Strike Battleship Engineers (The Ithis Campaign Book 2) Read online

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  One

  Senior Lieutenant Rebecca Islington rarely sat in her bridge command chair. The escort frigate Minstrel’s conn was a highly utilitarian post, bereft of the relative luxury to be found on capital vessels like flagships Fury and Argent. It was perfectly functional, of course, and the crew of Task Force Perseus’ lightest fleet member had the accomplishments to prove it. The Captain simply preferred to be on her feet and moving around when her ship was engaged in a search for enemy activity.

  After hours of mysteries and almost-contacts, even Islington’s bridge crew was starting to feel some anxiety.

  “Time, from my mark.”

  Lieutenant McCampbell checked his side console. “Eighteen minutes, forty seconds.”

  Islington paced in front of the viewscreen, hands clasped behind her. Her long auburn hair covered her back almost to her wrists. She stared forward, looking at nothing in particular.

  “Signals?”

  “Negative. No transmissions on any known frequency. We are LOS locked on the Bayone Six satellite bearing two nine one. Estimating four degrees horizontal and vertical off our port quarter. Otherwise, we are negative signals to a range of one million miles universal.”

  Minstrel was parked approximately 0.3 megaclicks above the surface of the gas giant Bayone Six. Islington had ordered her ship to its present position after her tactical station detected unusual gravitic readings at the edge of the Bayone Star’s seven-planet system.

  “Play it again, Cal.”

  The tactical officer punched up a replay of the real-time readings Minstrel had tracked on approach to Bayone Six only hours earlier. The main viewscreen switched to a magnificent view of the enormous planet and its seventeen natural satellites from an approach range of eight million miles. The tactical overlay highlighted several items of interest including a relatively fast-moving shadow at one edge of the planet’s silhouette. It was there for only a moment, then winked out.

  The Captain stood silently, contemplating the remaining 40 seconds of readings. Then it reset and played again.

  “Who are you...?” Islington said quietly.

  “Whatever it is, emissions suggest a light frigate-class vessel in the fifteen-thousand-ton range. If she’s under power, they must have been on a least-time approach to a low orbit,” said Executive Officer Hollis Meier from his post at the bridge command console. “Might even have tried to duck into the exosphere.”

  “Dangerous,” McCampbell offered. “Even if they maintain a drive field, that atmosphere could generate any number of hazards just reacting to a ship’s trailing radiation.”

  “But it does make a fine hiding place if their captain has the nerves for it,” Islington replied.

  “They could jump out anywhere along that approach track now, captain. Doubling back on us once our instruments are obscured would be textbook strategy,” Meier said.

  “Do they have the tonnage for that, sir?” McCampbell asked. “All due respect I’d think twice and perhaps thrice before I confronted a ship that outguns me two to one.”

  “This is exactly what the Commander was afraid of,” Islington said. “Even with Argent reinforced, we all knew there’s no telling what could wander into Sector Two. This is the first evidence of unidentified contacts since Scorpion One Three.”

  “Then why not advance and light her up?” McCampbell asked. “At least then we would know.”

  “Because, lieutenant, we’re not supposed to be here. We’re sixty-one light years away in the Perseus formation running maintenance and waiting for our upgrades. Jayce allowed us to get lost so we could come back to Gitairn and keep an eye on the captain. If we are fired on, that’s going to provoke a lot of questions the Commander would rather not answer until we’re sure.”

  “With respect, ma’am, why did Skywatch Command order Argent this far into Sector Two without escort?”

  “Because they know something we don’t,” Islington replied, turning back to the viewscreen. “Ten skippers in the strike fleet. None of us trust the orders we’re getting, so we’re hedging our bets until we can confirm our suspicions first hand.”

  “And right now, our suspicions are hiding in the exosphere of Bayone Six,” Meier concluded.

  “Exactly,” Islington replied contemplatively. “There are times I wish I had traded my extra missile batteries for that cloaking device.”

  “There’s nothing stopping us from ducking into that atmosphere ourselves, skipper,” Meier offered.

  Islington watched the swirling real-time view of the shadowy planet. “No, XO,” Islington sighed. “If I’m going to play cat and mouse I’d rather be the cat. Cal, if they transit the perimeter and we remain on station, how long before they can exit the atmosphere beyond our LOS?”

  “One hour, sixteen minutes, ma’am. That presumes they maintain an evasive course and side-step all the gravity wells put up by the planet’s moons,” the tactical officer replied.

  “Can you do that, pilot?”

  “Aye, ma’am. I can plot and fly that course in reverse.”

  Islington smiled. “Can our unidentified friend do it?”

  “If they have the chops.”

  “Alright, synchronize–”

  “Threat board!”

  Captain Islington moved swiftly back to the conn. “Signals, upgrade our emergency condition. Alert all decks. Sound battle stations energy.” The bridge lights shifted red. “Pilot, plot an evasive course on the leeward side of that moon at two nine two. Stand by for full power maneuvers.” She latched her shock harness and brought up her sideconn display.

  The engines of the small ship began to thrum rhythmically, then settled into a low purr. “Report tactical.”

  “I have an unidentified inbound contact bearing one seven one mark two eight eight designate hostile Kilowatt Alpha One on intercept course inside our defense perimeter and closing. Weapons range in fourteen seconds.”

  “Signals, prep LECWAR countermeasures and report on alert ten. Tactical, full power charge to reflex batteries. Pilot give me a least time heading to evasive position Charlie and bring the Minstrel about.”

  “Aye, ma’am. Course on the board. Helm answering maneuver heading two nine two. Vectoring evasive. Position Charlie twenty seconds from your mark. Standing by.”

  The weapons lock alarm sounded at the tactical station. “Missiles in space! Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!”

  “Well played, gentlemen,” Islington muttered. “Engage sprint propulsion forward. All ahead flank. Stand by to maneuver. Tactical, give me the count.”

  “We are tracking eight birds in acquisition range. Bearing one five mark zero. Battle computer calculates track on signature profiles with X-ray burst warheads.”

  “Right out of the atmosphere,” Islington said, baring her teeth. “Pretty crude for a warship.”

  “Hostile contact Kilowatt Alpha Two now inbound. Looks like a timed attack run, ma’am. Missile impact in 45 seconds.”

  “Bracketed?” Hollis asked rhetorically.

  “If so, it’s the sloppiest attack run I’ve seen in a long time, XO,” Islington replied. “Alpha Two has the range stretched too far. Alpha One is going to lose us in that moon’s magnetic field before it can break weapons range. What’s the story on the second ship, Cal?”

  “Looks a little heavier. Frigate class warship. Likely an escort energy weapons platform. More power but less maneu
verable.”

  “Execute evasive course.”

  DSS Minstrel dove into the gravity well of Bayone Six’s fourth largest natural satellite with eight missiles angrily chasing her engine emissions. A moment later she vanished from Alpha One’s instruments.

  “Launch LECWAR countermeasures.”

  Minstrel’s dorsal jettison mechanism activated. A powerful wide-spectrum transmitter blasted free from its launch housing and rocketed away from the moon’s surface. Four seconds later, it went live, blasting the entire Bayone Six navigation zone with powerful electromagnetic noise designed to resemble a certain Skywatch escort frigate on an evasive course away from the moon.

  It was good enough to peel away five of the inbounds.

  “Now.”

  The sleek little starship rolled into a least-time dive directly at the moon’s surface. The decks and bulkheads began to shudder as the quad drives started to cause energetic reactions in the surrounding magnetic field. The gray pock-marked moon’s surface grew larger and closer at an alarming rate.

  “Alright, let’s see some of those pilot chops, Finn. Put us on the deck. Three hundred feet clearance. Full power.”

  Several of the bridge officers reflexively held on to their shock harnesses with free hands as the starship Minstrel dove straight at the surface of the moon designated as Bayone Six Four at nearly eighty miles a second.

  “Range.”

  “Inbounds now four hundred miles and closing.”

  “Weapons status.”

  “Reflex batteries at full power. Standing by.”

  Proximity alarms went off at both the pilot’s station and on Islington’s sideconn. The forward viewscreen displayed the approach vector as a series of smaller and smaller green rectangles forming a curved tunnel that dove towards a jagged-looking range of rocky cliffs and barriers in the distance. The ship rolled port to maximize the integrity of its drive field and compensate for the fluctuating magnetic conditions around the small moon. Absent the field, the upcoming course correction and its associated inertial stresses would silently tear Islington’s ship to ribbons.

  “Sound collision.”

  The bridge lights shifted yellow and a unique-sounding alarm went off across all intraship communications channels. Moments later, the Skywatch escort frigate Minstrel leveled off at an altitude of 302 feet and rocketed across Bayone Six Four at a relative velocity of Mach 400. The effect on the dusty surface was not dissimilar to a series of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions stretching six hundred miles along the rocky satellite’s crust.

  Captain Islington watched the course track intently until her calculated time was up. “Report tactical.”

  Ensign Calvin Grant watched in awe as the savage storm of debris thrown into space by the lightning fast shockwave around the ship smothered three muted explosions in her wake.

  “Negative tracking on all inbounds, ma’am.”

  McCampbell grinned. If it weren’t for the immense new gouge across the moon’s surface, there wouldn’t be any evidence the enemy missiles had ever been fired.

  “Bring us about to new course zero five mark forty. All ahead flank.”

  Minstrel reached the tangent horizon and began to climb as Bayone Six Four’s surface fell away due to its curvature. Islington’s ferociously piloted ship had just performed a flawless barricade feint and now had a two-million-mile head start to system’s edge.

  Outnumbered and potentially in danger of attracting more enemies, she was racing for the safety of the battleship Argent and her fighter and gunship cover.

  Someone had to warn Captain Hunter his one escort had confirmed what they all already suspected. Someone or something was trying to hide their activity in the Bayone system, and now that they had been discovered, an attack was imminent.

  Two

  The roaring sound was coming from overhead. It had to be a natural sound. Lieutenant Yili Curtiss knew every sound her ships and boats could make, and this kind of angry roar could only happen during a catastrophic decompression event and even then, it would only last a few seconds before a deck alarm sounded.

  No, this sound was some kind of alien hurricane. The gradually declining temperature that came with it forced her back to consciousness. If it weren’t for the fact she was at the base of a canyon of some kind, Curtiss knew she wouldn’t have survived this long. Frost had gathered on her eyebrows and arms. She estimated the air temperature was well below human tolerances. There were remains of some kind of material nearby that appeared to be smoldering. Tiny wisps of smoke appeared and vanished occasionally. A fire would explain how she hadn’t passed out from hypothermia by now.

  She turned her wrist with some difficulty and noted her mission chronometer was counting up from sixty-one hours. That was impossible. Copernicus One’s mission was only a survey. Under normal circumstances, they would have lifted off to rendezvous with the battleship Argent after only a couple of hours.

  Yili tried to move, and was rewarded with a sharp pain in her right side from shoulder to knee. She looked up and could only identify vague shapes. It was long past dusk on Bayone Three. Somewhere overhead there was some kind of light shining, but from her vantage point, Curtiss couldn’t see where it was located. The broken and heat-scarred outer hull of her orbital combat engineering corvette rose into the darkness behind her. She couldn’t feel her toes.

  Crashed?

  “Report!”

  The sound of Curtiss’ croaking voice was ripped into the sky and dissolved by the screaming gale force gusts. If anyone heard her, they didn’t respond. Yili reached for her commlink and found it drained of all power. That was also impossible. Fully charged, a Skywatch commlink’s battery would last more than a month even under heavy use. There was something terribly wrong, and despite her technical knowledge, Lieutenant Curtiss had been fully awake for several minutes now and still didn’t have a single clue what it was.

  “Any Skywatch personnel, report!” If her radios wouldn’t work, she would just have to rely on volume. “Skywatch personnel! Can anyone hear me?!” She knew Able Crewman Tackett had stayed with the boat. Another shooting pain flashed up her arm, drawing a gasp from the engineer. She reached back with one hand and found part of the corvette hull to hold on to. Using her weight for leverage, Yili finally managed to pull herself up to a relatively stable sitting position. She hadn’t realized it up to this point, but the ground depression she was in had apparently been produced by the boat itself. She silently thanked goodness this particular planet had a marginally breathable atmosphere.

  She craned her neck back as far as she possibly could, desperately trying to see where the light was coming from. It was a stark white glow and it cast a distorted set of shadows along the far wall of the ragged crater. It wasn’t moving, which led Yili to believe it was likely one of the corvette’s running lights mounted on the hull. She couldn’t explain why one light was on and the rest of the boat appeared dark, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain. That light was the only thing making it possible for her to see at all.

  A spectacular canopy of stars filled the night sky over Bayone Three. With the exception of the repeater, the farms and the Lethe Deeps complex, there were no heavily populated human settlements to speak of planetside. The system made a fine stop-off point for vessels looking to load backup consumables, but it was by no means a place where most people would want to spend any time.

  Unfortunately, although the running lamp high overhead was providing enough ambient light for Curtiss to see where she was, it wasn’t going to be much help with her next priority, which was getting back inside her boat. Leaving aside the immediate survival concerns about the dangerously high wind speeds and the rapidly plummeting temperature, whatever injury Yili had sustained would need to be treated by someone with medical training or by an emergency medical unit like those aboard her boat.

  The OCE Corps was most of the reason the Angel autonomous rescue vehicles had been invented in the first place. It went without saying
every Copernicus-class orbital combat engineering corvette would be equipped with at least one. Like all technical personnel, Yili never knew when she would find herself injured by whatever she was trying to fix, so she had modified her own boat to support two. Fleet called them “Saint Bernards with anti-grav.”

  The angels aboard her boat were also the only way she was going to find the other four members of her crew. Curtiss carefully performed a personal inventory. Both her blasters were intact and holstered right where they were supposed to be. If she were attacked by bison or man-eating insectoid creatures, she would at least be able to defend herself after a fashion. She gingerly reached around and found her breakaway tools attached to her cinch at the center of her back. If she needed to build a man-eating insectoid creature, she had enough equipment to get started.

  Like all engineering problems, the keys to everything were power and time. Power was likely not going to be the problem, as it was clear there was something aboard the boat that was working. The problem was going to be oxygen, temperature and medical attention, probably in that order. Although Bayone Three’s atmosphere was breathable, it didn’t have the oxygen concentration necessary for human energy needs. Without supplementary life support, over time the average conscious person would start to become fatigued. In fact, this was likely to become serious after only a few hours. Had she been awake, Yili realized she would have likely suffocated by now. Only the fact she had been literally out cold had saved her life.

  With a working commlink, she could transmit a distress call and simply wait for the battleship Argent to launch a rescue from orbit. But the way things stood at the moment, such a transmission was unlikely to happen any time soon. She could wait, but now that she was awake, she had about ten hours of consciousness left without life support.

  Chief Engineer Yili Curtiss had her work cut out.

  Three

  Zony Tixia’s crew mates had always been suitably impressed by her aptitude for hearing. Some reacted with wonder and awe at some of the feats she had demonstrated. Zony never took any of it all that seriously. After all, being a Signals Officer had always been a job that depended on above average senses. Picking a faint transmission out of a wall of static was simply beyond the physical capabilities of most bridge officers. Doing so was also occasionally the difference between success and failure for a ship and its crew, which is why Zony Tixia’s career had advanced so quickly.