Battleship Destroyer (102 page)

The ship and everyone
aboard it was dead. They just did not know it yet even if he did. He had killed everyone that was depending on him.

He could not let that happen.

In a fraction of a second he realized they had one chance and only one chance to survive and he had no idea if it would even work but he had no choice. "Number One, sound collision alarms.” The wall continued to rush up at them. Tapping the comm he took a deep breath as the elephant continued to sit on his chest.

"Chief: I need you to detune the damn
engines. I need them to fan out with them throwing as much ionized mass out as possible to dig us a hole in a wall we are about to hit and then tap off as much power as the stern shields will take from the engine fusion heads. Add that change to the trigger on my stick so I can activate it just before we enter the cloud. We use the engines to cut us a hole through the cloud Chief or we die."

The Lieutenant Commander
instead of the Chief had popped up on the screen as soon as he had tapped the comm. "What the hell Captain I don't understand."

The
Ensign came on. "I think we can do it by reprograming the pinch coil controls at the end of the engines and reattaching the original head coils for ionizing the reaction mass we are not using any more.   The Second Officer joined in going over the details of what was needed as Jack concentrated on keeping them away  from the cloud as long as possible.

The ship slid
toward the cloud at almost a hundred times the speed of light as the bend came around to meet them. "Come on guys we are running out of time here."

The bend in reality was only a couple of degrees over millions of miles of trench but at a hundred times the speed of light it looked as sharp as a 90 degree Carpenters Square to everyone on the bridge.
It was called relativity.

"Working on it Captain, just another few seconds. I am not sure it will even work sir." The Lieutenant Commander said as his hands flew over his screens. He had a similar arrangement as Jack had used designing the engines a few weeks before. "Now that is a possibility."  As one of his screens suddenly blanked out to
be replaced by something else.

The Ensign over at the Science console suddenly said. "Yes that is it
, you have it. Now add the fusion head tap."

Then Jack was simply out of time as cloud filled his screens and the ship
’s hull started heating up from gas particles impacted, shaking the ship. "Hitting his trigger the engines suddenly changed sound losing half of their power as their pencil thin streams blossomed out to form solid cones arching down away from the ship. The two engine cones combining forces to make sure nothing bigger than an atom survived going through their cones forming a flattened bubble of burning vaporized dust and rock particles to add to the gas atoms already there as the heavily reinforced shields pushed the massively ionized atoms out around the ship creating a tube for the ship to run through. Though an occasional wisp of atoms made it through making the ship buck as the hull and fins on one side or the other flashed briefly bright.

Jack
stared at the screens for a good minute as the ship punched its way through the cloud leaving a tube behind them. Checking the bow sensors he could see the tube behind them. Ball lightning flamed across the tube following them as the heavily charged particles tried to release their charges. Taking another deep breath without the Elephant on his chest.  "Casualty report."

"No fatalities reported sir.
But many injuries all over the ship sir. It is going to take a while to sort things out as well as take care of the wounded sir."

"Ya that is to be expected. Even in The Game it took time." Jack continued to watch the screen a
s he checked the ship making minor adjustments to the ship going through the cloud creating the tube. Finally relaxing he looked up at the navigation plot screen and realized they were heading in the worst possible direction. They were going to come back out into the main trench only a few light minutes from Targets Alpha and Echo.

Jack started tapping the controls
getting frustrated after a few seconds. "Damn I don’t seem able to turn this beast even when I get the ship close to the tube's wall. Have to work on that." Turning to the Co-pilot. "You have the helm for a few seconds. Just keep the ship centered in the tube." Getting out of the chair. "You can take the helm if you please Number One."  The First Officer hesitated. His eyes growing big as he stared at Jack while shaking his head no but finally he changed seats. "They can't miss us when we come out right next to them headed straight for them. We will have to use power to straighten our course down the trench. Any ideas what to do? We have about 3 minutes."

Jack walked around the bridge stretching his legs and arms. Stopping next to the Ensign he squeezed her shoulder. "Thought we were gon
ers for a few seconds there." Patting her arm he turned and walked over to the Command Chair. He wanted to run around the bridge to get rid of all the energy that was suddenly streaming through his veins but knew better as he sat down in the Command chair. "I am still not coming up with anything people. Does anyone have any ideas at all?" Jumping up and walking around the front of the bridge. "I am still back in that tunnel. I still can't believe it worked. Do you know how many reasons why that should not have worked?" He walked back up the other side of the bridge to the Ensign and squeezed her shoulder again. "Hell; if I knew it was that easy I would have just bore our way back up to the other trench instead of coming over here just to get our assess shot off."

Back in the Command Chair he tapped the comm to Engineering. As the Lieutenant Commander Came back on the screen. "
Lieutenant, where is the Engineering Chief?"

"Ah,
he is working on the engine sir. Do you want me to try sending someone up to get him? We are kind of busy right now though sir."

“
No.” Jack looked down at his name plate and did a double take. “Now tell me that is a joke Lieutenant. Your real name is Scott?"

The Commander looked down at the name plate on his chest as he fingered it up to read
upside down. "Well that is what it says sir. Must be true." He said with a worn smile.

"Very well then Mr. Scott. I will let you get back to work
. Oh and damn good Job Lieutenant. You all saved the ship."

"Thank
you sir but I really don't think it was…"

"Enough Lieutenant
. We are headed straight for a couple of Spider Battleships and we both have work to do. Captain out." Jack took another deep breath. "Tactical, how is our little trap doing back at the hulks?"

"Sorry Captain but with the Ionized bubble around us and inside this cloud we are not getting any sensors or comms sir. The fusion core could detonate while we are in here and we would never know about it."

"Ah that is not quite true Captain." The Ensign said from the science/sensor station. We would be able to read a spike in neutron radiation and a few other particles if a core fusions off sir. We have not seen such a spike yet."

The Tactical lieutenant looked over at the Ensign. Not happy with getting interrupted. "
Bad news sir. Just before we entered the cloud, 3 of the first enemy squadron ships changed their course to intercept the slow transport squadron sir."

Jack shook his head.
"Weapons, how are the repairs on the guns going. We may need them rather soon. I think we are going to have to come out shooting everything we have including our long range missiles. I wish we had saved a few torpedoes now but we used what we could."

"
Ah sir, we did not want to bother you but the aliens are helping the Gun Chief repair the gun tubes a, all the gun tubes. The guns are out of commission until they are finished."

"What?" Turning to Pan Jack slapped the comm. "Gunner Chief Sherman, what is going on with my guns. We are going to need them in just a few minutes."

"Ah Captain, Ah, the Aliens have some kind of process to line the barrels with a carbon crystal layer that will keep the barrels from burning out. They plugged the barrels and pumped some kind of gas into them at extreme pressure. They say that even a few minutes of growth at that pressure should form a layer thick enough to keep the rest of our barrels from destroying themselves when we fire them. They also said it should add some power to the shots sir."

"And how long will it take to get them back into service Commander?"

"Ah," The Commander turned to one side to listen for a few seconds. "They say we can shoot them anytime though they would like to recover the gas. They only have a limited supply. The beam will simply vaporize the plug in the end expelling the gas. They also said that if the gas is left in, it will slowly thicken the barrel lining reducing the bore size of the barrel tube, increasing the temperature of the beam. If we leave it in long enough we should be able to shoot as hot a beam using only one capacitor at a time. Allowing us to shoot both turret guns at once with just as hot of beams delivering twice as much damage as we are now. Though I can see how reducing the bore size of the barrel can up the temperature of the beam, I can 't see how a barrel of only 10 or 12 inches could do that much damage even if it has the penetration."

"Very well Chief. We will be firing as soon as we get into the trench and get the guns charged.
They have a minute to drain the gas in half the barrels. Captain out."

Turning to Pan. "I am impressed Pan. What can you do with our smaller guns when we get time?"

"You did not ask your Chief Captain, but we have already started growing barrel linings in all your ship defense guns. We used much of the gas and do not have time to recover it before you enter battle." Pan bowed her head slightly still sitting in the jump seat. "We are already working on up grading your Capacitors."

"Well, I will wait as long as possible with the main guns but it depends on what the Spiders do. The small close in
defense guns are probably safe unless they have any torpedoes or fighters left."

"Captain." The
new Engineering Chief (appointed by the 1st Officer and temp until Jack's approval) appeared on the screen and looked worried. "We are starting to overheat. The space around us in this tunnel has risen to over a thousand degrees making it impossible for us to radiate our waste heat. Our engines and shield nods are reaching the red zones. They could trip out any time sir."

"Well get crewmen over and bypass the circuit breakers. If we
lose either in this cloud we are dead. Damn!  I knew I was forgetting something." Tapping his controls to bring up the engineering screen and studying the systems looking for some way to stretch their time long enough to make it out of the tunnel.  "I can't see or think of anything to use for a heat sink. Reaction mass would have been a possibility but we dumped all the tanks."

"No sir. We still have our engine feed tanks that are completely full. We can cross connect them directly to the cooler
s. I should have thought of that Captain a long time ago but using feed mass for anything else just did not cross my mind." The Chief disappeared from the screen.

Jack watched the temperature of the engines, grav-coils and shield node coils continue to climb into the red for another half minute and then start to rapidly drop. Tapping the com
m again for Engineering. "Chief, I need you to flip our engines back to maximum thrust from the cones as soon as we are out of the cloud. Captain out."

And then they were out of the cloud and the First Officer brought the ship around to
parallel the trench. They were about half way up the side with target Alpha and Echo about 4 light minutes ahead of them running down the trench at a shallow angle toward the opposite side maybe 10 minutes from impacting the wall. The Red Pepper was closing with them at about 1 light minute per minute. Jack looked around to see just how far they were from the close side of the trench and got a shock. The Red Pepper was reflecting off the side of the trench like a bad mirror. The red hot hull and radiating panels lit up like beacons.

Turning back around he knew he had no choice. "Weapons target Echo and prepare to fire. Ch
arge all weapons. Fire missiles, attack profile Beta Nine." Then as the main screens locked onto the targets Jack’s eyes grew big as his mouth dropped open.

The targets were firing on each other. "Cut active targeting! Passive on
ly. Hold gunfire. Change missile profile to Delta 2 Repeat Delta 2. What the hell is going on with them?" The spider ship with 7 armored decks was drifting toward the cloud while a spider ship with two decks, 4 guns and two engine was firing on another spider ship with two armored decks and 4 guns attached to the front firing back at it while approaching the 7 armored decked hulk from a different direction.

Pan spoke up. "The two ships are fighting over w
ho is the new Fleet Commander while capturing the scepter of authority. The shield decks. It was nice of you to take out the old commander for them."

"You have got to be kidding. Command is determined by who has the biggest
phallic shield?"

The addition of the 7 decks with the 2
they already have will give them command of a fleet with half a dozen squadrons when he returns to the main phalanx."