A few minutes later, they reach damage control.
When she cracks open the hatch to damage control, she’s instantly met with a roar of air being sucked out of the passageway.
Sighing sadly, she announces, “It’s been breached,” as she cranks the hatch closed again. She orders the hatches on either end of the passageway closed. Once they are, she again cranks open the door to find a huge hole in the compartment and that all of the crew have been sucked out. She hopes against hope that they went against the Captain’s orders and had their armor deployed. Or, at least, were able to deploy it in time. Stepping back out, she closes the door. Then she orders the bleed valves opened to repressurize the passageway. Once it has, she again leads the others aft toward engineering.
Before long, they reach a crossway. “Halt!” Evans freezes instantly as she looks around and can’t see anyone else in the passageway. “Identify yourself,” a booming voice commands.
“Lieutenant Evans, tactical officer. You’re one of our Marines, I take it?”
Someone in combat armor deactivates the stealth coating as they step into view. While it doesn’t make them invisible, it does help them blend into the background quite well when they aren’t moving. Even then, looking right at them, they would seem to be a blurry image of the background like you would see from heat rising.
They salute as the one in front introduces himself, “Gunnery Sergeant Smalls, Ma’am,” the man answers over the general channel of the link. He then deactivates the helmet of his armor. “Kinda glad to see you,” he states as several other Marines magically appear behind him. They all look huge and menacing in their Marauder combat armor.
“Trust me, the feeling’s mutual, Gunny,” Evans declares honestly, “How many of your men made it?”
“All of ‘em, Ma’am,” Smalls answers with a smirk as if to say, ‘Of course they’re all still here.’ “I got eight here with me, and the rest are still at their battle stations throughout the ship. Banner almost caught an Alkarin shell, but all of my Marines made it.”
For the first time since the ship was hit, Evans manages a smile, albeit a small one.
“Orders, Ma’am?” Smalls asks.
“I’m heading to engineering,” Evans states immediately. “We need to sort out how badly the ship is damaged, and find Lieutenant Pence.” She pauses. “Both the captain and the XO are dead. Pence is the next in line for command.”
Smalls shakes his head. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to say, but I’ve got some bad news for you,” he says quietly. “The chief engineer bought it when the ship got nailed. It broke his neck.”
Evans closes her eyes, mentally damning her luck since she had been counting on Pence, not only to know how to put the ship back in some semblance of working order, if possible, but also to take command.
“As I see it, Lieutenant,” Smalls says, “that leaves you as the skipper.”
She sighs. “Right,” Evans mutters, “Of course, it does.” For just a moment, she closes her eyes as she allows herself to feel sorry for herself, and at that moment, the only thing she wants to do is to run and hide somewhere, to cower in a closet. She isn’t prepared for this. ‘But, then again, who ever is?’ she asks herself.
She hears a clank and opens her eyes to see the older Marine patting the shoulder of her armor as he quietly says, “We’re with you, Ma’am. What are your orders?”
“Thanks, Gunny,” Even says with a grateful smile. The Marine nods and steps back with the others. “Right,” the Clary’s new commanding officer says, pushing her insecurities off into a corner of her mind.
She has a crew to save and a ship to get back into the fight. “The first thing we have to do is get to anyone else who’s trapped and free them. Gunny, that’s a job for your Marines, since they’re already spread around the ship. We’ll show you how to get the hatches open manually.”
“Naw, Ma’am. There’s no need, we know how to open ‘em,” Smalls says.
Evans nods. “Good. Next is engineering. Who’s senior there?”
“Chief Petty Officer Anne DeFalco.”
“Thanks.” She orders her computer to change the link to engineering. “Chief DeFalco?”
“Lieutenant Evans? I’m so glad to hear from you. You heard about Lieutenant Pence, right?”
“Yes, chief,” Evans replies. “What about the other officers?”
“They were in the forward engine room with the Lieutenant when we were hit, Ma’am,” the chief answers. Normally she’s an aggravatingly perky woman, but now her voice is dull and lifeless. “Several shells punched through from one side of the ship to the other. Nobody made it out of the compartment alive.”
“Damn,” Evans whispers. The deaths of the officers and crew in the compartment were a tragedy, but what’s even worse is the forward engine room housed the jump drive. The Clary wouldn’t be leaving the system without a lot of repair time in a repair yard, even with the nanites. Unless the battle has gone well, she doubts that’s going to happen. Even then, they’ll likely order the Clary scuttled. “How are the main drives?” she asks DeFalco, mentally crossing her fingers.
“The mains are still online, Ma’am,” she replies. “Everything aft of the forward engine room seems to be fine. Up forward is a total loss. We haven’t been able to do a full damage control survey, yet, but I’m guessing about a third of the main compartments on the starboard side have been breached, and most of the passageways are in vacuum on that side. Port shouldn’t be as bad.”
“Okay, chief, listen,” she told her quickly. “We’ve got to get the other main systems, especially life support, navigation, and sensors, back online. Then communications and finally, weapons, if we can.”
“We’d love to, Ma’am, that is, if we could just get out of here to get to the remainder of the ship.”
Evans looks at Smalls. Smalls seems to get what she wants and says, “Consider it done, Ma’am,” he said gruffly before barking a string of orders to his Marines.
◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
Sixteen hours later, Evans once again stands on the bridge. The bodies of the crew had been taken to the starboard mess hall. The surviving engineers, along with the help of the surviving crew and nanites, worked themselves to near exhaustion to cobble the ship’s systems back together.
On the bridge, the computer displays at the various control stations begin to light up as they begin the booting process. A tired but exuberant cheer comes from the bridge crew. The Clary is alive again.
◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇
Sitting in the captain’s chair was an experience that Evans had only dreamed of. Even on the rare occasions when Captain Morrison had let her and the other junior officers con the ship, he had never let anyone sit in “his” chair. Now, for better or worse, the ship was Evans’s.
Looking around the bridge, and then at her command display, it was clear that the ship was still in bad shape. Several of the main consoles remained dark, not that it mattered since they had no one to man them.
Only half the crew has survived, and it’s a miracle the ship hadn’t been completely destroyed. If one of the shells that tore through forward engineering had been just a few more centimeters forward, they wouldn’t be here. Of those control stations that were lit and active, every single one had red flashing warning lights and tell-tales glaring, but there were far fewer than before.
Glancing at the navigation display, which right now was based on passive sensors only, she could see the Clary’s long ballistic trajectory from where she had been hit, taking her well beyond the orbit of the moon. The ship had jumped in perilously close to the Alkarin forces in high orbit, and she had drifted over 50,000 kilometers since then. The Alkarins and Commonwealth ships are still slugging it out as shown on the tactical display as a cloud of red and green triangles where the passive sensors believe the ships to be.
Unless the sensors were off, there were far fewer ships than when the Clary had originally jumped in. It was difficult to tell from what the passive sensors could make out, as they were not nearly as sensitive or accurate as the active sensors.
Evans couldn’t be sure of the number of ships on each side, but if the sensors were anywhere near accurate, then the Alkarin’s have taken one hell of a pounding.
While it looks as if the Commonwealth had the upper hand, another destroyer might be able to make a difference. She had no intention of letting Clary miss this fight.
Shoving her concerns aside, Evans tightens the straps, the ones that Captain Morris had neglected to use, on the Captain’s combat chair.
Opening a channel to the crew, she says, “This is Lieutenant…” Then she stops herself. She’s no longer simply a lieutenant of the Commonwealth Navy. As fate has decreed, she’s now the commander of a warship. “This is the Captain,” she tells them. “As you know, while we have been able to repair the worst of the damage to the ship, we can’t jump out to return to the rendezvous point. Even if we could, I wouldn’t; it looks as if our fleet has taken fairly heavy losses, and our fleet is still heavily engaged against the enemy in high orbit. We are going to join in that attack.”
She pauses, thinking about her ship’s few minutes in action before they were struck. “The enemy thought they killed us and that we were no longer a threat. I plan to prove them wrong. I expect each and every one of you to give no less than your very best. That is all.”
Closing the ship-wide channel, she says to Ivanova, whom she had take over the navigator’s position, “Stand by to maneuver.” The ship is still on a ballistic trajectory, spinning about its axis.
“Standing by, Ma’am,” she answers. She’s still afraid but isn’t terrified as she was under Morris. Like the others among the crew, she wants to pay the enemy back. More than that, she trusts Evans far more than she ever trusted Captain Morris.
“Maneuvering thrusters,” Evans ordered. “Cancel our spin and bring her straight and level.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am.” Ivanova touches the controls, at first, hesitantly, but she seems to quickly gain confidence as the ship begins to respond to her commands.
For Evans, it was a very tense moment, because they hadn’t been able to test any of the ship’s systems for fear of drawing the enemy’s attention before they were ready. Now that the control and power systems for the weapons were repaired, the ship could at least present a credible threat. Everything shows green, but the drive system, despite Chief DeFalco’s belief that everything is functional, is still an uncertainty in her mind. “The ship is ready to maneuver on your order, Captain,” Ivanova reports. She’s stopped the ship’s rotation, and now has her level relative to the orbital plane, pointing toward Epsilon Eridani.
“Very good, helm,” Evans says while nodding. “Let’s see if we can get back into the fight. All ahead one-quarter, set course 064 by 207.” She’s hoping that by not using active sensors and keeping her acceleration low, the enemy ships might not notice the Clary for a while, allowing them to get closer. Nor has she tried to raise the fleet because she has no idea if the Alkarin can detect QC communications and thereby discover that the Clary isn’t just a derelict ship.
“All ahead one-quarter, aye.” Ivanova smoothly slides her finger along the console surface. After a moment, Ivanova reports, “Ma’am, the ship is now on heading 064 by 207.”
Evans’s tension begins to quickly fade as the deep, steady, and reassuring thrum of the ship’s drive continues without the slightest indication of trouble. She watches the ship’s icon on the tactical display as the Clary once again sails into harm’s way.
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