Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (20 page)

The bulkhead
door leading out of the central capsule was closed, and Cinda cursed as she
thought how she was going to get that door, as thick as the armor of the
capsule, open.  In frustration she hit the control opening button, and almost
laughed as the door slid open.  The CIC was in the rear central capsule, as
protected there as the bridge was in the forward one.  She jetted through the
fifty meters separating the capsules on her suit grabbers.  The tube was also
evacuated of air, and at first the door would not open, indicating that there
was still pressure on the other side.  She pushed her code in over the link,
overriding the lockout.  The door slid open and a blast of air came with it,
trying to push her away.  Her suit fought the outflow and got her into the
capsule, and she boosted away, depending on the crew behind her to close off
the door. 
If anyone isn’t in combat armor they’re idiots,
she thought,
not really worried about evacuating the corridor atmosphere.

The Captain ran
into the CIC, a room slightly larger than the bridge, with twelve seconds on
the clock.  The central holo showed the same view her link was feeding into her
occipital lobe.  For some reason it looked more real to see the physical holo,
and in that moment she almost wished she was not looking at it.

“All weapons are
firing at the missiles,” said the Exec, starting to get up from his chair and
sinking back down as the Captain waved him back.

Cinda could see
that on her link.  The forward laser ring was firing a full powered beam a
second, the two remaining counter missile tubes were cycling weapons as fast as
possible, even the close in projectile weapons were blasting on full auto, all
trying to stop the missiles that meant to kill the frigate.

“Integrated fire
control is down,” said the Exec as the tracks drew closer.

Which means
we’re really screwed,
thought the Captain, staring at the holo, the ticker
in her mind counting down to three seconds.  Everything was firing on local
control, with no integration to take advantage of overlapping fields of fire.

A laser hit one
of the missiles, detonating it seven hundred kilometers from target.  A gigaton
blast spread out from the missile as the antimatter warhead breached contain. 
There was negligible blast effect, but the hull of
Joel Schumacher
took
a wave of heat and radiation that rocked the ship as armor boiled away and
atmosphere vented.

The other
missiles attempted to change their vectors away from the blast that was frying
their own systems.  One didn’t make it out of the blast before its comp systems
fried from radiation overload, and it continued on at an angle that would
target nothing.  Another ran into a stream of pellets from an auto cannon,
losing two forward grabbers and also drifting off target.  A moment later a
counter missile struck the stern of that missile and destroyed the rear
section.

The fourth
missile made it away from the blast with minimal damage, then tried to
reacquire the target.  It missed the frigate by a dozen kilometers and slammed
into the ice ball.  The gigaton blast shattered the comet, sending millions of
pieces of ice in all directions. 
Schumacher
was hit by hundreds
of thousands of chunks of rock and ice, from several kilograms to one twenty
thousand ton monster.

Cinda fell to
the floor despite her combat armor as the comet exploded.  The frigate was only
five kilometers from the surface of the ice ball.  The blast effect banged on
the hull of the ship, obliterating surface installations like grabber fins,
electromag field projectors and auto cannon emplacements.  The nanoweave outer
skin, the sensory organ of the ship, was eroded away.  Any escape pods that had
survived the fight with the superbattleship were totally destroyed.

Joel
Schumacher
tumbled away from the explosion, power systems fluctuating,
gravity going in and out.  Inertial compensators blinked off in some portions
of the ship, and some crew were flung into the walls at scores of gravities. 
Their combat armor survived, becoming the coffins for the smashed remains of
the spacers who had sheltered in them.

“Damage report,”
yelled Cinda into the com as her link to the ship’s computer systems went down.

“Damage control
is out,” yelled the Exec, his wide eyes looking out at her through his
faceplate.  He pointed at one of the techs sitting in the room, designating that
woman as damage control chief.  Which was well and good, except the limited com
systems made that an almost impossible job.  At this point damage control was
more of a local function, crew seeing something that needed to be done and
doing it.

Main power came
back on, and with it a working schematic of the ship.  Cinda studied that
schematic on the holo screen, not sure if her ship was going to survive or
not.  Then her attention was all taken by the blinking red that covered part of
the antimatter reactor section of engineering.

“Engineer,” she
called over the com.  “What’s your status?”

“The Engineer is
dead, ma’am,” came back a voice from engineering.  “This is Petty Officer First
Faraday,” continued the young woman.  “I’ve taken over.”

“What’s your
status?” repeated the Captain, looking at that blinking red overlay of the
reactor and unable to pull up any other information.

“We’re having
some problems with the reactor, though I think we can get it under control,”
said the rating.  “But we’ve got a bigger problem.  One of the antimatter
storage containers was hit when we were slugging it out with the Cacas.  I
don’t know why it didn’t blow then, but I don’t think it’ll be long.”

“Can you
jettison the container?” asked the Captain, looking at the schematic and seeing
the answer to that question herself. 
Christ, but we’re screwed again.

“Maybe. 
Probably not.  I’m not sure ma’am, but if I had to stake my life on it, I’d say
no.  There’s a lot of damage back here.”

“Do what you can
to stabilize it, then get out of there,” said Cinda, making her mind up in an
instant.  She looked over at the Exec.  “Order abandon ship.  I don’t think
we’re going to save her, and I won’t lose any more people in a lost cause.”

“Yes, ma’am,”
agreed the Exec.  The call went over the com circuit as soon as his agreement
left his mouth, and acknowledgements came back almost instantly.

Strobes started
to flash across the vessel, and klaxons sounded in every compartment that still
had atmosphere.  A countdown timer appeared on every implant, though the time
was of course just an estimate.  The fact was, the ship was living on borrowed
time, and the antimatter could breach at any moment.

“Let’s get out
of here,” she ordered the people in the crowded CIC.  “You lead them out,
Exec.”

“What about you,
ma’am?” asked Frobisher, turning his helmeted head her way.

“Captain’s
prerogative,” she said with a smile, wishing she could lead the way off the
ship.  “First one on, last one off.”

The Exec nodded
and moved quickly to the hatch, the relocated bridge crew close on his heels
while the CIC people abandoned their stations.  Cinda tried to link into the
ship’s systems and hit a blank wall. 
There’s nothing I can do here,
she
thought, realizing that the system had gone down completely.  As soon as the
last crewman left the chamber she followed.

It was eighty
straight meters from the CIC to the outer skin of the vessel, about one hundred
and ten by the shortest route.  That route no longer existed.  The corridor
toward the stern was a wreck, bulkheads crushed inward to close much of it
off.  The corridor forward was still useable, by one person at a time.  The
Exec led the crew that way, squeezing his armored suit through a space not much
bigger than it was.  The lights were flickering, even the emergency systems too
badly damaged to function without failure.

There was still
atmosphere in the corridor, and when they reached a crossway that headed out
the sounds of people banging on a door came to their suit pickups.  Armored
fists beating against an armored hatch that was sealed shut.  The suits gave
them many times the strength of a normal human, but it was not enough.  Metal
glowed at the edge of the door, the sign of suit lasers being employed to cut
through the hatch.  It would also not be enough, not in time.  Voices called
over the local com circuit, suit to suit, begging for aid.

Cinda recognized
the door as leading into the stern area infirmary.  There were undoubtedly
medical personal behind that door, and maybe some injured.  She activated her own
suit laser and started to work on the edge of the door.  The laser was made to
cut through hull metal, but it was asking a lot to cut through this much alloy.

“We’re coming
for you,” she shouted over the local suit to suit com.  “Keep working your
end.”

Frobisher and
Jakardo were suddenly there with her.  Frobisher activated his suit laser,
while the Tactical Officer pulled the damage control cutter he had carried all
the way from the corridor outside the bridge.  His unit cut through the alloy
at six times the rate of the suit lasers, and sparks flew into the air as he
moved the beam from the left top side of the door down.

“Let me have
that,” she told her Tactical Officer.  “I’ll take it from here while you two
get off the ship.”

“No, ma’am,”
replied Jakardo, continuing to work the laser, while the Exec kept going at the
top of the door.

“That’s a direct
order, Mr. Jakardo,” growled Cinda, continuing to cut with her suit unit.

“And you’re not
the only one who can ignore those kind of orders, ma’am” said Frobisher.

Cinda smiled,
and glanced back in relief to see that the rest of the crew had left them,
heading out of the ship.  They worked in silence, concentrating on making the
cuts in the most efficient manner possible, until they had circled the door, all
the while wondering how much time they had.

“Shove,” yelled
the Captain, pushing with her suit arms against the door.

The three of
them pushed it into the room, to fall with a hard clang to the floor.  There
were a pair of sick bay orderlies and one injured crewman, all in battle armor,
the two hale crewman helping the hurt one.

“Let’s get the
hell out of here,” yelled Cinda into the com, herding the three they had
rescued to follow behind her Exec and Tactical Officer.  
Shit,
she
thought, looking at the timer on her implant.  Over six minutes had passed
since they had left the CIC, well past the estimated lifetime of the antimatter
container.

She felt
relieved when they reached the outer hull.  The door to the airlock was still
intact, though without power.  She wondered why the crewmen who had gone ahead
of them had closed it, then realized that it was set to always have one hatch
shut to the outside, unless it had been overridden.  She tried to signal the
override, with no success.  Frobisher reached the emergency manual override
first, pulling open the panel and pushing the rotating tool on his left
gauntlet into the interior and mating it with the ratchet.  The door started to
slide open immediately, air rushing through the widening gap.

“Lock your boots,”
yelled Jakardo to the others as the pull increased.  It was obvious why when
the rest of the airlock was revealed, or the space where one would have been if
something hadn’t have scooped it off the side of the ship.

“Is anyone still
aboard?” yelled Cinda over the local com after bonding her boots to the deck by
its magnetic locks.  She was greeted with static.  “Maybe I should do another
check of the ship,” she said over the com to the people with her.

“Not on your
life, ma’am,” said Jakardo, grabbing a hand hold on the chest of her suit,
boosting his armor, and pulling her out of the ship.  “The old girl is going to
blow any second now.  Everyone’s out who’s going to get out.”

Cinda nodded her
head, knowing the man was right, but still wishing she could go back in. 
If
the damned ship blew up around me, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the
future.

Everyone now
boosted on their suit grabbers, trying to put as much distance between
themselves and the gigaton class bomb the ship was about to become.  The suits
could pull twenty gees with their inertial compensators, twenty-five max,
putting the extra gravities directly onto the passenger.  All were trained
spacers, with the improved systems of all modern humans.  They could handle ten
gravities for several minutes, while their undergarments compressed and forced
blood back to the brains.  Still, in space it seemed like they were standing
still with only the stars in the background.

The Captain
turned her suit around as she boosted, until her ship was again in her view as
she backed away.  Now she had a frame of reference, the small form of the ship
getting smaller by the moment.  She zoomed in on the ship, gasping at the
revealed damage to its surface. 
And this is the side that was facing away
from the enemy ship and the comet.
  Though it had faced the incoming
missiles, which had done significant damage, even detonating hundreds of
kilometers away.

There was a
small flash about a hundred meters to the stern of the midsection,
engineering.  The small flash erupted into a large one, and the ship was gone
in an instant in a burst of eye hurting plasma.  Her faceplate darkened
immediately.

“Shit,” yelled
one of the crewmen close by, and Cinda lightened her visor, then cursed herself
as she saw the small dark blotches against the growing, fading plasma field. 
Those were solid objects propelled outward, pieces of the ship, and where she
could see the larger ones there had to be thousands of smaller that she
couldn’t.

The Captain
cringed in her suit.  Her HUD showed the mass of objects, and there was really
nothing she could do about them, other than move her suit out of the way of the
larger ones.  They passed by without a sound, except for a couple of screams
over the com that stopped with chilling suddenness.