Phillip Peterson - The Dark Ship

“Understood.”

Jeff couldn’t see the expression on his shipmate’s face as he delivered this fatal command to the escort ship.

“Perihelion maneuver in ten seconds,” Joanne said.

“OK,” Jeff replied. “Into position for high-g maneuver.”

He sat back and put his hands on the armrests, making sure his head was in the hollow of the backrest.

“Five, four, three, two, one…” Joanne counted down.

It was as if someone had thrown an anvil at his chest. The air escaped his lungs in a hiss, as the heavy antimatter engines ignited. He was flattened into his seat with the force of eight g. He could hardly breathe. Stars danced in front of his eyes.

“Power up the engines as planned,” Joanne said. “Perihelion maneuver in exactly three minutes!”

Jeff tried to lift his arm but failed. With agonizing slowness, the position of the ship’s vector changed on the navigation hologram. Jeff looked out of the window. The blue Acheron sun kept on growing, until it had outgrown the space of the window. They were so close to the surface, Jeff thought he could dip his hands into the flames of the sun. They passed layers of the sun that were thousands of degrees hot, but that was nothing compared to the frictional heat that some parts of the ship, still flying at almost the speed of light, had to endure. The hull of the ship couldn’t withstand the thermal load for more than a few seconds.

“Passing perihelion,” Joanne said. Her voice was little more than a croak.

In front of the window, the sun moved further and further to the left until it disappeared behind them.

“Sixty seconds,” Joanne said.

The vector of the little ship on the hologram barely changed direction anymore and pointed toward a blue symbol: their target, Acheron-4. Through the window, Jeff could see a tiny blue dot moving from the right and coming to a stop right in front of them. The planet with the enemy base was still over one hundred and twenty-five million miles away, but they were racing toward it and would pass it in less than seven minutes. If everything went smoothly, it would cease to exist shortly afterwards.

Suddenly, the pressure eased, and Jeff was sitting in his seat again with normal gravity. He took several deep breaths, then hit the talk button. “Navigation, status!”

“Perihelion maneuver complete. We’re precisely on course. We’ll reach Acheron-4 in six minutes and ten seconds.”

“The other ships?” Irons asked.

“The Neptune and the Spider have also completed their maneuvers. They’re one hundred and twenty-five thousand miles starboard. The Boston is still in the maneuver.”

“Missiles!” Finni screamed. “Twelve o’clock!”

Jeff glanced out of the window. But of course he couldn’t see anything. Only Finni, with his positioning system, could see the death-bringers.

“They’re gone again,” the radar technician let out a sigh of relief.

“They adjusted their flight path to our perihelion maneuver,” Irons said. “Time until missiles reach target?”

“About two minutes,” Finni whispered.

“Talk loudly and clearly, damn it!” Irons ordered, without raising his voice.

“Let’s drop the bomb and start the evasive maneuver!” Dave Green spoke up.

“It’s too early,” Irons said. “Come on, don’t lose your nerve.”

“I can see detonations of hydrogen bombs orbiting Acheron-4,” Finni reported. “They’re very strong.”

“Damn!” Irons frowned. “I wasn’t expecting that, looks like they’ve stationed kinetic weapons.”

Jeff gulped. The missiles were bad enough, but the scrap metal now flying toward them at almost the speed of light would puncture the spacecraft like bullets perforating single-layer toilet paper.

“One minute until the missiles hit!” Finni reported.

Jeff didn’t answer. There was nothing left to say or do. All they could do was wait. For death or life—those were the only two possibilities. The next five minutes were like a game of Russian roulette—he was holding a gun to his head and all he had to do was squeeze the trigger.

“Thirty seconds.”

Jeff clenched the armrests. All the simulations and trainings… nothing could have prepared him for this. He lifted his head and looked out of the window again. There was nothing to see but the blue dot of Acheron-4.

The clock continued its relentless countdown. Any moment now…. It was so quiet on the bridge, it seemed as if time itself were holding its breath. Only the dull throb of his heart echoed in his ears.

Suddenly, there was a blinding light. Jeff squeezed his eyes shut, but the bright light penetrated his closed eyelids. Tears ran down his cheeks. One of the missiles must have detonated right in front of them. Jeff forced himself to open his eyes again. The brightness had subsided slightly, but he still had trouble recognizing anything. A new sun had sprung up in front of them. Pale yellow, almost white, dazzlingly hot, and they were racing toward it at breakneck speed—they didn’t stand a chance of avoiding it. Already they were diving into the blinding ball of white-hot plasma.

“Cooling system on max!” Irons bellowed.

“Yes, Sir.”

There was a loud crash in the cabin and Jeff was almost thrown out of his chair. The cooling system must have failed somewhere on the ship. It was already overheated after the perihelion maneuver.

“Plasma intrusion! We’ve lost stabilizer number three!” Green screamed. “I’m sealing off the section!”

Jeff nodded. At least there was nobody in there.

“Understood,” Irons replied.

Then it was dark again outside. They had left the plasma cloud. Portside, more expanding suns came into view, but they were far away enough not to be dangerous.

“I’ve located forty-four detonations,” Finni said. “Most of them exploded behind us. I think we survived the missiles.”

Jeff clenched his teeth. It was too early to breathe a sigh of relief.

“I’m not receiving any signals from the Neptune,” Owl said. His voice was barely audible.

“Position?” Jeff asked.

“Yup, I’ve got it,” Finni replied. “One of the detonations was exactly in the flight path of the Neptune. It must have been hit.”

That could have been us! If they had raced into the plasma ball of the detonating missile just a few seconds earlier, the Charon would now be nothing but atoms. They would have been dead before they’d even registered they’d been hit.

Major Irons spoke. “Positioning! Can you estimate when the scrap of the kinetic weapon will reach us?”

“No,” Finni answered immediately. “We don’t have enough data on the strength of the detonation to calculate its speed. But we’ll probably pass it any second now.”

“How long till we reach the target?” Jeff asked.

“Two-and-half minutes,” Joanne replied. “We have to drop the bomb up to sixty-two seconds in advance, so we can reach a safe distance.”

“Good,” Irons said. “WSO, prepare the bomb—”

All hell broke loose. An almighty crashing noise sounded in Jeff’s ears. Splinters flew through the bridge in every direction. A violent pain shot through his arm as he was hit by a piece of debris. The alarm sirens wailed. Behind him, Green screamed. Jeff felt his ears pop. The cabin filled with mist, the air pressure dropped.

“Malfunction message!” Irons roared.

Jeff looked down at his arm and saw red patches seeping through his combat suit before the automatic seal set in.

“We’ve been hit!” Green screamed.

“You don’t need to tell me that! Give me a proper malfunction report!”

They must have passed through a wall of scrap metal. It was anyone’s guess how many bits of metal had perforated the ship.