“Weapons are charged and ready, Sir. Fighters are launching in thirty seconds.”
“Fighters in space? Not something we’ve ever seen,” whispered Chandra.
“No, but the requirement became apparent. They are a heavy fighter design, and with three crew that borrow heavily from alien technology, as all this does,” mused Huber. He pointed to everything they were wearing.
Huber looked away from the table and back to his crew who all looked to him.
“Display tech projection.”
The walls around them blurred and then sprung to life. The entire CIC appeared to evaporate and displayed everything outside the ship as if they were now floating in space. Taylor felt sick for a moment, and almost instinctively reached for his suit helmet for the environmental control and air.
“Amazing, isn’t it? We’ve had this tech thirty years and never really needed.”
Chandra paced around the room, inspecting the fleet. It felt as if she could simply reach out and touch the other ships in their fleet. Then she turned and looked towards the pulsating of the engines of the approaching craft.
“For the sake of simplicity, we will call the larger enemy ships frigates, the smaller ones destroyers,” stated Huber.
Fighters burst out from the centre of the room and into view. They were joined by smaller detachments from the surrounding vessels. The enemy were just minutes away, but it felt longer as they soared towards the human fleet. Taylor leaned in over Chandra’s shoulder.
“I wasn’t made for this, to sit in safety at the back,” he whispered.
“When any of those ships get through our defensive fire, and they will, you can bet your arse that marines will be all that stands between victory and defeat.”
Taylor smiled. Huber turned to them both and nodded in agreement. He paced closer and whispered to them both.
“If the Washington is breached, we only have enough marines to cover so much ground. Chandra, you are in charge of any internal defence of this carrier. Look after her, she’s fresh out of dock.”
“We’ll hold, Sir.”
“Sir, the enemy will be in range within thirty seconds.”
“Prepare to fire!” Huber shouted the order.
Just seconds before the first enemy craft entered range, a huge pulse of light burst from one of the enemy ships. A beam of light stretched out from the vessel and instantly struck the Maryland, one of the frigates in front of the Washington. The ship was torn in half with debris pouring from the hulk. They could see the silhouettes of dozens of bodies thrown out into space.
Huber froze in shock at the sight for just a few seconds then turned to his gunnery commander.
“Fire now, everything!”
Lights flashed from them, lighting up space for kilometres around the carrier. Pulses flashed back and forth as the enemy continued to rush towards them. Three of the enemy frigates and two destroyers were obliterated in the initial burst, but it didn’t slow the rest down.
Huber turned to the two aliens in the room.
“What the hell was that weapon?”
“Nothing we have ever seen,” replied Jafar in a concerned tone.
It was the first time Taylor had ever seen the alien show concern.
“You didn’t think we were the only ones developing our technology, did you?” asked Chandra. “We’ve given them a hard time. They’re not going to take it lying down!”
Another beam tore through one of the human ships, but to their horror it came from a different enemy vessel. Huber looked closely and could see the vast barrel protruding from the enemy ship, and there were two others like it. He tapped his console and barked out his commands.
“All Battlecruisers target those gunships!”
“Sir, we’ve lost all signal to the fleet and have internal solid feeds only!”
“God damn it! Concentrate all our fire on those things!”
A volley of fire smashed two of the enemy craft, but they watched in horror as the third got a last shot off before it burst into flames. The pulse hit the hull of the Washington and caused the lighting to dampen and flicker. They were thrown violently about the ship and the tac projection vanished, leaving them with the bare metal walls of the bridge.
Taylor lifted Huber back to his feet. Blood trickled from his face. They looked around for the others just as the emergency lighting system came online.
“Status report!” called Huber.
There was no response for a moment as the bridge staff tried to make sense of it all.
“Sir, we’ve taken heavy damage across floors thirteen through eighteen. Breaches have been sealed, but we still have fires on multiple levels.”
“Casualties?”
“We don’t have that much information yet, Sir.”
“Get me some eyes on the battle!”
The operations table he rested on lit up and flickered, finally coming to life. Taylor clambered over to the table in time to watch in astonishment as two enemy craft smashed into the Washington.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Sir, we have multiple breaches on floor three and eight!”
Huber turned to Chandra.
“We’ll keep the guns firing. Do not let this ship fall!”
“What about the bridge, Sir?”
“We have enough guards to look after us. Get to those breaches!”
Chapter 4
Lights flickered as power fluctuated throughout the Washington. Engineering and medical crews rushed about their duties. Taylor and Chandra fought through the chaos with Jones’ Company in tow. They now wore their full helmets with independent oxygen supply, so they could be ready for anything. The Colonel stopped at a junction and looked down two of the corridors feeding onto it.
“God damn, it all looks the same,” she whispered.
“This one,” replied Taylor.
“You sure?”
“No, but we have to keep moving.”
“Alright, go!”
They rushed forward down yet another corridor they’d never seen before. Taylor held is Mappad forward and tried to make some sense of their location. It shook about in his hand. He reached over, clipped it to his left forearm, and continued. It looked like they were heading the right way, but in the desperate rush and in a maze of corridors, it was difficult to know.
“I think we’re about a hundred metres away!”
As he said it, an explosion ripped through the corridor only ten metres from their position. The massive impact threw them off their feet, and the hull of a smaller enemy vessel smashed through into their corridor and passed right through into the next. Even before Taylor could get to his feet, he was sucked through a hole in the breach and out into space. He looked back to see the corridor had been shut off and its atmosphere normalised. He could see Chandra stood looking in horror as he floated away. The blast skin closed up around the hull of the enemy vessel, instantly sealing the breach.
“Fuck sake!” he shouted.
He’d never been tossed out into space before, and it was an oddly frightful, as well as fascinating, experience. He knew his suit and its integrity were all that was keeping him alive. But he turned and could see the whole battle before him. Several of their fleet had been hit by boarding actions, but the fight continued to rage.
