Aurora: CV-01 (18 page)

“Yes Sir!” the marine acknowledged, stepping forward and handing Nathan his weapon. “You might need this, Sir.”

Nathan was a bit stunned, but he realized why the marine was offering it to him. “What about you?” he asked.

“There’s a weapons locker at the bottom of the ramp, Sir. We’ll load up there on our way.”

“Very well, good luck.” Nathan watched them leave, the second marine handing him his weapon as well. For the second time in less than an hour, Nathan was amazed at the bravery of the people he served with, unsure if he was worthy of being in their company.

He looked over at Cameron, and after making eye contact he tossed her one of the weapons. “Just in case,” he told her. He looked at the science officer to the left of the flight console. She was obviously shaken, but looked like she could still function.

“Master Chief!” Nathan called out over the comm again. “Two Marines are headed your way, and they’re bringing an armory with them!”

“Yes Sir!”
the master chief answered.

“What’s your name, Ensign?” Nathan asked the woman at the sciences station. He felt a little embarrassed that even after a full eight hour bridge shift with her the day before, he had yet to learn her name.

“Yosef,” she answered a bit shakily. “Ensign Yosef, Sir.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Kaylah.”

“Okay, Kaylah. Is it possible for you to take over the sensors from your station there?” He needed someone on sensors more than he needed a science officer right now, but the sensor station was covered with blood.

“Yes Sir,” she answered. “But it will take a few minutes to reconfigure the console and displays.”

“Great, because I need someone on sensors more than I do sciences right now.”

“But I’m not a sensor operator, Sir.”

“But you’re all I’ve got, Kaylah. Besides, you’re a science officer, which means that you must be pretty smart. I’m sure you’ll figure it out quick enough,” he assured her.

“Yes, Sir,” she answered, turning back to her console to begin reconfiguring it to control the sensors.

“Master Chief!”
a heavy male voice bellowed from down the corridor behind him.

The master chief spun around, ready to fire at anyone coming up from behind their position.

“Check your fire! Two Marines! On your six!”

“Well come on up and join the party, boys!” the master chief called out.

The marines sprinted down the corridor, keeping low, falling in behind the master chief to take cover.

“Glad you could join us, fellas!” the master chief thanked them.

“Weatherly!” the first marine called out, identifying himself to the master chief.

“Holmes!” the second marine added.

“Pleasure to meet ya, I’m sure.”

“The lieutenant said you needed help pushin’ them back?” Weatherly asked.

“Yeah! We got about a dozen Jung bastards hunkered down just this side of the primary bulkhead!”

“Them ain’t Jung, Master Chief!” Holmes corrected him.

“Of course they’re Jung, dumbass! Who the hell else would they be?”

“I dunno, Master Chief! But I’m pretty sure they ain’t Jung! They came from that big-ass warship we rammed! Through a breach in the bow!”

“What big-ass warship?” Jessica asked, overhearing the conversation.”

“Orbiting Jupiter?” the master chief added, a bit baffled.

“We ain’t orbiting Jupiter any more, Master Chief!”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

“Shut your yap, Holmes!” Weatherly warned. “It’s supposed to be classified, remember?”

“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” Holmes argued.

“One of you better tell me what the fuck is going on, before I shoot you myself!” the master chief threatened.

Sergeant Weatherly decided that his fellow marine was probably right, and decided that given the circumstances, it was better to share what he knew with the master chief. “We’ve been on the bridge for the last hour, Master Chief, and some crazy shit has been goin’ on! Shit you wouldn’t believe!”

“Try me!” the master chief demanded, as an energy bolt bounced off the wall just above his head, causing him to duck reflexively.

“They got some new kinda engine or something! Can jump the ship ten light years in the blink of an eye!” Weatherly explained.

“Bullshit!” The master chief didn’t believe a word of it.

“No, Master Chief! He’s tellin’ ya straight! They’ve already jumped the ship twice! First out to the Oort! That’s when we tangled with those two Jung patrol ships. Then they had to jump again real quick! To get away from that antimatter explosion!

“No shit?” the master chief asked, turning to look at Jessica. She nodded confirmation to him, since that last part she had seen for herself. She just hadn’t been aware of their actual location until now. “Then where the fuck are we now?” the master chief asked.

“Dunno! Shit, I don’t think anybody knows just yet. We came out in the middle of some big space battle somewhere! Got pounded by this huge warship! Twice the size of anything we’ve got! Put four torpedoes into her and she kept on firing at us! We ended up ramming her and now were stuck with our nose in her side! That’s where those troops are comin’ from! Through a breech in the bow! The lieutenant wants to lock them out on the breech side of the bulkheads, so he can back the ship out of her and flush those sons of bitches out into space!”

Jessica had been listening to the marines throughout the ongoing firefight. “You keep saying the lieutenant!” she yelled. “What lieutenant! Where’s the captain?”

“Captain’s injured, Ma’am! And the XO is dead! Happened when we rammed her! Lieutenant Scott’s in command!”

“Holy shit!” she replied.

“Well I guess we’d better get this party started!” the master chief declared.

“Engineering, Mechanic’s mate Stewart here!”
the male voice answered shakily over the comm.

“Where’s Vladimir?” Nathan asked.

“He’s busy trying to restore maneuvering, Sir!”

“Where’s the chief engineer?”

“I don’t know, Sir. I think he’s dead! Vladimir’s been running everything since the collision! You want me to get him?”

“No, just tell him to hurry it up!”

Nathan looked up from his console at Cameron. “I don’t think he’s gonna get maneuvering back up in time.”

“What are you going to do?”

Nathan thought for a moment, but nothing came to him.

“Kaylah? You got sensors up yet?”

“Yes sir.”

“Great, can you tell me how many people are alive in the forward section, forward of the primary bulkheads?”

Kaylah worked her sensors for a moment, retraining them on the Aurora. “There’s a lot of interference, Sir. Either from malfunctioning systems or from the enemy ship, but it looks like eight, not counting the combatants.”

“Damn,” Nathan swore. “Hope they can make it to emergency shelters.”

“It’s not going to matter much, Nathan,” Cameron interrupted. “Not if we can’t back out of here.”

Four flash-bangs and four fragmentation grenades came bouncing down the corridor, coming to rest at the feet of the enemy. Realizing what they were, the enemy soldiers tried to duck for cover, but most were too late. The fragmentation grenades went off first, followed a split second later by the flash-bangs.

Jessica waited behind cover for a few seconds after the grenades went off, giving the shrapnel from the blast enough time to finish ricocheting off the corridor walls before they charged. The two marines went first, dressed in the heavy assault body armor that they had picked up from the armory and blasting away at anything that moved with their close-quarters weapons set for a wide dispersal. As soon as they ran out of ammo, they stepped aside and let Jessica and the master chief pass between them as they opened up in similar fashion. As they blasted away, the two marines reloaded and came back up behind them. Repeating this cycle several times, they were able to keep the enemy’s heads down long enough to get down the corridor, peeling off to the left and right to engage the combatants in hand-to-hand combat. Once they had stepped to either side and out of the line of fire, the remaining three crewman blasted away at the open hatchway with their captured energy weapons, effectively keeping the reinforcements on the other side of the bulkhead from pouring into the corridor.

Jessica began flailing away on the first enemy soldier she came to striking him about the face with her fists several times before pulling her combat knife and gutting him. Sergeant Weatherly cold cocked the next one with the butt of his weapon, then looped the weapon’s strap around the dazed soldiers neck and swung him around into the third soldier, knocking them both down. Pulling his side arm, he put several rounds into each of them before turning it on the fourth soldier that now had Jessica by the throat and was holding her up against the wall. Suddenly, a bolt of energy from an enemy weapon caught the Sergeant in the side and spun him around, knocking him off his feet.

Jessica fell to the floor as her attacker went down after being shot by Sergeant Weatherly. Rolling to one side, she swept her leg and knocked the last enemy soldier off his feet. Rolling forward, she used her knife again and slammed it into the soldier’s chest before he could get back up, giving it a twist to finish him off.

On the other side of the hallway, the master chief’s fighting style, while not as graceful, was just as effective. One, two, three enemy soldiers were tossed by the master chief out into the energy weapons fire being poured down the corridor by their shipmates at the other end. It wasn’t pretty, but it effectively ended all three of them. The fourth and fifth ones were handled by Sergeant Holmes, who seemed to prefer a rather long and over-sized knife for his close quarters action.

Either way, their side of the bulkhead was clear. Jessica signaled for the others to cease fire, after which the master chief swung the hatch closed and locked it before any more enemy troops could come through.

“Bridge!”
the master chief’s voice called over the comm.
“The forward section is secured!”

“Good work, Master Chief! Standby!” Nathan looked at Cameron. “Try and back us out.”

“It won’t be enough thrust to…”

“…Just try!” he pleaded, cutting her off.

“Okay,” she conceded, as she began to apply braking thrusters. “Firing braking thrusters at twenty-five percent.”

The ship began to vibrate, shaking an already loosened panel off one of the side consoles.

“We’re not moving!” Cameron reported.

“Bring it up to fifty percent.”

“Increasing thrust to fifty percent.”

The vibrations became louder, and the ship shook even more. But still it did not back away from the enemy vessel.

“It’s no use!” Cameron protested, “It’s just not enough thrust!”

“One hundred percent!” he ordered. Cameron spun her head around, giving him a look of disapproval the likes of which he had not seen from her before. And for a moment, he didn’t think that she was going to follow his orders. Finally, being able to wait no longer, he barked at her, “DO IT!”

His tone was also something that she had never heard from him, and it startled her somewhat, as she turned back to her console and brought the thrust up to one hundred percent.

“Braking thrusters at maximum!” she yelled over the sound of the ship as it bounced and rattled. Damaged consoles started sparking again as the vibrations caused their burnt circuits to short again. A portion of an already weakened overhead beam fell behind Nathan. Bits and pieces began falling everywhere.

“Sir!” Ensign Yosef shouted from her console. “We’re stuck on something!”

Nathan ran the few steps from the tactical console to Ensign Yosef’s side, struggling to keep his balance as the ship shook. He looked over her shoulder at the console.

“There!” she indicated, pointing at the image on the sensor display. It was a black and white image that looked much like a computer enhanced x-ray, but with multiple colors outlining some of the objects in the image.

“What is that?”

“It looks like a beam, or part of the enemy ship’s structural frame!” she reported. “It must of given way when we collided, and impaled us causing the hull breach! That’s where they came in!”

There was another object that Nathan couldn’t identify at first, something large. It had several lines and tanks, all clustered together along with some nozzles coming out of it.

“Is this in our ship or theirs?” he asked, pointing at the unidentified yet familiar looking object.

“Ours, Sir. It’s the…”

“…Docking thrusters!” Nathan spun around to face Cameron, suddenly having an idea. “Cameron. Remember how we stopped the roll in the simulator?”

“You can’t be serious!” she protested, remembering it clearly.

“It might break us free!”

“Nathan, there are still eight people in the forward section!”

“But they’re all at the aft end of that section! In the simulation, it only damaged the forward part! And it’s only a matter of time before they blast through that bulkhead and take the ship!”

“This isn’t a simulation, Nathan!” she warned.

“You think I don’t know that?” he argued, looking around the room. “Really?”

Cameron considered Nathan’s idea. It was a hell of a gamble, but she had to admit that without the more powerful maneuvering thrusters, there was no other way to break free from the enemy ship.

“You’re in command,” she agreed, turning to reprogram the maximum pressure limits on the docking thruster’s reaction chambers. “Resetting max chamber pressures,” she announced. “Which side would you like to blow up first?” she asked sarcastically.

“Port side!”

“Firing port docking thrusters, at full power.”

The ship slid slightly sideways to starboard, causing Nathan to stumble to his left slightly. There was a loud
crack
as the cowling over the forward side of the flight console cracked, probably the result of the severe jostling they were taking.

Suddenly, there was an explosion. It came from forward of them, underneath and to port. It was much louder than in the simulation and the entire ship lifted slightly before suddenly dropping back down, nearly knocking Nathan off his feet.