All My Sins Remembered (19 page)

“
The Fury
is holding her own, but it’s not looking good.  That other ship keeps disappearing on her, and her cruise missiles lose their lock.”  Gordy reported.  Hawke nodded, and looked through the Carbonsteel windows on the bridge to see the ongoing battle. 
The Fury’s
shields were strong, so it would take the
Guan Yu
quite a few passes before the shields would weaken, but the fact that she couldn’t hit back was telling.

“Thank you, Gordy.  You might want to get engineering locked down tight and
be ready for damage control.” Hawke said.  Gordy gave Hawke a nod, and headed towards the lift.  They both knew he could be needed very shortly.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, let’s get our missile and rocket batteries online.  Helm, bring us
to full combat thrust.  Let’s give the
Guan Yu
something else to worry about.”  Hawke ordered as he sat in the captain’s chair and buckled himself into his restraining harness.  Turning towards the communications station Hawke absently wished Tasha was here rather than planetside to finish overseeing the efforts to recover intel from the base servers, but then dismissed the thought and focused on the task at hand as he brought up a holographic representation of the conflict, giving him a better picture of what was going on than he would have had by looking out the view ports.  The
Guan Yu
had changed tactics, changing its combat runs from running at
The Fury’s
sides to running from its bow to aft sections, and then back again.  Hawke nodded knowingly, as
The Fury’s
weapons arcs were more limited there.  The
Guan Yu’s
captain was very, very good.  Even so, Hawke noted with satisfaction that Captain Yost, realizing her cruise missiles were ineffective, was pouring rocket fire at the
Guan Yu
at a very high rate.  Usually reserved as anti-missile batteries, rocket batteries were only semi-guided, but if there were no missiles to defend against, could be used as a point-blank weapon, which she was doing now.  It was then Hawke realized that his guidance systems on his assault missile launchers would be equally as ineffective.

“Gordy, our guidance systems won’t work for this fight.  Can you give me an alternative?”  Hawke asked through
the ship's coms channel to engineering.

“I don’t know.  Give me a few minutes and I’ll have an answer.  I’ll need to take the missile batteries offline for now.”  A winded Gordy responded.  Hawke mused in thought a moment as he considered his options before responding.

“Do it.”  Hawke ordered.  Bringing up some preliminary data collected by the sensors of both
The Fury
, and
The Black wave
, he permitted himself a small smile before turning towards the helm station.  “Helm, take us on a combat run right at the aft section of
The Fury
.”  The helmswoman gulped, but complied, used to orders that may not make sense to her, but trusting that Hawke knew what he was doing.

“Talon one to Fury,
give me five seconds of combat thrust in two minutes.  Change your fore rocket batteries to chaff rockets.”  Hawke ordered.   He hoped Captain Yost would trust his judgment on this, or else both ships might very well be spread out over several kilometers of space.

***

The spacious bridge of
The Fury
was a scene of controlled calamity.  Captain Yost sat in her captain’s chair with her eyes riveted to the steady stream of data showing on the holoprojector as well mentally processing the verbal reports from the various stations about the bridge that were coming at her.  This was one of the skills required of captains, the ability to process a lot of information concurrently, and then make intelligent decisions, and Captain Yost had the experience of nearly ten years on the bridge of various combat ships, five of which was with the Talons.  She absently drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair as she scowled at the holoprojector.  Her second battery of cruise missiles had the same results as the first, having no effect other than to use up forty-eight more costly cruise missiles, with the exception that she noticed the silhouette of the attacking ship outlined against the backdrop plasma created from the detonating warheads.  Maybe she could pick that silhouette up long enough on sensors to…yes.  Trajectory and inertia data.  There it was.

“Aim our dorsal rocket batteries to these coordinates and fire.” She ordered, sending the data to the two gunnery stations responsible for targeting the rocket batteries.  A few seconds later, the
familiar sound of rocket batteries being fired could be heard throughout the ship while its stabilizing thrusters fire to keep the ship's attitude and heading constant.  Captain Yost watched the rockets depart on her holoprojector, most of which peppered the shields of the attacking ship with little effect, and sighed in frustration.  She felt like she had brought a shotgun to a sniper duel.  She had given up trying to keep her weapon arcs facing the
Guan Yu
, and instead ordered that
The Fury
initiate a slow roll that would help relieve stressed shield generators by spreading out the location of the attacks.  The
Guan Yu
had tried to compensate for the roll, but was not able to do so completely, which had the desired effect.  Instead of being able to focus on their stressed dorsal shield generators, the damage now periodically hit aft, starboard, or even ventral shield generators.  This bought them time while they tried to figure out a way to actually fight, and
hurt
the
Guan Yu
rather than just give their shields a workout.

"Ma'am. 
The black Wave's
shields and weapons are powering up." One of the bridge crew reported.  The verbal stream of data paused, and Captain Yost lifted her eyes from the three dimensional representation of the battlefield to glance at the officer that had reported that, and nodded, the only sign she had heard any of the verbal data coming her way.  With that, the verbal data stream recovered, haltingly at first, until it found its normal cadence.  Captain Yost smiled grimly.  While she would never admit it, she held 'the Colonel' in high regard.  He was one of the best tacticians she had ever met, and that was saying a lot, in her estimation, because she thought quite a lot of her own abilities.  Just then, the the ship's command channel crackled to life.

"
Talon one to Fury, give me five seconds of combat thrust in two minutes.  Change your fore rocket batteries to anti-missile batteries."  Came the Colonel's command.  Captain Yost shook her head.  What did anti-missile batteries have to do with anything?  Captain Yost thought for a moment, then sighed to herself as she gave the order.  This had better be good.

***

The
Guan Yu
had just finished a combat pass on
The Fury
, starting from the aft of the ship and passing to the bow of it.  With a bright blue flare,
The Fury's
shields resisted the attempt, but this time there was bleed-through, and her hull flared bright red as the bleed-through superheated her armor.  Hawke knew that
The Fury
could not take but maybe two more passes before some of her shield generators blew from the stress being imposed upon them, which meant that portions of her armored hull would be unprotected.

"Sir, the ship's batteries are back online.  It's not pretty, but I jerry
rigged breaching charges on one battery of missiles, creating a cone-like proximity charge.  If we set them to blow in front of the ship, the directional blast might be enough to punch through her shields."  Gordy's voice said over the coms.  Hawke couldn't help but smile.  It was the craziest idea he had ever heard, and yet...

"How many missiles were you able to do that to?"  Hawke asked.  After a moment of silence, Gordy replied, "Just one barrage on all the launchers, sir.  You get one shot at this." 

Hawke nodded in approval, and then asked, "How did you do manage to jerry rig them so quick?"

"Duct tape, sir." 
Replied Gordy.  Hawke looked confused at Gordy's answer.

"
Duct
...tape?" He prompted.

"It's an old earth expression, sir...
never mind." Gordy said.  Dismissing the thought, Hawke leaned forward in his chair as he glanced out the bridge's windows at
The Fury
, which now filled the viewport.  It was now or never.  Hawke quietly held his breath and nonchalantly white-knuckled the armrests on his captain's chair as
The Black Wave
roared in towards
The Fury's
aft section.  Moments before impact,
The Fury's
thrusters suddenly roared to life, pushing the battleship forward just far enough to avoid being rammed by
The Black Wave
, and its fore rocket batteries spit out chaff rockets, creating a cloud of chaff in front of
The Fury
just as the
Guan Yu
had uncloaked.  The
Guan Yu's
lasers stabbed down at
The Fury
, but one missed entirely, having his sensors scrambled by the chaff, nor could he detect
The Black Wave
, which was now passing directly behind
The Fury
, with her missile batteries facing in the direction where the
Guan Yu
would soon be as it passed above them.

"Fire!" Hawke yelled. 
The Black Wave
shuddered as all of its missile batteries fired, sending a total of twenty four warheads flying towards the passing
Guan Yu
.  Though the
Black Wave
had only standard warheads, which were about half as powerful than the cruise missiles fired by
The Fury,
these missiles were faster to the target, and its assault launchers could quickly reload, delivering three missile barrages to two barrages from
The Fury
.  Hawke watched as the
Guan Yu
began to fade from view, presumably to try and outmaneuver the missiles once again, but just as it disappeared from view, the missiles detonated, a cone of shrapnel created a glittering cloud in space, engulfing the invisible ship.  There was a bright flash in the direction the ship had disappeared in, and suddenly the
Guan Yu
was visible again, its thrusters on full as it leapt away from the site of battle, trying to reach escape velocity.

"Lock on and fire!"  Hawke ordered.  For just a moment  it looked as if they would succeed in defeating the
Guan Yu
here and now, but it continued to pick up speed as it retreated towards one of the two jump gates in the system, and even as Hawke considered giving the order to give chase, he realized that it would be impossible, for many of the crew were still down on the planet.  With a sigh, Hawke sat back down in his seat, realizing for the first time how close he had come to losing both
The Fury
, and
The Black Wave.
  It had been far too close, and against only one ship!  They would have to be ready next time.  He sure hoped Gordy had some ideas.

In the
nearly twenty-four standard hours that followed the aftermath of their duel with the
Guan Yu. 
The Talons had finished their intelligence gathering and salvaging mission in the base on Daroon, and the personnel, along with the salvaged supplies, were brought up to the waiting ships.  Hawke had sent Gordy on a trip to the planet's PMC market to see if he could find various odds and ends engineers might need to help them combat the
Guan Yu. 
A few hours later, Gordy had returned wearing a big grin on his face, and with his supply shuttle brimming with missiles.  Hawke didn't ask questions, trusting that Gordy had the problem well in hand.  In fact, he was more concerned with taking up pursuit of the
Guan Yu
, which seemed to be taking a frustrating amount of time. 

The Fury
, though, was another story.  The initial attack on
The Fury
had melted away armor and severed a few internal power junctions, and the last exchange of weapons fire stressed one of the ship's dorsal shield generators beyond its limits, causing it to explode.  Several crew were lost to the vacuum of space, having been sucked out through the hull breach, and one engineer was killed when the shield generator exploded.  In all, they had lost five, with about twice that number in wounded.  Considering that
The Fury
had a crew of twelve hundred, in addition to its Marine compliment, the casualty rate was less than two percent.  To any combat commander, that would have been acceptable, except for the fact that they had not yet succeeded in their mission.  After assessing the damage, he had determined that
The Fury
would have to put in for repairs, which left
The Black Wave
alone to face the formidable
Guan Yu
.  He only hoped they could track it down before it could repair whatever damage they had caused it, or before they lost it altogether.

Now, Hawke found himself restlessly pacing in his office adjoining this quarters, waiting for Gordy's engineering team to finish unloading the supply shuttle,
and for the last shuttle from the planet to arrive and be secured before getting under way.  The waiting was getting to him.  He hated the waiting.  Outwardly, outside of his office, he would project the calm, collected mannerisms for which he is usually known for, but here in the privacy of his own office, he felt as if he was going crazy with all the waiting!

He knew it was more than that, though.  Over the days and weeks since they had left the
Jingashi Naval Station, he had caught himself occasionally staring at the newest member of their crew, Lieutenant Commander Tasha Altihkova, much to his embarrassment, for he had strictly disallowed fraternization within the company.  He knew that more than a few members of his crew had noticed his looks, and had even caught Nathan hiding a grin when he caught him staring.  He had gotten to know her quite a bit better since they had launched on this mission, and had been continually impressed both with her strength of character and her skill.  She was strong, yet not without her womanly graces.  He never could have predicted the affect she would have on him personally, for he felt a growing attraction for this green eyed, dusky-haired Multani woman.  With a sigh, Hawke flopped in his chair.  He would have to do something about this, before it got out of hand.  In fact, why wait?  Leaning forward towards the controls on his desk, he opened a channel to the ship's intercom.

"
Lieutenant Commander Tasha Altihkova, please report to the Captain's office."  Hawke ordered over the intercom, then sat back in his chair.  At least he would know.

***

Lieutenant Commander Tasha Altihkova heard the Colonel's page over the ship's intercom just as she was about to enter her quarters, and sighed tiredly.  She had been on her feet for nearly all of the day and a half she had been on the surface of Daroon, working feverishly to gain every last drop of hard intel off the base's servers.  She was quite ready to just flop in bed for however long she could, clothes and all, before the ship was under way again, and she was required to be at her duty station.  She wondered, sometimes, why the Colonel insisted on using her for virtually everything pertaining to communications.  Maybe she had somehow made him angry or something, and this was his way of punishing her.  But really, she couldn't complain.  At least, not too much.  The pay was good, or would be once the company collected, and she loved what she did.  Sucking in a deep breath and letting it out again, Tasha turned aside from her quarters and made her way towards the Captain's office.

When she arrived, her hand paused over the door to knock on it, inte
rrupted by Hawke's voice telling her to enter.  Stepping inside, she noticed Hawke sitting forward in his chair, hands on knees, and one leg nervously bouncing as he stared at her for a moment as she stood in the door, then he grunted and his eyes seemed to get angry as he leaned back and his leg stilled, but only for a moment before it resumed its nervous bouncing.  Tasha thought the scene a little strange, given what she knew of Hawke, for normally he was calm, and collected.

"Come in. Sit down."  Hawke invited.  Tasha stepped inside the office, and closed the door behind her, but intended on remaining standing until Hawke fixed her with a stern gaze and nodded towards the chair across from his desk. 
Tasha, growing a little nervous, sank slowly in the chair, stifling the grateful groan she felt rising out of her throat at being able to get off her feet.  As she waited for Hawke to begin, she noticed the dark shadows under his eyes, and how careworn his features had become since launching on this mission, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.  In nearly thirty years of service to the Gadari Republic, what had his haunted eyes seen?  And they were haunted, Tasha knew.  Though Hawke hid it well behind a calm and collected demeanor, and an icy expression, there were flashes of humanity that surfaced briefly from time to time, waves of emotion that sometimes seeped through during day to day operations that informed her of that fact.  For whatever reason, he struck her as a drowning man seeking redemption.  He looked...tired.  Yet, it was this same thing that made Tasha respect Hawke, for though he may lose sleep over his duties, he shouldered those responsibilities without complaint, knowing that it was just something that had to be done.  Hawke's expression now was one of careful consideration and of weighing his next words carefully, something he did often, and then cleared his throat nervously.

"Tasha, I have to admit that you joined this company at a strange time."  Hawke began.  "As you may or may not know, The Talons have drastically downsized their operations, and were about to transition from being a PMC to being a
company of peaceful exploration. "  Hawke paused again as he looked at Tasha's expression, which showed a hint of curiosity.

"Well, after this mission, The Talons are going to complete that transition, and so if you are interested in pursuing a career as a PMC contractor, I could refer you to some good companies." Hawke continued, then hesitated as if unsure how to proceed.  Tasha waited.

"Well, you have shown that you are good at your job, and there's no doubt we could use you as well, should you decide you want to continue on with The Talons as we transition into exploring the unknown."  Hawke said, then leaned back and sighed as if he had gotten something important off of his chest.  Tasha was more than a little confused.  Not by the offer, but rather because she had no idea why his offer seemed so significant to him.  After her encounter on the
Pripyat
, the ship she served on as an employee of a newly formed PMC that was quickly destroyed when her ship fell to the
Guan Yu
, she had long since come to the conclusion that she was not interested in being a Mercenary any longer, which is why this offer really did intrigue her.  She was a little surprised, but it was not an unwelcome gesture.

"I...thank you for the offer, Colonel.  May I have time to consider the offer?"  Tasha asked.  Again, Tasha was baffled as a flash of anger distorted Hawke's face, as if she had just slapped him, but it was quickly replaced
with one of resignation, and then replaced yet again with the calm and collected demeanor she had come to recognize as the mask he wore on a day to day basis, showing those he commanded the calm confidence he possessed.

"Of course,
Lieutenant Commander."  He replied, suddenly formal.  "I just wanted to offer you this opportunity.  We would be fortunate to have someone of your skill on the crew of
The Heaven's Gaze
when she launches."  Sensing the sudden change in Hawke's demeanor, and still quite confused by the whole scenario, Tasha stood up and at attention, to which Hawke waved her away, dismissing her.  With a stiff salute, she did an about face, and quietly left.

Hawke waited until the door had been latched closed before slumping back in his seat with a sad sigh.  Well, there you have it, he thought.  He had offered her a chance to continue their relationship outside the strict rules and regulations of a PMC, and she had coldly declined.  Hawke couldn't help but feel a little sad.  Sure, he had accepted that his lifestyle didn't lend itself to things like love and family, but that didn't mean he didn't ever think about them, or wonder what it would have been like to have a son or a daughter of his own.  In fact there were times he had wondered if he had completely wasted his life because he had none of those things, but those moments usuall
y quickly passed.  Plus she was young yet, barely forty-two years old.  Why would she bother with someone nearly past his middle years?

Hawke stood up and left the office, walking into the next room where his quarters were and
shut the door.  Moving to his hidden stash of bourbon, Hawke poured himself a small amount in a tumbler full of ice.  Just as he was about to take a drink, someone pounded on the door leading to the corridor, though judging by the weight of it, Hawke knew who it was.

"Come in, Nate."  Hawke called.  A moment later, Nathan stepped in, saw the bourbon in Hawke's hand, and closed the door.

"No more singing." Nate quipped, "The crew can't take that kind of stress right now."  Hawke couldn't help but chuckle, then took a sip and sat down.  Nathan followed suit, before asking, "So what's the occasion?"  Hawke shrugged dismissively.

"You didn't come in here to ask me why I'm having a bit of bourbon." Hawke prompted, trying to avoid the subject.  Nathan cocked his head to the side, then shook his head.

"No, but it can wait.  You don't drink much, nor often, so you either think this is a good time to take a moment to yourself and relax a little, or because something is on your mind and maybe eating at you." Nate said with a knowing look on his face.  "Since I know you would never usually drink alcohol under these circumstances, I'd have to say it's the latter."  Hawke set down the bourbon, and then stared quietly at the glass, realizing that Nathan was right, then shifted his gaze back to his oldest friend.

"I asked Tasha to stay on after the mission, to join us on
The Heaven's Gaze.
"  Hawke explained in a dead voice.  Nathan smiled.

"And she either said 'no', or 'I'll think about it,' didn't she?" Nathan supplied.  Hawke's startled glance made Nathan chuckle.

"How did you-" Hawke began.

"It's no secret to me that you seem to like her more than a commander should for a subordinate."  Nathan interrupted.  Hawke looked uncomfortable as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, his drink forgotten.  Nathan snorted and waved a dismissive hand.

"Oh calm down," Nathan said, "I'm the only one who knows."  Hawke looked a little relieved, but then seemed to think again on what Nathan had just said.

"The
only
one?"  Hawke asked.  Nathan snorted, his version of a chuckle perhaps.

"Of course!  You really didn't think she would understand the simple offer of continued employment, do you?"  Nathan asked.  Hawke looked surprised, and then guiltily glanced at the half glass of bourbon.

"Exactly."  Nathan answered, "Why don't you try being a little more overt next time, and skip the bourbon altogether?" Nathan asked.  Then he stood to leave.

"Oh, and we're ready to get under way, Captain.  Whenever you're ready."  Nathan added.  Hawke nodded and stood as well.

"Very well.  I'm heading to the bridge.  You coming?"  Hawke asked, his glass of bourbon forgotten.

"In a few minutes.  There's something I have to do first."  Nathan answered
slyly.  Hawke nodded, then took a moment to gather himself before stepping out of his quarters and into the corridor on his way to the bridge.  Nathan waited a full ten seconds after the door had been latched closed before he settled into the chair Hawke had just vacated with a satisfied sigh, and took a sip of the bourbon Hawke had left behind.  Everyone knew you didn't leave a twelve year old bourbon unattended, Amateur!