Penance (RN: Book 2) (32 page)

“Forward shields are down. I’m trying to compensate.” The sweating weapons operator cried.

“How many missiles are left?”

“Five, sir.”

“Target three of them at whatever that is,” Canthouse pointed at a dark cruciform that opened before them like a sinkhole. As the missiles turned to intercept, a thin whip like vibrissa spat from ball of sinew and bat wing to the far left to snare the lead missile, which detonated instantly shredding the noodle thin tentacle. The remaining missiles travelled deep into the cruciform maw with the mouth snapping shut as they detonated at the base of the throat. Moments later the carambola body bulged like a puffer fish with the great amber eyes bursting outwards, and every opportunistic feeder in the area moved in to feed.

A roving eye watched as the gunboat careered past and something dark and horrible turned in pursuit.

The first officer gripped his arm rests, his mouth ready to snap an evasive order, but the navigator did his job superbly with the ship suffering only mild abrasions as they fought on minus their protective missile screen. Eventually the herd thinned and they left the milling murder behind as they entered a large area clear of abominations, and far from the detonation. The only movement appeared to be the ship, which brushed the edge of a dense ferrite cloud as she approached the gate point.

The navigator grinned as he watched the spinning spirals pin balling about the screen to one by one settle on a point, lock their cycles and flash green as they rotated in unison. With a sense of ecstatic triumph he opened his mouth to inform the others, but the first word had barely formed before the ship staggered and heaved as if driving headlong into a wall. The eel thing was twice the length of the Bristol, which had struck it just after the midpoint only to become lodged three quarters the way through. With her engines still burning precious fuel the Bristol shook and lurched as the creature undulated in its death spasms, only for its abdomen to separate and the gunship force itself free as the engines sputtered out.

Previous experience saved the majority of the bridge crew who had secured themselves to their seats, with only Canthouse and Palmer picking themselves from the floor. The first officer struggled to stand from where he had landed between the forward consoles. With one hand nursing his previously injured right shoulder, Canthouse staggered to the command chair. As he sat he noticed Palmer laying sprawled near the main viewer with a stiff looking Stavener in attendance. They talked for a brief second before Palmer waved him away and sat up. He looked like the victim of a buffalo stampede, wincing as he stood and again wincing with every second step as he hobbled back to his seat, his left arm clutched to his chest.

“What happened?” Canthouse croaked.

“Something ran in front of us. We hit it. I think we went straight through.” Stavener said from where he sat at an odd angle, his left shoulder hunched up.

“It must be bad, virtually nobody is reporting in. Shields are down, We’re losing air along the upper port side. Engines are offline and …oh shit! Navigation: fuel status!” Stavener cried to the con operator.

The navigator dabbed at the blood that ran from a horizontal cut across his lower forehead from where his head had struck his display. Yet despite his injury the gears still turned and he understood his duty. He nodded at Stavener and wiped the blood from his cracked screen with his forearm before pecking at the keys. “Fuel status is zero,” he said in a low exhausted monotone. “We’ve exhausted the chemical motors and the sub-light motives are all off line.” Only then did his bleeding scalp wrinkle in realisation of their situation. He sat back and stared at the skewed image of the mayhem behind provided by the dislodged projector hanging by one mounting, “We’re fucked!” he said.

Canthouse couldn’t help but smile at the most obvious statement he had heard for a long time, but he wasn’t going to give up yet. “Distance to gate point?”

The navigator resignedly looked at his display and started laughing. His humour started as a private chuckle with his shoulders beginning to shake as his mirth increased, Soon, he lay over his console, his face buried in an arm and a fist pounding the table unable to control himself.

The first officer looked at Stavener who from some mad contagion was also laughing, his forehead resting in his palm as his shoulders heaved silently from some obvious but obscure joke. Canthouse glanced about the other bridge crew, all of whom appeared to have caught it and were also laughing. Then from the mere absurdity of the situation he too succumb, with several barking guffaws mixing with the others before he controlled himself.

“What is everyone laughing at?”

Stavener wiped at the tears streaming down his face with the sleeve of his tunic and said, “Distance to gate point is seven kilometres. And we’re out of fuel.”

Everyone started laughing again.

After a long minute, Canthouse waved his hands to restore some sense of order and the bridge began to settle.

“Seven kilometres! Surely that’s close enough as there’s always some lee way.”

The navigator tapped his screen, “Not with the ferrites around us, LC. They’re dispersing the point formation and demanding a more focused gate point. We need to be closer.”

“Thrusters then. We can creep up to it.”

“All forward thrusters are offline due to the impact with only laterals to the rear. We can spin in circles but we can’t go forward.”

“God damn it!” Canthouse cried, his face white and wild from frustration as he paced with one hand behind his head. “Can we …”

ding ding

He spun to face the tilted image of the main screen. “What the hell is it?”

“We’ve got company.” Stavener said. “Looks like one of them broke from the herd and is pursuing us.”

“Distance?”

“Twelve hundred and closing quickly.”

“Weps, what have we got?”

Fueled by desperation the weapons officers fingers flew as he assessed their remaining might. “Torpedoes are spent and everything forward is offline. We’ve got one torpedo in the VLS, two turrets and the secondaries, nothing else.”

“I don’t need to tell you what to do, just give it everything she’s got. We must survive these seven kilometres.”

The rear of the gunship lit up as blue-white meteors and undulating trails of phalanx fire reached toward the approaching creature that appeared to shrug off the smaller rounds, and moved on a spiral path so as to avoid the deadlier but slower main weapons fire.

Stavener threw his hands in the air, “No, there’s nothing I can do. We have nothing to make us go forward.”

“There must be something, man. Think of an op –“

“Sir, weapons fire is having no affect as the creature is avoiding or absorbing all ordinance.”

Canthouse gave Stavener one final disappointed glance and turned away, “Do we have any torpedoes?”

“One CN3 in the VLS system, sir.”

“CN3! They’re nuclear capable, right?”

“Yes sir,” the weapons officer nodded.

Canthouse never even had to consider it. They couldn’t use the missile in its regular composite mode as it would attract everything toward them, so …

“Priority retask the CN3 to fission capable, and prepare for snap fire.”

“Nuclear retask requires command authorisation by two command officers,” said the weapons officer as he automatically pulled the cover off the ‘shot locker’ nuclear authorisation plate that demanded a palm print and voice code from an authorised officer.

Canthouse sat in the command chair and pressed the comm link for the main magazine only to freeze at the realisation that there was no one to do it. There was no one to authorise the second launch code. Avery was confined, Denz was none compos mentis, Hewton had been relieved and the chief was mad. “Munitions, Avery.”

Canthouse’s heart nearly fell out his mouth.

“Chris, I’ve no time to explain, but I need your hand on the shot locker, now!”

“Confirmed, LC. Give me the count.”

Canthouse reached the plate in one bound, “Three …two …one …” Both men placed their palms and entered their codes.

The weapons officer nodded at the green light, “Retask confirmed.”

“Fire!”

The silo door hissed open and rocket exhaust belched from the launch tube, but no missile emerged.

“Misfire, misfire. The tube is warped and the missile stuck. We have no launch!” The weapons officer cried slamming the console with a fist.

Canthouse threw his hands in the air, “Oh give us a God-damn break!” he cried to the ceiling.

“Charge the LAW!” the voice said from behind them.

Every eye turned to where Denz stood looking cold and bitterly hostile as he returned their stares. “Are you all deaf or do you want to start laughing again? Weapons officer, initiate the long axis weapon charging cycle, now!”

With his mouth hanging slack, Canthouse stared at the commander as if he were seeing a ghost. He then turned and nodded at the weapons officer. “Is she capable?”

“Yes, sir. Initiating long axis weapon prefire sequence now.” His hands rapped across the controls and a power meter began to climb.

The first officer couldn’t help but stare as Denz stepped up to and stroked the arm of the command chair as he looked over it. He looked old and life worn, as if he had lived through this existence a hundred times with every horrible experience as fresh the hundredth time as the first.

“Commander, I thought –“

“Later,” Denz said looking him in the eye. It was like gazing into the eye of the sole surviving vulture. “Let’s get through this first.” He moved around and deliberately lowered himself into the command seat with an alpha males certainty.

ding ding

“Creature is –“

“Commence secondary weapons bombardment.” Denz said.

The creature writhed in agony, its head swiping  and mouth snapping at the stinging barrage of fragmentation grenades and explosive rounds of the close in solution, but on it came.

“LAW status?”

The weapons officer turned to him, “82%, but commander, we can’t target the –“

“Prepare to fire
PFM
on my mark.” Denz used his console to change the lopsided camera view to tactical. He watched the diminishing proximity counter with no show of emotion or concern.

Battered, torn and crazed with pain, the creatures great body undulated with living determination as it pushed itself on. No longer did it have a real purpose, no longer did it simply want to kill and consume, this had long since been surpassed by the terrible madness to end a life as painfully as its own was ending. It was close now and the great and terrible mouth lined with bone white stalactites and stalagmites began to open in final purpose.

“Main corrosive light weapon maxed out,” The weapons officer cried.

“Wait for my mark,” Denz said watching the counter.

500

The navigator and weapons officer sat back in their seats as they stared at the screen.

400

“
Commander!”
Stavener said with a ring of urgency.

300

Canthouse gave Denz a concerned side glance, “Comm -”.

“Mark!”

A million lightning strikes ionised the dense metalloid gasses surrounding the rear of the ship, with a blazing cone of plasma brighter than a hundred suns reaching out like electric fingers to touch the Tyrannosaur maw of the monster.

“We’ve got movement!” The navigator cried. “I don’t know how but the ship is accelerating. Sixty meters a second, seventy, eighty …” Then the ecstasy left him as he realised that it wasn’t enough. That what little drag the tendrils offered was sufficient to overcome the push of the LAW and prevent them from reaching the gate point.

“We’re slowing down. We’re not going to make it,” He cried.

“Charge the gate drive and set destination as Trent station. Jump at the earliest moment.” Denz said.

With tears in his eyes, the emotion driven navigator struck his console with clenched fists and stood to confront Denz, “Did you not hear me! I said we’re slowing down. We’re not going to make it!”

Canthouse and Palmer both stepped forward to block the navigator’s advance, but Denz raised a hand to halt them. Leaning forward he looked the navigator in the eye, “Charge the gate drive and set destination as Trent quarter station.”

Unable to hold his commander’s eye, the young con officer sank under Denz’s intense stare, and casting a glance at his comrades he returned to his station and initiated the jump process.

The lightning storm continued to rage with something long and irregular forming in its heart, and as the mass absorbed the storm’s heat so the gases cooled and coalesced and the object solidified.

The creature had never known such pain and it reeled from the lightning forks stabbing at it from all directions, with the great head scything and the immense jaw snapping as if at invisible insects as the heat cooked its brain. With its one failing eye, the creature caught sight of the derelict Bristol, and in a last ditch attempt at murder it drove forward directly onto the cooling metal at the heart of the lightning storm. The two hundred meter fulgurite entered the rear of its throat, driving through its multiple hearts and breathing sacs to lodge deep within in its digestive tract, and ending its life almost immediately. With a final series of spasmodic twitches the great form drifted into the rear of the gunship to send it tumbling through the open gate portal.