Penance (RN: Book 2) (27 page)

“We don’t have time for this bullshit!” Stavener said from behind her, and Guimar cried out as she crumpled to the floor from his kidney punch.

With his instant decision making clouded by the schadenfreude he felt at Guimar’s punishment, the first officer was slow in registering that one of his people had just assaulted another in front of the command crew during a time of urgency. He greatly resented any disrespect for the service and even though that bitch had it coming, the bridge of a warship fleeing destruction had to be the worst place for demonstrations of divine retribution. What Stavener did was unacceptable at any level and he needed to step in before things escalated out of control.

But just what the hell was wrong with this ship and crew anyhow? The mission had started smooth enough, but for some reason had degenerated into a farcical parody of everything that could go wrong, going wrong. With the crew morphing into the absurd caricatures of RN officers found in anti-RN propaganda. Maybe Avery was right. Perhaps they had gone to hell.

It was this unfathomable reasoning that added the venom to first officer’s intervention and saw him jump from his seat as if from a scalding bath.

“You there!” Canthouse bellowed an accusing finger aimed at Stavener who had sat down at the operations console. “Mr Stavener, cease what you’re doing as you are relieved. Mr Raulin, contact Mr Callows to place this man under arrest, immediately!”

“Aye, sir.” The young and wholly confused enviromentals officer said as he worked his console.

Ignoring the approaching first officer, Stavener worked like a man possessed.

Canthouse continued his predatory advance, “Mr Stavener, I said cease what you’re doing and step away from the console.”

The operations officer paid no attention as he tapped, typed and swiped, his fingers a blur as he reconfigured the sensor feed.

Unused to his direct orders not just being ignored but his very presence wholly unacknowledged; Canthouse paused in his step, “Stavener! Stop what you’re doing and move away from the console.
Now!
This can end here, so don’t make it any worse.” The man again failed to respond. “I said –“ Canthouse moved to grab Stavener by the shoulder and manhandle him away, only for his grasping hand to be somehow twisted and he performed a slow judo roll to end up facing the wall.

Unhurt but spitting from indignation, the first officer jumped upright and advanced on Stavener who stood leaning over the console still working.

“Assaulting an officer; I’ll break you for this. I’ll see you rot in
Vietstol
for the rest of your miserable life.” Canthouse spat as he positioned himself to rugby tackle the operations officer who had raised a halting hand. “Weps, con; if you could assist Guimar. Raulin. If you could aid me in securing this man.” He indicated where the anxious Raulin should position himself with a directing finger as Honus and O’Dean dragged the flaccid moaning Guimar from the area.

Stavener glanced between the display and first officer as he continued to work with one hand, “LC,
please!
Just let me finish configuring this and then you can shoot me. If I don’t we’re all dead anyway.”

“Too bloody late for that, old sport!” Canthouse’s eyes were spitting sparks as he dove at Stavener, his scything arms aimed at the other man’s waist in an attempt to bring him down. But Stavener somehow spun and Canthouse found himself flipped onto his back and sliding across the operations station to land at the base of the navigation console.

The first officer recovered just in time to see Stavener expertly deflect Raulin’s hands and subdue him via a finger jab to his sternum. The enviromentals officer choked, his eyes fish like and tongue protruding as he dropped to his knees whilst clawing at his throat with both hands. Stavener then backed away, his hands raised in surrender as he starred at the yellow tipped barrel of the approaching Callows’ stun pistol.

“Can I be of some assistance, LC.” Callows approached the scene warily, his left hand cupping his right wrist with the bright red dot of the sighting laser trained on Stavener’s chest.

Canthouse panted as he drew a shirt sleeve across his sweating face. The exertion had aggravated his glass peppered left cheek so sweat mingled with the beading blood and it stung like hell.

“Place Mr Stavener under arrest for the assault of operations officer Guimar, and place further charges for resisting arrest and assaulting the ships commanding officer.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Stavener wore the clown like grin of a person perpetually amused by troubling incidents as he glanced between the two men.

“I suggest you secure his hands as he appears quite adept at avoiding detention,” Canthouse said.

Callows took a cautious step forward, “OK, son, let’s not have any problems now. Just turn around, drop to your knees and clasp your hands behind your back.”

Stavener took a step back, his hands lowering and grin eroding as he realised the gravity of the situation. He glanced at Canthouse, “You’re serious? We’re blind with twenty ships trying to kill us and you want to arrest me for restoring the sensors?”

“It’s not what you did, it’s how you did it.”

“But that stupid bitch was going to get us killed! And so are you if you don’t let me finish restoring the data link.”

“Mr Callows remove this man from the bridge. now!” Canthouse cried without breaking eye contact with Stavener.

Callows’ short wiry frame adopted a lowered stance, his countenance one of stone cold severity as he gazed directly along his arm to the tip of the weapon where an amber light flashed. “Don’t let’s piss about now boy. This thing’ll drop you like a sack of sand. On your knees!”

“Look, just let me press those two buttons and I’ll go with you,” Stavener gestured to the console with his left hand.

“Don’t you touch a bloody thing!” Canthouse snarled.

Stavener’s stopped his slow backward step to stand with his feet slightly apart, his hands flared at waste level and frame stiff, defensive. His grin returned as he side glanced at Canthouse, “You’re just pissed that I kicked your arse.”

“
Mr Callows!”

Callows finger found the trigger.

Har-oo, ha-roo, ha-roo.

“What the hell is it now!” The first officer cried glancing toward the blank main screen.

“That’ll be the twenty ships that are trying to kill us,” said Stavener.

“You mean we have sensors?”

“Yes.”

“But the displays are blank!” The first officer said looking over the nav and tactical consoles.

“That’s because you won’t let me finish configuring the data feed.” Stavener tilted his head ironically.

“Well, what are you waiting for man!” Canthouse jabbed a finger at the operations console. He then shook his head at Callows who holstered his weapon as he drew back.

Stavener worked the console in a flurry of action with the tactical display returning to the main screen. “Done!”

“I have navigational control,” O’Dean cried.

“Same here, tactical is back,” Honus said.

“Oh, Christ!” Canthouse cried on evaluating the tactical display.

The brigand armada he feared to be within spitting distance was nowhere near. Instead the enemy ships were scattered about the area with those that were able showing a power spike as their magnetic augers chewed at the local space fabric in a desperate attempt to flee the area as quickly as possible. Two of the four frigates towing the Queen Victoria were gone, with the two having provided power now attempting to cut their umbilicals and initiate their gate engines as they too tried to escape. One of the frigates severed the tow line in a blaze of rear weapons fire, with its power output spiking as it manoeuvred away from the dreadnaught to simply disappear through a burning red oval. Its sister ship struggled to gain main power and attempted to break the tow line by brute force, accelerating away only for the umbilical to stop it dead like a dog finding the limit of its chain. After several failed attempts the ship suddenly lost all power and was swatted aside by the advancing dreadnaught, to be dragged behind like a rat with its tail caught between the teeth of an alligator.

Ships were fleeing all over with those unable to gate out bleeding their fuel tanks dry as they ran as fast their conventional engines would take them. The seemingly desperate flight confused Canthouse, who could only presume some anomaly with the Queen Victoria presented a danger so universal even the furthest vessel overdrove its engines as they sought to escape the area. It wasn’t until the Bristol had advanced a little more that the real problem presented itself. A fluttering brilliance he believed to be a local star obscured by the exhaust haze of the Bristol, slowly resolved into the Chinese FTL drive that flared and blazed like a Roman candle knocked to the ground.

Hewton’s explanation on detonating the FTL drive had kept more to instruction than result, but he did make one thing clear: Once the sparks came the clock had stopped and they really needed to be somewhere else.

The bandits too had known what would happen if the FTL drive was set to charge without being fired, and had made disabling it a priority on their return. Unfortunately, the Queen Victoria had been a pig to drag to the area, which delayed their arrival, and even though they had destroyed the reactors at the first opportunity they were too late.

The first signs of runaway reaction had occurred mere minutes after cutting the power, with the initial emissions being little more than the flint spark from a spluttering firework, but it soon accelerated to become a retina searing fountain that jetted more than its own length as the thorium core accelerated toward its inevitable conclusion.

***

Despite his years of training, Canthouse experienced the fleeting paralysis of immediate and unexpected danger, the soul draining moment experienced on hearing the click of a gun behind you: of a squatting camper hearing the electric buzz of an unseen rattlesnake. He considered this burning thing would be the most powerful man made eruption in history, but he was wrong. The single most intense releasing of energy caused by man would occur moments after the core exploded and it would have direct influence on his future. Even so, the core detonation would buckle space time, atomise anything within ten thousand kilometres, drop any living thing within a lunar orbit and kill hardened systems at four times that, so what the hell was he doing just staring at it!

A glance at the cycling tactical display broke his shock induced dawdling, and in less than a second the first officer had formed a plan. He reasoned the enemy posed no immediate threat, thus they no longer needed the weapons, that they should remove the caps on the sub-light engines, engage the chemical engines, cut power to all nonessential systems and route as much energy to the shields as possible.

“Stavener: confirm what I’m looking at.”

The operations officer who was deep in a three way conversation with the con and tactical officers looked up at him, “Confirm what? Confirm that we’re looking at the end of times? We need to leave, now! Right now. Must leave now!”

“How long have we got?”

“We should be dead already.”

“Distance to gate point?”

The navigator looked ecstatic when he turned to face the first officer with a smile so wide the gaps from his missing molars were visible. “Sir! Gate point at eleven hundred kliks and looking stable.”

Canthouse gave him a curious look, “Eleven hundred. Why so close?”

“It’s the FTL drive, LC. When it stopped charging the local flux cleared up. There’s still some contamination, but we can leave!”

“Let’s see if we can get there first. Has engineering removed the caps?”

“No, sir, not yet.”

“Set a course and engage the chemical engines. Give her everything, Mr Dean. I want the old girl lifting her petty coats.”

Canthouse moved to the command chair and pressed the comm link. “Engineering.” The unfortunate delay and conversation from the last time he contacted engineering weighed on his mind, and he was dreading a repeat event when –

“Engineering, Penton.”

“Penton, we’ve got an atomic the size of
Formidable
about to swallow us and I need all the speed you can give us. I’ve ordered the chemicals engaged and need the sub-light caps removed immediately.”

“Aye, sir. But removing the caps will do nothing as the sub-light motives are cooked and we’re just boiling copper, so I’ll need to take them off line. But if I overdrive the feed pumps to the chemical motors, that should give us a bit more go, but her fuel consumption’ll be for shit.”

“Do anything you can to make us go faster. All damages acceptable. What about shields?”

Penton huffed as he considered, “The mains are still offline, but if we shut everything down and redirect the support turbine and chemical alternators, I can give you one, maybe two banding generators. But that won’t even cover engineering.”

“Something is better than nothing, so do it. Take power from anywhere you need, including life support.”

“Aye.”

***

Aboard the stricken frigate, a bandit engineer stepped over the twined mass of hastily reconfigured cables to close a heavy knife switch in a desperate attempt at jump starting their reactors from the Victoria’s batteries. The dreadnaught’s AI sensed the energy drain as an attack on finite resources and immediately closed the power tap. With the frigate’s data feed reduced to white noise by the closed tap and with no ability of its own to scan local space, the relic defaulted to- defend at all costs: kill what can be killed. The AI revaluated its last telemetry as it searched for one last solution in which to commit its remaining might, but decided it needed more information. It reopened the power tap and connected directly to the frigate’s sensor feeds to learn all it could of its fleeing enemy.