Penance (RN: Book 2) (13 page)

“Operations, status!” Denz barked. Despite the visual presentation on the main screen he wanted to hear the preparedness of this Stavener, the replacement operations officer. Still, it was pleasing to see the entire bridge crew jump at his order and scurry about their business with an indentured intensity.

Stavener appeared not to have heard Denz’s request as he stared at his screen, his face creased with confusion.

“Operations!” Denz snapped even louder and not at all impressed by this new man’s apparent lacklustre attitude.

The operations officer came too from his apparent reverie, “I’m sorry, commander. But there’s something very odd here.”

Denz noticed the concern in Stavener’s countenance and stepped towards him, “What is it?”

“There’s a time discrepancy between the Chora Two navigation beacon and the ships chronometers.”

“How much of a discrepancy?”

Stavener looked up at him, “Nearly twelve weeks.”

Denz stared bewildered. The chronometers regularly lost a second or two during gate transit due to any dilation affect the gate cocoon couldn’t compensate for, and they would synchronise with the nearest buoy on exiting the gate stream. A discrepancy such as this was unheard of, certainly as far as he was aware.“Forty seven weeks! How’s that even possible?”

Canthouse wore his own uncertainty as he moved to join them. “Where the clocks affected by the event?”

“No, sir.” Stavener typed as he spoke, “Diagnostics and systematic records both indicate the chronometers are serving correctly with no gaps in their testimonies. I’m scanning to locate another beacon; we should be able too …” The operations officer again stared at the screen, his mouth poised mid sentence.

Stavener’s sudden silence and look of near terror caused a cold shiver to run through the first officer, “What is it?”

“LC, the …the nearest beacon is the
Boca seca
outer marker. And it’s two days behind us – by gate drive.”

“Boca Seca!” Canthouse glanced at Denz who shared his apprehensive demeanour, “That would place us …” The first officer’s eyes hunted as he ran the mental calculations.

“Over twelve weeks outside the EDP rim at maximum gate potential,” Denz said. He turned to the con officer, “Navigation. Confirm our coordinates.”

The navigator having pre-empted this request was running the confirmation procedure when Denz spoke to him.

“Sir, XNAV confirms our position as 334 by 068 by 265. Projection: 211583. The Boca seca nebula.”

“211583 – “ Denz lips moved silently as he considered the projection coordinate, which gave the true distance from the Sol system. Their previous position had been less than half that. “Reconfirm.”

“I have, sir. Both primary and secondary navigation systems are reporting the same result. We’re at the Boca seca nebula.”

“So we’re twelve weeks from where we where!” Canthouse offered.

“What the hell is going on here?” Denz made to begin pacing only to pause mid step when some supernatural finger plucked at his string of thought, and the sudden and overwhelming idea that they were pawns in some Olympian mischief saw him swivel to face the main viewer. “On screen.”

The main display flicked from the cycling ship systems view to a vast red-orange cone surrounded by a copper belt speckled with yellow-aqua marine protrusions. The Boca seca nebula.

The normality of the seen before him exorcised Denz’s preternatural concerns.
I’ve been watching too many damned science fiction shows
, he said to himself as he stared for several long seconds before saying, “Operations, any ideas?”

Stavener slowly shook his head, his look of confusion becoming one of bitter red faced frustration as he stared at his console display, “None, sir. But we may have a better idea when the sensors have finished cycling.”

“How long?”

“About two minutes, commander.”

“Very well, continue with the ships status until the sensors are back on line.”

The operations officer began to work his keyboard, “Weapons systems report the forward torpedo tubes are still offline and VLS capability is denied when the shields are raised due to shuttering limitations. Except for the thrust limitations, sub-light motive systems are restored and we have gate ability at your command. Enviromentals reports an oxygen tank shifted in its frame and sprung a leak, but it’s in hand, and …oh! The sensors have finished cycling and are reporting that –“

ding ding

Both command officers looked toward Stavener.

“It’s not that damned creature again is it?” Denz snapped.

Canthouse moved behind the ops console to consult the display, his face fraught with the possibilities the warning had brought with it the last time it sounded. “No it’s a ship,” he said without lifting his gaze from the screen.

“There’s more than one ship, sir. There’s fourteen of them.” Stavener said.

The main display changed to a tactical view with a wide horseshoe of red dots at the top center of the display and a smaller number huddled to the right, with a cloud of lifeless signatures scattered to the far right.

“Fourteen ships! This far out!” Denz said incredulously. The chances of meeting one ship in what was effectively the cold seeps of interstellar space was virtually nil, so to meet fourteen were astronomical. Denz’s first thoughts were to some form of alien action.“Who are they?”

Stavener worked his keyboard. “There are no detectable beacons, but four of the ships on the right show recent EDP radiation signatures. One is the EDP fleet auxiliary vessel,
Jeremiah
. Another is a cruise liner - The
Seven Wonders.
The larger one has no immediate recognition and is marked unknown, but the last one is –“

“It’s Governor Middlemore’s shuttle!” Canthouse said with a wistful stare toward Denz.

Denz considered the red icons on the main screen. “And the others?”

“I’m reading at least one hundred recognisable signatures amongst the debris cloud to the right, but no energy profiles. As for the active vessels there’s no record of any of their signatures on the EDP data form,” said Stavener. “But, commander, if I may offer an observation. Before I was assigned to the Bristol, I served with Captain Dunham as part of the border securities task force to try and contain the growing pirate threat to the shipping lanes approaching home waters. Part of my duties were to catalogue every ship we investigated, several of which belonged to the Scillian group controlled by Casgar Riedo, who operated near the Little Ghost nebulae. His ships were characterised by a specific radiation scarring from the nebula that made them easy to identify. That ship that resembles a sledge hammer has that same signature.” One of the red icons on the screen turned blue and grew to form the 3D model of a thick headed ‘T’ as the image zoomed in. “I’d swear that’s one of Riedo’s sleds. These are bandit vessels and I don’t think they’ve realised who we are as we’re too far for our passive signature to have reached them yet.”

Denz considered the scene on the main display. They had obviously found their way into some form of bandit staging or salvage area where they stripped captured vessels for parts, and from what the information told him of the two dozen or more partially completed hulls close to the Jeremiah, where actively constructing new ones. This may account for the strange hammer head vessel that had none of the normal attributes associated with deep space craft. It had obviously been constructed with the specific purpose of overcoming larger vessels in mind, with the long thin tail section containing the low powered but capable gate drive and chemical manoeuvring engines, and the heavily armoured fore section looking very much like a cudgeon for battering the drive units of their victims.

“What’s this large one, the unknown?” Canthouse highlighted a domed cylinder that dwarfed the rest of the pirate craft. “Interrogation data coming in now, It’s …” Stavener’s eyes widened as he exclaimed, “Oh, Jesus!”

“What is it?” Denz snapped a disapproving stare on Stavener.

“Commander, the data recorded during the initial sweep for the governor’s shuttle identified a Chinese signature as part of the unknown gate event, and -”

“And!”

“The signature from that large object is that of the
Shi Lang
. She was –“

“She was the largest carrier the Chinese had at LN-0R!” Denz said, his brow furrowing in incredulity. “But that can’t be her. She was destroyed. I saw the wreckage myself. And the signature is too small for something as large as a Chinese carrier, they carry over three hundred strike craft and weigh a million tonnes.”

“I don’t believe this to be the entire carrier, but rather her FTL drive unit. I think the Scillians have somehow salvaged her FTL drive and are using it to pull ships out of gate stream.”

“Is that even possible?” Canthouse asked as he leaned against a handrail.

“Well,” Stavener’s face creased as he thought, “The Chinese drives don’t work like ours. Where as we surf a gate wave, they use a magnetic impaler to literally punch a corridor through space fabric, like a rifle shooting a bullet through water, and then ride the free fabric restoration pressure through to the other side before it collapses. Theoretically, they don’t have to ride just one way; they could suck something through from the other side just as easily. I believe the bandits have hooked a salvaged drive up to a power source, probably from the
Seven Wonders
, and are sending out distress signals to lure targets of opportunity off the normal trade lanes. They are then pulling them out of gate stream using the impaler drive, kind of like snagging them with a whip and yanking them back here. It’s kind of brilliant, considering,” Stavener wore a look of appreciative wonder as he considered the technicalities.

“But how the hell did they salvage a drive unit from LN-0R and manage to get it here? And
why
here?” asked Canthouse.

“How they got it here is a subject for later consideration. As to why, is obvious. Who’d think of looking for pirate activity this far out.” Denz chattered his teeth as he paced in front of his command chair pondering the information. “We’ll have to neutralise this before they can overpower something that carries a more capable engine and use it against us.” He turned to face Stavener, “Have they detected us yet?”

“I pretty sure they know were here, but not what we are as our normal space signature won’t have reached them yet. Not for another …thirty six seconds.”

“But can’t they tell from our gate signature?” asked Canthouse.

“No, sir. I don’t believe so.”

“How so?”

Stavener leant back in his chair. “Well, for one thing we don’t have a standard EDP drive. And after the damage we took during the creature incident our–“

“Our gate signature should be virtually unrecognisable,” Canthouse nodded in a knowing way as he finished the ops officer’s thought.

Stavener gave the first officer a sour look for stealing his thunder. “Exactly, they probably think we’re one of those new Italian trade ships heading to Trent station, or a fat cruise liner doing the rim run. Anything but a Royal Navy gunboat. No matter what, they must suspect we’re seriously damaged or at least FTL crippled.”

Denz stood with his hands behind his back, his lips pursed and brow heavy as he stared at the group of pulsating red icons on the main viewer considering options. The majority of the ships appeared to be small to medium attack craft designed to overwhelm and cripple quickly. They were lightly armoured and carried a variety of oddly sourced weapons that made their offensive capability difficult to estimate. The only real unknown was the sled. He had never seen such a bandit vessel before as unlike the smaller vessels, which were a mixture of weaponised civilian craft, this strange looking thing had clearly been designed and built from the ground up with a specific intent in mind. Yet, even though only the boxy frontend of the vessel had been armoured to any reasonable degree, this could be the beginning of a disturbing trend in bandit capabilities.

His mind made up, Denz became all business. “Not as damaged as they’d like. We’ll move now whilst we still have the element of surprise and destroy that FTL drive unit before they can use it again. Weps, activate speculative armour and pull the safeties on the main batteries. Load four Lancet missiles into the rear tubes for slow release and heat up the LAW.”

“Aye, commander. Remove main battery safeties, load four Lancet and initiate long axis weapon prefire sequence.” The young Asian weapons officer’s face lit up with excitement as his fingers rapped over the keys.

The blunt
darb darb darb
of the battle klaxon sounded throughout the ship.

“Mr Stavener, send a communication to Trent station with our coordinates, situation and intentions. Maybe they can send someone to clear this up if we can’t. Status of sub-light engines?’

“Engineering reports the point six limit is still in effect, otherwise sub-light motive power at your discretion.” The navigator responded.

“Understood,” Denz stared heavily at the screen. “Take us in.”

The Bristol’s sub light engines flared as deep in her rear, four rotary magazines spun to the appropriate position and hydraulic rams pushed torpedoes into their tubes. “Lancet missiles loaded, sir.”