Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship (24 page)

"Sir, we need to start swapping out the crew for rest periods," Celesta said, her eyes bloodshot and her face drawn.

"I know," Jackson said. "Try and work it out. They'll have to make do with short naps ... I can't afford to have people in their quarters asleep if this thing makes a run at us."

"I'll try and—"

"Enemy ship is decelerating!" Davis called out far more loudly than necessary.

"Just decelerating or changing course?" Jackson asked, moving over to look at the plots the computer was generating from their meager sensor data.

"Just decelerating," she said. "Correction! It's turning into the system and accelerating towards Nuovo Patria."

"Son of a bitch," Jackson said. "This was their game. Wear us out and then make a mad dash towards the planet in a maneuver that we can't duplicate. Nav! Plot me a course in, maximum performance on three engines. Helm! Come onto new course when you get it and accelerate ... ahead full."

The
Blue Jacket
shook and rumbled as the engines were once again asked to provide maximum thrust. Jackson noted that the tone and vibrations were becoming more pronounced and more harsh as the mission wore on. He wondered how much the ship had left to give. The fact she was now steaming full bore towards yet another engagement with the alien ship was a testament to her designers, who could have never imagined what their brainchild would be subjected to when they drew her up fifty years prior.

"How long?" he asked.

"Nine hours and forty minutes," the specialist at Nav reported. "I can't do much better, Captain. We're carrying a lot of velocity in a very wide orbit. I'm trying to conserve as much speed as I can while turning as tight as she'll let me."

"Understood, Specialist," Jackson said, frustrated at the disparity between the aliens' reactionless drive and what it could do while they were slaves to Newtonian physics. "OPS, work with Tactical and try to keep a solid track on the enemy. It may be trying to lose us in the system."

"So much for resting the crew," Celesta said as Jackson sat down.

"I'll have Commander Owens issue stims if this looks like it's going to keep dragging on," Jackson said. "It's not my first choice to have my crew jacked up on drugs, but there are three people just here on the bridge I simply can't be without. I'm sure it's the same story in the other departments."

"I'll go down to Medical now and give Doctor Owens a heads up," she said, rising from her seat. "It wouldn't hurt to take a walk through the other sections while I'm down there to get a feel for how the rest of the crew is doing."

"Outstanding idea, Commander," Jackson said. "Thank you."

****

Celesta rode a lift down from the superstructure to deck nine, jogging down the port service tube, heading aft towards Sick Bay. She was becoming increasingly worried about the stress being piled onto Captain Wolfe. He'd assumed the full weight of recent events onto his shoulders, taking the deaths at the hands of the marauding aliens as his personal responsibility. She was worried it was going to lead to lapses in judgment on his part.

So far, the man she'd been serving with was nothing like what was described to her by Admiral Winters when she'd first arrived on Jericho Station. She assumed that she'd be meeting a buffoon of an officer who would be able to teach her little. Winters had even hinted that Wolfe was such a liability that she might be forced to take command of the
Blue Jacket
. The admiral had even gone so far as to say that he was respected so little by his crew that they probably wouldn't even question her. The message she'd received when they arrived at Podere confirmed that she'd been played. Celesta wasn't sure she liked what it said about her that she'd been handpicked for the task of undermining Captain Wolfe's authority.

When everyone around him was falling apart, Captain Wolfe seemed to be able to hold his fear in check and think rationally. The fact they were still flying, let alone delivering such a beating when so severely outmatched, was a testament to his ability to adapt to the situation. She'd like to think she would have been so cool if she had been sitting in the seat, but she couldn't be absolutely certain. Either way it would be over sooner than later. With the warp drive completely inoperable they were left with only two options: win, or lose.

"Commander Wright," Doctor Owens greeted her as she walked into Sick Bay. "Are you feeling unwell?"

"As unwell as anyone right now," she said. She'd meant it as a joke, but the chief medical officer just nodded with an understanding frown.

"Anyway ... I'm here at the behest of the captain. He wants to know if there is a low-grade stimulant that you can issue to the crew that will stave off the symptoms of fatigue for the next day, at least."

Owens' frown deepened. "I'm not necessarily in favor of distributing drugs like this to the crew," he said. "If certain members wanted to come in and—"

"Doctor," Celesta said forcefully, "the ship will soon be engaging the enemy, likely for the final time. We can't afford to rotate key personnel out to rest them, and the other departments are just as shorthanded as the bridge crew is. I'm coming to you in good faith that you'll understand the unique situation we find ourselves in."

He seemed to think on that for a moment. "I detect an implicit threat in that," Owens finally said. "If I refuse he'll relieve me of duty and find someone willing to distribute the stim packs." He waved off Celesta as she tried to protest.

"He has his job to do and I have mine," he said. "I wouldn't be much of a physician if I did not at least voice my concerns and he wouldn't be much of a captain if he didn't utilize everything at his disposal. I do, however, understand the situation. I will have my staff begin packaging the stims into two different strengths. I'll be counting on the department heads and supervisors to provide the correct one to the crew. Will that satisfy Captain Wolfe's requirements?"

"It will," Celesta said. "Thank you, Doctor."

"I'm in this fight as much as anyone else on this ship," Owens said with a shrug. "If you'll wait for a few moments I'll give you the required dosages for the bridge crew."

****

Jackson tried to keep from drumming his fingers on his armrest and bouncing his leg as the stims Commander Wright had brought up from Sick Bay began to take effect. The drugs had dried his mouth out and hurt his stomach, but the fog that had settled on his mind had lifted and he felt like he was again able to think clearly and quickly. He noticed the rest of the crew experiencing varying degrees of the same effects.

"Com frequency jamming has stopped," Lieutenant Keller reported. "However, there is no response from the drone platform. I'm getting signals from the planet but I'm having trouble cleaning the data up."

"It just took out the platform so there's no need to continue suppressing all communications," Jackson said. "Try and get a boosted signal to Nuovo Patria on the emergency band. Just tell them an attack is imminent and if they have anything that can take out landing craft or fight the enemy on the ground now is the time to drag it out. Just repeat that message as we fly down the well towards them."

The
Blue Jacket
was now flying away from the planet as it gained velocity and prepared for a series of gravity-assisted turns that would bring them back on course for Nuovo Patria. While counterintuitive to be running in the opposite direction at full power, the amount of energy needed to stop the ship, come onto the new course, and then try and accelerate back towards the enemy would do nothing but waste time and propellant, both a real concern when facing an enemy that didn't need to play by those same rules.

To compound the problem, the jump point from which they entered the system was at thirty-seven degrees inclination from the ecliptic plane. This meant not only were they needing an assist to pull them back towards the inner system, they needed to majorly correct their course on another axis and try to maintain their velocity through the maneuver.

"We've been captured by the seventh planet," Lieutenant Davis said. "Helm, the countdown for our next course change is being sent to your station now."

"Confirmed," the helmsman said. "Reducing power and preparing to come about onto new course."

"Helm, you're clear to execute course change orders from OPS and Nav until we're making our final approach to Nuovo Patria," Jackson said. "Don't waste any time waiting for me to confirm what they're telling you."

"Yes, sir."

Jackson felt the pitch of the engines change and heard the ship groan as the thrusters fired, pushing her against inertia at the same time the engines were pushing against the pull of the gas giant they were blasting by. He idly wondered what the locals called it. Given how many systems humans had colonized, only the life-bearing worlds were officially named, the others left to the local government to name, or not name, as they saw fit.

Soon the
Blue Jacket
began complaining in earnest about the opposing forces she was being subjected to. The buffeting was so violent that Jackson considered ordering his crew into their restraints. As the planet streaked by and out of view the engines came back up and they were flung away from the gas giant at incredible velocity. The angle of deflection they'd achieved wasn't all that extreme and they would now be in a position to use the sixth planet, another, considerably larger gas giant, to come about on their final course towards Nuovo Patria.

The problem was that they'd be closing on the planet against its orbital path, not chasing it. This drastically shortened their firing window assuming they could even get a clear shot at the enemy ship. Jackson briefly toyed with the idea of trying Barrett's trick shot again with the solid-core shells, but the exploding warp emitter taking out their high-power array had essentially eliminated that as an option. They would be quite close before they would even be able to get a solid lock on the alien ship, for too short a time to fire and then reload with the high-explosive shells as well as recharge the capacitor banks.

"Tactical, what missiles do we have left?" Jackson asked after a moment of thought. "I know we're out of Avengers, but there has to be something left."

"We have seven Shrikes and ten Mark VIII strategic nukes," Barrett said, reading off the display to his right.

"The Shrikes won't be effective at this closure speed and we know the nukes are useless," Celesta said.

"Well, let's look at that for a moment," Jackson said, tapping his fingers against his chin as he always did when trying to work through a problem in his head. "The warheads are fake, but the missiles are still the same that the ship was originally loaded with. The Fleet crews didn't bother to even take them out of the cradles when CENTCOM made the swap."

"I don't see how this helps us," she admitted.

"Those missiles are far more sophisticated than the dinky ship-to-ship stuff we've been lobbing at the alien ship so far
and
they're multistage," Jackson said. "Each missile has three sets of booster engines."

"While that's fascinating, sir, I still don't see what a missile without a warhead will accomplish no matter how advanced it is," she said.

"OPS!" Jackson barked, making Lieutenant Davis jump. "What's the projected time until our final course correction?"

"Fourteen hours," she said.

"Engineering, Bridge," Jackson said, stabbing the intercom button forcefully with his finger. "Daya, get your ass up here." The bridge crew stared at Jackson as if he'd lost his mind. They'd never seen him so brusque and unprofessional, much less over an open intercom channel.

"Lieutenant Davis, keep an eye out for any movement from the enemy. You have the bridge for now," he said, ignoring their looks. "Lieutenant Barrett and Commander Wright, you're with me."

Ten minutes later the three of them, and a visibly winded Daya Singh, were seated at the table in the conference room just aft of the bridge. Jackson ignored them as he began bringing up the specs for the MkVIII missiles they had sitting in the forward magazine.

"Lieutenant Commander Singh," he said, "tell me what explosives we have on board, or could improvise, that would fit in a cylinder five meters in diameter by thirteen meters high."

Singh just looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Have you been drinking, Captain?" he asked.

Jackson winced slightly at an accusation that struck a little too close to home even if it had been in jest, but ignored it. "Not even any of the rotgut your crew makes down in reactor room four," he said instead. "Now, what have you got for me?"

Over the next two and half hours the four officers argued, compromised, and finally agreed on a plan that the most optimistic of them thought could turn the tide of the battle while the most pessimistic felt it had an equally good chance of destroying the
Blue Jacket
before they even made it anywhere close to Nuovo Patria.

****

"You, you, you, and you. Follow me," Singh said. He'd walked into the break room just outside of the Engineering Operations Center and seemed to pick four specialists out at random. In actuality he knew they were among the more bright of the junior enlisted he had at his disposal. It was exceedingly convenient that the four had been trying to hide from their supervisor in the break room when he happened to walk by.