The ship went into near freefall, still aimed at the Control Ship and still firing away. Recognizing the threat, as well as their greater vulnerability while no longer maneuvering, Simmons had his watchstanders concentrate on the source of the silvery beam. While waiting for the shots to reach their target, Nathan focused on Kris’s icon. It and that of her Electrical Officer had gone red as soon as they left their pods, and he felt helpless and adrift as he waited for her to come back online.
Explosions flared upon the Control Ship, blanketing the area where the “assemblor” beam fired from. The beam cut out intermittently and then faded away to nothing, shut off at the source. Nathan almost cheered, but the nano-scale eating machines that Kris believed them to be had already been deposited on the hull and continued their destructive work. Whether the beam kept re-depositing them or not, they would eventually turn the ship into dust if Kris was unable to stop them.
Her voice cut in to the tactical net, causing an intense surge of relief in Nathan. “Okay! Since we’re fresh outta missiles, I decoupled their power cables from the main bus and grounded it to the outer hull. I’m gonna close the breaker and charge the exterior of the ship. Hopefully those suckers are small and fragile enough to kill with a little excessive voltage.”
Nathan shook his head, exasperated. “Stop talking about it and just do it, CHENG!”
“Fine! Just don’t be mad if I pop every other breaker on the ship in the process. Here goes.”
The speakers in his helmet squealed and popped, and his VR display flickered and went black for a moment, but it came back almost immediately. Red status icons blinked for all of the crew and for a number of systems. Railgun and laser fire had stopped. Panicked, Nathan called out, “Kris! XO! COB! Report.”
“Captain, XO, I think we’re okay. It’s just the monitoring systems and weapons that have gone offline. COB, get verbals from every station on the general net, and I’ll work with the department heads on system status and recovery.”
“Roger, XO,” Edwards agreed.
Nathan took a deep breath. “Okay. CHENG, report. Did it work?”
He looked at the hull cameras even as she spoke. The spirals of damage were no longer growing and no more dust streamed away from the ship. Kris spoke up, her voice filled with static. “Yep. I think so. No more critters eating the hull anyway. I’ve got a lot of smoke and electrical damage back here, but we’re still in the fight.”
Nathan took a look at the battlespace, considering that. The Control Ship was gouged and blackened, quiescent for the moment as it apparently contemplated its own damage. Their warheads were all gone, either expended in the attack or blasted by the Deltan defenses. The nanotech beam was also gone, as well as several of its laser emplacements. For the moment, the battle was paused, both ships wounded, warily watching their foe.
“Nope,” he said into the net. “We’re done. There’s no way we can stop them with what we have left, and we’ve given them pause with what we’re able to do. It’s time for retreat. They don’t know that we’re dry at the moment, and I want to get away from here before they can repair their systems enough to try to take us. Everybody back into your pods. Helm, give me flank acceleration for the horizon and let’s see if we can make it home before they do.”
“Roger that, sir,” Weston answered. “Fifteen g’s in ten seconds, everybody!”
“We’re buttoned up down in Engineering,” Kris yelled. “Let ‘er rip.”
Weston fired the thrusters, turning perpendicular to the Control Ship, and the propulsion hull lit up with flank thrust. The drive star began to roll by beneath them, putting distance and the burning horizon between themselves and the Deltans.
But the Control Ship—dormant while they had cruised by at a constant velocity—awoke now to full destructive fury, unwilling to accept a draw.
Six lasers shot out, all aimed for the same point at the weakest area of their hull, along the damaged radiator spine. Radiator panels burned straight through and came apart. Allocarbium bracing, made up of hardened alloys and nearly indestructible carbon nanotubes, vaporized under the thermal onslaught. Gantries, pipes, and shafts parted, and the spine of the ship cracked right down the middle.
Fluids and vapor shot out from the damage and the destroyer snapped in two.
The propulsion hull barreled past the mission hull at flank thrust, sending both halves tumbling away from one another before the drive shut down. Cut off from all power, the mission hull went dark, the data stream it had continually sent toward the re-trans pod now silent. The propulsion hull, never equipped with communication antennas, was robbed of a final voice as well.
The Sword of Liberty was no more.
February 8, 2047; White House Oval Office; Washington DC
Lydia Russ watched the destroyer’s final moments in real time, six months after the fact. No one in the room said a word, every one of them shocked into silence as the transmission from the Sword of Liberty cut away and the retransmission pod unemotionally kept up its broadcast, unaware that it sent forth its masters’ epitaph.
White faced and barely able to breathe, Lydia could not turn aside as the two halves of the destroyer spun uncontrolled around the Control Ship. Constructs emerged from the implacable vessel, each one forming up around the two halves of the Sword of Liberty. Bracketed by these alien devices, the destroyer sections were steadied up and then pulled into the interior of the Control Ship. The warped and damaged plates of the alien vessel, which had slid open to reveal a dark interior volume, slid shut once more, entombing her friends, denying them even the solace of a burial in space.
The re-trans pod dutifully recorded the Deltan formation as it once again began revolving about its drive sphere, but whatever was to be done about the destroyed Junkyard and the heavily damaged other vessels went unanswered. As soon as the Control Ship and the Deltan formation passed within close proximity of the pod, a flash of light lashed out and all transmissions ceased. The stream from half a light-year away fell to static.
Lydia slowly turned away from the wall-mounted screen and glared at Carl Sykes and President Tomlinson. Tomlinson looked as wan and in shock as Lydia had. Sykes seemed perturbed, but not dismayed.
Lydia pointed a finger at the screen. “They’re gone, Carl. We just saw them give up their lives to stop those damned Deltans. They made a sacrifice, assured that it wouldn’t be in vain. But when I go to sleep tonight, and they’re there in my dreams, what the hell do I tell them? Do I lie and say that the information they died to give us will help us alter the defense we’re building, that their example will help all the allied space navies be even more effective when the Deltans finally get here?
“Or do I tell them the truth, that there is no space navy, that the three ships we’ve been building still aren’t finished yet, that all the backdoor politicking and contract disputes haven’t allowed us to lay down any more hulls, that not one piece of the design has yet to be shared with our allies, even though we promised it to them right after the Sword launched? Huh, Carl? Which is it?”
Sykes flashed a brief look of shame, but squelched it in favor of indignation. “Lydia, none of that is my fault. These things take time, and delaying the completion of construction until after first contact was a strategic decision and the right one in my opinion. I’m sorry your team was killed, but this has shown us where the design flaws lie. When we complete the cruiser specs, we can build a truly effective warship. Now we don’t have to waste production time on these flawed destroyers.”