War Angel: part eighty-three

Richard’s head snapped up from his instruments. “Oh, no.”

Kate looked up from the tactical display, her eyebrow raised. “Now what?” she wondered, immediately running through ideas of what Richard could be worried about now. The list, she decided, was too long. She ran her fingers through her hair and exhaled, then replied. “How bad an ‘oh no’ are we talking about?”

The War Angel’s mechanical savant felt a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead. “Sensors are picking up movement. The ship we shot before moving inside here didn’t back off. It’s making its way toward us. It’ll be at the entrance we… carved… in about a minute.” He noticed that Gina was now staring at him as well. Richard thought for a moment about shutting up, then decided that someone had to speak the obvious. “We’re sitting ducks right here.”

“Can we divert extra power to the rear shields?” Gina asked, her throat dry.

Kate bounced her fist off of her forehead. I’m sure we could do a lot of different tricks with the damn shields if the person who created the stupid things was on the bloody ship!”

Gina began pressing buttons on her console. “I can change our profile, give them a smaller target…”

“Doesn’t matter. At this range, they won’t be able to miss. They will give us everything they’ve got, and there’s a good chance that they’ll just shove us through a bulkhead whereupon we’ll get stuck and then explode.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine, as always,” Gina replied flatly.

Suddenly, Kate snapped her fingers and pointed at Gina. “Belay that. You had the right idea. Re-orient us so that we’re facing the opening. The only real option is to hit them first. With all four cannons. We’ll even shove debris at them, and that should confuse their targeting.”

Richard raised his hand slowly as Gina began shifting the ship on its axis. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if we fire at them, the risk to Sarah and Jack is…”

“The same as it is if we sit here and take a pounding. One threat at a time, Clover.”

Sarah wrapped her arm around Jack’s waist, and he draped his across her shoulder. She was careful to avoid squeezing near his midsection, aware of his broken rubs. “Easy does it, Jack. Lean on me, and I’ll get us back to the ship.” She handed him a gun. “Can you still shoot?” He nodded. “Good boy. Let’s go.”

They stumbled into the damaged corridor and began slowly walking the path back to the War Angel. Every few steps, they would stop and Sarah would adjust her grip, and Jack would swing his arm back across her shoulder. It was not speedy, by any means, and soon enough, they were walking through the path that Kate had created for them. “She’s just ahead, Jack. Almost there.”

“How does she look?”

“Beautiful and deadly. Richard did his work well.”

He coughed out a small glob of blood. “Heh. Knew he had it in him.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I think you were the only one who thought that.”

“S’why I’m captain,” he said, gargling a laugh.

The Serr’Donn approached the inner breach of the Kan’Tar. Alarm claxons rang out as the ship’s computer warned of an immanent collision with a hull that no longer existed. B’thah K’alat swore under his breath, annoyed at the sound, and far more annoyed at the entire situation. What treachery had these Earthers committed that they were able to cause this damage? Where was the great F’ath M’isti? Was he captured? Fighting inside his own ship?

Dead? It was inconceivable.

It was all inconceivable until this moment. This ship had shown bravado unlike any like it in the annals of the war between these two planets. K’alat smiled. “And now its destruction will be at my hand. It is I who will be written of in the annals of our people. My reward in Erestia will be beyond imagination!”

His reverie was interrupted by a nearby officer. “Firing solution achieved!”

K’alat sat back in his chair with a satisfied grin. “Fire at will.”

Kate’s fingers danced across the targeting system. “Firing all cannons!”

Separated by only a short distance, the two war ships simultaneously opened fire on one another. Two of the Serr’Donn’s guns spat bright blue energy across the gulf of ship debris, pounding the War Angel across her bow and directly striking the shields right above the bridge. The impact sent Kate and Richard sprawling across the deck, Richard smashing his forehead on the edge of his station as he went. Gina held on only because her seat back was directly behind her and helped absorb the impact. The ship itself was thrown backward, and only by having the engines fired up did that prevent the War Angel from being propelled into the shattered deck and stuck there.

All four of the War Angel’s cannons erupted in a red blaze of fury. Two were fired at full power, and those struck their target true. The Serr’Donn now had an open wound in her side. At the same time, the other two cannons had fired on low power and hit already damaged sections of the Kan’Tar. This had the effect of stirring up an enormous amount of debris and flinging it into the air near the attacking Omegan ship. For a moment, at least, her targeting system was clogged.

“Down!” Sarah yelled, dragging Jack to the floor with her as the Omegan energy bolts ricocheted off of the War Angel’s shields and dispersed across the nearest space… which included the tunnel containing Jack and Sarah. The energy swirled over them and passed through the entire area before seeping into the hallway at the far end.

Jack gingerly lifted his head from the floor and looked toward their escape hole. “Looked like… the Angel fired at the same time.”

Sarah sat up. “It did. No way of knowing if they beat the bad guys, either.” She mentally calculated how far they had to walk until they could board the ship. “That we can’t board if it’s being fired on anyway,” she reminded herself. “I think we’re in trouble, Jack.”

He slid himself over to the wall and propped himself against it. “Doubly so, yes. Can’t get onto ship. Very bad.” Jack shrugged. “Radiation exposure from both ships’ weapons not so great, either.” He saw a panic begin to rise in her eyes. “One problem at a time, right? We don’t get on the Angel, we die no matter what.”

Kate struggled to her feet and wobbled back to the tactical station. She noticed Richard trying to regain his position as well, noticing the blood pouring down his face, and decided to treat him gently. “How are we doing, Clover?” she asked gently. Kate saw Gina nodding at her out of the corner of her eye, approving of this method.

He balanced himself using both hands and leaned forward to begin checking readouts. “We cut a hole in them. They are… on fire. But intact. The debris must be confusing their targeting.”

“It isn’t doing wonders for our, either,” she said through gritted teeth. “Will just have to do it the old fashioned way.” She hit the firing mechanism for cannon one twice, sending blasts at the wounded enemy. As she did, she stared at Richard, expectantly.

“One hit… second shot missed!”

She blew the hair out of her eyes. “Dammit!”

“I have an idea!” Gina’s voice rang out with excitement. The other two looked at her expectantly. “Yes,” she beamed to herself, “that just might work...”

“By all means, enlighten us,” Kate said, her patience wearing thin.

The War Angel’s pilot smiled in response. “Time to think a little more three dimensionally,” she replied, not looking up as she engaged the thruster controls.

War Angel: part eighty-two

Jack felt the deck vibrate beneath him as a cacophonous explosion roared throughout the Kan’Tar. He pressed his hands flat against the table, steadying himself as the shockwaves roiled through the guts of the massive ship. Alarm claxons rang out, and the lights dimmed, then went out. After a moment, a bright blue glow began to emit from the ceiling and from the floorboards.

“Well. They must be on their way,” he thought. Lifting his hands from the table, he slowly turned his head and spit a glob of blood onto the nearest wall. It splattered as it hit, dripping down the wall like the claws of a demon. The blue lighting gave it an almost fluorescent look, causing Jack to briefly admire his work. He then began the slow process of standing up again. “Better get ready. Soon,” he thought. “Soon.”

B’thah K’alat wiped away the blood from the gash in his forehead. After he finished, he stormed across the bridge of the Serr’Donn to the sensor station. “What is the status of that ship?” he demanded.

The warrior responded without looking up from his station. “They hit us hard. We have momentarily lost helm control, but it should be repaired in –“ Before he could finish, K’alat grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him out of his chair and onto the deck. The Omegan captain then stomped down on the warrior’s neck with the heel of his boot.

“I… said… what is the status of THAT ship! Not this one, fool!” He relaxed his foot. “Do your job, or you will be replaced!”

Nodding his head, the warrior got up off the floor and returned to his station. He studied his instruments for a moment, and then turned around, lightly trembling. “My Commander, they are… the enemy ship has used its weaponry to destroy the inner hull and has begun making its way inside the Kan’Tar.” He paused, his hands shaking. “It is continuing to do so, firing its weapons in all directions.” He swallowed, his throat going dry. “They have made their way through ten percent of the ship so far.”

K’alat went silent for a moment. “May the dead hunt well in Erestia.” The Omegan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them wide. “They must be stopped. Helm, get us to this end of their wake and put us into a position to fire all weapons. They have nowhere to run. We will have them.”

Kate continued to study the data Richard was sending her, adjusting the cannons and firing at a steady clip. As they made their way deeper into the Kan’Tar, she shifted her pattern. Her thinking had been two-dimensional at first, the optical illusion presented by the inside of the Omegan ship playing with her head, but as she began relying on the sensor data, she realized that she could use the guns on every axis. She fired forward, backward, to each side, up and down… suddenly she could picture the insides of the beast as no different than being out in space. She had a full sphere of tactical targets surrounding her, and the hunting was very, very good.

All around the War Angel, the Kan’Tar was dying in pieces. The cannons were cutting large chasms through the decks, destroying everything in their path. Equipment, vital systems… none of it was safe and was to be expected. But the crew of the War Angel was taken by surprise when the bodies started hitting them.

Initially, there was just one. Gina saw something on the viewscreen that looked a little larger than most of the debris they’d seen until that point, but it took until it impacted the shields to see that it was an Omegan warrior. He was missing an arm and a leg, and half of his face was burned off, but there was no mistaking it: this was the face of the enemy.

Gina turned pale. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “Please no.”

Kate opened fire again. “We killed how many with the bug and you’re worried about that?” she yelled from the weapons station.

“This is different,” Gina replied, anger rising in her voice. Four more bodies rained down upon the War Angel, bouncing away like limp sacks of meat.

“Debate later,” Sarah interjected. “Clover, how close are we to Jack?”

Richard eyeballed his data screen. “Sending Kate a firing solution that should cut us a hole that will get us as close as fifty meters now, Commander.”

“Received.” Kate punched in the solution and fired. “Path cleared. I’ll gear up and go get him.” She stepped away from the weapons station to find Sarah standing in front of her at the door.

“Belay that, F.A. You have the conn.” Sarah gritted her teeth. “This one is on me.”

Kate sneered. “That’s garbage and you know it. You want to play military ship all this time, and now pull this? You know this is inappropriate, Commander. Your place is on the bridge. Period.”

Sarah stepped through the door. “Not right now it isn’t.” She started walking away, Kate watching her as she went. Over her shoulder, she yelled one last command: “Cover my six, F.A.!”

Kate sighed heavily. “Yeah,” she muttered to herself, “because that’s worked so well for me today.”

The landing bay door opened, and Sarah hopped down to what was left of the floor beneath the War Angel. She admired the old ship’s destructive power for a moment, then set off in the direction of Jack’s transponder. The last cannon blast had cut a new hallway through the Kan’Tar, and she followed it steadily, gun pointed ahead of her in case of unexpected company.

All she saw, though, were dead bodies.

It amazed her, the numb sensation running through her body. It was like an electric current that kept her from feeling anything else. Days ago she would have considered herself to be something of a pacifist; now she was using biological weapons to commit mass murder of the enemy, and those untouched by the bug were fodder for the weaponry of the ship she had helped restore and bring to life. “One is resurrected, another dies,” she thought, trying not to admire the symmetry and failing.

She reached the end of the “corridor” and saw the hallway where she had walked earlier. A quick right turn, and a few doors ahead on the left was the dining hall. She approached cautiously, and then opened the door. Standing with his back against the wall, next to the door, was Jack. He blinked twice, clearing his vision, and then gave her a wan smile. “What,” he groaned, “took you so long?”

War Angel: part eighty-one

“Are you absolutely certain that the Angel’s shields can protect us from the close quarters?” Gina asked.

Sarah pulled some numbers up on the nearest screen. “Obviously, this isn’t quite what I had in mind when I designed the biogel packs. Those were meant to disperse energy more than physical hits. But between the shields and the hull – the original designers of the Revenge-class ships overbuilt – I do believe that she can take the pounding. It won’t be comfortable for us. It’s going to be seriously bumpy and unpleasant as we ride out the damage.”

Jack smiled and nodded. “The ship will be unprotected for a minute or so if you wind up having to pick me up, because the shields will have to drop in order for me to get into the ship. But even assuming that some of their crew manage a few shots at us, small arms fire isn’t going to hurt this old boat.”

“Guess we’d better hope they don’t have anything larger, then,” Richard muttered.

Kate fired over her shoulder as she and the doctor ran through corridor after corridor.  The pattern was consistent; a few blasts would fly past them, Kate would retaliate, and around twenty seconds later, another barrage would come from behind them. Their pursuers seemed no closer, which was a gift, but they weren’t going away, either.

“Keep running, Doctor, we’re getting close!” Kate yelled above the sound of laser fire. “They’re firing wildly, so they aren’t going to catch us!” Her voice directed itself inward, adding a silent “I hope.”

They sprinted around the next left-hand corner, and the two women brightened. Ahead of them was the door to the landing bay. At the threshold, they stopped running, walking through the door and shutting it. Wilma looked around at the bay and was stunned at what she saw. Dead Omegans laying everywhere, the remnants of a B-class cruiser sprayed around the area, and a fully functional War Angel floating above the deck, waiting for her crew complement to be complete. Kate looked over at the doctor as they made their way to the ship and saw the look on her face.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Kate asked.

“In the most appalling way possible,” Wilma replied. Suddenly, they caught movement out of the corners of their eyes. Looking at the far end of the landing bay, they saw a B-class cruiser coming around the edge of the Kan’Tar and preparing to enter the landing bay. The two women turned and sprinted toward the War Angel. They ran into the landing bay and Kate slammed her fist into a comm. unit, activating it.

“F.A. to bridge! We’ve got company coming!”

Richard switched the main viewscreen to show the Serr’Donn entering the landing bay. “B-class cruiser entering the bay, Commander,” he said, studying the suddenly very quiet Sarah as she sat forward in the captain’s chair. “Orders?”

“Give me a reading on them, full go. They’ll have all they need to know in a heartbeat,” she replied.

His fingers danced around the console, pulling up data. “They’re doing a full sensor sweep of the ship. Not just ours, but the Kan’Tar, too. Weapons are cold. No, wait… weapons powering up! They are slowing their engines to take up a position blocking us from leaving the landing bay.” He looked down for a moment. “They have us in weapons lock.”

The bridge door opened, and Kate ran in. Sarah swiveled around. “Tactical, please, F.A. Our company has us in weapons lock.”

Kate assumed her position at the weapons station. “But they haven’t fired? Weird.”

Sarah turned back to face the viewscreen. “I think they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Our weapons aren’t hot, we aren’t trying to run. They’re expecting the opposite.”

Gina held her hands steady on the helm. “What’s the plan?”

“We need to maneuver the ship around in order to execute the plan, anyway, so let’s do it really gently. Use the thrusters and swing us so that she sees our flank.”

“That gives her a bigger target, Commander,” Kate chimed in, concerned.

“I’m aware of it, Lieutenant Commander,” Sarah responded. “But at this range, she’s got us no matter what.”

A slight tremble passed through the War Angel’s flooring as the ship slowly made a ninety degree turn, settling in a position directly in front of the entrance to the interior of the Kan’Tar. As Gina finished the maneuver, sweat dripping from her hairline, Richard’s voice cried out in alarm. “Incom—“

Before he could finish, the blast from the Serr’Donn impacted the War Angel’s shields, shoving the ship backward and bouncing it off of the interior hull of the landing bay. Alarms rang out across the bridge. The crew bounced out of their seats, and the old warship drifted out of control for a moment.

“Gah!” Sarah screamed, half in pain, and half in anger. “Tactical! One cannon for them, the other three need to start carving us a path out of here. Helm! Once she fires the initial barrage, swing us the rest of the way around and make the move! Sensors! Continual feed to helm and tactical. Keep giving them a path and a target. Go! Go! Go!”

Kate eyeballed the tactical display carefully. She punched in coordinates for all four cannons and set them to full power. “Here we go…” Her fingers brushed the firing mechanisms and the War Angel’s laser cannons blazed to life.

Cannon four erupted in a fiery red blaze of destruction three times, punching the Serr’Donn across its nose, knocking that ship’s front end hard enough so that it drifted backward towards the landing bay entrance. It was a crisp, beautiful shot, one that would give the War Angel valuable time to execute its escape plan.

Cannons one, two and three were pointed the other direction.

Each weapon sent a cascade of death and destruction through the interior walls of the Kan’Tar. Nine total blasts tore through the bulkheads, doorways, walls, and equipment in their path. A gaping hole now existed in the Kan’Tar’s insides, and debris and pieces of the ship drifted downward toward the lower decks. Richard switched the viewscreen’s point of view, and the crew got a good look at what they had just done.

Gina used the thrusters and maneuvered the ship around so that it had its backside facing the landing bay. She then looked at the data Richard was feeding her and engaged the engines. “Helm ready. Taking us in… three… two… one… go.” The War Angel lurched forward and entered the hole it had just created. “Tactical, commence surgery.”

“With pleasure,” Kate replied. She focused all four cannons forward and opened fire.

War Angel: part eighty

“The most vulnerable part of that thing has to be the engines,” Richard told the group. “The outer casing on the rest of it is completely ridiculous, though.” He shrugged. “And it isn’t like the engines are all that vulnerable. They have a ton of cannons installed back there, and if they have any design sense at all, they have multiple redundancies if one gets knocked out. Even then, they still have some actual protection from the super hull, because they’re partially sunken in.”

Gina exhaled loudly. “So they aren’t really vulnerable either. This is insane.”

“Not from the outside, again, no,” Jack replied. “But if we do this my way…”

Kate continued blasting with all her fury as she watched Ben Drake drag his father toward her. Wilma whipped around the corner behind her, diving for cover, and Kate kept a wary eye as the rescue continued going right down the drain. “Nonononononono,” repeated over and over in her head.

Finally, Ben pulled his father around the corner, and Kate stepped back to assess the situation. The doctor immediately began inspecting the wound, and Kate could see from the older woman’s increasing anxiety that the prognosis was not very good.

Ben noticed the same. “Doc?”

Wilma shook her head. She looked into the older man’s eyes, and they had already turned glassy. She did a quick scan of his vital signs and shook her head slowly, and slumped down in defeat. Then the elder Drake coughed, and then began speaking. “Go…”

Kate peeked around the corner and saw movement beginning at the far end of the corridor. “I’m afraid he has the right idea, guys,” she said, her voice flat.

Ben’s head snapped around. “I am NOT leaving him here to die!” He knelt down next to his father. “I’m not leaving you, Dad.”

The doctor reached over and put her hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Fifteen minutes, maybe less, Ben.”

The younger Drake’s eyes hardened. “Then he’ll get them.”

Kate fired several shots down the corridor, explosive sounds vibrating through the walls. “We don’t have that kind of time. And we need to get back to the ship quickly.” She paused. “Quickly, do you understand?” Her voice softened. “Ben, he can’t run. We have to run. The Angel is going to be coming through soon, and the odds are that she won’t be coming this way. She’ll be heading for Jack, and the odds that he is in this part of the ship are pretty slim. He may even be back already.” She wheeled around and fired another volley, then dropped down and crouched next to Ben. “I can do it for him if you want. I don’t want you to have to do it.”

“No!”

“Ben,” she whispered, “You don’t want to be taken alive by these guys. You know what they do.”

A tear formed in the young comm. officer’s left eye. He reached out and took a gun from Kate’s hand. “We won’t be. Go. I’m staying with my father.”

“This is insane!” she yelled at him.

He shrugged. “You need cover anyway. Someone has to keep these guys off your ass while you make a play for the ship. Looks like I elected myself.” He checked the power levels on the gun. “Looks like I have some shots left. Don’t worry, I’ll make them count.” Ben locked eyes with Kate for the first time since she had tried to kill him. “And I’ll save a couple.”

Wilma began to weep. “Ben…”

Drake stood up, smiling at the doctor. “It’s been real, Doctor. Thanks for saving my life and getting me this far.” He looked around the corner and fired a barrage, then turned to smile at Kate. “You’d better go. They need you.”

Kate checked her remaining gun, then nodded. “I’d tell you I’m sorry, but –“

“It’d be a lie. Likewise. Guess we both are who we are.” He winked at her. “See ya around, F.A.”

Alarms began clattering throughout the Serr’Donn. The captain, B’thah K’alat, leapt from his seat. “Report!”

A bridge warrior spun around in his seat. “It is… impossible! The Kan’Tar just opened fire and destroyed the Qia’Zot!”

“What?! Confirm that!” A second warrior punched the ship’s sensor logs onto the main screen, and the Omegans watched as their flagship destroyed one of their fellows. K’alat sat back down into his command chair. “This is absurd. Raise the Kan’tar!”

“No response. There is some sort of interference,” one of the bridge crew replied.

K’alat stood again. “Engage thrusters. Take us into the Kan’Tar’s landing bay. I sense treachery.”

“From who?” asked the sensors officer.

“That,” K’alat, “is a very good question.”

Jack braced himself against the wall and continued to slowly walk through the Kan’Tar’s corridors. He had been hyper cogniscent of his movements as he and M’isti had left the others behind, and he was certain that he was making his way back the way he had come. He knew that his crew would be looking for him, but he wanted to make it as easy as possible to come and get him. The closer he could get to the landing bay, the simpler it would be for them.

A familiar door appeared ahead of him, and he approached it carefully. There was also one other option: his plan had failed utterly, and his crew was dead inside this room. He limped into the dining hall, and saw a number of dead Omegans on the ground, their blood spilled across the floor. He looked around the room and saw no traces of his crew or any damage they might have taken in their own efforts. Relaxing for a moment, Jack exhaled loudly, feeling the pain in his body more acutely than he would have preferred. His knees trembled for a few seconds, and he realized that this was where his journey in this ship was going to have to stop. It was going to be up to the War Angel crew to find him here.

He reached across the table and grabbed a glass of water. He took a large swig, then gargled and spit it out. A splatter of bloody water swept across the table, and he turned up his nose. “I seriously need the doctor,” he thought. “Or this rescue may be for absolutely nothing.”