Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 (15 page)

"Sir, given the small vocabulary on the sheets, I programmed the computers to look not only at those words, but at known synonyms as well, and correlate with words associated with the Navy and with
Yorktown
."
"And you found something?"
"Not exactly, but it correlates the highest probability of the message relating to a bomb on our jump drive."
"Us?"
"Aye, captain, sword. You."
"Katana."
"Aye."
"Mr. Garcia, engines to standby."
"Engines to standby, aye."
The lack of gravity is noticeable. The folks on the bridge who went out partying yesterday are particularly glad of the extra interruption to the external pressure on their hangovers.
"Mr. Perez, join me in engineering please. Mr. McAdams, nice work."
Shelby and I float down to engineering, me not explaining yet, an equally puzzled Lt. Powell there to greet us.
"Emily, the UBI intercepted a coded transmission to the saboteur that RISTA believes means a bomb was planted in our jump drive. How long to take a look?"
She's looking at me aghast that someone again may have messed around with her engines. "Fifteen minutes, sir, there's not a lot of room in the drive unit to hide something."
"Get to it. Commander Perez, please notify departure control that we're coasting, in case someone is coming along behind us."
"Roger that." Shelby heads back for the bridge. I wait while four sets of feet stick out from the top of various components at the far end of the engineering space. Twelve minutes.
"Clean sir, nothing there that's not supposed to be."
"Good news, lieutenant, I'll let them know not to scare us like that again."
"Thank you, Skipper." She sighs. I get myself back to the bridge.
"Nothing, sir?" It's McAdams, not used to being wrong.
"That's what probability means, Ensign, the highest probability is not always going to be right."
"Aye."
"Mr. Garcia, put us back on course, two gees."
We spend the next 10 hours watching the brown dwarf star grow larger and larger in our screens. I'm in my ready room, 15 minutes from having to go monitor the jump, catching up on paperwork as best I can under two gee deceleration when the room explodes in sound around me, horns and voices.
"
Battlestations. Battlestations. All Hands. Battlestations.
" The electronic voice, followed by Shelby's very unnecessary. "Captain to the bridge."
The engines standby making it easier for me to get where I'm going, and everyone else to their stations as well, though we practice doing it at up to four gees. Takes me ten seconds to unstrap and get out of my ready room and on to the bridge. There's a transmission playing loudly on the speakers.
"Repeat, this is UBI transport
Zimbalist
. We are under attack. Unknown assailant. Coordinates...." I don't hear the rest.
"Mr. Marcos, course to intercept, maximum gee approved, roll now!" Shelby flies back to her couch and leaves me mine.
"Maximum gee warning, ten seconds," no pre-recorded voice for that, Garcia is on intercom from her side station, her second at the controls. They have had plenty of time to get the course programmed in.
Yorktown
swings wildly to starboard, and then we are shoved backwards at full throttle, nine gees making it hard to think, much less breathe.
Twenty seconds is the maximum allowed at nine except in close combat, then he's got us cruising at six, still a monstrously crushing weight against our couches, then down to 4.5, maximum continuous thrust allowed if we want everyone to be conscious when we get there.
"Time to intercept?"
"Twelve minutes, skipper." The problem is we can only accelerate for half the distance if we want to be stationary when we arrive, then we have to rotate, otherwise, we overshoot and are fundamentally useless.
"RISTA, all sensors, active and passive, maximum range, find me the attacker. Mr. Jordan, all lasers hot. Open outer door on tube three, warm up the nuke."
They both respond, I don't hear. A few seconds of desperation, thinking about what else I can do.
"New target bearing 002 mark 000 relative, accelerating," it's McAdams who's at her side console like Garcia, technically off duty but up here working anyhow, "estimate 400 tons, by configuration its one of the ships from Gamma Omicron."
"Mr. Marcos, whatever acceleration it takes, run that ship down." We're in decel, it's going to take one heck of a maneuver to get there.
"Aye, sir, going to forward thrust."
Yorktown
goes to engine standby, pivots on full thrusters to get our nose pointed at the target, then we're back at nine gees, then six.
Bass is in our ears, his voice barely recognizable with six times normal force required to speak. "They're on jump course, 10 seconds." We aren't going to catch them, I have to watch helplessly as the ship approaches the star on my nav screen, then vanishes. My fist tries to make a hole in my arm rest, but fails.
"Mr. Marcos, Mr. Bass, find
Zimbalist
, get us there. Lt. Palmer, ready your away team."
Yorktown swings one more time, more calmly than it did last time, but still at combat speed, and we do a six gee accel/decel to target. There's little left, floating detritus that used to be a friend of mine.
"Mr. Perez, notify NAVCOMM locally, take the con. Don't think they'll be back, but if they show their heads, 30 megatons down their throats, no need to challenge first. Mr. McAdams, get me all possible destinations within the T jump range and probabilities when I get back. Twenty minutes tops, then we are jumping."
I get Yeager to bring my suit to the Marine hatch, and we board the ZR together with one squad of Marines and Palmer.
"Folks," I get on comm just to them, "this is not an investigation. We are looking for survivors or immediately available critical evidence. Otherwise, we're out and back. We're better served getting after the sons of bitches who did this."
We do a float through, that's everybody a set distance apart, starting at one end, and floating to the other of the main field. No survivors, though we basically knew that before we started, I couldn't leave if there was still a chance. None of them find anything useful, but I do, Darlington's pad, which was the one thing in all this mess I thought might be savable. One in a million that it survived, but there it was, I floated across the top of the field with my pad set to search for wireless signals. No evidence bag, no telling anyone else, it goes into my side pouch.
"Lt. Palmer, let's get back on board."
"Roger, sir, I'm sorry."
"Tell me what you saw." He doesn't start until we're sitting in the ZR, helmets off.
"Smaller laser, no more than 2 inchers knocked out the engines, then detonated the reactor and fuel. Nothing spectacular."
"Lieutenant, it takes precision timing to attack a ship this close to the sun and get to the jump point before somebody burns up. They had perfect intel to coordinate the attack. They used the weapons at their disposal to best possible effect. They silenced the one person who could lead us to them. I'd say they've been smart, efficient, and about as effective as you could possibly be."
"Yes sir."
"Tony, trust me when I say that you, Shelby, and I are still going to teach them a lesson no matter how efficient they think they are."
With that we feel the thunk of docking, grab our helmets, and get back inside.
I call a conference of my senior officers in my ready room.
"Where did they go?" I'm looking at McAdams.
"We assumed they would not go deeper into our occupied space, and they would not cross the border into Hwang space. That suggests Gamma Upsilon to Theta or Omicron, sir. Small probability of movement into one of the Delta systems, but hard to believe that no one would see them if they did, Skipper."
"Commander?"
"I agree. Omicron or Theta."
"Ok, our three corvettes were to meet us in Theta, let's jump to Omicron and see if we can do some hunting. Stations everyone, let's get out of here as quick as we can."
They leave me be, except for Shelby. "Sorry, Katana."
"You know the advantage of being where I am is that I am going to get to see whoever did this suffer. I know that's not the ‘right' way to feel, but they obviously don't care about the human race, we don't need to care about them."
She looks at me, still maybe not believing the truth of our adversaries.
We float on out to get to work. Only change I make from normal is to get everyone into their combat suits, just in case we come into Omicron facing 240,000 tons of enemy ship. All our guns are out, missile doors closed.
Normal jump prep, jump engines go on normally, we do the required three officer check that the correct coordinates are entered, and I enter my jump authorization code.
"Twenty seconds, jump fields up." Garcia has replaced Marcos as the pilot, shifting her second to her right. She makes one last confirmation of the panel. Camera screens go black.
"Ten seconds.... Five.... Jump....."
Just as she says it, McAdams is in our ears, "Skipper, stop....."
Too late. Jumps are nothing. Jumps are uneventful. Jumps are peaceful. Except today.
The ship rocks like a airplane in a thunderstorm, we're thrown into our straps, then back against our couches.
Yorktown
starts to roll to port and pitch downward, initiating a spin, slightly dizzy, but I know what happened. My panels are yelling at me in every shade of red there is and horns are sounding, the horns we dread the most.
"
Fire! Fire! Fire!
" It's in the instrumentation bay, lowest deck, where all the computer hardware that runs
Yorktown
is located.
Shelby's on top of it, doing her job. "D.C. party to the instrumentation bay, Lt. Palmer, 1st squad to instrumentation bay, security alert squads two and three."
"Belay that order." With the main comm system down, I am automatically on ship-wide intercom, the one system not rigged through the computerized comm system. "Everyone stay in acceleration couches. Flight crew switch to manual controls. Lieutenant Powell give me four gee acceleration as soon as able. Mr. Garcia, point our nose toward the planet and pretend we have a course set to Gamma Omicron 2."
There are a variety of acknowledgments in my ear, I reach to my overhead panel and seal the doors on deck six. If anyone was in that room and not dead from the explosion, I just killed them. Ten seconds then Powell's voice warning us just as we are slammed backwards once again,
Yorktown
fighting to get stable and to speed. Garcia and Marcos would normally be watching their panels as the flight management system kept the ship precisely on bearing. Now their hands are flying across their controls, modulating pitch, yaw, and roll by hand.
I keep going. "Mr. McAdams, report."
"Sorry, Skipper, my fault. The numbers at the bottom of the message translate to 423605 in base 10, the nav constant for Gamma Omicron, the original in base 8. The dictionary stops at seven, I didn't think about it until just before the jump. As soon as I did the math I knew the message meant the bomb was in the jump computer. I should have seen it sooner."
"Roger that, I was actually asking if there are any targets in our vicinity."
"Sorry, sir." She talks to Bass and Manuel at their side stations. "No targets visible Skipper, limited range however due to main computer damage. Working on improving."
"Thank you RISTA, let me know if the situation changes. Do not blame yourself."
"Aye, sir, sorry again."
I briefly take myself off ship-wide comm and speak as loudly as I can. "Folks, since they didn't know where we were jumping in, they may have missed our bobble. I want them to see us underway at strong acceleration to give them doubts about whether or not their plan worked. Do nothing that shows the outside world we're not 100 percent." Then I go back to the ship-wide system.
Shelby has good news. "Skipper, fire out." Expected, no air in the sealed room, but still needed to hear that.
"Copy that. Mr. Jordan, systems status?"
"We can't read anything here captain, all our screens are dead." Means all the functions are at manual stations in engineering. I can see all the other screens, my left has gone into default mode which means it cycles through every status screen on the ship, three seconds at a time.
"Copy, expected. Mr. McAdams, do you have laser control?"
"Aye, Skipper, manual firing capability at my station is active, all guns currently extended."
"One bit of good news. Missiles?"
There's a pause. Not a good sign.
"Skipper, outer door control shows on my board, but is non-functional. Manual programming functions available, but we'd blow the ship apart launching."
"That figures. And, Mr. McAdams, we're both fools here, me the bigger one. I just had a blinding flash of insight. I saw Mark Darlington on deck six, actually Commander Perez and I both saw him with a co-conspirator, on Earth. We'll give you time and date and you can check the security cameras once we're safe."
"Aye, sir."
"Mr. Powell, engine status?"
"We're go sir, don't recommend jumping any time soon. Mains are on local backup processors. All other systems appear to be operational on manual, but we won't know for sure until we're able to get out of our seats."
"Understood, just like annual proficiency drills. Let's go four gees for four hours, then coast. Keep me informed if anything changes."
"Aye, Skipper."
"Mr. Garcia, keep us on course to Gamma Omicron 2. Hopefully we'll be more functional by the time we have to do the orbit insertion."
"Gamma Omicron 2, aye, we've activated the local processor. It will keep us straight and level, but that's about all, sir."
"Understood. Ok everyone, by the book now. We're not the first ship in history to lose it's computers and network, that's how they figure out what goes in the book. We're going to two shifts on the command deck now, Commander Perez will command first shift and Lt. Ayala second. I will be wherever I need to be. Each division head except engineering will transfer two staff to the First Officer, Lt. Palmer will transfer one squad, for damage control work."
"The second we go to free fall, Marines will enter the instrument bay and gather whatever evidence they can recover. Then the First and the Chief Engineer will coordinate clean up and repair."
"Our sensors are now running mark one eyeballs instead of computers. The bad guys are here, folks, they wanted us here too and they got us. We need to find them and find them before they find us. Everybody available should be on a sensor screen. If we forget to ask you, please find an empty seat and get to it. Three hours and 45 minutes to engines off. Use that time to plan. Krieger out."