By Other Means (24 page)

“What the hell is going on, something is causing the core to go nuts.” He said, leaning in. “We’re all dead in eight minutes if we don’t get a handle on this.”

Parker didn’t know what to say to that, it was very much the truth.

“It almost looks like some kind of interference wave,” He said after a moment, “Almost like an inverse wave from what we’d look for if we were surveying a new jump point.”

Chief Harrowitz stared for a moment, jaw dropped, “Holy shit, Parker. That’s exactly what it is…”

Parker frowned, “It can’t be, Chief, there’s no way we’re close enough to any gravity source with enough focus to pop our core like that… and besides, I’ve never even heard of one that could do this! It would have to be a step out of phase with our core, and that’s not even
possible
!”

“It’s happening, so it’s possible.”

Harrowitz had no patience for arguing over possibilities when he was staring reality in the face, that was the sort of bullshit that belonged in a lab somewhere, not on a ship about to be crushed to the size of a quark.

“Run the numbers again, I’m going to see if I can pinpoint the interference.” He said, clapping Parker on the shoulder, “If this is what it looks like, we might be able to counter it with the Jump Drive.”

Parker twisted, eyes wide, “Sir… Chief, that’s… insane.”

“I know.”

*****

“Well, now,” Hiro heard his First Officer softly say from across the Deck. “That’s an interesting idea.”

“What is that, Commander?”

Commander Karin Seran looked up in his direction, “Chief Harrowitz has a plan, Sir.”

“Is it a good plan?” Hiro asked, walking over.

“Well, it’s not a
sane
plan,” She countered, “but it might work.”

“I’ll take it,” Hiro said, knowing that they were only minutes away from the destruction of his ship. Insanity had its place, and that place was generally when all the sane options had been exhausted.

Sounds like the time to me.

“He wants to use the Jump Drive to counter the interference that’s spiking our core,” She told him.

Captain Usagi blanked on that for a moment, the sheer concept shutting him down.

“Insane?” He finally gasped out, “That’s not insane, that’s…”

Honestly, he didn’t have a name for what that was.

He shook his head, “Will it work?”

“I don’t know,” the Commander admitted, “the Jump drives weren’t designed to manipulate space time on that level. We’re talking about a fine control of space time beyond anything we’ve ever attempted. Jump Drives were designed like bulldozers, but the level of control this needs is more like a set of tweezers.”

“So you don’t think it can be done.”

“I’ve seen people control major earth moving equipment like Maestros, Sir,” She told him, “It can be done, that’s not the question. The question is, can the
Chief
do it?”

Hiro nodded, glancing over at the countdown to the destruction of the Mexico. Seven minutes remaining.

“Tell him to be careful.”

“Get down!”

Bullets crossed the corridors one way, passing pulse blasts coming back in turn, creating a no man’s land of death and destruction in the middle. Sorilla pressed back against the wall, both weapons in her hands as she considered the options left. They had minutes left before the ships started literally crushing itself like a beer can, them along with it, and the radicals causing the whole mess seemed happy enough to die in the process.

“I
hate
fundamentalists!” She snarled, “Crazy bastards always more eager to die than fail. Stupid pricks.”

Krieg certainly wasn’t in any mood to disagree, but he chuckled wryly at her tone, “You telling me you’ve never entertained the thought of going out in a blaze of glory, Major?”

“Colonel, my dad raised me on stories of Francis Marion, not tales of Martyrdom,” She countered, “Give me a choice between failure and death, I’ll pick failure any day… I’ve never met a test I couldn’t retake, and I’ve never failed the same test twice.”

“Fair point,” He admitted, “sometimes failure means worse things than death, though.”

“Then it ain’t a choice, is it?” She replied, peeking her gun around the corner and firing a short burst.

“No, Major, I suppose it isn’t.”

“Grenade out!”

They all ducked back, covering as a Marine tossed a frag down the hall and hugged the ground. The explosion tore through the contained space of the ship with the fury of a hurricane, but only lasted a second. Sorilla, protected by her armor, was on her feet and moving almost the instant the shockwave passed.

Advancing in the wake of the explosion, Sorilla’s pistols roared as they spit a hundred rounds apiece into the enemy line before she was dry and had to duck into a doorway.

“Reloading!” She called, cracking her guns open and letting the barrels clatter to the deck.

Taking ground in this kind of fight was always a matter of feet and inches, using cover fire and other methods to force the enemy to blink while you advanced and secured a few bloody paces. It was slow work, however, too slow. Sorilla had the countdown up on her HUD, and the choice between death and failure was rapidly turning into a non-decision.

With her guns reloaded, Sorilla casually flipped the two pistols closed and took a deep breath.

She hummed an old familiar tune, swinging softly to herself as she considered her options.

“Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, tail on his hat... nobody knows where the Swamp Fox at; Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, hiding in the glen, He'll ride away to fight again.” She sung before twisting her lip, and scowling under her helm. “Oh, screw it. You want martyrdom, fine. Let’s be martyrs!”

“Give me some cover,” She called, twisting out of the doorway and breaking into a sprint.

“Major! No!” Krieg called, barely having time to recognize her intent. “Shit! Cover her!”

The hurricane once more descended on the corridors of the Mexico, this time with Sorilla Aida spitting cleanly in its eye.

*****

“Fire up the jump drives,” Captain Usagi ordered, “And wish the Chief good luck.”

He didn’t add that they would all need it, mostly because he didn’t feel like having that on the recorder on the off chance they survived.

“Aye Captain,” Commander Seran said, “Jump drive is coming online…”

There was a low moan, a sound none of them had ever heard on board ship and one that Hiro Usagi could only hope to never hear again. His Mexico had come alive in that moment, and he had no doubt that she was in pain.

“We’ve got gravetic stress all over the ship! Tidal forces are approaching shear tolerance!”

Hiro slapped his hand down on the screen, snarling, “Damn you, Chief! Less bulldozer, more tweezers!”

“Working on it, Skipper!”

Hiro took some solace in the fact that Harrowitz sounded at least as pained as he did, so the Chief clearly didn’t like what he was doing to the ship either. It wasn’t much solace, unfortunately, but there was some to be had.

“As you were then, Chief.”

“Aye aye, skipper!”

There were moments that Hiro hated his position. He’d aspired most of his career to Captain a starship for SOLCOM, but once you were in the hot seat you learned really quickly that the Captain spent most of his time just waiting on other people to do the jobs he assigned them. As a junior officer, he’d never had time to panic in a crisis, but as Captain that seemed the only thing he could do.

Of course, that wasn’t an option, so he just sat there and tried to look calm, confident, and a touch bored.

Oddly, as he well remembered, there was a comfort in seeing your commanding officer looking like he was struggling to stay awake in the middle of a crisis. So long as it didn’t slow down his decision making, at least.

*****

“Parker, ease off on the power to the jump drive,” Harrowitz ordered, “We’re creating tidal sheer that’ll cut us in half if we keep it up.”

“Backing it off, Chief,” Parker said, “I think I’ve got the interference localized. It’s… it’s on the Mexico, Sir.”

“What?”

That didn’t make any sense at all, not to Harrowitz or to anyone else. There were only two sources of space time distortion on the ship large enough to cause this kind of interference, and they were both under control of the Engineering department. They’d know if one of them was out of whack to that sort of extreme, particularly since they were currently using one of the sources to help combat the interference of the other.

“Three decks up from us, Sir.” Parker confirmed, “It doesn’t make any sense, but I think there’s another core on board.”

Saboteurs. I knew they’d been reported, but I thought they had to have hacked our systems… My God, they brought a core onto the ship?

Harrowitz felt pale and sickly as he began to put it together.

Another warp device, a core, could do what they were seeing but the game had just been brought to a new level if he was right.

“This changes things,” He mumbled, thinking it through, “We’re not trying to calm a core out of control, we’re actively engaging an enemy core. I don’t think anyone’s ever thought about how to do that.”

“The Alliance clearly has, Chief,” Parker offered.

“Right. Ok, Let’s start phase shifting the waves, see if that buys us a little time at least.” Harrowitz ordered.

“You got it Chief. Putting pwer to the drives… phase shift by three cycles…”

The Mexico’s reactor whined piteously, just before the ship herself once more groaned under massive stress.

*****

She was three quarters of the way to the enemy line when the ship came alive, groaning it’s protest against whatever treatment it was receiving, and Sorilla felt her guts lurch as her foot failed to contact the deck. The sudden loss of gravity stunned her momentarily as she was flung forward at breakneck speed, right into the enemy ranks.

It would have been her death if not for the fact that not a single one of them were expecting it either.

Sorilla slammed into the floating body of the first of the rebels, tangling with him as she pushed his weapon away and instinctively jammed her own into his chest. The pistol discharged three times as she held on to neutralize the recoil, then flung the enemy corpse away.

Fighting in microgravity was an odd dichotomy of speed and slow motion.

You had to consider every move before you made it, but once made the consequences could be on you in the blink of an eye and with no warning. Sorilla stayed in motion, twisting through the air as she kicked off one rebel, hopefully breaking bones in the process, and instantly grappled with another.

One of her guns was gone, she’d dropped it in order to get a free hand to control her fall, so she proceeded to smash her knees into the upper body and face of her victim, while hugging him close enough that she was glad of the armor between them.

If his species was anything that humans, she had little doubt he’d evacuated himself before she pushed him away.

She was twisting again to get a line on another target when she felt another lurch in her gut and, forwarned, managed to flip in mid air as gravity came rushing back before she slammed into the deck with enough force to drive her down to one knee and plant her free hand to brace herself with.

Four gees. Damn it, what the hell is going on?

Sorilla straightened, a little painfully even with the help of her powered armor, and looked back over her shoulder.

Marines were flat on the deck, most of them clearly in pain as they clutched as limbs that were turned in bad directions. Of the allies she’d come down with, on the Lucian was still standing, and he was slowly stomping in her direction with a strained expression.

“Your crewmates are fighting back,” He said, “clumsily, but they are fighting.”

Sorilla checked the acceleration numbers instinctively and nodded, “You’re right. Acceleration is dropping. How?”

“Countering the enemy manipulations with manipulations of their own,” kriss responded as he stopped beside Sorilla, “it is… delicate work, lest they tear the ship apart in its defense.”

The Mexico chose that moment to groan again, and Sorilla had a sinking feeling that she knew what he meant.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that wasn’t her department. She’d leave that to the people fighting that side of the battle, while she focused on her own.

“We have to shut down the rebels,” She said firmly.

Kriss nodded, “Truth. However, I do not think that your allies will be able to follow you this time.”

Sorilla grimaced, but certainly saw the truth in those words.

“Colonel…” She called, stomping heavily back in the direction of the marines.

“Go!” Krieg ordered, Forcing himself up to his knees. “We’ll follow as we can, but there’s no time.”

Sorilla nodded, turning back. She paused where her fallen M-Tac was and picked it up, the barrel scraping along the deck as the weight of the pistol still managed to surprise her. Full armed once again, she glanced over at Kriss and sized him up for a moment before saying anything.

“What are you waiting for? Pick up a weapon, we’ve got a job to do.”

The alien bared all his plentiful teeth at her before he picked up one of the fallen rebel pulse weapons and checked its charge. The cannon whined in response as Kriss nodded, “As you lead, Sentinel.”

*****

“They’re countering our attack.”

The elder Parithalian could see that, but he restrained the urge to snap at his comrade for belaboring the obvious. That the Terrans could even attempt to counter was a surprise, but it was also clear that they had little idea of what they were doing.

In fact, by his own estimations, they were far more likely to destroy the ship themselves than they were of stopping the attack. No, his concerns were more appropriately centered on the security forces engaging his men. They were the larger of the threats, since they actually might have a chance of stopping the strike before it was completed.

“Continue adjusting to counter their efforts,” He ordered, “We will hold off the assault as long as we can. Finish this. For all our people.”