Nathan’s head hurt, really bad. He couldn’t remember it ever hurting this bad before. And his leg, something in his left leg also hurt. He started coughing, the smell of smoke wafting into his lungs as he tried to take in a breath. He tried opening his eyes, but everything started spinning.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to concentrate and stop the spinning. There were noises all about him. Crackles, pops, and fizzles. And there were muffled explosions in the distance. And the moaning, someone was moaning. A woman suddenly screamed, causing Nathan’s eyes to snap open. Again his head began spinning, but not as bad as before. The room was dark, except for a faint glow from the back of the room, and the occasional flashes of blue-white light that coincided with the crackles and pops.
He rolled onto his right side and found he wasn’t laying flat, his feet were lower than his head. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out where he was, until it all started flooding back to him, through the pain, the spinning, and the coughing.
He looked around, realizing he was laying on the long, angled cowling between the backside of the helm console and the bottom of the main view screen, which was dark. I must’ve been thrown over the console.
He could hear the woman who had screamed, sobbing and saying something unintelligible to him, something in another language. He managed to slide off the cowling onto the floor, and crawl between the edge of the helm and the sensor operator’s console. After squeezing between the consoles, he looked to his left and found that the sensor operator was slumped forward, his head crushed by the side console that must’ve torn free and fallen during the collision. A pool of blood was forming below the dead officer, as it ran out of his head and down the console, finally spilling onto the floor below.
Nathan crawled out from between the consoles and onto the floor, coming face to face with Captain Roberts. He was lying on his back, and his right eye was bleeding. His shoulder looked odd, and his uniform was stained with blood on his abdomen. Nathan thought he was breathing, but couldn’t be sure in the poorly lit room.
There was another sound, one that Nathan couldn’t quite identify at first. Then he realized it was the sound of screaming, and yelling, and of weapons fire, coming across an open comm-line somewhere. It occurred to him that somebody ought to be looking into that sound. Someone in command.
He grabbed hold of the seat back at the helm station, using it to pull himself up. He winced in pain as he first put pressure on his left leg. He looked down at his leg, bending over and grabbing his left calf-it was wet, bleeding. He wondered if it was broken.
He looked around through the smoke and haze, looking to see who was in command. The captain was unconscious, probably still alive, but definitely in no condition to command. He looked about for the commander, but could not find him.
Nathan made his way up the step onto the main bridge level and limped around to the back side of the tactical station. Lying on the floor behind the console was Commander Montero. His back was severely burnt, and his head had taken a severe blow from a beam lying on the floor next to him. Nathan bent down and turned him over. But he too was dead.
Nathan managed to get to his feet, and looked around the bridge. The only steady lighting came from two emergency lights located over the exits in the back corners of the room. In the back starboard corner, Doctor Sorenson was sobbing uncontrollably over the mangled body of her dead father. One of the marines was starting to move behind her as he regained consciousness. In front of her, the ECO was dead, his console having exploded in his face.
Nathan looked to his left, the ensign at the science station was just waking up, and below her, Cameron was also starting to show signs of life.
The sounds of weapons fire and yelling again came across the open comm-line. It was coming from the tactical station directly in front of Nathan, which for all intents and purposes, appeared to still be functioning. Again, he knew something had to be done about the sounds. That’s when he realized that he was the most senior officer on the bridge. And he suddenly realized that he had to take action.
Nathan stood at the tactical station, and switched the comm to ship-wide “All hands! Prepare to repel enemy boarding parties! Repeat! We are being boarded! Find a weapon and defend yourself!” Nathan looked over at the marine who had just woken up. “We’ve been boarded!” he barked. Where? he thought, Where are they? He looked down at the tactical display and saw that the open channel was in the forward section. “Forward Section! Repeat! Forward Section!” Nathan spun around to the face the marine. “Secure this bridge! No one in or out without my orders!” The marine said nothing, just nodded and checked his weapon to make sure he was locked and loaded before moving to check on his fellow marines. Nathan glanced over the tactical display, trying to assess the ship’s condition. Their bow was rammed deep inside the enemy vessel, and there was a large hull breach on the port side about twenty meters back. He assumed that the enemy troops were entering through the hull breach.
Finally, Cameron began to open her eyes and cough.
“Cameron!” Nathan hollered. “Cameron! Wake up!”
Cameron rolled her head from side to side as she woke, trying to make sense of what was going on around her.
“Help her up!” Nathan ordered the ensign at the science station, who had only become conscious herself a moment ago.
The ensign stepped down and helped Cameron to her feet, holding her steady until she could focus and get her balance.
“Cameron! Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she responded in between coughs. “I think so?”
“Take the helm!” he ordered.
“What? Why? What’s going on?” she asked, looking around. “Where’s the captain?”
“He’s injured.” Nathan continued checking systems on the tactical display.
“What about the XO?”
“Dead.” Nathan called up engineering. “Engineering, Bridge! Can you hear me?”
“Dead? Then who’s in command?” she asked, still not fully coherent. Suddenly, she remembered the chain of command, and the impossible dawned on her. She looked around the room, seeing only two marines, Doctor Sorenson, herself, and the ensign at the sciences station. She turned her head back to look at Nathan in disbelief.
Nathan’s voice came blaring through the ship’s comm-system for all to hear. “All hands! Prepare to repel enemy boarding parties! Repeat! We are being boarded! Find a weapon and defend yourself! Forward Section! Repeat! Forward Section!”
Jessica and the master chief ran down the corridor, jumping through hatchways as they passed through each section. Jessica was still in her EVA suit, but had dumped her life support pack, helmet and chest piece. The suit was a bit on the heavy side, but she figured the extra armor it provided would be worth it in a firefight. She held her automatic close-quarters weapon in front of her as she ran behind the master chief, who carried one of his own and was wearing a flak vest.
“What the fuck is going on!” she demanded after hearing Nathan’s voice over the loud speakers. “First we’re slugging it out with warships, then we’re boarding them, then we’re slugging it out again, and now we’re being boarded? I mean, what the hell? Last I heard we were orbiting Jupiter!”
“You know what your problem is, Ensign?” the master chief said as they ran down the corridor.
“No, but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me!”
“You talk too much!”
The master chief turned the corner and suddenly found himself face to face with the enemy. Having never seen the Jung before, he hadn’t known what to expect, other than the fact that they were human.
“Whoa!” he cried, ducking as the enemy swung the butt of his rifle at the master chief’s face. The master chief hit the enemy soldier low, right in the upper abdomen with his left shoulder, driving him back against his friends. With his gun hand, the master chief reached around the first soldier and sprayed the ones behind him with automatic fire, sending at least three of them to the floor in a bloody pile.
“Get Down!” Jessica yelled as she brought her weapon to bear.
The master chief hit the deck as Jessica emptied her entire clip at the rest of the soldiers, killing not only the first one, but the remaining four as well.
“You okay!” she yelled, dropping her empty clip and slapping in a fresh one as she ran past him toward the sound of weapons fire.
“Fuck me!” the master chief exclaimed, stunned that not only had they just taken down eight enemy combatants, but that he had made it through the encounter without a scratch. He immediately started looking himself over for wounds, still in disbelief.
“Come on! It ain’t over!” she hollered, her voice full of excitement as the adrenaline coursed through her veins. All that combat training she had been through was finally coming in handy.
At the next corner, she came to a group of three shipmates trying to hold the corridor with small arms. There had been five, but two of them were dead, holes burnt in their bodies by energy weapons fire.
“How are you guys doing?” Jessica asked as she knelt down beside them and began to return fire. The smell of the burnt bodies was nearly overpowering.
“Better than them!” the first one answered.
“I don’t know what kind of guns they have, but they do some serious damage!” the second one exclaimed.
“Yeah, I can see that,” she answered as the master chief dropped down behind her.
“Here!” the master chief told his shipmates, offering a few of the enemy’s energy weapons. “Thought you could use these!”
The first crewman looked at the weapon in disbelief. “Where did you get these?”
“Took’em off the fuckers we just wasted back there,” the master chief bragged, pointing back down the corridor the way they came. “Figured they didn’t need them anymore!”
“From back there?” the crewman asked, turning slightly paler.
“Yeah, figure they were tryin’ to flank ya!”
“Shit! Thanks, Master Chief!” The crewman looked at the weapon. “How do they work?”
“Hadn’t thought about that,” he admitted. “Let me see it,” he added grabbing the weapon back from the crewman. The master chief looked at the weapon for a moment. It looked like an over-sized flare gun, with a longer barrel, and a large battery looking object situated just forward of the trigger. The master chief pointed it down the corridor and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. After looking at it again, he flipped a switch, then pointed down the corridor and pulled the trigger once more. This time the weapon discharged and a bright red bolt of light shot down the corridor, striking one of the status lights along the ceiling, obliterating it into a mass of molten plastic and metal.
“Like that!” the master chief smiled, handing the weapon back.
The other two followed the master chief’s example and joined their friend on the firing line.
“Me, Nash, and three crewman are holding this corridor for now, Sir!” the master chief’s voice reported over the comm. “But if they get reinforced, they’ll mow us down right quick!”
“Understood!” Nathan answered. “Standby,” Nathan turned to Cameron. “Cam, I need you to take the helm!”
“Sure,” she answered, resigning herself to the situation. As unbelievable as it was, Nathan Scott was legally in command of the Aurora. At least until a more senior officer from elsewhere on the ship assumed the role. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can you back us away from them?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted as she started checking to see what was working.
“Engineering! Bridge! Respond!” Nathan called.
“Da! Engineering here! Nathan! Is that you?”
“Yeah! Vlad! It’s me!” Nathan could hear all manner of commotion coming through the comm from engineering. People were yelling in the background, alarms were sounding, and he was pretty sure he heard the sound of portable fire suppression equipment being used. Above it all, Vladimir was yelling instructions to someone.
“What are you doing on the command channel, Nathan? You can get in big trouble for this!”
“I’m in command!”
“Shto?”
Nathan had learned a few words in Russian just from sharing a cabin with Vladimir for a few weeks, and he knew that ‘shto’ meant ‘what’. “I’m in command!”
“Oh bozhe moi!”
Nathan knew what that meant too.
“Listen, Vlad, can you get maneuvering back online?”
“I don’t know, Nathan! Everything is crazy here! Let me call you back!” Suddenly the line went dead.
“All I’ve got is braking thrusters, Nathan!” Cameron announced. “And docking thrusters! But nothing else!”
“Master Chief!” Nathan called over the comm.
“Yeah, go ahead!”
“What side of the primary forward bulkhead are you on?”
“Aft side!”
“Damn it!” Nathan cursed.
“Can you drive them back behind the primary forward bulkheads?”
“With a few more guys, maybe!”
Nathan spun around to face the marine guarding the port exit. “You two go down and help. I need them pushed back behind the primary forward bulkheads. Then lock those hatches and I’ll flush the bastards out into space!” he ordered.
“Yes Sir!” the marine acknowledged, stepping forward and handing Nathan his weapon. “You might need this, Sir.”
Nathan was a bit stunned, but he realized why the marine was offering it to him. “What about you?” he asked.
“There’s a weapons locker at the bottom of the ramp, Sir. We’ll load up there on our way.”
“Very well, good luck.” Nathan watched them leave, the second marine handing him his weapon as well. For the second time in less than an hour, Nathan was amazed at the bravery of the people he served with, unsure if he was worthy of being in their company.
He looked over at Cameron, and after making eye contact he tossed her one of the weapons. “Just in case,” he told her. He looked at the science officer to the left of the flight console. She was obviously shaken, but looked like she could still function.
“Master Chief!” Nathan called out over the comm again. “Two Marines are headed your way, and they’re bringing an armory with them!”
“Yes Sir!” the master chief answered.
“What’s your name, Ensign?” Nathan asked the woman at the sciences station. He felt a little embarrassed that even after a full eight hour bridge shift with her the day before, he had yet to learn her name.
“Yosef,” she answered a bit shakily. “Ensign Yosef, Sir.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Kaylah.”
“Okay, Kaylah. Is it possible for you to take over the sensors from your station there?” He needed someone on sensors more than he needed a science officer right now, but the sensor station was covered with blood.
“Yes Sir,” she answered. “But it will take a few minutes to reconfigure the console and displays.”
“Great, because I need someone on sensors more than I do sciences right now.”
“But I’m not a sensor operator, Sir.”
“But you’re all I’ve got, Kaylah. Besides, you’re a science officer, which means that you must be pretty smart. I’m sure you’ll figure it out quick enough,” he assured her.
“Yes, Sir,” she answered, turning back to her console to begin reconfiguring it to control the sensors.
“Master Chief!” a heavy male voice bellowed from down the corridor behind him.
The master chief spun around, ready to fire at anyone coming up from behind their position.
“Check your fire! Two Marines! On your six!”
“Well come on up and join the party, boys!” the master chief called out.
The marines sprinted down the corridor, keeping low, falling in behind the master chief to take cover.
“Glad you could join us, fellas!” the master chief thanked them.
“Weatherly!” the first marine called out, identifying himself to the master chief.
“Holmes!” the second marine added.
“Pleasure to meet ya, I’m sure.”
“The lieutenant said you needed help pushin’ them back?” Weatherly asked.
“Yeah! We got about a dozen Jung bastards hunkered down just this side of the primary bulkhead!”
“Them ain’t Jung, Master Chief!” Holmes corrected him.
“Of course they’re Jung, dumbass! Who the hell else would they be?”
“I dunno, Master Chief! But I’m pretty sure they ain’t Jung! They came from that big-ass warship we rammed! Through a breach in the bow!”
“What big-ass warship?” Jessica asked, overhearing the conversation.”
“Orbiting Jupiter?” the master chief added, a bit baffled.
“We ain’t orbiting Jupiter any more, Master Chief!”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“Shut your yap, Holmes!” Weatherly warned. “It’s supposed to be classified, remember?”
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” Holmes argued.
“One of you better tell me what the fuck is going on, before I shoot you myself!” the master chief threatened.
Sergeant Weatherly decided that his fellow marine was probably right, and decided that given the circumstances, it was better to share what he knew with the master chief. “We’ve been on the bridge for the last hour, Master Chief, and some crazy shit has been goin’ on! Shit you wouldn’t believe!”
“Try me!” the master chief demanded, as an energy bolt bounced off the wall just above his head, causing him to duck reflexively.
“They got some new kinda engine or something! Can jump the ship ten light years in the blink of an eye!” Weatherly explained.
“Bullshit!” The master chief didn’t believe a word of it.
“No, Master Chief! He’s tellin’ ya straight! They’ve already jumped the ship twice! First out to the Oort! That’s when we tangled with those two Jung patrol ships. Then they had to jump again real quick! To get away from that antimatter explosion!
“No shit?” the master chief asked, turning to look at Jessica. She nodded confirmation to him, since that last part she had seen for herself. She just hadn’t been aware of their actual location until now. “Then where the fuck are we now?” the master chief asked.
“Dunno! Shit, I don’t think anybody knows just yet. We came out in the middle of some big space battle somewhere! Got pounded by this huge warship! Twice the size of anything we’ve got! Put four torpedoes into her and she kept on firing at us! We ended up ramming her and now were stuck with our nose in her side! That’s where those troops are comin’ from! Through a breech in the bow! The lieutenant wants to lock them out on the breech side of the bulkheads, so he can back the ship out of her and flush those sons of bitches out into space!”
Jessica had been listening to the marines throughout the ongoing firefight. “You keep saying the lieutenant!” she yelled. “What lieutenant! Where’s the captain?”
“Captain’s injured, Ma’am! And the XO is dead! Happened when we rammed her! Lieutenant Scott’s in command!”
“Holy shit!” she replied.
“Well I guess we’d better get this party started!” the master chief declared.
“Engineering, Mechanic’s mate Stewart here!” the male voice answered shakily over the comm.
“Where’s Vladimir?” Nathan asked.
“He’s busy trying to restore maneuvering, Sir!”
“Where’s the chief engineer?”
“I don’t know, Sir. I think he’s dead! Vladimir’s been running everything since the collision! You want me to get him?”
“No, just tell him to hurry it up!”
Nathan looked up from his console at Cameron. “I don’t think he’s gonna get maneuvering back up in time.”
“What are you going to do?”
Nathan thought for a moment, but nothing came to him.
“Kaylah? You got sensors up yet?”
“Yes sir.”
“Great, can you tell me how many people are alive in the forward section, forward of the primary bulkheads?”
Kaylah worked her sensors for a moment, retraining them on the Aurora. “There’s a lot of interference, Sir. Either from malfunctioning systems or from the enemy ship, but it looks like eight, not counting the combatants.”
“Damn,” Nathan swore. “Hope they can make it to emergency shelters.”
“It’s not going to matter much, Nathan,” Cameron interrupted. “Not if we can’t back out of here.”
Four flash-bangs and four fragmentation grenades came bouncing down the corridor, coming to rest at the feet of the enemy. Realizing what they were, the enemy soldiers tried to duck for cover, but most were too late. The fragmentation grenades went off first, followed a split second later by the flash-bangs.
Jessica waited behind cover for a few seconds after the grenades went off, giving the shrapnel from the blast enough time to finish ricocheting off the corridor walls before they charged. The two marines went first, dressed in the heavy assault body armor that they had picked up from the armory and blasting away at anything that moved with their close-quarters weapons set for a wide dispersal. As soon as they ran out of ammo, they stepped aside and let Jessica and the master chief pass between them as they opened up in similar fashion. As they blasted away, the two marines reloaded and came back up behind them. Repeating this cycle several times, they were able to keep the enemy’s heads down long enough to get down the corridor, peeling off to the left and right to engage the combatants in hand-to-hand combat. Once they had stepped to either side and out of the line of fire, the remaining three crewman blasted away at the open hatchway with their captured energy weapons, effectively keeping the reinforcements on the other side of the bulkhead from pouring into the corridor.
Jessica began flailing away on the first enemy soldier she came to striking him about the face with her fists several times before pulling her combat knife and gutting him. Sergeant Weatherly cold cocked the next one with the butt of his weapon, then looped the weapon’s strap around the dazed soldiers neck and swung him around into the third soldier, knocking them both down. Pulling his side arm, he put several rounds into each of them before turning it on the fourth soldier that now had Jessica by the throat and was holding her up against the wall. Suddenly, a bolt of energy from an enemy weapon caught the Sergeant in the side and spun him around, knocking him off his feet.
Jessica fell to the floor as her attacker went down after being shot by Sergeant Weatherly. Rolling to one side, she swept her leg and knocked the last enemy soldier off his feet. Rolling forward, she used her knife again and slammed it into the soldier’s chest before he could get back up, giving it a twist to finish him off.
On the other side of the hallway, the master chief’s fighting style, while not as graceful, was just as effective. One, two, three enemy soldiers were tossed by the master chief out into the energy weapons fire being poured down the corridor by their shipmates at the other end. It wasn’t pretty, but it effectively ended all three of them. The fourth and fifth ones were handled by Sergeant Holmes, who seemed to prefer a rather long and over-sized knife for his close quarters action.
Either way, their side of the bulkhead was clear. Jessica signaled for the others to cease fire, after which the master chief swung the hatch closed and locked it before any more enemy troops could come through.
“Bridge!” the master chief’s voice called over the comm. “The forward section is secured!”
“Good work, Master Chief! Standby!” Nathan looked at Cameron. “Try and back us out.”
“It won’t be enough thrust to…”
“…Just try!” he pleaded, cutting her off.
“Okay,” she conceded, as she began to apply braking thrusters. “Firing braking thrusters at twenty-five percent.”
The ship began to vibrate, shaking an already loosened panel off one of the side consoles.
“We’re not moving!” Cameron reported.
“Bring it up to fifty percent.”
“Increasing thrust to fifty percent.”
The vibrations became louder, and the ship shook even more. But still it did not back away from the enemy vessel.
“It’s no use!” Cameron protested, “It’s just not enough thrust!”
“One hundred percent!” he ordered. Cameron spun her head around, giving him a look of disapproval the likes of which he had not seen from her before. And for a moment, he didn’t think that she was going to follow his orders. Finally, being able to wait no longer, he barked at her, “DO IT!”
His tone was also something that she had never heard from him, and it startled her somewhat, as she turned back to her console and brought the thrust up to one hundred percent.
“Braking thrusters at maximum!” she yelled over the sound of the ship as it bounced and rattled. Damaged consoles started sparking again as the vibrations caused their burnt circuits to short again. A portion of an already weakened overhead beam fell behind Nathan. Bits and pieces began falling everywhere.
“Sir!” Ensign Yosef shouted from her console. “We’re stuck on something!”
Nathan ran the few steps from the tactical console to Ensign Yosef’s side, struggling to keep his balance as the ship shook. He looked over her shoulder at the console.
“There!” she indicated, pointing at the image on the sensor display. It was a black and white image that looked much like a computer enhanced x-ray, but with multiple colors outlining some of the objects in the image.
“What is that?”
“It looks like a beam, or part of the enemy ship’s structural frame!” she reported. “It must of given way when we collided, and impaled us causing the hull breach! That’s where they came in!”
There was another object that Nathan couldn’t identify at first, something large. It had several lines and tanks, all clustered together along with some nozzles coming out of it.
“Is this in our ship or theirs?” he asked, pointing at the unidentified yet familiar looking object.
“Ours, Sir. It’s the…”
“…Docking thrusters!” Nathan spun around to face Cameron, suddenly having an idea. “Cameron. Remember how we stopped the roll in the simulator?”
“You can’t be serious!” she protested, remembering it clearly.
“It might break us free!”
“Nathan, there are still eight people in the forward section!”
“But they’re all at the aft end of that section! In the simulation, it only damaged the forward part! And it’s only a matter of time before they blast through that bulkhead and take the ship!”
“This isn’t a simulation, Nathan!” she warned.
“You think I don’t know that?” he argued, looking around the room. “Really?”
Cameron considered Nathan’s idea. It was a hell of a gamble, but she had to admit that without the more powerful maneuvering thrusters, there was no other way to break free from the enemy ship.
“You’re in command,” she agreed, turning to reprogram the maximum pressure limits on the docking thruster’s reaction chambers. “Resetting max chamber pressures,” she announced. “Which side would you like to blow up first?” she asked sarcastically.
“Port side!”
“Firing port docking thrusters, at full power.”
The ship slid slightly sideways to starboard, causing Nathan to stumble to his left slightly. There was a loud crack as the cowling over the forward side of the flight console cracked, probably the result of the severe jostling they were taking.
Suddenly, there was an explosion. It came from forward of them, underneath and to port. It was much louder than in the simulation and the entire ship lifted slightly before suddenly dropping back down, nearly knocking Nathan off his feet.
Without warning and in a surprisingly fast motion, the ship slid quickly out of the hole it had made in the enemy ship, the force of the exploding docking thruster making the hole even bigger, severing the beam that had impaled them and allowing the ship to slip free. It was like someone suddenly pulling the rug out from under his feet, and the motion knocked Nathan to the floor. That’s when he realized the inertial dampeners were probably off line.
“We’re free!” Cameron exclaimed, not believing it herself.
“No kidding,” Nathan said, grabbing the tactical console and pulling himself back to his feet.
The sudden separation from the enemy ship left the forward section open to space, and Nathan hoped the sudden decompression had sucked the intruders out into space.
“Kaylah!” How many intruders left in the forward section?”
“None, Sir! They were either sucked out or died inside!”
“How many of our people?”
She paused for a moment before reporting. Nathan knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Six, Sir,” she answered solemnly. “They’re sealed up in their berths.”
Nathan tried to brush their deaths away, like he figured a good leader was supposed to do. But all he could think was, I just killed two people! He knew that many others had probably died already today, but the deaths of these two were the direct result of a decision he had made. And with full knowledge that he was putting them in harm’s way. He wasn’t sure that he could ever forgive himself. But he had to find a way to live with it, at least for now.
The Aurora backed slowly away from the damaged enemy warship, leaving a gaping hole in her side. Debris and the bodies of dead enemy soldiers floated freely, leaving a ghastly trail that led from the bow of the Aurora back to the hole. But once the ship began to move away, the warship’s guns again had a workable firing solution, and immediately opened up on her as she tried to escape.
The first salvo struck them near the bridge, catching them off guard, nearly knocking Nathan off his feet again. There should really be a chair, here! he thought, tired of always having to fight to stay standing.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “How can they still be able to fire!” Every second of the last twenty minutes had been a constant struggle to survive. And just when he was starting to think they had a chance, fate would throw another obstacle in their way.
The rounds continued to land on the upper side of their bow, bouncing them around so violently that Nathan could barely hear himself think. He was scared out of his mind and felt like he would piss himself every time they took a hit. At the moment, following in his father’s footsteps and going into politics didn’t seem all that bad.
Without any shields, each strike was ripping chunks off of their exterior hull, exposing the subsequent layers underneath. Nathan knew that before long, there would be more hull breaches, and eventually their luck would run out and one of those shells would get deeper inside before it detonated, ripping them apart in the process.
A few of the lights on the bridge snapped back on, along with a few additional systems. The main view screen flickered a bit, but still did not come back to life.
“Maneuvering just came back online!” Cameron reported.
“Get us out of here!” he pleaded.
More explosions shook the ship, the last one causing the entire ship to slide sideways a bit, slamming the tactical console into Nathan’s side nearly knocking the wind out of him.
“Can’t we move any faster?” he shouted.
“We’re at full reverse thrust!” Cameron defended. “It’s just not enough! This ship wasn’t designed to go fast backwards!” Another red light on her console turned green. “Wait! The orbital maneuvering systems just came back on! Maybe if I end over…”
“…Not exactly by the book, Ensign!” Nathan interrupted, already liking the idea.
“Yeah, I wonder where I picked up that bad habit?” she said.
“You’re not waiting for me to give you permission, are you?” Nathan asked. The inertial dampeners were still off line, and Nathan could feel himself getting heavy as she pitched their nose up hard.
“Not a chance,” she smiled.
About ten seconds later, Nathan went from feeling abnormally heavy on his feet to feeling abnormally light as Cameron ended their end-over flip in abrupt fashion. He grabbed hold of the console in front of him just in time to keep himself standing as she fired the orbital maneuvering system at full burn.
“OMS are burning!” She watched her flight display as their velocity steadily increased. The orbital maneuvering system was only designed to increase their orbital velocity to increase an orbital altitude. If they only had the main propulsion working, they could get out of there in seconds instead of agonizingly long minutes.
“Engineering! Bridge!” Nathan called over the comm.
“Yes! Nathan!” It still sounded like all hell was breaking loose in the background.
“Vlad! We’re gettin’ pounded! Can you give me any weapons?”
“I am sorry, Nathan! But we only have one reactor online, and only running at fifty percent! I could maybe connect rail guns to same reactor, but it might be too much for one, I don’t know.”
“What about torpedoes? Can you give me torpedoes?”
“Torpedoes should work. If crew can load the tubes, torpedoes have their own power source. Just push button and they go. But Nathan, you should know this.”
“Why would I know this? I’m a pilot!”
Cameron held her hand up in the air, without turning around.
“Oh, and I suppose you did?” he asked her. She offered no verbal confirmation, just a self-righteous smile that Nathan couldn’t see from behind her.
“Is there anything else I can do for you Nathan? I am very busy right now.” Something exploded in the background, and Vladimir shouted some more directions at someone.
“No thanks. Do what you can, bridge out.”
Nathan looked at the torpedo bay status display. There were no torpedoes loaded in the forward tubes, and the aft tubes were not yet completely installed.
“Torpedo Room! Bridge!” he called over the comm. “Torpedo Room! Do you copy!” No one answered. “Damn!” He looked at the status display again, when he noticed something. One of the torpedoes that the captain had launched at the enemy warship had not detonated, and it was still active.
“Kaylah!” he shouted. “Scan that warship! One of our torpedoes didn’t detonate! Can you tell me where it is? Is it still stuck in them?”
Kaylah worked her console for a few moments before responding, as more of the enemy rounds exploded against the hull, continually bouncing the ship.
“I’ve got it! It’s stuck just aft of amidships!” She spun her head to look at Nathan. “Right in front of their reactor plant!”
“What kind of reactor?” he asked. They were still awfully close to that ship, and if they were using antimatter, he doubted they would be far enough away to survive the blast.
“Scanning!” Another shell struck, sending sparks flying as the panel above the ECO console shorted out.
“Kaylah!” Nathan begged, not knowing if they could take another hit. “What kind of reactor!”
“Fusion!” she answered. “They’re using simple fusion reactors! Six of them!”
“Nathan! What are you going…” She wasn’t able to finish her sentence, as Nathan wasn’t gonna waste time debating this one with her.
“All hands, brace for shock wave!” he called out ship-wide, as he detonated the last torpedo’s warhead.
Outside, in the silent black void of space, the aft end of the crippled warship suddenly broke apart in a blinding flash, shredding her mid section until the entire back half simply broke free from her. Moments later, her six fusion reactors started exploding in rapid succession, causing her tail to burst into pieces, and most of her forward section to break apart into smaller pieces.
Seconds later the shock wave hit the Aurora. It hit hard, so hard that it forced her tail down by thirty degrees in the blink of an eye. Without the inertial dampeners, any of her crew that were in the back half of the ship suddenly found themselves tossed up head first into the ceiling, before falling back to the floor again. But that wasn’t the end of it. Six more smaller shock waves from the warship’s exploding fusion reactors also hit them, albeit with far less force.
Nathan shook his head, shaking the debris off. He was on the floor yet again, behind the tactical station, facing Doctor Sorenson. She had been holding her dead father the entire time, up until the last shock wave tossed her and her father’s body into the corner on top of the body of the dead marine by the starboard exit. Other than her initial screams of shock and the subsequent cries of grief, he had not heard a peep from her during the entire battle. He wondered if she was in some kind of shock. Of course, she had every right to be, they all did.
He looked at her, seeing the look of abject fear in her eyes. “Are you alright?” he asked. After a moment, she looked at him. “Doctor Sorenson? Are you alright?” he repeated. She stared in his eyes for a moment, finally nodding slightly. “Don’t worry,” he promised her, “We’re going to be alright.” He didn’t really believe it, at least not completely. But he felt she needed some hope in order to hold it together.
Nathan struggled back to his feet. He could see that Cameron had somehow managed to stay in her seat at the helm the entire time, and was busy trying to see what was still working. He made his way over to Kaylah to see that she too was unharmed. She looked even more shaken, with a small gash on the side of her head from flying debris, but she was conscious and already trying to get back into her chair.
“I need to know what other ships are out there, Kaylah,” he told her as he helped her into her chair. “Without the main view screen, you’re the only eyes we’ve got.”
“Yes Sir.”
It was still pretty dark in the room, and there were fewer systems offering information to him through the tactical console than before. “Damn!” he swore. “Now just about everything is down!” He looked towards Cameron at the helm in front of him. “How’s the helm?”
“I got nothing. Everything is down. No propulsion, no maneuvering. Even the OMS are down now. And we’re still only running on emergency power.” She turned around to face him. “We’re dead in the water, Nathan,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.
For a moment, Nathan felt like she was accusing him of something. He had not given her a chance to disagree with his plan to detonate the last torpedo. There simply hadn’t been time for discussion, not if they were going to survive.
“Sensors are down too, Sir. Well, not completely down. But they keep flashing in and out. It’s hard to get a decent image to build.”
“Keep trying,” Nathan instructed, most of the determination having left his voice.
“Engineering, Bridge.” Nathan looked at the comm controls, they appeared to be dead as well. “Great. No comms.”
“What do we do now?” Cameron asked.
Nathan looked around the room, hoping another bright idea would pop into his head. But nothing did. He had been lucky so far, and he knew it. He might have made one or two good decisions along the way, but the fact that they were still breathing was due to dumb luck. He just wondered how much longer his luck would hold out.
“Any ideas?” he asked, admitting that he had none of his own.
Cameron looked at him, saying nothing. But he could see in her eyes that she had no ideas either.
Nathan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I guess all we can do is wait,” he resigned. “And hope that Vlad is still with us.”
It was their first opportunity to stop and look around the bridge, and witness the amount of damage they had sustained. The helm and navigation consoles appeared undamaged for the most part, which was a good thing. The Sensors and Electronic Countermeasures stations were both fried. But the auxiliary console behind them that had been configured for the Jump drive seemed relatively undamaged, which was surprising considering the exit directly behind it had practically collapsed.
The comm stations at the rear of the bridge had suffered some sort of an explosive short circuit, but the port side auxiliary station, as well as the engineering and science stations were all intact. And of course, the tactical station that Nathan had been using was also relatively undamaged.
All in all, he figured it could’ve been much worse. They were, after all, still alive. And that meant there were still possibilities. He only hoped that whatever they might be, that they weren’t too unpleasant.
Cameron had taken it upon herself to deal with the injured. She had first checked on the captain, who still lay bleeding and unconscious, but alive for now. She did what she could, breaking out an emergency medical kit from the cabinet near the exit. But other than the captain and the four of them, the rest were dead. Altogether, a total of seven people had died on that bridge half an hour ago. She just wondered how many more had died elsewhere on the ship. They had left Earth on a simple test cruise with a skeleton crew of one hundred, which was barely enough to run the ship. They couldn’t afford to lose even those that had died on the bridge, let alone others. Not if they were to have any hope of getting back to Earth.
Earth, she thought, wondering in what direction it might be.
“Have you thought about those smaller ships?” Cameron asked him.
“What?” He had been off in his own little world when she asked the question.
“The other ships out there? The smaller ones that were attacking the big one that nearly took us out.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve thought about them.” It was a lie, he hadn’t. “Well, if any of them survived the shock wave, they’ve probably high-tailed it out of here by now. I mean, a big ship like that has gotta have friends, right?”
“Maybe. But what if they’re still out there?”
“What, you think they’re gonna come after us?” he asked.
“Why not?”
“We didn’t have a fight with them?”
“We didn’t have a fight with the big one either, but that didn’t stop them.”
“Maybe they thought we came to help the smaller ships?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then shouldn’t the smaller ships be thankful we helped them out?”
“Maybe. But what if they’re pirates, they could be coming back to board us right now.”
“Space Pirates? Come on, Cam.” It sounded too silly to him. But then, the more he thought about it… “Ya think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she admitted with a sigh.
Nathan thought he saw a bit of desperation in Cameron’s expression. And he knew how she felt. “Let’s just think positive thoughts, okay?” he encouraged.
Suddenly, a crackly voice came across the comm at tactical. A crackly voice with a Russian accent. “Nathan! Can you hear me?”
Nathan jumped up and ran back to the tactical station. “Yes! Vlad! I can hear you! What’s your status!”
“Well, I’m okay,” he joked, causing Nathan to smile. “But the ship, she is not so good.”
“Can you get power restored?” Nathan knew that they could only go for so long without power.
“Yes! Soon! We are working on it now! But Nathan, I had to hot-wire the comms to tell you something. There are ships approaching us from behind. I think they are going to land inside the hangar deck.”
Nathan’s mind began racing. Who were they? Was it the same ships that had been attacking the warship that nearly destroyed them? If so, why were they coming here? Were they coming to board them? If not, why else would they try to land? Maybe some of the smaller ships were from the bigger one. Maybe that’s who is coming to land.
Nathan managed to break from his out of control thoughts for a moment. “How do you know?” he asked Vladimir.
“We have power here, and I have a man on sensors. He saw them. He says if they are landing, it will be in a few minutes.”
Nathan knew one thing for sure, no matter who they were, he couldn’t just let them walk onto the ship unescorted. And if they were another boarding party, which seemed the most likely scenario, they needed to be stopped at the flight deck, before they got deeper into the ship.
“I need to get someone to the hangar deck,” Nathan said to himself. “Vlad! Can any of you keep them from entering?”
“We don’t have any weapons, Nathan!”
Nathan thought furiously for several seconds, his eyes dancing around the room as if looking for inspiration. “Is the wireless working?”
“Yes! I tried calling you on it before, but you did not answer,”
“Sorry, I didn’t have them on.”
“What kind of commander doesn’t wear wireless?” he said to someone near him.
“I gotta go, Vlad! Get power up as soon as you can!”
Nathan grabbed his headset and put it back on. “Master Chief! You still with me?” he inquired urgently through his headset. “Master Chief! Bridge! Do you copy!”
“Bridge, Ensign Nash here.” The was a pause. “The master chief is dead.”
Nathan had only met the man once, when he tricked Nathan into touching the outside of the ship as a joke. But for some reason, the news of his death startled, causing him to lose his train of thought.
“Jessica?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of you survived the shock wave?”
“If you mean that last wild ride you gave us, then just me, Sergeant Weatherly, and two other tech specialists.”
“You’re still armed, right?”
“Uh, yes,” she answered sarcastically.
“Get everyone you can to the hangar bay! We’ve got ships coming in with unknown intent!”
“What? Who the hell are they?”
“I don’t know! Just get over there and don’t let anyone from those ships leave the flight deck!” he ordered. “Now move it, Ensign!” He wasn’t sure why he threw in that last part. Maybe it was because that’s what he thought the captain would say. Maybe he was trying to act more like a leader. Or maybe he was getting tired of being questioned. He didn’t want to be in charge, especially now. But command had fallen on his shoulders and he wasn’t about to shirk away from his responsibilities, not this time.
“On our way,” she obeyed, hearing both the urgency and the desperation in his voice.
“And stay on wireless, the hard-lines aren’t reliable right now!”
“Yes Sir!”