Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three) (61 page)

Blackman held up a small datapad for McManus to see.  It showed the carrier’s launch bay, filmed from high up from one of the internal cameras and looking along its length towards the bow.  The Shaper craft could be clearly seen, lying half on its side at an angle about a hundred metres away.  Something was moving in its shadow.  McManus could see figures, mostly human, though some appeared to be from alien species that he couldn’t identify.  They moved in a calm, ordered fashion out of the alien craft, like automatons.  There was something else in there too.  It was difficult to see at first, but it seemed to boil like smoke from the Shaper ship before it started to coalesce.

‘Now what the hell do you think that is, Commander?’ said Blackman.

‘I’m not sure...’ replied McManus, watching as the cloud, clearly mobile and seemingly sentient, floated up in front of the camera.  He could clearly see now, that the cloud was composed of millions of swarming motes.  There was something there within it, the briefest hint of a face, before the cloud rushed forward as one and smothered the camera, cutting the link.

‘I have a very bad feeling about this,’ said McManus.

‘Sir, we’ve all heard the rumours,’ said one of the marines, who gripped a combat shotgun nervously. ‘About
them
, about what they look like.’

‘I think you might be right,’ McManus answered.  ‘The Admiral needs to see this, and we need to think of a way to get that thing off the ship.’

‘That’s the other thing,’ said Blackman.  ‘It’s not just the cameras; we’ve lost control of all systems in the forward launch bay.’

‘Get me engineering!’ ordered McManus. ‘Now!’

As the Commonwealth fleet advanced towards the enemy, Chen watched as the battle between the Shaper and Nahabe ships grew ever more visible through the bridge windows.  The brilliant flashes of light and expanding shells of energy had grown from pinpricks of light above the brilliant orb of the planet beneath them until individual ships could be discerned against the blackness of space above and the green and brown continents and brilliant blue seas below.  The Nahabe had now lost two ships to enemy fire, and the remaining vessels were being heavily battered by the Shaper craft, though they returned the favour with every weapon at their disposal.  One of the Shaper destroyers had been torn apart by the concentrated fire of the gunspheres, whilst another had been heavily damaged and was fleeing away from Valparaiso.

With the
Anzio
and its group left to watch over the disabled destroyers, Chen divided the rest of her forces, seeking to attack the Shaper craft from different directions. She would thus attempt to split their fire, reducing their opportunity to flank her forces.  Conscious that her remaining weapons against the Shapers were fixed guns mounted on the bellies of the carriers, she couldn’t afford to allow the Shapers to get into a position where they might use their manoeuvrability to their advantage, not to mention concentrate their superior firepower.  She ordered the
Plataea
and the
Pericles
groups to peel away on her starboard flank, whilst the
Leonides
and
Nelson
groups split away to port.  The
Churchill
,
Marcus Aurelius
and
Alamein
groups would advance up the centre.  Damage sustained throughout the fleet in the battle with the renegade vessels had been very minor and, save for the ships whose cannons had failed, causing them to lose power, all ships were at full operating capacity.  There was however the small matter remaining of whatever it was that had entered the
Churchill’s
launch bay.  The comm. chimed.

‘Admiral, this is McManus.  We’ve got a bit of problem down here.  The ship’s definitely been boarded.  I’m sending you the footage now.’

The images obtained by the Marines appeared in her HUD.  There was no mistaking the streamlined, crystalline form of a Shaper craft, nor the enslaved beings that issued forth from it.  Then Chen saw the indistinct cloud emerge from the vessel and coalesce in the air and she went cold with the realisation of what it was.  She’d read reports on what the enemy, what the Shapers themselves, were supposed to look like.  She realised that she was looking at one, and that it was on board her ship.

‘Commander,’ she said a little shakily. ‘Get every available marine down there right now.  It’s one of them.  We have a Shaper aboard the
Churchill
.’

‘Thought so.  Jesus,’ McManus answered.  ‘It gets worse.  We think that the Shaper is intent on taking over the ship, now that it has internal access to our systems.  We’ve already lost control of systems in the launch bay.  We think that it’s trying to escape and enter the rest of the ship.  We’ve already lost the internal cameras as well as the launch bay shielding systems and catapults.’

‘We’re not seeing anything offline.’

‘They aren’t offline, we just don’t control them anymore.  The outermost fields have been reactivated to stop us venting them into space and we can’t throw that ship off the bows with the magnetic catapults either as something is shorting them out.  I’ve got engineers coming down here, but it looks like we’re locked out of the systems.  I’ve already alerted engineering and they’ve physically isolated this section from the rest of the ship by dropping the pressure doors leading out of the forward hangar deck. There aren’t any control systems accessible from the launch bay itself that connect to the rest of the ship, except for the cameras which Chief Kleiner assures me aren’t linked to anything critical, it’s just dumb systems connected to power relays in there that they’ve managed to control, but if that thing gets loose, who knows what it might do...’

‘I get the picture,’ Chen replied. ‘We’ve had intel. reports in the past that the Shapers are able to subvert computerised systems if they can gain physical access.  The sheer simplicity of the systems inside the launch bay may have saved us.  Defend the hangar bay at all cost, Commander. We can’t afford to let that thing get any further.’

‘Roger that.  Any hints on how we kill it?’

‘You’re guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid,’ Chen replied, grimly. ‘We’ve never had to fight one directly. At a guess, I’d imagine that projectile weapons might not be much use against the swarm.’

‘Something energy based would be better, aye,’ agreed McManus, in a tone that suggested he was mulling over his options.  ‘Will keep you posted, Admiral.’

‘See that you do, Commander.  Chen out,’ she replied.

The Shapers themselves were still beings about which little was known.  Few had seen them and lived to tell anyone about their experiences.  Captain Caleb Isaacs was one of the few that had.  Most reports were sketchy at best - often incomplete descriptions of half seen things or the ravings of men driven mad by what they had witnessed.  Now one such creature was lurking down in the launch bay of her ship.  It made her shudder to think about it.  No-one really knew the abilities of the Shapers themselves, much less what they were capable of in direct combat.  On top of that, she had a battle to win.  The Shaper fleet was coming into range now, the destroyer craft coming about to guard the vast command ship that was beginning to turn towards them, even as the Nahabe craft poured fire onto it. 

They must have seen what happened to the other ships, thought Chen. They know what we can do.  We won’t get a second chance at this.

With that, she gave orders to her ships and prepared to engage the enemy.

Down in the
Churchill’s
forward bay, McManus and Blackman decided on their plan of action.  In front of them, the massive pressure doors that lead to the forward launch bay stood tightly closed, though every so often, periodic thumps and the sounds of scrabbling could be heard through the thick metal above the background rumble of the ship’s engines operating at full capacity.  Behind them, about another two hundred metres distant, another set of doors had been closed across the hangar bay, sealing the rest of that massive space off from any incursion and protecting the carrier’s precious complement of fighters and bombers.  Fortunately, there had been no combat craft in this forward section, the area having been cleared to allow ships to be manoeuvred easily into launch positions on the forward catapults.  There was, however, an assortment of tractor and loader vehicles and a couple of the
Churchill’s
shuttles left within the forward bay plus piles of equipment crates that the marines had arranged into makeshift cover.  The doors to the rest of ship had been closed, sealing the marines in with whatever was trying to come through the doors in front of them.

‘So, Commander Blackman, what do we have at our disposal?  Projectile weapons might not be much use against this thing,’ said McManus.

‘Not a great deal,’ said Blackman.  ‘We have laser rifles and pistols, but what we could really do with is something with an area of effect.  Plugging away at a swarm with laser rifles might be as futile as trying to attack it with bullets.  What we do have, however, is plasma grenades.  These little beauties are for clearing out bunkers,’ said Blackman and removed a fist sized egg shaped device from his belt.  ‘Concentrated plasma held in a magnetic field.  Fries flesh and electronics with equal ease.  Don’t know if it’ll kill this thing, but it ought to upset it.’

‘And then, once we’ve really pissed it off?’

‘Hopefully we can get it to relinquish its hold on the launch bay systems and force it back into the launch bay.  Then we can throw it and its ship into space off the bow catapults. The magnetic launch system should do the job.  I have engineering standing by.  As soon as I give the order...’

‘That’s a lot of ifs, Commander.  We know next to nothing about these things.’

‘It’s the best idea I’ve had so far,’ Blackman replied grimly.

‘And I have to admit, I can’t think of anything better,’ McManus conceded.  ‘Ah, shite.  Who wants to live forever?  Got any of those things going spare?’

At that moment, they felt the deck vibrate beneath them.  A sudden jolt, followed by a series of thuds, then a continuous sideways motion as the ship manoeuvred.

‘Feels like we just entered combat again,’ commented Blackman.

‘Aye, sure enough,’ replied McManus, and then noticed that the doors to the launch bay had opened a crack.

The Shaper destroyers came at the Commonwealth fleet at high speed, like sharks going after the scent of blood.  They were manoeuvring hard.  It would be a difficult task indeed for the carriers to hit them with their fixed weaponry, as the Shapers were only too aware.  The Shapers were vastly outnumbered, but if the humans couldn’t hit back with anything that would count, then they would be unable to stop the shining, crystalline ships from taking their fleet apart.  Two were heading for the
Plataea
and
Pericles
groups, two more for the
Leonides
and
Nelson
groups, whilst the more ponderous super-destroyer was coming about to face the
Churchill
and
Marcus Aurelius
.  The other remaining destroyer still harried the Nahabe, launching hit and run attacks at the gunspheres as they whittled down the super-destroyer’s shields bit by bit.  Chen faced a difficult decision.  She replayed the events of the battle so far and took a gamble.

‘Signal to the fleet.  Destroyers are to use their spatial distortion cannons.’

‘Admiral, pardon me, but are you sure?’ said Singh.

‘It’s the only hope we have of hitting those Shaper craft,’ Chen replied.  ‘Their turreted cannons might not be as powerful as the fixed weapons on the carriers, but they can be aimed more easily.’

‘But the other vessels were disabled by systems malfunctions.’

‘It’s a chance we’ll have to take.  If we can’t hit the enemy, we’re just as dead if we don’t try as if we try and suffer the consequences.  Andrews, transmit the order!  Helm, aim us squarely at that super-destroyer and close the distance as quickly as you can.’

Andrews nodded and did as she was ordered.  Chen watched the range counting down on her HUD and gripped the arms of her command chair in anticipation.  If she was wrong, the entire operation would fail, thousands would die, trapped in helpless ships.  If she was wrong.

‘Communication from Admiral Cartwright,’ said Andrews, as the two fleets closed at speed.  ‘He reports that his fleet has engaged the Shaper fleet in the Chittagong system.  Several ships have been lost to the enemy, with a number badly damaged, but he is confident of success.’

Chen digested the information with a grim satisfaction.  So, she was doing better than her commanding officer.  It didn’t cheer her any though.  Even now, hundreds of her comrades under Cartwright’s command lay dead or dying inside the ruptured hulks of their ships, and she had matters at hand to deal with.  The
Plataea
fired, its shot missing the incoming Shaper destroyers.  The
Pericles
followed suit, grazing one vessel with spatial distortion fire and ripping shards from its flanks, but the Shaper ship seemed to shrug off the attacks and kept on going.  As the vessels closed, it became the turn of the destroyers to shoot.  The lead Shaper ship, the one that the
Plataea
had missed, bore the full brunt of the volley from eight of the smaller spatial distortion cannons.  Its bow section crumpled under the weight of fire and the ship almost seemed to flinch and recoil like a wounded thing, peeling away at speed.  The other pressed on into the formation of human vessels and let rip with its powerful weaponry.  Chen saw three ships die in as many seconds, as the Shaper destroyer casually tore apart the cruiser
Cambrai,
the missile frigate
Sebastopol
and the destroyer
Acre
before passing through the formations of ships at lightning speed and looping around for another attack run, leaving the shattered wrecks in its wake.

The
Leonides
and the
Nelson
groups met with more success.  The former scored a lucky direct hit on one of the Shaper destroyers as the enemy ship apparently miscalculated during its attack run on the
Nelson.
The impact tore the stern off the alien craft, sending the remaining forward section spinning toward the human vessels where it passed harmlessly between the assembled warships.  The second Shaper vessel dodged the initial shot levelled at it by the
Nelson
, but then lost its forward shields to several impacts from the destroyers, though un-coordinated firing failed to damage the vessel significantly, allowing it turn sharply away and come about for another run as energy beams from the human warships stabbed out at it, seeking to secure hits now that its shields had collapsed.