December 29th, 2261. 15:00 St. Mary’s Station, First Fleet Command
Admiral Timothy Dufresne had fully expected the day to be another ho-hum affair. That was until a message was received from the CNS Des Moines log and John’s personal message addressed to the admiral. The office swiftly turned into a flurry of business; additional officers were called in on their day off to help with the workload.
His viewscreen turned on without his command. That was not a sign that any officer ever wanted to see. Admiral Charles Dickinson, the commander of the First Fleet, had a very serious look on his face.
“Tim, what in the fuck is going on? Is this message and ship’s log, correct?”
“Sir, the ship’s log has had its location fully redacted. That’s standard practice when a log is transmitted from enemy territory. But it has been authenticated. Now presuming Lieutenant Lief isn’t conducting some sort of disinformation campaign, which I am neither suggesting nor believe to have happened, then that means Commander Shephard ordered his wing to attack an enemy fleet.”
“A stealth wing. Attacking an enemy fleet. In hostile territory?” Admiral Dickinson looked utterly bewildered, “What in the absolute fuck happened? Where did it happen?”
“We don’t know. They had carte blanche authorization to explore and observe. John’s letter and log's notation were pretty damning sir. It contained some, to be generous, terrible assumptions about the enemy fleet and used his father’s failing tactics. If they went through with it…”
“Then they’d be dead if they didn’t disengage and leave. Fuck. What’s intelligence say about this?”
“It’s going to be a week or two before they can get into touch with their contacts. This conflict is fucking everything up. Alliance extra-net has said nothing about a battle. As is to be expected, they are very selective about announcing military results. However, we do have confirmation that something happened but haven’t been able to glean anything from the activity that’s been observed.”
“Wonderful, the Alliance is in damage control and has a stranglehold on information which means we have fuck all.”
“Sir, intelligence was pretty clear that unless they have a contact in the system in which an attack occurred, it’s very possible they may not find out where it was. Their contacts in their military are exceptionally difficult to get a hold of these days. That said, we are trying to track down their location now, but once they leave our space…”
“I want the forward scout wing to begin looking at systems along our border. Start with where they were last known to be and fan-out from there.”
“Sir, I recommend we move them to our bordering systems but not to cross the border. I hate to say this but our other forward reconnaissance wings are being actively chased out of their systems.”
“Dammit. Then the survivors, if there are any, are on their own.”
“For now, yes, but we’re hoping things cool down and we can jump into the correct system to do a recovery operation,” Tim pinched the bridge of his nose, “I’ve already sent a couple of officers to his wife, sir. He sent a message to her.”
“Fucking hell. I don’t want this leaking anywhere. Not yet. Not until we have confirmation of what happened.”
“We also contacted her parents. The mother was on the line when she found out. She’s the only daughter of the Robinson family. They are the owners of a mil-tech-focused corporation. I hope I didn’t overstep it, but we intimated that if this gets leaked their contracts are on the line.”
“Good work. What a fucking mess we’re now stuck with.”
12:35 CNS Des Moines – Secondary Bridge
The secondary bridge was effectively a clone of the main bridge, but minus two stations in the rear. John was sitting on the console for the helm and looking back at the assembled officers and crew.
“Ok, so the bad news first. We lost badly and our ship is seriously fucked up. But we have main power, food, water, and our slip generators our functional.”
Lieutenant Rebecca Linton stood up sporting an eyepatch, “The two nurse aids have had their memories fogged over. The crew is exhausted, nervous, and scared. What’s worrying now is that many are angry.”
“The more minor injuries, I’m using the term loosely here, I am going to begin discharging members of the crew,” Lya Blanchet said, “The crew needs rest.”
“Ok, division heads need to work and figure out schedules. Send a third of your people to the rooms to start out a new first shift,” John said.
“Sir, are we really not abandoning ship?” Lieutenant Perry Guetta asked, “I’m not sure why that order hasn’t been made yet.”
“Lieutenant, what do you know of Alliance practices surrounding POWs and surrendering troops?”
Perry shook his head.
“If you’re lucky, you get sent to a forced labor camp for not less than five to ten years. Survive that and they let you go. Life pods are often used for target practice. High-value prisoners are tortured and then disposed of. This is the main reason why our trade relations with them are nearly non-existent, and also why we have a prison colony of their soldiers from the last war.”
“But maybe…”
“In that last battle, we destroyed four frigates and six cruisers I believe. The alliance lost more ships trying to save some of their ships from a failing orbit. And that battleship is now facing months of work to bring her back to functional status. We start launching and broadcasting SOS’ we’ll be converged on and shot dead. This ship will either get us home, or it will be our end. I firmly believe she will get us home.”
“I presume you have a plan of sorts, sir?” Sergeant Zach Miller asked.
“Starting tomorrow engineering teams are going to begin welding the loose armor panels back onto the ship. We will most likely be harvesting some from the ships near us.”
Lieutenant Eileen Cho smirked, “Hold on, that’s pretty macabre. What if there are any survivors?”
Ana shook her head, “I’ve already confirmed the passive scans. There’s no atmosphere in either ship. We’re also only going to be taking detached armor plates near our sister ships.”
“But we can’t active the slipstream generators until we’re out of a gravity well,” Lieutenant Smith said, “We’d have to fire up the engines and then burn out of orbit here.”
“We’re already in a ballistic trajectory heading out into the empty void. We’ll be out of the gravity well in thirteen or fourteen hours,” John said, “Thankfully we were burning so hard that we were well above escape velocity when we killed the power. Assuming things go to plan, main power comes online, feeds the capacitors, and thirty seconds later we’re in slip space.”
John jumped down and stood in front of the assembled leaders, “Look, I’m not going to bullshit any of you. We shouldn’t have been in this fight. The captain gave us an unlawful order. We followed that order. I am not abandoning this ship. I am not going to fail you. We WILL get home. It’s not going to be without sacrifice, pain, or hardship. But we will get home. But to do that I need all of you on board with this plan and I need you to both believe and get everyone on board.”
“Marines are already with you, sir,” Zach said immediately.
“Thank you. Now, everyone that isn’t working gets some much-needed rest. I’ll take the first watch here. Perry, you are due in six hours. Rebecca, you’ve got the watch in twelve hours.”
The officers began filing out of the bridge. John walked to the rear of the room and sat down at a terminal. Perry stayed behind and waited for everyone to pile out. When the door closed Perry leaned against the bulkhead.
“Captain, I wouldn’t say this in front of the other people. But I was on the bridge.”
“You were one of the lucky ones to live through that mess,” John said looking up at him.
“What happened to Commander Shephard. I’ve never seen an officer do that.”
“Shell shock was what we called it a couple of centuries ago. Basically, he suffered from a combat stress reaction. The first officer suffered from it as well. They basically got stuck and couldn’t act or make any commands.”
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“Could we have gotten out of there before the trap was spring?”
“Sure, if we never started attacking them in the first place. After that, I’m not sure since I haven’t reviewed the information. But I didn’t notice that the Commander wasn’t responding or correcting and he did order us to press the attack. In my opinion, even if we peeled off from the battleship it would be unlikely for any of us to break orbit cleanly.”
“Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
John nodded, “Speak honestly of this plan.”
Perry sighed, “We should abandon ship and announce our surrender. The enemy has to receive us in accordance with our last treaty.”
“Where in the treaty does it require holding and treating POWs ethically?” John asked quietly.
“It’s in there though.”
“Oh, there’s lots of words and bullshit in that treaty. But between the Alliance and us, there isn’t a single mention of POWs. We presume much, but the Alliance views every hostile soldier as a threat. A threat to eliminate,” John looked down at his terminal and unlocked several images and reports, and transmitted them to the main screen, “Interact with those as you see fit. The first two happened last month. The rest occurred during the last war.”
“This can’t be. No one is this barbarous,” Perry refused to accept.
John answered quietly, “You can believe what you want. I will not allow myself or anyone on this ship to suffer any more than they already have. We live as one, or we die as one. Those are the only two results of our actions from this point on. I honestly believe we will get home.”
“I can’t say that I believe in any of this. But I will follow your lead,” Perry said before leaving the room.
John brought up a wireframe of their ship on the main viewscreen. He overlayed what Ana and Deniz wanted to weld onto the frame. If the others saw this janky solution to the structural concerns, he’d have more people like Perry. But it was concerning, even alarming to John, about the threat morale posed. If one person jumped into an escape pod and let out an SOS, it’d be game over for them.
December 30th, 2261. 03:00 CNS Des Moines – John’s Quarters
John woke up about a minute before his alarm was scheduled to go off. He spun his legs from under the covers and placed them on the chilly floor. The lights hadn’t been turned on yet, so he was just sitting there in the dark.
The enormity of the task that not only he and what was left of the crew punched him in the face that morning. It was going to take a herculean effort to survive, and no shortage of luck either. The dangerous extravehicular work was going to begin today.
The alarm began going off and the lights turned on. John stood up and walked over to the terminal to turn the annoying thing off. A short amount of stretching was done to get the blood flowing for the day. Afterward, he took care of his morning routine and then got dressed.
John picked up his watch from the table and looked closely at it. Under normal circumstances seeing gouges and damage to a twenty-five thousand credit watch would be highly annoying. But now his Rolex Submariner watch had lots of character. It would tell a story that no other could match.
“Three-hundred-meter water resistance,” John grunted as he smiled reading the dial, “A fat lot of good that does me out here.”
He slid the watch over his left hand and locked the clasp into position. John strode out of his room and headed to the mess hall. The corridor was cleaner than he remembered it the night before. He noticed a couple of the marines working with the engineering crew.
“Morning Captain,” one of the marines said as he saluted John, “The Chief and Lieutenant Silva wanted us to clean up the corridors. I didn’t think it mattered that much but it feels better.”
“Keeps your mind from wandering too. Keep up the good work you two,” John nodded and continued to walk down the corridor to the officer’s mess.
John walked into the room. He shook his head and cursed at himself under his breath. It was after hours technically for food. Luckily for John, one of the chefs peeked outside of the kitchen at the right time.
“Perfect timing sir. Still have some chow available.”
“Whew, thank you,” John walked over to the serving area and waited patiently for his meal to be put together, “Would’ve been a fucking disaster to go on an EVA on an empty stomach.”
“Sir, I know this is gross to ask, but I’m going to anyway. What happens if you have to, you know, go out there?”
John grinned, “You either hold it or you just go.”
“What if you have to take a shit?”
John laughed, “You really try to hold it in. That would be a, and I apologize for this answer, really shitty situation to be in.”
“Hah!” the chef’s assistant laughed, “Eat up sir. Stay safe out there.”
John smiled at the smart-ass chef’s assistant. The mood in the room wasn’t as tense as it was the prior day. It wasn’t back to normal, but things felt much looser. That was good. The crew needed moments of normalcy to unwind.
He found a table and slid into an open seat at the end of it. To his right, there were several crewmen and an ensign. The ensign, who John was reasonably certain was one of the many weapons officers onboard, stopped eating and stared at his hands and they shook uncontrollably.
“Ensign,” John said.
The ensign looked over at John, “Yes sir!”
“Look at your hands and take some deep breaths.”
He looked down and saw that they weren’t shaking. The young man looked at John then back at his hands. He was flummoxed at what happened.
“Ensign, it’s easier to say this than do this. But what’s done is done. You can’t change anything that happened. Find a goal that’s achievable now and focus on what you can do now to achieve that goal in the future.”
“Sir, I switched shifts with my bunk mate…”
“Rotten luck. That’s all it is. Would your friend want you wallowing in self-pity?”
“I mean, probably. We didn’t really like each other,” the ensign said.
The enlisted crew sitting with him couldn’t stifle their awkward laughter at the bluntness of that statement. John grinned and shook his head. He looked back at the young man.
“Shitty luck for him then. Don’t beat yourself up, it won’t do any good. Trust me, been there and done that. Right now, you need everyone around you to do their part. They need you to do your part. When we get home, that’s when you can focus on the past.”
“Thank you, sir.”
John nodded and began eating his meal. He checked his watch and noticed that he was running a bit short of time. The rest of the meal was quickly eaten. He patted the ensign’s shoulder as he walked by. The crew needed everyone to do their part to survive, John wasn’t lying when he used that line to motivate the crew.
04:15 CNS Des Moines – Main Hangar Airlock
Despite the regulations clearly saying he couldn’t do this, along with virtually everyone also agreeing that he should go on any EVAs, John was adamant that he was going to help. His power armor was a bit bulkier than the standard suit the engineering team was wearing. But it could amplify his strength many times over and that could let John hold much larger chunks of armor in place.
“Sir, are we sir the welding arcs aren’t going to be observed?” Ana asked.
“They aren’t bright enough to be differentiated from the background light at standard ship distances. And in the off chance, they were detected our computers would read that as debris in the way.”
“Understood. Well, at least this part of the ship avoided most of the damage,”
“Sirs, the drones have finished mapping the exterior of the hull. We should stay on the starboard side as much as possible. The port side is sketchy as hell,” Petty Officer Brian Olson said.
John nodded, “Marking the path to follow in our HUDs. Let’s take this slow and methodical. I don’t want to lose anyone.”
The fearless captain walked out into the exterior pad. Their gloves and boots both had magnetic locks in place. In theory that should keep the crew from being ejected off the vessel. It took nearly ten minutes to walk up to the spin of the ship. There they finally found out why the railgun stopped working.
“SHIT! Look at that!” Ensign Valerie Walsh.
“Good lord. The slug welded itself to the armor plates,” Ana said.
“Now we know the spine is still good,” John said as he continued walking forward, “Are we sure we couldn’t use a forward airlock?”
Despite John not being able to see her, Ana shook her head, “Not for this one. We need to map safe routes to walk. And most of them are being used for cold storage.”
“What about using the port side airlocks?” John said as he trudged forward.
“I’d rather not start an EVA attached to nothing. We’re not exactly experts,” Ana said.
“Not that you asked, but I agree with that,” Brian said.
“At our current rate it’s going to take forty-five minutes to get into position, and the same to get back,” John was speaking his thoughts out loud.
“Safety over speed and expediency sir,” Ana said.
Deniz that added to their channel, “I’m sending one of the drones to inspect all the airlocks. Using the aft airlock is going to make this take at least a week or two to complete. The good thing is we have plenty of free time now.”
“Pushing three weeks actually. We have the food stores, but the problem with three weeks is maintaining unity and focus for that long,” John paused, “Deniz, please work with the Doctor to ensure everyone has time in the rec room to unwind every day.”
“I will do that Captain.”
The EVA team continued their slow walk forward. Thirty minutes later thy were in position. Two armor plates were partially attached to the ship still. They were looking at the structure to find out how it was attached and what the best way was to reweld it.
John walked forward to reach and grab the armor panel. He then pulled it down a couple of inches. The team saw that one of the beams on the far side was bent pretty badly. The armor plate wouldn’t have the normal support structure beneath it, but if it was welded in place where it was it’d make the ship that tiny bit more rigid.
“Ok, one of you, check to see if the plate is bending any when I pull down. Otherwise, I’m going to yeet this in place and then y’all start welding quickly.”
“Is that really wise?” Brian asked.
John ignored the question and pulled down hard on the armor plate. He was incredibly strong, but that armor plate wasn’t going to bend. It would have been a cool story to tell people at a bar years in the future though. ‘So, this one time my captain got our ship fucked up and I bent a ceramite armor plate.’ John sighed at the missed opportunity as the engineers furiously welded away.
The armor plate directly next to it was the next one that was treated in the same fashion. Except a bead was run down the middle of the two plates. John walked out on the plate and tested its strength as drones were inspecting things. They had spent almost forty minutes on the two plates, which were connected to the ship still.
John looked up at the debris field and scanned it while the engineering team was debating the next steps. The power armor's onboard VI was reconstructing where they should go. A large chunk of the broken plate that was adjacent to the first plate they rewelded in place could be seen a few hundred meters from the ship.
John painted the broken plate, “Deniz, have one of the drones drag that plate back to us.”
“Roger.”
Fifteen minutes later the drone was pushing the armor plate in place. John was tired of listening to the engineering babble and helped force the plate into position. He activated the welder on his right hand and tapped it into place. Brian walked over and helped weld the seams while John did the same with where it had cracked in the center.
It was an amateurish hack job. There were beads of weld all over the cracked area. But after that piece was done, they began the slow walk back into the ship. The drones followed behind them, to retrieve them if something awful happened. John was lost in thought the whole walk back. Work had been done, but it was brutally slow going. Hopefully, Deniz had detailed maps of both the ship but also of the debris cloud surrounding the ship. Inch by inch, that was how they were going to get home.