[Friday, December 17]

Onboard the supercarrier, HMS Reliant, Captain Manalo mutters under his breath, “And now the fun begins.”

[Destroyer, HMS Clary]

Captain Morris is nervous, as well he should be. The intel they had on the fleet they were to face was days old. Who knows what they’ll be facing when they jump in.

“Stand by for emergence,” the ship’s navigator announces to the crew. “Normal space emergence in five…four…three…two…one. Sequence initiated. Jump engines disengaged.”

Morris suddenly finds himself staring at a scene straight out of hell.

“Jesus Christ!” Captain Morris cries as the HMS Clary suddenly emerges into normal space over the moon. An Alkarin battlecruiser is hurtling directly for them, and already firing on them. “Hard aport, Z-vector minus fifty! All ahead flank!” he shouts at the navigator.

Like everyone else on the bridge, Lt. Amanda Evans stares with a terrified expression as the battlecruiser fills the bridge display and collision alarms blare throughout the ship. If the Clary was a cruiser, there was no way she would be able to maneuver fast enough to avoid the collision. Even so, there’s a good chance they’ll still collide with them.

While Morris, in her and the rest of the crew’s opinion, is an imbecile when it comes to leadership and tactics, at least he knows how to maneuver the ship. As it is, even with the navigator directing the ship into a sharp left downward turn and the destroyer accelerating at maximum thrust, breaking out of their assigned position in the squadron formation, they barely escape. Turning her eyes back to her targeting console, she sees that the Alkarin ship barely cleared them by a single meter. Although the near-collision is the least of their problems.

“Multiple contacts close aboard!” Evans calls out loudly.

“Identify them, damn you!” Morris bellows as he looks at the tactical display beside him, which is now filled with a cloud of red icons interspersed with the green icons of the battlegroup along with many yellow icons of damaged or destroyed ships of the Alkarins and the battlegroup.

Several of the yellow and many of the red icons, then quickly more and more, began to turn bright orange as Kellen, the ship’s AI, categorized them as wreckage that could potentially pose a navigation hazard. Evans feels her stomach lurch at what her display is showing. This side of the system is quickly becoming a charnel house of damaged, dead, and dying ships. Flaming wreckage and explosions from at least fifty vessels are scattered throughout nearby space, 13 of them Commonwealth ships, and Evans can see what can only be several hundred, possibly thousands, of bodies. Her sensors indicate that some of them are in vacuum suits, desperately attempting to board the commonwealth ships.

“I’m trying, sir,” Evans replied, “but we jumped into the middle of the Alkarins, and the data link still hasn’t synchronized yet.” That fact concerns Evans more than anything else. Like all of the ships in the Commonwealth fleet, their ship had a data link capability that allows the fleet to act as one very large virtual weapon. Only, it still took time, even if just a few moments, to establish the links after a jump. “Kellen has to identify the ships visually or by their emissions signatures.”

“Well, that’s not one of our ships!” the pilot exclaims, pointing at the bridge screen. While it maneuvers smoothly, it’s not unscathed as its hull is covered from stem to stern with scorch marks and at least half a dozen ragged holes where weapons have found their mark.

“Targeting,” Evans called out, “hard lock!” The ship’s targeting systems lock on to the enemy ship and track her. At this close range, they could use almost any weapon, but the primary antimatter Gatling guns and laser turrets are the best choices in this situation since they could do the most damage quickly and missiles might even damage the Clary at this range.

“Stand by…” Morris states before giving the navigator orders to twist the Clary hard to starboard to better and more quickly bring their turrets to bear on the Alkarin ship, “Fire!”

Evans gives Kellen firing authority, and microseconds later, the ship echoes with the thrum of the main Gatling gun turrets.

“Clean hits!” Evans announces.

None of the bridge crew needs to hear her announcement to tell them that they’d hit their target since the bridge screen, now nearly filled with the image of the enemy ship, shows a cascade of explosions down her flank, blowing huge holes as the fire from it suddenly ceases.

There is a brief cheer on the bridge before Morris calls out, “Target, designate!”

Using the command override on his console, he steered the crosshairs for the pulse cannon onto a distant Alkarin capital ship, silhouetted against the moon far below, that was roughly the size of a dreadnought. To him, it appeared to be an easy target of opportunity. The Clary, one of the few remaining older unupgraded ships, still had the fixed 100-centimeter pulse laser cannon along the Clary’s ventral centerline of the ship. The pulse cannons have been removed with the upgrades because of the drain on the energy buffers, which leaves the ship defenseless until the capacitors recharge.

Clary suddenly alters course automatically to line up her bow with the target. “Captain?” Evans asks, not entirely sure what the captain is planning, but hoping he isn’t going to use the pulse cannon. “Captain, no, wait!”

“Firing!” Morris says almost gleefully as he hits the commit button. The lights dim and the entire ship thrums as the pulse cannon fires, sending an extremely powerful beam of coherent emerald light streaking toward the target.

Unfortunately, when Morris used the command override, it locked Evans’s station out of the weapon control cycle. Morris apparently doesn’t realize that it will also bypass the additional target lock cues. Evidently, he thinks that as soon as the commit button lights, the weapon is locked on target and ready to fire. The second half of his assumption, that it’s ready to fire, is correct, but the targeting system had yet to establish a hard lock on the enemy ship since the Clary’s angular motion from the turn hadn’t been completely arrested.

The impending miss isn’t why Evans tried to stop Morris from firing. It was the Commonwealth carrier that was directly in the weapon’s path, behind the Alkarin dreadnought.

Expecting to see the enemy ship burst into a gigantic fireball, the navigator increases the magnification on the bridge display so they can have a close-up view of the hit, but the Alkarin warship quickly passes out of the line of fire, leaving only the carrier, HMS Wallace in the crosshairs of the pulse cannon.

“Oh, my God,” someone murmurs loudly into the sudden quiet on the bridge as the beam from the pulse cannon tears into the drive section of the carrier, shearing off the rear third of the carrier and sending the wreckage tumbling. Sparks cascaded from severed electrical conduits, and streams of air bleed from the compartments that are now suddenly exposed to hard vacuum. Tens, then hundreds of bodies in armor, clearly visible with the high magnification of the screen, drift away from the wreckage.

Horrified at what Morris has done, Evans looks away from the decimated carrier, loathing the man who now sits shocked into immobility in his chair.

Morris’s mouth opens and closes like that of a fish out of water as his mind tries to come to grips with what he’d just done. ‘That’s one screwup he can’t blame on the crew,’ Evans thinks bitterly.

Yanking her attention back to her console in an attempt to distract herself from the idiot, she spots another Alkarin ship coming to bear on the Clary. “Incoming from starboard!” Evans cries as she sees a volley of projectiles erupt from one of the dozen or more ships embroiled in a huge fight to the Clary’s starboard. “Captain, I recommend coming to course…”

“Belay that!” Morris shouts, throwing Evans a disgusted look. “I can handle my ship, thank you very much, Lieutenant!” he states caustically after a glance at his command display, he states, “There’s no way those rounds will hit us.”

“Sir…”

“You are relieved! Get the fuck off my bridge, you stupid bitch!” the captain screams at the top of his lungs. The bridge immediately becomes deathly quiet except for the tactical alarms clamoring for attention. Her face a mask of utter fury at the stupidity of him relieving her right in the middle of a battle,

Evans unbuckles herself from the combat chair and stands beside it. “Yes, sir!” she angrily snaps before stepping away from her console.

“Ivanova,” Morris growls, “take over tactical. Move your ass, now!”

Without a word, the newly commissioned ensign, who normally handles communications, unstraps from her chair and rushes across the bridge in a panic. She has virtually no experience with tactical and looks utterly terrified. She looks up at Evans as she slips into her still-warm chair, her eyes wide with barely concealed terror.

“Get the fuck off my bridge, Lieutenant,” the captain ordered tersely. Giving Ivanova what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder, Evans turns to leave. Morris takes another look at his tactical display and concludes that the incoming enemy shells are getting uncomfortably close after all. “Fuck! Where do they find these morons? Why aren’t the CIWS firing, Ivanova?” Morris demands.

Looking desperately at the tactical display, she replies in a hoarse voice, as terrified by the captain as the incoming weapons, “They can’t, sir.”

“Goddammit, what the fuck do you mean?” he yells frantically.

Evans stops and turns to look at Morris. “Because, you fucking moron,” she tells him, unafraid of the captain’s anger with the death of the ship quickly approaching, “you completely drained the energy buffers when you destroyed that carrier with the pulse cannon.” A horrified expression slowly appears as the realization dawns on Morris.

“That’s right, Captain,” Evans states quietly. “Without power, our weapons are useless until the energy buffers recharge. That’s why the designers decided to remove the spinal cannon as part of the upgrades. Congratulations, you maniac, you’ve killed us all.”

‘At least I have the satisfaction of seeing that before we die,’ she thinks. Two seconds later, the enemy salvo hits.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

“Lieutenant,” a voice says. It’s vaguely familiar but seems to be muffled and distant as if her ears are stuffed with cotton. Her voice is rather pleasant, but she seems to be upset for some reason. “Lieutenant, come on, wake up, we need you.”

Blinking her eyes open, Amanda Evans sees a blur hovering over her that gradually resolves itself into the face of Nancy Ivanova.

The last few seconds of what happened on the bridge flashes through her mind, when Morris had relieved her of duty and replaced her with Ivanova just as the Alkarin shells were about to hit, and hit they had. The last thing she could recall was flying across the bridge as explosions wracked the ship. She remembers thinking, ‘Your life is supposed to flash before your eyes right before you die,’ and she felt cheated that she hadn’t been able to see her own life replayed before her body smashed into the bulkhead. Looking up at Ivanova, she can still hardly see her face because the bridge is now lit by only a few of the emergency lights, throwing a sickly, dim red glow through the smoke that swirls in the compartment.

What she can see isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination. Ivanova has a deep gash across her left cheek, and her face has been smeared with blood and smoke. Although, streaks through it have left trails down her cheeks where tears fell. She has no idea if they’re from fear, pain, or the trauma of the ship being hit.

“Lieutenant,” Ivanova says.

Evans touches the back of her head to find her hair plastered down by a sticky wetness. She thinks, ‘Must be blood from hitting the bulkhead.’

“Lieutenant, please, say something,” she whispers desperately.

She swallows a couple of times. “Ivanova,” she manages to say hoarsely, then coughs wetly, making her head throb dully. Aside from that and some likely bad bruising, she seems to be in some semblance of one-piece.

Making a few exploratory movements with her hands and feet, she finds that, thankfully, nothing is broken.

Hearing her name had an immediate effect on Ivanova. “Thank God,” she whispers, lowering her head to rest on her breast with a sobbing cry.

Reaching up, Evans gently strokes her hair. “Shh~ Calm down. At least we’re still alive.” Ivanova sits up, wipes her tears, and nods with a tentative smile. “Status?”

She shrugs. “I have no idea. Everything is out at the moment.”

“Help me up,” she says. Once she’s standing, she asks, “Have we been boarded?”

“No. Well, not that I know of anyway,” she reassures her. “No sign of boarders or anyone else. After we were hit, the fleet moved on, and we were just left here. I think the Alkarin must have believed we were dead.”

“Where is everyone?” She can’t see very well through the haze and dim light, but the bridge should be busy as the Captain and XO direct damage control efforts to make the ship at least space worthy, if not ready for combat.

She slowly shakes her head. “There’s only four of us left,” she says as she helps her over to the Captain’s chair, where she sits down. “Everyone else on the bridge is dead.”

That immediately clears away the remaining fogginess and sends a chill up her spine. A dozen crewmembers man the bridge, and all but four are dead?

“The Captain?” she asks. Regardless of how much she hates Morris, he’s nonetheless the ship’s captain. Not hearing his badgering voice is somehow disconcerting.

“Dead, thankfully,” Ensign Barret spits out venomously as he walks through the smoke with Seaman First Class Nikolaus Armande to join them. “The fucking bastard!”

“What about the XO or Chief Camden?”

“We don’t know if anyone else made it,” Ivanova replies.

Evans asks, “How’s the ship?”

“We have no communications at all, neither inside nor outside of the ship. The bridge is still pressurized, but I heard some venting up forward after we were hit. All of the controls and consoles are out.” She looked around through the dim haze at the panels that should be alight with information and touch controls. “We’ve still got gravity, so we still have power, and that means that engineering must still be online. Well, at least partially. We can’t get the hatch open to get to the rest of the ship, though.”

“We haven’t heard anyone outside in the passageway, Ma’am,” Barret offered tentatively. “No one has come to try and find us.”

Evans sits there for a moment as she thinks, then gets to her feet with their help. She’s still a bit unsteady, but they need to get moving. It suddenly occurs to her that they should all be in armor. Morris, the utter moron that he was, wouldn’t allow armor to be worn since, in his words, ‘It shows a lack of confidence in him and the ship.’

If the bridge suddenly did decompress, being in armor would save their lives. Not to mention, if she had her armor deployed when the ship was hit, she wouldn’t have been injured this badly, if at all.

“Deploy your armor,” she orders. “We have no idea if this crap is toxic.” She deploys her armor and orders the computer to turn on the suit’s lights. The command channel is dead silent. She then orders her computer to change to channel four, the channel for the bridge crew. Trying hard to ignore the bodies, Evans tells the other three, “First, we need to get out of here and find out who else is left, and then we need to find out what kind of shape the ship is in.”

“But we can’t open the hatch,” Ivanova says quietly.

“Yes, we can,” she replies as she kneels next to a small access panel. Evans spent a great deal of time studying the Clary’s schematics and emergency protocols after she had been assigned to the ship. The mechanism is exactly where they said it would be, and she quickly opens the panel, removes a crank, and inserts it into a slot in the gearing. Turning the manual handle just enough to crack the seal, the hatch begins to slide open. Aside from a very slight hiss of the pressure equalizing, it seems like the passageway is still pressurized, so she cranks it open the rest of the way. Unlike the bridge, the passageway that led to the rest of the ship is fully illuminated by the emergency strips.

Turning off her suit lights for the moment, she leads the others aft toward engineering. Her first goal is to stop at main damage control, to see if anyone is alive there. Then on to engineering to find Lieutenant Pence. Along the way, they find several crewmembers still alive. After making sure that they all knew how to open the hatches manually, Evans sends half of them forward to find and help any other members of the crew who might be trapped or injured. A few minutes later, they reach damage control.