I felt helpless. This was not my fight.
“Evasive manoeuvres,” Atkins declared. “Pull us aftwards, all power.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Are the null-shields holding?”
Like most military vessels, the
Oregon
was equipped with null-shields: a projected energy field, capable of dispersing incoming enemy fire. It worked best on energy weapons but could be used to counter other ballistics as well. The Krell vessels had a similar technology, although it was of some biological origin.
“She’s inside the null-shield,” Pakos explained.
So that was the enemy strategy. To pull so close to us that our shields were useless. It was the sort of gamble that a human warship would never take, because it left the attacker open to a retaliatory strike. I watched now as the null-shields projected by both ships met; resulting in a miniature storm of evanescent blue embers.
“She’s firing!” someone yelled.
The first Krell ship opened fire with a brief volley of bio-plasma shots. Inside the enemy ship were specialised, living cannons – grown to generate bio-energies every bit as lethal as the manufactured weaponry of the Alliance military. Plasma raked the hull of the
Oregon
. Somewhere port-side, not far from our position. The
Oregon
’s gravity well stuttered and the bridge shook violently as impact after impact tore into the hull. I staggered with the force of each hit, grappling the edge of a bank of monitors to stay on my feet. My gut lurched and I tasted bile at the back of my throat. Sparks exploded from a nearby terminal. An officer slumped over one of the weapons stations, dead.
I wanted to yell out for a damage report – to get answers about how badly we had been hit – but bit back on my words. This was Atkins’ ship: he was in command out here.
“We have ablative plating,” Atkins murmured, by way of explanation. “Lieutenant, maintain power on the shields. It’ll take more than that to bring us down.”
I exchanged a worried glance with Jenkins.
“But not much more,” she said to me, voice barely a whisper.
“Everybody in one piece?” I asked.
Blake rubbed a bloody graze on his head, but it was only superficial. “Just about.”
“Lieutenant Caitlin is dead,” another officer called across the bridge. “The primary railgun is inoperative.”
This was my chance to do something.
Fuck it – I’m not dying like this
.
I dashed across the bridge to her post. During the preliminary bombardment, she must have hit her head hard against the console. Either that, or suffered some kind of cerebral feedback from the Krell attack. I pulled her jack-cables free, unplugging her corpse. There was no doubt she was dead: her eyes and mouth were wide, blood pooling at the ears. I hauled the body out of the chair and slid into it myself.
“Sorry, Caitlin,” I said. “But I need your weapon.”
Starship crew and simulant operators shared the same jacking connections – those hard-wired ports at the top of my spine, in my forearms. The jacks were still warm from the dead officer’s connection; one of them slipped out of my hand, slick with her blood. The other weapons officers turned to look at me, one or two standing from their stations with concerned expressions.
“What the hell are you doing?” Pakos shouted at me across the bridge.
“What does it look like?” I replied. “I’m taking control of the railgun. I don’t see anyone else doing it.”
“You’re not trained! The railgun requires extensive operational experience to fire—”
“And I’ve already told you – I’ve done this before.” I really didn’t care what she said; I wasn’t going to sit there while this battle played out around me. At least I could make a difference with the railgun.
“Leave him, Lieutenant,” Atkins directed. The tone of his voice suggested respect – perhaps he wasn’t such a rules-man after all. What I was doing right now: this was most certainly against regulation.
There was a jag of pain as each of the cables hit home. In truth, although I
had
done this before, I wasn’t experienced in the use of shipboard weaponry. The principles of connecting with the
Oregon
were roughly the same as operation of a simulant. It was the nuances that differed.
It took a moment to make the neural-link, then I was online.
I am the
Oregon.
New information flooded my synapses. I was the machine. Targeting data uploaded to memory buffers in my head. For a few seconds, the flood of information was disabling – just like the initial rush of transition. Physically I was still in the bridge, but with a thought I commanded the primary railgun: a living human being inside, an enormous inert railgun outside. The holo in front of me snapped into focus.
“Primary railgun online,” Pakos declared behind me.
“Fuck yeah!” Kaminski yelled.
“You might like to take safety measures,” Atkins said. “This ride is about to get bumpy. Initiate defensive measures with lasers please.”
The Krell warship was positioned overhead, dominating the bridge view-port. The
Oregon
’s laser batteries began shooting, meeting incoming fire. With each pulse the lasers illuminated the scarred and battered underside of the enormous ship.
“Has the fleet fought this hostile previously?” Atkins asked.
By their nature, the Krell did not give their vessels names. There was no ship title and no identification tag on the hull. To the Krell Collective, I doubt that this particular ship had any individuality or distinction beyond her size and mass. But the Navy held records, and every Naval engagement during the course of the Krell War had been catalogued in detail. Every vessel was studied, every tactic deployed considered. If a starship had a known weakness, then it would be recorded. All Navy ships were equipped with a database of known hostiles. It might give us an edge, no matter how miniscule.
This played out around me, but my focus was somewhere else entirely. I searched for targets outside with the railgun. There was something animal about the machine, something desperate. It hungered for a target and I reined it in. I commanded firepower capable of decimating an entire fleet. It was exhilarating, intoxicating.
Data flowed across my mind’s eye. It was so similar to operating a simulant, yet so different.
“Database match acquired,” a young officer called triumphantly across the bridge. “Primary hostile is
Death of Antares
. Category four. Last Naval engagement was seven years ago, claimed lives of nine hundred crewmen aboard battleship
Virginia Central
—”
“Keep to the essentials, please,” Atkins replied. “We don’t have time for the detail.”
Not to mention the effect that the disclosure would probably have on the morale of the bridge staff. A battleship was four times the mass of an assault cruiser like the
Oregon
and the news that this alien vessel had taken one of those down would be understandably unwelcome.
“Known weakness on starboard port!” she blurted back. “Uploading the data to you now, Captain. It took a hit during a sighting at Proxima Yaris, as a result of a Naval bombardment—”
The
Oregon
listed again, and I swayed in my seat with the motion. Something else struck the ship, this time so hard that the entire spaceframe shook. Might’ve been a larger piece of local debris, or perhaps a solid-shot weapon deployed by the
Death
. Space outside was crammed with potential targets now.
“The
Death
has a weakened arterial wall at the connection point between the rear engine and the third hangar port,” Atkins said. “From here, we have a clear shot at her belly.”
A holo sprang to life showing the
Death of Antares
– a spinning wireframe diagram. Markers illustrated the weakened spot: the location of the previous Naval bombardment.
“Charging particle beam accelerator,” a weapons officer declared. “Acquiring target.”
“Permission to fire. Commence bombardment.”
The view-port flashed again, and a glittering beam shot across space. Against the black, the light was so bright that it left an after-image on my retinas. The weapon scoured the underside of the
Death of Antares
, causing a rupture between two armoured plates. Fluid and assorted debris erupted from the vessel, spilling out into space. The ship continued her slow and interminable manoeuvre overhead, but I could tell that she was hurt.
Damn it
. I felt a pang of annoyance that I was not the operator to take first blood. The railgun swivelled angrily outside.
“Did we kill it?” Blake asked, excitedly.
The weapons officer’s impact had caused some minor structural damage – a report filtered through to my station.
“Not quite,” I growled. “But we’re close. This is my kill.”
The ship sailed overhead, and I saw my chance.
I didn’t wait for an order. I opened up with the railgun. It was nothing more than a dumb killshot weapon – slow and unguided, but absolutely lethal at this range. It could punch a hole through hull plating and open the enemy ship to vacuum. That was the goal: make the enemy ship bleed to death. I fired a short volley of super-accelerated shots into the underside of the
Death
.
To me, immersed in the operating system of the
Oregon
, each shot seemed to take an eternity to reach its target, all the while the
Death
firing barrages of bio-plasma into the
Oregon
. The reality was that it took microseconds for the rounds to impact.
I knew that the
Antares
was dead before she did.
First one, then two, railgun shots pierced the lower hull. Assisted by the
Oregon
’s AI, my aim was good, and each shot hit the same weakened seam on the underside. In slow motion, the rounds punched right through the armour plating. More debris poured from the puncture wound, more fluid spilled out into space – freezing before it had even left the vicinity of the vessel. The ship seemed to wobble, the engine-light flickering. The bio-plasma pores stopped firing.
“Confirmed hit,” I declared. “She’s moving beyond our shield perimeter.”
A cheer went up across the bridge. This was better than I had expected. I felt a surge of hope run through me. The weapon still hungered, and I felt the enormous barrels cooling, but if nothing else I had bought us some time.
There is still another one out there
, a voice sounded in my head. That was either me, or the railgun AI – now reloaded, eager for another target.
“Any database match on the secondary hostile?” Atkins yelled.
“The
Great White
, sir,” the same officer from earlier replied. “Responsible for the scuttling of three Alliance Navy ships at the Battle for Gavis Prime.” What was it with this officer and bad news? “Category six. No known weaknesses, sir.”
“What’s a category six?” Kaminski called.
No one bothered to answer him. Krell starships were categorised according to their threat level – based on intel held on specific vessels, cross-referenced with size. A category six ship was
big
.
“What category are we?” Kaminski followed up.
“We’re a three,” I called back.
“Ah, shit.”
The
Great White
made ponderous progress through the asteroid field, firing brilliant lance-weapons as she went. She was further away than the
Death
and well outside our null-shield. Each shot fizzled against the shield, now holding firm and protecting us. The enemy ship was still partially concealed by the asteroid field and as she moved the loose debris was sent scattering.
I’ll take you down just as easily
, I promised. The railgun was getting the better of me. I
had
to fire.
“I’m continuing fire on the
Death
,” I declared.
It was as though the
Oregon
was possessed by some feral, bloodthirsty spirit – and therefore I was too. The railgun fired. There was no recoil, no aftershock from each shot. Around me, other weapons officers followed suit. All weapons converged on the crippled enemy ship. Torpedoes launched, and as soon as the particle beamer had recharged it fired again as well. There was a strange detachment from the battle itself; save for the occasional, and probably quite significant, creak and groan of the
Oregon
’s chassis, the battle was fought silently. This was the difference between firing starship-bound weaponry and fighting in a simulant: there was no pain, no immediate consequence of my actions.
I fire, something out in space dies
. Inside my sim, everything was visceral: the simulated became real. I felt the ache to get back into my simulator-tank, though the sims would be no use against warships.
Even as the
Death
’s fuel tanks ruptured, exploding in a magnificent and short-lived flash, there was no sound. Pieces of the
Death
scattered across the view-port, striking the reinforced windows with percussive thuds. Smaller bits of debris sparked against the null-shield outside. Although a significant portion of the vessel still lingered in space, the ship was finished. Most of her interior was now open to vacuum, and the Krell crew would die to the void just as quickly as us.
“Primary threat neutralised.”
I was dripping in sweat, I realised. Despite the circumstances, I was enjoying the carnage, enjoying doing this. Perhaps
because
of the circumstances I was enjoying it. I fired the railgun with a reckless abandon. The ammunition counter eventually began to deplete, and a warning flashed – informing me that I was reaching a critically low projectile count.
“That’s a confirm on the non-operational status of the
Death of Antares
,” Atkins bellowed behind me. “Cease all fire on the vessel.”
Was that directed at me?
I wondered. In any event, I pulled back in my seat and stopped firing the railgun.
“Now we only have to deal with the
Great White
,” he said.
The battle was far from over. The
Great White
fired a constant stream of energy beams into the
Oregon
. The null-shield wouldn’t hold for ever. We would have to take some offensive action, to bring down the other ship.