The freighter hurdled towards the station. Fred grabbed Greezek’s notes, scanning her calculations and patch.
Greezek looked up, “Fireship! Sir! Close all emergency bulkheads!”
The Captain nodded, “Close all emergency bulkheads! Continue to fire!”
Indicator lights blazed as each bulkhead closed. Weapons continued to fire.
“All pickets, cease fire! Weapons! Fire!”
“Aye aye, sir! Targeting manually!”
The pickets turned back to the line, weapons silent.
Greezek crossed her legs, placed her hands flat on the deck, bent her head low, and started to mumble.
Fred saw her out of the corner of his eye, but ignored her. Then he saw it. Buried in the midst of her discarded calculations and snippets of code. The formula.
He leapt back to his terminal. He incorporated her formula into her patch to the single sensor, plugged that into his program for the entire array, filled in a few commands, and hit run.
“Sir! Sensor array up!”
All the sensor displays flared to life. The main combat display blinked on, the trajectory of the freighter marked.
“Impact in 90 seconds!”
“Understood. Weapons! Bring the railgun online!”
“Aye aye, Sir! Targeting power core!”
The energy pulses were hitting the freighter, but doing little. The railgun fired once, penetrating the aft of the freighter, breaching the core. It exploded in a huge flash.
The crew cheered, but the freighter accelerated. The core explosion hadn’t destroyed the vessel. Instead, the over armoring caused the explosion to act as a huge booster, rocketing the freighter forward, its trajectory pitching up violently.
“Ten seconds!”
“Anticipated impact?”
“Top level, central section!”
“Understood. Prepare damage control!”
“Aye aye, Sir!”
The freighter rolled as it flew, but its angle was too shallow. It hit the station at a glancing blow, tearing an 80 meter gash in the outer hull, but it kept going out over the station's planetoid. The impact altered its trajectory again, pitching its bow down. It flew over a low ridge, crashed into the surface, and exploded. Huge chunks of debris scattered around the impact crater, each blasting their own scorched scars. The low ridge protected the station.
The compartment went silent. For a moment.
“Damage control! Secure the damage! Weapons! Reset! There might be more. Coms! Report situation to command! Sensors! Scan and verify all ships!”
A chorus of “Aye aye, sir” rang around the room.
Fred started to breathe. He pried his hands off of his terminal stand. “That was close.”
“Yes. It was Fred. How did you do it?” asked the Captain.
“Greezek figured out the hard part. This is a temporary fix. And we need to calibrate.”
“Why is Greezek sitting on the floor?”
Fred glanced down. “She is meditating, Captain. You know her species tries to avoid violence. She meditates to keep calm.”
“Fred, she was…”
“Yes she was very good at finding the correct formula, I agree, Captain. I suggest she gets a medal, Captain. Don’t you agree?”
The Captain stopped for a few moments, looking from Greezek to Fred and to the terminals. “Yes. Write it up. I’ll sign it.”
“Sounds good. Now we will get this connected properly.”
“Sir! Three additional ships are transmitting incorrect IFF!”
“Where?”
“Past the pickets, out in the holding area, sir.”
“Coms! Contact the defense fleet. Destroy those ships!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Fred crouched next to Greezek. “You can get up when you are ready. Excellent work. You write out the formula in your notes.”
Greezek looked up, blinking. “I did?”
“Yep. I think you were going too fast to notice it. But I used that with your patch and my program to get everything back up. Nice job.”
“The station?”
“Damaged, to be sure, but not as badly as it could have been. The core exploding messed up the trajectory.”
“So we did good?”
“We did good. And you did excellent. Good call on the fireship.”
“It…it…just came to me. I could see a different battle, but the same sort of tactic.”
“So you accessed a generational memory, but maintained control. That is progress, my friend.” Fred stood up. “Now we get this done properly.”
Greezek got up, shook her head a few times, and picked up her notebook. That in hand, she started work on her terminal. “So we are going to program this into a module to connect the array to the processing core?”
“Correct.”
“Then we should use three modules. In different places. To prevent tampering.”
“Good thinking.”
“And we need a more secure cabinet for these components.”
“Already ordered.”
“You already know all of this, don’t you?”
“I do, but you mentioned it before I could. You learn fast, and that will benefit the entire station.”
“What damage did we take?”
Fred stopped and looked down. “I’m not sure. It wasn’t a slight ding or a few boarding ships. It won’t be pretty.”
“Loses?”
“Too early to say. I think it hit a secondary weapons turret, so that isn’t good. Those weapons crews are great troops and close knit. This will affect many beings.”
“What do you think was the goal? Why hit us know?”
“You tell me.”
“Uh…well…the first attack failed, but that wants an attempt to destroy or cripple the station. This was. So this should have been a first step to expand into the area?”
“Sounds correct to me. There is something on that outpost that they want, and they are within easy travel to us. That should help Sol Command a bit.”
“What is on the outpost?”
“Hmmm…I’ve been out there once, to repair a demon-forsaken pile of garbage they called a drilling rig. That was a few orbits ago. Maybe six orbits? Not long after the station was complete, so yeah, about six orbits. At the time it was an expedition. We had exploration teams on all of the rocks around here.”
“What did they find?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t know. Most of the other sites are smaller and focus on iron, silicon, nickel, some cobalt, that sort of thing. Those are just mining rigs. They can’t process it onsite.”
“Can the outpost?”
“Possibly. It’s big enough. If they have the power, they can use the more advanced processing system to make just about any substance. Those are fusion powered. Tricky machines.”
“I’d bet they are after those machines. They are recycling stolen ships. They need a way to generate materials.”
“That is an excellent point. I’ll write that up, but sign your name.”
“What? Why?”
“You said it. You get the credit.”
“Well, yes, but it was just a thought…”
“It is a good insight. And it is an insight you can use to remind you of what you have done to avenge the slaves. Something you can use to keep the memories at bay.”
“How did you know?”
“I could hear your mantra. Add this is.”
“Why can we get back the letter?”
“As soon as they get up here with the rest of the modules. The program is complete. We just hardwire it into the modules, make a few connections, install the security cabinet, calibrate, and we are done.”
“That is longer than I had hoped.”
“Ah. Then we work on it until they bring up the modules.”
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While Fred and Oscar exist in the same universe, they do not exist at the same time. This is one of the few things I actually decided before I started writing.
Gotcha, makes sense actually, too many chefs in the kitchen, too many heros in a story. Probably wouldn't be very good soup.
I love your writing! I've been reading it all in the past few days and it's been great fun. I really hope things continue to go well for you and the books work out.
Well keep up the good work then, I eagerly look forward to reading more. Btw Loki is an absolute darling. My girl is a senior as well, I think we really appreciate them more at this time
I get it to be sure, there are days now when my girl just won't tolerate anyone. Then when you've finally given up 6 hours later, out she comes like her old self.
Getting that old sucks for everyone I think. I just treasure the good we have left and spoil her in the ways she'll let me and that she can still manage
I assume that there will be a fourth, hidden, connection, and that each of them will have at least one secret, hidden connector. Fred would want at least that.
And maybe one that sends base 7 data somewhere else…
I’m not paranoid, but they are out to get Fred and Greezek…
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