Crimson Worlds: Prequel - Bitter Glory Read online

  “Very well, engineer.” Compton pulled up the targeting scanner, staring intently, waiting for the system to finish booting up. His eyes were narrow, focused. He shut out everything else, even Wasp’s two torpedoes. They would hit or not, but his focus was now on Scorpion’s shot.

  “Missed.” It was Kiernan, disappointment replacing the excitement in her voice. “Wasp’s first shot missed.”

  Compton wasn’t listening; he barely heard the tactical officer’s voice. He was staring, computing the targeting angles, waiting for the system to activate so he could fire. His eyes bored into the scope, his concentration rigid, unshakeable. Good targeting was 99% mathematics and 1% instinct. But it was the 1% that made the difference. And Terrance Compton had been one of the best gunnery officers to set foot on a fast attack ship. He was a little rusty, but with his chief gunner dead, Compton wasn’t about to trust anyone else with the shot.

  “Hit!” Kiernan almost jumped out of her seat. “Wasp’s second torpedo. A direct hit!”

  There was a murmur on Scorpion’s bridge, but Compton ignored it. His eyes were locked on the targeting computer, watching it come online as Kiernan’s shout echoed across the bridge. He had his targeting solution already, but he checked it again. His fingers tightened slowly, pressing down on the firing pad. Scorpion lurched as one of its torpedo tubes blasted its ordnance into space. Two seconds later, Compton’s fingers squeezed again, the second torpedo accelerated from the attack ship, streaking toward the enemy vessel.

  “Torpedoes away, sir.” It took Kiernan a second to realize Compton had fired, but then she was tracking the weapons, plotting their course. “Trajectory looks good.” A pause. “One minute, thirty seconds to impact.” Another pause. “One minute fiftee…captain, energy spike on the enemy vessel!”

  Compton’s head swung around. “Angeldust battery…fire! Evasive maneuvers.” The energy pulse wouldn’t give Scorpion much warning, maybe two seconds. Then the destructive power of the laser shot would lance out from the enemy ship at lightspeed.

  “Enemy laser hit on Wasp, sir.” Kiernan was a brave officer, and one who would never push off danger on her comrades. But she couldn’t keep all the relief out of her voice. Scorpion was in no condition to endure another hit.

  Compton leaned back in his chair, outwardly calm, but inside struggling to keep his cool. “Damage report, lieutenant.”

  “Unclear, sir.” Kiernan was frantically working the scanner controls, trying to get an idea how badly Wasp was hurt. “It looks like they managed to partially interdict with their angeldust launchers, but it still looks bad, captain.”

  Compton’s screen was split, half displaying the meager information they were getting from Wasp, the other side tracking the telemetry of his torpedoes. His eyes darted back and forth, but finally he focused on his shot. There was nothing he could do for Wasp in the next minute anyway…and if Augustus Garret couldn’t save her, not a thing Compton did would matter.

  “Forty seconds to torpedo impact.” Lieutenant Kiernan had come to the same conclusion. It was looking very much like the fate of the squadron rested on those two torpedoes working their way to the target.

  Well, Compton thought grimly, if you were ever going to score a hit, now is the time. The seconds peeled away slowly, each instant stretching agonizingly before it finally gave way to the next. Thirty seconds, an eternity…then twenty.

  “Ten seconds.” Kiernan’s voice was edgy. They all knew what was riding on this. Another laser hit and Wasp would be done for. Scorpion might survive a hit, but she’d be a mangled wreck. No…it was now or never. This was the battle. And everyone on Scorpion knew it.

  Compton stared at his screen. He’d get the data as quickly as Kiernan, but the tactical officer stayed focused on her duties, relaying battle data to the captain. Scorpion’s life support systems were still functioning, and the bridge was a comfortable room temperature. But Compton could feel the sweat dripping down his back, first a single drop, then heavier, the inside of his suit becoming slick and uncomfortable.

  “Five seconds.” Kiernan sat completely still, reading off the countdown. It was only an estimation, of course. Both the target ship and the torpedoes would be making vector changes. A hit could come 3 or 4 seconds early or as many late. “Two, one…”

  There was silence on the bridge, all five officers present simultaneously staring at their workstations and listening for Kiernan’s report. The first outburst came 2, maybe 3 seconds after the initially projected detonation point. “Hit!” she exclaimed wildly. Then, a few seconds later, “Another hit!”

  A murmur of excitement rippled across the bridge, but Compton’s people were too professional to let it get beyond that. Kiernan was reviewing the incoming data, preparing the damage assessment, and she’d report as soon as she knew anything.

  Compton was relieved…there were no guarantees, but he knew two hits probably gave Wasp and Scorpion the edge at least, even if they didn’t take out the enemy vessel completely. But his thoughts were drifting elsewhere…to Wasp…and to the Burke, which was still careening off into space, its shattered engines unable to decelerate or alter its vector.

  “Let’s get that damage assessment, Lieutenant Kiernan.” Compton’s voice was firm, but also distracted. He was thinking about the Burke…and he had a bad feeling. “We need to finish up with this battleship. We’ve got someplace we need to be.”

  Chapter 14

  Control Center

  AS Wasp

  Wolf 424 System

  “I said increase thrust 25%. Am I going to have to repeat myself again?” Garret’s voice was caustic, his eyes glittering with rage. Wasp was hurt…badly hurt. She was finished as a warship, he knew that much. Her main structural spine was fractured, her primary power conduits hanging on by a thread. A battleship might have gone to the shipyard for a total rebuild, but Garret knew his brave little attack ship was on her last mission.

  “But, sir…yes, captain.” Forsten had started to argue again, but then the resignation flowed over him. “Increasing engine output 25%.” His hand paused on the control. He knew the engine wouldn’t take it. Garret knew it too, of course, but the captain was determined to take any chance…any chance at all.

  The combat against the enemy battleship had been a fight to the finish. Compton’s hits had nearly crippled the thing, but they hadn’t knocked it out completely. In the end, Wasp and Scorpion had been forced to close to point blank range and finished it off with their cruise missiles.

  Now Wasp and Scorpion were chasing Burke. The civilian ship was dying, its life support all but exhausted. It would be a close race between freezing and suffocating, but unless one of Garret’s ships could catch the runaway research vessel, everyone on board would die. And everyone included Charlotte Evers. Garret had confirmed it…she was the chief of the ship’s xenobiology team.

  The battle had lasted hours longer than Garret expected, and both ships had taken heavy damage. Now they were pushing battered systems to their limits, straining to accelerate and match velocity with Burke in time. Garret’s responsibility was to every Alliance citizen on that ship, but his mind was focused on only one. He had to save her. He was determined to do it with nothing but pure will if need be, but the limits of his ship’s savaged systems were unaffected by his stubbornness.

  Wasp lurched forward, her single remaining engine straining, thrusting at almost 5g. But there was just too much damage. The burn lasted ten minutes, almost eleven. Then the engine failed. Garret’s crew worked wonders and got it back online. Then it failed again. Wasp was moving at 0.01c, unable to accelerate…or to decelerate and change vector. Unless they could get the tortured engine back online, she would follow Burke into deep space, becoming a ghost ship herself.

  “I need that engine back online now!” Garret’s voice was cracking, the stress in it obvious, though no one onboard truly understood the true extent of his desperation.

  “Negative, captain.” Ensign Finch’s voice was hoarse, the c
rushing fatigue coming through loud and clear. “The main power conduit is ruptured.”

  “We need that thrust, ensign.” Garret was still insisting, but the energy drained from his voice. A ruptured conduit meant the engine was junk.

  “I think I can patch something together from parts of both engines, at least enough to maneuver…” Finch’s voice was guarded…Garret could feel the “but” coming. “But, we’re talking about hours…ten or twelve.”

  Garret sighed hard. There was no point beating up on Finch. Replacing a power conduit with a brand new one in ten hours would be impressive…rebuilding one from scrap in that time would be a miracle. But it might as well take a month. Ten hours was too long for Charlotte. Too long for everyone on Burke.

  Garret flipped on the command com. “Terry, our engine is out again. We’re looking at ten hours, at least, before it’s back online.” His voice was a plea for help. Scorpion was her only chance now.

  “We’re blasting full, Augustus.” Compton’s words almost choked in his throat. He wanted to promise his friend Scorpion would get there, that he would reach Burke in time to save her crew. To save Charlotte. But he knew he wasn’t going to get there in time.

  There was silence on the line…Garret slowly realizing that everyone on Burke was going to die. They were going to die because he had decided to attack the enemy battleship. Compton opened his mouth silently and shut it again, not willing to worsen his friend’s pain with empty promises.

  * * * * *

  Garret sat bolt upright in his chair, oblivious for once to the hard plastic ridge poking his spine. His eyes stung from the air as he stared straight forward, almost without blinking. He felt as though he had jumped over a great chasm…still moving outward, not yet falling, but realizing the ground wasn’t there. He knew what was happening, but it was unreal too…like a bad dream from which he was trying to wake.

  The line was open, and Garret could hear Scorpion’s boarding party. Compton was leading it himself…a gesture Garret would always remember and appreciate. Compton knew his friend would be listening, and he warned his crew not to say anything. He knew what he’d have to report to Garret, and no one but him was going to do it.

  Garret listened as Compton and his people searched the silent landing bay, and he knew right away. They found three bodies lying next to workstations, suffocated and almost frozen solid. Scorpion had been hours too late. Everyone on Burke was dead. He could hear Compton’s breath, heavy in the helmet of his survival suit. Garret knew his friend would have rather faced an enemy battlefleet than to tell him what he had to.

  “Augustus…” It was obvious from his voice…if Garret hadn’t been sure before, he was now. “We’re too late. They’re gone.” A short pause, then: “I’m so sorry, Augustus.”

  * * * * *

  Garret sat silently, lost in dark thoughts. Whatever doubts he might have had were gone. Compton had searched every compartment of Burke. His people found Charlotte in her quarters, slumped over her workstation. It still didn’t seem real. He’d only seen her a few times since he’d left for the Academy, and he’d ceased to be a meaningful part of her life long ago. But now, confronting the reality of her death, he felt as if they’d never been apart. The pain was sharp and raw, not the muted grief felt for an old friend, long since parted. His mind went back to that rainy day on the landing pad, remembering his empty promises, regretting the callous ambition that had ruled him.

  Wasp’s engine was back online, miraculously repaired in less than eight hours. Finch had worked wonders, taking over when Carson was killed and patching the shattered vessel back together. The ship was basically a wreck, but it would get back to base now. Garret was lost in his own misery, but he’d remember to see that Finch’s heroism was recognized.

  He owed it to her…to go see her one last time. But he couldn’t do it. Augustus Garret didn’t flinch at marching into hell itself to face the enemy, but the thought of staring into Charlotte’s frozen, dead face was more than he could bear. She’d known he was in the system…of that he was sure. He’d sent the original communication to the Burke, and he’d clearly identified himself. What went through her mind, he wondered, in those final hours? Did she even realize he’d known she was there? That was a solace he’d grasped for hopelessly…that she didn’t know he’d abandoned her again. But the comfort was fleeting. She’d known he was there…there was no doubt. She’d left him a message.

  Compton had found the data chip clasped tightly in her hand. He’d almost kept it, thinking to spare his friend the heartbreak. But he couldn’t…Garret had a right to see it, no matter how much pain it caused. He’d delivered it to Wasp himself, unwilling to allow anyone else to do the deed.

  Garret rolled the small chip between his fingers. He hadn’t watched it…he couldn’t. Not yet. One day he would, but now he knew he’d lose the last of his composure if he did. His ship still needed him, his crew looked to him to lead them home. They’d performed magnificently, and they deserved the best their captain could give them. Garret had failed Charlotte again. He wasn’t going to fail his crew as well.

  Chapter 15

  Sector Base Omicron

  Alpha 9 System

  The two surviving ships of Third Squadron limped into base. Scorpion was shot up badly, her streamlined hull pockmarked with a series of nasty gashes and quick patches. Half her internal systems were shut down by leaks and broken conduits. It was a miracle she was even operating under her own power. If there had been such a thing as a decoration for damage control bots, Garret would have awarded one to Compton’s automated repair workers.

  As bad as Scorpion was, Wasp was in even worse shape. Garret had burned out her one good engine in the desperate attempt to catch Charlotte’s ship in time. Wasp had almost become a ghost ship herself, zooming off into deep space at 0.01c, unable to decelerate or change vector. Finch’s people had managed to repair the engine, barely, and bring her back around. The ship could just about put out 4g of thrust, not much, but enough to slowly decelerate and revector for the trip through the Ross 614 warp gate. Garret hadn’t know what he’d find there, and he fully expected to emerge in the midst of an enemy task force. Instead, Third Squadron transited into the middle of a full-fledged battle.

  The Alliance forces had counter-attacked into the system, seeking to drive the CAC invaders back. The fighting had been raging for days. The two forces had approached at high velocity, engaging in a short, sharp exchange of fire before passing each other. Both fleets decelerated and turned about for another round. They were just about to engage again when Wasp and Scorpion emerged into Ross 614, behind the Alliance task force.

  Neither ship had any functioning weapons systems, so they identified themselves to the Alliance commander and matched course and velocity with the fleet…at least as well as their battered vessels could manage. They would run the gauntlet past the enemy along with the entire task force. It was the only option.

  The engagement at Ross 614 turned out to be a major battle, and a bloody one too. Tactically inconclusive, it was an Alliance strategic victory, halting the enemy invasion and driving the CAC and Caliphate forces back into their own space. Losses were fairly even, but Third Squadron’s destruction of the enemy battleship swung the overall calculation to the Alliance. There were capital ships damaged on both sides, but Wasp and Scorpion had scored the only outright kill.

  Combat tactics were transitioning, and the opportunity to catch a battleship alone would turn out to be a rare and fleeting one. The First Frontier War had been fought by small squadrons of ships, vessels that would barely qualify as light cruisers by the standards of later conflicts. Capital ships were something new in interstellar war, and the Second Frontier War saw the rapid development of tactics built around the battlewagons.

  Early battlegroup tactics were rough, and the support vessels and their crews were still learning how to protect and screen a battleship. Operations would become very sophisticated by the Third Frontier War, with well-plac
ed escorts providing multiple layers of protection to capital ships…even damaged ones retreating from the combat zone. But in the early years of the Second Frontier War, it was still possible to sneak up and launch an attack on an isolated battleship, especially one limping away from the fight.

  With the loss of their damaged dreadnought, the enemy fleet couldn’t sustain the offensive, and they withdrew. Garret and Compton and their two small ships had arguably won the campaign for the Alliance, though that victory had not, as they both knew all too well, come without its cost.

  * * * * *

  Garret walked slowly across the perfectly manicured grounds, glancing up at the massive hyper-polycarbonate dome and the vast blackness of space beyond. The Alliance Naval Academy was one of the greatest structures ever built by man, a massive series of interlocked modules orbiting a gas giant in the Wolf 1061 system. Under the nearly indestructible material of the domes, the Academy, many sections of it at least, resembled a university. There were fields and buildings that could have been part of any past navy’s campus, but instead of clouds and sky they sat beneath the inky blackness and pinprick stars of space.

  During the Academy’s night, when the artificial lighting of its simulated day receded, the midshipmen could look up at the magnificent vastness of the universe…the battlefield they would fight their wars upon. Garret had always loved that view, clearer and more perfect than any terrestrial panorama, than any visage obscured by atmosphere and pollution. But now it was changed…or he was. Or both. He saw the beauty still, but now it was marred, imperfect. Now he also saw the death, the destruction…men and women struggling to keep their savaged and dying ships in the fight…the horrible, transfixed look on their frozen, dead faces when that beautiful black vacuum took them.