Penance (RN: Book 2) (15 page)

The young Indian man’s normally deep moca skin flashed anaemic from being the direct subject of both senior officers attention. He managed a humble, ‘Yes, sirs’ before returning to his attention to his console.

***

Soon there was only one combat ship left. With two of its reversing engines destroyed the heavy sled spun lazily on its long axis due to unequal torque, but even crippled it still had enough thrust to outrun the sluggish Bristol.

“The main batteries don’t appear to be slowing her down.”, Canthouse said as he watched the constant stream of blue-white shot disappearing towards the heavy marauder, and the barely visible yellow splotches of the impacts. He considered lowering the shields to fire the VLS anti-ship missiles, but said, “LAW: status?”

“Capacitors tapped out, Lieutenant-Commander. Full capability on your order,” Honus replied.

Canthouse resisted the urge to look to Denz for confirmation on his choice of the LAW, and bit the bullet. “Let’s hope she doesn’t move out of the way this time. Mr Honus, cease the main batteries, target the sled with the long axis weapon and fire when able.”

The stream of battery fire stopped to b replaced by a beam of liquid sun that lanced out and faded away. The bridge was religiously quiet as all present stared at the main screen expectantly.

Nothing appeared to happen for the first instant with the image of the distant sled unchanged, until a yellow bloom appeared on the upper hull, to be followed by a larger detonation that engulfed the entire vessel.

Cheers of triumph lit the bridge as the crew whooped and pumped fists in celebration of the LAW’s success. Canthouse’s cheeks ballooned as he released the breath he held since the LAW fired. He turned to Denz who smiled and nodded before becoming business again. He permitted the crew their celebrations for a short minute before saying, “Operations, project current sensor readings onto the main screen.”

Stavener worked quickly and a plan view of the local area appeared on the screen, with the Bristol in the center and the debris scattered all about them represented by blue dots. Several large red icons marked the position of the abandoned ships and the FTL drive. Two smaller red dots hovered at the extreme upper periphery of the display and Stavener highlighted them.

“What are they Mr Stavener?” asked Denz.

“The two ships that fled before the battle, Commander. I’m receiving a continual active sensor signal. It appears they’re monitoring our actions.”

The two icons magnified on the screen but due to the distance they appeared as little more than static filled outlines of irregular shaped hulls. Canthouse noticed the strength of the probing sensor signal, which was quite high given the distance. “That’s quite a strong sensor signal. How far away are they?”

“Almost two million kilometres,” Stavener said.

“Weps, could the LAW reach them?”

“Too much dispersion to do little more than warm their beer at that distance sir.”

Canthouse stared pensively for a moment, “Can they see us clearly? Could they say, see us opening the VLS launch doors?”

“Easily,” Stavener gave Canthouse a curious look over the top of his display.

“What’s the time delay between us and them?” The first officer turned to face Denz who also considered him curiously, then nodded as he realised his XO’s plan.

“About six and a half seconds.”

“Weps, illuminate the ships with the targeting sensors and open the VLS doors,” Canthouse looked at the clock at the top of the display. Twenty six seconds later the two icons twitched and broke away to disappear from the main display as they gated from the area.

The crew laughed and clapped to Canthouse who smiled.

“Very good,” Dens said, his business tone returning as he lifted himself from the command chair. “Gentlemen, we need to finish our business here. There may be survivors aboard those abandoned vessels and amongst the wreckage who need our assistance. XO, pick your men and take the launches to investigate those ships and wreckage for survivors.”

“Aye, commander,”

Denz turned to the operations officer, “Where’s Lieutenant Avery?”

“Lieutenant Avery is on deck D reforming the search party to find our missing crewmen.”

“Good, but inform him to leave his people to it and initiate a ship wide damage assessment immediately. And send a brief to Trent quarter station stating our position and condition. Say we are still gate capable with a full report is to follow shortly. Time to message arrival?”

“Seventy six hours, Commander.”

“Hmmm,” Denz said as he considered the image on the main screen.

He returned to his chair and used the controls to manipulate the display to zoom in on the abandoned FTL drive. Being so much closer the image revealed the power lines and transparent tubular walkways that ran between the FTL unit and the closely parked cruise liner and freighter, so it was true that the bandits were using the liner to power the jump drive. He gazed in wonder at how the reworking of apparently incompatible objects proved even the most discarded of society were capable of a level of inventiveness that continually amazed.

Both the liner and the FTL drive carried some inherent material value with the liner possessing one, possibly two low power reactors. But only the desperately ingenious would have thought of using them to charge the FTL drive and to use as a weapon to cripple and salvage ships over fantastic distances, with virtually no possibility of detection. Someone was seriously for the chop when someone informed the marauder leader that all their months of hard work and god knows what in resources had been blown because someone chose the wrong ship to pick on. If they’d just let the Bristol slip on by their operation may have remained undetected for years, with the EDP scratching its head in frustration at all the missing ships and no idea where to start looking.

He tapped the arm of his chair as he thought. The liner may be salvageable if the hull were intact, but the FTL drive unit would have to be destroyed to prevent a repeat use. He would use the LAW to see what effect it would have on such a large chunk of copper. If anything, trying to destroy such a large solid target would provide valuable data on the LAW’s effectiveness.

Two green dots separated from the silhouette of the Bristol as the launches departed with one headed toward the main battle area and the other the cruise liner. Hopefully, some survivors would be found, possibly even the governor, who had most certainly been taken for ransom. It served the old fool right for dealing with the barrel scrapings of society. No doubt he would blame the navy for failing to protect him, but let’s see how that held up in a review.

His personal comm unit beeped with a priority message from lieutenant Avery: he needed to speak to him regarding a problem in engineering. The commander composed a response saying he would meet him in engineering in a few minutes and sent it. Denz stood and informed operations of his intentions and left the bridge. He’d speak with Avery and then make a start on his after action report,

Denz sucked his top lip as he considered seeking out Cummings enroute and asking her to help with his report: in his cabin. She could help with the more …personal …entries.

Two of them had taken her. Two men she saw nothing of except for the faint blue glow from where the light leaked beneath night vision goggles. They never bound her, there was no need. The first back handed slap had struck like a mallet, dislocating her jaw and sending her to the floor. The vice like fingers found her throat, with other hands pulling and ripping. She fought, but they were too strong, too heavy, one of them straddled her writhing legs and fists pummelled the resistance from her.

They took turns. The first: big powerful, her body arching off of the floor with every thrust. Her soul tearing screams from the searing fire of dry entry blocked by a cloth forced between shattered teeth. The second: heavy, sweating, less certain of his actions, struggling to find her as the other encouraged.

They invaded everywhere. Flipping her over, two at once. Her tongue a scrap of meat and her moans stopped, the only sound the knocking of her limp form on cold metal.

She no longer felt the needles but the drugs heightened everything.

They laughed as they experimented and inserted. What entered her was cold, inhuman and felt as if it were splitting her in half. Hands moved over her, finding her head, holding it still as they cut as they chiselled as they chopped, and she knew and she felt and she screamed inside.

Denz stood in the berthing bay watching the unloading of the launch with a cold light in his eye. He had just come from a meeting with the chief engineer and the news from engineering was not good. The stress placed on the sub-light engines during the battle had essentially boiled away the remaining insulation on three of the engines, with the primary coil of number one now a useless fusion of copper alloy. The ship had been reduced to three engines not one of which could operate over forty percent, and with number four reduced to fifteen.

When asked how the engines of such a modern ship could overheat and fail so readily, the chief engineer wore something of a clueless look and scratched his head as he muttered about the her being an experimental vessel and the quality of materials in her construction. About how he had complained to the costs and appropriation people that what they were installing wasn’t fit for a salvage scow, but no one had listened.

With the near loss of her sub-light engines the Bristol had essentially been stripped of any meaningful low speed manoeuvrability. They still had the chemical engines, but their limited fuel burned quickly, and for battles such as the one they experienced their meagre thrust made them next to useless. All this meant things may not fare so well if they were to encounter further bandit activity.

Denz tried to put the thought of such instances from his mind as it was pointless worrying about them. With any luck it would take the bandits some time and pluck before they returned to investigate their handiwork. By which time there’d be nothing of use left for them and the Bristol would be long gone. Moreover, he had substantial problems of a more local nature. The meeting in engineering had taken so long that he had had no time to make a start on his report to the commanding officer at Trent quarter station. A report that would contain more than performance and damage assessments. A report that would need to mention certain deficits in the crew, four of whom were still missing with biting indictments against several more, including both his first and second officers.

It was with a certain ambivalence that Denz considered his first officer’s failing in loading the rear revolving magazines with the correct compliment of weapons. If he’d discovered the error during a routine inspection of the weapons bay, he could have quietly swept it under the rug with nothing but the official private censoring. But to have it discovered during the heat of battle in front of the bridge crew was ...was. Denz shook his head as a he considered an action that could break a man he so respected, and in whom he held complete and unequivocal faith in duty.

Yet maybe this was the problem. Maybe he had placed too much ability, too much perfection as a first officer on a man he knew little of before serving with him. Denz felt a pang of disappointment, but he was unsure if it was for the failings of his first officer, or for his own failings in the ability to judge his crew. Maybe this is what led to this feeling of trust assassination and the surely absurd notion that he needed to do everything himself.

Yet maybe he was over thinking it.

Anyway, it was not his decision to make. If he were purposely outside the rim, light years from the nearest base it would be his problem, but being able to return to a quarter station at will all he had to do was report it and leave final consideration to the duty admiral of Trent station whose name had slipped his mind.

That’s if they were able to make it that far in their current condition. The chief engineer appeared satisfied that the gate engines could get them to Trent, but his own paranoid convictions concerning the ability of the Bristol’s gate drive to operate whilst damaged, had him considering a call to Exeter base on the way to conduct some immediate repairs. Unfortunately, Exeter was little more than a repurposed freighter hull operating as an outpost to fill a gap in the rim area, with a gate wearied commander of equal rank to his own and no real facilities. He just hoped what facilities they did have would suffice to get them to Trent, which was home to the rim-paq squadron and the place where the real facilities where to be found.

Yet, he was distracting himself from his concerns in regards to his officers. Canthouse was not the only man causing him unease at that moment. Even the normally rock steady Avery was acting suspicious. He had known the second officer since before his original commission to the Bristol and Avery was a lowly Leading Hand. They’d kept in touch after his being confined to a desk for ten months, and he had sought Avery out as a possible executive officer on being given the Bristol for a second time. Avery could have easily qualified as his XO, but was pushed to second place when favour saw Canthouse made first officer, something that never appeared to rancour Avery in the least.

Avery appeared to be the cinematic ideal of a stereotypical English officer in being cool, calm and collected under even the most trying of circumstances. Something Denz had to agree with as arriving on the bridge with battle klaxons blaring to see Avery stood between the two forward control chairs, his frame stiff, arms clasped behind his back and his steely gaze on the screen as he calmly issued orders, reduced the entire bridge crew’s anxiety no matter the emergency. So it was with grave disappointment that he witnessed the same man acting like a fidgety first year cadet during the visit to the engine room.

The second officer had been distracted; rubbing his neck and interlocking his fingers as he paced nervously, gripping the guard rail and looking about the engineering spaces as if trying to locate someone. Avery had responded to direct questions in the vague shiftless manner of a user awaiting his fix, never once making eye contact with either of them with his responses trailing away so he stood in silence peering into the main engine bay. When questioned about his unfocused behaviour Avery had stated he was concerned in regards to the where abouts of the missing crew members. And though Denz never believed him, he needed his officers were they where, at least until they’d left the area and the current crisis was over.

The final crew members descended from the launch, with one glancing behind him as he reversed down the ramp with the last of six large black canvas bags stretched between him and a crew mate, which they loaded onto a freight dolly. Canthouse was reviewing his tablet when he appeared at the door of the launch that had visited the liner. He looked pale and exhausted as he glanced about the docking bay, and Denz wondered when was the last time his first officer had gotten some decent sleep. Canthouse grimaced, shaking his head in dismal confirmation on making eye contact with his commander: no survivors. That meant both search and rescue crews had drawn a blank.

Denz moved across to the launch. “Status, Malcolm,” he asked in a solemn tone.

“Six recoverable bodies, sir. There were more but after god knows what those bastards did to them, as we’d need a week and a shovel to bring them all back. And the condition of the women …” The first officer’s look became gaunt as he shook his head.

Denz’s imagination strayed to the condition of bodies that that required a shovel to return them and he checked himself, “The governor?”

“That’s him there,” Canthouse indicated the last bag on the trolley. “The last to die with a single shot to the chest.”

Denz followed the pointing finger to where the dolly waited for the freight lift, “I’m surprised they killed him as he was a good bargaining chip to have.”

“I don’t believe they intended to as we found his body by the airlock. I think they were taking him along but he put up a fight at the last moment thinking rescue was near. They didn’t want his making problems at that moment so they shot him.”

“The others?”

“One was Martins, the adjutant. We couldn’t locate all of him. The rest; all civilians. Probably high society types from the liner being held for ransom, and all shot just before they left.”

Canthouse came from an influential family and Denz resisted the urge to ask if he knew any of them, which he’d probably deny even if he did. “What’s the condition of the liner? Is she salvageable?”

“No, she’s completely stripped. Right down to the internal bracings and much of the rear hull plating. They left just enough framing to support the reactors. It’s literally a metal envelope that will collapse with even the slightest attempt at moving her.”

“Well, that’s one less problem,” Denz said rasping his chin. “But we’ll put a few rounds through the reactors just to be sure they can’t be used again.”

“One piece of good news, sir. I found this when looking around their control area.” Canthouse passed his tablet to Denz. The screen held the image of something resembling a gas camping light.

Denz flipped the screen on its side only for to chuff in frustration when the picture rotated to its original position. “Now what could they possibly want with that?”