By Other Means (26 page)

The metalstorm weapons roared, blowing through the unarmoured interior glass with ease as she tore up the visible opposition before landing against the rail of the catwalk on the other side of the target room. It was a bizarre sensation, to say the least, to be walking horizontally on a safety rail, with the whole of Engineering looming out at her side.

Her brain was insisting that she was standing sideways and about to fall, but her implants and inner ear were quite happy that she was once more upright and stable. It was an…
annoying
… dichotomy.

Sorilla’s HUD started reporting on nearby allies, and she noted that there was an Engineering team not far from her position. She briefly queried their implants for basic information, then forced her way into their comm channel.

“Crewman Parker, Major Aida.” She said, her voice nearly monotone as she kept her focus on getting closer to the enemy position.

“Uh… Parker here?”

“I’m about thirty meters from you, this is a combat zone, Parker. You should take your team and pull back.”

“Can’t do it, we’re trying to combat the enemy device. The latency was too high using the main systems,” He said, “we had to move closer.”

“Are you the reason I’ve been bouncing off the frigging walls here?” Sorilla demanded, more than a little exasperated.

“Uh… sorry about that?”

“You’re so damn lucky I don’t have time to strangle you.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Parker said, “but we’re literally the only thing keeping the core from imploding right now.”

“Fine, fine, just a little warning from now on,” Sorilla ordered, “I left my only backup hanging to a door frame on Deck three because gravity suddenly decided to go sideways on us.”

“I’ll do what I can, but this isn’t exactly the easiest job I’ve ever had,” The Crewman bitched, “the systems were
not
designed for this sort of thing.”

“Something we’ll have to correct in the future, no doubt,” Sorilla hopped off the catwalk rail and landed on the wall near the windows she’d shot out.

She settled into a crouch, guns in hand, “I’m about to do an entry, so I’ll be quiet for the next bit. Give me a warning before you do anything stupid.”

“Says the woman about to charge a room full of aliens armed with a super weapon.”

When he says it like that…

Sorilla didn’t respond as she walked along the frame of the windows, firing down into the room. It was a bizarre sensation, she found, to be firing down into a room where here targets were standing… or you know, not, horizontal to her position. It did have the effect of making her a very small target while they remained normal.

Her guns roared, one single loud sound that eclipsed all others in the area. Inside the room they turned bodies into slabs of meat, or meat like product in the case of some of the alien biochemistry involved, and generally rained chaos down before the two pistols fired dry and Sorilla jumped off the frame and into the center of a cracked piece of glass.

It shattered under her weight and she dropped/flew into the room, twisting abruptly as she fell into the field of the enemy device and normal gravity once again asserted itself. Sorilla arched in mid air, landing solidly on the floor as she dropped the spent barrels from her weapons and looked around.

Her threat board was clear, no sign of movement to be found, but there was still the artillery shield to deal with and, of course, the Lucian currently clinging to the doorway for dear life.

“You alive?” Sorilla called.

“For the moment.”

“Room’s clear.”

Kriss grumbled, dragging himself bodily into the room until he was perched horizontally on the door frame.

“This is… incredibly disorienting.”

“Try walking around a Ghoul ship.” Sorilla countered dryly, walking around the artillery shield. “How do we get into this thing?”

Kriss scowled, judging the distances involved, then leapt into the room. He too curved in mid-air as normal gravity asserted its dominance over him, and landed easily a few feet from Sorilla. He walked over and examined the shield carefully.

“Again, Sturm construction, they were too well equipped.” He grumbled, finding an access panel. “This will take time.”

“How much?”

“Less is they haven’t changed the default codes, more if they have,” Kriss said simply. “Sturm technology is… not to be trifled with. You haven’t encountered them yet, in many ways they are as frightening as the Ross… merely more… sociable.”

“Oh joy,” Sorilla grumbled.

Another race as bad as the Ross, technically, was
not
something she wanted on her mission books.

Kriss scowled at the system, “They changed the codes. This will take time.”

A low moan of twisting metal reverberated deeply around them, sounding unlike anything Sorilla had ever heard before.

“Time may not be something we have.”

*****

“We have no more time for this, finish it. Finish it now,” The elder Parithalian ordered, eyes on the display where he could see the Lucian trying to break into the shield.

He knew that the codes would hold for a time, but the artillery defensive system was one of the Sturm’s open market devices. That meant that the security built into the system was not, as one might hope, the best.

“They’re setting up a wave off phase to the one we’re trying to use,” He said, “Stop fighting them and reinforce their own wave.”

“Yes, Master.”

We won’t collapse into a singularity, but it should be nicely spectacular all the same.

*****

Sorilla flinched, twisting in place to look out over the catwalk into the engineering section beyond.

“What is it?” Kriss demanded, pausing to look at her.

He didn’t know what had clearly startled the Terran Sentinel, but he could read her motions well enough. She was badly frightened by something.

Sorilla ignored him, patching into the local comm-net instead.

“Parker! Watch it, they just put a lot more power into whatever they’re doing!”

There was no immediate response, but Sorilla was too distracted to be concerned by that. Outside the room, in the Engineering section, tools, scrap debris, and shards of glass were floating up into the air like a wall of flying junk. Sorilla could feel the power humming in the air, and as if on cue a loud groan of metal travelled through the ship, like the death cry of some great leviathan of the deep.

Sorilla spun around, shaking her head.

“Not again, I’m not
losing
another ship!” She snarled, guns coming up.

Kriss ducked out of the way, “Don’t be stupid! That is an artillery shield! If you could damage it with those toys do you really believe I would be trying to break the security?”

Sorilla growled, lifting her guns clear of the firing line.

“We
have
to get in there!”

Kriss returned to what he was doing, “I am working on it!”

“Not good enough.”

*****

Parker swore as ever reading he had suddenly spiked.

He recognized what was happening, but too late to stop it, “Damn it, they’re reinforcing our counter waves!”

“Won’t that slow the core’s expansion?”

“Yes,” Parker acceded as he went to work, “but the tidal sheer of the new standing wave form will tear the Mexico to pieces before we stop! I need new calculations, we’re going to have to reverse our wave form!”

“The Jump Drive isn’t designed for this!”

“I know!”

*****

“Hull breaches! Decks nine, eighteen, twenty three, thirty! More reports coming in, Captain!”

Hiro slapped an emergency switch, “Damage control teams! Get the ship locked down! Close
every
blast door, I want the Mexico compartmentalized! Now!”

“Sir, the Diplo teams are still caught in the spire!”

“Nothing we can do, lock them out.” Hiro ordered, “If we lose the spire, we lose the Mexico otherwise.”

“Aye Sir.”

No matter what happened now, Hiro knew that this was the Mexico’s last mission. Even if they came out in one piece, more or less, there was no way that the hull strain wouldn’t cause them to be declared unfit for service.

*****

The sound of blast doors slamming shut did nothing to improve Admiral Ruger’s mood.

“What was that!?” The Alliance Ambassador demanded, a hint of what Ruger was fairly certain was panic had set into his voice.

“blast doors.” The Admiral said dryly.

“But what if there is a breach on this level?” The Ambassador demanded.

“I believe,” Sienele offered, “that is precisely why the doors were closed.”

Ruger nodded to the Alliance spy master, “I’m afraid so. If the spire is breached with those doors open, the whole ship could be compromised.”

Sienele accepted that calmly, noting the potential weakness in the design for his report, assuming he lived to make one. It was something they’d theorized, of course, but it was always good to have confirmation. The fact that the area could be so tightly sealed limited the risk in such a design choice, of course, but there would likely be ways to exploit it if one looked hard enough.

“But… then we’re locked out here?”

Ruger didn’t spare the ambassador much sympathy, it was his own people… rebels or not… who were at fault here, after all. Still, he couldn’t say that he was particularly pleased with the situation either.

Maybe next time we skip the view and have our negotiations in an internal room…

*****

Sorilla stepped to the windows, as close as she could without crossing the warp ridge into the gravity wave beyond them.

“Parker, tell me you’re on this.” She demanded.

“I’m on it,” The crewman finally came back, “but it’s going to be close. Can you get to the source of the interference?”

“Negative. Bastard is hiding in some kind of portable bomb shelter,” She said, “maybe if I had breaching tools, but…”

“Understood.”

“I can feel the power spike from here,” She said. “Watch it, there’s another surge coming.”

Silence reigned for a moment as Sorilla braced herself against the cross beam, feeling the tug of the gravity wave pull at her. Parker came back a moment later, “Thanks. We were able to stop that one ahead of time. Let me know if they send any more.”

“Wilco.” Sorilla said, “Can’t do anything else right now. There’s no one else in comm range, and the ship’s repeaters are down. Do you have a hardline?”

“I have a line back to main engineering…”

“See if they can find some breaching tools and send them up here.” Sorilla asked.

Honestly she didn’t think they’d get there in time, but it seemed like the thing to ask for.

“Roger that. I’ve sent your request along,” Parker replied, “now hold on, cause I’m going to try something.”

Sorilla just looked out at the wall of debris that was just… hanging there, and nodded absently. “I hope it’s something good.”

*****

Parker tapped in a series of command, hoping that he was doing the math right. It should be, in theory is was fairly simple wave mechanics, but on the level they were working at he really didn’t want to accidentally forget to carry the one or something equally stupid.

Because gravity waves normally had just long frequencies, one didn’t experience local deviations the way you could on an ocean, for example. That didn’t mean that deviations didn’t happen, of course. Jump Points were one example of that happening naturally in the universe proper.

What was happening right then on the Mexico, however, was most assuredly not a natural phenomenon. The peculiar mixing of two space-time warp cores had created extremely short frequency standing waves all through the Mexico, and the tidal forces resulting from that was in the process of slowly tearing the big ship apart.

What he had to do, then, was create a new pattern. Not just neutralize the attacker’s wave front, but actually reverse the pattern.

If it doesn’t kill us all, it should blow the ever living hell out of their core.

Parker hoped for the best as he keyed the program into action, “Everyone… hang on!”

*****

The alarm coming from the portable core was the first clue they had that something had gone wrong, shocking the elder Parithalian from his concerns over the success of the mission to something a little more immediate.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know!” His companion admitted, panic clearly setting in. “There’s a surge blowing back through the system!”

The blue skinned alien glanced back at the system, eyes widening as he recognized the change in the pattern.

“No, you fool!” He rushed over, shoving his companion aside. “They’re reversing the pattern! It’ll bounce us, shield and all, around like a toy if we don’t counter!”

He could feel the change in gravity even as he entered the new program and sent the countering command, praying that he was in time.

*****

The alarms had been so damned distracting that Harrowitz had them cut, physically, just so his crews could continue working without being annoyed to the point of either distraction or self-immolation. He was primarily monitoring the ongoing fighting between Parker and the Saboteurs, though there wasn’t a lot he could add to the mix.

It was like watching a game of chess being played out in at least five or six dimensions, maybe more, with each side trying to anticipate what the other was going to do several moves in advance. So far, he had to admit to being impressed with Parker’s moves.

The kid is keeping up, while it’s clear he’s the one fighting with a considerable handicap. I don’t know how much longer he can hold this, though.

The acceleration of the ship had ceased to be the primary issue, they still have over a hundred gravities to spare on the engines and the core wasn’t increasing any longer, so imploding wasn’t going to be a problem. The tidal stress of the standing waves of gravity within the ship, however, those were a
significant
problem.

So far Parker had kept the G-Forces to mostly survivable tolerances by human standards, which meant that the ship could take the biggest portion of the stress as well. There were places, however, where he was seeing several dozen times the force of gravity tearing at the ship in opposing directions. The Mexico just wasn’t designed to take that kind of stress, the design specifications had all assumed that the tidal forces would be predictable and oriented in specific patterns around the core.