The Oncoming Storm (8 page)

Outside, he stopped and considered, briefly. He’d worried about the captain. He knew he had good reason to worry about the captain. But perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The bridge looked and felt different as Kat stepped through the hatch and walked towards her command chair. All of the consoles were manned this time; each one installed, then checked and checked again until the engineers were absolutely certain they were working perfectly. She felt the hum of the starship’s drives, a constant background noise ever since the fusion plants had been activated for the first time, grow stronger as the chief engineer ran his final checks. Lightning was finally ready to separate herself from the shipyard and head into deep space.

Kat settled back in her command chair, trying to control the mounting excitement within her heart. This was her ship. She’d sat in command chairs before, stood watches, and even held command for days at a time, but none of those ships were hers. Lightning was her ship and she was finally ready to leave. She forced herself to calm down as she keyed the console and then looked up at the display. Lightning still sat in the midst of the independent shipyard, like a baby attached to her mother. That was about to change.

Bracing herself, she activated the internal communicator. “Mr. Lynn,” she said, formally. “Status report.”

“All systems are green, Captain,” the chief engineer said. She’d had a dozen meetings with him since they’d first met and he’d impressed her with his competence. At least he didn’t seem to be one of the engineers who inflated his estimated repair times to make himself look like a miracle worker. “Our fusion plants are online, drive harmonics are nominal, and the vortex generator is at optimal readiness.”

“Good,” Kat said. She looked up at Commander McElney. “Mr. XO?”

“All stations report ready,” her XO said. His face was impassive, but she thought she detected a hint of concern. No one could forget just how much bad luck had struck Lightning’s predecessor. “We are ready to separate from the shipyard.”

Kat took a long breath. “Check the tubes, then seal all airlocks,” she ordered. No one would be in the tubes now, not after the alert had sounded, but they had to take precautions anyway, just in case. Besides, overlooking safety precautions was a bad habit. “And then prepare to cut the power lines.”

Minutes ticked away before the XO spoke again. “Captain,” he said formally, “all tubes are cleared. The airlocks are sealed.”

“Cut the power lines,” Kat ordered. Previously, her ship had drawn its power from the shipyard’s fusion cores. Now, Lightning would be completely reliant on her own reactors for power. “Engineering?”

“These beauties took the strain without even dimming the lights,” Lynn pronounced. “All power cores are functioning optimally. Battery power is held in reserve.”

Kat had to smile. Keeping the lights on was hardly a significant demand, not compared to the ship’s drives or weapons. They could have operated the lights through batteries alone for days, if necessary. But it was good to know there hadn’t been any minor problems.

“Disengage from the tubes,” she ordered softly. “And then prepare to take us out of the yard.”

“Maneuvering thrusters online,” Lieutenant Samuel Weiberg reported. The helmsman looked disgustingly confident in his skills, but he had reason to be. “Drive field generators standing by.”

A faint shiver ran through the hull, so faint that Kat wondered if she’d imagined it.

“Tubes disengaged,” her XO said. “We will be clear to depart in five minutes.”

Kat felt her heartbeat racing in her chest, thumping so loudly that it was a wonder no one else could hear it. Her ship was finally ready to depart . . . She braced herself, mentally counting down the seconds. Suddenly, she just couldn’t wait.

“The shipyard just signaled us,” Linda Ross reported. The communications officer looked up from her console, her gaze meeting Kat’s. “We are cleared to depart.”

“Take us out,” Kat ordered.

A dull quiver ran through the vessel as the maneuvering thrusters fired, slowly pushing Lightning out of the shipyard and into open space. The quivering grew stronger as the helmsman checked and rechecked his systems, knowing that a single mistake could have disastrous consequences if he didn’t catch it in time. Drive fields were so much simpler, Kat knew as she watched him work, but bringing a drive field up within a shipyard would tear the complex apart. They would have to wait until they were in open space before powering up the drives and leaving the system behind.

She watched the display until they were outside the shipyard and then keyed her console. “Mr. Lynn?”

“Drive nodes are online,” the engineer said. “You may bring the drives to full power at will.”

Kat smiled. “Bring up the drive,” she ordered. “And then run a full cycle of tests before we go anyway.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” the helmsman said. Another quiver, stronger this time, ran through Lightning. The background noise deepened for a long moment, then returned to the steady thrumming that had pervaded the entire ship since the fusion cores were activated. “Drive online . . . field active in twenty seconds.”

Kat held her breath. This, she remembered, was where Uncanny had suffered her first major systems failure. Her drive nodes had proved utterly unequal to the strain placed on them and blew, one by one, leaving the starship tumbling helplessly through space. After that, she had been mildly surprised the Navy had kept the ship in commission, let alone built a second cruiser to the same—if somewhat modified—specifications. She felt tension rise on the bridge as Lightning quivered, a faint sensation spreading through the hull, then settling down.

“Drive field active, seventy percent power,” Weiberg informed her. “All systems appear to be handling the strain.”

The XO looked relieved. Kat didn’t blame him. Apart from the potential for disaster, a repeat of the Uncanny debacle would probably have destroyed both of their careers. The last she’d heard, almost everyone who had served on Uncanny as senior officers had left the Navy, although not all of their careers had been blighted. Some had no longer felt like pushing their luck.

“Good,” Kat said. She took a breath, then leaned forward. “Bring us up to one hundred percent power.”

The quivering grew stronger as the ship shook herself down, but the status lights remained green. Lightning wanted to move, Kat realized; she’d been in the shipyard far too long. And now she was in open space.

“Take us towards the convoy,” she ordered. Briefly, she wondered what the Admiralty would have told the merchantmen if Lightning had been unable to escort them. Probably would have detached a cruiser from Home Fleet to do the honors. “Mr. XO?”

“All stations report full readiness,” the XO said. “No problems detected.”

Kat smiled and sat back in her command chair as her ship sliced through the vacuum of space, heading towards the gathering convoy. The quivering was almost completely gone now, even though the starship was operating at full power. She glanced down at the constant stream of updates from the datanet and felt a wave of relief as she realized that most of the bugs that had crippled Uncanny had been removed. At least the Navy had learned from the disaster, she noted. She’d always had the impression the Navy was slow to learn, let alone incorporate changes into later generations of starships.

But Uncanny lost power in front of a horde of dignitaries, she reminded herself. King Hadrian himself had been there. No one could be allowed to sweep such a balls-up under the table.

She leaned back and studied the long-range sensors as they came to life, feeding data into her personal display. Tyre was one of the most heavily industrialized star systems in the known galaxy and it showed. Her sensors tracked asteroid miners, remote industrial nodes, cloudscoops for mining helium-3 from the gas giants, and thousands of spacecraft or starships making their way to and from high orbit. Tyre itself was surrounded with orbital defenses, including thirteen massive battle stations and countless remote platforms. It all looked so safe and impregnable.

Earth felt the same way, she thought, feeling cold ice running down her spine. At Piker’s Peak, she’d studied the Breakaway Wars. Who knows what will happen when the system comes under attack?

She shivered. Before the Breakaway Wars, the UN had believed humanity’s homeworld to be untouchable. They’d found out the hard way they were wrong and they hadn’t lived long enough to correct their error. And now, all that was left of the once-proud Sol System was a handful of asteroid settlements, struggling to survive against the odds. The UN and most of the worlds that had taken the lead in fighting it’s control were long gone.

“Approaching convoy waypoint,” Weiberg reported. On the display, the nine freighters were coming into view, grouped around a small trade station. There was a faint hint of amusement in his voice. “Request permission to slow down.”

“Granted,” Kat said. Had she ever been that young? She looked towards Lieutenant Ross. “Contact the convoy master. If they’re ready to depart, we might as well leave the system at once.”

She waited for the response, silently regretting the lack of a formal launching ceremony. Lightning had been commissioned weeks ago, of course, but it would still have been nice to have a dedication. But the Uncanny disaster had ensured that her sister would have a far less public launch and departure. There had been so many questions asked in Parliament that the Navy had bent over backwards to avoid publicity this time around. Kat didn’t mind—there would have been questions about her qualifications she would have found hard to avoid—but her crew deserved better.

“The convoy master reports that his ships will be ready to depart in twenty minutes,” Lieutenant Ross said. “They have to bring up their own drives.”

Idiot, Kat told herself sharply. A freighter—even one of the most modern freighters in the galaxy—could hardly afford to keep its drive field active at all times. The wear and tear on the drive nodes would cost them thousands of crowns to fix, if the drives didn’t fail completely while they were in hyperspace. You should know better.

She turned to look at the tactical officer. “Raise shields,” she ordered. “Cycle the weapons systems; bring us to full tactical alert.”

Alarms howled through the ship as the crew raced to combat stations. They’d run endless drills while they were in the shipyard, but this was different. Kat watched as the starship’s shields snapped into existence, silently relieved that the Navy designers had indulged their usual desire for multiple redundancy. Lightning could take a great deal of damage and still maintain her shields. But she wished there was more time for a live-fire exercise.

“Shields and weapons at one hundred percent efficiency,” Roach reported after several minutes had passed. “Long-range tactical sensors active; passive sensors active. Running tracking exercises now.”

Kat allowed herself a moment of relief.

“Good,” she said. “Stand down from combat stations, then devise a set of exercises for when we reach Cadiz. There should be some harmless asteroids in the system we can use for target practice.”

“There should be drones too,” the XO put in.

His voice was impassive, but Kat thought she sensed doubt in his tone. Cadiz Naval Base was on the front lines of the war everyone knew was coming. Seventh Fleet should be training every day, running live-fire exercises constantly, despite the cost. But she’d checked the shipping manifests and noted that Admiral Morrison hadn’t requested any replacement drones from Naval HQ. It was just possible, she supposed, that his techs had managed to salvage all the drones, but she wouldn’t have put money on it. No matter how good the techs were, one or two drones per exercise were always a write-off.

She gritted her teeth. It was far more likely Admiral Morrison wasn’t running any training exercises—and that was absurd. Didn’t he know there was a war on its way?

Lieutenant Ross cleared her throat. “Captain, the convoy master reports that his ships are ready for departure,” she said. “He would like to know if we intend to open a vortex for the merchantmen.”

Kat tapped her console. “Engineering, this is the captain,” she said. She wasn’t surprised by the request. Each use of a vortex generator cut its lifespan by several months . . . and they were staggeringly expensive. She didn’t blame the civilians for wanting to rely on a military ship to open the pathway into hyperspace. “Can we hold a vortex open long enough for the merchantmen to enter hyperspace?”

“Yes, Captain,” Lynn assured her. “We should have more than enough power to hold the gate open for ten minutes, if necessary.”

Kat nodded, then closed the channel and turned back to the helmsman. “Plot the gate coordinates, then pass them to the convoy,” she ordered. “We’ll follow them into hyperspace, closing the gate behind us.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Weiberg said. He worked his console for a long moment, designating a location several thousand kilometers from the station. Opening a gate close to a large structure was asking for trouble. “Gate coordinates set.”

“Take us there,” Kat ordered. Lightning started to move, followed by her nine charges. Kat had to wince as she saw what passed for a formation among the civilians, and she shook her head ruefully. This wasn’t a parade. “Lieutenant Ross?”

Ross turned to look at her. “Captain?”

“Transmit a formal departure notification to System Command,” Kat ordered. It was unlikely that System Command would object to their departure, not after they’d received orders to leave as quickly as possible, but the signal had to be sent. “Attach a full copy of our readiness status and the test results from our final trials.”

And let them know the ghost of Uncanny didn’t put in an appearance, she thought. It wasn’t something she could attach to an official communication. She’d send a private note to the Admiralty later. They should have sent someone to give us a proper farewell, no matter what I wanted. The crew deserved better.

“We are in position, Captain,” Weiberg informed her. “Vortex generator is online; coordinates locked.”