Posted by Thanatos on July 25, 2000 at 15:42:49:
The Heath, October 2116:
It was one of those mornings when the air was still and misty, with the bitter chill of winter just round the corner, and I looked out of the kitchen window at the cobwebs glinting in the brittle sunlight, and I knew I had to get out of the house.
It had been some days since I'd been out for a run, and I enjoyed the sensation of my legs carrying me along the road, then up past the fields, all the while just my footfalls keeping me company.
Out of the town now, and along the horse walks, up to where the racehorses exercised on The Heath. They were out now, the second lot of the day, and I could hear the thunder of their hooves on the turf as I labored up the hill.
At the top of the hill, I came across a small huddle of people round a horse that had fallen onto its side.
I could sense something bad had happened, and I slowed, despite my instincts to pass by.
The mare was on its side, trying to get up. I thought at first that she had broken her leg, but then I saw that her legs were fine, but she didn't have the strength to get up. Her sides were heaving, trying to get breath. The saddle and girth had been flung aside, and the rug, with the monogrammed insignia of the stable had been flung over the horse's sides to keep her warm.
I stopped, and drew closer, looking over the fence that separated the heath from the walkway, and nobody stopped me.
The stable lad that had been taking her out was crying.
There was a man there with a black bag, and he was loading something into an injector. The others looked on, silent.
The vet stepped up to the mare, injector at the ready.
'Just a moment,' the stable lad said, holding up his hand, and he knelt by the horse's head and stroked her face, and the horse seemed to recognize him, and her bloodshot eyes opened and rolled to look at him. The stable lad slipped a sugar lump from his pocket and pressed it into the horse's mouth.
'It has to be now, son,' said the vet, placing his hand on the stable lad's shoulder, who bowed his head, and carried on stroking the mare's head as the vet pressed the injector to a vein. The mare jumped slightly then settled down again, and her breathing grew slow.
In the long silence that followed, I could hear the birds singing in the sky, and there was the rustle of a whispering wind that caressed the grass of the heath. Maybe it was the passing of the horse's spirit, that lived to run, and would run no more, but I bowed my head with the others, and the world was quiet, and the sky was a blue bowl above our heads.
When I looked back again at the horse, her sides were still, and people were standing around, waiting. The stable lad was still stroking his friend's face, holding her neck in his arms, unable to believe that the gentle mare he had tended since she was born was gone.
And my mind went back to that time, a lifetime ago, when I had held someone's head in my arms.
TANNHAUSER'S GATE, off Canopus III, 2098
Captain Harris.
Captain Kate Harris wanted me.
You didn't mess with the Captain, and when the call came I leapt from my bunk, dressed as quickly as I could, and clambered to the flight deck of our ship, buckling on my comlink as I pulled myself hand-over-hand along the gangway.
We had returned to zero-G during my sleep period, the slow tumbling of the ship halted in preparation for the expected battle, and all around me I could see articles lashed down to the decks, and partitions taken down and stowed.
Captain Harris was standing in front of the main viewport as I entered the bridge, staring out at the stars, and she hauled herself round when she heard me enter.
She was petite, barely five foot four in her spacesuit, and the silver fabric shimmered and rippled over her slim body as she turned to face me. All the rest of the bridge crew were suited up, their helmets off and close by, and I realized with a thrill of excitement that this was what we had been waiting for these past two weeks.
'Mister Tracey,' she said immediately, 'we have received orders to engage the enemy fleet. I want you to plot an intercept course on the second flagship, and take us in. And get your suit on, this will be a combat situation.'
My jaw dropped, but I responded immediately:
'Aye, Captain,' and I pulled myself to my post, relieving the duty helmsman, who gave up his post with an envious smile.
'You always were the lucky one, Chris,' he muttered, and clapped me on the shoulder as I shrugged on my suit and took over.
I always was the lucky one.
The first helmsman ever to take a frigate into a real combat situation. We had all trained so hard for this moment, and it had been my turn to take over when we went in. My thoughts were dominated by the desire to perform to the best of my ability; for the time being, there was no time to worry about my own fate.
'Bring the reactors up to full power, Engineer,' the Captain ordered, and the distant thrumming of the fusion plant rose to a powerful roar that could be heard throughout the ship.
'Maneuvering power.'
'Maneuvering power, aye.'
'Tactical on display,' the Captain was looking forward, at the 3D holographic display that filled the forward part of the bridge. On it, the warships of the Secession Fleet were grouped in battle formation in orbit over Canopus III, and thin lines trailed from each speck, showing velocity and acceleration vectors. They were leaving orbit, moving outwards on a Hohmann transfer trajectory to intercept us.
Two battleships, nearly twenty smaller ships, and this was the final countdown to the first space battle that had been fought in anger. But there would be no last-minute political solution now; the time for that had been and gone, and the colonists on Canopus III had formally appealed for help before they had been overrun by Secession forces. I still remembered the terrified scream of the female newscaster as they had burst into the studio, the sharp crack of gunfire, and the splash of blood on the camera lens before the feed went dead.
No, this was it; there was no doubt in any of our minds that we were committed.
Captain Harris walked into the middle of the display, and pointed to the line of enemy ships, her finger between the two largest. From the outside, no-one would have guessed that her small and graceful form held the mind of a born leader, a person who could lead men and women into battle, hold them together, and come out the other side.
'This is where we're aiming for,' she said, indicating the second of the battleships, the Acheron. We're to punch a hole in their battle line, take their fire, while the rest of our battle group come up behind.'
She turned round to face us. The bridge was very quiet, and only the faint exchange of reports from around the ship could be heard. 'We've all trained for this, a dozen times, so we know what to do. This is an historic moment. Never before have any ships engaged each other with hostile intent. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to make history, and it is my privilege to lead you today.' She let these words sink in, then pulled herself back to the Captain's chair, and strapped herself in.
'Let's do it. Helmsman, take us in, maximum speed.'
'Intercept course on Acheron, maximum speed, aye,' I acknowledged, and ran up the twin General Electric plasma drives to full power, and the thrust from the drives pushed us back into our seats. Nearly a hundred and fifty meters behind us, the engines glowed white-hot in the vacuum of space as dying atoms were blasted out at near-light speeds, and the other ships of our battle group ran up their reactors as they prepared to move off behind us.
Forty minutes until our batteries were in range. In many ways, battles in space resembled the ancient fighting tactics of the days of sailing ships, with giant ships moving slowly towards one another, culminating in frantic close quarters combat, only the sizes and distances involved were vastly greater.
Thirty minutes, and the Captain ordered the rest of the crew into their suits, and the escape boats to be armed.
Twenty minutes, and we transmitted our last message beam back to base, relayed by the other ships. I thought of what I had written in my last message, written late last night, and if she would still be there for me when I got back.
Ten minutes, and we could the shape of the enemy battleships on the telescopes. Like huge aircraft carriers in space, they powered up out of orbit, heading right for us, while we decelerated out of our solar orbit to intercept them.
Five minutes, and the true enormity of what we were doing dawned, as the enemy battleships loomed closer. They had nearly ten times our firepower, and considerably more range, but they didn't have our maneuverability, and we were relying on that to evade their atomic and high explosive warheads. Spaceships were fragile things, and it didn't take much to punch through their pressure hull and send the crew to a freezing death in space.
There was no such thing as deflector shields, or directed energy weapons in space battles. They were fought with guided missiles, and countermeasures, and the terrible Vulcan cannons for really close range. The only thing in our favor was that it took a direct hit; with nothing to transmit a shock wave, a weapon could burst quite close to us and not have much effect. But there were fragmentation weapons that could do terrible damage at close range, and the cannons could tear into the thin metal casing of the ship and slaughter any crew in moments.
'All blast shields up,' ordered the Captain, 'close all airtight doors.'
The bridge doors hissed shut behind us, and my heart beat faster. We all knew that, if our compartment was compromised, those doors would never open again, and we would die in here.
Forty seconds until we were in range. We were closing on the Acheron, and we could see her gun turrets swinging round now, pointing directly at us.
'Steady as she goes, helmsman,' she said, and put her hand firmly on my shoulder, then released it, and that touch, that tiny piece of reassurance, meant so much to me. It steadied my jangling nerves, and my breathing slowed to something more normal. I realized that she was going round the whole bridge, a quiet word here, a press on the arm there, something for each of us.
'Give me the intercom,' she asked finally, sitting in her chair.
Her voice echoed round this ship. We heard it on the bridge, and heads lifted to listen to it in the engine room, in the gunnery turrets, in the galleys:
'Attention all hands. This is the Captain. We are about to engage the enemy. We will not be able to answer back for some time after the enemy guns target us. We can expect a rough ride. Keep your helmets handy, stay cool, and get ready to answer fire the moment we are in range.' She punched the intercom out, and did a final check on her suit controls.
'Strap in everybody,' she ordered, 'here we go.'
The ship jerked, all ten thousand tonnes of it, as we were hit by the first of the enemy missiles. The countermeasures ensured that the blast took place away from the main hull, but the shrapnel from the blast still had the capacity to inflict terrible damage, and the ship shook as another missile exploded.
'Damage report!' she barked.
'Hull intact. Minor damage to starboard batteries. One missile launcher out of action, ma'am.'
'Steady as she goes, Mister Tracey,' she warned me. I had let our course drift by a fraction, and she had noticed it. 'Keep us on track. Stand by for evasive.'
'Incoming salvo!'
'Steady as she goes, everyone. Hold tight.'
The ship was shaken by another blast, then a second, a third, then a salvo erupted against us, and my vision went blurred as we were shaken by a tremendous barrage on our bow.
'Damage! Keep her STEADY, Mister Tracey!'
'Countermeasures almost out. Hull puncture in bow compartment one.'
'Seal it off!'
'Aye, Captain.' The order to kill everyone in that compartment went out, and everyone knew what would be happening in there...
The crew struggled to clamber through the doors, and some of them got through. But most of them didn't make it, and they were knocked from their handholds by a terrible blast of air, a blast that sucked the oxygen from their lungs and left them gasping in vacuum. It slammed them against twisted pieces of metal and impaled them there to die like stuck insects, it tossed them around like straws as their life was torn from them. Then in the cold vacuum of space, without their helmets, the blood started to run from their noses and eyes, and their lungs froze, and one by one they started to die...
'Incoming!'
'Evasive! Show us what you can do, Mister Tracey!'
I responded instantly, and threw the ship into a tight roll to starboard, then spun to port in a tight turn. The stars spun round us in a crazy spiral as we tumbled. Strain alarms shrieked, but we were in combat, and I knew how far I could push it. The countermeasures burst again like small suns against the blackness of space, and another missile thumped home, but only one of at least eight that had been aimed at us, and I knew we had done well.
'Incoming!'
'More please, Mister Tracey,' asked Captain Harris, and I threw the ship into an identical maneuver, knowing that they would be expecting me to go the other way this time. I was right, but as we twisted, the awful cry went up:
'Out of countermeasures port side! Prepare for impact!'
We were disoriented with the neck-twisting evasive maneuvers, and the shock of the explosion against the hull of the ship was appalling. Two missiles socked home, penetrating the thin skin of the outer hull, and the insulating layers between, before bursting through and exploding inside the ship.
I felt the explosions, a concussion that reverberated through the ship and made my eardrums pop.
'Damage!' yelled the Captain, and the bridge air conditioning filled with smoke.
'Hull breached, ma'am, port side bow. We...'
All hell broke loose, and we were rocked by another tremendous impact. This time, the main lighting went out, to be replaced by the red glow of the emergency lights. One of the blast covers to the bridge viewport was torn away, and the armored glass cracked. I coughed on the thick smoke that had filled the bridge.
'Helmets on!' yelled the Captain, 'can we still maneuver?'
'Negative, ma'am,' came a voice from Engineering, 'we've lost power from the main reactor. The containment is leaking, it's - ARGGGHHHHH!' There was a terrible scream from the voice on the intercom, and in the distance more cries, and then the channel went dead.
The main reactor's primary coolant exploded into the engine room, and molten sodium metal sprayed about like quicksilver. It burst into flames as it encountered the oxygen in the air, and it melted through the engineering crew's thin suits like a hot knife through butter. They died in an agony of molten, flaming metal that filled the room and splashed over the walls, igniting the aluminum hull, and above the dreadful noise of dying men and women came the shriek of the radiation alarms as the fractured tokomak spewed out streamers of superheated plasma. It cut through the hull as if it wasn't there, venting the ship's lifeblood into space, and tore along the compartment and licked menacingly over the backup reactor...
'Fire in engine room,' reported Damage Control, 'extinguishers released.'
'Seal off the compartment,' ordered the Captain, her voice tense. There was dead silence on the bridge now. 'Emergency power to thrusters. Keep us moving, Mister Tracey!'
'No power from main reactor, ma'am. Secondary reactor is overheating. Backup power is ready.'
The eyes of the dead chief engineer gazed sightlessly at the secondary reactor as it blew apart, and the interior of the engine deck was filled with violet flame as the molten sodium mingled with hot plasma. The walls of the compartment fell aside like flaming paper...
'No power from either reactor, switching to power cells,' came the report, and the helm went sluggish in my hands as we lost thruster power.
'No power for maneuvering, ma'am,' I reported, 'we still have some attitude control.'
'Cannon!' came the warning, and there was a distant rattling on the hull as the enemy ship's Vulcan cannons opened up against us.
In a corridor near the hull, men and women were dying. They flung their arms wide and gasped in pain as explosive shells riddled the hull and blew shards of razor-sharp metal into their soft bodies, shredding their thin suits. Then came the evil whirlwind as the corridor decompressed, and their open wounds erupted in fountains of blood as the air pressure plummeted, and their blood sprayed past their gloved fingers as they clutched their punctured suits...
'We're sitting ducks here,' she said after a moment, her voice sounding tinny through the intercom of her helmet. She closed her eyes for a moment. 'Alright. Abandon ship. Get everyone into the escape boats while we still can. We've done our job here.'
'Abandon ship. Repeat, abandon ship.'
As if in answer, a dozen white explosions erupted in the distance, and we crowded round the viewport to see that the rest of our ships were now in range, and were opening fire on the enemy. We had punched a hole in their formation, and had let the others through.
'Damage control, Captain. We're breaking up.'
'Alright, everyone,' she said, 'get yourselves clear. Mister Tracey?'
'Aye, ma'am?'
'Stay here with me and hold the ship as steady as you can while the boats get away.'
I felt privileged to be on the bridge while we let the others escape. The enemy seemed to have ignored us for now; we were less threat than the other ships that were now blasting into them. I could hold the ship in a stable attitude, but only just, and the shop wallowed and pitched unsteadily as each boat blasted away, taking our crew to safety.
Now there was an eerie quiet on the bridge, and there was only the hiss of carrier waves in our suit helmets as we waited for the last boat to get away.
Captain Harris patted her chair affectionately.
'You know, Tracey,' she said, 'I'll miss this ship. She's been good to me. I once sat in your station and wondered what it would be like to have my own command one day. Well, now I know.'
The ship shook gently as a compartment blew deep inside, and I corrected the attitude.
'Good, Mister Tracey, that's it. You know,' she continued, 'we've been in battle barely fifteen minutes. A whole lifetime in training, and we're abandoning ship after just fifteen minutes.' She paused. 'Are the escape boats away yet?'
'Last one's closing its doors now, ma'am.'
She nodded, and crossed over to retrieve the main disk from the data safe, and slipped it inside her suit.
'OK, Mister. Set the ship to hover as best you can, and let's make our way out.'
I programmed the autopilot to hold us steady, and we left the bridge. We made our way down the main corridor, and a tangled mess of wiring hung and sparked from the ceiling. Most of the smoke had cleared now, but we passed several rooms that were on fire, and the doors had sealed shut.
As we neared the Engineering deck, I saw a terrible sight. One of the doors leading up to the gun turrets had sealed shut; clearly there had been a hull breach on the other side, and through the transparent section in the center of the door I could see a female crewmember.
She had her spacesuit on but had no helmet.
She was beating at the door in terror and frustration with her gloved fists. Her eyes were wide and staring, and as she saw the Captain she hammered on the glass in a frenzy, her cries for help clearly audible. Behind her, a viewport had cracked, and papers and bits of wreckage were whirling round.
Then the viewport behind her blew, and her eyes met mine, and the life-giving air gushed out into space, and she pressed her gloved fingers to the glass, her mouth crying out silently in the cold vacuum of space, her faint scream trailing away into silence. Blood sprang from her nose, and she stood there for several moments, unable to believe that she was in vacuum. Her eyes filmed over as her tears froze in vacuum, and she slowly collapsed to her knees, as if begging, her splayed hands sliding down the glass, and her booted feet thrashed feebly against the deck as she squirmed in her death throes. She was looking at me as she died, her mouth opening and closing feebly, as if trying to get air, then suddenly a blood vessel blew inside her mouth, and...
'Come ON!' shouted the Captain angrily, then as I tore myself away from the blood-spattered door and hauled myself along the corridor, she added, more gently, 'There's nothing we can do for her.'
We were getting near the hangar, where the last escape boats were located, when suddenly the ship was rocked by a violent explosion, and we were thrown off our handholds to plunge headlong on the floor. A missile must have targeted us. The roof bulged in, spilling cables and gas from ruptured pipes round us, and through our helmet monitors, we heard the voice warning:
'Danger. Hull in this section is compromised. Airtight doors are closing in ten, nine...'
'Get out!' yelled the Captain, and thrust me forward, to the end of the corridor, where a red flashing light showed the door about to close.
She pushed me along in front of her, and the ship was rocked by another blast, and we both struggled to pull ourselves along the bucking, pitching corridor.
'Get OUT!' screamed the Captain, and threw me bodily through the door. It was sliding shut from the ceiling, and the Captain was hard on my heels.
There was a sickening crunch, and then a terrible, suppressed scream, a low moan of despair...
I turned, and Captain Harris was lying face-up, the door having closed shut on her knees. Her face inside the helmet was a mask of pain, and her teeth were clenched. Her booted feet hung limply on the other side of the door. Her legs had been completely crushed.
I opened up her helmet. This section was safe for the time being.
'Get... out...' she hissed from behind clenched teeth, and motioned for me to unzip her suit. I did so, and she indicated the data disk.
'Get it... back... to Fleet,' she managed.
I couldn't leave her. She had made sure that everyone had got off the ship before her. This was the person I had served for all my time on operational duty, the person that everyone had looked up to. I wasn't going to leave her here, trapped in a dying ship. I already had my medikit open, and I pressed a painkilling injector to her skin, over her exposed neck. It jumped in my hand as the dose went home.
Her eyes closed.
'Another...' she whispered.
I broke out another, and she lay back as it went in. I thought for a moment that she was gone. But she opened her eyes again after a moment, and looked at me.
'Captain...' I began, but the tears were blinding me.
I loved her.
She smiled.
'It's okay, Chris. I can't feel anything now. But I want you to do something for me before you go. Will you do something for me?'
I nodded.
'I don't want to die here, alone,' she gripped my hand. 'It's a lonely life, being in command. You'll find out, when you get your own ship. I've lived alone; I don't want to die alone. Would you do something for me? Would you do something for your Captain, before you go?'
I could barely move my head; my eyes were full of tears.
'There are two more shots in your kit, and four in mine. I want you to give me all those shots, at once. I'll be unconscious after another two, and the rest will finish me off. I won't feel a thing. Please, will you do this for me?' she stroked my hand, and looked up at me, and my tears dripped onto her hand.
I reached for the medikit, and broke the seal on the remaining two cartridges.
'Goodbye, Chris.'
'Goodbye, ma'am. It's been a privilege to serve under you.'
'Thank you for telling me that... Mister Tracey. And now... if you please...'
I pressed the first shot to her neck, and it went in. She lay back, semi-conscious, as I readied the second.
'You know that time when you came in and found Mister Anders with me in my quarters?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'I never loved him, you know. I just wanted a good... a good fuck that night. But tell him from me... tell him from me... that I always remember... that night. Will you do that?'
The second shot went in.
'Yes, ma'am.'
She lay there, and her mouth moved slightly, but she was fast falling into unconsciousness. I reached for her medipack, and banged in the remaining four shots. She didn't flinch as they went in.
I checked her breathing and pulse. It was very slow. She hardly breathed.
I turned around to check the status on the escape boat.
When I turned back, her heart had stopped.
She had gone.
The men standing around the horse shuffled now, and from the bottom of the lane, near where the road ran by the heath, a towing vehicle was hovering with a suspensor sled.
The others helped the stable lad to his feet, and someone picked up his saddle where it lay on the ground.
I didn't run home, but walked all the way. Too many things were going through my mind, and besides, I was remembering Captain Harris.
Time had slipped by after that day.
I had been given a command, of a frigate, just like the one that Captain Harris had commanded.
I had never seen action myself after Tannhauser's Gate, although the Secession Wars raged for another year, and countless lives were lost, and worlds ruined, before the madness came to a close. I retired from the Fleet four ago, and came back to Earth, and now I spent my time writing, and being interviewed. The pilot of the first spaceship ever to see battle.
I had never married, or settled down with anyone, and my dreams of telling stories about spaceships to two little children sitting on my knees were just the dust of wasted opportunities and wistful glances over the shoulder.
When I got back home, I went to the cabinet in the study, and unlocked the door, and took out the box, and stroked the gold of the medal, and my eyes filled with tears as I remembered Captain Harris that day, a lifetime ago.
Thanatos_r@hotmail.com