The battle of Devastation reef

“Ah, yes,” Michael said, embarrassed that he had forgotten.

“Thought you might have,” Ferreira said, a look of stern disapproval on her face.

“Okay, okay. On my way. Just make sure you get to the sick bay, too.”

“Taken care of, sir. The coxswain’s there; soon as she’s done, she’ll cover for me.”

“Good. I’ll go walkabout when I’m finished.”

Michael set off to the sick bay. After ten uncomfortable minutes at the hands of nano-sized medibots relentless in their determination to repair the subcellular damage caused by a fraction of a nanosecond’s exposure to intense gamma radiation, he was free.

His first stop was engineering. Climbing down the ladder into the starboard engine room, he spotted the lower half of Chief Petty Officer (Propulsion) Chua. The man lay flat on his back, most of his body buried deep inside the armored casing of the main driver mass supply feed, with the rest of Tufayl’s engineering team huddled around him.

Michael waited patiently until Chua slid back out of the access port, his face and body black with driver pellet residue. “Any joy, chief?” he asked.

Chua shook his head. “No, sir. I think we’ve found the problem, though. Shock damage to one of the transporter bearing sets. Nothing fatal, but …” Chua stopped.

“Go on.”

“Well, sir. There’s a risk we might lose the whole feed if one of the bearings fails. Not a big risk, but a risk. If we’re under even half power at the time, that’d probably take out the whole engine room. There’s a lot of mass coming down that feeder tube.”

“Fixable?”

“No, sir. Yard job. Not a big one, but it’s beyond us, I’m afraid.”

“Was afraid it might be.” Michael masked his disappointment, though he was not surprised. The dreadnoughts’ limited ability to fix battle damage was one of their biggest weaknesses. “Rebuke and Qurrah?”

“Looks to be the same problem, sir. But without spacers to crawl inside”-Chua waved a hand at the access port-“we can’t be sure. Their repairbots aren’t in yet.”

Michael nodded. Another weakness of the dreadnought design: When it came to getting into awkward places to find out just what the hell was going on, spacers were hard to beat. “Okay. So my starboard engine is power- limited?”

“That’s right, sir. You can have 90 percent if you need it and full power if the Hammers start breathing down our necks, but don’t be surprised if we lose the whole starboard engine. Ten minutes at full power, tops. You can have emergency power if you override the safety interlocks, but I would not recommend doing that unless we’re going to die anyway.” Chua’s tone of voice might be lighthearted, but underneath the dirt, his face was grim.

“Ten minutes at maximum power. Avoid emergency power. Understood.” He looked in turn at the rest of the engineering department. “Any other problems? Petty Officer Morozov?”

“Well, sir, the honey pot’s a bit shaken up, but apart from a bit of blowback from the crappers”-Michael winced theatrically while the rest of the engineers laughed-“which the housebots are cleaning up, we’re fine.”

“Pleased to hear it. Let me guess. I know the exec has nagged you guys to death, but none of you have been to the sick bay? Am I right?”

Sheepishly, the engineers nodded their heads.

“Well, guys. I need you fit and well, so get your asses up there pronto. If I can do what Lieutenant Ferreira tells me, so can you!”

“Sir,” they chorused.

“Right, I’m off.” Comming Bienefelt to meet him, Michael left the starboard engine room, encouraged by the attitude of the engineers and even more by the news that he could have full power if he needed it, not to mention emergency power if things turned really bad. Emerging from the engine room’s armored air lock, he made his way forward through the echoing emptiness of the hangar, the backup lander-Sedova had christened it Creaking Door, and he reminded himself for the umpteenth time find out why-its sole occupant. Well, the place was empty only if one ignored the enormous bulk of Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt.

“Sir?” she said.

“Matti. I want to see for myself how the forward compartments survived the Hammer attack.”

“I guessed that’s what you wanted, sir. That’s why I brought this.” Effortlessly, Bienefelt waved the bulky shape of a handheld material scanner that Michael would have had trouble lifting with two hands.

“Ah, good,” Michael mumbled. “I was just going to, er … you know …”

“Let me guess, sir … You were going to peer at them?”

“Peer at them? Yes, I think that’s the technical term,” Michael said, a touch embarrassed. The idea of doing a proper survey by using a scanner capable of detecting minute cracks never occurred to him.

“Honestly, sir.” Bienefelt rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What would you ever do without senior spacers?”

“Screw things up?”

“You said it, sir, not me.” She grinned at Michael, the bond between them palpable. “Shall I lead on?’

“Please do, Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt, please do,” Michael said with exaggerated deference, thankful, not for the first time, that he had spacers like Bienefelt to rely on, “I’m not sure I could find my way without you.”

With scanner held in an enormous hand, she set off, a muted “hmphhhh,” her only response.

Tufayl’s forward compartments were an uncomfortable sight, their rawness a stark reminder of what the dreadnought had gone through at Comdur. Not that any trace of the spacers who had died up there remained. No, it was the crude roughness with which the salvagebots had stripped the compartments, the hastily installed reinforcing to the ship’s frames, and, right forward, the wall of ugly gray ceramsteel armor slabs, thousands and thousands of tons of them, cut with millimeter accuracy to fill the ship’s bows right up to the original armor, the slabs secured by welds and makeshift bracing.

Michael gave the work no points for aesthetics, but that aside, the compartments were in good shape. The impulse shock from the wall of gamma radiation had left the area untouched.

“All looks pretty good, Matti,” he said. “What’s the scanner show?”

“We have some minor stress fractures around some of the welds but nothing that’ll affect structural integrity. The bracing’s good. I think the Tufayl’s done okay. That was one hell of a bang she took.”

“It was. I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you find anything.”

“I will, sir, though I’m pretty sure the engineers did it right. Certainly looks that way.”

“Let’s hope so. Let me know when you’re done. The XO tells me the Ghost is inbound, so I’ll be down in the hangar.”

“Sir.”

Reassured that Tufayl was okay and leaving Bienefelt to finish the survey, Michael made his way back to the hanger while Caesar’s Ghost cycled through the air lock. Once the lander was secure, he made his way over and waited until Sedova emerged.

“How was it, Kat?” Michael said as the Ghost’s command pilot jumped down.

“Well, sir. To be honest, bloody terrifying.” Sedova smiled, but it was forced. She unlatched her helmet and took it off, running a hand through sweat-soaked hair.

“Troops handle it okay?”

“No probs, sir. They’re fine. I shut down Iron Duke’s artificial gravity and kept the Ghost in the hover until the attack was over, so we missed the impulse shock altogether, but we have a couple of radiation-induced glitches I’d like the engineers to have a look at.”

“Okay. Keep me posted. To save the executive officer having to nag you, get everyone up to the sick bay like yesterday.”

“Will do, sir. Never seen my dosimeter read so far into the red. My neuronics are telling me I don’t have long to live. Talk about scary.”

Michael nodded. It had been. Without nanobots to repair the radiation damage, he and the rest of Tufayl’s crew would all be dead inside forty-eight hours. “Right. I’m off back to the CIC.