This Corner of the Universe (18 page)

Four
minutes and fourteen seconds since the beginning of her charge from the Beta
Field,
Anelace
finally lashed out against her foes.  Her mass driver
barked once and an iridium round moving two-thirds the speed of light hurdled toward
the ketch. 
Cutthroat
returned fire with both railguns a second later.  Multiple
projectiles streamed from each barrel, reaching out for the corvette.

Vernay
concentrated on the reload procedure of the Kruger while trying to remain
cognizant of vampires Charlie and Delta bearing down on her ship, just 15
ls
away. 
Beyond those, she saw four more pairs streaking toward
Anelace
at
roughly 16
ls
intervals.  After waiting for the next round to be seated
into the mass driver’s breech and for barrel temperatures to reach acceptable
levels, Vernay’s right index finger twitched and the mass driver pulsed again. 
In the background, she heard Captain Heskan ordering navigation to fire the bow
thrusters and return to the Beta Field.

Anelace
and
Cutthroat
were within
weapons range for only eight seconds.  During that time, the distance between
the two ships closed to 8
ls
before
Anelace
altered course.  As
the range began to expand,
Anelace’s
mass driver fired a third and final
time at the ketch from a distance of 12
ls
.  After the shot, both ships had
reached a safe distance to avoid any new weapon’s fire but the rounds fired
earlier closed on their respective targets.

The
first mass driver and railgun rounds struck their targets less than a second
apart.  The iridium round struck the bow of
Cutthroat
nearly straight on
and shattered as it passed through the hull.  The dozens of fragments tore open
the ship and rained death on the men inside her bridge.  The shrapnel continued
nearly straight down the line of the ship, being pulverized into smaller pieces
as they smashed through bulkheads, equipment and crewmen. 
Cutthroat’s
atmosphere
blew out of the multitudes of hull fractures and turned briefly to fire as the
iridium dust combusted in the shower of sparks from destroyed electronics.  The
last of the iridium fragments once again punched through
Cutthroat’s
hull at her fourth frame, halfway down the ship, and continued their journey
through space.

As
Cutthroat’s
bridge was incinerating, her railgun bursts struck
Anelace
.  The first
rounds assailed her fully charged AIPS defense screen and each round emitted a
burst of light as its kinetic energy transferred to the shield.  Bullet after
bullet strike caused the Turner AIPS generator to draw more and more power from
Anelace’s
power plant, in a losing battle to maintain the screen’s integrity.

Overall,
the AIPS shield did quite well, stopping seventy percent of the incoming railgun
rounds.  As
Anelace’s
thrusters finished their burn to spin her bow back
toward the Beta Field, the shield generator finally cut power to the screen to
avoid burnout.  Petty Officer Deveraux, monitoring the defense screen from the
AIPS control compartment, commanded it to enter its cooling subroutine and
begin the slow regeneration of the shield once again.

After
the AIPS screen dropped, the remaining railgun rounds slammed into
Anelace
. 
Her massive drives now faced
Cutthroat
and the incoming rounds as she pointed
back toward the Beta Field.  Four, twenty-centimeter metal balls sliced through
the armor surrounding
Anelace’s
second drive and the upper starboard
engine choked as the metal cut through its delicate mechanisms.  The remaining railgun
shots went wide as
Anelace
completed her course change.

In the
first portside turret control compartment, Gunner’s Mate Second Class Jamison
was feeling like an extension of his GP laser.  Twenty-eight seconds ago, he
had nailed vampire Bravo 4
ls
from
Anelace
.  He was unsure if Spaceman
Parker’s shot from the other portside turret would have hit it and he knew that
Lieutenant Vernay would scrutinize this action ad nauseam after it was over.  Now
assigned vampire Charlie after the first pair was destroyed, he had a solid
lock and was determined to maintain it even through
Anelace’s
maneuvering.  He found combat simultaneously thrilling and terrifying but he
was looking forward to the stories he could tell when he started Officer
Training School in just under a month.  He and Spaceman Gables were due to
hitch a ride out of Skathi on the next freighter so they could reach New London
before their “report no later than” dates.  Now, they would both be going into
OTS as combat veterans.  His weapons lock holding, a small smile spread across Jamison’s
lips as he thought poor Spaceman Parker was going to have to wait for the next
set of missiles to get his first kill.  He was four seconds from firing when
his turret stopped slewing.  Jamison’s targeting computer beeped in frustration
at him, indicating its loss of weapon’s lock due to the incoming missile flying
outside the pulse laser’s line of sight.

“Port
lasers are masked!” Vernay cried, giving warning that
Anelace’s
two portside
lasers could not fire at incoming missiles because her own hull blocked their
line of fire.  Heskan’s stomach lurched. 
How the hell did that happen?
 
“Diane, roll us one-fifty now!” shouted Heskan as the main screen optical of
Ketch-Two showed Vernay’s second iridium round smash into its port drive,
exploding it into scraps under the blow.

Vampires
Charlie and Delta rocketed toward
Anelace
barely two kilometers apart. 
Although fired simultaneously from missile tubes within fifty meters of each
other, the separation between the missiles as they approached their target was
extremely small.  Tiny variations in course and engine speed, as well as
differing evasive maneuvers performed to defeat point defenses during the final
seconds of flight, usually caused separation of missiles in the same volley to
be tens of thousands of kilometers when they finally reached their target. 
Given the extreme distance and speeds of interstellar combat, even those
distances were considered so minuscule as to be irrelevant.  In this instance
however, the two missiles had flown nearly identical paths to
Anelace
and when she maneuvered to a heading to return to the Beta Field, her own hull had
blocked her port lasers’ line of sight to both missiles.  The missile
designated by Vernay as vampire Delta vaporized under the skillful laser fire
of
Anelace’s
starboard gunners.  Yet, no point defense was available to
stop vampire Charlie.

Anelace’s
last chance at salvation came
from her powerful electronic countermeasures.  ECM Suite Delta was a program
designed to use brute force to confuse and blind incoming missiles with so many
phantom targets that the missile’s guidance system would suffer a silicon
mental breakdown trying to sort out the hundreds of illusionary targets from
the real one.  There were more artfully crafted ECM programs and ones that were
certainly more sophisticated but for fighting Interceptor-B guidance packages, Suite
Delta was projected to be the most effective.

However,
vampire Charlie was not fooled and flew under
Anelace’s
keel, detonating
four hundred meters below her between her twelfth and thirteenth structural frames. 
The shock wave slammed into the regenerating AIPS shield, which had cooled
sufficiently and had spent the last two seconds rebuilding the protective
screen around
Anelace
.  Although at only twenty-two percent of full
strength, the shield deflected some of the shock wave around
Anelace
before cutting off once again to avoid burnout.  The remaining force pounded
the bottom sections of the corvette’s stern.  The heavily armored bay doors
crumpled like foil under the assault, driving shards of twisted metal into the
shuttle bay, through the Class-F shuttle borrowed from Renard and into the
bay’s ceiling.  However, the interior of the hanger, also heavily reinforced to
withstand a catastrophic shuttle disaster, absorbed the shrapnel without
compromising the structural integrity of the compartments directly overhead on
Anelace’s
lower deck: a training simulator room, a briefing room and part of Engineering.

All
three of
Anelace’s
lower drives rocked as the missile’s shock wave
rolled over them.  The outer drives weathered the explosive force well. 
Although shaken severely, their mounts absorbed the massive quake and prevented
serious damage to the internals of the engines and their connections with the
main hull.  Ironically, it was the best protected, center drive that fared far
worse.  Even though it was connected not only to the lower engine wing mount
but also directly to the bottom of
Anelace’s
hull, sixty-two of her
eighty-five mounting bolts sheared under the force of the explosion.  The
entire nine-and-a-half meter engine pitched upward sixteen centimeters,
severing every electronic connection between it and the main hull.  The myriad
of power networks feeding the engine ruptured and the actual drive in the mount
warped under the incredible stresses caused by its movement.  Sensors inside
the drive lost their connection with the engineering compartment and
immediately triggered a shutdown to the fatally damaged drive.  In Engineering,
monitoring programs signaled an interruption in the power feeds and
Anelace’s
engineers safely flushed the power lines to the drive.

The
entire ship felt the jolt of vampire Charlie’s accomplishments.  On the bridge,
Heskan would have been lifted off his shockseat if not for the braces keeping
him in place.  He immediately understood that one of the missiles must have
exploded very close to the ship. 
How bad is the damage
, he asked
himself though unsure if he wanted the answer.

Before
looking over to Chief Brown, Heskan looked up at the tactical plot to see what
disaster was unfolding next. 
Vampires Echo and Foxtrot are due in twenty-three
seconds.  Please let us have finished our roll before then.
  Looking to the
chief, he saw Brown already talking swiftly into his helmet’s microphone and
decided not to bother him.

Heskan
returned his attention to the optical of Ketch-Two while he waited for Chief
Brown to gather information.  The pirate ship was battered and drifting in her
debris field; most of her bow had been destroyed and he could see power to her remaining
flickering drive was intermittent.  During Heskan’s inspection of the stricken
ketch, the third mass driver round flashed by it faster than the human eye
could detect, missing cleanly.

Anelace
was now decelerating.  She had
quickly reached her maximum speed of .33
c
during her initial charge but with
Heskan’s order to come about and retreat back to the relative safety of the
Beta Field, she valiantly fought inertia.  Already, her velocity had reduced to
.23
c
.  In twenty seconds, she would be briefly at relative rest before
achieving forward motion, steadily climbing back to her maximum speed and
pushing hard for the asteroid field, 91
ls
away.

Sixty-seven
light-seconds in the opposite direction,
Blackheart
released her seventh
pair of missiles at the little corvette.  The captain had yet to see how the
recently fought battle between
Cutthroat
and
Anelace
had played
out but he assumed things did not go well for his consort.  The saving grace
was that through a fluke of happenstance, his first and second missile salvos
would arrive immediately before and after their skirmish.  With any luck, the
crew of the corvette had become overloaded and allowed his missiles to hit.  He
had seriously considered holding his fire on the seventh salvo but decided it
was better to potentially waste two missiles than have the unthinkable occur
and see a still operational corvette when the light from its firing pass with
Cutthroat
reached him. 
After all
, he thought,
she’ll be coming for me next.

“Capt’n,
my preliminary damage report’s ready,” Chief Brown said as he faced Heskan. 
“Drive Six has been knocked out of action.  Engineerin’ says it’s completely
dead an’ they don’t have a repair estimate.  Drives Four an’ Five are functionin’
but both are actin’ funny.  The L-T says they’re vibratin’ somethin’ fierce an’
he has to keep droppin’ the power exchange to below seventy percent to settle
them down before he can push it back up to maximum.  He also said that while Drive
One ain’t vibratin’ the temperatures are climbin’ an’ he either has to cut the
power or it’ll fail completely in a couple of minutes.”  The chief rubbed the
bridge of his nose as he continued, “Oh, the shuttle hanger’s been destroyed. 
One of the shuttle approach camera feeds is still workin’ an’ I panned around
while talkin’ to Engineerin’.  The hanger is all messed up but I doubt you were
plannin’ on takin’ a shuttle ride anytime soon anyway, sir.”

Heskan
looked at Riedel.  “Helluva missile hit.  How do you think it got Drive One?”

Riedel
shook his head.  “No idea but shock waves can do some funny things.  We’re
going to need those engines.”

Heskan
nodded in agreement.  “Contact Brandon, tell him to do whatever is necessary to
get the ship up to .3
c
.  Burn out Drive One if he has to because we’ve
got to reduce the closure speed of those missiles and keep them in our point
defense envelope longer to give our guys a chance.”  Heskan checked the plot. 
Ana
has slowed to point zero-two-C.  At least we’re not moving toward those
missiles any longer. 
The third pair of missiles was getting close and he
instinctively tightened his grip on the arms of his command chair as he watched
them come in.

Since
the near miss, Gunner’s Mate Jamison’s confidence had been shaken.  When his and
Parker’s turret had been masked from vampire Charlie, he had felt the jolt of
the hit just seconds afterwards.  Even though he knew it was not his fault, he could
not help but feel like he had failed.  His mind raced over how many people could
be dead and what condition the ship might be in because he had come up four
seconds short.  Trying to put his feelings aside, he worked on locking on to vampire
Echo.  He saw Echo’s partner, Foxtrot, disappear in hellish fire from one of
the starboard laser turrets.  His finger stabbed the command-accept-execute
button on his console and his pulse laser issued a burst that reached out for
the missile.  His heart skipped a beat as the shot missed.  Parker’s shot
followed his own a fraction of a second later but also missed the mark and
Jamison’s left knee began to shake nervously as he waited for his Lyle to cool
and recycle.  Doubting he would get a third shot, Jamison ensured a hard
targeting lock on the missile before firing the second time.  Parker’s second
shot seemed rushed and again missed.  Jamison exhaled as he fired but his heart
sank as the missile continued its suicide run toward
Anelace
.  Panicked
now, Jamison shouted at his laser to quickly recharge.  His finger was still
poised over the console button, waiting, when the missile exploded only two
hundred meters from his turret. 

The
missile fragments and shock wave slammed against the fully rebuilt AIPS screen,
which protected most parts of the ship from Echo’s onslaught.  However, near the
portside turret compartments where the force was greatest, fragments and the
blast wave battered down the screen and hammered
Anelace
.  The
tremendous force punched both portside Lyle turrets into the ship as
Anelace’s
hull caved inward under the blast.  Her hull breached, the turret control compartments
vented their atmospheres immediately although Jamison and Parker were spared
asphyxiation as
Anelace’s
hull and laser turrets had crushed them in
their collapse.

Damage
Control Station One, the adjacent compartment to Parker’s turret control room,
suffered similarly.  Able Spaceman Getney watched in horror as his room’s port exterior
wall warped before ripping open.  He had been sitting in his shockseat as
required during combat operations but had failed to activate the restraint braces,
contrary to regulations.  Many damage control crews disliked the restrictive
braces because they slowed their reaction time in reaching a damaged station. 
Getney was blown from his seat toward the breach.  The loss of pressure caused
his lungs to expel his breath and as he tumbled toward the hull fracture, he
desperately tried to close his helmet’s visor.  As he fell through the hull’s fissure,
his left leg smashed against the jagged opening, breaking his femur.  Disoriented
and in shock, Getney’s attempts to close his visor failed.

In
the AIPS control compartment, Petty Officer Deveraux was battered so hard
within his shockseat he was stunned.  Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his
vision, he saw the strobing warning lights indicating a compartment breach.  Although
confused why the alarm claxons had not sounded, it occurred to him to lower his
visor to secure his shocksuit.  The noise that had come from the compartments
ahead of him had been raucous and the door leading to Getney’s DC-One was now knocked
askew with a visible, active containment field between that compartment and his
own.  Looking around from his seat, he noticed a one-meter tear in his room’s
outer wall and what he thought was empty space past it.  Still dazed, he realized
he should report this to Harry Getney in the next room.  As he began to unlock
his seat’s braces, he noticed his console blinking furiously at him.  The
bridge was sending him a text request for an immediate status report.  Unsure
why they had not just called down and asked for it, he pressed his
communications button and began to speak but could not hear his own voice. 
Without thought, his hand reached up to hold his nose as he attempted to “pop”
his ears but was stopped by his helmet’s visor.  He began to talk again yet
still could not hear himself.  Finally, the understanding that he had been
deafened by the blast hit him.  Lucidity growing, Deveraux immediately began typing
a message to the bridge via his console while he marveled that in his state of
shock, he had actually almost left his station in the middle of combat and tried
to enter an obviously decompressed DC-One.

Blackheart’s
missileer once again stated the
next missile salvo was ready to fire.  The captain was busy cursing his
decision to place his escort ketches 20
ls
from the flagship even though
at the time, it had seemed the right thing to do.  After all, the limited
weapon range of the ketches dictated that they be positioned so they could
engage the corvette while it was still too far away to attack
Blackheart
. 
However, this would be his eighth volley launched at the little corvette, which
most likely was already destroyed.  How would he justify to the council the wasting
of precious Interceptor-Bs on a dead target?  Grumbling, he issued the command
to fire and then gave the order to hold additional fire until the tactical
situation became clearer.  The missiles shot forth from
Blackheart
and
then sped toward their three sister volleys ahead of them and their target, 70
ls
away.

The
distance between
Anelace
and
Blackheart
was increasing now. 
Although laboring with only five Allison drives,
Anelace
had clawed her
way past .23
c
as she sailed for the Beta Field.  The vibrations from the
lower drives shook the stern of the ship and Lieutenant Jackamore could feel it
through the entire engineering compartment.  Though he scolded himself for
thinking in such terms, the latest missile hit had mercifully been further
forward and his engines and power plant had not been affected.  He feared that
the damage already done to
Anelace’s
drive systems would place her in a
fleet repair dock for several months.  His recent conversation with Lieutenant
Riedel had not been a pleasant one.

On
the bridge, Heskan waited in mute frustration for information on the second
missile hit
.  It wasn’t a hit
, he reflected,
a hit would have knocked
us around much harder or simply destroyed us.  I’ll enter it as a near miss in
the after-action report
.  The preposterous thought that one benefit of
being destroyed in the battle would be he would not have to worry about the
paperwork afterwards entered his mind but he recognized that his gallows humor
was just his psyche preparing itself for the inevitable casualty report coming
any moment now.

“Capt’n.”
 The voice of Chief Brown made Heskan’s stomach tighten as he braced himself
for the report.  “DC One an’ both port laser turrets are out of action.  I’m
not gettin’ a response from anyone in those compartments.  All three compartments
have depressurized an’ remain open to space.”

Lieutenant
Vernay cringed visibly as Chief Brown continued, “I’ve got limited
communications with the AIPS control room right now.  The AIPS screen is regeneratin’
an’ the compartment is now air tight with workin’ containment fields.  I’m
sendin’ Spaceman Alvarez from DC Three for a better look but I’m startin’ to
run low on manpower.”

“Do
what you can, Chief, every section is being pressed thin.  Mike, can Engineering
spare anyone?”

Riedel
shook his head.  “I doubt it, sir.  They already have people working in Operations
since Orphan killed our boarding party and with our drives acting flaky...”  He
shrugged before speaking into his shocksuit’s microphone briefly.  After a
moment, he said, “Sir, Jackamore says Ana has hit point three light but he’s
burning out Drive One to do it.  The other drives can maintain structural
integrity at point three light for a little while even after One goes but Ana’s
top speed after this run will only be around point two-five-C.  He also said
he’s bound by regulations to recommend cutting power to the lower drives, Four and
Five, because of their vibrations.”

“I
hope you told him no, Mike.”

The
first officer snorted.  “I told him he’d have to get out and push if he shuts
them down.”

Heskan’s
eyes returned to the tactical plot. 
Anelace
predicted the next volley
from the schooner would be launched in three seconds.  The long line of missiles
headed for
Anelace
ranged from just 10
ls
away out to 63
ls
away. 
It had been forty seconds since the corvette had taken the second near miss and
the closest missiles were still a full minute and twenty-three seconds away from
impact.  He had hated running back toward the Beta Field but the resultant
change in the closure rate of the missiles had probably kept them alive the
last forty seconds.  Further, the loss of the portside GPs now made the
withdrawal even more necessary as
Anelace’s
point defenses were cut in half
by the single, decisive blow
.  If we’d still been charging the schooner, the
next volley would have already intercepted us and just when Vernay needs the
time to reorganize her point defense tactics. 
He looked over to the
weapons station and saw Vernay furiously typing at her console while talking
into the mic of her shocksuit helmet.

The
presumed deaths of Jamison and Parker were more devastating blows to Vernay.  Half
of her people were gone.  Half!  When Brown had complained to the captain that
his section was “startin’ to run low,” she had wanted to stop the battle and
run across the bridge to pummel him.  Despite trying desperately to stay ahead
of
Anelace’s
rapidly deteriorating point defense situation, she still could
not help but do the distracting math.  Four out of eight of her section’s crewmembers
were probably dead.  Assuming Bonner was uninjured and there were no further
casualties, her next section meeting would include only herself, two petty
officers and two spacemen.  Moreover, how many others had died on
Anelace
because of her failures?  How many more would as well?  She found herself almost
wishing for a bridge hit to end this nightmare.  Before the engagement, she had
naively thought she had honed her crew into the best weapons team on any system
defense ship in the Brevic Navy.  Her face now flushed red with rage and
embarrassment as she thought back to the times she had sat in this very chair
and actually fantasized about the pride she would feel as she and her section
performed flawlessly in a battle.  But she saw things clearly now; she
understood.  Both teams played to win and sheer luck could trump either side’s
skill or training.  The masking of the port lasers at exactly the wrong time had
not been anyone’s fault.  The track of the missiles,
Anelace’s
course
change and the angle she had first rolled to engage the missiles had created
the perfect combination of events to shield half of her defenses during that
critical four-second window.  Nonetheless, Vernay knew she would play out those
four seconds endlessly for the rest of her life, whether it was as a young
lieutenant killed in action during her first engagement or as an admiral thirty
years from now.

“Dammit!”
Blackheart’s
captain thundered.  The light from the firing pass between
Anelace
and
Cutthroat
had finally spanned the 81
ls
gap between them.  He
had scored two missile hits but the corvette was still under power and in the
fight.  He nearly issued the command to resume firing when he saw the time
lagged image of
Anelace
turning away from him and powering back toward
the Beta Field.  He trembled in rage as he saw the stricken ship still able to push
itself to .3
c
and growled as his missileer informed him that any missile
launched now would take eleven minutes to reach
Anelace
, while the
corvette herself would reach the massive disturbance zone of the Beta Field in
just over four.  Instead, he ordered
Blackheart
to come to rest in space
and keep her broadside facing the vexing corvette.  He then sent an order to
Merciless
,
his last remaining escort ketch, to join up with him.  Its
vain pursuit
of the faster corvette was doing nothing but moving her farther away from her
flagship.