The Sunfire (32 page)

On the starboard side of the
Sunfire
, the armour
plating and hull started to slowly retract, as if it were a flower slowly
opening its petals for the first time. However, this was no thing of beauty, as
once the section of hull was fully retracted the massive orbital bombardment
guns slid out into their fully deployed firing position, before angling
themselves to target the Tyrell Corporation complex just becoming visible on
the far horizon of the planet. Once the ship’s firing computer had confirmed
the trajectory, the massive guns commenced their firing sequence, launching
their deadly payload towards the planet below, first one, then another until in
total the ship had released all thirty shells. After they had ceased firing,
the massive guns began to retract back inside the ship and the hull closed
around them.

Meanwhile the bombardment rounds started to fall into the
planet’s thick atmosphere, quickly heating up to more than one-thousand,
six-hundred degrees Celsius. From a distance they looked like a group of
shooting stars, but these did not bring luck, only death and destruction, which
was quickly realised when several minutes later they impacted on their intended
targets. With the huge amount of kinetic energy they had accumulated falling
through the thick atmosphere, they hit with the force of several hundred tonnes
of TNT. Within the blink of an eye these external structures were obliterated,
one-by-one.

Once the dust had settled, only one structure still remained
standing, the bombardment round having fallen short by several yards. As this
structure held the facilities fusion reactor it was indeed fortunate that this
round had missed—as otherwise everybody’s day would have been ruined.

*****

Satisfied with the results of the orbital bombardment, Paul
turned back to the helm and was just about to inquire as to the remaining
distance to the second station when the operations Officer called out.

“Missiles. I am detecting multiple missile launches from the
Titan station directly ahead.”

Paul shrugged. It was not as if they could expect to enjoy
the element of surprise a second time. By now Paul realised everybody in the
vicinity of the planet, if not the entire system, must realise they were there.

“Do we have a lock on that missile battery?” Paul inquired.

“Yes Captain.”

“Tactical, are we within range for the particle cannons?”

“Sixty more seconds Captain, but the forward missile battery
is now within range.”

Paul shook his head. “No point wasting them. That
monstrosity ahead has twice the number of point defence guns we have. No way
would any of our missiles get through, so we will save them for when we can
make them count. Operations anything you can do about those missiles?”

“We are jamming their targeting scanners,” the Officer
replied.

Already Paul could see a number of the missiles starting to
veer off course, but not all of them. “What is the status of our point defence
guns?”

“Locked and loaded.”

“Very well, if that is the case, then pass automatic fire
control of the guns to the ship’s computer. Weapons free,” Paul insisted, not
particularly worried about the approaching missiles, as the ship was more than
capable of defending itself against them. The bigger threat was going to come
from the station’s heavy guns, as they had no defence against those.

“Firing now,” the Tactical Officer called, as the smaller
point defence guns spun up to speed, targeting the incoming missiles. These
guns were fully under the control of the ship’s computer, because with the
combined velocity of the approaching missiles and the
Sunfire
no human
controller could ever hope to complete the necessary targeting calculations in
time. However the ship’s computer took milliseconds to calculate approach
velocity, pitch and yaw and, with a sudden start, first one, then another, then
all the guns on the ship’s prow opened fire. Within the space of a couple of
seconds the approaching missiles were torn apart.

“Missiles neutralised Captain.”

“Very well, are we now within range of the particle
cannons?”

“Yes Captain, just about.”

“Then target that missile battery and eliminate it before it
has a chance to reload. We don’t have unlimited ammunition for those guns and
we will need to make every last shot count before this is over.”

One of the two particle beam cannons located on the front of
the ship turned to face the Titan station still several kilometres away. It was
a massive directed-energy beam weapon that used a highly concentrated beam of
subatomic particles with negligible mass. It accelerated these charged photons
to near-light speed, targeting the distant missile battery. As they travelled
at such speed it took only a fraction of a second for the beam to cover the distance.
The weapon delivered the particles onto the surface of the missile battery,
conveying tremendous kinetic energy in the process, inducing near instantaneous
and catastrophic overheating.

The missile battery, already in the process of automatically
reloading, had a number of highly volatile missiles aboard and these
immediately detonated. The explosion caused a cartwheeling effect of subsequent
explosions, igniting the store of missiles still waiting to be loaded. The
explosion was clearly visible from the
Sunfire
, still several kilometres
away.

“Scratch one missile battery,” Paul commented out loud.
However, in the next instant the ship pitched hard to port as the lights and
consoles flickered momentarily. “Damage report!” Paul demanded.

“We’ve lost one of the particle cannons on the bow. Looks
like we took a lucky hit from one of the station’s heavy rail guns just coming
into range,” the Operations Officer groaned.

“I’m not sure if I would call it lucky,” Paul responded with
a frown. Heading towards the second station, with the bow of the ship pointed
directly at it, the
Sunfire
was at her most vulnerable. That was the
reason for the particle cannons to be situated on the bow. It was the ship’s
most powerful weapon and capable of firing in all directions, except for aft,
but that area was covered by the ship’s rear guns and missile batteries. With
one of their particle cannons destroyed, they had lost almost fifty per cent of
their forward offensive capability and they were still a significant distance from
the second station. “Use the remaining particle cannon to target and destroy
those guns,” Paul ordered.

“There sure are a lot of them for one cannon,” the Tactical
Officer replied dubiously.

“Then the sooner you start, the sooner you will get them
all,” Paul snapped back.

*****

“Direct hit,” the Weapons Officer called, seated in the
command centre of the orbiting defence station. “Looks like we took out one of
their particle cannons.”

Commander Hackett winced as once again the station shook
violently, this time unable to avoid spilling his tea onto his uniform
trousers. “Blast it, man,” he called out in pain, quickly trying to dab the hot
tea away with a tissue before it stained his pants. “Then hurry up and take out
the other one!”

The first indication there was a problem was when the
gravimetric sensors reported a wormhole forming. After that everything seemed
to go to hell. Almost immediately they had lost all external communications and
their targeting scanners effectiveness had been reduced by over fifty per cent,
for the enemy warship seemed to be broadcasting an extremely powerful
electromagnetic jamming signal that was interfering with everything. Hackett
had no idea of the status of the other two stations but based on the explosions
clearly visible twenty minutes earlier, he assumed at least one of them had
already been destroyed, or at least very badly damaged.

Hackett had been momentarily stunned, wondering what could
possibly have caused such immense damage. A Titan defence station was supposed
to be all but impregnable, and easily capable of holding off a small fleet.
Three of them combined should have been sufficient to destroy a Confederation
Navy taskforce. Yet, his station had already lost its primary missile battery.
Even seated in the very heart of the station the Commander had flinched at the
fury of that explosion. Aside from one lucky shot that had destroyed the enemy
ship’s particle cannon, so far they had inflicted little damage on the enemy
warship. And the enemy ship’s remaining particle cannon was picking off their
heavy guns, one-by-one.

“By the Maker,” Hackett shouted angrily, “It’s only one
ship, man. What are you playing at? Why can’t you hit it?” And it was true,
except for their early success an inordinate percentage of their shots were
continually missing the target.

“We cannot help it,” the Weapons Officer replied helplessly.
“That ship seems to have some sort of active camouflage system that is
confusing our targeting scanners. The scanners are insisting there are multiple
contacts. It’s as if there are a dozen ghost ships out there! The targeting
computer doesn’t know what to aim at.”

Hackett could only slam his fist down in frustration.
Suddenly a thought occurred to him.

*****

Meanwhile the
Sunfire
was also faring badly. While
they fortunately had not lost the second particle cannon, the Tactical Officers
comment regarding multiple targets unfortunately was very true. More and more
guns on the station were opening fire, as the ship got ever closer. They had
already lost multiple point defence guns on the bow, in addition to the armour
taking a battering. It was only going to be a matter of time before another
unlucky strike did critical damage to the bow of the ship.

“Breaching pods!” The Operations Officer called out. “The station
has just launched breaching pods.”

“The Commander of that station is certainty confident,
perhaps a little over-confident,” Paul mused aloud. “Destroy
—
”
he started to order before stopping, brow furrowed in thought.

“Wait, are any of those breaching pods targeting the bridge
or engineering?”

The operations Officer checked his scanners before replying,
“No Captain, most of them are heading towards amid-ships.”

“I wonder…” Paul trailed off, before coming to a decision.
“Hold fire.”

“What! Why?” Both the Operations and Tactical Officers
called back, in stunned disbelief.

“Let the breaching pods through and prepare to shut down the
ship’s main computer.”

At this announcement both Officers looked at the Captain in
amazement. The main computer controlled
everything
on the ship, from the
lights and environmental controls, through to the weapons and engines. Neither
of them had ever heard of a ship’s main computer being shut down in flight, let
alone in combat. This was usually only done when the ship was docked and
undergoing maintenance.

“Do it,” Paul insisted urgently. “We need to buy ourselves
some time.” Paul tapped into the ship’s internal communication system. “David,
get yourself and your men ready, we are about to have uninvited guests. Prepare
to repel boarders.”

“Acknowledge Captain. We will be standing by,” David
replied, before closing the communications channel.

“Breaching pods have now docked with the
Sunfire
and
are starting to cut through the outer hull,” the operations Officer reported,
unable to believe what they were allowing to happen. For the breaching pods
were equipped with powerful plasma torches, which could cut through even the
thickly armoured hull of a warship, and disembark the numerous troops that were
on-board.

“Get ready to shut down the main computer,” Paul ordered,
holding his hand up high in readiness. Counting to sixty in his head, Paul let
his hand drop. “Now.”

Closing his eyes in prayer the Operations Officer entered
the necessary codes to shut down the main computer. For a moment nothing seemed
to happen, then one-by-one the various consoles on the bridge started to go
dark, followed moments later by the lights. The ship suddenly felt very quiet
as the life-support systems also fell still. “Main computer shutdown complete,”
he whispered.

Paul cocked his head to one-side as if he was listening
intently for something. After a few moments he announced with a smile to the
astonished bridge-crew. “The station has stopped firing.”

*****

Lance Corporal Warren snapped his pulse rifle up as he
stepped onto the enemy vessel, quickly scanning left, and then right but he
couldn’t see anybody else. Growling in frustration he activated his
communications gear to find out if any more of his squad had made it alive. He
snapped the channel closed when all he could hear was static, as the damn ship
was still jamming all communications.

Warren promised himself that if he ever made it back to the
station alive, he was going to shoot Hackett. Who had come up with the dumb
idea of just sticking one marine in each breaching pod, then firing them off
towards a fully functioning enemy warship? It was suicide.

Hearing whispered voices behind him, he snapped around,
bringing his rifle to bear on
—
an empty corridor. “Just
great. Now I am hearing things too. Could this day get any worse?” he asked
rhetorically. It seemed fate was listening to him, as at that moment all the
lights on the ship suddenly went out. “Fantastic,” he sighed despairingly,
switching on the small flashlight attached to the barrel of his pulse rifle.

More voices behind him caused him to quickly spin around
once again, raising his weapon, to an empty and now dark corridor. “Okay, this
is starting to really creep me out,” he muttered, deciding to see where the
corridor led.

The corridor seemed to go on forever, he was surrounded by
the dark, with nothing but his ragged breathing and the occasional whispered
voice to keep him company. By the time Warren came to the first door he was so
desperate to get out of the corridor he just palmed it open, and slipped
inside.