Olivia was on the quarterdeck when the alert sounded. “What are we looking at Lieutenant?” She said turning to the lieutenant manning the long range scanners.
“Boarding Torpedos incoming,” said the Lieutenant, “at least one ship of the line charging energy weapons.”
“Shields to maximum output, prepare for impact,” Olivia ordered.
The energy weapons flared against the shields but they held, only to be followed by a barrage of projectile fire which simply passed through the shields, moments later the point defence canons opened up attempting to disintegrate the projectiles before they could get close. Still several impacts shock the ship.
“Damage report,” shouted Olivia.
“Multiple hull breaches, nothing major though - we’re foaming up now,” came Ms Liu’s voice over the comms system.
“Power up the slip drive,” Olivia ordered, “we need to get out of here before those boarding torpedoes hit us.”
“Powered up,” came Ms Liu’s, “I’ve been charging it constantly for days now.”
“Pilot status?”
“Getting her online now,” Ms Liu lied, “she’s in a rest cycle, it will take a few minutes to get her online.”
“Get on it quick, we don’t have long.”
“Yes sir,” Chloe frantically scrolled through the final diagnostic checks on her pad, “confirm all green.”
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Amir had already begun pulling his rifle out as soon as he heard the alarm sounding and was heading to his assembly point within seconds, sprinting through the corridors and starting to pull in the feeds from the new security scanners into his implant. They had achieved ninety percent coverage throughout the ship with only some of the inner most compartments not covered. Already the master of arms was flagging compartments where boarding torpedo impacts were most likely.
Amir wasn’t heading to any of the impact sites - their defence would be left to the crew, streams of sailors were already rushing down the corridors, holding their rifles inexpertly as they ran. Well they’d have to just do their best, Amir thought. His own destination was further in the depths of the ship; he was heading to the muster point with the rest of his marines dead in the centre of the ship where they could most quickly reach any other point of the ship as quickly as possible.
When he arrived at the muster point his NCOs were already organising their fire teams, checking weapons and generally getting ready to move out. Amir was satisfied with his men’s preparations; but really unless they got into the slip quickly the numbers of boarders would soon overwhelm them from the scans Amir was seeing. The priority was securing the passage from Sparrow’s current location to the jerry rigged flight deck Chloe had rigged up.
“Fire teams 1 and 2, come with me - special orders from the Captain. We’ve got to secure compartments 156 through to 168,” he ordered, “follow me. The rest of you - respond to the requests from the master of arms for support but your priority is to project main engineering and prevent anyone breaking through to the quarter deck. Be prepared to abandon your positions if necessary to protect the priority areas. If we lose engineering there’s no escape. If we lose the quarterdeck our command and control systems are lost too. Don’t get bogged down repelling boarders, that’s the crew’s job. Our job is to keep this boat afloat.”
With that inspiring speech, Amir dashed off with the two fire teams in tow. As he ran through the corridors he explained the plan to his men, two marines in every other compartment; barricades set up in each compartment. It wasn’t a great plan, he only had twelve marines plus himself to secure the passage from Sparrow’s dorm to the flight deck; but it was the only plan going.
“Captain’s orders are to protect this passage, it’s a key strategic route that connects with both engineering and the quarterdeck. We need to hold it,” Amir barked as they ran, “it’s our main weak point.”
As they ran through the corridors Amir positioned two men at a time in each of the compartments he had chosen to defend. Amir hoped that Sparrow was already in the flight deck, or at least on her way. He would be guarding the actual flight deck.
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Harriet bolted upright from her uneasy sleep the moment the alarm sounded, wailing through the dorm at such a volume no one could possibly sleep through it. For the past week the Captain had ordered everyone sleep in their number three’s so now all she had to do was strap on her flak jacket, little protection that it was, catch the rifles being hurled out the dorm’s weapon’s locker by a CPO and retrieve her own sidearm from the locker by her bed, which had automatically opened when the alarm sounded.
Her station was one of the forward ones where they expected boarders, she gulped, likely they’d be overrun in minutes and she’d be dead even sooner. She had to hope that Sparrow, who she’d glimpsed dashing out of the dorm even as she was still opening her eyes, would get them into the slip before anyone got through the point defence network.
Heaving her rifle up into her hands, she quickly loaded it, keeping the safety on for now she started sprinting to her own position; the rest of her work detail would be heading there too; Compartment 607. It stood directly behind compartment 608 which was an outer compartment and stood on a direct route to main engineering. The master of arms was already pushing tactical analysis into her implant highlighting the trajectory of a 30 man boarding torpedo was right in line with compartment 608. Three minutes off, well outside Sparrow’s best time for clambering into the cramped flight deck. Not something that she should know but in the private training sessions Sparrow had been giving her she’d got to talking to the pilot and she had quickly spilled the whole contents of the crazy plan that Ms Liu, Mr Choudary and Sparrow had come up with.
Harriet arrived to find her detail already hauling the barricades into place well behind the blast door which the enemy would surely blow off as soon as they had pressured up compartment 607 after the torpedo’s impact. She rushed over to help one of her detail pull another barricade off the wall and lock it into position at the rear of the compartment.
“Seaman Ellis,” the Petty Officer in charge barked at her, “take the rear barricade, your job is to cover the rest of us if we have to abandon our positions.”
“That means you’re last out,” shouted another sailor from the front barricade.
“But don’t worry, we’ll be covering you when it’s your turn to drive through the blast doors,” another sailor shouted over.
“I’m not worried,” Harriet shouted back, “I’m ready.”
“You’re really not,” snarled the Petty Officer, “but no one is so don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah we’ll all be dead in four minutes' time,” said one of the sailor’s on the second barricade.
“Speak for yourself you idiot,” said the seaman manning the barricade with him, “you go get killed, I’m going to get out of this one.”
“Compartment 608,” came a voice over the intercom, “thirty seconds to impact. Brace, Brace Brace.”
Harriet tucked herself low into the shadow of the barricade, gripping it tightly as she’d been trained and tried not to actually count down from thirty in her head. She was terrified, she hadn’t expected to be terrified, they’d been drilling for weeks now and her shooting was good and even in hand to hand combat she had gained some competency; at least she knew enough that she felt she could evade and escape rather than be laid out on the deck. However, now the moment was here she just wanted to curl up and hide. She could just hear the Petty Officer shouting something about not thinking about things and relying on muscle memory. She didn’t care, she could barely hear him over the sound of the alarms and the mental noise of dozens of new tactical alerts buzzing into her implant faster than her brain could process them.
Then the impact hit; it felt like the whole ship was going to be torn apart. Of course it wasn’t - that wasn’t the point of boarding torpedoes. They were designed for hard and fast penetration, sealing up the damage they caused almost as fast as they crashed through the ship’s superstructure; so that the troops inside them could disembark into at least some atmosphere. The Petty Officer was the first to recover.
“Take your positions,” he ordered. Already Harriet knew the enemy soldiers would be spilling out into the compartment on the other side of the sealed blast door. In seconds the telltale glow of a plasma cutter boring through the blast door was visible. Harriet pulled herself off the floor and knelt behind the barricade and brought her rifle to bear. She struggled to hold it steady but at least she had it shouldered with the safety off.
“Make your first shots count,” the Petty Officer bellowed, “our best chance is cutting them all down in the blast door.”
He was right but it wouldn’t make a difference Harriet thought, from what Amir had said about the first boarding, these soldiers were much better equipped than the defenders. They’d be grenades and flashbang hurled into the compartment before anyone risked rushing through the door.
Sure enough, as soon as the blast door was breached there was the clattering sound of grenades landing in the room. Harriet threw herself behind her barricade just in time as explosions tore through the compartment. Almost immediately enemy fire erupted through the breach and the first soldiers started charging in. Harriet forced herself back into position behind her barricade and let off a short burst at the door from her position. The rest of the detail started to open up as well around the same time; all except the ‘survivor’ on the second barricade who looked like they had been ripped apart by a grenade blast; Harriet’s stomach turned even as she pulled the trigger for a second time, only aiming enough to avoid any of her crew mates.
The Petty Officer was the next of them to go down. Harriet watched a bullet shatter his skull in a frightening shower of red mist. The seaman next to him on the first barricade, screamed a retreat and immediately the surviving sailors were hurling themselves over Harriet’s barricade and racing towards the open blast door at the rear of the compartment.
They’d held about forty seconds Harriet reckoned, certainly less than a minute. She could see a pile of enemy bodies by the breached blast door but ultimately thirty against six, now four was never going to work out their way. Harriet emptied the rest of her clip towards their attackers before ducking back down to reload.
“Harriet,” someone shouted, “get out now!”
Not waiting she flung herself towards the blast door, just remembering to keep hold of her rifle. All around her she could hear bullets hailing towards the door, as she scrambled towards it she saw a shower rip through the chest of one of the other members of her detail; he slumped to the floor just inside the blast door. No amount of nano’s were going to fix that. Moving as quickly as she could she hurled herself through the blast door; she screamed as she felt a bullet tear through her left calf but somehow managed to push her way through the blast door just before it came crashing down behind her.
Already someone was hauling her up and sticking her behind a barricade. “Marines on their way,” someone shouted, “ETA two minutes.”
“We’ll never hold until then,” another voice shouted, “there’s just two of us left and the crippled greenling. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
Harriet pulled herself up, the glow on the sealed blast door had nearly cut a passage through already. “We don’t have time to argue,” she shouted, “they’re nearly through.” She pushed herself back up to kneeling and lined up her rifle again. This would be it, she thought, the marines wouldn’t arrive in time. She was crippled; there’d be no scrambling away this time. The two other sailors were if anything more terrified than her. All she could do now was maybe get off a shot or two before someone took her out. Well it had been a short naval career at least, she thought to herself grimly.
There was suddenly silence and then a deep clang as the cut blast door section hit the deck. She opened up with her rifle immediately not bothering to take cover this time. She just held the trigger down and emptied her entire clip into the doorway, not bothering to aim. She ducked just in time to reload - as she did so a massive plasma burst flooded into the compartment. The parts of the other two members of her detail above their barricades incinerated instantly, the remainders of their bodies collapsing to the floor in smouldering piles. Enemy soldiers started flooding past the heavy weapons specialist into the room. Harriet, still dazzled by the blast, thought she saw one of the enemy troops barge past the heavy weapons specialist briefly turning him so the fuel containers on his back were exposed. Harriet instinctively unloaded another entire clip towards the fuel containers and then flung herself behind the barricade again.
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A massive explosion ripped through the compartment; Harriet felt the barricade being ripped off its moorings, taking her with it through the rear blast door. The plasma scorched her clothes, hair and skin; the pain was incredible even before she landed with a heavy thud in the next compartment. This time she couldn’t get up, she could just gaze into the melting wreckage of the compartment and witness the pile of dead bodies of the enemy reduced to smouldering bones and ashes by the plasma explosion. This time Harriet did vomit, the foul substance pooling beneath her body as she collapsed back to the floor. Suddenly the blast door in front of her slammed down; command and control must have picked up the firefight, one of many she was sure were already going on all across the ship. That was the last thought she remembered before she collapsed unconscious.
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Sparrow had awoken almost instantaneously when the alarm rang through the dorm and by the time the other sailors were waking up she was already charging out the door towards the flight deck. It was a five minute run from here to the flight deck and then another two minutes to scramble through the crawl spaces she and Ms Liu had created, and into the pilot’s seat. That was without the streams of sailors now charging through the corridors getting in her way, shoving past her as they scrambled to get to their stations.
Finally, after running for much more than five minutes she saw the first of Mr Choudary’s marines guarding the compartment ahead of her. She leapt over their barricades not even acknowledging them as she charged towards her destination. Finally she spotted Mr Choudary standing guard by the storage locker that marked the entry to her pilot’s cockpit.
“Quick!” was all Mr Choudary said as she dived into the storage locker he had just opened and into the rising space in its back wall that was opening in response to her presence. She pulled herself through the tight conduit as quickly as she could and emerged into the relatively more open space where the cockpit stood. Still on her hands and knees she pulled down one of the screens creating an entryway towards her chair, grabbing the screen and locking it back in place as she scrambled into the chair.
Adopting her best pilot’s persona she interjected over the intercom, “Waking cycle complete, I am out of hibernation Captain and stand ready,” she began before adding the agreed lie, “projection systems are currently inoperable.”
“Pilot, this is the Captain,” Captain Hernandez’s voice echoed throughout the small cockpit, “just get us as far away from here as quickly as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” Sparrow replied. Already starting the initiation sequence on the slip drive’s control board; this was all so much slower than using the interface. Suddenly she felt the transition as the ship dove into the strange realm of the slip. Immediately her screens flashed into life, she tried not to think about the giant blindspot beneath her feet and immediately put the ship into a barrel roll, only known to her due to the strange lack of inertia in the slip. Not pausing she hauled the control stick towards her as she almost instantly had to navigate around a high density patch that had appeared before her.
She had no real plan for this voyage, there hadn’t been time to plot an indicative course. All she was really managing was charting a passage through the wrecking waters of the slip which may or may not keep them within Corporation space. Flying like this made her feel disconnected; when she had been connected to the interface she would be getting instant reports from Ms Liu about the status of the drive, course correction alerts from the ship’s AI, orders from the Captain or XO, all arriving at the same time through the interface and parsed nearly instantly by her programming into the information she needed to get through the slip unscathed. Now, just like she had been in the shuttle she was on her own - but that had been a short flight, twenty minutes, to get enough distance to throw off their pursuers she’d need to be navigating for hours. She suddenly felt daunted, another feeling she had never experienced before.
Steeling herself she reviewed her performance, still hovering at just above forty five percent, would that be enough to get them through this journey; having said that she noticed her programming was slowly adapting to having to channel manoeuvres through her physical body and not via the interface. It was then Sparrow realised that she was thinking inside the partition in her mind again - whilst most of her mind was involved in piloting the slip - here she was again in this strange, unwanted partition in her mind talking to herself. She tried to rip down the partition again but strangely she found that this time she couldn’t. In the meantime as she struggled with this strange mental anomaly she could sense her performance slipping down below the minimum thirty percent level. She checked the AI’s internal clock; seventeen minutes, not nearly enough but Sparrow was now scared she couldn’t perform well enough for any longer in the slip without jeopardising the ship.
Suddenly, something strange appeared in front of her, the mass scanners were showing nothing but her visuals showed massive chunks of something heading straight towards them and then suddenly a massive spike on her EM scanners. If it wasn’t for her incredible twitch reactions suddenly overriding everything else in her confused mind they would have been smashed to smithereens.
“Multiple anomalies,” she voiced over the quarterdeck’s comms systems, “advise immediate reentry into the real.”
“Do it,” came Captain Hernandez’s concerned voice in response.
Then as she felt the ship return into real space a more concerning thought came into her head. Where was Harri? She was already interfacing with the AI through the slip control board even as she had that thought. First came a flash from her ident that confirmed she was still alive, then an image pulled across from the command and control module and Sparrow saw Harri lying unconscious in a body strewn compartment. There were no marines around, inevitably command and control would have diverted them as soon as it became apparent they weren’t needed in that compartment. However, Harri was still there and as Sparrow studied the image she could see she was extensively burned and bleeding from multiple places. Sparrow knew instantly that the other girl’s nano’s couldn’t heal those wounds - they were probably scrambling to keep her heart and lungs functioning.
Pushing herself out of the chair and the cockpit as quickly as she could she practically exploded out of the storage locker. She saw Mr Choudary leap to attention as she charged out of the corridor. “It’s Harri,” she shouted behind her as she sped off.
“Wait, there are still firefights going on all over the ship,” Mr Choudary called as he started to run after her, “where are we going?”
“Compartment 606,” Sparrow called back, “I think she’s bleeding out.”
“606,” Mr Choudary muttered, before suddenly shouting, “shit, let’s hurry.”
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How the hell did she end up getting assigned to the 600s, Amir thought, as he ran after Sparrow. Those compartments were always going to be bloodbaths, someone on this ship must be still out to get the young honourable, he knew the Captain would never have assigned any greenling anywhere near such a vulnerable location. Sparrow seemed to think the girl was still alive which was a miracle in itself. He was thinking that even as he pulled down the command and control footage of the compartments and watched the rest of Lady Ellis’ detail be clinically cut down, he saw her shot and hauling herself through the blast door and then gulped as he saw the heavy weapons specialist unleash a plasma burst into the compartment they’d retreated into. Surely no one could have survived that but even as he thought that he saw the girl push herself up and empty a clip into the briefly exposed fuel tanks of the weapon’s specialist. Then the footage cut out. The next images Amir received were from the following compartment. He saw Ms Ellis on the floor, hideous burns covering much of her body and face; by some miracle her mass of hair was largely untouched.
“Med techs to Compartment 606, priority order, Captain of Marines,” he shouted into his comm as he ran.
It seemed like they were running for hours, in reality it had only been about four minutes, but somehow the tiny pilot was outpacing him; either he was getting old or this was something else strange about Sparrow. He redoubled his efforts and made up some of the gap; Sparrow was just running blindly towards the compartment; if he didn’t keep in shouting distance he wouldn’t be able to navigate her around the firefights still going on in many of the outer compartments as the crew and his marines tried to eliminate the remaining boarders who had got onboard before they dived into the slip.
Eventually, they charged into compartment 606. Sparrow immediately dashed over to the girl and started to try and rouse her. “Stop that,” Amir shouted at her, “it won’t help.” He was already wrenching open the damaged door to the little locker that held the compartment’s emergency medical kit. Rushing over with it he immediately placed the defibrillator’s contacts onto the girl’s chest and then roughly but quickly placed the oxygen mask over her face, turning on the cylinder as he did so before standing back. Luckily the defibrillator was still reading a heartbeat; her nanos were keeping her alive, just. Now it appeared safe to do so he pushed Sparrow away from the other girl and administered a large dose of trauma nanos into the stricken form below him.
Sparrow was already pushing back towards the girl, clearly intending to pick her up.
“Don’t move her,” he shouted at her, “you don’t know where she’s injured. The best thing we can do is keep her alive until the med techs get here.”
“She’s going to die,” Sparrow wailed, her face looked truly grief stricken; could that really be? Amir had been thinking of the little pilot more and more as human but still this was something else, this was real anguish.
“Keep calm,” Amir called, “panicking won’t help her. We’ve done all we can, it's up to the med techs now.” A panicking pilot, around med techs who had possibly seen her physical form, was not going to be a good situation. “You need to hold it together Ms MacLeod,” he said firmly, calming himself at the same time, “you need to remember your situation also puts Ms Ellis’ in mortal danger so pull yourself together.”
Sparrow seemed to choke down a final sob before composing herself and kneeling down next to Ms Ellis and gently taking her hand in her own. Had those two become close? How was that possible? He knew Sparrow had been giving Ms Ellis extra training and had generally been watching out for her, since the incident a few weeks ago, but the young Honourable had always seemed to despise the pilot; had that changed? Was it a problem if it had? Something to review with Chloe. In the meantime all he could do was look at the diagnostic readings now spewing out of the defibrillator unit. Amazingly, if those med techs hurried, it looked like she had a good chance of surviving if nano patches were applied quickly enough to the third degree burns covering the girl’s body. There was a bullet to remove as well of course but that would be simpler than the burns.
Finally, Amir turned to the sound of heavy footsteps from a pair of overburdened med techs carrying a stretcher. One of them immediately clipped a restraining collar round Lady Ellis’ neck, Amir knew that was to stabilise the spine and stop any additional damage through movement. With her body now rigid the med techs were able to move her onto the stretcher, activate it’s propulsion unit and watch it race off to medical piloted by its own simple AI. Immediately the med techs were on their feet heading to the next patient to evacuate.
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Olivia’s head was still spinning. The defence had been considerably more effective than during the first attack. That was not to say they hadn’t taken another wound they could ill afford. The first reports were coming in and it sounded like the company was down another sixty hands. Something had clearly gone wrong with the slip drive or the pilot; Olivia wasn’t sure yet but was already sending a shielded message to Ms Liu about it.
“XO,” she barked, “where are we?”
“Plotting now Sir,” she heard Lieutenant Commander Desai respond, he paused, and appeared to check his console, “did the pilot say there was an anomaly?”
“Yes,” Olivia said cautiously.
“Well, I don’t know how but I think we’re in uncharted space?”
“How is that even possible, we were only in the slip for nineteen minutes? We should be still well inside corporation space,” Olivia queried, now feeling as confused as her XO.
“I don’t know,” the Desai exclaimed, “all I know is that by dead reckoning the AI thinks we're about a year from our nearest standard candle.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes Captain,” her XO sighed, “all I can say is we probably don’t have to worry about pursuers.”
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Harriet opened her eyes and immediately shut them again in the harsh white light beaming down on her. She opened them again more slowly, she tried to bring a hand up to shield them but found she couldn’t. Then there was a voice, she didn’t recognise it at first, but slowly her awareness came back to her and she found if she kept her eyes closed she could just about tune into the voice.
“Harri,” it said, “don’t try to move, you've still got a restraint collar on.”
Harri, Harriet thought, that must mean the voice talking to her was Sparrow. She nearly blurted out the name but some survival instinct in her must have intervened and she managed to splutter out “Ms MacLeod.”
“Yes, it’s me,” she heard Sparrow answer, “you must remain calm Harri.”
“Easier said than done,” Harriet replied as pain suddenly flooded her body, before it quickly subsided as she felt a heavy dose of opiates enter her system. “What’s the damage?” she asked nervously.
“Harri,” Sparrow spoke softly, “you were shot in the left calf. The bullet’s been extracted and once the nanos have finished your leg should be fully operational again.”
“But,” Harriet asked, this was more pain than a bullet hole.
“You were badly burned in the explosion,” Sparrow started, “you have extensive third degree burns across much of your body. The med techs prioritised your face and limbs for reconstruction and they anticipate good results; however, your torso was more heavily burnt, to such an extent that they had to prioritise saving your organs. I’m afraid you will have extensive scarring to those areas even once healed.”
“Well at least I’ve got my organs,” Harriet sighed.
“You have lost a kidney,” Sparrow added.
“I’ve got two of them right?” Harriet asked weakly.
“Yes Harri,” Sparrow replied, sounding sad.
“That’s alright then,” Harriet said before slipping back into blissful unconsciousness again.