orbits?”

“No, Captain,” the tactical officer said, looking over his shoulder at Jackson as he did. “It’s simply changed direction and slowly drifting onto an intercept course. No means of propulsion detected.”

“A reactionless drive?” Jackson said, standing up and walking towards the main display.

“That’s my assumption, sir,” Tactical confirmed.

“Who would have technology like that?” Ensign Davis said with concern.

“Not us,” Jackson said, the impossible truth of the situation becoming more clear. “Ensign Davis, prepare a com drone for a quick launch, same com addresses as the last one. We need to inform CENTCOM that we’ve encountered a new enemy, and they’re not human.”

Chapter 12

“Aye, sir,” the normally unflappable Jillian Davis said in a trembling voice. “Drone is ready, message uploaded along with our preliminary sensor scans.”

“Launch it. Now!” Jackson said. While the ship was at general quarters and he was on the bridge he didn’t have to enter his passcodes to authorize something as mundane as a com drone launch. He needed to ensure that CENTCOM was aware of the situation. His last message would be worthless without the context of the new information he now had.

“Drone is away,” she said. “It’s free floating until its engine fires, but it’s out of the ship.”

“Good enough,” Jackson said. “Tactical, what’s our range?”

“We’re at three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers and closing. Heavy beams are in range at two thousand kilometers, but they’ll spread a lot that far away.”

“Understood,” Jackson said, exasperated he had no standoff weapons at his disposal. “What is the optimal range for the Avengers?”

“We’re within their accepted envelope now,” the tactical officer said. “They’ll fire an initial burn and then accelerate into the target once they break fifty thousand kilometers.”

“Lock on all four missiles and fire,” Jackson said, his jaw set. “Reload the tubes once they’re away.”

Everyone on the bridge seemed to freeze.

“Sir?” the tactical officer said hesitantly.

“I SAID FIRE!!” Jackson roared, coming out of his seat. “You send those missiles or I will have you arrested for treason and find someone who will!”

“Missiles away!” the officer said, his hands shaking as he manipulated the fire controls.

“Reload and track,” Jackson said, sitting back down. He waved off the Marine who had run onto the bridge when he heard yelling about someone being arrested.

“Birds are flying hot and clean,” Ensign Davis said once she realized the tactical officer seemed completely locked up. “No reaction from the target. Final course correction in one hour. Impact estimated in one and a half.”

“Thank you, Ensign,” Jackson said, watching the seemingly pathetically slow tracks creep across the main display as the computer opened another window to show the
Blue Jacket
in relation to the enemy … construct. He had a hard time calling something that big a ship. It was irregularly, asymmetrically shaped but roughly resembled an almond. It was just over three kilometers in length and two at the beam. He wasn’t even sure how you’d safely bring something that big into such a close orbit with a planet without it simply falling from the sky. But then again, he’d just witnessed it sit in space and perform maneuvers as if it could care less that the planet's gravity well was there at all.

“Target is moving!” the tactical officer said, finding his voice again. “It’s now accelerating along its original course. It’s coming right at us at over two hundred G’s of acceleration.”

“The thing is no slouch,” Jackson grumbled, surprised at how calm he felt staring down a planet killer as it raced to meet him. “Are the missiles updating their targeting profile?”

“Yes, sir,” Tactical reported. “They corrected and fired their engines again two minutes ago to compensate for the target’s movement. Impact will now be in ten minutes.”

“What will four Avengers do to something that big?” Jackson asked quietly to himself.

“Piss it off,” a voice said from his right. He looked and saw Chief Kazenski standing there, his eyes fixated on the main display. Jackson had almost forgotten about the wayward senior enlisted man.

The alien didn’t try and dodge or intercept the missiles bearing down on it. The hardened nose cones of the weapons slammed into the organic-looking hull of the target, the motors firing one more time to try and maximize the penetration before the binary high-explosives ignited. Once the flash cleared the
Blue Jacket's
optical sensors were able to see that the alien hull was peeled back on the nose, but the ship was so large it barely looked like they'd scraped it. Looks were deceiving, however, and the Avengers did what they were designed to do and got some penetration, causing more damage beyond just the point of impact.

“We’ve done significant damage to the target’s nose, sir,” the tactical officer said. “Laser range in two minutes.”

“Target where our missiles did the most damage,” Jackson said. “I want all beams concentrated on the hull openings.”

“Aye, sir. Updating targeting data now.”

“Helm, push our nose to starboard by three degrees and kick her in the ass,” Jackson said. “All ahead full.”

“Ahead full, aye,” the helmsman reported. The ship began to shake as the engines came to full power and the
Blue Jacket
surged towards their target.

“Our shot window just narrowed with the velocity change,” Tactical warned.

“Then don’t miss,” Jackson said. “Nav, once we pass the target I need a course that slings us around the planet and out the other side.”

“We’re running?” Celesta asked.

“We’re collecting invaluable data,” Jackson corrected. “Going out in a blaze of glory by slugging it out with a ship twenty times our tonnage is not helpful to anyone. We make this pass, see if we can bloody their nose, and then run for it.”

“If we survive the first pass,” she said.

“If we survive,” he agreed. “But they’ve spotted us and they’ve shown their propulsion is much more advanced than ours. This initial engagement is going to happen no matter what.”

“Agreed,” she said.

“Davis!” Jackson called. “Make sure we have as good a sensor picture as we can of the target on this first pass. I don’t expect to make another one. Make sure we’re recording all sensors all spectrums.”

“Aye, sir,” she called out, the fear in her voice that was there previously fading away as she became too busy to reflect on how scared she was.

They all watched the display tensely as the alien … ship … was resolved in greater detail. Thermal optics showed all the strange aspects of the asymmetrical hull, but failed to show anything resembling a drive output or weapons emplacement. Jackson had no doubt that they’d kicked over the hornet’s nest with this one. For centuries humans had become complacent in the fact that nobody was in the neighborhood that could cause them any trouble. That misconception had just ended, and hard.

“Firing heavy beams!” Tactical called out, startling anyone who hadn’t been watching the range countdown. The power draw for the forward heavy beams was so great that other systems began to drop out as the MUX determined who needed the power the most. Jackson watched as the beam projectors heated up under the continuous fire, but he was also watching the nose of the alien ship warp and slough away as terawatts of power per beam were poured into the breaches created by the missiles.

“”We’ve got a thermal buildup along the target’s port side,” Davis called out.

“Let's get a—” Jackson’s command was cut off as a brilliant flash lanced out from the alien ship and hit the
Blue Jacket
full on the prow. The main display winked out and the illusion of a window was shattered as if they were staring at a blank wall. All the other sensor feeds also were cut in an instant. Alarms were blaring on the bridge and the displays that were still working were scrolling a seemingly endless list of warnings.

“Some sort of high energy thermal blast right on the prow!” Davis yelled over the chaos. “Most of the sensors are out!”

“Go to backups,” Jackson said, blinking as his eyes adjusted. “Get damage control parties to the prow and get me a casualty report. We’re still alive so we can assume the ship has overflown us. We need to see where we’re going and we need to see what’s around us.”

Armored hatches opened up along the forward edge of the superstructure and auxiliary radar and optical sensors deployed. Soon the main display popped back up and showed that the ship had executed its predetermined course and shot them around the planet and had them speeding along on an escape vector, still under full power.

“How are we still alive?” Celesta asked.

“Because they were as curious about us as we were about them,” Jackson said. “I’ll bet we’re the first humans to fire at them. They wanted to see what we were capable of.”

“Not much, it would seem,” Ensign Davis said. “Enemy vessel is continuing along their original course, but they’ve accelerated to over six hundred G’s. They don’t seem to show any interest in coming back around for another shot.”

“That’s good news, I suppose,” Jackson said. “Maintain sensor contact with the target and stay at general quarters. Tell Engineering to begin charging the warp drive capacitor banks.”

“Do you think it’s over?” Celesta asked as he walked back to his seat.

“For the time being,” he said. “But I think something much, much worse has just started.”

****

The trip out of the Oplotom system was fairly anticlimactic. They lost contact with the alien ship soon after they accelerated away from the planet, but it had been flying away from them at an incredible rate of speed when last they saw it. Using the backup optical sensors they were able to identify the nearest jump point and plot a direct course, wanting to warp out of the system before the aliens could change their minds.

****

“What hit us?” Singh asked as he looked over the reports coming in from his crews working in the prow. He and Jackson were standing outside of the hatch that led into the CIC.

“Some sort of high energy plasma discharge if I were to take a guess,” Jackson said. “That was just a single shot.”

“Impressive,” Singh said impassively. “It turned almost every antenna on the prow to slag and destroyed all the bulkhead pressure fittings so completely I’m not sure we can repair very much of this damage.”

“New pressure fittings?” Jackson asked. “Those can’t be too difficult to fabricate.

“Not especially,” Singh agreed. “But the heat from whatever hit us also deformed the outer hull to the point that we need to figure out how we’re going to remount everything.”

“It seemed like we were giving as good as we got on that first pass,” Jackson sighed. “But this data is telling me they gave us as much attention as you would to swat a fly. One little parting shot and they've damn near crippled and blinded us.”

“So are we heading back to Haven?” Singh asked.

“No,” Jackson said. “We’re on our way to Podere. It’s a relatively advanced world and we should be able to at least get some basic repairs done before tackling the longer flight back to Haven.”

“Maybe,” Singh said, unconvinced. “You’re still chasing this thing, aren’t you?”

“No,” Jackson said honestly. “Our single destroyer will not be able to go toe to toe with whatever the hell that was. We’re going to get ourselves into a little bit better shape and then we’re going to bug out.”

“I’m mildly relieved to hear you say that,” Singh admitted. “This is something better left to First or Fourth Fleet.”

“Yeah right,” Jackson scoffed. “If CENTCOM pushes too hard to deploy those fleets away from Britannia or New America I think we’ll begin to see the breakup of the Confederacy.”

“Truly?”

“If Haven calls on either of those governments to deploy their ships to the AU or the Alliance because of a new, super powerful alien threat, how do you think that’s going to play out?” Jackson asked.

“I guess I’ve never looked at Fleet as part of all the political wrangling between enclaves,” Singh admitted. “CENTCOM will have nothing left but a handful of old ships in Black Fleet that will answer the call, but every human world could be at risk.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jackson said. “It’s a single ship … or whatever it is … operating out along the frontier. This could either be an unfortunate misunderstanding, a declaration of war, or simply an incredible failure to communicate.”

“Which one do you think it really is?” Singh asked, ignoring the crew walking around them.

“I honestly don’t know,” Jackson sighed. “But we’ve been expanding with abandon for a couple hundred years. Our exploratory method leaves much to be desired and I think we’ve stretched ourselves too thin and too far for the level of technology we’ve achieved. We sent one deep space vessel out centuries ago and when it never came back we simply turned our eyes towards the easy targets: all those habitable worlds the warp drive put right within our reach. I don’t know … I feel like this was more or less inevitable.”

"Profound," Singh said sarcastically. "I wasn't aware you were such a philosopher."

"Right now I'm the CO of a badly damaged ship that's running scared," Jackson snorted, ignoring the barb. "I'll leave the philosophy of it to the politicians. Can we successfully transition with the backup sensors?"

"Certainly," Singh said with confidence. "This ship was designed with the assumption the prow was going to take some hits. You could have retracted everything but the targeting sensors before the engagement, but given the power the alien ship put out it wouldn't have made a difference. The outer armor was so badly warped the carriages to bring the assemblies back into the inner hull were nearly vaporized."

"Terrific," Jackson said. "I'm going to get us to the jump point as fast as she can get us there. Just keep the repairs up and keep your people busy. The less time they have to reflect on what's happened the better."