The first destroyer to breach of either group, Sword of Freedom of Group One, proved slightly too far ahead of the missiles’ explosive shock front. Stellar plasma cut deep within her, vaporizing the destroyer from the bow back as momentum fed her into the fire. She simply ceased to be, the flames of her demise still nothing next to the luminous energy of the plasma itself.
Flanking her and slightly astern, Intractable and Sword of Vengeance hit the pause imposed by the missile shockwave. That pause was still energetic enough to raze both vessels. Armored hull plates blackened and popped, springing free to allow the energized gasses of the plasma shield to stab deep into each ship. Crew died and weapons burned, but the hulks of both ships made it through. The next rank, with four destroyers and Trenton herself, pushed through with survivable damage, but every last radiator on each ships’ amidships spine was blown—still the greatest weakness of the human warships. However, the cruiser design mitigated this obvious flaw, and from her spine Trenton extended a full set of auxiliary radiators from within armored sleeves along her central spine. Heat management would cripple the remaining destroyers, but Trenton would soldier on.
Group 2 breached the plasma shield with a similar butcher bill, and Admiral Henson had to take a moment to allow the shock to dissipate as he saw all the damage that had been wrought on the fleet. Out of two cruisers and eighteen destroyers, only the two cruisers had made it past the shield relatively mission capable. Of the 17 surviving destroyers, five were all but blackened frames to which a few dismal lifepods clung, ten more were in various states of distress, and two—Sword of Independence and the NAE Paul Teste—appeared virtually undamaged aside from their damaged radiators, but their lack of cooling capability still rendered them almost immobile and with a very brief attack window before their systems overheated.
It horrified the admiral.
He could not dwell upon it yet, however, because the now exposed Control Ship—which already looked less distressed under the silver clouds of repairing nanotech—opened fire with multiple lasers and assemblor beams. The battle had only just begun, and though they had wounded the enemy severely and survived his surprising defense, their victory was by no means a foregone conclusion.
Calvin Henson glared at his tactical screen and snarled, “All vessels, FIRE!”
“Move faster, damn it!” Nathan yelled. The crew streamed up the corridor before him, just short of panic.
Their initial attempt to escape the wardroom had been stymied for a time when the violent shaking of the Sword of Liberty and the Control Ship that surrounded it had jammed the doors between them and their destination and made opening them next to impossible. Then the shuddering largely stopped, and they all worked with nervous intensity, worried they had missed their opportunity to join with their compatriots from Earth, worried that now when they had committed themselves and there was no way to hide what they were up to, the stasis would return and all would be lost.
Nathan and Dave Edwards, channeling the spirit of Christopher Wright proceeded to yell and berate the fragile crew until they began working again, struggling to open each and every pressure door, step by step closer to their objective. Now, as they finally set to work opening the last door, the wide loading doors leading into the hangar, the concussions and shaking of the Control Ship being subject to pitched battle began anew.
Kris looked to Nathan. “Second wind? Think our side took a little breather and now they’re back to fight?”
Nathan shrugged. “I have no idea, babe. But if the Navy brought enough firepower to re-engage after being repelled once, then they may well have enough to finally crack this ship down to whatever protected core we’re in. And that’s good and bad for us.”
“Yeah. Good that maybe we’ll have a clearer path out of the belly of this monster.”
Edwards chimed in after her. “Yeah, and bad because they ain’t gonna be likely to hold fire if and when we bust out. Hate to go all this way to end up a victim of friendly fire.”
Nathan looked around them. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling the big hits like the missiles would make. These are taps like kinetic rounds. Maybe the battle isn’t going as well as we could hope after all.”
Edwards grinned. “Then maybe our boys need a little help. Your girly’s got a prescription for some heavy duty mayhem against these bastards. I say we let it loose and deal with whatever comes.” The Master Chief turned to the techs working on cranking the powerless door open. “Or I would if you idiots could just open a goddamn door!”
With that, the door sprang open and people began to rush through toward the SSTOS. Edwards pushed off the overhead and pulled himself through the doorway. “It’s about friggin’ time! Well, don’t wait on me, boys and girls, get aboard! Because I promise I will kick your ever-lovin’ asses—legs or no legs—if you let me board that shuttle before you do.”
The crew flew aboard the shuttle, unencumbered by any luggage or supplies. Kristene and Andrew Weston shoved their way to the front of the boarding throng so they could finish the preps for launching and initiating her plan. Edwards went aboard as the last crewman to enter, leaving only Nathan aboard the Sword of Liberty, the captain about to abandon his post.
Nathan stood half in, half out of the shuttle, braced in the frame and looking back at what he had worked so long to build, at what had sustained them and protected them for so long. The Sword of Liberty was not just a ship. It was a part of him, a part of them all, and the final part that he could touch of Gordon Lee, his last link to the great man and his friend. After this, live or die, the past would be gone, laid to rest. Did they have a future? And if so, what did it hold?
“Stop the sentimentality and get your overpaid ass on the bus, sir.” Edwards clasped his hand, drawing Nathan in. Nathan nodded and swam into the shuttle, turned and shut the hatch. He checked the seals, glanced around to assure to himself that everyone else had strapped in, Edwards included, and pulled himself to the cockpit.
Weston had brought the reactor online and the engines were warmed already. Kris had negotiated a link to Liberty’s bridge and monitored the conditions aboard her. Nathan drifted behind her. He felt the vibration of the shuttle through his palms as he held himself in place, followed by a sharp shudder, transmitted through the SSTOS, through the ship, and presumably through the alien vessel. “I’m feeling missile strikes, Kris. It’s time.”
Her fingers hovered over her screen’s connection with the Liberty. “Nathan, you know this whole scheme is nuts. I got the damn idea from a freakin’ Niven story I read as a kid. We’re probably either going to be blown up, or else it won’t do enough and we’ll still be stuck in the middle of this Patron prison. This is a huge gamble.”
“Kris, I’m CO, so it’s my gamble and I choose to gamble on you. Do it.”
Without another word or hesitation, Kris stabbed down on the button, initiating the Sword of Liberty’s final program. All the power cells, batteries, and capacitor banks for the power conditioning system, the empty missile modules, and missing railgun and laser emplacements suddenly reversed their flow of energy and fed electrons back into the destroyer’s grid. This energy circulated about, bypassing shutdown system after shutdown system, seeking a lower potential and somewhere to expend itself. Finally it found an objective and flooded in, energizing the twelve enhanced photon drives of the auxiliary propulsion and maneuvering system.