The Burden of Command, page 7
part #14 of Empire Rising Series
In less than a minute, Jake followed his bridge crew out of Container onto the berthing corridor. It was already full of marines and navy personnel moving from the other captured ships towards Python. Pirates who had been captured on their ships were being pushed along at gun point. “Go ahead and make sure she is ready to depart,” Jake ordered Lydia. Lydia nodded and sprinted off. Jake waited until everyone had passed and then followed behind. When he got to the hatch that led onto Python, he waited counting off everyone that headed into the ship. “Keep moving!” He ordered when the marines started to appear. They were already sprinting, but he felt he needed to say something. Though it took less than a minute, it felt like an eternity passed before Onoda and Becca appeared.
“Go get onboard,” Onoda said as he gestured for Jake to go ahead of him. “We’re the last ones.”
Jake switched his COM channel to speak with Lydia. “Detach the ship and get us out of here,” he ordered. As soon as he entered the ship, Jake rushed to the bridge. When he got there, he saw Python was already moving out of the hole in the asteroid. “How long have we got?” He demanded as he threw himself into the nearest command chair and strapped in.
“Forty-five seconds,” Lydia called out.
“Gun it,” Jake ordered. At once, he was squished back into his command chair as Python’s engines went into overdrive. Jake hoped everyone had found a seat to strap into. It was too late to worry about that now. Tapping on his command chair, he accessed the bridge’s holo display and brought up an image of the asteroid and space around it even as Python raced away from it. “There,” he said as he pointed at a small asteroid. “Put that asteroid between us and the pirate base.”
Python immediately began to alter course. The pirate ship made it around the asteroid just three seconds before the asteroid base blew up. When it did, Jake’s eyebrows rose in surprise. The explosion was massive. The large asteroid was turned into a million chunks of rock that were hurled out in every direction. Even with using the small asteroid as cover, Python was battered by several small pieces of rock. Alarms went off, warning of damage. “Cut our engines,” Jake snapped. “And reduce our reactor power levels.” He had no idea what condition Python was in. He couldn’t risk causing any additional damage. “And scan the area. I want to know where those pirate ships are.”
Moments later and the holo display widened to show a larger area of the system they were in. Three contacts were quickly identified. The pirate ships were racing towards three separate shift passages out of Zika-seven. After just a couple more seconds, a fourth contact appeared. Resolute was on the move. She was accelerating hard after the nearest pirate ship. Jake grinned at the site of the Imperial cruiser. She was more than twice as fast as the helpless pirate ship. There was no way they could escape. “All right,” he said after taking a couple of deep breaths to calm down. “Let’s take stock of our situation. Check on our crew and on the state of Python’s systems. I want a full report as soon as possible.”
“Right away Lieutenant,” Lydia replied. She then turned and began to organize the bridge crew.
Jake’s COM unit beeped a few moments later. “Go ahead,” he said to Major Onoda.
“I’m sending you an initial report I’d like transmitted onto Resolute,” the marine Captain requested. “It’s mostly the visual feed from some of my marines. What we saw on that asteroid was concerning. I think it was blown as much to hide the evidence as to allow the pirates to escape. Captain Domingo needs to know. If she can capture one of those ships intact, there could be vital intelligence we need to understand just what has been going on.”
“Understood Captain, I’ll transmit it right away,” Jake replied. With Lydia busy, he accessed Python’s COM unit and sent the message. Then he began to investigate the ship himself. Assessing its reactors, engines and then weapons, he tried to get a feel for the ship’s capabilities. What he found made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Though not military grade, Python’s reactors and engines were impressive. Very impressive for a pirate ship. Her weapons were even more so. She was equipped with copious amounts of point defenses, four heavy plasma cannons and eight missile tubes. Unbelievably, the tubes were fitted to fire Imperial Navy missiles, and mark VI missiles no less. They were the standard missiles used by the navy in the later stages of the Karacknid war twenty years ago! Using them on a civilian freighter was the very definition of overkill. Jake quickly put together a brief report on Python’s capabilities and sent it on to Resolute. Captain Domingo would be very interested to learn just what kind of ships she might be up against.
“I’m ready to report,” Lydia said five minutes later, breaking into Jake’s thoughts. Jake looked up and gave her a nod. “We’re missing four crewmen and one marine. They were killed securing the other three pirate ships. Five more of our people are injured, though not seriously. We have thirty-three pirates captured. They are all in hangar bay one. Major Onoda’s marines are keeping a close watch on them.”
“And the ship? We know she can certainly fight if she needs to. How are her other systems?”
“Surprisingly, far better than Wolf Fang’s or Container’s were,” Lydia replied. “The crew seemed to know what they were doing. She doesn’t come close to navy standards, but it’s what I’d expect from a well-kept civilian ship. Her reactors, engines, and other primary systems are all fully functioning. The hits we took from the detonation of the pirate base only caused cosmetic damage. The hull seems to be well-built. From what I can tell, she was not put together from a collection of other ship parts. She has been built from her keel up as one ship. She even has ample life support systems; we should have no problem with everyone crammed on board. You certainly picked the right ship, Jake.”
“More questions,” Jake said as he shook his head. “We’ll have to interrogate the survivors from Python’s former crew closely. Send your report to Resolute.”
“Aye, sir,” Lydia replied.
“Everyone else, familiarize yourself with Python’s controls and systems as best you can,” Jake ordered. He then set about doing the same. His first priority was getting the ship’s computer to project the courses of Resolute and the three pirate ships. He quickly got the holo display to update to show him what he wanted. The results made him grimace. Resolute would easily catch the ship she was pursuing now, but then Captain Domingo would have a dilemma. She wouldn’t be able to catch up with both of the other pirate ships before they reached their respective shift passages. One of them was going to escape. Jake designated them as alpha-two and alpha-three. “Lieutenant Morrison, plot us two separate pursuit courses after contacts alpha-two and three.”
“Yes Sir,” Lydia said. A couple seconds later and two new lines appeared on the holo display. They showed alpha-two would make it to its shift passage before Python could catch up, but Jake could bring alpha-three into missile range just before it could jump out.
“Lay in a pursuit course for alpha-three. Load all our missile tubes,” Jake ordered. Tapping on his command chair, Jake opened a COM channel to Resolute. “Captain Domingo, as you can see from our reports, Python is a powerful ship. With your permission, I intend to close with alpha-three and try and prevent her from escaping. That will allow you to deal with alpha-two once you have subdued alpha-one.” As soon as he sent his message, Jake nodded to Lydia. “Engage engines.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for permission?” Lydia asked.
Jake shook his head. “We can always turn around if she says no. If she says yes, we don’t want to waste any time.”
Lydia nodded as her fingers danced over her console. Moments later and Jake felt Python’s engines kick in as the pirate destroyer began to rapidly accelerate. Once again, he found himself wondering who had built the ship and why. As he waited for his message to reach Resolute and Captain Domingo to send a reply, Jake’s mind wandered back to the attack on the pirate asteroid. They had always been walking into the unknown. Yet he couldn’t help but feel like they should have handled things better. Three pirate ships had escaped. The pirates had managed to self-destruct their base and they had taken casualties. It suddenly dawned on Jake that the deaths they had suffered were his fault. He was in overall command. In four years of active service, he hadn’t seen any Navy crew die. Now he was responsible for five. A sense of coldness descended around his heart. He didn’t know the numbers, but he was also aware of the fact that his orders had killed more pirates as well. Maybe as many as a couple of hundred had died in the attack on the base and then the ship he had sent crashing into the asteroid field. As Jake raised his eyes to the holo display and focused on alpha-three, he started to second-guess his decision to give chase to the pirate vessel. If they didn’t surrender, he’d have to fire on them and add more deaths to the day’s butcher’s bill. And what if they are as well armed as we are? He asked himself. Judging from the pirate ship’s acceleration rate and the unkept look of her hull, alpha-three looked more like a Wolf Fang than a Python, but there was no way to tell just what weapons she had until she opened fire. If she turned out to be well-armed, he was certain to lose more of his people. The excitement Jake had felt hours ago at the prospect of the mission was now completely gone. Almost, he wanted Domingo to reply and call him off. Ever so slightly, he shook his head. This is not like all the reports I read, he admitted to himself. In the heat of the moment, he had reacted to things as he had been trained to. But now that he had time to think, his confidence in himself was quickly draining.
“We have Captain Domingo’s reply,” Lydia reported moments later. She nodded towards the holo display. It changed to show Captain Domingo sitting in her command chair on Resolute’s bridge. Despite all the action going on in the system, she looked perfectly calm.
“I received your request, Lieutenant Jackson. You certainly are keen. Was destroying a pirate asteroid base and four of their ships not enough for you?” Domingo actually chuckled. “You’re an officer after my own heart, Jackson. Of course you can pursue. Accept her surrender if you can, destroy her if you can’t.”
Jake felt a small measure of his confidence returning. If Captain Domingo trusted him, then he didn’t want to let her down. Tapping his command chair he began recording a reply. “Thank you Captain, we will keep you updated.” Jake turned to Lydia. “Hail alpha-three, order them to surrender.” She nodded as she looked down at her console.
The pirate vessel was already carrying out evasive maneuvers just in case Jake tried hitting it with a long-range plasma cannon shot. When a minute passed from when Lydia sent her message, she looked back up and shook her head. “I don’t think they’re going to reply.”
“Very well,” Jake said, “we will keep gaining on them and try to bring them into missile range.”
For an hour, Jake sat in his command chair largely in silence as he watched alpha-three slowly get closer and closer. When Python was just half an hour from being able to launch a missile at the pirate ship, an energy spike was detected from it. The pirate ship’s acceleration rate increased slightly moments later. It wasn’t much, but as an updated projection of alpha-three’s course, it became clear it would get the ship to the system’s mass shadow before Python could fire.
“What do we do, Lieutenant?” Lydia asked.
Jake hesitated. He thought he knew what the pirates had done. They had taken the safeties off their reactors and engines. It was a risk, likely a massive risk given the condition the ship’s components were likely to be in. Either their reactors could meltdown or their engines overload, either would probably destroy the pirate vessel. He could do the same, but he would be putting his people in the same risk. If he was commanding a navy destroyer, he might just give the order. Navy ships were built to hold up under severe stress for short periods of time. But he didn’t have nearly the same confidence in Python. He shook his head. “It’s too risky. We can’t match them.”
“Should we reduce our acceleration?” Lydia followed up.
“No,” Jake said at once. “If we do, they will reduce theirs as well. If they want to run this risk, we will keep pursuing them. Maybe one of their engines will fail and we’ll catch them yet.”
For another nine minutes, they continued pursuing alpha-three. Then a message came in from Resolute, the cruiser had just destroyed alpha-two when it refused to surrender. Lydia put the message on the main holo display. “Lieutenant Jackson, if you’re willing, I’m giving you permission to pursue that pirate ship into the next system. With your speed advantage, you should be able to catch up to them and force them to surrender before they get far. These pirates have already done too much damage to our shipping, if we can stop that ship I want to. Resolute will wait here, we’re going to do a very thorough scan of the wreckage of the pirate base and the ships we have destroyed. Something very fishy is going on here.”
Jake felt every eye on the bridge turn to look at him. In theory, Domingo was giving him every Lieutenant’s dream. His own ship and an independent mission. Even if it was only for a couple of days, he would be in sole command. An acting captain in all but name. Instead of joy however, his doubts came back to assail him. If he failed, he could end up getting more people killed. Yet Captain Domingo’s words came back to him. If the pirate ship did escape, its crew could kill countless more people. He glanced at Lydia. She gave him the slightest of nods. He tapped his command chair to send a reply. “Thank you Captain, we will not let you down. Python out.” When Jake looked around at Lydia and the other crew on the bridge, they were all smiling. He couldn’t help but catch their enthusiasm. “Let’s check Python’s shift drive and get ready to make the jump into shift space,” he said as he flashed them a smile. “And then we are going to make these pirates regret ever thinking they could run from us.”
As his crew got ready, Jake watched alpha-three. There was still a chance her reactors or engines could fail. Yet now, Jake found a part of himself hoping they wouldn’t. His mind went to his parents and even his instructors at the Academy. If he was successful in hunting down the pirate ship, it would look very good on his record. It would also make those he respected the most proud. And that was what he wanted more than anything. Clenching his teeth together, Jake raised his chin and mentally prepared himself. When alpha-three disappeared from Python’s sensors as she jumped into shift space, he gave the order to follow. Twenty minutes later and the captured pirate ship tore open a hole into shift space and flew through it. Though Jake had endured hundreds of jumps, as the transition sent a small shudder through Python and up his command chair, it felt like none of the others. This time, he was in command.
Chapter 7
One of the first lessons I learned in the war with the Ca’casiadans was that most of a naval battle is spent waiting, and in the waiting, there is little for the mind to do but imagine how horribly things were about to go. Of course, I had said as much to my students many a time over the years. Yet, the reality of it was far harder than even I had imagined.
-Excerpt from Empire Ascendant 3015 AD.
Python After Python jumped into shift space, Jake sent Lydia to get some rest, and then spent six hours touring the pirate vessel. With Petty Engineer McKay, he went over every primary and secondary system. If there was a chance they would have to fight alpha-three, he wanted to make sure Python would be up to it. Surprisingly, they found only a few secondary systems that needed minor repairs or software updates. Leaving McKay to it, Jake eventually made his way to what Lydia had identified as the Captain’s quarters. When he got there, he was happy to see someone had stripped the bed of the previous occupant’s bed clothes. Without even bothering to take off his uniform, he crashed onto the bed and fell asleep instantly.
In what felt like no time at all, the blaring of his COM unit pulled him from his slumber. Groggily, Jake fished around in his tunic pocket for it. “Go ahead,” he said when he finally found it. “Sorry to disturb you Jake, but McKay has just contacted me. There is a slight fluctuation in two of the shift drive’s nodes. He wants to jump out of shift space to examine them.”
“It can’t wait until our next scheduled stop?” Jake asked. The shift passage from Zika-seven to Hitachi-two, had five sharp turns in it where Python would have to revert to normal space, alter course and jump again.
“I asked him,” Lydia replied. “He said he is unfamiliar with Python’s shift drive. He can’t guarantee what might happen if we continue without assessing the problem. We could cause more damage.”
Jake rubbed his eyes as he tried to think more clearly. Even a small delay would give alpha-three more of a head start on them. Yet, if he waited and they did more damage, he would be giving them even more of a lead. And he couldn’t risk stranding his crew in the middle of nowhere if the engines failed completely. “Very well, jump us out. I’ll be on the bridge momentarily. No, wait. Inform McKay I’ll meet him in the shift drive compartment.”
“Understood,” Lydia said.
Not even bothering to take the time to straighten his uniform, Jake quickly made his way to where the shift drive was housed. The advanced spherical drive filled the largest hangar. Twenty cables were attached to the sphere. Each ran through the ship to the twenty shift nodes on Python’s hull. The nodes were how the drive tore a hole in normal space into shift space, and then also how the drive projected a shift bubble around Python, keeping her from being dumped straight back out of shift space once she entered. When Jake stepped into the hangar, McKay and several other technicians were already working on two of the cables. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked as he approached.
“We’re just getting a look at things now, Lieutenant,” McKay answered. “Fluctuations usually mean a faulty power relay or something more serious within the shift drive itself. We are checking the relays first.”
“How long will it take to find out?”
