Warpath (48 page)

The Revenge moved
around a large cluster of asteroids, curving through the space so it
faced the battleship nearly a hundred thousand kilometres distant and
fired its beam weapons at the same time as letting lose with a
railgun volley. The battleship let loose with sixteen torpedoes and
its three main guns. The torpedoes were rendered useless or smashed
by the railgun rounds in the narrow corridor between asteroids. The
heavy shells from the battleship exploded against the Revenge’s
shields. Another round of fire followed right behind the first,
costing the Revenge her forward shields.

“C’mon, Jake,
move,” Oz said, hoping to see the Revenge move back under cover.

The Revenge let loose
with another volley of railgun fire, launched torpedoes and missiles
then thrust upwards. The instant before they reached the safety of
cover, a trio of large shells struck the front of the Revenge,
cracking their nose section open and destroying the old location of
the ship’s bridge.

The Order Hand had done
little better. The Revenge was able to render a narrow section of its
shielding on the port side useless, and they were venting atmosphere
from as deep as five compartments in from their primary hull. Chief
Frost was directing the gun team on that ship, and they weren’t
loading as quickly as Oz would like, but their accuracy was deadly.

There was an arrogance
to the way the Revenge moved, accelerating around several gargantuan
asteroids as it stalked towards the battleship from behind cover.
“Let’s keep up with them, Helm,” Oz said.

“Sir, the base is
recovering, we have detected motion from the main gun batteries. They
are tracking us,” reported Lieutenant Yore.

“How long before they
have a firing solution?” Oz asked, looking at the tactical map,
trying to find a way to direct the helm better so they could keep
more asteroids between them and the base.

“Forty seconds or
less,” the Lieutenant replied. “We will still be moving from one
asteroid to the next, there are no easy lines of fire.”

“Let’s keep it that
way,” he said. Another volley of torpedoes issued from the Triton’s
launchers, most of them had no difficulty pushing through flak and
impacting on the base’s shields. “How much damage have we really
done here?”

“Their shield energy
is down to seventeen percent,” reported Lieutenant Yore’s
assistant Tactical Officer.

‘
Suggestions?’
Oz asked mentally.
‘The
Revenge is about to try to take on a battleship with equivalent
armament, and we’re trying to distract a base that would have had
us slagged by now if it weren’t for all this cover.’

‘
Disappear,’
Hausgiest replied in his mind, sending him a mental image
that served as a tactical diagram.

“Comms, signal the
Revenge that we’re cloaking,” Oz ordered. “Cease fire, cloak
the ship.”

“All attention will
be on the Revenge, it won’t last more than two or three minutes
when they break cover to escape,” Ayan said.

“I know what I’m
doing,” Oz said as he turned towards the helm at the front of the
bridge. “Helm, adjust heading to three, eighty nine, two eight
seven and follow that chain of asteroids to the Revenge. We’re
going to pass behind them and fire a full salvo of antimatter
torpedoes at the base as soon as we have a clear shot.”

The base fired their
main guns at asteroids nearby, sending showers of shards towards the
Triton. “They’re trying to get our location by seeing what
bounces off our shields,” Ayan said. “I can only compensate so
much with our projection system.”

Chunks of less dense
asteroids exploded in bursts of white, filling the space around them
with debris. Three rounds struck their shields, one breaking through
to the hull.

“Hangar three has
taken damage, but it is still intact,” reported tactical. “Aft
shields are charging back up from thirteen percent.”

“Is our cloak
intact?” Oz asked.

“Yes,” Ayan
replied. “Cloaking shields are compensating for the damage to the
outer layer of our hull.”

The next shells missed
narrowly, and they moved back behind cover. The station’s attempts
to strike at them became less and less accurate over the next few
seconds as the Triton moved towards the Revenge.

“Sir, you’re not
going to believe this,” Communications said. “We’re getting a
direct connection to the base computers. Someone on the Revenge
hacked in.”

“Can you deactivate
the station’s guns?” Oz asked.

“Not yet. I haven’t
found that system, it might not be networked.”

“All right, then,
download everything, starting with navigational and patrol
information,” Oz said.

“I’m going to see
if we can increase bandwidth,” Ayan said as she brought up a data
control hologram in front of her seat. “And I’ll try to
prioritize our downloads so we don’t get a bunch of copies of
letters home and speeches from Eve.”

“God, I’ve been
trying all this time, and they get it first,” muttered Ensign
Gallow.

The Revenge was
expertly guided around one of the largest ice asteroids that they’d
seen by Ashley. “I have confirmation, there was no one in the
forward observation section when it was hit,” Finn reported.
“Nothing important was damaged.”

“All right, line up
your shot, Frost, and wait until we’ve discharged are DEMP arrays
before you fire,” Jake said.

“Aye, gunners ready,”
he replied.

“I’ll take control
of the torpedo and missile launchers,” Jake said, bringing up an
old-fashioned key style control. “We’re going straight at them
one more time.” He sighted the port side of the enemy battleship,
where their sensors said the armour was thinnest. “So far, so good,
Ashley. Bring us out of cover right where you promised.”

“Ready with beam
weapons,” Agameg said. “We may fuse the controller system in beam
number one if we fire at this intensity.”

“Take it down ten
percent, Chief,” Jake replied. “We may still overheat, but the
damage shouldn’t be as bad.”

“Sir, I have hacked
their entertainment systems and non-essential mechanical assemblies
aboard the Order Hand,” reported Liara from communications.

“All right, start
playing their entertainment library in thirteen seconds, and what
mechanical assemblies?”

“Well I don’t have
control of hatches, or machines in main systems, but things like food
processors, lifts, the bed adjustments in the bunks,” she replied.
“That kind of stuff.”

“The Captain’s
chair?” Finn asked. “You would have control of its rotation and
adjustments.”

Liara looked through
her display and nodded. “Oh my God, I do!”

“Do whatever you can
to make the Captain’s seat act like a rodeo bull,” Jake ordered.

“What’s a rodeo
bull?” Liara asked.

“Something Oz showed
me a long time ago,” Jake replied. “It spins and bucks back and
forth really fast, trying to knock you off.”

“Aye,” Frost said.
“I’ll have to make one sometime.”

“Sounds like fun,”
Liara said. “But it won’t be for this captain. Sending you the
controls to the enemy Captain’s seat, Finn.”

“Adding a random
testing cycle to his seat’s pre-sets,” Finn said.

“Send him on a ride,”
Jake said, wishing he could see it. “Are you playing their library
back as loud and as bright as you can?” he asked.

“What part of their
library?” Liara asked.

“All of it at the
same time,” Jake replied.

“Done!” Liara said
with a grin.

Frost snickered to
himself, visibly forcing himself to focus on the task at hand.

The Revenge moved to
the last large asteroid it was going to use as cover. “Forwarding
all the commands, the chair should be bucking, and the entertainment
system should be blaring,” Liara said.

They broke cover and
Agameg fired every beam weapon on the ship, draining the battleship’s
shields down to critical levels as three rays of white light swept
across their vessel. “Firing all guns,” Frost said as the roar of
fifteen heavy railguns shook the ship. Jake followed up with
twenty-eight heavy missiles and the eight torpedoes they could
launch. “Begin opening that wormhole,” Jake ordered. “Reload,
fast as you can.”

A hail of antimatter
torpedoes fired past them towards the base, and the Triton
de-cloaked. “We are ready to go,” Oz reported.

“Jake, stop
generating a wormhole,” Ayan said from the engineering section
aboard the Triton. “We’ll have one open in three seconds.”

Five solid thuds
sounded against the Revenge’s port side hull, and Jake’s missile
launchers reported that they were disconnected. “Stop generating a
wormhole,” Jake ordered. “Damage?”

“Our shields are down
to twenty three percent on aft port sections,” Finn reported.
“Minor hull damage, our missile emplacements are gone. Shells
struck one of our missiles as it left, setting off all twenty eight
and destroying our main turret.”

“No ammunition
explosion in the magazine?” Jake asked.

“None, which is a
miracle. I need to get some bots down there to make sure we don’t
have munitions jammed somewhere.”

Another pair of shells
struck their fore portside as Frost announced; “Firing all
railguns.”

All but four of their
shots missed. The ones that struck tore holes through the middle of
the hangar bay on the enemy battleship.

“The Triton has
opened their wormhole, and I have a course set to enter,” Ashley
announced.

“Execute,” Jake
said. A massive explosion surrounded the base in the distance,
indicating that most of the Triton’s antimatter torpedoes made it
through. They were into the wormhole behind the Triton before they
got a scan of the damage.

“Permission to join
the damage control teams, Captain?” Finn asked.

“Aye, granted. Make
sure we don’t have any munitions ready to blow near that gaping
hole where our missile launchers used to be, please.” Jake said.

“We will be in
transit for twenty three minutes,” Ashley said.

“Thank you, great job
everyone,” Jake said. “Liara, did we download any updated
information that we can use to find Freeground Alpha?”

“I’m starting my
search now, Sir,” she replied.

Carl Anderson missed
research. His medical career was often interrupted by it, and his
research career was, in turn, interrupted by his work in the
clandestine service. As Governor of Haven Shore and master of the
Rangers, he was able to balance all sides, and ignore politics when
it was convenient. Ayan’s old aide, Lacey Rosedale was perfect to
take his place as Governor, and was happy to fill in when he was
busy. He would serve as long as he could, and make sure she got the
seat when he had to leave it.

The mess left behind by
Doctor Messana was something he could not ignore. When he directed
Triton Fleet soldiers to deliver the contents of the lab to a new
section of Haven Shore medical along with most of the other
experiments, there was no resistance. He didn’t want the dimension
drive, and there was only one issyrian who had a tenuous claim to the
Fallen Star and whatever was aboard.

The Fallen Star was
originally a Freeground Fleet ship, making it more his property than
anyone else’s. His final order for the vessel was for it to be
recycled by the Solar Forge, the records of whatever was removed from
the vessel deleted.

Everything from the
research sections of the Fallen Star was transferred to a lab that he
and four Ando Model androids knew about. He hoped that the Haven
Shore Medical Centre would match the Triton’s medbay in technology
and capability soon, but there was so much work left to do, so many
devices to have manufactured, it would have been months if he didn’t
steal everything from the Fallen Star. With the technology from that
ship, he’d cut the time down to days. He only had to make sure that
the medical equipment that he’d taken was fit for use on normal
patients. Extra features or programming could do more harm than good.

He looked at one of the
results of Doctor Massena’s experiments as it lay on the table. It
was the result of the perfect conversion of the Alice copy from
framework to pure human. The last three days had been tiring, but
he’d gone through all the research, checked all the simulation data
and made sure all the relevant equipment was set up exactly the same
way as it was aboard the Fallen Star. His testing began where hers
ended using all the things Doctor Messana created, and he could not
believe the results, so he spent an extra day performing the
simulations over again. “She found it,” he said to the red-haired
corpse on his table.

A male Ando android
stood at his side, ensuring that everything he said and did was
clearly recorded. “Doctor Messana was trying to solve the problem
of removing framework from a living body, and she succeeded, but she
also gave us a way to reprogram the software any way we want. This is
the secret to destroying the indestructible army. The thing that
brings them into being is their greatest weakness. We can infect them
with a virus that tells their framework systems to destroy their
organic material, and, if we have a gifted programmer, maybe even
take control of the soldiers themselves.”

He touched the cold
cheek of the converted Alice copy briefly. Unlike so many autopsies
and inspections he’d done before, this one was difficult to take.
There was something about the way she looked, with features that were
unmistakably the result of Ayan and Jake; that made him want to avoid
looking at her. “Again, I do not condone Doctor Messana’s
methods. Her logs indicate that she became obsessed with getting
Jacob Valent back into shape, to the point of replacing fractured
segments of memory with grafts from the original Jonas data found in
the Fallen Star’s computer. The work she did repairing the
emotional centre of his brain has had obvious results, he is more the
man I met almost a decade ago aboard the Sunspire than the hard edged
warrior I have come to know. Jonas and Jacob are both killers, there
is no doubt there, only the first had a better moral compass, and I
think that has been given to Jake, and now I have no misgivings about
him and my daughter. I don’t know if Doctor Messana would ever tell
him that she made those grafts, or that she adjusted his pheromones
to be highly compatible with Ayan’s. It is as if she was so driven
to help Jake that she had to ensure his future happiness at the same
time. The muscle enhancement and enrichment packages that she
installed perfectly were all intended to make his transition from a
framework super-man to a mostly normal human as seamless as possible.
Scar removal was another art she had mastered, I can’t help but
admire the range of skills she had. It is a shame she lost her way,
and a tragedy that she was murdered.”