Warpath (17 page)

The tactical display
appeared on his helmet, signalling to Jake that they had a sensor and
navigational system working. “Brace for impact!” he announced as
he saw that they had been blasted off course just enough for the
down-tilted nose of the Warlord to catch the edge of a large
asteroid.

The inertial dampers
saved them from most of the jostling, but Jake was still nearly
pitched out of the command seat. “Shields?” he asked.

“Our aft shield
emitters are slagged,” Finn announced.

“We’ve lost all our
port emitters from frame twenty three back, we can give you sixty
percent coverage, about eleven percent power,” Ayan added.

“Really?” Finn
said. “Show me, quick.”

“Give me whatever you
can,” Jake replied. “Weapons?”

“We have three guns
left,” Frost said. “Lost five crewmen in their turrets, one to an
antimatter ammunition explosion, emplacement three is open to space.”

“Seal that off, get
our good side facing the enemy, and start plotting a wormhole course
to Kambis orbit, safe arrival space,” Jake said, seeing that the
wormhole generator was intact and still charged. The Warlord had
drifted past the asteroid field, and had luckily put itself under
cover, the field was between them and the carrier group. “Launch
fighters, we need them to stay close and to provide countermeasure
fire in case those ships start sending guided missiles our way.”

“Aye, fighter launch
systems are up and running, launching,” Frost said. “I’m
surprised there’s a straight line left on this ship after that.
First pair are away.”

“This is Carnie,”
announced one of the newest additions to the Samurai Squadron. “Me
and Hottie are on station, ready to stop anything coming at the
Warlord while you get things running. Initial scans of the carrier
group show heavy damage, but I’m guessing they’ll be able to
recover enough to ruin our day.”

Jake didn’t know much
about the new pair in the Samurai Squadron. He hadn’t even met
them, but Carnie was well known as an incredible shot, and Hottie was
a man who did not enjoy his call sign in the least, but no one told
Jake the story behind it. Both were phenomenal pilots that Minh-Chu
had to fight with Triton Fleet for.

His tactical display
told him two more fighters launched off the racks and another pair
were being loaded. They may be able to provide the modest cover they
needed.

“Main sensor array is
up!” Kadri said, surprised. “Pin a medal on the tech that got
that working again,” she added. “I have a clear read on those
destroyers. Full crews, the furthest one from us has no shields on
its aft-port quarter, the other is turning to intercept us. The
Carrier’s shields are down on the fore-dorsal section, port launch
bay is severely damaged, as well as the starboard launch bay, but
their main hangar can only open a quarter of the way, and it is
launching small ships. They don’t look like fighters. Both the
battlecruisers took light damage, they are moving into position above
the carrier to cover with their shields.”

Jake looked at the
ships that the carrier was launching. “Those look like pods with a
rocket on one end and some kind of cutter system on the front.”

“Never seen anything
like that before,” Frost said. “There are four people in each.”

“Carnie here,”
announced the pilot. “I’ll have a firing solution on those in
just a sec. We’ll have all our birds out playing defence in a few
seconds, Warlord, don’t worry.”

“Wormhole course
plotted,” Ashley said.

“Start opening it,”
Jake said. The carrier launched another wave of pods, it appeared on
his tactical display as a line of twenty-four new contacts. “Hurry.”

The first wave of six
got clear of the asteroids between them and the warlord, and the
fighters opened fire. The rockets on the back of the pods fired,
sending them towards the Warlord at an alarming speed. Five were
obliterated by their cover fire before they could finish the trip to
the Warlord, the sixth was heavily damaged, but its momentum carried
it past the fighters. It struck the hull of the Warlord and went
spinning past it, directly through the point in space where they were
generating their wormhole.

“Wormhole generation
failed,” Ashley’s navigator announced. “The surface of that
thing reflected enough energy to interrupt it.”

“Do we have enough
power to generate another right away?” Jake asked.

“Nope, it’ll take
eleven minutes,” Ashley replied. “Could speed it up if we can get
more power though.”

“Warlord,” Hottie
said over his communicator from the cockpit of his fighter. “We
have a problem, no way are we knocking all those pods out.”

Jake saw what he was
talking about. The pods were splitting up, getting enough distance
from each other so the fighters and the Warlord would have trouble
taking two or more out at a time. They fired their rocket engines,
accelerating so quickly that the tactical display in Jake’s helmet
couldn’t quite keep up.

“Our last turrets are
helping with that,” Frost said. “Something is going to get
through.”

“Counter incursion
teams, get ready,” Jake said.

Alice and Stephanie
checked in as ready.

“One of those
destroyers will have a firing solution on us in one minute and twelve
seconds,” Frost said.

“Get us under cover,
Ash,” Jake said. “Use the asteroids, we can’t take direct hits
from that ship.”

“I’m trying,”
Ashley replied. “None of my thrusters are running at full power,
and I’d be real happy if someone could jumpstart my number four
engine.”

“On it,” Finn said.
“I have a damage control officer on his way out.”

With a glance Jake
could see that David Penton, a man he’d saved from slavery before
they arrived on Tamber, was on his way through a maintenance hatch to
the pylon holding thruster four. “He has the worst timing,” he
said under his breath. “Get that wormhole generator charging
faster,” Jake said.

The seven Samurai
Squadron fighters fired at the incoming pods, sending streaks of
automatic gunfire and missiles towards the approaching wall. Five
heavy thuds sounded against the hull, followed by a rain of shrapnel.
To Jake’s amazement, David managed to avoid getting torn to shreds
or crushed by hiding behind the thruster pylon in the nick of time.
“Captain, I can see five pods attached to the hull. One is right
above the power systems on our main rear thruster. All the pods are
starting to cut.”

“Just finish what
you’re doing and get back inside,” Finn said.

“My team’s going
outside,” Alice said over inter-ship communications.

“No,” Stephanie
replied over her communicator. “Stay in position, inside the ship.
Your team will get killed out there. We don’t all have David’s
luck.”

“Aye,” Alice
replied.

“Sir, guided missiles
from the lead destroyer!” Frost said.

“Turn our shields
towards them, “ Jake ordered. “Samurai, take them out before they
get here.”

“Roger,” Carnie
replied.

The small fighter group
of seven couldn’t be faulted for their performance. The lead
destroyer and the carrier were each launching waves of five guided
missiles, some of which wove between a few asteroids before entering
the clear space around the Warlord. “They’re jinky,” Quack said
from her cockpit. They were able to knock out the first fifteen
guided missiles, before one got through.

To Jake’s surprise,
the missile turned into an arc at the last second, avoiding the heavy
shields on their lower side, instead striking their weakly shielded
dorsal side. The next two to get through did the same, doing no
damage to the pods that were attached to the Warlord’s hull, but
destroying the shield emitters for the dorsal side of the ship.
“They’re after the bridge,” Jake said.

“I hate this,”
Ashley said as she turned the Warlord, the number four thruster
activated, giving her the power she needed to get them moving faster
towards the closest cluster of asteroids. “We’ll be under cover
in a sec.”

“I can’t get back
in,” David said. “Going to thrust off and take my chances until
search and rescue can pick me up. Wish me luck.”

Even while the Warlord
was under terrible assault, Jake couldn’t help but wonder at
David’s coolness under pressure, and his bravery. His suit’s
emergency thrusters got him away from the Warlord, then he engaged
his cloak. David would indeed be safe if he could get away from the
shrapnel and other agents of destruction.

“Cover, squadron!
Knock those missiles out!” Frost said as several hits registered on
the hull.

“Breach, dorsal
section,” Finn announced. “Our main reactor is down. Our main
engineering section is open to space. Two fires in adjacent
compartments. Putting them out.”

“Switching to
secondary systems, but we can’t keep the shields up, there’s no
way to route power to several generators, and we lost some people
with that last volley,” Ayan said.

“Most of our
engineering staff,” Finn added.

“The destroyer and
carrier have stopped launching, their last volley is incoming,”
Frost said.

“Not going to get all
of these,” Carnie said. “We’ve taken hits, I’m down to one
gun, sorry, Warlord.”

Jake watched as the
fighters, most of which took damage putting themselves between the
missiles and the Warlord, sacrificing shields, and in some cases,
parts of their ships to keep the missiles at bay, opened fire on the
last volley. Fifteen heavy missiles cleared the asteroid field, and
three were destroyed by Samurai squadron in the first second, seven
in the two seconds that followed, and then six hit them, spiralling
around the Warlord, seeking her bridge. Four struck in front of the
bridge, the other two exploded through the hull, destroying crew
quarters over their heads. Alarms went off, the doors at the rear of
the compartment opened. The bridge was losing atmosphere. “How long
until we can open a wormhole?” Jake asked, standing and
transferring control of as many systems as he could to his command
and control unit.

“Three minutes, nine
seconds,” Ashley said, surprised that her seat was retreating from
her pilot station. “What’s goin’ on?”

“We’re abandoning
the bridge, falling back to a launch bay,” Jake said. He was
relieved to see that he was able to transfer pilot controls to
Ashley’s command and control unit, and that the wormhole generator
was still charging. “We’re going to have to keep the ship going
while we get there.”

“The first pod’s
cutters have broken through,” Stephanie said. “If we blow these
off with grenades, we lose all hull integrity in this section.”

“I don’t care, just
kill those boarders,” Jake replied. “And make sure you don’t
get sucked out with the atmosphere.”

“Blowing one off,”
Stephanie said.

Frost opened a hatch at
his feet and hurriedly handed rifles out to Ayan, Kadri, Finn and
Jake. He also activated a small portable shield bot and took a case
of ammunition.

Jake adjusted his rifle
to the maximum setting, he would only be able to fire in bursts, and
he only had a hundred and five shots, but they would be powerful
enough to cut through most armour.

“Blew four grenades
right at the base of the pod, didn’t do a damn thing, those things
are full-thickness welded to the hull, and they have shielding,”
Stephanie said. An explosion sounded over her comms and Jake only
heard the sounds of gunfire and running.

“Steph! What is it?”
Frost asked.

“Knights, four Order
Knights in each pod,” she replied.

“Okay, I don’t like
this,” Dent said from his fighter where he held formation on
Ronin’s port side.

Ronin finished
verifying what he was seeing on his tactical display. “Triton Fleet
is on alert, but the Triton isn’t here, neither is the Warlord or
any of the new gunships.” The recently organized group of forty two
mid-sized ships were running a picket line near Tamber Orbit. Triton
Fleet gunships and fighters were assisting, filling in soft sensor
areas, where the time delay between scanning and receiving data was
too long for larger ships. The Barricade and the British Alliance
Fleet numbering three large carriers with three battlecruisers and
nine destroyers each along with countless smaller ships watched over
it all.

“I knew we were being
misdirected when that British Lieutenant directed us back to the
fleet,” Dent said. “They’ve got Tamber locked down, this is not
where the action is.”

“It was a good order,
he saw they were on alert, and sent us back,” Ronin said, observing
the situation and putting the pieces together. “I’m linking us up
with Skyguard Squadron.” He sent a hailing signal to Skyguard
command.

“Slick to Ronin,”
addressed the leader of Skyguard.

“Ronin here. Did we
miss the party?” Minh-Chu asked.

“Triton and the
Warlord followed your lead up, the Barricade is our new operational
carrier, so don’t scratch that fighter. As big as it is, the
Barricade is not a full carrier, it’s got a fifth the capacity of
the Triton and her crews are all green.”

“Slow service,
possibly bad service, gotcha. Any word on what they found out there?”

“I was hoping you
could tell me,” Slick replied.

“Wing Commander
Ronin, this is Barricade Flight,” said the familiar voice of
Governor Anderson.

“Finally found a
command seat, old man?” Ronin replied.

“Rushed into service
at the last minute, glad I’ve been keeping an eye on this ship all
along,” he replied. “Otherwise I wouldn’t know which end was
up.”

“Where do you want
me?”

“The Morrigan could
use some fighter support, they’re patrolling the far side of
Kambis.”

“I see it, Slick and
I will provide scout support. Any idea what we’re watching for?”