Aurora: CV-01 (19 page)

Without warning and in a surprisingly fast motion, the ship slid quickly out of the hole it had made in the enemy ship, the force of the exploding docking thruster making the hole even bigger, severing the beam that had impaled them and allowing the ship to slip free. It was like someone suddenly pulling the rug out from under his feet, and the motion knocked Nathan to the floor. That’s when he realized the inertial dampeners were probably off line.

“We’re free!” Cameron exclaimed, not believing it herself.

“No kidding,” Nathan said, grabbing the tactical console and pulling himself back to his feet.

The sudden separation from the enemy ship left the forward section open to space, and Nathan hoped the sudden decompression had sucked the intruders out into space.

“Kaylah!” How many intruders left in the forward section?”

“None, Sir! They were either sucked out or died inside!”

“How many of our people?”

She paused for a moment before reporting. Nathan knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Six, Sir,” she answered solemnly. “They’re sealed up in their berths.”

Nathan tried to brush their deaths away, like he figured a good leader was supposed to do. But all he could think was,
I just killed two people!
He knew that many others had probably died already today, but the deaths of these two were the direct result of a decision
he
had made. And with full knowledge that he was putting them in harm’s way. He wasn’t sure that he could ever forgive himself. But he had to find a way to live with it, at least for now.

The Aurora backed slowly away from the damaged enemy warship, leaving a gaping hole in her side. Debris and the bodies of dead enemy soldiers floated freely, leaving a ghastly trail that led from the bow of the Aurora back to the hole. But once the ship began to move away, the warship’s guns again had a workable firing solution, and immediately opened up on her as she tried to escape.

The first salvo struck them near the bridge, catching them off guard, nearly knocking Nathan off his feet again.
There should really be a chair, here!
he thought, tired of always having to fight to stay standing.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “How can they still be able to fire!” Every second of the last twenty minutes had been a constant struggle to survive. And just when he was starting to think they had a chance, fate would throw another obstacle in their way.

The rounds continued to land on the upper side of their bow, bouncing them around so violently that Nathan could barely hear himself think. He was scared out of his mind and felt like he would piss himself every time they took a hit. At the moment, following in his father’s footsteps and going into politics didn’t seem all that bad.

Without any shields, each strike was ripping chunks off of their exterior hull, exposing the subsequent layers underneath. Nathan knew that before long, there would be more hull breaches, and eventually their luck would run out and one of those shells would get deeper inside before it detonated, ripping them apart in the process.

A few of the lights on the bridge snapped back on, along with a few additional systems. The main view screen flickered a bit, but still did not come back to life.

“Maneuvering just came back online!” Cameron reported.

“Get us out of here!” he pleaded.

More explosions shook the ship, the last one causing the entire ship to slide sideways a bit, slamming the tactical console into Nathan’s side nearly knocking the wind out of him.

“Can’t we move any faster?” he shouted.

“We’re at full reverse thrust!” Cameron defended. “It’s just not enough! This ship wasn’t designed to go fast backwards!” Another red light on her console turned green. “Wait! The orbital maneuvering systems just came back on! Maybe if I end over…”

“…Not exactly by the book, Ensign!” Nathan interrupted, already liking the idea.

“Yeah, I wonder where I picked up that bad habit?” she said.

“You’re not waiting for me to give you permission, are you?” Nathan asked. The inertial dampeners were still off line, and Nathan could feel himself getting heavy as she pitched their nose up hard.

“Not a chance,” she smiled.

About ten seconds later, Nathan went from feeling abnormally heavy on his feet to feeling abnormally light as Cameron ended their end-over flip in abrupt fashion. He grabbed hold of the console in front of him just in time to keep himself standing as she fired the orbital maneuvering system at full burn.

“OMS are burning!” She watched her flight display as their velocity steadily increased. The orbital maneuvering system was only designed to increase their orbital velocity to increase an orbital altitude. If they only had the main propulsion working, they could get out of there in seconds instead of agonizingly long minutes.

“Engineering! Bridge!” Nathan called over the comm.

“Yes! Nathan!”
It still sounded like all hell was breaking loose in the background.

“Vlad! We’re gettin’ pounded! Can you give me any weapons?”

“I am sorry, Nathan! But we only have one reactor online, and only running at fifty percent! I could maybe connect rail guns to same reactor, but it might be too much for one, I don’t know.”

“What about torpedoes? Can you give me torpedoes?”

“Torpedoes should work. If crew can load the tubes, torpedoes have their own power source. Just push button and they go. But Nathan, you should know this.”

“Why would I know this? I’m a pilot!”

Cameron held her hand up in the air, without turning around.

“Oh, and I suppose you did?” he asked her. She offered no verbal confirmation, just a self-righteous smile that Nathan couldn’t see from behind her.

“Is there anything else I can do for you Nathan? I am very busy right now.”
Something exploded in the background, and Vladimir shouted some more directions at someone.

“No thanks. Do what you can, bridge out.”

Nathan looked at the torpedo bay status display. There were no torpedoes loaded in the forward tubes, and the aft tubes were not yet completely installed.

“Torpedo Room! Bridge!” he called over the comm. “Torpedo Room! Do you copy!” No one answered. “Damn!” He looked at the status display again, when he noticed something. One of the torpedoes that the captain had launched at the enemy warship had not detonated, and it was still active.

“Kaylah!” he shouted. “Scan that warship! One of our torpedoes didn’t detonate! Can you tell me where it is? Is it still stuck in them?”

Kaylah worked her console for a few moments before responding, as more of the enemy rounds exploded against the hull, continually bouncing the ship.

“I’ve got it! It’s stuck just aft of amidships!” She spun her head to look at Nathan. “Right in front of their reactor plant!”

“What kind of reactor?” he asked. They were still awfully close to that ship, and if they were using antimatter, he doubted they would be far enough away to survive the blast.

“Scanning!” Another shell struck, sending sparks flying as the panel above the ECO console shorted out.

“Kaylah!” Nathan begged, not knowing if they could take another hit. “What kind of reactor!”

“Fusion!” she answered. “They’re using simple fusion reactors! Six of them!”

“Nathan! What are you going…” She wasn’t able to finish her sentence, as Nathan wasn’t gonna waste time debating this one with her.

“All hands, brace for shock wave!” he called out ship-wide, as he detonated the last torpedo’s warhead.

Outside, in the silent black void of space, the aft end of the crippled warship suddenly broke apart in a blinding flash, shredding her mid section until the entire back half simply broke free from her. Moments later, her six fusion reactors started exploding in rapid succession, causing her tail to burst into pieces, and most of her forward section to break apart into smaller pieces.

Seconds later the shock wave hit the Aurora. It hit hard, so hard that it forced her tail down by thirty degrees in the blink of an eye. Without the inertial dampeners, any of her crew that were in the back half of the ship suddenly found themselves tossed up head first into the ceiling, before falling back to the floor again. But that wasn’t the end of it. Six more smaller shock waves from the warship’s exploding fusion reactors also hit them, albeit with far less force.

Nathan shook his head, shaking the debris off. He was on the floor yet again, behind the tactical station, facing Doctor Sorenson. She had been holding her dead father the entire time, up until the last shock wave tossed her and her father’s body into the corner on top of the body of the dead marine by the starboard exit. Other than her initial screams of shock and the subsequent cries of grief, he had not heard a peep from her during the entire battle. He wondered if she was in some kind of shock. Of course, she had every right to be, they all did.

He looked at her, seeing the look of abject fear in her eyes. “Are you alright?” he asked. After a moment, she looked at him. “Doctor Sorenson? Are you alright?” he repeated. She stared in his eyes for a moment, finally nodding slightly. “Don’t worry,” he promised her, “We’re going to be alright.” He didn’t really believe it, at least not completely. But he felt she needed some hope in order to hold it together.

Nathan struggled back to his feet. He could see that Cameron had somehow managed to stay in her seat at the helm the entire time, and was busy trying to see what was still working. He made his way over to Kaylah to see that she too was unharmed. She looked even more shaken, with a small gash on the side of her head from flying debris, but she was conscious and already trying to get back into her chair.

“I need to know what other ships are out there, Kaylah,” he told her as he helped her into her chair. “Without the main view screen, you’re the only eyes we’ve got.”

“Yes Sir.”

It was still pretty dark in the room, and there were fewer systems offering information to him through the tactical console than before. “Damn!” he swore. “Now just about everything is down!” He looked towards Cameron at the helm in front of him. “How’s the helm?”

“I got nothing. Everything is down. No propulsion, no maneuvering. Even the OMS are down now. And we’re still only running on emergency power.” She turned around to face him. “We’re dead in the water, Nathan,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

For a moment, Nathan felt like she was accusing him of something. He had not given her a chance to disagree with his plan to detonate the last torpedo. There simply hadn’t been time for discussion, not if they were going to survive.

“Sensors are down too, Sir. Well, not completely down. But they keep flashing in and out. It’s hard to get a decent image to build.”

“Keep trying,” Nathan instructed, most of the determination having left his voice.

“Engineering, Bridge.” Nathan looked at the comm controls, they appeared to be dead as well. “Great. No comms.”

“What do we do now?” Cameron asked.

Nathan looked around the room, hoping another bright idea would pop into his head. But nothing did. He had been lucky so far, and he knew it. He might have made one or two good decisions along the way, but the fact that they were still breathing was due to dumb luck. He just wondered how much longer his luck would hold out.

“Any ideas?” he asked, admitting that he had none of his own.

Cameron looked at him, saying nothing. But he could see in her eyes that she had no ideas either.

Nathan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I guess all we can do is wait,” he resigned. “And hope that Vlad is still with us.”

It was their first opportunity to stop and look around the bridge, and witness the amount of damage they had sustained. The helm and navigation consoles appeared undamaged for the most part, which was a good thing. The Sensors and Electronic Countermeasures stations were both fried. But the auxiliary console behind them that had been configured for the Jump drive seemed relatively undamaged, which was surprising considering the exit directly behind it had practically collapsed.

The comm stations at the rear of the bridge had suffered some sort of an explosive short circuit, but the port side auxiliary station, as well as the engineering and science stations were all intact. And of course, the tactical station that Nathan had been using was also relatively undamaged.

All in all, he figured it could’ve been much worse. They were, after all, still alive. And that meant there were still possibilities. He only hoped that whatever they might be, that they weren’t too unpleasant.

Cameron had taken it upon herself to deal with the injured. She had first checked on the captain, who still lay bleeding and unconscious, but alive for now. She did what she could, breaking out an emergency medical kit from the cabinet near the exit. But other than the captain and the four of them, the rest were dead. Altogether, a total of seven people had died on that bridge half an hour ago. She just wondered how many more had died elsewhere on the ship. They had left Earth on a simple test cruise with a skeleton crew of one hundred, which was barely enough to run the ship. They couldn’t afford to lose even those that had died on the bridge, let alone others. Not if they were to have any hope of getting back to Earth.

Earth
, she thought, wondering in what direction it might be.

“Have you thought about those smaller ships?” Cameron asked him.

“What?” He had been off in his own little world when she asked the question.

“The other ships out there? The smaller ones that were attacking the big one that nearly took us out.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve thought about them.” It was a lie, he hadn’t. “Well, if any of them survived the shock wave, they’ve probably high-tailed it out of here by now. I mean, a big ship like that has gotta have friends, right?”

“Maybe. But what if they’re still out there?”

“What, you think they’re gonna come after us?” he asked.

“Why not?”

“We didn’t have a fight with them?”