Battleship Destroyer (73 page)

Jack looked around at the damage control screens again surprised at no
t seeing any additional damage on most of the ships. And then he realized that the ship that had turned broadside had launched its lifeboats with the bow looking like Swiss cheese as another enemy beam. From one of the first ships knocked out hit it. The little dots swarming from the ship.

The fleet fir
ed again. This time with all 12 guns of the Parsley added to the salvo. (The blown up barrel having been replaced by a spare taken from the abandoned ship the week before.)

All five enemy ships started drifting but the Captain put two more
of the Parsley's and four of the fleets salvo's into them before ordering the fleet to cease firing. "I do not see anything on any of the enemy ships that can hurt us now." Turning around she looked at the damage control screens. "Well that is fewer than I had feared and only one has launched lifeboats.  Damage control, report."

"Six ships hit
with two suffering major damage sir. The Red Pepper has been abandoned after the forward section took at least a dozen direct hits killing the senior Command officers and most of the crew in the forward section with major damage to the ship's engines.  The Cabbage has suffered heavy damage to both engines and most of its decks. It is requesting permission to abandon ship. The four other damaged ships are making repairs and will be underway again shortly with at least one engine operational on each of them."

"Comm, get me the Cabbage." The bridge of the Cabbage appeared a few seconds later as a side screen zoomed in on the ship showing the
stern of the Cabbage missing large chunks of her hull along with several landing/cooling fins. "Captain Williams, your ship does not look good."

The Cabbage's Captain looked bac
k out at them white faced. "Six beams hit us in the nose and went out the stern sir. Nothing is working anywhere within the ship except the basics on emergency power. We are finding few survivors on the main gun deck or engine rooms though we are having a hard time getting to the lower sections. I am hoping that some of the lower small self-defense gun turrets still have survivors if and when we get too them. It is quite a mess across the entire ship but the stern seems the worst where the beams hit solid objects and bloomed. With no gravity making it dangerous slow going. Half the crew did not have their battle suit helmets on, so we keep losing people cutting through bulkheads and decks."

"Captain Williams, it
cannot be helped. We have the main enemy fleet breathing down our throats. You only have a couple of hours to rescue your trapped crewmen or we leave them behind."

"No Captain. It could take hours to get to and check all the aft compartments. I am not leaving the ship without them." The Cabbage's Captain
stared out of the screen grimly determined. "If a ship could come alongside and take my wounded and most of the survivors I will stay with my damage control crews and follow you in the ships boats later."

"W
e are sending over additional marine search crews Captain Williams. Do the best you can. Out.  Comm, get me of the Red Pepper’s Captain." 

An immaculately uniformed
man in a cramped shuttle boat's pilot seat came on the screen. "I am Commander Buttoner, Engineering Officer of the Red Pepper Admiral. Senior surviving officer.  If you will be so kind as to come pick us up before the enemy fleet gets here I would be forever in your dept., Sir." Another side screen was switched to show the Red Pepper with little outward signs of damage to most of the ship except for all the holes in the nose that seemed to go straight across from side to side. The ship was not even tumbling.

"Report on the condition of your ship Commander."

"My ship is destroyed Captain. Can't you see that? We lost all contact with the forward sections of the ship and both engines were knocked out. The crewmen I sent forward told me that all they found were bodies, blood and too much wreckage to go very far. So I ordered the ship abandoned. I have a hundred survivors. Forty walking wounded I think."

"You only had a few minutes between the time you got hit and when the lifeboats started popping out of the ship." The Captain said disgustedly. "You could not have had time to do much searching." Turning red she curled her lips. "You get your fucking butt back on that ship and start a
descent search of the nose section. I will be over there within the hour and you have better show me a couple hundred bodies or some survivors from the nose section Commander."

The Captain hit her comm icon with the f
orce to make her chair shake as the Commander disappeared. "Comm, get me the 4 other damaged transport Captains in Conference comm as soon as you can. Mr. Tuner, hard dock us to the Cabbage and be quick about it. Plot, where is the Enemies main fleet? How long are they to intercepting us?"

"They are 15
+ hours out Captain, with the destruction of the picket fleet and now the squadron, they have changed directions to stay farther away from the cloud increasing their return time by the minute. I will inform you when they finish their maneuver and settle onto a new course sir."

Three Captains and a Commander popped up on four screens across the front of the bridge. "Gentlemen, my screens show
you all still each have an engine left and are getting your fires under control. I am not going to lose any more ships simply because they cannot keep up. You will immediately start decelerating to cloud penetration point Zebra 8 is that understood? Zebra 8.  With 1 good converted engine, you should still be able to pull a good 350 Gees but I am not going to take a chance you can maintain it. Get started now as a squadron."

"But wha
t about my boats? My 4 surviving boats are sitting at the battle sight. Not to mention the boats from the two ships we lost in that damn canyon. Whose stupid idea was that?"

"You let me worry about the boats Captain.  I will be ordering them picked up by other sh
ips as soon as we get off the Comm. I want you 4 powering out now since there is no chance you could get more than 400 Gees to escape if we do run into another fleet." Turning to the far left screen Commander, where is your Captain?"

"The bridge was hit killing everyone in it Vice Ad
miral Sir. I am the 3rd Officer Lieutenant Commander Murphy and was stationed in the auxiliary bridge sir. How soon can you send over another Captain Admiral?"

"I am not. It is your ship
Captain.  Get it back to the Rock and I will make that permanent. Captain Robinson, you are now Commodore of the 4 ships, get them home safely and remember protocol's and procedures for transferring the Rock's picket coordinates and Codes to our new Captain as soon as possible just in case you get separated. I see several of your ships still have active shuttles on board. Use them. Good luck to you all. Admiral out."

The ship approached the slowly tumbling Cabbage. "Captain or Admiral? Ah. Maybe you should have someone else docking the ship sir. I am the one responsible for the destruction of the two ships in the trench sir."

"It is still Captain while I am commanding a ship Lieutenant. We are short Captains during this massive fleet expansion and I have told you before, you are not responsible for the destruction of anything. You are responsible for saving this fleet again so shut up about what could not have been prevented. We have why too much to do to go crying over the lost. Get this ship docked." Tapping her comm. "First squadron send your marine search parties and render assistance where you can to the Cabbage. Second Squadron Ditto to the Red Pepper. ASAP for all Captains, we don't have much time so get it done.

The 4 damaged ships started decelerating away
as they slowly closed in on each other. Slowing their race across the clouds of the Nebula as Jack clanged onto the hulk of the ship. As soon as the ships were locked together Jack stopped there tumble with his thrusters then put them on station keeping. "Damn. That was sloppy the second time around. I am losing my touch."

"Very good Mr. Turner. As my first officer you need to follow me.
Second Officer Strickman you have the conn." The Captain left the Bridge followed by Jack and the Ensign.

"Ensign! Where do you think you are going? Get back to your console."
The Second Officer bellowed.

The Ensign stopped half way to the hatch and turned around with a scrawl
but headed for her seat.

Jack turned at the hatch. "
She is with me Mr. Strickman. Call a replacement tech."

“Ensign, get to the Admirals Barge on the Cabbage and get it ready for space.” The Admiral said over her shoulder as she took off at a brisk pace

The Captain wound her way through the ship, finally stopping in front of an armored hatch with a big, foot thick arm, reaching down from the overhead with a combination pad on it. Typing in a few numbers she placed her hand on the pad as her eyes were scanned and said. "Code 21C3Z." The hatch started opening out on the end of the arm. The sides of the hatch was stair stepped in about an inch every foot as it continued to slide out.

After some 5 feet of
solid hatch had slid out with no sign of the inside edge of the hatch Jack was starting to wonder. "OK Captain. What needs a vault this thick?"

The hatch continued to slide slowly
out. "Have you ever heard of premorbid strings?"

"Sure. Energy left over from the big bang that looks like long
microscopic strings.  So?"

"What do you know about the old nuclear
fusion bombs?"

"Just that they use
fission bombs to create the fusion explosion. I have read about them but never heard of anyone using them in space for combat. Though I have read about someone using a few to annihilate a few cities long ago on Earth. Seems like they would make good torpedo warheads. Especially against these monsters."

"No they would not Mr. Turner. What happens when an energy string touches matter?"

"The string turns into whatever element it touches but they are so thin they pass through most ships without touching anything. Even if they touch something all they do is add a little to the mass of the ship. Most ships have warts scattered on their hulls adding a few pounds from strings."

"Well Mr. Turner
what do you think would happen if you added a couple of pounds of Enriched Plutonium or Uranium to a nuclear bomb along with a lot of energy?"

"It would probably go boom."

"Very good Mr. Turner. There is hope for you yet. Uranium and Plutonium are both very dense and the miles long strings seem to be attracted to them or the concentrated energy they give off. Every ship has an Atomic Vault for self-destruct bombs only. Normally only Combat ships carry the bombs but since I am an Admiral with information that can never fall into the enemy hands I carry several with me on every ship I am on." The Door finished opening and the Captain walked in. "We are putting this bomb on the hulk to make sure the enemy does not take possession and discover our new technology. The few minutes it will take to transfer the bomb should be safe but every second out of the ten foot thick super dense depleted uranium walls of the vault is risky."

Several
technicians and armed marines rode into the vault on narrow carts behind them. The technician driving with the marine sitting behind him facing the opposite direction. In the center of the vault sat a cart with a big 16 inch diameter tube 4 feet long with rounded ends. The Compartment had room for a dozen such containers but it only carried three.

"From now on every ship with the new engines will carry such a device and as
temporary First Officer, and if you do eventually make Commander you will need to know." They followed the device out of the vault and as soon as the crew hit the end of the hatch the train of carts speeded up rushing down the passageway and the connecting lock to the other ship. A cart train pulled up and a few seconds later they were quickly racing along behind the bomb. "If a string hits the plutonium cores outside the vault it will destroy the ship in a multi megaton explosion. You should always make sure the other ships vault is open before you transport the device to lessen the transit time if you are outside an atmosphere without a magnetic shield."

"I thought concentrating uranium into fissionable materials was prohibitively expensive. Why go to all the trouble if it is this dangerous in space?"

"Weapons grade material has not been produced for over a thousand years that I know of. This is left over from the Cold Wars before man got out into space and discovered how plentiful strings really were outside star systems. That strings are attracted to the dense highly radioactive cores. But for some jobs nothing does as good as the devices. Jobs that do not require a ship to carry very many of them or much time outside specially built vaults. No, if you could figure some way for a ship to carry more than a couple of warheads and deliver even one of them onto a target without being destroyed either in the ship or on its way to the target I would give you your own ship. But excuse me if I do not hold my breath. They have been working on that for thousands of years while trying to come up with something like science fiction’s Warp Gates or Wormhole tunnels to transfer ships instantaneously between star Systems.” The Admiral smiled at Jack.   “Make you First Admiral of the Republic for that one Commander."