The silver fleet the com.., p.58
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 58
He glanced over at the comms consoles where his officers were recording as much information as they could before the inevitable happened. It might seem like a ghoulish thing to do but it could prove vital later.
He could see Yamada and Ensign Roberts over to one side, deep in conversation. Yamada looked up and spotted him. He came over, drawing Roberts along in his wake.
“Sir, we’ve been having a discussion. It’s probably too late to do anything but we think we might have an idea.”
*
Silva had Webster working the comms while she got into her thin suit. She’d had particular difficulty working around her injured leg. She hadn’t said anything but from the expression on her face he suspected that she’d broken it again when she’d taken that tumble with Grozier. He was having no luck contacting anyone but then that was hardly surprising - with the appearance of what was left of Big Daddy, everything had changed. They’d already registered five ships of varying sizes leaving the station and they were expecting more.
They had no reliable idea how long they had before the object struck but it couldn’t be very long now, the thing was growing in size as they watched.
“We need to get out of here,” he said for the third time.
“I’m well aware of that,” she said, struggling to slide her arms into her sleeves. “We just need a little while longer.”
“That thing isn’t getting any smaller.”
“The Mantis can get a message to the Port Authority. Get them to call this thing off.”
“That’s not going to make much difference…”
A voice cut across the pair of them.
“Dardelion, this is the USDC Mantis, are you receiving, over?”
“Mantis, this is the Dardelion. Commander Alexander Webster speaking.”
There was a moment of static on the other end.
“Say again, Dardelion, we didn’t catch that last transmission.”
“This is Commander Webster. I need to speak with Captain Faulkner immediately.”
“Er, we’re going to need you to verify your identity, sir.”
Webster rattled off his service number.
“Okay, but we’re going to need a little more than that.”
Webster rolled his eyes at Silva, hoping for her support but all he got was a shrug.
Standard operating procedure didn’t change just because an enormous meteor was bearing down on them.
It took a good five minutes to satisfy the comms officer that Webster was indeed who he said he was.
“Putting you through now, sir.”
While he waited, he watched as Silva eased the ship forward. Just ahead of them were two huge storage containers. If they could just get across there it would provide them with the perfect hiding place. He just hoped that they’d be able to close the distance before the drone started firing again.
“Captain Faulkner here, who is this?”
Webster realised he only had one chance to convince his c.o. of who he was.
“Commander Webster, sir. The man you recruited straight out of prison.”
“Alex,” the initial relief didn’t last long. “What are you doing? You need to get clear of Blackthorn as soon as possible.”
“That’s the problem. We’ve got some security drone out here trying to shoot holes in us.”
Faulkner took a moment to take this in.
“Who’ve you got on board with you?”
“Lieutenant Silva, along with Sergeant Markham and his men,” now was not the time to dwell on their losses. “We also have Governor Ardent joining us.”
“That’s good to hear but for now I am ordering you to report to Captain Mahbarat aboard the Serrayu.”
Webster exchanged glances with Silva.
“Captain Mahbarat, sir? I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”
“It’s a lot to take in, I grant you, but you must do as I ask. Once aboard the Serrayu I would like you to offer your official surrender to Captain Mahbarat on behalf of you and your team.”
“Surrender, sir?”
“That is correct, Commander.”
Webster rubbed the heel of his palm into his eye. Things were worse than he’d thought. The captain must have had some kind of break down. It had been a while coming but the signs had been there for some time. He’d need to contact Chief Surgeon Morton. It would be essential to get her help with the ludicrously difficult proposition of relieving Faulkner of his command. It couldn’t be avoided any longer. But before he could hope to do that, he needed to find a way of getting back on board the Mantis.
“Alex! Alex!” Silva hissed. “You need to see this.”
“Just a second, sir.”
“I can’t wait, Commander. Too much going on. Good luck and goodbye.”
The contact was broken.
“What is it?” he demanded of Silva. He was close to losing his temper.
“It’s all over the screens. Come and take a look.”
Webster reluctantly climbed out of his seat. She had five screens open. All of them showed the same thing.
Three missiles.
“I don’t understand. What’s he shooting at, now?”
“Blackthorn. Don’t you see, the captain must have lost his mind. He’s firing on Blackthorn.”
*
Klaxons were sounding all over the ship.
Faulkner had asked if they might be turned off on the bridge but it seemed that there was no way of overriding the alarms without taking out some other more vital systems.
“Warning! Warning! Evacuation in process. Please make your way to your nearest escape pod.”
The message was repeated every few seconds.
Faulkner had expected some resistance once people realised what he was planning but that had not materialised. His crew were too well drilled to try and countermand a direct order to evacuate.
The bridge was largely deserted, with only three officers remaining apart from himself.
Lieutenant Commander Bertran, Lieutenant Yamada and Lieutenant 2nd Class Rolf.
The only other crewman aboard was Palmer Davitz, down in Engineering. He’d taken so long marshalling his engines that he simply refused to abandon them now.
Ensign Roberts had requested that she be allowed to remain behind but Faulkner had flatly refused. He’d be much happier with her safely aboard one of the executive escape pods. Roberts had a very fine mind, much sharper than his own and, if she survived this, he could see her rising through the ranks in very short order.
Indeed, she was the one largely responsible for what was about to happen.
Their debate had been brief but profoundly illuminating.
It had been Yamada who had started it.
“It’s probably too late now, sir,” he had said. “But we think we might have something.”
Faulkner wasn’t sure he wanted to listen. He was a realist, after all. He knew what was about to happen. But, eventually, he had conceded.
Roberts said, “All this time, sir, we’ve been looking for the answer in the wrong place.”
“We’ve been concentrating on the threat posed by Big Daddy,” Yamada said.
“With good reason,” Faulkner said.
“We’ve become so hypnotised by the threat it poses that we haven’t thought to look elsewhere for a solution,” Roberts said.
Faulkner had been close to making his excuses and leaving but he thought he owed it to Yamada to hear them out.
“We were reflecting on the complexity of the calculations necessary for someone to hit Blackthorn from, effectively, the other side of the system,” Yamada was saying. “But we also realised that such a thing would only be possible because Blackthorn’s orbit is so predictable – owing to its being attached to Iscaria via the umbilical. If that weren’t the case then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“You’d be able to alter Blackthorn’s course,” Faulkner said. “Push it out of the way somehow.”
“That’s right, sir,” Roberts said. “There are any number of fully functioning space stations which currently don’t have an umbilical: Lincoln being a good example. Most simply maintain a geo-stationary orbit which can be altered.”
Realisation was slowly starting to dawn for Faulkner. “But that would require the station to have its own propulsion system,” Faulkner said. “The thrusters on Lincoln are enormous for that very purpose. Anyway, you’d still be attached to the planet.”
“There’s a reason why they call it a tether, sir,” Roberts said.
Faulkner stared at her for a moment, trying to work out what it was she was saying.
Then, realisation hit. “You want to find some way of severing the umbilical. Cut Blackthorn loose, is that it?”
Yamada nodded. “Yes, although, normally, an operation like that would take several months.”
“But we’ve spoken to Lieutenant Commander Bertran,” Roberts could hardly contain herself. “He thinks there might be a way of doing it.”
Faulkner was shaking his head. “Look, I admire the effort but it’s not going to work. If we’d done this at the start then we might have had a chance but even if we could sever the umbilical, the forces necessary to knock Blackthorn out of its orbit would have to be exceptional. And, even then, it could take several days to have any effect. I’m sorry, but whatever we do, Anvil is going to hit Blackthorn – it’s inevitable.”
“Sir,” Yamada took a sudden step forward. With almost anyone else, Faulkner would have interpreted the move as being confrontational. “We understand your concerns but, if you could just indulge us for a few moments longer - we have something we must show you.”
As he turned, one of the other officers threw him a basketball and it was that, more than anything, which grabbed Faulkner’s attention.
What was Yamada doing with a basketball on the bridge?
“Sir, if you wouldn’t mind holding your hands above your head?”
Faulkner raised his arms the best he could, his old injuries doing their best to hinder him, while Yamada passed the ball to Roberts.
“Sir, the ensign is going to throw the ball across to you, sir. If you’d be so kind as to catch it?”
Faulkner raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement.
Roberts threw the ball under-hand so it looped lazily over towards where Faulkner was standing but, before he could catch it, Yamada had slammed the ball aside. It bounced across the bridge where one of the helmsmen bent to retrieve it.
“Newton’s Second Law of Motion,” Roberts had said. “The rate of change of momentum of a body is directly proportional to the force applied. Blackthorn will only stay in its current orbit until a greater force is applied to it.”
“It would have to be something pretty substantial, though,” Faulkner said. “A fleet of tugs couldn’t shift her.”
“Targeting a series of missiles along the station’s equator was our first thought,” Yamada said but then seeing Faulkner’s response, he quickly moved on. “Although the level of destruction necessary to achieve such a shift would be on a scale similar to anything that Anvil might inflict.”
“All our data on this comes from the station’s defensive planning,” Roberts said. “A badly damaged ship on a collision course, say.”
Yamada held up his hands. “Though, of course, no modern starships has anything like the sheer mass we’d be looking for.”
“Very informative,” Faulkner said, cutting him off. “You know, for a second there, I thought you were going to suggest something really stupid. But you didn’t, which is good.”
For a second, it looked as though Yamada’s will was about to buckle.
But then Ensign Roberts was speaking. “Are you familiar with Tacoma Station, sir?”
Faulkner was on the edge of walking away but something in what she’d said struck a chord with him.
“Tacoma? Yes, that sounds familiar. One of the very early orbitals. Didn’t end well as I remember it.”
“Fell out of orbit, sir,” Roberts said. “Burnt up on re-entry.”
“That’s right,” Faulkner said. “Cost a fortune. Set the whole orbital programme back twenty years.”
“That is correct, sir.” Yamada said. “But the engineers learnt a lot of valuable lesson from it.”
“Yeah, I remember now: something to do with some heavy freighter messing up its approach. Didn’t it crash into the side of the docking bay?”
Yamada stepped up to his CO, and in that moment his eyes burned with a conviction more closely linked to religious zealots. But it wasn’t Yamada who spoke next.
“They’re talking about docking gyros, sir.”
Faulkner looked to his left to see that Chief Engineer Palmer Davitz had just entered the bridge.
“Docking gyros?”
“I know, sir. Sounds crazy as hell but I think they might just be onto something.”
*
Faulkner watched as the three missiles approached Blackthorn. Yamada and Bertran stood behind him while Rolf, the lead helmsman, bent to his task.
“So, we’re not trying to hit the elevator itself?” Faulkner asked.
“No, sir,” Bertran said. “We haven’t time to programme in that level of accuracy. Chances are we’d miss anyway.”
“This from the master of the lucky shot,” Yamada joked.
“The luckiest of lucky shots,” Bertran reminded him.
There was nothing like a bit of gallows humor to alleviate the tension.
“So, I decided to go with proximity explosions. Chances of destroying the umbilical with one shot are pretty slim, so we’re hoping that these three can get the job done.”
“What about the elevators?” Faulkner said. “Won’t they still be operating?”
“I honestly don’t know. They are designed to survive a major breach so long as the carriage is below the rupture line when it occurs. The carriages themselves can maintain their integrity for several days. They should be able to reach the planet safely.”
“How much do you think this thing cost?” Yamada asked. “The station itself?”
“Whatever it cost, I’m hoping they won’t be deducting it from my paycheck,” Bertran said.
At that moment, the first missile detonated although the only visible effect that it had done so was the shock wave which rippled along the elevator’s shaft.
Faulkner folded his arms tightly across his chest and waited.
“Of course,” Bertran said. “We knew it couldn’t be that easy.”
The second blast was much closer to its target, the explosion noticeably brighter, the impact causing a marked bow wave in the umbilical cable itself. They could just make out sections of debris breaking off and when the elevator eventually straightened, they could see where some of the cables had been shorn away.
But still, it held.
Faulkner put a hand on Bertran’s shoulder.
“Whatever happens next, you’ve done an excellent job.”
“This next one is a little bit different,” Bertran pointed out, sounding far calmer than he had any right to be. “This is an MDW, a Mass Dispersal Weapon. As it detonates it sends out a shower of razor-sharp projectiles which can cut through anything. Hopefully, this might do it.”
The final missile was even better placed than the second, the detonation twice as impressive and yet the effect was much the same. The elevator effected a marked undulation causing even more debris to float away and, though it was clear that the shaft had been majorly compromised, it still remained in one piece.
They waited a few moments, hoping for a miracle. Hoping that the stress from the various explosions might have been enough to sheer the shaft in two. When it didn’t happen the three of them released a collective sigh of disappointment.
“No good?” asked Rolf without turning round.
“No,” Bertran said. “No good at all.”
“That’s it, then,” Faulkner said. The evacuation meant that there were no crewmen available to load a second volley, even if they’d wanted to.
“That’s annoying,” Yamada said simply. “Extremely annoying, in fact.”
“Might it still work?” Faulkner asked. “Ramming the station?”
“There’s a slim chance…” Yamada said without conviction.
Bertran was shaking his head. “In all likelihood, we’ll achieve nothing. The outcome will be exactly the same.
It was while they were considering their options that Helm Operator Rolf spoke.
“Sorry, sir, but someone is trying to get through to you. Says its urgent.”
Yamada moved across to his workstation.
After checking the message he turned to Faulkner.
“It’s Commander Webster, sir. He wants to speak with you.”
*
Webster was calmer now. His initial fears that Faulkner had suffered some kind of mental episode had been assuaged as soon as he’d heard Yamada’s voice. While there was a chance that Faulkner might have been able to bully a group of junior officers into following some insane plan, Webster couldn’t see Yamada falling for it.
The man was too fond of doing things by the book.
If Faulkner had managed to persuade him, then chances were that his plan had something to recommend it, no matter how ludicrous it might seem.
“I’m sorry, sir, you’re going to have to go over that again.”
“Yamada and Roberts hatched the idea between the pair of them. I’m not sure I fully understand it myself.”
Webster couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Sir, you have to re-consider. This all sounds like madness.”
“An hour ago, I might have agreed with you but if they can convince Davitz they can convince me.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” he looked over at Silva for moral support. “Regardless of how much mass the Mantis might be carrying, she’s still only one ship. All you’re going to do if you insist on going through with this is to sacrifice yourself along with the ship.”
There was a long pause.
“I’m not sure you’re right in that regard. It’s something to do with the docking facilities on these bigger stations. They’re all fitted with finely tuned stabilizers to prevent any large vessels docking knocking them off their axes.”
