Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (22 page)

Chapter 19

"...
the devastation is simply indescribable. We have no landing craft aboard so we have no way to verify that there are no survivors, but the damage looks absolute. As of right now I'm declaring Xi'an a complete loss. There are no signs of any other ship in the area and the debris in orbit is inconsistent with a Raptor-class destroyer. We will continue our survey before moving on to Oplotom. We are using our only com drone to send this message so we will be out of contact until we reach a world with a drone platform still intact. Captain Jegg of the TCS Constantine, out
."

The ball of ice that had been forming in Admiral Alyson Winters' stomach did a slow roll as the images from the cutter,
Constantine
, scrolled across her monitor after the captain had signed off his communiqué. With shaking hands she pulled up the operational reports filed by the
Blue Jacket
over a week ago and compared the images.

Unsurprisingly, they were an exact match. The only difference was that Captain Wolfe had been much, much more thorough in his investigation than Captain Jegg had been. The bile rose in her throat and she felt her temples throb with the fast onset of a tension headache. She would like to say it was because of the magnitude of the tragedy she was looking at, but that would mostly be a lie.

She was fucked. Truly and properly fucked.

So confident that Wolfe had either gone completely off the reservation and lost his mind, or was playing some sort of bizarre game, she hadn't even thought to look more carefully through the
Blue Jacket's
reports before filing them away. She'd saved them in a hidden file on her personal computer, relishing the fact that the damning documents would be all she'd need to make sure the disgusting Earther would never step foot on a starship again and would likely be sent back to Earth with a no-travel restriction hanging around his neck.

Now ... Now it looked like she would be the one answering some uncomfortable questions as evidence of an attack on no less than two Terran planets had been covered up by her hold order on any communications from the destroyer. Now that the
Constantine
had verified that something had likely attacked and wiped out Xi'an there would be no way to keep a lid on it since the Senate Intelligence Committee was waiting on word from the frontier regarding rumors of unrest along the AU/Alliance corridor.

But ... what were the odds Wolfe would emerge victorious against such an overmatched opponent? She scrolled through the reports and saw how much damage the old
Raptor
-class ship had taken in a single pass against the alien ship. The damn fool appeared to be pursuing it across the Alliance. In fact, she hadn't heard from the ship for nearly five days. It was possible, even likely, that the
Blue Jacket
was nothing but wreckage by now.

She closed all of Wolfe's reports, purged the data from her machine, and then quickly went into the data archives and removed all the exceptions she had put in when the
Blue Jacket
had departed. Winters had been a data clerk herself, never having actually left Haven her entire career. She'd never commanded a starship nor had she served as an actual mission analyst, but she did know exactly how to retrace her footsteps and eliminate any evidence she'd ever been in there. In fact, she was accessing the system using generic administrative credentials that would be difficult to trace. When everything came to light after the
Constantine
returned it would simply look like Wolfe had neglected to file regular operational reports. Given the man's past, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for an inquiry board to conclude it had been negligence on his part.

****

Jackson walked the corridors of the
Blue Jacket
, stopping to talk to crew or look in on a department that seemed to be having a particularly rough time under the circumstances. Even though the mutiny had been quashed he still felt a bit exposed, even with the Marine sentry tailing along behind him. He was still carrying the .45 under his utility top since the weapon's thin profile was easily concealable. The modern sidearm in his office was a bit more unwieldy, would have to be worn in an external holster, and could be disabled in the same way he'd deactivated the weapons the mutineers had been using.

From what he could see, the ship was in bad shape. The fact she was still flying and had a little bit of fight left in her was a testament to the designers at the Sierra Shipyards and the builders who'd put her together. They were less than a day from arriving in the Nuovo Patria system and he knew that if they met the alien again there it would be the last time, one way or another. The destroyer simply couldn't survive another beating, and if their high-explosive shells failed to disable or destroy the enemy they were out of ammunition anyway.

"So the port-side lasers are completely inoperable?" he asked as he walked alongside Daya Singh. They were in a large chamber that housed reactor three while the chief engineer inspected some maintenance that had been done to the fuel system.

"Total loss," Singh confirmed. "At least not without being in a shipyard with months of down time."

"That's unfortunate."

"We were actually lucky that when the power trunk exploded it didn't cause serious damage to the MUX and the subsystems located in that area," Singh shrugged. "As it is we don't even have enough raw material to try and effect repairs on the system, and even if we did there's no guarantee it wouldn't just happen again."

"Do we know what caused it?" Jackson asked.

"Design flaw," Singh said confidently. "For the laser projectors on our flanks the power is distributed in such a way that if the main feed breaks it kills power to the entire side. My guess is that, other than in testing, the system has never been up past ten percent capacity for the entire life of the ship."

"So we're down to a single salvo with the mag-cannons," Jackson said, shaking his head. "Not a scenario I had envisioned when I thought about deep space battles."

"How's that?" Singh asked disinterestedly as he continued to look over the work his crews had done earlier. Jackson answered him anyway.

"I always figured we would stand off hundreds of thousands of kilometers and lob long-range missiles at each other until someone got lucky," he said. "Despite the size and the velocity of the shells they can spit out, the mag-cannons are still basically thirteenth century tech ... you have to get in very close and you can't guide the weapon once it's fired."

"I agree there," Singh said, straightening up. "When I was first assigned to the
Raptor
-class I always thought the cannons were absolutely absurd. Although they would make a hell of a ship-to-surface weapon."

"A little like using a sledgehammer to kill an insect, but true," Jackson said.

"I've had crews inspecting the cannons and the turrets while we've been in warp," Singh said. "They'll hold up for this last fight. I can't promise the same about the rest of the ship."

"That bad?" Jackson said with a wince.

"Missing engine, leaking air from a few dozen hull breaches, power system fluctuating wildly, and significant structural damage just for good measure," Singh said. "No matter what happens at Nuovo Patria, this will be the old girl's last cruise."

"It already was," Jackson said, no longer seeing any need to keep the secret. "Ninth Squadron is being stood down. The
Pontiac
and the
Crazy Horse
are already heading to Sierra to be dismantled and scrapped."

"I guess we'll go out in style at least," Singh said.

****

"Stand by!"

The
Blue Jacket
bucked and shuddered under Jackson's feet as she transitioned back into real-space. Just as Jackson was about to order Nav to verify their position a flash outside blinded him. Before he could blink his eyes clear there was a tremendous
boom
felt throughout the ship and alarms began blaring.

"Are we under attack?!" he demanded.

"Negative, sir!" Lieutenant Davis shouted over the alarms. "One of the forward warp emitters broke loose from its mount and impacted the ship! We have breaches in the upper hull, outer and inner. Pressure hatches have failed and we're losing atmosphere on decks fourteen and fifteen."

"Seal off all pressure hatches on those decks!" Jackson snapped. "Try to contain this before we lose the whole damn ship!"

"Pressure hatches closed," Davis said. "We could only save seven compartments out of nineteen."

"How many crew?" Jackson asked, dread in his voice.

"Twenty-seven," Davis said quietly, her voice barely audible even with the alarms silenced. "Six were blown out of the ship when the hull was compromised."

"Daya! What the hell happened?" Jackson practically screamed into the intercom.

"
The forward dorsal emitter broke loose from the arm sometime during the flight
," Singh's voice came through the speakers. "
It was held in place by the distortion ring created by the drive and was released when we transitioned back to real-space. It was still charged and exploded when it impacted the hull.

"
There's more bad news, however ... the emitter still had the power cable attached. When it hit the hull it blew out four main power junctions. The dorsal mag-cannons are inoperable until we repair or bypass the affected junction
."

"Get to work on it NOW!" Jackson barked. "Get your crews in pressure suits if you have to, but I need those cannons online as fast as you can possibly manage it. Coordinate your efforts through OPS. Bridge, out." He leaned back and rubbed at his eyes before looking at his bridge crew.

"Does anyone have any good news?"

"I've verified our position, sir," the spacer at Nav said. "We're on target, seventeen kilometers away from our intended entry point."

"That's good," Jackson said. "Coms?"

"We're getting normal com chatter, Captain," Lieutenant Keller said. "Drone platform, ships in orbit ... everything looks quiet. There's even an Eighth Fleet cruiser in orbit over Nuovo Patria."

"Send them a flash message and warn them we may have an enemy combatant arriving soon or hiding already in the system," Jackson said. "Don't be too detailed until they ask."

"It'll be nice not to be the only ship in the fight this time," Celesta remarked.

"Don't count on it," Jackson said. "Odds are they'll run if the enemy ship appears in their sky."

"Whereas we no longer have that option," Celesta said, gesturing out the "window" of the main display to the crumpled arm that used to hold one of the four forward warp drive emitters.

"No we don't," Jackson said. "This is where we'll make our last stand. Tactical! Begin scanning the system. If that thing has been here trying to repair itself I'd rather find it sooner than later."

It was the better part of an hour of frenetic activity on the bridge when they received their first com signal.

"Captain," Lieutenant Keller said. "That cruiser is demanding we fly a specific route down to Nuovo Patria and prepare to be boarded."

"There hasn't been enough time for them to receive our signal and send a response," Celesta said with a frown. "They sent that as soon as they had positive identification on our beacon when we transitioned into the system."

"Tell them we're severely damaged and will not be flying anywhere at the moment," Jackson said. "After that ignore any further transmissions from them."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Keller said, clearly uncomfortable with the order.

"Could it simply be because we're not scheduled to be in this system on this cruise?" Celesta asked.

"I would normally agree with that assessment," Jackson said. "But the request to board is highly unusual. I can only imagine Winters has sent out standing orders to the entire area. The only thing that does surprise me is an Eighth Fleet cruiser skipper actually giving a damn what a CENTCOM admiral wants."

"So what do we do"?"

"Nothing," Jackson said with a slight shrug. "We press ahead with repairs and stall over the coms as long as possible. I still believe that bastard is on his way here or, more likely, sitting somewhere in the system waiting for us to show up."

"Could that cruiser be of help if they entered the fray?" Celesta asked, raising her voice so that the bridge crew would lose interest in their private discussion.

"That cruiser is a bit newer, but if a
Raptor
-class destroyer has been taking such a beating from the alien ship that smaller ship would likely do little more than slow it down," Jackson said. "I'd almost rather they stay out of it than risk their crew to a no-win situation." They fell silent as the soft, almost relaxed murmur of the bridge belied the gravity of their situation and the manic state of the engineering crews that were already entering the damaged forward sections to try and get power restored to the dorsal cannons.

"Tactical! Where's my update?" Jackson called out.

"Working on it, sir," Lieutenant Barrett said. "The emitter took out the auxiliary high-power array when it exploded. Slag from the hull took out most of the antennas. I'm working with what we have left."