“Re-targeting,” the commander announced, not waiting for the order.
In the Special Operations section just forward of the Aurora’s flight deck, Jessica and her teammates sat waiting for something to do. They were all highly trained in the art of specialized combat and covert operations, and they could handle just about anything. But during a yellow alert, all they could do was sit in their ready room and wait.
Being assigned to the Aurora was about the last thing that Jessica had wanted upon graduation. She had hoped to get assigned to a deep cover intelligence gathering team that would be smuggled onto one of the core- system worlds occupied by the Jung, in order to collect intelligence to forward back to Earth. Such assignments were the dream of every spec-ops officer, since due to the difficulty of getting info back to Earth, they were authorized to take whatever actions they felt necessary to protect the interests of their homeworld. It was a life of excitement and danger, where your fate was in your own hands, and not the hands of some brass hat sitting behind a desk somewhere back on Earth.
But instead, she had been assigned here. She understood why every ship needed its own spec-ops team. And this ship, with its FTL capabilities, at least had the ability to get her somewhere interesting. So in that sense, it was better than getting assigned to one of the older sub-light ships.
When battle stations had been called, she had been sure it was a drill, despite the fact that it had not been announced as such. Even when the ship started maneuvering hard and accelerating sporadically, she still had her doubts. But then they heard, and felt, torpedoes being fired. And then the constant pounding of the rail gun cannons as they laid down point defense flak. While they might fire the cannons in a drill, there was no way they were going to waste a couple of torpedoes. Those things were like small space ships, and were armed with small tactical nukes.
But the final evidence had been the explosions, the first of which struck very close, above and forward of them, knocking them out of their seats. A few minutes after that, two more torpedoes were launched. Either they were fighting multiple ships, or one really big one. But in the orbit of Jupiter? It just didn’t make any sense.
But after the last batch of torpedoes had been launched, it had suddenly gotten quiet. The main engines, which had been running at full thrust, had also quieted. And she was sure that she felt deceleration-sometimes it was hard to tell with the inertial dampeners in play.
Suddenly the room turned red and the action alarm squawked a single blast. The master chief in charge of the unit picked up the comm handset and took the call.
“Spec-Ops,” he announced. The master chief listened intently for a few moments. “Yes Sir!” The master chief hung up the handset and turned to face his people. “Alright! Listen up! Suit up for an EVA boarding action! Two insertion teams, four elements in each team! You move out in ten minutes!”
“Holy shit!” Jessica exclaimed. Maybe this ain’t such a bad assignment after all!
“Her main drive is definitely wiped out,” the commander proclaimed. We nailed her square in the ass with both shots. Just about blew her tail off.”
“What are you seeing over there?” the captain asked his sensor officer.
“She looks pretty dark, sir. I’m pretty sure she’s running on emergency power. Her shields and weapons are down, but her antimatter reactor is still online. She’s probably blown her power distribution system.”
The captain turned to his comm officer. “Any signals coming out of her?”
“No Sir, not a peep. But I’ve only got the local array to work with, so I’m not a hundred percent sure about that. If they used a tight-beam, I doubt I’d see it.”
“Could she be playing possum, luring us into a trap?” This time his question was directed back to Commander Montero.
“It is possible, but doubtful. She’s pretty busted up. Most of her aft section is open to space.”
“He’s right sir,” the sensor operator added. “In fact, the only pressurized compartments I’m seeing are engineering and her Bridge. Pretty much everything else is in vacuum.”
The captain thought about it for a moment. His first instinct was to stand off and pulverize her with his eleven remaining rail guns. But there was a good chance that there was some valuable intelligence on that ship, maybe even some technology that might come in useful. No one had ever captured a Jung ship before.
“It is a risk,” the captain admitted to his XO. “But I think it’s worth it.” He looked to his second in command for confirmation.
“Agreed,” the commander said.
“Very well.” The captain sat back down in his command chair. “Take us in, Lieutenant. Slow and easy. Roll us over and park us directly above her topsides, roof-to-roof. Since we don’t have any shuttles, they’ll have to do this the hard way.”
“Yes Sir,” Nathan answered as he began rolling the ship. They had already decelerated and had been slowly coasting towards the disabled ship for the last few minutes.
“XO, let’s keep all guns trained on her, just in case.”
“Already done, Sir.”
The two boarding teams walked out onto the flight deck. Wearing armored combat EVA suits, each of them carried a small close-quarters weapon attached with quick-connect fittings to the chest plates of their suits. The flight deck’s gravity plating was only one quarter of Earth norm, so carrying their transfer packs out across the deck onto the open landing apron was easy.
Jessica looked up as she stepped onto the apron. Directly above her was the crippled Jung patrol ship. It was only about half as big as the Aurora. It was badly damaged and she could see several openings in her hull through which they could probably gain access. But her rail gun turrets still looked operable, which made Jessica a little nervous.
“This is so fuckin’ cool!” her partner, Ensign Enrique Mendez exclaimed.
“You can say that again,” she agreed. Jessica knelt down and secured a heavy transfer line to the deck, setting the carefully coiled cable neatly down next to her.
“I sure don’t remember this scenario in training, huh Jess?”
“Me neither.”
“Cut the chatter,” her team leader ordered. “Mount up and let’s get this show on the road. We go across as one, then split up after we reach the target vessel. Alpha goes forward and Bravo goes aft.”
Each group lined up in pairs. One of them held the transfer pack in front of them, the other latched onto the first one’s back. With a blast of the maneuvering jets in the transfer pack, each pair lifted off the landing apron of the Aurora and began their ascent to the roof of the Jung ship. It was slow going, as they didn’t want to slam into the other ship at breakneck speeds.
Jessica and Enrique were the last to leave. Enrique operated the transfer pack, with Jessica attached to his back-one hand on her weapon with it pointed straight ahead, and the other hand on the free end of the transfer line she had attached to the deck. The transfer packs had just enough thrust to get them over to the enemy ship, so the transfer line would be their only way back to the Aurora.
Jessica kept her eyes forward, looking for any signs of a hostile threat as they coasted toward the Jung ship. It was a rather ugly looking vessel, dirty and not well maintained she thought. It looked more like what she thought a space pirates’ ship might look like, if such a thing actually existed.
“Approaching the vessel now, Sir,” the report came over the comm.
The main screen was displaying the view from a camera built into the top of the Aurora just forward of her flight deck. It gave them a clear view of the boarding team as they made their way across the void between the two ships.
Nathan was amazed as he watched the spec-ops teams floating across in pairs, not understanding how anyone could do something like that, let alone want to do it. Spec-ops had a reputation back on Earth. ‘Anything, anytime, anywhere.’ Apparently they had meant it.
“Any change in that ship’s status?” the captain asked.
“No sir,” the sensor operator assured him. “She’s still at minimal power.”
The inside of the Jung ship was dark, with only dim emergency lighting in operation. There appeared to be only a single battery powered light in each section, which seemed hardly enough for the job. It seemed a little odd to Jessica, since you could read in the emergency lighting in the Aurora.
Jessica’s team had gone aft toward engineering, while Alpha team headed forward to capture the bridge.
