Honor Bound

Chapter Twenty

“Looks pretty bad from out here,” Esmeralda Villanueva radioed, gently nudging the controls of her shuttle to send it slowly floating across the nose of the Sheridan. The nose of the massive cruiser was armored with a solid meter of nickel iron melted off an asteroid… not even the directed fusion blast of the Protectorate lighter’s main drive had been able to penetrate that, though it had re-melted and vaporized several centimeters of it.

What the blast had penetrated was the much thinner armor over the gravimetic emitters in the nose that were the key to the ship’s long-range sensor array. Without them, the ship could still use optical, radar and lidar to scan her surroundings… but when she went FTL via the Eysselink field, she’d be flying blind.

“Are you seeing this, Sheridan?” She asked, trying to angle the shuttle to get a better picture of the damage.

“Roger that,” acknowledged Lt. Commander Devlin, the Damage Control officer. “Assault One, do a slow pan around the nose then you can head back to the docking bay.”

On the bridge of the Sheridan, Devlin shook his head slowly as he examined the images coming from the shuttle. “I don’t think there’s any way to repair that kind of damage outside of a dry-dock, Admiral,” he said with grim finality.

“I think you’re right, Mr. Devlin,” Patel agreed, scowling. “I suppose it could have been worse.”

McKay nodded silent agreement, suppressing a shudder.

What a clusterfuck, he reflected. The Helm had activated the drive at nearly the same time that both he and Patel had screamed the command… but it had been a half-second too late. The damage had been done. And when the Eysselink field had impacted the enemy ship’s drive plates, the resultant fusion explosion had ripped the Protectorate lighter to atoms.

“So,” McKay finally said aloud, holding onto a safety rail behind the Admiral, “the Protectorate ship is toast, which means we can’t follow it to the next gate. Even if we figured out where we are, we can’t use our Eysselink drive to go home because we can’t navigate at hyperlight speeds without the gravimetic sensors: we could fly right into a planet or even a star. That leaves us with just one option as far as I can see: follow the gates back the way we came until we reach the Peboan system and then follow the route that Mironov gave us back to Earth.”

Patel hissed out a sigh, and McKay knew him well enough to know that another man would have been cursing. The Admiral said nothing for a moment, staring at the viewscreen. “Engineering,” Patel called over the intership communicator.

“Engineering here, sir,” came the reply from Commander Kopecky, the Sheridan‘s chief engineering officer.

“Commander, can we still use the Eysselink field to open the wormholes without the forward emitters?”

Kopecky didn’t answer immediately and McKay could picture from past encounters the broad-bodied, bushy- browed Czech lost in thought, mouth twitching as he talked himself through the problem. “Aaaaaye,” the man dragged the word out slowly as if he were assembling it in his head, “I believe we can still manage it sir. We can rig something using the gravimetic lensing fields for the laser batteries possibly.”

“There’s no way to use those lensing fields to replace the sensor emitters?” McKay asked, curious.

“Hmmm…” Kopecky turned the grunt into a Buddhist mantra. “You know, Colonel McKay, that’s not entirely impossible. The downside would be that we would lose the lasers as armament for the duration of our voyage… and of course the range would be a bit less: those lensing field emitters aren’t as big as the sensor emitters, nor as powerful. But we might be able to rig something up. What say you, Conner?” He was speaking to Conner Devlin, the Damage Control officer who was still on the bridge.

Devlin had a troubled expression, his eyes clouded with thought and McKay thought he would be pacing if there were gravity. “It might work. It will require some serious crew-hours of work… I think we’re looking at thirty to forty hours, minimum of solid work, not counting testing. And like Commander Kopecky said, we’d lose the lasers.”

“That’s a damn good idea, McKay,” Patel nodded to him. “Commander Kopecky, get with Commander Devlin and work me up a detailed plan for making the modifications. I want it presented to me in my office in two hours.”

“Permission to head to engineering, sir,” Devlin asked.

“Of course, Mr. Devlin.” Devlin pushed off and headed out into the corridor and Patel turned to the Tactical officer. “Ms. Pirelli,” he said, “we have some experience now with the jumpgates. I know you can pick them up on the gravimetic sensors when they open. What I want you to do is get together with the senior Sensor tech and compare our readings from before the gates were opened and see if there is any sort of predictable reading we’re getting via the Eysselink scanners when they aren’t open. And I want that report in my office in three hours, is that clear?”

“Aye, sir,” Pirelli said with more confidence than she probably felt, if McKay judged the slight widening of her eyes correctly. She turned back to her station and used her ‘link to call the Sensor station.

“I think I see where you’re going here, sir,” McKay ventured thoughtfully, hanging behind the Admiral’s shoulder. “It’s risky, but I like it.”

“I’m grateful for your approval, Colonel,” Patel commented ironically, cocking an eyebrow. “Mr. Mironov.” He turned to the Russian, who’d been taking all this in impassively, as if he were watching a movie. “You said you had tried to stay away from Novoye Rodina, but if we get you within a few jumps of the system, could you recognize it?”

Mironov looked to McKay, who sighed and had a brief exchange with the man in Russian.

“I think I can,” Mironov said haltingly. “I would need to see system…” Another exchange with McKay. “…specifications, planetary positions. I would need to be within one or two jumps, I think.”

“Mr. Mironov, I want you to sit down with Mr. Sweeny and give him every detail you remember about the systems near Novoye Rodina… Colonel McKay, you can help translate, if you wouldn’t mind. Get it done in four hours and get it to my office.”

“I’m beginning to sense a pattern there,” McKay said with a grin.

“Well, you are the head of intelligence,” Patel observed wryly. “I want to be moving on a course of action in six hours. If we have to rig the laser focusing fields, I want us ready to leave the minute the work is done. We are not going home without the location of Novoye Rodina, even if it means flying blind through every jumpgate between here and the next galaxy. Do you concur?”

“The President’s last word to me on the matter of General Antonov,” McKay told him, “was ‘Kill that son of a bitch.’ I don’t want to head home until I at least try to carry out that order.”

“Excellent. Then let’s get to work.”

Vincent Mahoney smiled slightly as he traced a finger over the curve of Esmeralda Villanueva’s shoulder. Her skin was warm and slightly damp with sweat; spherical globules of their perspiration floated around inside the sleep net that kept them in her bed.

“You know,” Vinnie said quietly, “I never had sex in zero gravity before this trip.”

Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. “And you were a Marine? I find that hard to believe.”

He shrugged. “Getting involved with someone in my platoon didn’t seem smart. And the Fleet girls… well, by the time I made it on the Reaction Force platoons, I was an NCO and it didn’t seem like the right example to be setting.”

“Jesus, you’re a regular boy scout, aren’t you?” She laughed, a sound he would never get tired of.

“If I were a boy scout,” he replied, raising an eyebrow, “I wouldn’t be fraternizing with a superior officer.” He shrugged. “Of course, I may have mellowed a bit in my old age.”

“And fraternizing very, very well, may I say,” she purred, leaning over to kiss him. “I’m just glad for the