Penance (RN: Book 2) (24 page)

The pilot glanced at him, “Then we need to dock.”

Stavener stared, his mouth poised to ask something but for some reason unwilling to commit, “How long will that take?”

“Three minutes.” The pilot smiled teasingly, “Then we need to transfer the fluid to the gate drive.”

“I fucking hate you!”

The pilot grinned as he manipulated the comms controls. “There’s some chatter between the Bristol and Brunel,” he increased the volume -

Canthouse: Who’s in charge?

Guimar: Lieutenant Hewton.

Canthouse: Tom, you there?

Hewton: Yes, LC.

Canthouse: Tom, don’t wait for us. Fire up the motives and move the ship away as fast as you’re able. Tell the launch bays to prepare for unassisted landing as we’ll be coming in hard. And have the engineering crews ready with the refuelling lines.

Bristol: *unintelligible voices*

Hewton: LC, the bandits have split up with some smaller craft heading to the Jeremiah and the rest pursuing you with the lighter units advancing on your position. Can you go any faster?

Brunel: *low conversation*

Canthouse: The pilot says we’re on maximum burn, so we’ll just have to run for it. Send us your solution for keeping them off us and we’ll stick to it as best able. Be ready for us Tom.

Hewton: Aye, sir.

“What does he mean -
unpowered landing?”
Stavener asked.

“We normally dock automatically with the boats being pulled in by manipulators. This is what takes three minutes.”

“And unpowered is different?”

“Yes.” A wry grin formed on the pilot’s face as he knew what the follow up question would be.

Stavener picked up on the pilot’s teasing him, but had to ask even if he was going to dread the answer. “How?”

“We’ll be approaching at full speed with maximum braking at the last moment and entering the bay manually.” The pilot gave him a wry side glance, “It may get bumpy.”

“You mean we’ll be crashing into the ship?”

“Essentially.” A flashing light attracted the pilot’s attention and he flicked a switch to cancel it. He stared at the console display for several seconds before speaking into his microphone. “Brunel – Bayden-Powell, we’ve got closers coming from 290 with superior delta-vee.”

“We see them, Bayden,” the Brunel pilot responded.

“LC, request we commit to zero evasisves?”

Canthouse’s voice came over the comm, “Roger, Bayden. Kill the attractors and commit to a dry run as the Bristol has a solution, so don’t stray.”

“Roger.”

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Stavener asked his eyes widening in proportion to his mounting trepidation.

“It means …” The pilot flicked through a series of switches and keyed his mic, “Going ZG folks, so hold tight.” He reached to an overhead binnacle and reversed two stubby red levers and palmed them flat. “It means I’m killing the gravity rotor as it impedes our manoeuvrability, you may feel a little light headed.” He punched a large black knob on the forward console and Stavener felt light in his seat with every movement of the boat suddenly clear and jarringly sharp.

“It also means that the bandits are approaching faster than we can out run them, so the Bristol is lending a hand to keep them off our arse. Look -” The pilot pushed the control yolk to the left with the carbon scarred hull of the Bristol coming into view.

The gunboat’s elongated rugby ball hull looked impossibly distant with a thickening haze trailing from her three flaring engines as she crawled through a ponderous turn to starboard. Three bursts of white steam erupted from behind the stumpy sensor tower to arc over her rear, with the vaporous tendrils reaching toward them until the interceptor missiles flashed past at insane velocities.

A repetitive
beep beep beep
came from the instrument panel, “Here they come!” The pilot yanked back on the control yolk and the operations officer screamed as the boat suddenly arced up, spun to arc back the way it came, with the interceptor exhaust washing over their hull as the pilot commenced evading what pursued them.

Then Stavener saw them. Undulating streams of golden orange sparks that sprayed from behind and appeared to be seeking them out like someone chasing a cat with a water jet. It took him several seconds to realise they were heavy calibre rounds from the pursuing bandit ships, but when he did he almost screamed again.

The
beep beep
of incoming fire was constant now with the boat bucking and lurching as they spiralled, arced and jinked to avoid the pursuing fire and stay close to the path of the Bristol’s streaming missiles and blue white meteors spitting from her two functioning rear turrets.

“Those class twos are bloody quick!” The pilot turned a dial and then palmed it in. Balls of manmade sunlight lit up the smoking missile trails as streams of flares spat from the launch in an attempt to foil the pursuing missiles. Many of which spiralled on their approach to the lumbering Bristol, some to be detonated by the hunting streams of Phallanx fire, others to become mini-supernovas on finding her hull.

A heavy gravel
Tak
came from Stavener’s side of the ship when something struck the hull. The pilot grimaced, stabbing at switches as a Christmas tree of fault indicators lit up the console and more alarms blared.

The shuttle was shaking so hard that Stavener could barely see, and he wondered how in hell the pilot could make out where he was going when a dark form to their right caught his eye. The Brunel spun and danced through angel wings of ejected flares, and Stavener cried out when a flak round detonated on-top of the co-pilot’s window with the Brunel corkscrewing out of view.

The mine cart ride all became a little too much for the operations officer who felt as if he were on some form of hallucinogenic trip with alarms, flashing lights and stars bursting all around them as they spun down the rabbit hole. The twinkling form of the Bristol transformed into a plump maggot, with her podgy segmented body arching and stretching cartoonishly as she crawled further and further away with his every drawn out blink, and then things got a whole lot worse.

“ - so be ready!” The pilot cried as he fought with the controls to keep the boat within the solution.

Stavener stared at the distant gunship. He had been so far into his reverie that he had missed what the pilot had said, but he obviously needed to be ready for something. The operation’s officer’s face creased as he carefully composed a query that would get him the required information without his looking ignorant, “What?”

The pilot gave him a frustrated grimace, “We’re about to transition to the Bristol’s secondary solution.” The grimace melted away to be replaced by the same wry look as before, “It may get bumpy.”

Every one of the Bristol’s rear defence pods lit up with her hull disappearing behind a curtain of explosions that swallowed the launch like a fiery thunderhead as it transitioned into the secondary grenade solution.

Stavener curled into a ball, hands clasped over his ears and cries lost to the roaring hailstorm of shrapnel battering the hull as the launch shuddered and bucked as if caught in a rock slide. The hits were coming fast now and he lost count of the spider web cracks in the armoured front screen, but then they were through with the Hadian curtain terminating as abruptly as it had started.

Stavener pumped his fist and whooped for joy on seeing the rear quarter of the Bristol filling the view forward as they headed toward an open section of the hull.

His smile faded, however, as they approached and kept approaching with no cessation of velocity toward a hole that appeared far too small for the launch. He shook his head, his eyes terror wide, sweating hands pushing him deeper into the seat as the shrinking gap in the side of the gunboat approached at a suicidal rate, and then the pilot yelled, “BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!”

A volcano erupted in front of them as the braking motors fired and Stavener felt like a doll being shaken by a mad baby as he was thrown against the restraints, arms and head projecting forward zombie like, and then,
thunk!
They were in. With the starlight cut off by the descending veil of the launch bay door.

Stavener sat panting, tears streaming down his corpse white face from the realisation that he was still alive. He looked to the pilot who was already unrestrained, both hands clicking through the dozens of system switches as the fuel pumps whined down.

The operations officer never considered himself a stupid man, as with his understanding of complex multi-spectral systems and computer operations he was a cut above the normal operations staff, and way smarter than most anyone he knew to the point of contempt. He was just more capable at pretty much everything he did. Nevertheless, this man,
this
jockey
– he glanced awestruck at the pilot who had the unruffled workaday countenance of a street sweeper, and who raised his eye brows in an
are you ok
gesture; Stavener nodded in return. This man who had just piloted this glorified furniture truck through a closing dragon’s mouth to escape the seven fiery hells, possessed skills he could never hope to have and must be one of the most capable men he had ever met.

The pilot picked at his teeth as he said, “You scream like a pansy.”

Stavener sniggered as his head flopped against the seat back, his eyes closed and chest heaving from pure relief. After a few long seconds he said, “I fuc –“

“Let me guess,” the pilot said, a huge grin cutting his face as he removed his helmet, “You fucking hate me?”

***

“Where we at, Tom?” Canthouse called as he jogged onto the bridge, his sling flopping loose and a blood stained gauze pad held to the left side of his head from where powdered glass had peppered his face.

“I set a course directly away and we’re on the limiters, but she’s crawling. The secondary’s are keeping the majority of their missiles at bay, which are all old stuff for the most part. I think their keeping their class fives back until they’ve picked away our close in defences.”

“Tactical?”

Hewton glanced to the tactical presentation on the screen. “Twenty three ships, half of them light raiders, several frigate sized and this thing.” Hewton tapped a series of controls on the arm of the command chair.

The largest contact magnified to show an armoured atrocity that was more weapon than hull.

“What the hell is that!” Canthouse cried on seeing it in greater detail.

“Operations, repeat to the LC what you told me.” Hewton said.

Guimar’s fingers rapped over the keyboard with a data cell appearing next to the bandit profile. “Tactical sensors report the contact as –“

“It’s the god damn Queen Victoria!” Canthouse cried taking a step forward with his eyes widening in astonishment. “How the hell did they get her? She was supposed to have been scrapped more than fifteen years ago.” He shook his head in slow wonder as he gazed at the antique battleship.

The Queen Victoria was a relic from the RNO’s first steps into projected interstellar might when the fledgling EDP anticipated more of an alien threat than existed. Superbly armoured, but over gunned and under powered she was decommissioned after a short and horribly expensive tour of duty.

For the first time in his RNO career, Canthouse felt genuine fear from another star ship. A onetime encounter with a Russian, Peshchera Nonstr - class battleship during manoeuvres had caused butterflies, but this thing positively throttled his stomach. “My God!” He turned to Guimar, “Is she active?”

“No, Lieutenant-commander, she has no internal power, her engines are dead and she is under tow by the four larger enemy vessels. Two of which are providing power via umbilicals.”

“She has no functioning motives, but we suspect one or two of her main turrets are active,” Hewton’s pale countenance reflected his worry.

Canthouse picked up on his concern but had no real idea as to the threat, “What can she do to us?”

“We use rail drivers in our turrets. She uses torial drivers. The same things that shift our fourteen thousand tonnes at point nine. Imagine what they could do to a two tone projectile! Even with the shields we couldn’t withstand a direct hit. Without them, we’ve no chance.” He slowly shook his head in bleak conclusion. “We need to leave.”

Canthouse bit his upper lip as he glanced at the screen, “Navigation! Distance to nearest gate point?”

“We’re experiencing severe interference from the charging FTL, sir, and the variables keep shifting. Distance to nearest viable gate point is currently 3200 kliks, but this could change any second.”

The first officer evaluated curves, masses and accelerations as he watched the constantly shifting tactical display, but the variables were too much for his frazzled mind. “How long will that take us?”

“On our present curve, time to gate point is fourteen minutes.”

“Fourteen minutes, Christ! It may as well be a week.” He turned to Hewton, “Tom, their filling the gate capacitors this minute, but- “ Suddenly the lights dimmed and the officers were almost thrown to the floor when the Bristol staggered from the force of something striking her hull. The shattering
ha-roo ha-roo
of the calamity alarm filled the command deck.