Far From Home: The Complete Series (51 page)

A long pause. She didn’t think Dana would even answer her.

But then:
When the time is right.

The next thing Jessica knew, she’d tumbled forward out of the command chair, her arms barely keeping her head above the deck plating. And in that same moment, the
Warrior
nearly shook apart.

* * *

“Excellent! Continue firing!” Carn said with what came close to joy as he watched the small Union ship dodge around their streams of fire. Bolt after bolt slammed into the little ship, yet still it held together. Kept moving. Kept buzzing about them like some metal bumblebee.

“We are re-aligning the warheads,” a helm officer reported.

“Fire them as soon as you have a lock,” Carn ordered.

He clasped his hands behind his back. Behind the mask, behind the mirror into which every fallen enemy had looked in their final moments, Carn grinned.

“Sir! We have a lock!”

He inhaled. Already he felt victorious. “Fire.”

* * *

She heard: “Damage to the port engine.”

And: “. . . leaking coolant!”

Then: “They’ve locked weapons.”

She opened her eyes. Pushed herself up. The
Warrior
tilted back crazily, like some kind of animal climbing a wall. The whole ship vibrated, thrummed, beneath her. A set of hands lifted her up by the armpits, and she got to her feet then settled back into the chair.

“Captain! Are you okay?” Dolarhyde asked her.

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

His hand was still on her shoulder, as if holding her in place so she wouldn’t fall again. She patted his hand, looked up at him. “I would consider the harness.”

She frowned. Then she looked down and saw what he was pointing to. The safety harness straps at each side of the command chair.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said and buckled herself in. “Thank you.”

Dolarhyde smiled somewhere beneath his great, bushy beard, then went back to his station. Jessica turned around.

“Jess, you okay?” Greene asked her. He didn’t even look up. His hands flew across the controls, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

King didn’t get a chance to answer. Alarm bells rang all around her.

“Incoming warheads . . .” Greene said, his voice trailing away. He looked up, shocked. Then sense kicked back in and he worked furiously with the controls. “Diverting all energy to the aft hull plating. Hopefully it’ll hold.”

Hawk took them into a steep nose dive. Jessica clung to the arm rests of the command chair, the
Warrior
tumbling in a corkscrew manoeuvre. Her stomach lifted into her mouth, then back down toward her feet.

“Brace–” Greene yelled. Then he was silenced as space opened up around them in an almighty explosion.

* * *

General Carn watched the
Warrior
tumble and die in front of him.

“Direct hits. They are disabled,” a Naxor crew member reported.

“Load a nuclear warhead into tube two,” Carn said, his voice calm and collected. “Then send them to oblivion.”

8.

Commander Chang would have stood up were it not for her own safety harness holding her in place. “Report!”

Beaumont scanned the smaller vessel. “Their atmosphere is intact, and I’m picking up life readings inside,” he said with relief.

“They’re spinning out of control,” Rogers noted as he glanced up at the viewscreen.

No power
, Chang thought.

“Commander!” Beaumont yelled as he spun about. “I have a radiological alarm!”

* * *

“Report!” King shouted. “And stop these goddamn alarms.”

A moment later, the noise stopped. Systems were still online. She could see the lights twinkling in random patterns on the different stations around her.

“Temporary loss of power,” Dolarhyde said. The dim emergency lighting cast long shadows on the old man’s face. He looked like a caricature of a castaway as he got up from his station.

“Where are you going, Captain?” King asked.

“Down to engineering. We need power. I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“Be careful down there,” she said.

He nodded and left.

“Hawk?”

The helmsman bashed the helm terminal with both fists. “Hell! There ain’t nothin’ there, Cap! We’re a sittin’ duck!”

Commander Greene drew a sharp breath. “Captain, I’m picking up a nuclear signature.”

“Where from?”

“The enemy ship,” Greene said. He swallowed. “If they intend to launch a nuke at us, we won’t be able to outrun it.”

King gritted her teeth together. She watched the blank viewscreen, willing it to come back to life. Hoping beyond hope for the ship to get them out of a jam.

“Understood,” she said.

* * *

“How long till we get there?” Chang asked. The
Defiant
headed toward the
Warrior
‘s position.

“Twenty seconds,” Rogers replied.

“They have launched the nuclear warhead!” Beaumont yelled. “Fifteen seconds till impact.”

The Warrior’s going to disappear before our eyes,
Chang thought.
And who knows how powerful it’ll be? It’s a completely alien design.

“Increase power to engines and shielding. Every last inch of power, whatever you have. The dregs in the bottom of the tank. Give her all you’ve got!” Chang shouted. The
Defiant
raced toward the
Warrior
.

A bright, sparkling yellow light tore away from the bottom edge of the Dreadnought, headed straight for the
Warrior
.

“Eight seconds to impact.”

“Come on come on come on,” Chang said.

“Five.”

“We’ve cut the gap,” Rogers said.

“Turn! Turn! Turn!” Chang shouted and closed her eyes, waiting for the nuke to slam into the
Defiant
‘s side and blow them to kingdom come. Rogers rolled the
Defiant
to starboard, offering her port side flank for the nuke. Sacrificing her wing for the sake of everyone and everything they held dear.

The explosion tore through the
Defiant
in a blinding white flash. It sent her veering away, barely missing the freewheeling form of the
Warrior
. The resultant damage ran across entire decks, penetrating vital systems that immediately died upon exposure to the void. Atmosphere and particle matter spewed from the gaping hole in her side, like blood and guts from a slain beast.

For all intents and purposes, the
Defiant
was dead.

* * *

The blinding light faded away. Seconds beforehand, the viewscreen had come back to life, revealing the
Defiant
‘s desperate bid to close the distance between them and the incoming nuke. Jessica had watched, helplessly, as the weapon smashed straight into the
Defiant
.

Now she wondered if her command was still there. Still in one piece. She doubted it, and her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest at the mere thought of it, but there was always hope . . .

“The
Defiant
‘s still there!” Greene said. “Not answering hails just yet, but they’re still there.”

Immediately, her thoughts turned to how she would enact revenge. How she would hit back. Inexplicably, they were still in one piece. They were still alive, against the odds.

She’d use what time they had to make sure Carn regretted his actions.

“Commander, please assist Captain Dolarhyde down in engineering. Get the tubes loaded with the most dangerous warheads we have in our arsenal,” King ordered. “He’ll know which one will serve us best.”

Greene left without another word.

Hawk let rip a
Yeeha!
from the helm. “Finally! We’re gonna be shootin’ somethin’ big!”

Jessica nodded once. “You’ve got that right.”

* * *

Aboard the
Defiant
, all was not well. Down in the engineering section, Chief Meryl Gunn gave the order to evacuate.

“Come on! We’ve got thirty seconds to clear the whole deck! Everybody out! Get behind the blast doors!” she shouted at them all.

The engineering crew – Krinuans among them – ran past her.

“Come on Chief,” Belcher urged.

“No. I’m the last out. Go.”

“Not without you, Chief,” Belcher said.

Gunn rounded on him, grabbed him by the collar and screamed in his face. “I’m not messing with you, Gary! Get the hell out!”

He took the hint and joined the others.

Certain the whole section was secure and free of personnel, Gunn left too. The doors slid shut behind her and she accessed the control pad to the side of them, locking the section off. Then she evacuated the deck.

Not that it would do much good hiding behind a blast door when the entire reactor went up.

* * *

Chang felt the blood trickle down the side of her face but she ignored it.

Just a small bleed
, she told herself.
Or I’d have bled out already
.

“Commander!”
Gunn’s voice was loud and immediate over the speakers.
“I’ve evacuated the entire deck. The reactor’s critical.”

Chang swallowed. “How long, Chief?”

There were many things that could be fixed aboard a starship. Even the beating heart of the ship, the reactor, could be mended on most occasions. But it was a given that when the ship’s Chief Engineer announced the reactor as critical, and told you she’d evacuated the area, that the heart of the
Defiant
had finally given out.

She was going to blow.

“Fifteen to twenty minutes. We might have time, if we start evacuating now, to get clear of the blast,”
Gunn said.

This is almost unbelievable
, Chang thought.

“Then get to the escape pods, Chief. I’ll issue a ship wide evacuation call.”

“Commander… Lisa… I’m sorry…”
Gunn said.

Chang smiled thinly. “There was nothing you could do, Chief. Now get going, the clock’s ticking. Get your people out.”

Chang turned to the others on the bridge. “That goes for all of you, too. Once the ship is secure, we’ll get to the nearest escape pod. The
Defiant
‘s a ticking time bomb.”

Rogers and Beaumont shared apprehensive looks. Lieutenant Slavin visibly swallowed.

Alarms rang all over the ship, the bells of impending doom echoing through the deck plating to the bridge.

“Now I’d better inform the whole ship…” Chang said, her voice cracking despite her attempts to control it.

9.

Dolarhyde arrived back on the bridge.

“Well?” King asked him.

At the helm, Hawk kept the Warrior out of the Dreadnought’s reach. Their fire glanced the Warrior’s bow, struggling to keep a lock on them. If he’d been any less of a pilot…

The older man wiped his brow. He was covered in dust, sweat and some kind of grease. “They’re loaded and ready to fire. Not sure how they’ll work though.”

Jessica shifted in her seat. “And you say these are… ?”

“Something called a Duotonic Cascade Shell. Least, that’s what it says on the container. I don’t know if they’ll even work, sitting up here so long.”

She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“I’ll be back in engineering with Commander Greene,” Dolarhyde said and left.

Jessica unclipped from the command chair and took a seat at the weapons console. She opened a channel to Captain Praror’s ship. Presently his people were keeping the Dreadnought moderately busy. It was no wonder they couldn’t fix a good shot on the Warrior with the Krinuans running back and forth, punching where they could.

“Captain Praror, can you hear me.”

“I read you Captain,” Praror said.

“You may want to pull your people back,” she advised. “We’re about to fire something at that Naxor ship. Something experimental. It might have . . . unpredictable . . . results.”

“Understood. We’re falling back now. Any reports from the
Defiant
?”

Jessica shook her head, though she knew he couldn’t see it. “No. They’re not responding to our transmissions.”