Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

He contemplated how to take on two heavily armed Hegemonics at the same time. Somehow there must be a member of his own squadron without an adversary. Or had the Hegemonics adopted some complex chess-like formation in which their ships all covered one another?

A hint of a shudder passed through his mind at the thought that he might be seeing the first stage of a large, relentlessly unfolding Hegemonic plan.

He was about to speak to Sergeant Quelle again when a sudden movement on the scope screen attracted his attention. Among the wavering lines by which the screen represented the strat an indistinct shape was expanding swiftly.

A moment later the screen itself went blank and at the same time a horrifying explosion tore through the Smasher of Enemies . The destroyer shuddered for a second time. The nose tipped sharply downwards and the bridge caved in.

Before he deserted his desk Captain Aton verified that all com lines to the bridge were dead. Amid a hail of collapsing metal he fled from the room with the rest of his staff, helping them through the disintegrating door and leaving himself last of all.

He knew without any doubt what had happened. The flitting shape on the scope screen had been a strat torpedo which by a hundred-to-one chance had struck home. It was the sort of bad luck no chronman liked to think about.

By the look of things the torp could have hit the destroyer close to the impact point of the earlier Hegemonic energy beam. At any rate it appeared to have exploded inside the inner armour – within the ship herself – and had caused severe structural damage.

In short, the Smasher of Enemies was breaking up.

A frightening, tortured creaking sound came from all directions. Aton glanced around him at the twisted, heaving corridors. He grabbed the arm of his lieutenant.

‘Get to the com room. If the beta transmitters are still functioning try to raise the fleet and request help.’

The lieutenant went off at a lope. Behind him, what was left of the bridge folded up like a tin can in response to the pressures of the ship’s shifting girder frame. Its erstwhile crew moved closer to Aton as if for comfort. Up the corridor came the sound of shouting and a distant, pained groan.

Another, worse danger had occurred to Aton. It was possible that the Smasher of Enemies was now helpless; if so, one or both of the Hegemonic destroyers could move in close enough to fire more torpedoes at point-blank range. He seized another officer.

‘See if you can get to the torp section. Tell them to fire on the standard pattern, once every two minutes.’

For the moment there was no knowing, of course, if the torp section had even survived the explosion. There was no knowing if any system in the stricken ship was still operational – except that there was obviously still some power flowing: the lights still burned.

Comforter Fegele was on his knees, praying for the survival of the ship – and, Aton thought cynically, of himself. Irreligiously he yanked the priest to his feet.

‘The Lord’s vengeance has fallen on our vessel,’ Fegele babbled. ‘This is the price of heresy.’

Aton pushed him away and pointed to a white-faced young ensign. ‘Vuger, you come with me. The rest of you – get some rescue work organised.’ He spoke harshly, aware that morale was dropping. ‘There are bound to be a number of wounded. I want the situation stabilised for when we’re ready to move.’ With a last glance at Fegele he added, ‘The souls of the dying need your ministrations, Comforter.’

He went scrambling down the twisted ladder towards the drive-room, with Ensign Vuger stepping down hastily above his head. As they went deep into the ship the evidence of the destroyer’s own destruction became even more evident: walls that had bulged, then broken open like paper bags, lines and conduits that spewed everywhere like ravelled string.

But as they reached the bottom of the ladder and picked their way through the wreckage the lights dimmed momentarily and then burned more brightly than before. At the same time a nearby com speaker crackled. Aton mentally congratulated the repair crews; they had lost no time.

He paused by a speaker and managed to get through to gunnery. The voice that answered was not Quelle’s or the gunnery officer’s, but that of an ordinary crewman.

‘We’re blind, sir. And three of our beamers gone.’

‘Where’s Sergeant Quelle?’ Aton demanded.

There was silence. Then, in a strangled voice, the crewman said, ‘Deserted his post, sir.’

Aton left the com and pressed forward, motioning Ensign Vuger to follow.

They stepped over the bodies of two dead crewmen and into a scorched area where smoke drifted and the smell of hot metal was in the air. The bulkhead separating the drive-room from the rest of the ship seemed to have melted and only now had solidified. Within the drive-room itself there was fair calm, despite the destruction that had been wreaked. Aton saw the body of Ensign Lankar, who a short time before had been proudly displaying his knowledge of the time-drive, laid out neatly alongside one wall with several others.

To the searing effects of the Hegemonic energy beam had been added the punishment of the torpedo explosion. A gyro was stuttering and giving off a deep tremoring hum from behind the thick steel casings. Aton understood at once that the situation was very bad.

‘Are we able to move?’ he asked.

A young, officer, saluting hastily, shook his head. ‘No chance, sir. It’s as much as we can do to maintain ship’s field.’

‘What chance of phasing into ortho?’

The other looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps. Do you want us to try?’

‘No,’ said Aton. It would do no good. Even if they managed to escape from the ship, without the requisite equipment to keep them phased most of the crew would be thrown back into the strat after a short period of time. And there was clearly no possibility of cruising to the nearest node, where orthophasing could be made natural and permanent.

So it all depended on someone coming to their rescue.

How was Lieutenant Krish getting on in the com room?

He looked around for a com, found one that worked, and dialled. The com speaker crackled. A voice spoke through faintly, unintelligibly.

And then the floor rose under his feet. There was a whoomph , followed by a noise that vibrated on his eardrums to such an extent that he had the momentary impression of existing inside a deep, solid silence. Flung against the opposite wall, dazed, he watched in fascination as the floor and ceiling strained towards each other with a grating sound that made him think of giant bones breaking.

The blast of the explosion seemed to continue in a prolonged smashing and cracking. The collapse of the already weakened ship’s skeleton – and timeships always suffered a good deal of physical stress in the strat – was accelerating.

Lieutenant Krish crawled towards him and helped him to his feet. ‘Another torpedo,’ Aton said breathlessly. ‘I’m afraid we’re finished.’

The movement of the ceiling towards the deck had ceased for the moment, but he did not think the drive-room would be habitable for long. He staggered to the instrument boards. An engineer joined him and they stared together at the flickering dials.

The engineer hammered his fist on the board in frustration. ‘The ship field is breaking down,’ he declared woodenly.

‘How long will it hold?’

‘I wouldn’t give it another ten minutes.’

Aton went immediately to the com set and dialled a general alert. In a loud, firm voice he announced, ‘This is the captain speaking. Take to the rafts. This is the captain speaking. Take to the rafts.’

He repeated the message several times, then turned to the stricken faces of the surviving drive-room crew. ‘The ranking engineer will stay to do what he can to hold the field steady,’ he ordered. The engineer nodded, and Aton told him, ‘I will relieve you in five to ten minutes. The rest of you, get to a raft.’