The Worlds Wonder
Chapter Two
Recommended Listening:
Mars, Bringer of War
USS Enterprise
Main Bridge
The tactical officer called out calmly, slowly at first. "Multiple ships firing on us. Seven torpedoes inbound. No, eight. Jamming pulse trains commencing... two have lost lock. Three."
A deft twist of Stol's controls and one of the quartet of red bolts scraped by just outside proximity detonation range, losing lock and arcing uselessly off into space as it tried and failed to turn for a run against the
Liberty.
Three photon torpedoes hit in quick succession. An antimatter warhead exploded against the explorer's shield bubble, rocking the ship. That kind of impact that didn't seem too impressive, until you remembered that over two million tons of metal had just
jumped. Another thump. Another. That left the last one, lagging seconds behind. She could see it on the main plot, coming straight for them- its drive fields shining with a shimmering blue radiance unlike anything she'd ever seen before.
Sapok chimed in, amazingly still calm. "Focusing active sensor-jamming... This one is different. Torpedo is accelerating on terminal approach. Closing too quickly- I can't stop it, ma'am."
Sam snapped out "Helm, hard to ventral!" and old Stol began the motion almost before she could complete the word. The
Enterprise pitched down, shifting the point of impact away from the square-on sledgehammer blow the torpedo had aimed for.
The last Licori torpedo detonated.
If the earlier explosions had made the ship jump, this massive fireball seized the ship and rocked it like a rowboat caught in the current of a raging waterfall.
Enterprise's shield generators screeched and howled, coolant and bracing fields fighting madly to hold up the ship's defenses in the face of a blast unlike anything her designers had imagined.
The bridge crew shook their heads, rattled, dazed. Samhaya reeled for a long moment, muzzily.
What did they just do, pick up their warp core and hit us over the head with it? She couldn't even tell who it was that blurted out the obvious question: "What the hell was
that?"
The tightly focused Gaeni at the engineering monitor station turned to call out "Shields are holding!" That was something, at least. And like young Beekeru, Sapok of Vulcan kept his mind on the mission, answering that first question for all its unprofessionalism.
"The torpedo used a low-yield photon first stage, and an exceptional strange-matter second stage, triggered by an unknown means. Net yield is significantly greater than that of antimatter. Taking a hit with shields down is- contraindicated. In addition to the blast itself, I anticipate major hull corrosion from exotic effects."
"Let's not find out about those." Samhaya shook her head. "Mr. Brann, pass the word to the commodore, and the squadron. We can take a few more like that, but I don't know if the frigates can." As the lieutenant commander began to do so, she considered the tactical situation. Their abrupt, evasive turns had hurt their angle for the planned firing pass against that Licori cruiser, but lined them up well to hit one of the little escorting ships as a secondary target...
UES Liberty
Main Bridge
Captain Olesya Sokolova watched as her helmsman kept the
Liberty on track, forming on the lead explorer. An explorer with a name to conjure with.
She'd joined Starfleet- and then UESPA- to protect the Earth, among her other reasons. She remembered how, as a girl, she'd gazed up into the night sky with fear as the terrible, devouring cloud of V'ger closed upon her world. That force had been warded off.
Enterprise had shared what was now her duty, stood watch over Sol system, in those days.
That
Enterprise was gone, and another after her, and Sokolova was growing old, now. But today, she commanded the flagship of Earth's fleet, charging into the fire, hard on the heels of a reborn legend, competing for battle honors.
And so far, the score was one for one.
"Shields holding, ma'am, but there was some leakage on that last pass."
Fair enough. So far, ka'Sharren's unorthodox tactics had worked. The Andorian had turned around the usual conventions of naval warfare, directing the task force's flock of
Mirandas and
Centaurs to weave around and entangle the Licori ships, while the heavy explorers swung through the melee on repeated firing passes, slamming into the fight like a five million ton hammer each time. They'd potted two frigates thus far, one on each of the last two runs. And the smaller Federation ships
were avoiding the bulk of the Licori's fire, despite Sokolova's own doubts. Maybe ka'Sharren had been right to expect so much of them.
But when it was combined with the unexpected weapons at least some of the enemy ships carried, the strategy couldn't save everyone.
A blue hell-bolt slammed into the Earth ship
Shanghai. A roiling wave of strange quarks and subatomic chaos tore through the
Miranda's saucer, stripping deck after deck. In moments, the ship was reduced to a burnt-out, half-skeletonized wreck, drifting through the infinite night.
A murmur rose from some of the bridge stations. She felt it too; UESPA was a tight-knit force. If there was anyone on the bridge who didn't have friends on the
Shanghai, they were luckier right now than they had any right to be. There were pieces of the saucer still intact, superficially. Maybe someone wasn't dead over there. Maybe.
The range was closing again,
Enterprise and
Liberty swooping down on the imperial fleet like avenging angels. And the mystery super-missiles were far from the only threat that answered them. Masses of beam fire- blue-white plasma, disruptor salvoes from the pair of battleships, exotics in all the colors of the rainbow- reached out from the Licori fleet as the
Excelsiors approached. Sheaves of photon torpedoes lanced out from the imperial ships. Thankfully, they were
merely ordinary multimegaton antimatter bombs.
Despite the constant harassment and distraction, the Licori fleet was a practiced, experienced force, one that could lay down no small amount of firepower.
Liberty shook under massed bombardment, shields flickering under the assault as beams and bolts rained down on the great ship. Olesya wondered, frustrated, at how the explorer ahead of her seemed to dance between the raindrops. Some of her people were probably going to die today, from
Liberty's inability to replicate the trick. Was it her fault?
She let none of it show. A spread of torpedoes from
Enterprise crossed the void, bracketing one of the Licori cruisers. That ship was obviously in poor shape, now, struggling to reconstruct a working shield bubble as stray shots from the frigates hammered it. She turned to speak to her tactical officer, but Li was already on it, as he made two swift adjustments to the starboard phaser bank's settings. The slash of orange that cut through the black
also cut through the imploding shields of the enemy cruiser, drilling into its defenses for long seconds as the tactical officer adjusted his aim, finding the engineering section-
The cruiser vanished in a tremendous fireball, as
Liberty pulled clear from the melee, a last pair of torpedoes rocking the hull as they detonated behind her.
The score was two to one, now, in
Liberty's favor... and Captain Sokolova was in no mood to feel pride at that. Not after what happened to
Shanghai. Not after Commander Duncan half-turned from Operations, looking sick with concern. "Ma'am, AuxCon reports radiation alarms. Something must have shaken loose from those last hits."
"Order Commander Benten to evacuate threatened areas and move to a tertiary control point."
That wasn't the first damage her ship had taken. And even though she knew a dozen people on the
Shanghai, though she cried out inwardly for Oluwaseyi and Lei in particular, knowing the two promising youngsters were probably dead...
For all that,
Olesya would be the lucky one, luckier than she had any right to ask, if this wound to her own ship would be the last.
AHS Pride
The Federation's
Excelsiors, aptly named, cut a swath through the tangled mass of the fleet. They were
fast ships, and had joined the battle last. Where
Venerable and
Indefatigable anchored the Licori force and let the rest of the fight swirl around them, the Starfleet admiral had taken a different tactic.
He was handling his dreadnoughts in a way that exploited their surprising speed, covered for their slow rates of turn, and made it nearly impossible to concentrate fire as the Imperial Navy would against the blocky Ked Paddah battleships. The alien commander was taking the pair of heavy ships on swooping firing runs, battering the Licori fleet savagely with each pass.
Pride's Bene sister ship, the
Insight, had been blown to atoms by fire striking the cruiser's warp core. Already the
Censor had fallen, and little
Beautiful was a wreck, both nacelles shot away.
They couldn't take much more; it was time to fall back before the fleet was utterly ruined, before the Emperor himself could be killed or captured by the onslaught of the enemy. What could the warmaster of Tartresis do?
Perhaps more than most.
He had a weapon of incredible power at his command, but he had only
one ship.
One weapon that might disable even the great flagship of the enemy. He'd fired the quantum-boost weapons singly, saving his thunder, but nine such torpedoes remained. Three of the new torpedoes at once might destroy an
Excelsior, or they might not. But they could hurt it terribly.
There were two alien battleships. One was the flagship. He might only get one shot like this. They had to know where the 'specials' were coming from by now, and
Pride would take terrible fire no the next pass. He had to pick one, or the other.
The lead battleship snapped about cleanly in the distance, shimmering against the heavens. She maneuvered like a frigate a quarter her size. Every time she'd closed, she'd clawed at the Imperial fleet with beam and missile, smashing through the Licori forces and scattering all before her. Though it had been the trailing ship that killed
Insight, it was the one in front that had caused the most chaos, prevented them from chasing down the harassing fire of the buzzing frigates that swarmed around them.
He'd never seen anything like her, not in a score of battles, great and small. If he were in command of the Federation fleet he would have placed himself aboard that ship. He would
duel for the right to place himself aboard that ship.
But... another man might be on the battleship in the rear, a ship not to be despised in her own right. Such a one would let the crack ship in front clear the road, that they might walk more quietly. It was what an admiral of the other houses would do. It was what an admiral of the gutless Ked Paddah, or the scheming, dishonest Gaeni would do.
It was what the Emperor himself had done.
It would be good to imagine that he fought a hero. But heroes seemed far, far too rare among these poor shuddering stars.
He sighed. He would target the trailing
Excelsior.
AHS Pride
Torpedo Room
Frantically, the naval ratings labored to reset the torpedoes' targeting relays. Tarenda of Calamar watched them with the keen-eyed, manic hyperfocus that was her lot, moving about the compartment with swift, staccato motions. It was slow, too
slow-
The ship shook like an earthquake. Impulsively she gripped a bracing frame as she was thrown from her feet. Many of the crew did the same. Others sprawled. Bare moments later, the call came on warmaster Halkh's channel. She touched the bracelet around her wrist and listened to his words.
"Fusion power is down, the main deflector is damaged. It's time. Fire full spread."
Her brother mentat, the fire control computer, shook his head, flailing his hands and gesturing. The quick-speech conveyed much, in little time, and Tarenda's voice was dour as she spoke to her warmaster. "Our repeater plots to forward sensors are down, sir. I still have local control, but we only had time to retarget two-"
"Do it." Warmaster Halkh smiled thinly. "Whatever happens, to us or to the enemy, they will remember the pride of Tartresis."
She obeyed, darting to the controls, and slammed the switch home, smiling at the pun. Three quantum torpedoes shot from their maintenance cradles into the tubes, with the smooth, almost gentle
snap-crack of finely engineered Licori servomechanics.
Three quantum torpedoes launched. One, still programmed for its old target, curved towards a
Miranda to pronounce its doom. The Tellarite frigate wove, blasting waves of jamming. But Tarenda had worked on her 'specials' herself, and held the naval ratings to the most exacting standards. The torpedo's tracking systems might lack analysis and processing power, but they were in a real sense too stupid to cheat, and too well-maintained to fail. A blue-white blast chewed a massive bite out of the frigate
Nugruch, disintegrating the port nacelle and leaving the ship adrift.
Two more torpedoes bore straight and level for the
Liberty.
UES Liberty
Main Bridge
The first blast shook Captain Sokolova's ship like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, powerful enough that even an explorer's shields could barely stand it. But the next impact, a split-second later, was worse. The Earth ship rocked, slalomed, under the second hammerblow- and the slalom was slow to damp out. Something was wrong with impulse power, steering, or both. She knew in her gut that her ship had just taken a terrible wound. Her fears were confirmed when Lieutenant Commander Duncan at Operations turned to her, his face grim. "Ma'am, heavy damage to the engineering hull!"
"Details?" She scowled.
"Four decks burned through, structural integrity flickering around sixty percent... AuxCon and the secondary computer core are
gone..."
She took a deep breath, listening, thanking the stars for the happy coincidence of the evacuation. Even so, she knew she'd lost good men and women now, some who'd been with her for three years and more.
"Is Commander Benten's team safe?"
"Yes, ma'am, he's directing damage control operations."
"Good." She turned to face the other side of the explorer's great bridge. "Tactical, back-trace those torpedoes. It has to be
one ship firing them." She imagined
Enterprise was already doing the same, but anyone could need a crosscheck. "Lieutenant Fremont, signal the flagship. Tell them
Liberty is still in the fight, but we're going to need to adjust our tactics to accomodate our damage..."
AHS Pride
Torpedo Room
"Confirmed hits on the enemy battleship- right around where we think they keep their flag quarters. Good work!" Warmaster Halkh's praise reached Tarenda through the veil of abstraction and analysis. Exultant, she knew it was done, as the warmaster cut the signal. Already, the ship's crew were loading the next spread of quantum torpedoes, her almost the last of the weapons she'd practically hand-built and cared for. Three more shots.
This would be their last, follow-up strike. The Federation flagship would be crippled if not obliterated, the pursuit hamstrung. They could return to Calamar, she could finally convince the House to put her new warheads into mass production. A weapon decades, perhaps a century beyond what the uncreative, machine-thinking Federation had. One that enabled cruisers to stand against battleships. She laughed.
"No longer will the galaxy be dominated by the legacy of these
fools and their thinking toys!"
Even with her preternaturally quick, sharp thoughts, Tarenda of Calamar never had time to realize she was dying. Not when a second overcharged phaser blast from the
Enterprise cored the
Pride's forward hull and reduced the ship to a drifting wreck.
