No Middle Ground (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride) Page 2
Biting back a scathing retort, Middleton forcibly relaxed himself enough that he bit out, “Tell him to overcharge the engines like we did when acting as the Lucky Clover’s wingman—now!”
“Yes, sir,” replied the engineer. A few moments later, he nodded in acknowledgment of his Chief’s unheard reply and said, “The Chief says it’ll take about twenty seconds, and that he’s making—“
“Another note in his log,” Middleton cut in and finished irritably, “noted, crewman. Tactical: how long until the forward batteries are ready to fire again?”
“Seventy seconds, Captain,” Sarkozi replied promptly. “The standard recharge is thirty seconds under our current power output, but overcharging the weapons requires additional time for cool-off.”
“Understood,” Middleton replied, already performing calculations on the heat dissipating and refractory qualities of water ice at seventy to ninety degrees Kelvin. Overcharging the weapons had allowed the Pride to overcome the corvette’s shields, whereas firing at normal power would have allowed the corvette to continue maneuvering while re-balancing their shields. He allowed himself to grin before Ensign Sarkozi turned abruptly.
“Incoming missiles!” she reported more than a little anxiously.
“How many?” Middleton demanded, more irritated with her emotional outburst than the fact that they were to receive fire. She had a fine tactical mind, but Sarkozi had a long ways to go before she would be a fully-fledged, battle-ready officer in the Confederation MSP.
“Twelve…no, make that, sixteen long-range Starfire class missiles on intercept course,” she reported, her voice slightly less frantic than before. “Missiles will enter effective firing range in…four minutes,” she reported more than a little sheepishly.
“Carry on, Tactical,” Middleton ordered, leaning back in his chair. Starfire missiles were an older class of weapon, easily found on any local black market. They were essentially a mobile, one-shot laser cannon powered by a controlled, thermonuclear reaction which generated a relatively powerful laser beam. The earliest versions of these weapons had utilized streams of superheated plasma, but with improved refraction technology their value as focused laser platforms became apparent.
Each one packed roughly the equivalent punch of one of the Pride’s heavy laser cannons, but their individual power wasn’t the part that concerned Middleton; it was how they could be deployed with unerring precision and timing that made him set his jaw.
“Comm., scan these frequencies for anything unusual,” he instructed, manually punching up the bands which he recalled the Starfire fire-linking systems were usually set to. He didn’t expect the Comm. stander to recognize the signal when he heard it, but he should at least be able to detect the activity.
“Scanning, Captain,” the Comm. stander acknowledged. He cocked his head as his eyes flicked back and forth over the information streaming across his screen until he stopped and expanded a particular band, and Middleton breathed a sigh of relief even before the Comm. stander reported, “I’ve got something here, sir. It’s strange…some kind of trinary data stream like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Forward that frequency to Tactical,” Middleton ordered as he turned his chair to face the Engineering crewman. “I need my engines, crewman!” he snapped. This could be close, especially if our onboard comm. gear isn’t powerful enough to approximate standard countermeasures, he thought silently.
“Yes, Captain,” the crewman replied, and Middleton turned to Sarkozi.
“Do you have that signal, Tactical?” he asked, keeping his voice as even as he could manage.
“Yes, Captain,” she replied without looking up, “re-routing primary comm. array control now.”
“Good,” Middleton said, fighting to keep the surprise from his voice at her arriving at the correct course of action. A keen tactical mind, indeed, he thought to himself, just as the forward batteries fired on the fleeing corvette.
“Seven direct hits, Captain,” Sarkozi reported with barely a sideways glance at the gunnery reports streaming onto her screen as she continued working on preparing the Comm. array to deal with those incoming missiles. “They’re streaming trace amounts of atmo and it looks like their power grid is fluctuating.”
“Carry on, Tactical,” Middleton said, having read that information as quickly as she had and not wanting her to be distracted from the task at hand. He looked at the tactical readout on the main screen and saw the sixteen Starfire missiles spreading out into a fan-like formation as they approached the Pride of Prometheus.
If they re-routed all available power to the shields there was a chance they could get lucky and absorb the combined weight of the missiles’ laser fire, but if more than half of those shots converged on a single shield generator’s facing they would face the very real danger of a ship-wide power grid failure.
The true threat posed by the missiles wasn’t in their individual, or even combined power—their deadliness was based purely on their unerring accuracy and coordination. If all sixteen combined their fire to a single point at the same moment, there were very few ships in the space-ways that could simply absorb the blow—the Lucky Clover being one of them, while the Pride of Prometheus—even with its robust forward shield facing—was not.
“Comm. array prepped, Captain,” Sarkozi reported before adding, “two minutes until the Starfires are in range. Time to the effective edge of the planet’s ring system: eight minutes.”
Middleton’s eyebrows rose in pleasant surprise. Sarkozi had apparently seen the same tactical value in the gas giant’s epic ring formations as he had, and he made a mental note to congratulate her later. “Keep us on the equatorial plane as long as you can, Helm, while keeping a clear line of fire for gunnery,” Middleton ordered. “We don’t want to commit one second earlier than we need to.”
“Aye, sir,” Jersey replied gruffly, as though this was all some great, personal inconvenience to him.
“Comm.,” Middleton turned to face the Comm. stander as he forwarded a file to the stander’s station, “on my order you are to send this file at maximum wattage, on the frequency of that signal you detected the trinary signal on; send these pulses on a random schedule with a period between three and twelve nanoseconds—but you are to wait for my order.”
“Yes, Captain,” the Comm. stander acknowledged as he prepped his console.
“Missile firing range in thirty seconds, Captain,” Sarkozi reported just as the lights dimmed slightly.
“Engineering!” Middleton snapped as he rounded on the crewman, who was already on the horn with Garibaldi down in Main Engineering. “Report, crewman!”
“Reactor two is overheating, Captain,” the crewman reported frantically. “The Chief requests we reduce consumption to avoid a containment failure.”
“Denied,” Middleton barked, looking back at the tactical display on the main screen. They were too close to the edge; if they slowed now and delayed reaching the ring system by even thirty seconds, the second corvette would have a chance to deploy her own missiles—and that was simply an unacceptable risk, to Middleton’s mind. “Tell him to hold it together for another,” his eyes flicked down to his chair’s readout, “five minutes; then we can reduce the power consumption—and not a second earlier!”
“Missiles in firing range…now, Captain,” Sarkozi reported tensely.
Not waiting another instant, Middleton ordered, “Now; transmit the signal, Comm. And keep transmitting until I give the order to cease.”
“Transmitting now...but Captain,” the Comm. stander objected, “the array can only handle that kind of load for ten, maybe twelve seconds before it fails.”
“Understood, Comm.,” Middleton growled as he ground his teeth. It was a risk he had to take; in a one-on-one fight, the Comm. systems were of far less utility than the shields, so it was an easy choice to make.
The seconds ticked away…five…eight…ten…twelve, and just as he was about to order they discontinue the signal in an effort to sav
e the equipment for a potential second salvo, the tactical display blossomed with the sixteen missile icons flashing red, indicating they had fired.
The ship shuddered with repeated impacts, and the lights on the bridge flickered before going dim and gradually returning to their normal luminosity.
“Discontinue the signal, Comm.,” Middleton ordered quickly.
The Comm. stander shook his head. “The array’s been knocked off-line, Captain,” he reported with obvious disappointment. “I’m reading multiple relay failures; recommend we dispatch an Engineering team to effect repairs.”
“Do it,” Middleton ordered, mentally breathing a sigh of relief at having avoided the worst possible outcome.
“Reading twelve distinct impacts, Captain,” Sarkozi reported with obvious relief. “Forward shields are at thirty percent, port dorsal shields at sixty five and starboard dorsals at eighty.”
The Pride’s forward cannons fired again, and the icon of the southern pirate corvette turned grey indicating catastrophic power failure had been detected.
“The southern corvette’s shields have collapsed…and I’m reading a fusion core ejection,” Sarkozi reported hungrily. “She’s broadcasting her unconditional surrender and I’m registering ejecting life pod signals—she’s dead in the water, Captain.”
“Thank you, Tactical,” Middleton replied. But just to be certain, he called up the CR-70 specs once again and nodded in satisfaction at what he saw. The missile complement of that ship’s class, with the sixteen missile configuration, was limited to precisely that number of shots per engagement without an exceptional—and borderline insane—engineering crew to reload them.
The weapons were modular by design, and therefore were not reloadable during combat conditions, requiring at least twenty minutes even with a crack engineering team to replace even one missile. So with the corvette’s power plant ejected, she was no longer a factor of any kind in this engagement—which meant this would now be a one-on-one fight between the Pride and the northern corvette.
“Helm, take us to the southern side of the rings; put them between us and the northern corvette,” Middleton instructed, relaxing fractionally now that the most critical part of the battle was behind them.
“Aye, sir,” Jersey replied, only slightly less irritably than before.
Damage reports could be heard streaming through the engineering and Comm. stations but they sounded light, all things considered. A few crewmembers had been taken to sickbay to treat minor head wounds and there had been a few cases of electrical burns, but no one had died thus far in the engagement, which made Middleton breathe easy as they came under the outer edge of the ring system.
Round one to us, he thought to himself.
Chapter II: A Dance of Ice & Fire
“The remaining corvette has still not fired her missiles, Captain,” Sarkozi reported, far more calmly and professionally than when they had been under fire but with a quizzical note to her voice.
“Her captain must have a cooler head than his companion did,” Middleton replied grudgingly, “he doesn’t want to play his ace this early in the game.” Having placed the incredible rings—composed primarily of water ice but with an unusual amount of nickel and iron particulates—between themselves and the corvette, the Pride had temporarily nullified the corvette’s biggest offensive weapon in her Starfire missiles. That would give the Pride precious time to recharge their shields, as well as work their way back toward the station in an effort to force an engagement on Middleton’s terms rather than the enemy’s.
“Helm, lay in a course toward the collection facility at best possible speed,” he instructed before turning to the Engineering crewman. “Tell Chief Garibaldi that he can cool off Two Plant now; he should have about thirty minutes to set it to rights before we need to restore full combat power.”
“Yes, Captain,” the crewman replied, relaying the order. Surprisingly, there was no reply this time—and thankfully no promise to make yet another note in his Demon-blasted log.
“Captain,” Sarkozi said, taking a few steps away from her station and gesturing to the main screen, “the three merchantmen are still on course for the collection facility; shouldn’t we interdict them?”
Middleton shook his head. “By themselves they wouldn’t pose much of a threat, but that Corvette’s missiles make for a force multiplier. The corvette could deploy them and then—assuming this second captain is halfway capable—coordinate the maneuvers of his ship and the three merchies for an advantageous formation while we try to counteract the missiles. The merchantmen entering the fray would complicate things unnecessarily; letting them dock is a concession we have to make, given the available data.”
“But sir,” she continued respectfully, “if they’re willing to risk an engagement with us, wouldn’t that indicate there’s something of great value to them aboard the station—something we should deny them access to? I doubt they’re going there to re-stock on H3 before beating feet, sir.”
“Your logic is sound, Ensign,” Middleton agreed with a nod of his head, “but pirates without warships are far less dangerous than pirates with warships. Without knowing for certain what’s aboard that station, I have to deal with the threats in order of apparent priority—that means the corvettes first, the merchantmen second, and then the station and its contents.”
“What’s to stop the second corvette from hightailing it out of here, sir?” Sarkozi asked, glancing at her Tactical team briefly before returning her attention to the Captain.
“Greed, Ensign,” Middleton replied confidently as he ran silent calculations to confirm their next likely engagement time with the enemy—assuming the pirate captain was as capable as he, or she, appeared. “If they were going to leave they would have done so already. You’re right; there’s something on that station which is valuable enough to tilt their fight or flight response toward the former, even in the face of a superior foe. Still, we’re now officially on the clock; if we play games for too long out here those merchies will escape with whatever cargo they seem so desperate to reclaim. Then there’ll be no way to stop that corvette from doing likewise, what with her speed advantage.”
“So we have to force the engagement here and now,” Sarkozi said with a knowing nod before turning back to her Tactical team and performing some calculations. “By my numbers, the merchantmen will reach the station in just under an hour—seventeen minutes before we reach extreme range of our forward array,” she reported, confirming Middleton’s own calculations. “If the remaining corvette follows this course toward the nearest gap in the rings,” she continued, throwing a hypothetical trajectory up onto the main screen which seemed to match the corvette’s current course, “they’ll reach an interdictory position in forty two minutes—eight minutes prior to our reaching firing range on the merchantmen, sir.”
The Captain punched up the technical specs on their forward heavy laser array, and after finding the frequency bands the weapons operated in, made a note which he forwarded to Sarkozi’s console. “We don’t want to give the merchies that much time if we can help it, Ensign,” he said confidently. “Make the modifications I’ve outlined to the forward array and report when you’ve finished.”
“Yes, Captain,” she replied, turning to her console and going over his note as a smile crept across her face. “I can have those modifications ready in eight minutes,” she reported hungrily.
“Do it,” he ordered, turning to the Sensors officer. “I need the primary sensors modified to deal with the unusual amount of iron in that ice ring,” he explained. “We’re going to need to use the primary sensor array for targeting, so we’ll need tactical-level accuracy; the weapons’ own targeting systems can’t cut through the rings’ interference. Can you do it?”
The Sensors officer looked at her console for a few moments as she got readings on the ice ring’s composition. “I think so, Captain,” she replied hesitantly, “but based on the interference, as well as our current velocity, we’ll ha
ve to slave the weapons to the sensors so they can fire as soon as a target lock is acquired. The firing windows are only going to open for a fraction of a second—too short for human reaction times.”
Slave-rigging the computers to command fire control, even temporarily, was a breach of standard operating protocol—one that required the Captain’s authorization to make. Ever since the AI wars, humanity had been distrustful of allowing machines to have too much control over dangerous equipment like weapons, and it was possibly a punishable offense for a Captain to do so—even temporarily. Normally the solutions were populated by the computer and then the gunners would verify the readings with their own targeting computers which were completely independent from the ship’s computer networks.
“Sarkozi,” Middleton nodded decisively, “slave fire control to the Sensors and set the solution parameters yourself. Each battery should offset their fire interval by ten microseconds from each other, firing in a clockwise sequence; the first laser will clear a hole through the ice ring debris to provide a clear shot for the second. We’re only going to get a couple shots before that corvette’s out of range, so we need to make each one count.”
“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged curtly.
“Helm,” the Captain continued as he forwarded another set of instructions to the helmsman, “re-orient the ship; I want our bow facing that corvette while they make for the ring break, but I don’t want to change our current trajectory. I also want axial rotation precisely as indicated—can you be that exact?”
“Aye, Captain,” Jersey replied tersely, but even the man’s sour disposition did little to deflate Middleton’s buoyant mood. Seconds later the view screen tilted upward, showing the gas giant’s incredible ring system as the bow of the ship rose gently to face it. He knew the rate of rotation he had ordered would be too slow to observe with the naked eye, but Middleton still disliked being in less than total control of the situation so he checked his instruments to verify the Pride’s axial rotation.