As he said that there was a rumble of thunder through the ship. It was a combination of deep cracks transmitted through the metal of the ship.
“I would guess that was firing,” Hinchcliffe said. “And I can guess what they’re firing at. Our ride home.”
“Any ship, even a Dreen ship, is going to have brain, muscle and lungs,” Berg said. “That’s the way one of my teachers put it one time. The brains on a normal ship is the conn. The muscles are engineering. The lungs are environmental. Kill any one of those, and the ship stops. Well, actually, since it can probably shift brains, the exception is conn.”
“And if we kill the ship, we kill ourselves,” Priester pointed out. “If we take it down, the Blade and the Hexosehr will blast it to pieces. And that assumes that six Marines even can take it down.”
“Got a better idea?” Hinchcliffe asked. “Then that’s the plan. We need to figure out where the brains, the lungs and the muscles of this ship are.”
“I would suggest we wait on engineering,” Berg said.
“Reason?”
“Well, Staff Sergeant, I don’t know how to shut down a fusion reactor,” Berg admitted. “And unless you’ve taken a learning annex I don’t know about…”
“Conn, Tactical. Some of the fighters are being recalled. I’d say they have to refuel.”
“Now we have some idea of their flight time,” the CO said. “And hopefully of their cycle time. How you doing with those tweaks, Commander Weaver?”
“Almost done, sir.”
“Good,” Spectre said with almost feline malice. “There’s no better time to hit a carrier than when she’s cycling her fighters.”
“What the hell was that?”
The staff sergeant nearly jumped out of his skin at a series of nearby clangs.
“I don’t know,” Berg said, trotting over to one of the windows. “Ah, they’ve pulled in their fighters.”
“Really?” Hinchcliffe said, trotting over to stand next to him. Even with the filthy glass, the large ovoid that now occupied the bay could be clearly discerned.
“I wonder how hard they are to kill?” Berg asked.
“Thirty bays,” Hinchcliffe said. “Less counting the ones we’ve already grapped up. Nine Marines. If you cut the cables, the big piles die. I’d guess the big piles are their replenishment system. You thinking what I’m thinking, Two-Gun?”
Berg cut the cable with his monoknife. According to Smith and Priester, the green goo that gushed forth wasn’t any threat. Just before he left he decided to shove a grenade into the bubble on the wall. He set it for twenty seconds, took the lift up and waited. There was a rumble under his feet and looking in the bay he saw there was now green goo gushing everywhere.
“Heh,” he muttered, heading for the next bay.
Space Combat Unit replenishment system failure above probable wear. 20% loss of replenishment fluids. Intruder probability 99.99999%. Dispatch repair units Class One through Four. Dispatch Security Units Class One through Three.
The door to the fighter bay lifted smoothly despite the patina of wear.
“You sure about this, Staff Sergeant?” Nicholson asked.
“Better to blow them up here if we can,” Hinchcliffe replied. “Fire.”
Nicholson trained his 25mm cannon around the corner of the bulkhead and onto the rear of the fighter, then triggered a stream of Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot. The rounds had a tungsten core designed to penetrate light armored vehicle armor.
About half the rounds bounced off but several tore through the armor, releasing a gush of liquids and steam. Nicholson stopped firing and backed away as soon as he had penetration.
“It hasn’t exploded, ye—” Hinchcliffe started to say when there was a tremendous roar from the bay.
The blast flung all the Marines to the floor and blew the outer hatch to the fighter bay open. Air began to gush out in a whirlwind but the inner door slammed shut automatically, cutting it off.
“That was pretty,” Hinchcliffe said. “Let’s do that again.”
“Conn, Tactical.”
“You sound puzzled, TACO,” the CO said.
“Spectral analysis shows there was just a gush of air and water… There’s another one, coming from Sierra One.”
“That’s our converted Big-Boy, right?” Spectre said. “Interesting. Did the Hexosehr get in a hit?”
“Negative, Conn. It just seems to have suffered random failure. Not sure of the cause.”
“Next shot we’re going to go for the Big-Boy,” the CO said. “Mostly because I want to look at what might have occurred. We might be able to use it.”
“WE GOT DREEN!”
Nicholson and Smith, the other cannoneer, had managed to destroy five of the fighters before Dreen security responded. There were six entrances to the bay, four outboard, headed respectively port aft, starboard aft, port forward and starboard forward, and two midline headed fore and aft.
Dreen security responded through the forward, starboard entrance. Fortunately, the Marines were gathered to port, the side that Berg had entered.
The first wave were Dreen dog-demons. Quadrupedal, heavily armored on the front quarters, they had heads like a gargoyle with a big, crushing beak. In armor, the beak was the part to look out for. It was reputed to cut through Wyvern armor like a hot knife. Some people joked that they were Dreen Marines, “Devil Dogs” being one of the nicknames the Marines had picked up over the years.
If so, they were doing a lousy job. Their powerful claws had a hard time getting purchase on the slick floor of the hangar bay and they slid into view rather than charging.
“Light ’em up,” Hinchcliffe ordered. “But conserve your ammo. We’ve got a long fight ahead of us.”
Berg targeted one of the sliding dogs and fired, hitting it at the juncture of the neck and shoulder. That spot was unarmored and the 14.5mm slug nearly blasted the beast’s head off. It slid to a stop in a welter of green blood.
Berg didn’t think about it more than an automatic “target down,” placing his rangefinder on the next of the beasts and another. Before he knew it, the engagement was clear.
“Okay, I think they know we’re here,” Hinchcliffe said, lowering his smoking machine gun. “Let’s not be here. We’ve fucked up the replenishment system and blown up five fighters. Good enough for now.”
23
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Spectre said.
Their sole run on the battlewagon had been a bust, the chaos balls missing by a mile. But they’d gotten some good video. And it was apparent that five of the fighter bays were blasted outwards.
“What in the world could have caused that?” the XO said. “Some sort of systems failure?”
“They’re not even all together,” Weaver pointed out. “There are three side by side, then a jump, then two more. I don’t see a systems failure being that… random.”
“Tactical, has the carrier relaunched, yet?”
“Negative, Conn.”
“Okay, that’s the next target,” the CO said. “We’ll puzzle about the battlewagon later.”
“Oh YES!” Spectre shouted, all nausea forgotten, when the video from the series of strikes was replayed.
It was evident that one of the chaos balls had hit the carrier right in a hangar bay. The ship was gushing air and water and there were secondary explosions. It wasn’t out of the fight yet, but it was sorely wounded.
But it had taken ten evolutions, fifty attacks, to get that result.
“Set up another run, Pilot,” Spectre said. “Commander Weaver, how far away from the unreality node are they?”
“About seven light-seconds, sir,” Bill replied.
“After this run we’ll head back there and see if any Marines survived,” Spectre said. “No, I hadn’t forgotten about them.”