Last Measure of Devotion (TCOTU, Book 5) (This Corner of the Universe) (19 page)

Although referred to as a vacuum, space is not
empty.  Each coil gun projectile slammed into roughly one atom per centimeter
of travel.  Those particles collided with the hypervelocity bullets and fused
with their atoms, producing a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles.  The
gamma rays and debris expanded outward in a bubble of incandescent plasma
around each speeding projectile.  This cycle of fusion and emission at the
leading edge of each projectile ate roughly halfway through the bullet before
encountering
Hawk’s
AIPS.

The first hits to the defensive screen were not
the projectiles themselves but the expanding sphere of gamma rays and plasma.  The
screen pushed aside ninety percent of the x-rays, the rest effortlessly stopped
by the brig’s standard duralloy armor.  Plasma ejecting from the first projectile
struck two nanoseconds later, also easily deflected by the defensive screen. 
An instant later, five of the half-gram projectiles crashed into
Hawk’s
AIPS with the force of
about half the energy released in an average Terran
thunderstorm.

Hawk’s
AIPS strained to meet the energy requirement necessary
to fend off such an assault, succeeding three times before cutting out to circumvent
critical overload.  The first three coil gun rounds defeated, the next two
bullets passed unimpeded through the collapsing screen on their way toward
Hawk
.

Both rounds penetrated
Hawk’s
hull, barely clipping the
port side of her bow.  Each tiny projectile struck the warship at severe angles
brought about by the vessel’s evasive efforts, serving to augment the ship’s
last line of defense, her duralloy armor.  Equal parts traditional armor,
Bremsstrahlung armor and Whipple armor, the two half-gram projectiles exploded
upon impact with the duralloy coating and turned into a spray of plasma.  Given
the extreme angle at which they struck, eighty percent of the energy deflected
away from the brig with the remaining energy directed inward.  The destructive sphere
from the expanding plasma pierced
Hawk’s
hull at the forward stores and
adjacent life support recycler compartment.  Both compartments were decimated
in a fiery hell of plasma and shrapnel, replaced quickly by the icy cold of
space.  The initial vapor cloud and debris struck the opposing bulkheads and
traveled just one additional compartment deeper into the ship before expending the
remaining energy, spalling the inside bulkheads of the adjacent interior
compartments.  The remaining nine rounds in Sycamore’s opening coil gun salvoes
slipped wide to port.

*  *  *

Flashing indicators near Covington’s arm hinted
vaguely to the extent of
Hawk’s
damage.  Although Heskan felt no perceptible
sign of distress, he understood all too well that each, tiny blinking light on
the console meant raging turmoil for the sailors inside those compartments.  He
felt extremely vulnerable without his shocksuit despite being relatively well
protected, deep in the heart of the two-decked brig.  It was unnerving, the
knowledge that a decompression event on the bridge would mean a horrific death
for him and his friends.

“Damn, the AIPS has already collapsed,”
Covington exclaimed while shaking his head.  He looked fiercely toward his
first officer.  “Damage re—”  Covington stopped speaking abruptly as Heskan’s
hand closed around the young ship captain’s right arm.

Heskan pointed at Covington’s ship status
display with his other hand.  “Look at the positions.  It can’t be too bad so
it can wait.  Use this time to plan your pass based on which ship you want to target.”

Across the bridge,
Hawk’s
weapons
officer announced, “Approaching five light-seconds shortly.”  He glanced at
Vernay standing over him and added, “At least our forward batteries show green.”

“It’s still a bad time to lose our screen,”
Vernay grumbled.

“Jack,” Heskan said, “can you shave time off
the regeneration routine?  Use every trick in your book.”

Truesworth looked questioningly at
Hawk’s
sensor officer.  The young woman quickly withdrew her hands from her console
and nodded frantic permission.  Truesworth grinned as he leaned in close.  “You
don’t have to just sit here,” he whispered.  “Why don’t you work on spoofing
their sensors?  Those ships can’t have that sophisticated of a targeting suite
and your average pirate officer is a lot more interested in his weapons than
the data that guides them.”  His fingers rapidly tapped commands to split the
controls of the console into twin hemispheres.  Controls for the advanced
integrated projection screen flared into existence on his side of the panel.

Ahead of Heskan, Lieutenant Selvaggio slapped
at the hand of the navigator.  “No!” she scolded in a quiet voice.  “Never
execute an opposing evasive maneuver when facing kinetic weapons.  Think about
it; if you duck to the right and then jink to the left… you’re just standing
still in the middle.”  She tapped at the ventral thruster controls.  “Use ninety-degree
evasive maneuvers.”

The seated officer nodded his head feverishly
and grappled with the thruster controls.  He quickly zeroed out the port
thrusters while simultaneously firing four thrusters located along
Hawk’s
keel.  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he gushed as he looked up to his raven-haired
mentor.  “I’ve never faced rail guns before and we’re usually trying so hard to
keep our best face toward the enemy that we don’t have much room for evasion.”

Selvaggio smiled supportively while resisting
the urge to correct the young navigator.  If
Hawk
were facing modern
rail guns instead of outdated coil guns, she would have been much more
concerned.  “You’re doing fine,” she murmured while tapping a finger near the
chart plotter.  “Now mind your heading; you’re going to get a course change
order very soon.”

Heskan’s eyes darted away from the muted
conversation in front of him and to a waving Vernay.  Her expression conveyed
impatience and great need.  Heskan nodded in understanding but brought a calming
hand up as if to say, “It’s coming.”

“Okay,” Covington said loudly.  “WEPS, target
Mirific and fire at will.  Helm, port turn, forty-five degrees.  I want both of
them to pass on our starboard side.  Keep our speed up.”  He immediately looked
toward Heskan for affirmation.

Heskan gave him the thumbs-up but said quietly,
“Keep planning your battle, Captain.  How will you know when to switch your
fire to the other pirate ship?”  As Covington pondered the question, the elder
captain ordered, “Jack, split screen.  Opticals of both pirate ships with
tactical in the middle.”

Covington smacked his forehead with a hand.  He
leaned close to Heskan and whispered, “Of course!  If I see her break apart, I
can switch fire.”  He grinned at the simple realization and added, “This isn’t
anything like we were taught at the
Sekhmet
Academy.  It’s completely free flow.”

To
Heskan’s left, the WEPS officer simply pressed the confirm button on his
weapons director console cluster.  Under Vernay’s guidance, he had worked ahead
and properly anticipated the most likely target for
Hawk’s
batteries.  The
electronic orders were sent to the twin dual GP turrets atop
Hawk
and
the quad mount along her starboard beam.  Given the weapons officer’s augury,
Hawk’s
gunners gained an extra four seconds to aim at their target.

The
Seshafian brig burst through the 5
ls
envelope as it narrowly evaded a second
score of coil gun rounds rushing past her at half the speed of light.  A
heartbeat later,
Mirific’s
maser struck
Hawk’s
partially
regenerated AIPS screen.  The protective barrier flared brightly as waves of
energy competed against each other for dominance.  The AIPS screen lost the
fight but shunted much of the maser’s destructive potential before expiring in
a crescendo of light.  The remaining bursts of energy gouged wicked scars
through the duralloy protecting the Number Six starboard thruster.  An eye
blink later, the thruster erupted outward in a shower of debris.

With
the threshold to light laser range breached, both sides opened up their
arsenals.  Twin spits of death stuttered from the coil gun barrels of
Salvage
One-One
.  Less than 2
ls
to her port side,
Mirific’s
maser
recycled and, once again, unleashed its doom.  The freighter had rotated
slightly, offering more of its starboard profile to her target in order to unmask
two additional, hidden B-pack laser mounts.

Hawk
responded with eight general
purpose laser shots, slaved in two-second intervals.  Under expert tutelage,
Covington had resisted the urge to fire at the pirate ship that had already struck
him.  Instead, he wisely decided to concentrate his fire on the ship that was
the greatest threat inside of five light-seconds, and to trust in his
helmsman’s elusiveness and sensorman’s ECM talents to neutralize the coil guns
of the second pirate ship.

A
pair of heartbeats after the first salvo,
Hawk’s
turrets belched again. 
Two seconds after that, they fired a third time.  Before the GP turrets could
recycle for a fourth salvo, the opening barrages touched their opponents.

Red
status indicators lit all along
Hawk’s
starboard beam on Covington’s arm
console even as Vernay leaned over the WEPS panel and dragged the salvage
vessel’s avatar toward the targeting queue.  “Switch over soon, L-T,” she guided
her charge.

The
young lieutenant looked up in confusion.  “Why?  We haven’t stopped the first
one yet?”

Vernay’s
eyebrows screwed together as she explained, “You really think that freighter’s
going to last past the twenty-four laser bursts you’ve already fired at it?” 
She glanced at the panel’s status and added with slightly more annoyance, “The
forty
bursts you’ve now fired at it?”

A
bright, ruby light flared into existence on the panel.  As the WEPS officer
absorbed the information, Vernay, acting on instinct, announced, “Starboard
quad has been hit, Captain.”

Heskan
opened his mouth to acknowledge but caught himself.  From his left, Covington
answered, “Yeah, we’re being hit all down our beam.”  Heskan watched
Covington’s hands tightening around his chair arm consoles in death grips.  “Get
ready to switch targets, WEPS,” Covington advised.  To his right,
Hawk’s
sensor officer was in near hysterics about how the AIPS screen was going to
burn itself out laboring under Truesworth’s new protocols.

Hawk
had endured nearly half a minute
of combat starting with the opening coil gun bombardment.  Throughout the
hectic maneuvering, the brig had closed to within 2.9
ls
of the enemy
before her port skid permitted the agile ship to skirt around the spinning pirate
ships.  During those moments, the third burst from
Hawk’s
quad GP turret
struck near the massive drive mounts attaching
Mirific’s
starboard CT-20
Allison drives to the main hull of the Q-ship.  The combined torque of the
drives and thrusters, rotating and accelerating to keep
Hawk
within view
of her weapons, stressed the compromised mounts past their shearing point. 
Twenty-seven seconds into the fight,
Mirific’s
starboard drive broke
loose and rotated a full thirty-two degrees outward and twenty-two degrees
upward.  The resultant stress tore the freighter apart from the stern.  Sixteen
additional laser bursts from
Hawk
were wasted on the dying ship, tallying
unnecessary damage to a doomed enemy.

Heskan
was about to advise Covington to switch targets when the right third of the
wall screen flared brightly.  Heskan’s eyes darted up to witness the final
death throes of the Q-ship.  He mouthed the words along with the sensorman’s
cry.  “ELTI Mirific.”

“Move
your fire to the salvage ship, WEPS!” Covington said triumphantly as he thrust
a fist into the air.  During the time it took
Hawk
to change her focus,
the remaining combatants reached their closest approach.

WEPS
scrambled to comply with the order.  “How did you know?” he asked his overseer.

“Experience,”
Vernay replied.  Her shoulders slumped in a morose admission.  “I killed my
share of civilian ships when I sat in that seat.”

The
confession drew a fleeting, horrified look from the seated officer but he wisely
remained silent.

“Captain,”
Hawk’s
operations officer announced, “we’ve got decompression events all
down our starboard side.  Worst of the damage is to our Number One quad mount
and Engineering says we’ve lost the starboard drive. The crew quarters also took
several hits.”  She glanced over her shoulder to Covington and added, “The core
is good for now but Lieutenant Casey recommends we strike our lights after this
pass.”

Seeing
the range to the salvage ship beginning to tick upward,
Hawk’s
weapons
officer exhaled and instructed his gunners to cease fire for the pass.  Vernay’s
jaw dropped.  “Keep firing!” she commanded tyrannically.

The
weapons officer’s face turned bright red while he quickly countermanded
himself, “Fire, fire, fire!”

The
time lost during the conflicting orders cost
Hawk
six laser bursts.  Had
the brig’s starboard quad turret been operational, the missed opportunities
would have more than doubled.  The result was to leave
Salvage One-One
damaged instead of crippled.  The final pirate’s own coil gunshots, seemingly
perfectly aimed, fell wide to port, victims of
Hawk’s
elusiveness and the
wall of ECM placed between herself and her opponent.