Penance (RN: Book 2) (19 page)

“How long has it been their?” asked Canthouse.

“It appeared about five minutes ago, Lieutenant-Commander,” Christine Guimar, the duty operations officer said in her smooth French tone. “We tried to comm you when it arrived, but there was no response.”

“My tablet got damaged,” Canthouse said considering the main screen.

The vessel was small, the size of a life pod, but had obviously been modified to make it gate capable by the addition of an extended cone under the rear of the wedge shaped hull. Several other pods or units ringed the rear of the upper hull, but he could discern no practicable use for them.

The vessel’s location on the feather edge of the active sensors meant the fuzzy image faded in and out of the surrounding white noise, making any intentions difficult to determine.

“Has it moved?”

“No sir. It appeared, parked on the edge of our sensor disc and began scanning the local area to focus in on us.”

Canthouse noted the strength of the scanning beam, which was unusually strong for a vessel of that size. One of the additions to its hull had probably augmented its sensors.

A double beep came from the ops console.

“Interrogation data is coming in. Computer is comparing readings to those from the earlier incident. Registration: indiscernible. Sub-light exhaust signature, ee-qual. Hull radiation signature, ee-qual. Scanning signature …” Guimar looked over her display at Canthouse. “Ee-qual.”

“So it’s them,” Canthouse said. “Do we have any information on the gate signature?”

“Too far and too scattered to make any sense of it, sir. We need to get closer.”

“Status!” Denz said striding from the rear door with Stavener in tow.

The first officer turned to him, “Our friends are back. Looks like a scout sent to check for us.”

“Is it definitely them?”

“No question. Interrogation data confirms it.”

“Do we have any gate signature data? Can we determine where they jumped from?”

“We’re too far for a vessel as small as this. We need to move closer. Shall we set the hounds on them, sir?”

“Hmm …” Denz stared pensively at the screen, chattering his teeth as he judged distances and estimated the travel times of a Dogfish assessor probe. “No. it’ll take fifteen minutes to get there, and with how they’re banging away with the Doppler sensors, I believe they’re expecting it. No. We’ll kill them. Weps!” Denz turned to face the duty weapons officer. “What’s the fastest interceptor we have on board?”

Beriff swivelled to face him, “The class three,
Sprinter
, Commander.”

“Time for a class three to reach that ship?”

“Eleven minutes, sir. But I wouldn’t recommend we waste the shot as they’ll see it coming well before it reaches them.”

“Hmm …” Denz responded, his lips trumpeted and forehead furrowed as he stared at the screen. What the weapons officer said was perfectly true. The scout ship was spraying its local area with sufficient active energy to cause splash back from even the stealthiest of missiles.

A movement from the opps console distracted his attention. Stavener had manoeuvred behind Guimar, who hissed at him with a shooing motion of her hand, adding almost too low to hear, “Goh, away. Ships crew only.” He made a mental note to investigate that later.

“Are they within range of the long axis weapon?”

The weapons officer never responded immediately as his fingers worked the keyboard and touch screen. Denz noted with some dissatisfaction the pained expression on Beriff’s face as he opened and closed the same query screen several times as if unsure what to do.“We are just in range for a vessel of that type, Commander.”

“Initiate the LAW, but do not target it until the capacitors are charged. We don’t want them knowing what we’re doing. Is that clear weapons officer?”

“Yes, sir.” Beriff turned to his console, his pale face creased with uncertainty and his head nodding with every deliberate prod of a key as he activated the ship’s main energy weapon.

Canthouse watched as Beriff fumbled his way through the LAW activation sequence. He had always had some misgivings in regards to Beriff’s abilities at the tactical station, and he watched with mounting trepidation as an uncertain hand wavered over the targeting system before moving away. He opened his mouth to caution Beriff when the hand pressed down on the acquisition controls, targeting the enemy craft with the LAW only seventy percent charged.

A double beep came from the ops console. “Target vessel is turning away. I’m detecting a gate signature.”

“God damn it, man!” roared Denz, his face purple with fury.

“
Mr Beriff,
you are relieved!” Canthouse cried rushing to the weapons officer and knocking him from the chair to the floor. He sat down and looked over the controls.

“Can we fire?”

“Yes, sir. Capacitors primed. Firing now!” Canthouse stabbed a button.

There was a distant
Whump!
Followed by a momentary shudder and then people were hurled from their seats when the entire bridge bucked as if the ship had been picked up and dropped.

A cacophony of alarms blared as dozens of systems reported catastrophic damage. The worst of which was the wailing bray of the reactor containment system that signified a failure in the core shielding.

“Malcolm!” Denz called as he struggled to his feet.

Canthouse’s shadowed form appeared from behind the weapons console. “Here!” He clutched his recently repaired right shoulder, and grimacing as he worked the arm back and forth.

The first syllable of
What the hell just happened
formed on Denz’s lips until he realised Canthouse would have about as much idea as he had. Turning to Guimar he said, “Operations! What the hell happened?”

Guimar continued to type as she spoke, “There has been a detonation in the long axis array. I cannot be more specific as the number of collateral failures is overloading the incident reporting system, which is having difficulty prioritising the errors.”

Denz paid scant attention to Stavener who lay on his back moaning, with his arms crossed over his face behind the securely seat-belted Guimar. “Can you make any sense of it?”

Guimar stared at the display with a machine discipline as her fingers worked the keyboard faster than Denz thought possible.“Reactor cooling systems show nominal pressure, but there are a number of unregulated radiation emissions around the core systems. This is the priority.”

“Agreed.” He turned to face Canthouse who joined them. “The reactors show as contained, but let’s not take any chances.”

The first officer nodded and cried, “Bridge crew!” Most of the people heard nothing with his words lost to the racket of the alarms. Canthouse moved to Denz’s command chair, pressed a series of switches on the arm console and all the local klaxons stopped, with only the muted whooping of distant alarms echoing in from other sections of the ship.

“Bridge crew!” Canthouse repeated. Everyone of the recovering crew stopped and looked at him. “Type one disaster recovery. Assume the reactors are breached and all high energy systems have been compromised. Full radiation protocol. Check the containment systems have kicked in and any contamination is contained. If it can be shut down, then shut it down until we know it’s safe. Each of you check your systems for integrity and take the appropriate actions. Do it now!”

The people became a swarm of activity as systems were checked, double checked and shut down where required.

Soon the system failure data began to come in with ‘none service’ flags appearing next to far too many of the critical systems for the first officer’s liking.

“Forward turrets: owt. Speculative armour: owt. Primary life sciences: offline. Gate drive …offline.” Guimar reported as the data began to make sense. “The core is showing as contained, but we are still getting sporadic radiation warnings from the surrounding compartments.”

“So what’s causing the radiation warnings?” asked Denz.

***

“So what is causing the radiation alerts?” asked Canthouse watching the information creeping across the main engineering display

“A support frame collapsed in number two store dumping its load and a couple of hull markers cracked open.” Hewton said from where he leant against a bulkhead to the right of the gathered section chiefs standing about the engineering control station. “The dye is a partially radioactive and I think the sensors picked this up, confusing it with what the coolant systems were shouting about at the time.”

The chief engineer nodded in agreement as Hewton spoke. “Given the proximity of the two systems, that’ll do it. It agrees with what this screen says.” He munched his tongue as he considered the scrolling data cells, with his cheeks hollowing so he looked like a toothless pensioner.

“So it was the long axis weapon that caused the explosion?” asked Canthouse, massaging the bicep of his reslung right arm.

“Yes. For some reason the attenuator directed the energy in instead of out. Backward instead of forward. The blow off panels released the over-pressure, but the momentary spike crippled many of the nearby systems. Several of them quite badly.”

“Blow off panels? You mean we’ve lost a section of the hull?” asked Denz.

“Yes, but nothing critical. The LAW was designed to fire both fore and aft, but the money finished before the rear iris could be fitted. So it was decided it should only fire forward and the rear emitter channel covered over. The whole apparatus is still there, minus the focusing ring. The panels that cover it are designed to be easily removable should the system be completed, but for us they worked as blowout panels. And a good thing too as if we hadn’t we’d all be in different parts of space right now.”

“So what caused the attenuator to reverse?” Denz asked.

The chief engineer glanced at Hewton who shrugged and motioned a hand to ignorance. “I don’t really know at the moment as it’s a closed system. The display just flashes ‘attenuator reversal error’. But the whole LAW area is still too hot to enter, so I’ll need to make an emergency access request as soon as it cools down.”

“Could operator error have been a factor?” asked Denz in a tone bordering on insinuation.

Canthouse glanced at the commander as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. Denz’s countenance was one of enquiry, with no apparent inquisition about him, yet there was something malignant there. Could this veiled vindictiveness mean he was looking for a scapegoat?

“No, sir, no. This was definitely a material or system problem. There are too many procedures in place to allow anyone person to do anything like that.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” Denz nodded without apparent reason as he considered the floor in front of him. “The access request will need to go through Lieutenant Avery as that’s his domain.” Denz nodded an acknowledgement of presence in the direction of Avery who stood at the rear of the group, with his arms crossed and a severe misanthropic air about him. ”I think the situation qualifies as an emergency, so there should be no problems. Put your request to him as soon as you can enter the area. I’ll need a full report as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Commander.” The chief responded with a nod of conformation. He momentarily caught Avery’s eye and the second officer looked positively grave.

“So, Chief, what did we lose?” asked Canthouse.

“Well …” the chief engineer turned to consult the main engineering display. He gestured at the screen, manipulating it so a three-dimensional representation of the ship’s hull slid from an upper corner. The skeletal frame of the Bristol’s squat submarine like hull spun slowly on a center axis, with red blooms appearing in various parts of the model as the damage reporting systems fed in real time data. The majority of the damage indicators appeared about the lower mid-section of the ship, with the cells ranging from a faded bubblegum pink to deep carmine as they neared the long axis weapon and surrounding systems.

A low astonished whistle came from one of the gathered section chiefs, followed by incredulous murmurs as the group appreciated of the damage the Bristol had received.

The whistle summed it up perfectly for Denz. He knew the Bristol had sustained some serious damage, but the cluster of injury markers pinned to the red mass centerd in the ship’s mid-section presented the idea of a human heart skewered by dozens of blood red flags. A disturbing number of which were directed at the speculative armour and gate drive systems.

“Well …” the chief engineer repeated as he watched the rotating model.

“For the sake of expediency, just the move us and save us systems, Chief. We’ll get to the lesser systems as and when,” Denz said.

The chief engineer splayed his fingers at the screen as if flicking away water, and a large number of the error markers either dispersed or sank to the floor of the model leaving behind the deepest red flags. Many of which still pointed to the major systems.

He indicated the sections as he spoke. “The sub-light engines were largely unaffected, which doesn’t mean much given their previous condition, but they still work. Ballast capacitors five and six of the gate drive ruptured spilling their coolant onto the super-heated sections of the LAW through breaches in the conjoining bulkheads. It vaporised instantly with the expanding cloud blowing out some of the hull sections. Again, we can thank God for them, and …”